How Trump Is Fixing the Revenue Side of the Federal Government and, In Turn, The Nation's Economy

As readers of this blog know, I have never voted for a Republican for President since I began voting in the 1970s. Thus, I am not a Trump voter. However, I have avoided coming down with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and have kept an open mind about him. I find him obnoxious, graceless, and certainly not smooth.

However, he has been effective in other facets of his life and he has been effective as President so who cares if he is not graceful and eloquent? Consider the following stats as a historical review:

• When Trump left office in 2021, the average price of a gallon of gas was $2.42, when Biden left office the average cost was $3.08.
• When Trump left office in 2021, the average 30 year mortgage rate was 2.65, when Biden left office the average cost was 7.04%.
• When Trump left office in 2021, the average cost of a dozen eggs was $1.47, when Biden left office the average cost of a dozen eggs was $4.95.

I could go on but you get the idea: I do not care what a politician's personality is as long as he or she delivers results for Americans, much like Trump did in his first term and unlike what Biden did in his only term.

Since coming into office three months ago, Trump has made excellent progress on several major issues facing the country including illegal immigration, illegal drugs flooding into the country, wasteful government spending, and the need to develop the country’s manufacturing base. Over the next series of posts, we are going to focus on the last two aspects of his progress, eliminating wasteful government spending and developing the country’s manufacturing base.

We have already done a series of posts on Trump’s attacking of wasteful government spending which began with the following post:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-by-numbers-part-2.html

We will get back to wasteful spending since Trump and Elon Musk have continued to identify stupid and wasteful government spending since the above posts on wasteful spending were discussed.

Today, however, we will review the various sources and companies that have promised to invest in America as a result of Trump’s policies. Revenue and expenses/costs are part of any business and Trump is a businessman. Thus, today let’s focus on “revenue:” generating jobs, wealth, and eventually taxes. And in the following posts we will go through the incredible amount of wasteful spending that he and his team has identified, something any business owner should always be doing, optimizing and hopefully minimizing his company’s costs.

But today, Trump’s efforts to bring investments and jobs to the country:

1) Apple recently announced that it will bring up a quarter million square foot factory in Texas by 2026. This factory will be focused on building artificial intelligence servers and this effort will create about 20,000 research and development jobs across the country.

It also announced that it plans to spend a half trillion dollars in the U.S. in the next four years. These expenses and investments will be spread out across its many product lines including purchases from U.S. suppliers and filming TV shows for its streaming service.

According to Apple CEO, Tim Cook: “As a proud American company, we're thrilled to continue to make significant investments in the US. Today, we’re announcing a $500 billion commitment to support American innovation, advanced manufacturing, and high tech job creation.”

2)Kimberly-Clark recently announced that it plans to domestically invest $2 billion over the next five years. This will be the company’s biggest U.S. investment in over 30 years.

This investment will greatly expand its manufacturing base to keep up with domestic demand for its many consumer products. The company expects this investment to create over 900 high end industrial automation and advanced manufacturing jobs.

According to Group Vice President for North America, Russ Torres: "This landmark investment represents a strategic bet on the American consumer and our ability to drive innovation-led sustainable growth for Kimberly-Clark. It reflects the confidence we have in our long-term growth plans and complements a broad range of commercial and R&D investments we have been making throughout the business as part of our Powering Care transformation journey."

A new factory in Warren, Ohio will be spread out over 1 million square feet. A new regional distribution center in South Carolina will streamline and improve the company’s logistics and delivery capabilities.

3)The United Arab Emirates recently committed to spending/investing a whopping $1.4 trillion in the U.S. over the next ten years. These investment will be done in various fields including AI, semiconductors, energy, and manufacturing.

For example, Emirates Global Aluminium will build the first new aluminum smelter in the country in 35 years. Such an investment is expected to double U.S domestic aluminum production.

