March, 2015, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: When NASCAR and Pigs Are More Important Than Citizens, Getting Drunk at the State Of The Union, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time once again to review the latest insanity and ineptness from the American political class. We do this review every month to prove our hypothesis that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. 

They waste hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth every year, they never resolve any of the major issues facing Americans today, they continually put their foot in their mouth with their idiotic statements and positions, and they operate government functions that are bloated and ineffective in delivering quality service to taxpayers. And worse of all, they have rigged the country’s elections processes so that their election and subsequent re-elections are almost guaranteed to ensure their mediocrity continues. 

To review the past examples of political class insanity just type in “political class insanity” in the search box above.

So lets get started on what is likely a multi-day review of their latest incompetence and insanity, with the first post in this series appearing yesterday:

1) It is no secret that the Obama administration has added more to the national debt than every other Presidential administration that came before it. Of the more than $18 TRILLION in debt that the country now owes, $8 TRILLION of that came just from the Obama administration. This $8 TRILLION comes out to about $67,000 for every American family in the country.

The Obama administration and the current Washington political class has added so much debt that the Obama White House now estimates that by 2021, the country will be spending more on interest from the national debt than on the entire Defense Department budget. Given that the current annual Defense Department budget is about half a TRILLION dollars a year, by 2021, on average, every American family will be spending over $4,000 a year in taxes just on interest payments alone. Insanity.

2) According to an article in the December 12, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently vetoed a piece of legislation that would have banned the use of restrictive gestation crates for breeding pigs that affect about 9,000 pigs in the state. As a former resident of New Jersey I do not have a position on whether this is a humane thing to do or not.

But as a former resident of New Jersey, I know there are far bigger issues that state politicians should be worried about and focused on than the comfort of 9,000 pigs:

• The state’s unemployment level continues to run higher than the rest of the country.
• The state’s long term unemployment rate continues to be one of the worst in the country.
• The state’s cost of living and tax burden continues to be one of the highest in the country.
• The state spends more and gets relatively less bang for its investment in education relative to many other states in the country.

But why focus your legislative efforts on issues that affect most of the state’s residents when you can develop and pass legislation that focuses on 9,000 pigs. Horrible, horrible political priorities.

3) But New Jersey is not alone in state politicians that are focusing on the wrong priorities. The city of Charlotte, North Carolina invested over a $100 million of taxpayer funds to help build the NASCAR Hall of Fame in the city. Unfortunately, this investment is not paying off since only 400,000 people are visiting the Hall Of Fame each year while the city planners expected over 800,000 to show up annually. 

This 50% attendance shortfall has resulted in the city having to put up another $5 million of taxpayer funds to pay off some of the debts that the Hall Of Fame has incurred in addition to the $137 million in debt it incurred to build the Hall. Additionally, banks who invested in the project will get back about a third of which they invested and royalties to NASCAR have been suspended for the near future.

As with New Jersey, I am sure there are far better needs and issues that city lawmakers and politicians should have been spending their time on than building a white elephant of a hall of fame. Bad priorities.

4) According to a recent article written by Tyler Durden that appeared on the www.zerohedge.com website, the United States and the inferior lawmaking ability of the nation's politicians have resulting in two depressing facts:

• The United States has the highest prison and jail incarceration rate of any country in the world.
• This high incarceration rate has greatly diminished the punitive and preventive effective of crime and criminals.

Just another example of politicians coming up with a solution that makes the original problem even worse. Details of these conclusions include the following facts and realities:

• There are about 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. 15 states have total populations less than 2.3 million.
• There are more Americans in prison than the combined populations of Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming.
• The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population by 25% of its prisoners.
• One out of every three black men will spend time in prison or jail.
• 2.7 million kids across the country have a parent who is jail or prison.
• The U.S. imprisonment rate has grown by 400% since 1970.

Despite the every increasing incarceration rate, a recent study and research effort from the Brennan Center For Justice at the NYU School of law found that this increased incarceration rate has had a limited effect on crime rates over the past two and a half decades. One reason driving this diminished effect on crime is that a lot of those currently wasting away in prisons and jails are there for non-violent and victimless crimes such as illegal drug use. 

Author Durden writes: “America’s incarceration rate has become so saturated that it has absolutely no meaningful impact in lowering crimes rates anyway. The time for prison reform and the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences is long overdue.”

Thus, politicians’ efforts to make us safer are not having any real effect any longer while costing billions of dollars in taxpayer wealth to make us the most imprisoned planet in the world. Something is worn here, something is insane here.

