December, 2019, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Politicians Who Should Be Seen and Not Heard and The Continuing Greed of Those Who Serve In Office

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.

Let’s get started:

1) Freshman Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has shown herself to be anti-Israel any number of times in the past two years. Her disgust with Israel has been well documented and we will not go into her statements and actions supporting her hatred at this time.

So her behavior after the recent slaughter of Jewish Americans in Jersey City, New Jersey was certainly surprising, crazy and at the end of the day bigoted:

• According to Alicia Luke, writing for the Freedom Outpost website on December 12, 2019, Tlaib tweeted and blamed “white supremacy” for the murders for the three Jewish Americans, and a Jersey City policeman.
• Specifically: “This is heartbreaking. White supremacy kills,” the Michigan Democrat wrote in a since-deleted tweet.
• Her sympathy was initially surprising given her past disgust with the Jewish state.
• It would seem that maybe she had a change of heart but that was probably not the case.
• Rather then opportunity to make peace with the Jewish state, she immediately tried to leverage the dead Americans to support her faux outrage at the myth of white supremacy.
• You see, white folks did not commit the violence and murders, two African Americans committed the atrocities, a reality that did not fit Tlaib’s knee jerk reaction to spread hate about the races in this country.
• As soon as she realized that her desire for headlines and an opportunity foment white supremacy made her look like an ill-informed idiot she deleted the tweet.

This is how low the leadership has fallen in D.C. A politician immediately assumes the worst in order to fit it into her dialog of dividing the races in this country and she opens her mouth without doing even basic research into the reality of a situation. And she makes a fool of herself while families in Jersey City are in the beginning stages of mourning the loss of their loved ones, Tlaib did not even have the human decency to remain quiet for a grieving period. Disgusting.

2) But Tlaib is not the only freshman Congresswoman opening her mouth and espousing idiocy. Our favorite politician gaffe machine, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, somehow put her foot in her mouth again:

• Trump has been trying to clean up the scandalous food stamp program that while it does a good thing in helping struggling American families to put food on the table for their families, it has been riddled with scandal and fraud as people fleece the system and the American taxpayer.
• Trump has proposed changes to the system that would reduce the taxpayer risk and make sure that only people who deserve the food support get it.
• It is estimated that upwards of 700,000 people currently milking the system for food support would lose that opportunity to rip off the system.
• But as with Tlaib above, Ocasio-Cortex did another knee jerk reaction as a result of her hatred for Trump.
• And has a result of talking without knowing and/or understanding what Trump was trying to do, she looks like a vain and hateful person.
• She tweeted out the following fallacy: “My family relied on food stamps (EBT) when my dad died at 48. I was a student. If this happened then, we might’ve just starved. Now, many people will. It’s shameful how the GOP works overtime to create freebies for the rich while dissolving lifelines of those who need it most.”
• But this assertion is so false since according to the rule that Trump is pushing, the restrictions and reductions would apply to able bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who DO NOT have dependents and does not apply to parents with minor children, the elderly, or the disabled.

In other words if you are a stand alone adult without kids, are not elderly and not disabled, you are going to have to get off your duff and get a job in order to eat. Millions of American taxpayers go to work every day in order to eat, there is no reason why able bodied adults should not do the same.

For Ocasio-Cortez to say that many Americans will starve to death because of Trump is nothing more than a fallacy, a denial of reality, and more childish hatred towards Trump. As always with Ocasio-Cortez, she should again consider the following piece of advice: It is better to remain silent and thought ignorant than to speak up and remove all doubt. Ocasio-Cortez and just about every other politician in D.C should consider this advice.

3) We recently discussed the rather distasteful reality that Obama now owns three homes worth in excess of $25 million: an estate on Martha’s Vineyard, a home in an exclusive D.C. neighborhood, and another luxury home in California. This is quite amazing since Obama earned only $400,000 a year as President, before taxes, and his wife was a housewife. Both of their careers prior to the White House did not include million dollar salaries nor do they have massive family inheritances.