4)Saudi Arabia’s crown prince recently announced that he wants his country to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. According to a Saudi spokesperson: “The crown prince affirmed the kingdom’s intention to broaden its investments and trade with the United States over the next four years, in the amount of $600 billion, and potentially beyond that.”

5)Japanese Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba recently promised to boost Japan's investment in the U.S. by $1 trillion after a recent meeting with Trump. Part of this commitment involves boosting Japan’s importation of U.S. liquefied natural gas.

The Prime Minister, during the meeting, also pointed out how two Japanese car companies, Toyota and Isuzu, have plans to build factories in the U.S.

[Note: these stories and actions were reported by reputable news sources including Reuters, Associated Press, Japanese Times, and other sources.]

Big companies and wealthy nations are committing to making big investments in the U.S. as a result of Trump’s efforts and business negotiating skills. These investments will create jobs and wealth, the “revenue” side of the equation we discussed above.

But investments in America and our economy are not related to these huge investments discussed above:

• IBM - $150 billion to be spent over the next five years for manufacturing operations.
• Thermo Fisher Scientific - $2 billion over the next four years to expand its manufacturing and innovation projects.
• Corning - $1.5 billion to expand its manufacturing location, adding 400 new jobs.
• Merck - $1 billion investment to build a new manufacturing plant in Delaware to create more than 500 new jobs.
• Amgen - $900 million investment in its Ohio manufacturing operation.
• The Bel Group - $350 million investment to expand its U.S. manufacturing across several states.
• Nvidia - $599 billion investment over four years invested in its AI infrastructure.
• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing company - $100 billion investment in its U.S.-based chips manufacturing.
• Johnson & Johnson - $55 billion investment over four years in its manufacturing, research, and development operations.
• Roche - $50 billion investment in its U.S. manufacturing and research operations, creating more than 1,000 jobs.

I will end this discussion here but we could list out dozens of other domestic and foreign companies and nations that have committed to invest trillions of dollars in the U.S. economy over the next decade or so.

And this is why I do not care that Trump is an obnoxious, crude person. The only thing that matters is positive results, regardless of what you think of the person creating these positive results. The investment plans discussed above, the “revenue” component of the business of government, are amazing. Over the next several posts we will continue to discuss the unbelievable number of wasteful projects and efforts that are wasting taxpayer wealth every day, the “expense” side of the government.

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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:

https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom

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Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2018, Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In A Science: Forecasts That Went Horribly Wrong and The Massive Failure Of Paris

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) As a trained professional statistician, it comes natural to me to go back in time to see how well a forecast predicted reality. Given how good, or badly, your forecasts performed allows you to improve your forecasting skills and accuracy. According to a June 23, 2018 article by Shawn on the Fix This Nation website, that is exactly what some folks have been doing for the major climate forecasts of the past thirty years:

• The Wall Street Journal had climatologists Patrick Michaels and Ryan Maue compare climate forecasts from thirty years ago to today’s actual results.
• James Hansen of NASA back in 1988 started a lot of this climate change/global warming nonsense when he declared he found a “high degree of confidence” in the relationship between human-produced CO2 and the “greenhouse effect and observed warming” of the atmosphere.” 
• Most of Hansen’s predictions said that the Earth’s temperatures would increase steadily over the next thirty years as humans threw more and more CO2 into the atmosphere. 
• However, only his Scenario C was close to being true and that forecast said that the Earth’s temps would NOT increase substantially in the coming decades.
• Forecast models developed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on average forecasted twice as much warming than what actually happened as did other major “expert” forecasts.
• Hansen also did forecasts that also lamely predicted that the number of hurricanes and tornadoes would increase as a result of CO2 that was going to be produced by mankind.
• Of course, those forecasts were also epic failures with Michaels and Maue concluding that not only were Hansen’s forecasts wrong the reality was “the opposite may be true.”
• Michaels and Maue also concluded that, “The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.”

The forecast failures were “long and tedious,” the predictions never came close to being accurate over the test of time. And yet, many liberals like Al Gore and Obama still insist that man made global warming and climate change is reality. When everything you claimed would happen did not happen when do you let go of the fantasy?