U.S. imprisonment rate per 100,000 people since 1880:



5) It is not uncommon in life for a person to turn to alcohol when they are really depressed or really bored. Not sure what the reasons were for Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg getting a little unsober at the recent Obama state of the union speech but who can blame her? She had to sit still for a long time while listening to empty promises and arrogance from the President of the U.S.Justice Ginsburg had drunk so much pre-speech wine that she actually nodded off in the middle of the state of the union proceeding. She apparently was unaware that she passed out during the speech until she returned home and got a call from her granddaughter saying, “Bubbe, you were sleeping at the State of the Union.”But the Justice had enough integrity to admit she was not sleeping: “The audience — for the most part — is awake because they’re bobbing up and down all the time and we sit there, stone-faced, sober judges. At least I wasn’t 100 percent sober because before we went to the State of the Union we had dinner. Justice Kennedy brought in … it was an Opus something or other, very fine California wine that Justice Kennedy brought, and I vowed this year just sparkling water, stay away from the wine. But in the end, the dinner was so delicious, it needed wine to accompany it.”Again, who can blame her? This President has made more promises that never got fulfilled, has spent more tax money that has resulted in minimal improvement in Americans’ lives, has violated more laws and Constitutional tenets than any other President, and continues to shower himself and his family with golf rounds, international vacations, and privileges of royalty to the extent that no other President would have dared to do. At least viewers at home could turn off the President and go to another TV channel. Justice Ginsburg had no other option than to overdrink and pass out to escape the depression and boredom that is the Washington political class on display at the state of the union message. So what did we learn to today from the political class insanity we reviewed:

• Obama’s budgets will eventually crush the country and its economy.
• New Jersey politicians worry more about pigs than citizens.
• North Carolina city politicians worry more about NASCAR than citizens.
• We are the kings of incarceration relative to the rest of the world.
• Even Supreme Court Justices are being driven to drink by the Washington political class.

More reasons to drink due to politicians’ ineptness tomorrow.

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

Janaury, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Failure In Economics, Failure In World Peace, Failure In Tax Policy and More

This is our third post this month that will be covering yet more political class insanity, idiocy, and ineptness. It is a shame that these people do not work in the private sector because if they did, they would have been jobless long ago. But alas, they work for the government, where failure is accepted, tolerated, and often rewarded at the expense of our wealth and liberty.

1) The first piece of insanity if both as good news and bad news story. Good news in that the Washington political class has finally gotten around to terminating a number of stupid, special interest tax breaks and credits. The bad news is twofold: why were these tax breaks ever created in the first place and why were they allowed to go on so long?

The following idiotic, wasteful spending examples that have finally expired come from the January 5, 2013 issue of the Tampa Bay Times:

• At an annual taxpayer cost of $50 million, the first tax break, labeled the NASCAR loophole, allowed anyone who builds a racetrack to receive a tax benefit through accelerated depreciation. Supposedly it was put into place to give NASCAR a better chance of competing with theme parks. But why should NASCAR get a tax break and theme parks not get the benefit at the expense of the American taxpayer? Stupid, narrow, and unneeded tax stupidity, given the billions and billions of dollars NASCAR generates by itself.
• At an annual taxpayer cost of $75 million, Hollywood studios will longer be able to deduct up to a whopping $15 million of their movie production if more than 75% of the movie’s production work took place in the United States. They could get 80% of they produced the film in low income communities.
• At an annual cost of $9 billion, large banks and other financial giants will longer be able to take advantage of a tax break called the “Active Financing Exception To Subpart F.” This tax break, in effect since 1997, allowed companies to defer taxes on overseas income when they use special types of financing. Critics of the tax break probably are correct when they point out that this tax break actually encouraged U.S. companies to invest overseas rather than domestically. Still, the banking and financial giants are howling about losing the tax break, claiming it allowed them to better compete overseas. As an American taxpayer, I would suggest they take that tax break money form their shareholders, the ones that truly benefit form competing overseas, not the American taxpayer.. At $9 billion a year over 17 years, we are probably looking at a ghastly $150 billion that the American taxpayers used to subsidize companies like JP Morgan, General Electric, and others.
• At an annual taxpayer cost of $240 million, American rum drinkers will no longer have to pay for the $13.50 Federal tax per gallon that was levied on all rum made in or imported into the country. That tax money was then given to the rum companies in Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands to support their competitiveness. This tax has been hassling rum drinkers since 1917, meaning that it probably cost American citizens billions of dollars in corporate welfare over the past 97 years it was in effect.

A few other tax beaks expired but these above are the most inane. Why American citizens should have to subsidize banks, financial institutions, NASCAR racetracks, rum producers, etc. is idiotic. In a capitalistic society, these companies should survive, thrive, or die on the merits of their own intelligence, work ethics, and business decisions. Taxpayers should not be responsible for their success.

Unfortunately, there are probably thousands of other such corporate welfare programs and tax breaks that still exist, mostly as a result of campaign donations to incumbent politicians.

2) We already have reported that the Federal government has spent upwards of a billions on a substandard website for Obama Care. We have already reported that well over 90% of large Federal government information systems efforts over the past few years have either collapsed under their own failure or came nowhere close to fulfilling their initial objectives. 