Thus, we were forced to wonder how the former First Family is not only able to afford three grand homes but also pay the maintenance, property taxes, and utility costs that accompany these properties. And now we may know how he does it:

• During his administration Obama actively pushed the so-called Common Core education process, a process that we accurately predicted would be a disaster for the country and which is now basically defunct despite billions of taxpayer dollars wasted on the effort.
• Wherever Common Core was adopted, test scores and learning progress plunged.
• Fast forward and we find out that Obama got a whopping $65 million book deal from Penguin Random House Publishing.
• Pearson Publishing received a $350 million contract during the Obama administration to publish Common Core educational materials.
• Nothing shady here until you realize that Pearson Publishing and Penguin Random House are corporate relatives.
• Pearson and a company called Bertelsmann are joint owners of Penguin Random House which we just said gave Obama the ridiculous book deal.

So, the obvious question is: did Pearson/Bertelsmann/Penguin Random House have a quid pro quo deal with Obama, Pearson gets the $350 million Common Core contract and Obama gets a sweetheart book deal from Penguin Random House? The appearance of a conflict of interest is often just as bad as a real conflict of interest and this “arrangement” certainly fits that description.

Combining this Obama “deal” with the reality that Joe Biden has made over $15 million since leaving office, the whole stench of politicians getting obscenely wealthy while providing little to benefit society just smells more and more. Politics is no longer about serving the country and its citizens, it is about making oneself richer and richer. From the mega bucks Nancy Pelosi’s machinations relative to the Visa IPO to Ocasio-Cortez complaining she is overpaid despite living in a luxury apartment, getting $300 haircuts and wearing designer clothes, the greed of the American political class has never been so intense or so obvious while its ability to resolve real issues and problems has never been so low.

So today’s insanity included two politicians who do not know when to just be quiet, or at least speak AFTER they have the facts, and the gross corruption and greed of politicians both while in office and after they leave office.

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/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

November, 2019,Part 7,Political Class Insanity: The Hypocrisy of Michelle Obama and The Laziness of Bill de Blasio

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.

Let’s get started:

1) As we have discussed previously, it is not only the lying, greed, ineffectiveness, and idiocy of politicians that make us mad but it is also the hypocrisy. Obama Care was good for Americans but politicians continued to get much more superior healthcare and insurance above and beyond what Americans got from Obama Care. It is a crime to do insider stock trading if you are not a member of Congress but perfectly okay if you are a member of Congress. Hypocrisy galore.

Michelle Obama is just the latest hypocrite to have one opinion for us but a totally different set of behaviors for her:

• She recently spoke out about how “white people” (which in itself is a racist term) moved out of city neighborhoods as minorities moved in, creating the term “white flight.”
• Specifically: “But unbeknownst to us, we grew up in the period — as I write — called ‘white flight.’ That as families like ours, upstanding families like ours … As we moved in, white folks moved out because they were afraid of what our families represented. And I always stop there when I talk about this out in the world because, you know, I want to remind white folks that y’all were running from us. This family with all the values that you’ve read about. You were running from us. And you’re still running, because we’re no different than the immigrant families that are moving in … the families that are coming from other places to try to do better.”
• Given this viewpoint, I am assuming that her and Barack have moved back into their old neighborhoods in Chicago, wanting to set an example of how bad “white flight” is.
• But wait, didn’t she and Barack just spend over $15 million to buy a luxury house on Martha’s Vineyard, a locale that is 95% white and only 2% black?
• And if this is not bad enough, the Obamas also own a home in the Kalorama neighborhood of DC which is 80% white and only 4% black, and they have a $5 million third home in Rancho Mirage, California which is 80% white and 2.5% black.

They had three chances to practice with Michelle is preaching, i.e. do not run away from minority neighborhoods like white people do and they chose in all three cases to be crass hypocrites of what they say vs. what they do.