2) We have often discussed the reality that the infamous Paris Climate Agreement was a disaster and that, fortunately, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement. The only people that were going to have to make sacrifices were Americans, that the big and growing polluters (e.g., China, India) and others had no fat in the climate fire. Obama sold the U.S. down the road to satisfy his own ego.

Trump took some serious heat from both inside and outside of the country for correctly pulling us out of the agreement but Nicolas Loris and Bryan Cosby, writing for the Western Journalism website on June 2, 2018, updated everyone on how well, really how badly, other countries were doing relative to their meager commitments within the agreement, one year after Trump’s withdrawal:

• Despite the claim of climate alarmists that coal is bad for the environment and climate change, worldwide coal usage actually went UP 1% in 2017 despite the effort of the Climate Agreement signees to reduce coal usage.
• A lot of this coal usage increase was because Asian countries’ increase in coal fired electricity.
• World wide there are 1,600 coal fired electricity generating plants under construction, plants that will burn enough coal to produce 840,000 megawatts of electricity.
• If the Paris agreement was any good I doubt that it would allow for the use of 1,600 NEW coal fired power plants.
• And it is not just China and India increasing their usage of coal, smaller countries like Turkey and Indonesia have also struggled to meet their Paris goals since they need the cheap and quick use of coal to meet their growing economy needs.
• Pakistan signed onto the Paris agreement but that agreement is quite useless: “Given the future economic growth and associated growth in the energy sector, the peaking of emissions in Pakistan is expected to take place much beyond the year 2030. An exponential increase of (greenhouse gas) emissions for many decades is likely to occur before any decrease in emissions can be expected.”
• But it is not just Pakistan who is contributing nothing to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement: “Germany, a world leader on climate action, has failed to cut emissions and has actually seen emissions rise during the past two years. Germany may even have to buy its way out of a binding European Union agreement to lower emissions in the coming years.”
• Brazil expects its emission to continue rising until at least 2030, Japan will continue increasing its use of coal since nuclear in that country has a bad rep, and Poland and South Korea also plan on using more coal going forward.

But all of this proves how bad the whole agreement process was from the beginning: although many countries are falling short of the commitments they made just a few short years ago there are no ramifications or penalties. Even infamous NASA scientist James Hansen, see above discussion, called the whole process “a fraud” in 2015, claiming that, “There is no action, just promises.”

Commitments already being missed, the widespread and increasing use of coal across the world, and no penalties for failure. Trump got this one right.

Still a good thing to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. More to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

"Meet the New Boss, Same As The Old Boss"... or The Failed Foreign Affairs and MIlitary Strategy Of The Obama Adminstration

Back in 2013, President Obama made the following quote and claim: “A decade of war is now over.” Which is good since given the following warlike actions the U.S. is involved in, I would hate to see what it would be like if the “decade of war” was NOT over:

• The Obama administration recently sent 300 troops into the Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops.
• The Obama administration is debating whether to give the Ukrainians actual weapons as opposed to only the non-lethal aid it has been providing.
• The Obama administration recently sent 3,000 troops back into Iraq to support the fight against the ISIS forces.
• The Obama administration is flying air attacks against ISIS forces throughout the Middle East.
• The Obama administration sent many, many tanks and jet planes to Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge.
• The Obama administration spent well over a billion dollars in inserting U.S.military resources into the Libyan civil war.
• The Obama administration is still launching drone attacks into Pakistan to combat the Taliban with a recent attack killing two civilian hostages including an American.
• The Obama administration is still launching drone attacks into Yemen to fight any number of different enemies after having abandoned the country and leaving about half a billion dollars worth of military equipment behind for those enemies to put to their own use.
• The Obama administration has a fleet of warships assembled in the Middle East to prevent Iran from shipping weapons to its allies in Yemen with a potential armed and physical confrontation narrowly avoided in the past week when an Iranian convoy of ships headed for Yemen turned back.
• The Obama administration has doubled the number of U.S. troops it is keeping in Afghanistan this year, to 10,000 troops, and is now allowing the Pentagon to directly support Afghanistan forces in battles against the Taliban, a significant change in strategy from previously saying that U.S. military forces would only conduct counter terrorism operations, whatever that is. 
• The Obama administration still has tens of thousands of troops stationed in Japan.
• The Obama administration still has tens of thousands of troops stationed in South Korea.
• The Obama administration tens still has tens of thousands of troops stationed around the world in dozens of countries.

