February, 2019, Part 12, Political Class Insanity: Corruption In Washington, Corruption and Financial Ruin In Illinois, and Public Defecations Throughout The West

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

This will be the 12th and last post this month for political class insanity. Trust me, we could have done more. It seems the idiocy, insanity, and ignorance of the American political class at all levels of government is on an upwards trend over the past several months. We could probably rename this blog to “political Class Insanity” and have enough material to support for a long time. But after today, let’s move onto to a few different themes before we return to the insanity early next month.

Let’s get started:

1) We have often made the strong case that at least one state government will go belly up financially in a short time. Usually due to high pension and retirement costs, these states have far more unfunded liabilities looking at them in the coming years than resources and reserves to service those liabilities. The top candidates for bankruptcy look to be California, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Illinois. 

However, given the following information, I would put Illinois in the lead for this dubious award of being the first state to go bankrupt:

• According to a recent Bloomberg article, the new Illinois governor is supporting the selling of bonds and raising the tax rate to service the state's debt and unfunded liabilities.
• Governor J.B.Pritzker would sell $2 billion in state bonds, change the state’s flat tax income tax structure to a progressive tax rate structure and leverage government assets (e.g.roads, bridges, etc.) to feed needed financial resources into the state government retirement system.
• The hilarious part of this plan is that the state has $134 billion in unfunded liabilities in its pension system and his plan is to sell $2 billion bonds to help offset this deficit, i.e. the bond sale would cover a measly 1.5% of the shortfall.
• The change in the income tax structure would be even more lame, raising about $200 million a year.
• According to the article: “The shortfall built up from years of failing to set aside enough money to cover all the promised benefits, leaving the government facing escalating annual contribution payments. That has left Illinois’s credit rating dangling just one step above junk, lower than any other state, and caused investors to demand large penalties on its bonds.”
• The governor’s plan calls for the money raised to go directly into the pension system for long term use and not be used for short term payouts of the pension liabilities or used for other government purposes as what has happened in the past.

Too little too late, it appears. First of all, the amount of money that could be raised is a fraction of the unfunded liabilities. The cost of issuing bonds that are hovering new junk bond status will be very high given that the investors will want high returns for a risky venture. And raising taxes that are already very high usually results in people leaving a high tax state for a lower taxed state so that raising the income tax rates will likely suppress, not increase, tax revenues.

The cure obviously was not to offer such lucrative pensions and retirement benefits to begin with. But that is how politicians buy votes, offer freebies and worry about paying for those rich benefits down the road. But it looks like Illinois's road is going to end pretty soon, $134 billion in unfunded liabilities will do that to your financial bottom line.

2) Let’s move from financial mismanagement to a more serious topic, treason. It is no secret that many long time government employees, politicians, and operatives were not happy that Donald Trump was elected president. They had a cozy, enriching deal going and they were not happy that an outsider had a high potential of disrupting their cozy arrangements.

Which brings us to a recent NewsMax article:

• Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, was fired by Trump for his shady dealings while the acting director.
• Now McCabe has written a book and is asserting that high ranking officials at the Justice Department had at least discussed removing a legally elected President from office by conspiring with Cabinet officials to invoke the 25th Amendment.
• The 25th Amendment’s intention was to remove a President for not being able to do the job, e.g. for health reasons, not to remove a sitting President because you did not like his policies, policies that would disrupt the corruption and self serving culture that Washington insiders had cultivated over the years.
• Highly respect lawyer and Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, called this effort, if true, a “coup d’etat” and a “grievous offense against the Constitution: ”The 25th amendment is about Woodrow Wilson having a stroke. It’s about a President being shot and not being able to perform his office. It’s not about the most fundamental disagreements. It’s not about impeachable offenses."
• He went on to say: "That's why you need two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate agreeing, and it has to be on the basis of medical or psychological incapacity, and not on the basis of even the most extreme crimes which there is no evidence were committed. But even if they were, that would not be a basis for invoking the 25th Amendment."

Serious, scary stuff. Washington bureaucrats plotting to overthrow a sitting President who was legally elected because their lives were disrupted. Scary, scary stuff from a freedom and democracy perspective.

3) Okay, back to Illinois, specifically Chicago. Not surprisingly, according to a recent Godfather Politics website story:

• Chicago was recently named the most corrupt city in the country.
• The University of Illinois at Chicago made the pronouncement.
• It gained this dubious title by having the highest number of Federal corruption convictions from 1976 through 2017, 1,731 convictions.
• It beat out LA (1,534 convictions), Manhattan (1,327 convictions), Miami (1,165 convictions), and D.C. (1,159).
• More than 30 Chicago City council members have been linked to corruption cases over this period of time.
• On a statewide basis, the state of Illinois was the third most corrupt state on a per capita basis.