People move their homes because they want a safer neighborhood, they want better schools for their kids, their jobs removed or they move for a better job, or they are retiring and downsizing. But if white people do any of these things they are acting like racists and causing “white flight” in Michelle’s eyes while she is allowed to move into high end white neighborhoods and she has no problem with that.

Hypocrisy galore from the former first lady. 

2) The other thing that bothers me and probably others from the previous set of paragraphs is how are the Obamas, who during his eight years in office made only $400,000 a year from his job while Michelle learned nothing from her time in the White House: able to afford a luxury home in exclusive Martha Vineyards, a luxury home in an exclusive housing enclave in D.C. and a luxury home in California? I believe I read somewhere that the D.C. house is worth $8 millions which puts the total Obama home investment over $28 million? 

Let’s do some simple math:

• The total value of their three homes is about $28 million.
• Let’s assume they put 20% down for their mortgages.
• Let’s assume they got a very favorable mortgage rate of 2.5%.
• Which means that their monthly mortgage payment is about $88,000 a MONTH!
• This doesn't include property taxes, homeowners insurance premiums, or any HOA fees they would have to pay.

Thus, it is not inconceivable that Obama's are paying over $100,000 a month to manage and hold these three properties.

They did not come into the White House as a very, very rich family. They did not earn enough money in their jobs during their eight years in the White House to be considered a very, very rich family. Are we to believe that their books and speeches have been so grand as to allow them to afford over $25 million in real estate properties and over $100,000 a month in housing expenses before taking into consideration their other assets and expenses? 

Gee, it must be great to be an American politician even if during your time in office you accomplished very little of any value to most Americans. What a great country...for the American political class at least.

3) We have often talked about how bad the homeless problem is out on the west coast. From Seattle to Los Angeles, liberal and Democratic politicians have turned once beautiful cities into dangerous eyesores: public urination and defecation without repercussions, tons of garbage littering the streets, no plan to help the thousands and thousands of homeless Americans get back on their feet or beat their drug addictions, explosion of the rat populations because of the garbage and the reviving of serious, long dormant diseases such as typhus, etc.

What had mystified me is that there were very few similar stories regarding the homeless-related problems in New York City. NYC has the same characteristics of the west coast problem-plagued cities but no reported public urination or defecation issues, no tons of garbage littering the streets, no large homeless encampments throughout the city, etc. Is it possible that NYC found a way to resolve homeless problems that the west coast cities did not despite having an overwhelming number of liberal and Democrats politicians?

Seems that is not the case, i.e. they did not resolve the issues and problems of their homeless problems, they found a rather unique way to sidestep what west coast cities did not:

• Rather than help homeless Americans in his city, the current mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio, has been working a program to export them to other parts of the country.
• Rather than spend city funds to find these folks shelter and feed them and help them get drug addiction treatment, he has been trying to dump them off anywhere that was not inside his city limits.
• De Blasio has been operating a program called the “Special One-Time Assistance Program” directed at his city’s homeless population.
• This was a top secret program within the city’s Department of Homeless Services organization.
• This organization spent $89 million of taxpayer money to send 12,482 homeless New Yorkers out of the city to other parts of the country.
• Those homeless folks that promised and actually did leave NYC received money for transportation, home furnishings, and a year’s worth of rent somewhere else.
• On average, this program spent $41,000 of taxpayer money on each homeless family.
• And to make the program even shadier and more disgusting, de Blasio and his city employees did not notify other hundreds of towns and cities around the country that they were about to receive the homeless folks that had been bribed to leave NYC.
• Now the burden of resolving the NYC homeless problem has been simply and quietly exported to other places around the country.
• When Hawaiian Democratic state representative John Mizuno found out that at least one homeless NYC family had been transplanted to Honolulu, he accused NYC of their homeless people “being dumped here” in Hawaii.
• The Democratic mayor of Mount Vernon, New York is demanding that de Blasio take back the homeless people that de Blaosio shipped up to Mount Vernon, that his town ”is not standing for it.”
• Of course, de Blasio’s people do not see it that way, saying that calling the program a “dumping ground” and “export” is offensive to those that are relocating which, of course, is hogwash.