Obviously, we were being sarcastic. Like most of Obama’s other campaign and Presidential promises (e.g. most transparent administration ever, will reduce the annual Federal spending deficit in half, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor under Obama Care, etc.), the “decade of war is over” is either an outright lie or incompetence on the administration. You cannot claim the decade of war is over when you are involved in at least a dozen different war situations around the world.

The Obama administration thus has degenerated into nothing more than an old Who song, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Despite his promises, we are still sticking our noses, and our military, into other countries’ affairs at great expense to the American taxpayer, just like just about every other President has done. Step 30 and its military strategy from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” would have prevented us from getting involved in these dozen war zones and others: "Bring back all nonessential deployed military personnel to the United States.This will save money and help our reputation as a freedom loving, non-imperialistic nation.”

But now we have no strategy, no exit plan, this administration has got us so entangled into so many war situations that it is difficult now to tell who our allies are and who are friends are. We are heading off Iranian arms shipments to Yemen with our Navy but allowing Iran to help in the fight against ISIS. We are working with the Saudis in the Yemen mess but the Saudis do have sympathies and relationships with ISIS since both are Sunni based religious entities. We said we were limiting our military exposure in Afghanistan but then turned right around and expanded it. The list of conflicts and confusion goes on and on which is not unexpected when you do not have a strategy and seem incapable of formulating a coherent one.

But it should come as no surprise. This administration, and those that came before it, are generally operated by people that have no strategic planning ability or smarts:

• Obama Care is an ill conceived and expensive insurance plan failure when it should have been a strategic, well coordinated public health campaign.
• Giving tens of billions of dollars to failing and bankrupt alternative energy companies is not an energy strategy, it is crony capitalism. 
• Trying to have single, centrally controlled education curriculum that serves millions of kids like Common Core is not a strategic answer to our failing public schools it but rather just another bloated Washington bureaucracy.

That is why term limits is so important. The current set of Washington politicians have failed miserably at everything they try to do, with the dozen failures of Obama’s foreign policy listed above just the latest example. That is why we urge all of our readers to go to our term limit website to learn why term limits are so very important and critical to our future:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

We leave today with two depressing quotes that naturally arise as the failures of this administration mount:

- In May, 2013, President Obama stated these words at the National Defense University: “America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.” Given the foreign affairs and military mess and conflicts stated above, it is obvious that his administration has not defined the nature and scope of the problem since there is no apparent and effective strategy in place to define our place in the world. 

- Which leads us to the recent insights from historian Robert Kagan: “We’re sort of seeing the world order cracking around the edges. The only thing Obama can hope is that it doesn’t completely collapse while he’s still President.”

My, the “hope and change” theme has fallen far from its lofty perch in 2008. The only thing left for this hope and change President now is to hope current foreign affair and military crisis situation does not change for the worst until he gets out from under the mess he has created after his second term ends.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

April, 2015,I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science

Every month we revisit the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” The theme started when I got tired of people like Al Gore and others yelling and slandering anyone who dared to disagree with their view of global warming, since then rebranded as “climate change.” Yelling and demeaning people is no way to win them over to your view, which is what the Al Gores of the world are still doing.

Thus, we set off to explore ALL science, research, and realities relative to global warming, not just the handpicked science that global warming advocates cherry pick. What we have found through the years is that it is very realistic and in tune with the real world to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Much science and research has been shown to debunk Al Gore’s way of thinking and slandering. And we have brought counter evidence to his view of the world every month for years. To access those previous posts, just enter the search term "I am a global warming doubter” in the search box above. 