So, Illinois is a state that is not financially corrupted but morally and legally corrupted also.

4) Speaking of corruption, it appears that abusing the 25th Amendment to depose Trump was not the only corruption going on within the FBI over the past couple of years. Newly obtained government documents by Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information effort, revealed that the FBI had been in negotiations with the Hillary Clinton campaign to suppress criminality as it related to the misuse to classified information in return for favorable treatment from Clinton's State Department.

Specifically, according to the Daily Wire article on the subject: “The trove of documents turned over by the FBI, in response to a lawsuit by the transparency group Judicial Watch, also included discussions by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page concerning a potential quid pro quo between the State Department and the FBI -- in which the FBI would agree to effectively hide the fact that a Clinton email was classified in exchange for more legal attache positions that would benefit the FBI abroad, and allow them to send more agents to countries where the FBI's access is ordinarily restricted.” In other words, the FBI would cover up Clinton's law breaking if it could get favorable treatment from Clinton’s State Department."

In a specific email exchange disgraced Justice Department Lisa Page, someone who was active with her FBI lover Peter Strzok in trying to discredit Trump, outlined the deal: "As you will see, they describe a discussion about potential quid pro quo arrangement between then-DAD in IOD [deputy assistant director in International Operations Division] and an Undersecretary at the State Department whereby IOD would get more LEGAT [legal attaché] positions if the FBI could change the basis of the FOIA withhold re a Clinton email from classified to something else."

So corruption at the highest levels of the state government in Illinois and the highest levels of the Federal government in Washington.

5) One last piece of insanity for today and this month. A basic function of government is to protect the welfare, assets, and lives of its citizens. If government did nothing more than that they would be successful and fulfill a basic tenet of government. But apparently that is not happening in some major cities out west:

• According to the Freedom Outpost website, in an article by Michael Snyder, many major western U.S. cities are becoming major health safety hellholes.
• The Los Angeles city hall may have to have all of this carpets ripped out as rats and fleas are running wild in the building.
• The cause of the infestation is believed to be the major homelessness problem that infects the city.
• We have already reported how the infestation is causing a rise in the Medieval disease, typhus.
• The number of homeless people living in LA has been rising about 20% a year, drug abuse is everywhere on the streets, and mountains of trash pervade many city streets, giving rats a fertile breeding ground.
• In Salem, Oregon, officials shut down a disgusting homeless encampment that was a rat breeding ground.
• The city government of Denver just made public defecation and urination legal so that is probably the next city to face a major public health issue.
• Denver also made camping on public and private land without permission legal, panhandling is now legal, and lying across public right of ways like sidewalks is not illegal.
• The most infuriating aspect of the whole Denver debacle is that the mayor explicitly said that these new laws and rules were to protect immigrants from “unintended consequences.” 
• Seriously, what about the “unintended consequences” of the disease and pest infestation that could occur to non-immigrants from these public health hazards that the local politicians have made legal?
• But Denver has a ways to go when it comes to public defecation since in a recent seven day period, the city government of San Francisco received 16.000 complaints about piles of human feces, 16,000 instances in seven days.
• In 2015, there were 60,491 official complaints about public defecation, about 170 companions a day.
• Besides public defecation, you can also legally shoot up drugs in the streets without ramifications, with the city government actually handing out free drug syringes to the tune of 5.8 million in 2018.
• Which has resulted in million of used drug syringes hanging out on the city streets somewhere.
• A visitor recently described what the local politicians in San Francisco had turned the city into: “I found it quite shocking the number of folk sleeping rough on the sidewalks, the smell of weed and drug impedimenta everywhere, the filth, mental illness and degradation on view just a few meters from the financial centre driving Silicon Valley. It’s a city where the destitute seem to have become invisible to the Uber hailing elites. We found ourselves hopping on one of the beautiful F-Route Trolley Buses to find nearly every seat occupied by someone lugging around their worldly possessions around in a plastic bag. It was desperately sad.”

And American politicians have managed to screw things up this badly from a health and homeless perspective in the bright light of a great economy. Can you imagine how bad things will get once the next recession hits?

Sorry the post ran a little long but we wanted to get in the last bits of political class insanity today: politicians destroying the health and wealth of great American cities, Illinois trying hard to be the poster child for economic and financial mismanagement, and corruption at the highest levels of Washington. Lord help us, save us from those that populate an ineffective and vindictive political class.

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:


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

The Disgrace and Dishonor of The FBI, The Justice Department, and the Washington Political Class

Readers of this blog know we are not big fans of big government, stifling bureaucracies and bureaucrats, and inept politicians. I can name very few government functions that are efficient, effective, and provide real value to American taxpayers in support of their needs and their freedoms.