$89 million properly spent within the city limits could have gone a long way to breaking the cycle of homelessness: building food banks, building homeless shelters, paying for temporary housing within the city, offering job training, offering day day care services, that $89 million could have done a lot of good. But no, de Blasio would rather have this cycle of homelessness not be resolved, just moved out of his domain.

This attitude of not doing you job to help those in need within your domain is lazy, selfish, and inhumane, providing a temporary self serving fix while not addressing or working to resolve the underlying root causes of being homeless. I find it beyond insane, I find it disgusting.

The hypocrisy of Michelle Obama and the inhumanity of Bill de Blasio, not a good review of the American 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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

October, 2019, Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and a Believer In Science: Obama's Hypocrisy, Firing Real Scientists, and More

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 man made 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 man made 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) We have often discussed and pointed out examples where global warming advocates either make up data and statistics or misuse them in order to make a point that is often pointless. We know that leading global warming scientists around the world have been caught fudging research numbers to get the answers they want, not what reality is telling them. We are told over and over again that 97% of climate scientists tell us that mankind is causing global warming and just as often we have shown what a bogus number that 97% is.

Unfortunately, a real life scientist using real life data got royally screwed for the simple act of being honest:

• According to an article by Warner Todd Huston on October 21, 2019 reported on the Godfather Politics website how a real scientist got fired because she proved that polar bears are not being killed off by climate change/global warming.
• Susan Crockford, a zoologist by training and profession, proved that polar bears are not dying out because of climate change.
• After teaching at the University of Victoria for 15 years, her contract was not renewed and she has been shown the door at the university without any comment or reason from the university.
• She has been a leading researcher in both the history of dog domestication and an in-demand speaker on her scientific research into polar bears.
• She claims she was fired because her views did not support the theory of man made global warming and climate change.
• According to the Washington Times: “Ms. Crockford accused officials at the Canadian university of bowing to “outside pressure,” the result of her research showing that polar bear populations are stable and even thriving, not plummeting as a result of shrinking Arctic sea ice, defying claims of the climate change movement. Her dismissal, which she announced Wednesday in a post on her Polar Bear Science blog, has spurred alarm over the implications for academic freedom and the rise of the “cancel culture” for professors and scientists who challenge climate catastrophe predictions: “When push came to shove, UVic threw me under the bus rather than stand up for my academic freedom,” said Ms. Crockford, who earned a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies, specifically biology and anthropology, in 2004.”

When you cannot argue facts and logic then just attack the credibility of your opponent. That is what the global warming, climate change cultists have devolved to, not wanting to hear alternative viewpoints, only their own biased myths.

2) It seems that anything that happens in the world today is a result of man made global warming/climate change and must be addressed IMMEDIATELY or we face dire consequences:

• Warner Todd Huston writing for the Godfather Politics website on August 24, 2019 provided an example of this false and incorrect panic.
• Brazil has recently suffered through some horrific wildfires, fires that got so bad that the Brazilian government called out their military to help put out the flames.
• Almost immediately the word got out from the global warming crowd that the fires in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil are endangering 20% of the world’s oxygen.
• Thus, if the fires were not stopped soon we would run out of oxygen.
• As always not to be bothered with facts and realities, Presidential candidate Kamala Harris tweeted out this false statistic about 20% of the world’s oxygen: “Brazil's President Bolsonaro must answer for this devastation. The Amazon creates over 20% of the world's oxygen and is home to one million Indigenous people. Any destruction affects us all.”
• CNN, never missing a chance to misrepresent global warming, got into the 20% act also: “The Amazon, which produces about 20% of earth's oxygen, is often referred to as "the planet's lungs. An inferno in the world's largest rain forest, two-thirds of which is in Brazil, threatens the ecosystem there and also affects the entire globe.”
• Congresswoman Barbara Lee: “The Amazon produces 20% of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. If we fail to combat climate change now, soon we won’t have clean air to breathe. We must take #ClimateActionNow. This is not a drill or a hoax.”
• The article also contains a slew of other less famous people mimicking the same statistics, the Amazon rain forest produces 20% of the world’s oxygen
• And while their concern is admirable, their statistic is way off.
• According to stats and real research cited in the article and research by a Dr. Jonathan Foley, it is physically impossible for the Amazon rain forest to produce 20% of the world’s oxygen, best case it produces 6%, less than one third of the nonsensical number being tweeted about by global warming advocates.

