A few last notes on American political class insanity for this month and this year:
1)In America today, millions of Americans are suffering:
At any time there are about 600,000 homeless Americans living on the streets with tens of thousands of them being our armed services veterans.
It is estimated that about 17 million Americans are in a food crisis because of high inflation and high food prices.
Millions and millions of Americans are without medical insurance or adequate medical care.
Millions and millions of Americans are in need of drug addiction treatment especially since Biden's border policies have allowed an unheard of amount of illegal drugs to flood into the country.
One would hope that American politicians would be focused on helping these Americans in need. But as always with our politicians, hope is never present.
Consider:
Douglas Murray is a reporter for the New York Post and he was recently allowed to visit the Hamas terror tunnels that the terrorist group Hamas has constructed under the Gaza Strip.
The sole purpose of these tunnels has been to build an underground network that could be used to attack and kill innocent Israeli citizens.
And these are not just simple crawl spaces, these are sophisticated tunnels that are big enough to drive vehicles in.
To build such tunnels, it has to have taken billions of dollars, dollars that were intended for the poor citizens of Gaza but which were hijacked by Hamas leaders for their own enrichment and their desire to kill Israelis.
And to probably no one’s surprise, Murray reports that over the past 16 years or so, the American taxpayers have donated about $400,000,000 to these heinous individuals.
An incredible waste of our tax dollars which help finance the fatal consequences for over 1,400 innocent Israeli citizens. Think how that $400 million could have been used to help Americans in need:
That money could have provided about 230 nutritious meals to everyone of those 600,000 homeless Americans.
That money could have provided drug addiction treatment to over 60,000 struggling Americans over a year’s time.
And yet the Washington political class decided it was better off to fund a terror organization halfway around the world than to help struggling American citizens. Disgusting.
2)But the stupid wasting of American taxpayer wealth does not end in Gaza:
The U.S. State Department has provided American taxpayer dollars to a “queer” Muslim organization in India to provide “LGBTQWI” people in the region with a online platform to write.
Yes, a platform to write for people half a world away, funded with U.S. taxpayer money.
The money was funneled through a George Soros organization, “Creating Resources for Empowerment and Action.”
It eventually went to the Queer Muslim Project which is an “online platform for queer, Muslim and allied voices.”
Somehow this idiocy is supposed to “support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security,” which is obviously boilerplate nonsense.
Output from this effort will be presented at a “leading Mumbai literature festival.”
This idiocy follows on the heels of another State Department program that partnered with the Queer Muslim Project which paid for a 10-week “creative incubator” for young LGBTQIA writers which resulted in, wait for it, a magazine.
This has nothing to do with queer or LGBTQWI issues or biases. Our reaction would have been the same if it involved sending money to straight, white writers in Ireland. Americans are hungry, homeless and in need of medical care and sending money overseas for writing projects, wherever it is going for whatever group, alleviates none of their suffering. It is an insult to American taxpayers and an affront to those citizens in need.
3)But American politicians do not have a monopoly on stupid political acts, as witnessed by some insanity that happened up in Canada recently:
In an act of stupidity that has the full support of Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, the Canadian government now requires that free tampons and other products for female periods be placed in men’s restrooms in government buildings, airports, and military places.
A Twitter account, @HoCVStaffer, posted the official tampon policy online, a policy that asserts that tampons are really important basic needs and by giving them away for free in bathrooms the hope is that people will feel less embarrassed or awkward about menstruation, a normal part of life.
Somehow someone in the government including the prime minister thought this was a good idea and a good use of taxpayer wealth.
So much wrong and stupid with this policy:
How is witnessing a tampon in a men’s room going to make anyone “less embarrassed?”
Was market research done to verify this policy or did someone in the government have too much free time on their hands and needed to justify their job?
Since when is it the job of any government function to provide free tampons, or other personal health products, to anyone who walks by?
As a guy, I am pretty sure that men will either ignore this policy or the smart ones will simply just scoop up all of the free feminine hygiene products and bring them home to their wives and other females in their lives, saving themselves expenses while ripping off the Canadian taxpayer.
And keep in mind that it is not just the expense of the products that the taxpayers are paying for, there is a labor cost involved in stocking and restocking the supplies after they have been hoarded and taken home.
I assume that Canada also has homeless, hungry, and medical needs for their citizens which would have been much better served with this funding.
I would also assume that if you polled every Canadian that “the need for free, taxpayer subsidized tampons in men's rooms” would not make the top 100 list of citizen concerns.
It constantly blows one’s mind that politicians and government bureaucrats can waste so much taxpayer wealth on such stupidity.
4)One area that politicians excel at is their ignorance of basic economic principles. This is playing out again in California:
California state politicians have enacted legislation to raise the minimum wage to $20 in the state.
State politician Chris Holden introduced the law and claims that it will help fast food workers feed their families and improve their quality of life.
Nice sentiment that is completely devoid of economic understanding.
Two things are going to happen because of this law, the first of which is that fast food restaurant owners will have to increase their product prices to pay for their increased salary costs which is going to increase food costs which will wipe out at least some of the benefit of the pay increase.
Secondly, fast food restaurant owners will find ways to reduce their now increased salary costs by any way possible such as replacing human workers with machines.
Or they will do what many in-state Pizza Hut owners have already said they are going to do, which is to fire over 1,200 delivery drivers, thus, reducing their labor costs.
These Pizza Hut restaurants will rely on companies like DoorDash, GrubHub, and others to make deliveries, relieving them of the costs of paying 1,200 employees to deliver.
These 1,200 were from just a small geographic area, it is expected that Pizza Huts in other areas will also cut out their delivery staff.
So here is the result of this faulty economic reasoning by Holden and his cohorts in state government: “The good news is that you are now making $20 an hour. The bad news is that you no longer have a job.” So much for these 1,200 employees having an easier time feeding their families and improving their quality of life
But we could have predicted this outcome of higher wages leading to high unemployment. Consider what happened out in the Washington state area a few years ago:
https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/03/economically-ignorant-in-seattleand.html
Wages were raised and people lost their jobs because of it, a precursor to the “Good news is that you are making more money, the bad news is that you no longer have a job.”
It happened in the Seattle area in 2015 and it is going to happen again in California in 2024 simply because most American politicians have no understanding of basic economic principles. As a result, their actions result in higher inflation and more unemployment. The exact opposite of what they wanted.
That will be it for today: economic ignorance in California, tampon idiocy in Canada, wasting money on writing projects in India, and funding terrorism in Gaza. Never underestimate the ability of today’s politicians to waste money on bad priorities that usually have minimal impacts on society but if they do have impacts. it is usually negative, be it death in Israel or unemployment in California.
**********************
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
**********************