Our intention is to start an adult, mature, science based conversation based on all available information. That has certainly not been the intention of Al Gore types. They have wanted to browbeat their views into disbelievers heads. And even if they are right about global warming, which we have proven they are quite possibly wrong about, they come up with no plans that would reunite the world around a solution. 

They only want the United States to curtail their carbon footprint, a reduction that would be dwarfed by the increasing carbon footprint of the rest of the world, especially China and India. All they would end up doing is briefly forestalling their end result while crippling the economic growth and vitality of the United States.

With that background, let’s look at what the global warming/climate change hysteria has brought us in the past month or so.

1) Obama is really worried about global warming. Secretary of State Kerry is really worried about global warming. Al Gore is really worried about global warming. The American people? Not so much. According to a recent Gallup poll:

• Americans worries about environmental issues such as pollution and extinct species is down across the board from last year’s poll.
• In fact, of all the green issues polled, Americans have the least concern about global warming.
• Last year 34% of Americans worried about global warming or climate change, this year only 32% worried about them.
• Despite all of Al Gore’s rants and other global warming hype, according to Gallup, Americans concerns about global warming is no higher than when Gallup first started asking the question in 1989.

Given previous science related discussions in this blog about the fallacy of global warming/climate change, and Americans having much bigger concerns than global warming according to Gallup, maybe the President and the Secretary of State should refocus on what is important to Americans and not what is important to lawyer and former politician Al Gore.

2) This President likes to make statements and claim facts, expecting us to take him at his word. However, after six years and lies too numerous to count, you have to take anything Obama says with a grain of salt and disbelief. 

Continuing this tradition of statements having no basis in reality, he recently claimed that global warming/climate change was responsible for his daughter’s asthma. As usual he provides no science for his assertion, expecting us to just believe him. Global warming/climate change was the cause of an asthma attack when she was a toddler, an incident that caused the family to rush to the emergency room: “Well, you know Malia had asthma when she was four and, because we had good health insurance, we were able to knock it out early. And if we can make sure that our responses to the environment are reducing those incidents, that’s something that I think every parent would wish for.”

However, in a 2009 USA Today article, Obama said: “I’ve said before that as a former smoker I constantly struggle with it. Have I fallen off the wagon sometimes? Yes. Am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker? No.”

So, maybe secondhand smoke was the culprit in the asthma attack and not global warming? That certainly has a higher chance of causing an asthma attack than global warming/climate change. 

3) We have often pointed out that even if the U.S. reduced its coal power plant carbon footprint by double digit amounts, that effort would be overwhelmed by the expected large increases in coal usage around the world. India and China alone are planning to add hundreds and hundreds of coal fired power plants in the coming years. 

Given the political friction between European nations and Russia because of the Ukraine situation, many nations are moving back to using coal rather than natural gas it used to get from Russia. Even worse, a lot of the coal that they are now using is some of the dirtiest coal in the world.

And now, another country is getting online for coal. Given that Japan used to have a large reliance on nuclear power but has shut down a lot of that capability after the tsunami disaster, it is in dire need of additional energy sources. As a result, it plans to build 43 coal fired power plants to fill the energy gap. Although Japan had promised to submit a plan to cut its carbon footprint, it is not one of the only 35 countries which have submitted plans to the U.N.

Japanese environmentalists from the Kiko Network estimate that these new coal plants will throw off 127 million metric tons of carbon dioxide which they feel will never allow Japan to meet its reduction in carbon output: “These projects, which may still be operating in 2050, run counter to Japan’s efforts to tackle climate change and should be quickly reviewed or stopped,” the Kiko Network said in a press release

The loss of over half of the energy it used to get from nuclear plants has resulted in skyrocketing power costs for Japanese consumers and businesses. Thus, it has turned to coal and is unlikely to turn away from that energy source any time soon, despite whatever promises the country made to Obama and the U.N.