Three things of importance here:

1. The fires are serious and are causing damage to the environment, animals and the economy in Brazil and need to be addressed as quickly as possible.
2. However, I really cannot take a global warming advocate seriously if their emotional response to the fires is off by a factor of three which tells me they are either intentionally lying to get their view across or are too ignorant or too lazy to do a simple look up on a simple statistic.
3. And finally, I would rather believe a real scientist, Dr. Jonathan Foley, than a failing Presidential candidate, a Congresswoman who probably has absolutely NO climate expertise, or a biased news network who usually loses out to the Hallmark Channel or Cupcake wars for viewership ratings.

3) One of the biggest advocates for man made global warming and the myth that 97% of climate scientists believe in man made global warming, was former President Barack Obama. He was supposedly so into global warming that he entered the country into a stupid, idiotic climate agreement that was signed in Paris, an agreement that had no teeth and would have done nothing to curtail so-called global warming while making American considerably less wealthy.

I say supposedly because:

• According to Richard W. Rahn, writing for the Washington Times, Obama recently purchased a home on Martha’s Vineyard:
• Rahn: “If you really thought that the ocean level was rising rapidly, would you buy a house next to the sea? If you really thought that increased carbon dioxide emissions threatened the very existence of mankind, would you be so selfish as to fly around in a private jet, have houses with many times the carbon footprint of the average person, etc. etc.? Former President Obama just bought his family a very large seafront home. Many of the most vocal Hollywood crowd have multiple large homes, including on the beach, private jets, limos, etc. Their actions are more important than their forked-tongue utterances.”
• This Obama mansion costs in excess of $15 million so there seems to be a disconnect: if global warming was going to destroy the world unless the U.S. signed off on the Paris Climate Agreement, as Obama insisted, then why did he risk putting $15 million of his wealth at such a high risk?
• Or did he view the global warming fallacy as a way to gain more control over us, reducing our freedoms, but enlarging his control and greed?

Since Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez predicts that the world will end in about ten years because of man made global warming and climate change, it does not sound like a good investment by Obama.

We are being sarcastic, of course. Obama is not a real estate idiot, buying an island out in the Atlantic that would be one of the first dry land pieces to be submerged by global warming melted glaciers. Nothing illustrates the hypocrisy of the whole global warming fallacy than Obama buying an island in the ocean.

The hypocrisy of Obama, the fallacy of false statistics, and punishing real scientists who tell the truth based on real science. Another three reasons why I am still a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

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/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

November, 2015, Part 3, By The Numbers - Obama's Death Knell For Democrats, Vacationing On Taxpayer Wealth and Golf,Golf, Golf

This is the third post this month as we continue our periodic discussion of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.

1) Remember how the media proclaimed that when Obama was elected President that the Republican party would wither away and die off? Obama was the young vibrant leader, the first African American President while the Republicans were a bunch of old white guys from a different, past generation of America?

