May, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: More Free POress Failures, Arrogance in the Chicago Mayor's Office, and Bad Priorities In California

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) We have often pointed out that a strong, aggressive, fair, and unbiased free press is critical to defending our rights and freedoms and uncovering scandals and misdeeds by politicians and government officials. We have also often pointed out how the journalism field and news industry in this country have failed to uphold those lofty and important pillars of freedom. 

News reporting and journalism in this country today is a disgrace, amoral, and totally biased to preconceived notions, wants and TV ratings. And the American public has grown more and more tired of journalists and news people being out of integrity for a long time now. According to Gallup, 58% of those surveyed now have very little or no trust in the journalism industry today. That pessimism level was only 28% back in the late 1970s and has trended steadily worse since then.

Nowhere has this failure of the press to be unbiased, fair, and aggressive been more pronounced than in the recent Tara Reade situation. Ms. Reade was a member of Senator Joe Biden’s staff long ago. She has recently accused him of sexual molestation and digitally penetrating her during an encounter many years ago.

When similar accusations were made when Brett Kavanaugh was being considered for the Supreme Court, news outlets, news papers, and news pundits jumped on the accusations immediately and basically concluded that Kavanaugh was guilty of nasty sexual acts without any real proof, facts, or credible evidence, all of which melted away after a very bitter and biased investigation by Congressional Democrats. But the fact remains that the journalism industry in this country jumped on the first inkling of sexual accusation and went hard after Kavanaugh.

But now Ms. Reade comes forth with actually more proof of evidence that Biden is guilty than the Kavanaugh accusers ever had, and the news media, in all forms, somehow choke on their word processing programs:

• It took the New York Times and Washington Post almost three weeks to even acknowledge that the accusations were being made.
• CNN took over three weeks to even acknowledge Ms. Reade’s existence on their website and coverage after that was weak and flaccid.
• And worst of all, National Public Radio (NPR), a left leaning, liberal organization took almost a full month to acknowledge the Reade situation, a fact that NP management recently admitted.
• NPR reporter Asma Khalid, was assigned the Reade story back in March.
• Despite the accusations, Khalid did not speak to Reade initially, claiming that she needed to do some research.Her editor at NPR, Kelly McBride, admits that the research process could have been finished inside of one week.
• Khalid took nearly three weeks to do the “research.”
• Compare that to the Kavanaugh situation where Khalid issued a report ONE DAY after the Kavanaugh accusations broke, i.e. she didn't take three weeks of research and then another week to put the story together.
• Not only did it take so long to actually put the Reade NPR story together, Khalid omitted an interview she did with one of Reade’s friends that could have substantiated the claims that Reade has made.

Again, freedom, liberty and democracy relies on a strong and unbiased news industry to process the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Unfortunately, the biases that exist today across all major news outlets not only distorts or ignores the truth, it undermines our freedoms since now nothing is real, nothing is the truth when all news reporting is done for personal, political, or business gain, truth be damned.

2) Let’s go back out to Chicago. The Mayor of Chicago is Lori Lightfoot. She has placed the city under some pretty stringent stay at home rules. But she acted like a typical “do as I say, not as I do” politician when a few weeks ago she had a beauty salon open up, which violated her own rules, to get a haircut. Her response after getting called out for the violation was that she needed to look good since she was in the public eye. Never mind that she violated her own rules and put other Chicago citizens in danger.

But her hypocrisy has continued since that bad optic beauty salon visit:

• She recently wanted “defiant churches” that she will take action against them if they hold church services in violation of her edicts, the edicts she ignored.
• She had previously warned churches against holding services via what she called “educational outreach.”
• Now, she is getting more aggressive and threatening unspecified action if she continues to be ignored: “We’re going to be communicating over and over again over the course of this week. I understand that people are getting anxious. But defying common sense and public health guidance only puts their congregations at physical risk. We’re going to continue to have that discussion but, if necessary, we are going to take action to make sure there is compliance to the stay-at-home orders.”
• Cristian Ionescu, the pastor at Elim Romanian, called his church’s first in-person service in two months an “extraordinary success” and claimed that his church took extreme measures to protect church participants.
• He went on to say that political leaders should have worked with the churches in the city and state to protect the First Amendment and the congregants rather than dictate terms and conditions for gatherings: “They should cooperate with us, not dictate to us. I take offense that they think they care more about our people than us.”
• Joe Wyrostek, pastor of Metro Praise International Church had the same view: “I just feel like we were put at the back of the bus. We were not in any of the discussions. We have to stand up for ourselves at some point. We’ve lost trust in what they’re doing. We have to peacefully resist and see where it goes.”