That will do it for this month’s update. Not a lot going on but some of the same old stuff:

• Americans having a better sense of what is important to them vs. what Washington politicians think is most important for them.
• Politicians claiming they know what is best for us even if they have to bring their kids illnesses into the debate and leave science out.
• Another country goes over to the dark side of coal, making any sacrifices Americans make in the name of global warming is even less important.

I am still a global warming doubter and and a believer in science, even more so after today's review.

By The Numbers, Part 2: Obama's Numbers Sink Further, Poverty Numbers Rises Despite Trillions of Dollars And More

This is our second post in a three part series themed, “by the numbers.” In this series, we look at the reality of the numbers facing our country, whether they are polling numbers, government statistics, or from other sources. By looking at the numbers, it is easier to determine the reality of our world and the issues that we face rather than using the hatred, prejudices and lies of our political class. Their purpose is not to resolve issues using reality but to ensure their perpetual reelection chances by stoking emotions rather than understanding the numbers. 

So let’s continue our analysis today using the real world’s numbers to determine our real world situation, a situation driven by our politicians’ bad decisions and selfishness.

1) According to reputable sources, we have previously discussed the fact that all levels of government within the country spend about a trillion dollars a year to help the less advantaged in this country, a spending level that has been increasing steadily over the years. At this level of expenditures, you would think that our politicians would have eliminated poverty long ago.

And you would be so wrong, at least according to a recent analysis by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to their analysis, over one in five kids in the U.S. today are living in poverty. In 2012, there were 15,437,000 children under 18 years old, or 21.3%, who were classified in the “below poverty” threshold, according to the Census and a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entitled, Poverty in the United States: 2012.

When President Johnson declared “war on poverty” back in 1964, the percentage of American kids living in poverty was 22.7%. Fifty years and $22 TRILLION later, the American politician class has only been able to reduce the level of kids living in poverty from that 22.7% to the current 21.3%. And even though the percentage has decreased slightly, I would bet that the absolute number of kids living in poverty is much higher today than in 1964 given that the population of the United States is so much more 50 years later.

Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. After 50 years and TRILLIONS of dollars with no substantial improvement in the number of kids in poverty, I would say that our politicians fit that definition quite well. Insane. 

2) Consider what the we spend for national defense in this country, as estimated by the Cato Institute:

• On average, every American spends about $1,900 every year for national defense.
• $1,900 figure is roughly four and a half times more than what the average person in other NATO countries spends on defense even though these countries boast a collective GDP of approximately $19 trillion, 18 percent higher than the United States. 
• South Koreans spend about a third as much on national defense than Americans even though we spend billions of dollars every year protecting that nation from its northern neighbor.
• Americans also outspend people in Japan by more than four to one even though we have troops and military assets posted in that country to help with its defense.
• Thus, despite having a national debt that is fast approaching $18 TRILLION, we continue to pay for the defense of our allies as if the Cold War never ended.
• While the United States spends 16.8% of the budget on the military, Japan spends a measly 2.4%. 
• South Korea’s share of military spending is only 11% of their GDP, and they having a crazed and hostile regime on their northern border. 

As Cato points out very well: “The U.S. Constitution stipulates that the federal government should provide for the “common defence.” But the document never talks about providing for the defense of other nations. We could have revisited our alliances after the end of the Cold war. We could have paid more attention to the culture of dependency we created among our allies. Instead we continued to spend vast sums on the military, discouraging others from developing their capabilities, and removing their will to use their militaries in ways that could have advanced both their and our security. Today, our wealthy allies are little more than wards of Uncle Sam’s unending dole, and they will remain militarily irrelevant so long as we continue along our present path.”

Well said, we are providing military welfare for allies that are more than capable of paying their own way while many in this country suffer for the exporting of wealth to wealthy and underpaying allies around the world.