Well, as Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Consider the political numbers that have occurred since Obama became President:

• With the recent election of a Republican to be governor of Kentucky, Republicans now control the governor’s seat in 32, 64%, of the states.
• Republicans control 30, 60%, of the country’s state legislatures and have total or split control of 38 out of 50, 76%.
• There are 13 fewer Democrats in the U.S. Senate since Obama was elected.
• There are 69 fewer Congressional Democrats in the House of Representatives since Obama was elected.
• There are 11 fewer Democratic governors since Obama was elected.
• There are 913 fewer Democrats in state legislatures since Obama was elected.
• Maryland, Illinois ,and Kentucky now have Republican governors, a rarity in those states throughout history.

The Washington Post mapped out this Republican dominance in the following map (click on the graph for a larger view):



Image credit: Washington Post

2) A recent article by Derrick Wilburn on the Allen B. West website continued to review the carnage that the Obama Presidency has wrought on Democrats across the country:

• The 2014 elections gave the Republicans their biggest Congressional majority in both houses in almost 99 years, 54 seats in the Senate and 247 seats in the house.
• They achieved their biggest control of state legislative bodies, 68, since 1928.
• In the 2014 elections, the Republicans won 24 out of 36 open U.S. Senate seats.
• 50% of the U.S. Senators who voted for Obama Care are no longer in the Senate.

While Obama in his own mind might think he is legendary the only thing the numbers show is that his policies and attitude has had a legendary bad impact on Democrats across the country.

3) Maybe one of the issues people have with Democrats is that their political leader, Barack Obama, seems to think that he and his family can use and waste taxpayer dollars on their many expensive vacations. According to recent findings via Freedom of Information Act requests, Judicial Watch published its expense findings on three Obama family vacations regarding just the cost of transportation:

• Obama's June 20, 2015 golf outing to Palm Springs required 10.6 hours of flying time at $206,337 per hour, costing taxpayers $2,187,172.20.

• Obama's July 18, 2015 trip to New York City with his daughters required 1.5 hours of flying time at $206,337 per hour, costing taxpayers $309,505.50.

• Obama's August 7, 2015 family trip to Martha's Vineyard required 3 hours of flying time at $206,337 per hour, costing taxpayers $619,011. 

Thus, just the flying costs to the American taxpayer for just these three Obama family vacations cost over $3 million. Judicial Watch is still waiting for the cost of Secret Service costs for these trips.

The additional details from Judicial Watch were also provided:

• While in Palm Springs, the President played golf at the private golf course of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison. This was his fifth golf outing to Palm Springs in just the past two years.
• In New York he told ABC TV News that he was in the city “hanging out with his girls.” He, his two daughters and their friends flew to New York on Air Force One.
• After one day they all flew home but the President flew back to New York just two days later to appear on TV’s “The Daily Show.” 

He still made the trip to New York even though four Armed Forces recruiters had recently been killed in a terrorist attack in Tennessee.

His trip to Martha’s Vineyard including many rounds of golf on many private course. The house the First Family stayed at was 8,100 square feet in size, it sat on a 10 acre lot, it had 17 rooms, and usually rents for $50,000 a WEEK.

The numbers show that Obama and his family are certainly living the good live, all on taxpayer wealth.

4) Speaking of Obama and golf, as of this past August, the President had played 248 rounds of golf. This is the most rounds of golf played by a President since the 1950s. This comes out to about one round of golf every ten days, a rate that the vast majority of Americans and vast majority of American golfers fail to attain.

This is a President who promised he “would not rest” until every problem the country was facing was resolved, as witnessed by his promises, all of which have been broken, in the following video:

http://obamagolfcounter.com/ 

I foolishly assumed that he meant he would not be golfing every ten days or so until every problem was resolved, that is how I interpreted his continual “will not rest” promises.

But I should have known better. Remember, this is the same Presidential candidate that said he would not take vacations if elected since there were so many issues facing the country:

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Obama-vacation-video-golf/2014/08/12/id/588289/

Over 248 rounds of golf prove that this is another broken promise, the golf numbers do not lie.