It is certainly easy to lose trust in elected officials when they violate their own rules to get their hair looking nice. The purpose and skill of a politician is leading and peacefully coming to a consensus that addresses any many issues and concerns as possible across all parties. Dictating what one should do and not do is not leadership, it is authoritarian.

3) One last piece of local political class insanity to finish up today. We have often pointed out how screwed up the state of California is, from huge unfunded budget liability holes to failing schools to crumbling roads to a dysfunctional housing market to an enormous homeless problem to higher and higher taxes. 

Thus, given these critical issues. One would hope that local and state opticians were hard at work, focused on these issues that probably touch every single resident of the state and not in a good way. 

But you hope would be crushed when you find out what one state politician’s priorities are:

• Evan Low is a California state assemblyman.
• In February, he introduced legislation that would make it illegal for retail stores with 500 or more employees to have separate boys and girls sections for clothing and toys in their stores.
• Of course, such requirements would increase store merchandising costs which would either reduce the stores’ profits or much more likely result in higher prices for consumers and shoppers in those stores.
• Higher prices for absolutely no reason.
• The basis for this proposed law is that the 9 year old daughter of a member of Low’s staff told Low that she did not like it when boys and girls clothes and toys were separate sections.
• As a result, the desires of a nine year old, California may soon require private stores to merchandise their stores according to the whims of a 9 year old.

So rather than work on the budget holes, the homeless problem or probably dozens of other, much more pressing and important issues, this politician is taking advice from a 9 year old on an issue that really is not an issue. I am sure that if you took a poll of Californians about what are the top 50 issues their families face, the separate retail merchandising of boys and girls products does not crack the top 100. And yet this politician is wasting taxpayer wealth and resources on this nonsense.

Nonsense in California, nonsense in newsrooms and nonsense in Chicago, no wonder things are screwed up when politicians and news people have such lousy priorities and moral standards.

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

Don't Worry, Be Happy: The Bursting Of The Government's $20 Trillion+ Debt Bubble Will Make Today's Worries So Trivial

If you are still freaking out that Donald Trump is President, relax, don’t worry, be happy.

If you are still fuming because of the damage the Obama Presidency did to this country, relax, don’t worry, be happy.

If you are still upset because Betsy DeVos is now the Secretary of Education, relax, don’t worry, be happy.

If you are fretting that Federal taxpayer funding of NPR and NEA might get cut, relax, don’t worry, be happy.

You might was well be happy now because as the Federal government debt load rapidly approaches $20 TRILLION, any worries you have today about the Federal government and how it affects your lives will become overwhelmingly trivial once the national debt bubble bursts.

NPR funding? That is a gnat on a gnat’s ass, that sucker gets wiped out in the first shock wave when the debt bubble bursts.

Department of Education and Betsy DeVos? That priority is so far down the list that the entire Department of Education will be swept away along with Ms. DeVos.

Obama’s destructive Presidency? Too late to worry now, that ship sailed eight years ago before his Presidency almost doubled the national debt amount incurred by EVERY previous President COMBINED.

Trump’s Presidency? Since the Constitution requires that all government debt be paid back before any government operating expenses, his hands are tied in what can be paid for and funded when the debt bubble bursts.

Yes, forget about your worries today, they will be washed away when the debt bubble bursts because many of you are going to have to worry about how you are going to survive when your Social Security check gets slashed by 20 - 30%.

Yes, forget about your worries today, they will be washed away when the debt bubble bursts and your Medicare payments double or triple every month.

Yes, forget about your worries today, they will be washed away when you realize that you and every one of your kids and grandkids are currently on the hook for over $61,000 of that $20 TRILLION national debt, a figure that rapidly grows every day.

How much is a TRILLION dollars? Consider this simple math reality: if you had spent a MILLION dollars a DAY since the day Jesus Christ was born, you still would not have spent a TRILLION dollars. And we are looking at more than twenty times that amount of debt. A million dollars a DAY.