3) Where do logical people want to live? Most of then tend to migrate to areas within the country where they get to keep more of their hard earned wealth and income. Usually, this means living and working in states where there are lower and fewer taxes, as shown by the following graphic from the website www.howmoneywalks.com:

















The states with the highest income taxes have had a net loss in taxpayer Adjusted Gross Income of $107 billion, and the states with no income tax have had a net gain of $146 billion. In other words, there’s been an exodus from high tax states to those with no taxes. 

Thus, even though the politicians in those red states above thought they could get more state government revenue by having a higher tax burden, on average those states shrunk their tax base by about $12 billion per state in the past 15 years, probably wiping out any benefit of raising taxes on a continually shrinking tax base. Back to Einstein's insanity observation.

4) According to a recent Fox News poll, the country’s citizens do not have a really good feeling about Obama’s performance in office relative to his predecessors:

• A majority of those polled say the Obama administration is less competent than Bill Clinton's administration. 
• And in what has to be an ego deflating finding, a plurality of those polled say it is less competent than George W. Bush’s administration.
• Sixty-eight percent say the Obama administration is less competent that the Clinton administration. 
• Forty-eight percent say it is less competent than Bush's, compared to 42 percent who say it is more competent. 
• Seven percent judge Obama's and Bush's administrations the same.
• Fifty-five percent say that the Obama administration has made the country weaker; 35 percent say his administration has made it stronger.

Now I am sure some of my liberal friends will dismiss the findings out of hand since they saw the word “Fox” associated with the poll. That’s fine but understand that this is not the only poll out there or that we have discussed that shows how poorly Obama’s performance is being perceived. Just yesterday we showed that according to a CNN poll, he receives approval ratings for major issues that never exceed fifty percent on any of those issues, a finding consistent with this Fox polling. 

That will do it for today. But we will need one more day to do our “by the numbers” analysis to show that we are living with the worse and most inept set of politicians in our history, as measured by the numbers. That is our reality, politicians that do the same thing over and over at every increasing spending levels but never resolve any major issue of our time.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

March, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Defense Budgets Out of Control, Government Real Estate Out of Control and Government Partying Out Of Control

It’s the beginning of the month which means it is time for another dose of political class insanity, idiocy, screw ups, and wasteful spending. Every month we need to take a week or so of posts to cover all of the many inane acts that politicians all over the country impose on ordinary Americans, acts that almost always cost us money or freedom. Previous discussions of political class insanity can be accessed by looking at the early posts of previous months from the list of dates on the right side of this screen.

Unfortunately, when we started doing this feature four years ago, we could usually cover a month’s worth of insanity in a day or so. Over the years, we have needed more and more time each month to get our insanity reviews done, indicating that our political class decision making and actions are getting worse over time. There is little doubt that the trend will continue this month also.

1) We have often discussed the reality that the U.S. continues to needlessly deploy over a hundred thousand troops just in South Korea, Japan, Europe, and other parts of the world, at a cost of billions and billions of dollars a year. These deployments may have served a purpose at one point in our history but now are unnecessary relics from our military past. 

More recently, the current Presidential administration has involved U.S. military resources in an illegal and ill fated military conflict in Libya, has stationed 2,500 U.S. Marines in Australia, and now has placed U.S. troops, or “advisors,” in upwards of a half dozen African nations. In addition, in the past six months, the President has threatened to militarily intervene in Syria and his Secretary of State has floated the idea of having U.S. troops serve as peacekeepers in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

All of this costs money, as the following chart shows, U.S. military spending vs. major all countries around the world (double click on graph for a larger view):



As you see:

• The U.S. spends almost $600 billion a year on defense, a cost that is equivalent to well over $5,000 a year per U.S. household.
• This is four times more than what China spends on defense despite China having orders of magnitude more people than us.
• This is about eight times what Russia spends on defense.
• In fact, the U.S. probably spends more than most of the nations on this chart COMBINED.