That will do it for this month’s “by the numbers” update. Do not believe political spin, believe the numbers if you want to know what reality is.

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

Part 8, August, 2012 Political Class Insanity: National Science Foundation Wasteful Insanity, Another Multi-Million Dollar First Family Vacation, More Detroit Lunacy, and More Mortgage Madness

This is our eight and hopefully last post on this month’s political class insanity. What once took one post a month to cover will now take at least eight to cover as the insanity and lunacy from our political class continues to accelerate every month. Wasteful spending, idiotic programs, government inefficiencies, and as we have covered the past two days, fiscal management incompetence. The politicians in this country are a walking disaster every time they speak or act.

If you read enough of our monthly posts on political class insanity, you cannot help but wonder if we are currently experiencing the most incompetent set of politicians in our country’s history. Given they have been unable to resolve a major issue or problem for the past fifty or so years, e.g. failing public schools, lost war on drugs, etc., it is hard to defend them from a competency perspective. Let the following bits of lunacy speak for themselves:

1) We have previously reported on how wasteful and stupid many of the projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) are:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/national-science-foundation-wasting.html

Stupidity funded by the taxpayer included in that review included the following “scientific” studies:

- How to ride a bike.
- When did dogs become man's best friend?
- Are political views genetically determined?
- How to improve the quality of wine.
- Do boys like to play with trucks and girls like to play with dolls?
- How rumors get started.
- Do parents choose trendy baby names?
- When is the best time to buy a ticket to a sporting event?
- How much housework does a husband create for his wife?
- A virtual recreation of the 1964/1965 World's Fair.
- Sponsorship of a YouTube rap video.
- A review of event ticket prices on Stub Hub.
- What motivates people to make political donations.

Given its history, it should not surprise anyone that one of the latest NSF taxpayer funded project is to spend $2.25 million to study the emergence, transmission and evolution of facial tumor disease in Tasmanian devils. These creatures are native to Australia which is half way around the world from our $17 TRILLION national debt, our chronically high unemployment, and the cancellation of White House tours. In other words, why is the American taxpayer sending over $2 million around the world to study a disease of a creature that is not native to our country?

Now, the NSF tried to justify the grant by claiming by understanding how the tumors manifest themselves in Tasmania devils we would get a better understanding of how to combat cancer in humans: "Across Tasmania, devil populations are being decimated by an infectious cancer called Tasmanian devil facial tumor disease. This study will investigate how transmission is related to heterogeneity in contacts and genomic variation in host and/and or tumor within populations. Genetic studies may reveal underlying causes of devil facial tumor longevity, perhaps providing information on cancer recurrence in humans."

It is a pretty weak link if you look at their wording: may reveal, perhaps providing information, etc. What they call justification for a terrible waste of taxpayer money I call insanity and a total waste of taxpayer money for a low potential view into cancer in humans. With $17 TRILLION in national debt and four years in a row of TRILLION annual deficits, we cannot afford “perhaps.”

2) This past week or so the President has been traveling around the country with some rehashed and invalid economic plans in an effort to bolster the middle class and his absurd claim that he is a friend of the middle class. But I sometimes wonder if even knows what the middle class is since from his actions, he certainly does not send a message that he does:

• The White House recently announced that he and the first family will be vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard this August.
• He will be staying at the $7.6 million home of a Chicago corporate finance manager because the $20 million home he and his family usually stay at is not available.
• This home features water access to Chilmark Pond, tennis courts and swimming pools and sits on nine and a half acres with ocean views and a basketball court.
• This is not to be confused with the vacation he and his extended family took earlier this month to three countries in Africa which cost the American taxpayer about $100 million.
• This is also not to be confused with the extended vacation he and his family took back at the Christmas holidays in the Hawaiian islands.
• This is not to be confused with other vacations that members of his family have taken to Mexico, Spain, western ski resorts, etc. over the past few years.