Oh, and before my liberal friends and family give me their standard knee jerk reaction on matters like this, namely, “tax the rich more!”, I got a surprise for you: that is an extremely ignorant and invalid suggestion. Trust me, I have done the math, no matter how much you tax the rich, your inane remedy comes nowhere close to resolving this $20 TRILLION issue. And the Congressional Budget Office also did the math, agreeing with me, and concluding in their recent long term view of the economy that this is solely a Federal government overspending issue that cannot be resolved by over taxing any American.

But did we at least get anything for the $20 TRILLION debt hole we are now in? Apparently not since our roads, bridges, and dams are still falling apart, our public education processes still radically under educate our kids, much of our armed forces are still not combat ready, and the major social programs of the Federal government (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) are still hurtling towards fiscal insolvency.

The Obama administration spent about $26 TRILLION over its eight year reign, incurring well over $9 TRILLION in debt in the process and left us worse off than when it began. It took us from a historical and manageable debt to GDP ratio of about 60% to a ratio of over 100%, putting us in the elite company of distressed economies like Greece. These are the facts, nothing you can say changes these facts no matter how much you idolized Obama.

So when you sit down to the dinner table tonight and look at your kids eating, or as you watch TV tonight and look at your grandkids’ pictures on your mantle, remember that we have saddled them with a debt load that they and their kids will be paying back for generations to come. And for that load we have left them a country and government in a very sad state of affairs.

So relax, don’t worry, be happy because far worse is on the way than the trivial political stuff you are worried about today.

P.S. - That $20 TRILLION is the amount of Federal government debt incurred already. It does not include the tens of TRILLIONS of dollars in unfunded future Social Security, Medicare, and other Federal government liabilities (currently sitting at just over $85 TRILLION) on top of the $20 TRILLION.

P.S. That $20 TRILLION also does not include the $3.2 TRILLION government debt at the state and local government levels.

Check out the Debt Clock (if you dare) insanity at:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

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

The Latest Insanity And Bewilderment From Your Political Class - March Edition

My monthly edition of Reason magazine arrived today so that means it is time to do our monthly update on the insanity and bewilderment that continuously emanates from the American political class. As I have mentioned many times before, Reason magazine is an outstanding publication that looks at our world through the lens of freedom and liberty. Its articles are always well researched, well written and while they are almost always in-depth, they are a fairly easy read. I suggest that anyone with Libertarian leanings subscribe, their understanding of the world and liberty far exceeds any other news or media outlet in the country.

The following bits of government insanity are in the April issue of Reason:

- Joe Biden spoke highly of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in a PBS interview on January 27, 2011: "I would not refer to him (Mubarak) as a dictator." Let's see, Egypt has lived under virtual martial law for decades, any elections have been rigged, opposition political parties have been suppressed, Mubarak's friends and military allies own or control great portions of the Egyptian economy for their own benefit, and Mubarak ran a vicious secret police organization during his time in power to go after Egyptians who dared to oppose him.  Many and various forms of torture machines and processes were found when his secret service buildings were opened up. If he is not a dictator, Mr. Vice President, I would hate to see a real dictator.

- According to an article by Matt Welch in this month's Reason, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was really not in tune with what was going on in Egypt in the early part of the year:

• On January 25, 2011, Hillary viewed the Egyptian government situation as "stable."
• However, just five days later on January 30, 2011, she said that an "orderly transition" was needed to a new form of government that should occur over a period of months. What happened to the stability of the current government she talked about five days before?
• It gets better. Just eleven days later, Mubarak resigned, the current Egyptian government structure collapsed and Clinton's boss, President Obama, said that "Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day." Therefore, we went from a stable government to a government collapse in just over two weeks. Does not appear that Madam Secretary, or her boss, were on top of this situation.

- In the United States, it is currently against the law to provide so-called material support to terrorist groups. Sounds like a good law, we do not want people providing guns, bombs, information, etc. to violent, anti-U.S. groups. However, according to a short article by Jacob Sullum, the law goes further than that. In fact, it is a felony to challenge a group's designation as a terror organization, it is a felony for a lawyer to file a brief on the behalf of that organization, and it is a felony to advise that group on how to use peaceful tactics for achieving its goals.

Thus, using Joe Biden's definition of what is and what is not a dictator, it is not out of the realm of possibility for a sitting President to declare a political opposition party a terror organization, an organization that would have no legal recourse. Given the President's dislike of Fox News, what would stop him from labeling Fox News as a terror organization? After all, under the Biden doctrine, if Mubarak is not a dictator, all laws of logic can be suspended by the Obama administration.