One organization that seemed to buck that trend of incompetence was the FBI. Whether because of the complimentary TV show from long ago or the image of honest, hard working agents protecting us, the FBI seemed to have a decent, if not good reputation for providing justice to America. But recent news reports over the years, capped off by the recent FBI inspector general report, would indicate that the FBI is just as inept, corrupt, and a danger to freedom as just about every other Federal government agency.

Below I have highlighted some of the corruption and sad attack on our freedoms based on a recent National Review article by Victor Davis Hanson relative to both the FBI and the Obama Justice Department. 

• The premise of the article and the major finding of the inspector general (IG) report was that FBI and Justice department professionals acted badly, illegally, and anti-freedom wise to protect and enhance their careers if and when Hillary Clinton became President, something that they all felt was a done deal.
• Let’s start off with documented bias from some FBI people that was in the IG report: 

15:07:41, Agent 1: “ . . . I’m done interviewing the President — then type the 302. 18 hour day . . . ”

15:13:32, FBI Employee: “you interviewed the president?”

15:17:09, Agent 1: “you know — HRC” [Hillary Rodham Clinton]

15:17:18, Agent 1: “future pres”

15:17:22, Agent 1: “Trump cant win”

• This exchange kind of sets the stage for the entire FBI view of Trump, he cannot win so let’s position ourselves and our careers for the Hillary coronation.
• This was highlighted again by an exchange by two other FBI/Justice Department people, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who at the time were passionate adulterers:

Page: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

• Here is a most egregious abuse of power, a high ranking FBI agent claiming that he, and probably others, would prevent an honest election from taking place, that they would commit to stopping Trump from being President even if he won. How this is not treason and severe abuse of our freedom is beyond me.
• Other FBI and Justice department high ranking officials are on record calling American voters as smelly, retarded, ignorant and feces.
• They viewed Trump as an idiot, loathsome, a menace, and a disaster.
• The article nicely sums up why they are so blatant, disgusting, and condescending with their views: “They do so because they assume their candor to each other will earn rewards rather than punishments. More generally, they count on their illegal and unethical behavior becoming known and thus résumé points rather than grounds for later firing and jail.”
• Other IG findings show that the FBI agents and officials wanted Hillary to win with the quote, “I’m with her,” namely Hillary.
• This “I’m with Hillary” attitude was evident with high ranking FBI executive Andrew McCabe: “Why would a seasoned careerist like Andrew McCabe allow his spouse to receive nearly $700,000 in campaign donations from Clinton-affiliated organizations, only later to become a chief investigator of the Clinton email scandal, or why would he so clumsily leak to the press and lie about it afterwards? Easy answer: He wisely played the odds and knew that his future FBI ascendency was assured, given that he had helped exonerate the soon-to-be president, Hillary Clinton,” behavior trumped that of the others.”
• Same with Loretta Lynch who met and cut a deal with Bill Clinton during that infamous airport meeting in Phoenix, she wanted to stay on as Attorney General under a Clinton administration, or possibly get a Supreme Court nomination, so what better way to curry favor with Hillary than to make sure Hillary did not go to jail for having an illegal and unsafe computer server in her home, an action against both Federal law and government regulations.
• The article points out that “What are the odds that two friends accidentally bump into each other in charter jets at the same time at one of the nation’s roughly 5,000 airports?” 
• Same thing with James Comey shutting down the Clinton email investigation and sitting on the Anthony Weiner laptop national security fiasco for so long, he wanted to stay on as head of the FBI under the Clinton administration.
• And let’s not forget Rod Rosenstein and Sally Yates at Justice who forced through a seriously flawed and weak FISA court order to spy on Trump and help get Hillary elected based on baseless, manufactured “facts” in an attempt to keep their cushy, high paid government jobs under a Clinton administration.
• This mentality that Hillary would save them all when she got elected led Comey, former CIA head John Brennan and former National Security head James Clapper to lie to Congress and the American people while under oath to Congress, Hillary would save them and justify their deceptions.
• And let’s not forget Susan Rice and Samantha Power, high ranking people under Obama who also probably wanted to keep a high paying, powerful position under Clinton, that they illegally unmasked hundreds of American citizens who were Trump supporters and who, under current law, were entitled to keep their identities secret.

The article sums up this mess quite nicely: “For all the investigations and IG reports, for all the revelations of scandals and wrongdoing, there will probably in the end be little consequence, simply because to those who matter, such illegality is seen as nobility. Many at the highest echelons of the FBI and DOJ broke laws. But Trump broke a far higher and far more important unwritten law — one forbidding any presidential candidate and future president to be and act like Donald J. Trump.”

Laws were broken but as always happens in Washington and among the political class elite, “there will probably in the end be little consequence.” You and I break a law, we go to jail or pay a hefty fine. Washington insiders break a laws while at the same time breaking our democracy and destroying our rights as guaranteed under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, nothing happens. How did we get so screwed up as a country?

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:


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

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