Tough to say you are in tune with the needs with the middle class when you are taking multiple luxury vacations in a single year, vacations that most middle class Americans could not afford in their lifetimes.

3) Most informed voters know that Detroit recently declared bankruptcy and is a true fiscal basket case. Which makes a recent CNN news report all that more ludicrous. According to the report, despite its crumbling financials, infrastructure, and city, Detroit is going ahead with plans to build the NHL Detroit Red Wings a new $444 million arena, apparently with the support of the Michigan governor. How does this make any sense:

• Detroit’s unemployment rate for June was 9.4%.
• The city has billions of dollars in debt obligations it cannot possibly pay back.
• The illiteracy rate in the city is approaching 50%. 
• While the new arena might create a few temporary construction jobs, it will not create many long term jobs since 1) workers in the current hockey arena will just move over to the same jobs in the new arena and 2) any suburban hockey fans coming into the depths of Detroit are not going to hang around there before or after the games to build up the local economy for fear of their lives since, according to the CNN article and report, it takes the understaffed Detroit police an hour on average to respond to emergency calls.

Total insanity to be catering to a professional and wealthy hockey team when so many other societal needs are being unfilled in Detroit. 

The one ray of sanity in this fiasco comes from State Senator Gretchen Whitmer who actually ”gets it” from a reality perspective and who actually argued something sensibly when she said: “If you want people to live in the city, and not just visit to go to games, you have to invest in schools, in having the police to respond to calls. There are so many investments that should trump a sports stadium.”

Too bad fiscal political insanity appears to be winning out over Senator Whitmer’s common sense.

4) Just about every Washington plan that tried to fix the fallout from the Great Recession has failed miserably. The latest example of failure comes from a Newsmax article from July 24, 2013. The Obama administration’s HAMP program tried to get mortgage relief via loan term modifications help to American homeowners who were suffering financially as a result of the recession.

The Special Inspector for the Troubled Asset Relief Program recently completed a study audit to see how HAMP was doing and the results were not good:

• According to CNN reporting, of the 1.2 million HAMP mortgage modifications over the past four years, more than 306,000 borrowers have defaulted again, this time on their modified loans. 
• Thus, the program has at least a 25% failure rate since the article also points out that another 88,000 home owners are at risk as well. These 88,000 potential defaults could push the failure rate to almost 33%.
• The re-defaults to date, not including the pending 88,000 potential defaults, have cost the American taxpayer over $800 million so far.
• The article points out that the Federal government has already spent $4.4 billion on the program, a program with an unacceptably high failure rate.
• Thus, on average each non-defaulted HAMP home owner received less than $5,000 on average. I doubt that $5,000 made much of a difference for most people that were seeing their homes lose 40-50% of their value, far more than $5,000.

Two pieces of insanity here. First, most real people working real, non-government jobs would be fired if their failure rate on the job was 33%. Unfortunately, that kind of ineptness is tolerated in government programs. 

Second, and this is the type of thinking that really ticks you off, is the fact that while $4.4 billion is a lot of money, it is miniscule compared to the overall U.S. mortgage market. 

Let’s do some simple math. The Federal Reserve estimates the current value of all residential mortgages in this country is over $13 TRILLION. The Obama administration has spent $4.4 billion to aid that market. $4.4 billion is a paltry .03% of the overall mortgage market. You cannot expect to fix a problem by investing .03% against that problem. .03%, in any situation, provides you absolutely no leverage. 

Thus, this problem was doomed to failure relative to its objectives before it even started, a 33% failure rate notwithstanding. All the HAMP program did was save a very, very small number of mortgages from default while wasting $4.4 billion in the process. It never had a chance of making any kind of dent in the mortgage issues in this country as a result of the Great Recession. Insanity.

Okay, I thought we could finish off this month’s insanity with this, the eighth post. However, the insanity is flowing in quicker than I can write it down so we will need at least one more day to get it all in, assuming that the flow of lunacy from the political class does not overwhelm my inbox again.

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