Thus, given this heritage of massive spending for minimal results as it relates to data systems management and development, it should come as no surprise that the Department of Justice is about to spend well over half a million dollars to enhance its brand image and positioning on the Linkedin business networking system. This outrageous expense was reported on January 2, 3014 by the Washington Free Beacon.

And this expense is not even for the whole Justice Department, if for only the criminal division which has less than one thousand employees. Supposedly this expense will help the division recruit highly talented professionals and interns.

The actual development cost of the Linkedin presence is $544,388 but there is also an monthly, ongoing cost of $719.95 a month. Doing some math, over the first five years, the cost of the presence would be about $587,000. If the division hired 100 people over that timeframe, not unreasonable since the Federal government sees very little turnover in their employee base, each one of those hire would have cost at least $58,700 each just to cover the Linkedin expense. Does not seem like a very efficient way to get candidates for a very small division within the Federal government.

And given the history of Federal government systems management, want to bet those costs go much higher before all is said and done? Remembers, user access to Linkedin is free, why the government has to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to access a free site is certainly questionable.

3) An interesting economic study was recently reported by Dean Stansel, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, and Fred McMahon of the Fraser Institute. They conducted an analysis where they measured a variety of components to determine economic freedom levels by North American jurisdiction.

These components included the size of government, discriminatory taxation, regulation, the legal system and property rights, sound money policy, and freedom to trade internationally. They found via their methodology that the province of Alberta, Canada, ranks highest for economic freedom, followed by the province of Saskatchewan iin North America. The state of Delaware is third, followed by Texas and Nevada. Other U.S. states in the top 10 states and provinces are Wyoming, South Dakota, and Colorado. 

New Mexico was determined to be least economically free entity, followed by West Virginia. Other U.S states in the bottom 10 are Mississippi, Vermont, Maine, Kentucky, Montana, Arkansas, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. 

But what is really the big news from their study is that these ten states, the ones with the lowest economic freedom, have an average per-capita GDP of $40,014. That GDP measure is nearly $10,000 less than the other 40 states: $40,014 compared to $49,355. Imagine how much lower it would be if compared just to the top states that are the most economically free such as Delaware, Texas, Nevada, etc. The GDP gap would be much wider.

Conclusion: the less taxes, the fewer regulations, the least government interference in citizens' economic freedom results in greater prosperity for those citizens. However, the Washington political class seem to think and act just the opposite, especially those within the Obama White House since their actions lead to more taxation, more regulations, more interference and as we have seen, less and less prosperity for all Americans. Insanity.

4) There was great hope for world peace when President Obama took office. He had a sky high approval rating both domestically and across the world. He gave a hopeful, peace themed speech to university students in Cairo. His brand was “hope and change.” He won a Nobel Peace prize for simply breathing. He was going to be the breakout world leader who settled things down and brought peace in our time.

Five years later, not so much. Maybe it was his inability to wind down the Afghanistan war. Maybe it was his indiscriminate killing of civilians, adults and children with drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Maybe it was his assertion that he could assassinate American citizens without putting them on trial first. Maybe it was his dangerous and stupid intervention in the Libyan civil war. Maybe it was his threat to send armed forces into Syria as a result of a purported chemical attack by government forces. Maybe it was his alleged assertion that he “was very good at killing people.” Maybe it was his stationing of U.S. Marines in Australia.

Whatever the reasons or reasons, a recent survey by pollster Win/Gallup International across 65 nations found that the United States was viewed as the most dangerous nation the face of the earth. Not China, not Russia, not Iran, not North Korea, the United States. Detailed results from the survey include the following depressing findings:

• The U.S. topped the list of the most dangerous country in the world with an aggregate of 24% of respondents.
• The runner-up threat country, Pakistan, was way behind at eight percent, one third the perceived threat as the U.S., China was third at six percent, followed by North Korea, Iran and Israel at five percent each.
• In Russia, 54% of respondents said the U.S. was the greatest threat to peace and in China 49% of respondents said the U.S. was the greatest threat to peace.
• But our allies were not quite happy with us either since NATO partners Greece and Turkey (45% each), and Pakistan (44%), which is also a top recipient of U.S. aid were also sure that we were the top threat to world peace.
• In Latin America, Argentina (46%), Mexico (37%), Brazil (26 percent) and Peru (24%) also viewed the U.S. as the top threat to world peace.

The list and findings go on but you get the idea. The Obama administration has failed miserably in actions, words and promises to bring about a world political and military environment that is compatible for world peace. In fact, we are still viewed as the biggest threat to world peace. 

So much for hope and change on the international front from this version of the Washington political class. Maybe the fact that we have hundreds of thousands of troops stationed around the world and spend more on military forces than the rest of the world combined might also have a bearing on the hostility towards us.

Whatever the reason, certainly a failure of leadership from Washington in general and the White Hose specifically.

Failure on the world stage, failure to rein in stupid tax breaks, failure to efficiently spend information systems dollars, and failure to understand economic freedom concepts. Sounds about right for this set of political class members. More buffoonery tomorrow.

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