This chart proves that we really need to find a way to rein in the insane defense spending by substantially cutting the deployment of U.S. military resources around the world along with reducing other other excessive and wasteful defense spending. We simply cannot afford the cost of what the political class is spending in this budget item, getting very little in return. 

2) Let’s look at another chart, a chart which partly explains why the military industrial complex in this country spends almost $600 billion dollars a year:

This chart comes from a recent Cato analysis and report which counted up the number of physical buildings that the Federal government currently owns. Cato and the chart point out:

• The top three occupants of Federal buildings are the Army, Air Force, and Navy who in total occupy at least a whopping 180,000 buildings.
• This comes out to an almost incomprehensible 3,600 defense related buildings in every state on average. Another possible reason for an annual defense budget of almost $600 billion a year?
• In total, the Feds own over 300,000 buildings.
• But it gets worse. The government also leases 55,000 buildings, for a total of 361,000 buildings.
• But there is still more insanity. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of buildings that it owns AND leases, the Federal government owns and leases another remarkable 486,00 pieces of real estate such as parking lots. 
• The General Services Administration reports that the annual operating costs for all the buildings and structures is $33 billion. 
• Although the current market value of the buildings is unknown, a government report estimated the replacement value in 2007 at $1.5 trillion.
• The Federal government even admits that at least 77,000 of the assets are under used or unneeded.
• Some of them have been ignored for so long that they are in what Cato calls an “alarming state of deterioration.”

Obviously the Federal government needs to do a good spring cleaning of its real estate holdings. Selling these assets to private investors would 1) put them to better use than the non use they are receiving today, 2) would save American taxpayers billions of dollars a year in annual maintenance, administrative, security, and repair costs, 3) would reduce Federal government energy costs in keeping these facilities with power, and 4) would not contribute to our already outlandish national debt in the long run.

One problem is that the government does not know exactly what it owns, what condition those assets are in, and what real estate assets are excessive or unused. The GAO says that the government has a “lack of accurate and useful data to support decision making” on its vast property holdings. 

How insane is that, the Federal government has gotten so large and unwieldy that it does not even know what it owns? If a private business ran itself like that, not knowing what assets it owned or where those assets were located, it would soon be out of business. When government does it, the problem goes unattended for decades and the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill for the political and bureaucratic incompetence.

Nevertheless, it is time for Washington to clean up this mess that it has been causing for decades, spring clean and bank the savings regardless of how unglamorous the clean up is. Anything else is just plain insane.

3) The political class spends and wastes our money is so many ways, not the least of which is how politicians and government bureaucrats party. Consider some of the party expenditures the Washington political class has treated themselves to over the past few years using our tax money:

• The White House staff currently has five chefs on staff at a cost of over $550,000 a year. Why five chefs, do they all prepare one part of every meal? Too excessive even for the President, especially when over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed, almost fifty million Americans receive food assistance, and our national debt is now over $17 TRILLION. Cut it down to two chefs and show at least a little empathy for the rest of America.
• In 2013, Joe Biden went to Europe for just two days where he and his staff rang up two nights of hotel expenses that exceeded $1 million. $1 million just in hotel expenses. I would not expect the Vice President to stay in a Motel 6 but I also do not think that $1 million for just two nights of lodging is respectful of taxpayers either.
• In the past few years the IRS has spent about $50 million on its conferences, often held in very nice surroundings outside of DC. A 2013 conference in Anaheim, California cost the American taxpayer $4 million and included some hotel rooms that went for $1,500 a night. Expenses also included $17,000 just for conference speakers one of which spoke about “Leadership In Art,” a topic that has nothing to do with tax collection and tax law.

Other such nonsense and cases of taxpayer wealth can be seen at:

http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2014/02/22/video-party-time-on-the-taxpayer-dime/

That will do it for today, just day one of this month’s political class insanity. A defense budget out of control, government real estate out of control, and politicians and bureaucrats partying out of control. All paid for by the American taxpayer who gets virtually nothing in return for these expenditures.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w