- The number of pedestrian deaths increased .4% in 2010. No big deal. While any death is bad, most people would be smart enough to realize that a .4% increase is so small that it could probably be attributed to rounding or sampling randomness, not a trend. Unless you are New York state senator Carl Kruger who has introduced a bill making it a crime to use a cell phone, an iPod, or other electronic device while crossing any street.

Talk about screwed up priorities. The New York state government is in a desperate hole financially, slashing budget in order to remain solvent. New York public schools, like most public schools, are failing to educate our kids. The war on drugs in New York and elsewhere goes on unabated. But what is Senator Kruger worried about? Whether or not full grown adults are smart enough to look up when crossing the street. Pathetic priorities. How is this ever going to be enforced? Are you going to have cash strapped police departments stationed at busy intersections to write tickets and make arrests?

And the real kicker is that even if they passed the law it is unlikely to make a difference. A 2010 study by the Institute For Highway Safety found that laws banning cell phone texting while driving actually increase the danger on our road ways. Why? When it became illegal to text, drivers simply moved their cell phones away from the windows in order to not get ticketed, which took their eyes further away from the road while texting. Thus, this is a stupid law that is likely to backfire. Politicians should not be involved in such nonsensical activities like crossing the street.

- On the good news side, a Pennsylvania law that allowed police within the state to issue summons for public profanity has been struck down as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit. As with the nutty New York Senator,  we need to start running this country like adults that are serving adults. Most people do not like profanity but it should not be a crime, it is really just bad manners. With our dire financial situation, let's free up our police and other resources to do real work and not the work of grandstanding politicians.

- On the good news side, that is really not a good news side, President Obama recently announced that he wanted Federal government entities to do a review of their regulations and procedures and identify and eliminate those that are inefficient, ineffective, or outdated. Sounds great, good news, let's cut through the red tape and bureaucracy.

Not so fast. According to the Wall Street Journal, any regulations put in place under the Obama regime are off limits. I guess he thinks that anything regulation he put in has to be good, it's those other President's who put in the bad stuff. Also, more than a dozen major Federal government entities will be exempt from the exercise since they are independent agencies. Some of these agencies include the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications commission. Thus, in the twinkle of an eye really good news has turned into really no news at all.

This does give you an idea of how out of control our Federal government has become. If the President Of the United States cannot dictate a common sense directive to major portions of the government, who or what can control them? We are truly headed for an out of control Armageddon if agencies of the government have become self sufficient and self sustaining with no executive branch oversight.

But Reason magazine does not have a monopoly on political class insanity. Consider some recent findings from The Week magazine:

- A top state department employee, P.J. Crowley, was recently forced to resign when he voiced his opinion that Bradley Manning, the accused leaker of government documents to Wikileaks, was being subjected to cruel and unnecessary punishment. Mr. Manning is supposedly forced to stay n his very small, solitary confinement cell 23 hours a day, he his stripped naked each night, and is then forced to wear a suicide proof smock to bed every night. All of this stupid treatment for someone who has not been convicted of any crime and who reportedly has not been any kind of trouble maker. I guess the administration does not see any problem with this inhumane treatment since they did not think that Mubarak, who probably did similar things to his unconvicted people, is not a dictator.

- Many times we have discussed the phenomenon of how many government policies actually accomplish the exact opposite of what they are intended to do. Ban texting while driving and make the roads more dangerous, that sort of thing. In the United States, we pay people to purchase a hybrid car under the assumption that if there are more high hybrid autos on the road instead of traditional gas autos, less oil will be used, since hybrids generally get far better gas mileage, which will result in less green house gas emissions.

This may not be the case or reality. According to a short blurb in the March 25, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, Sweden the exact opposite has happened. Sweden apparently has been a big advocate of their citizens buying and using "green cars" such as hybrids, ethanol, and clean diesel autos. However, the Swedish government has found out that since all of these alternatives get great gas mileage, their owners tend to drive much more than they used to, resulting in many of them actually using, and burning, more gasoline than non-green car owners. Thus, we may actually be subsidizing drivers in America to burn more gas and create more green house gases then if they had bought traditional, lower mileage cars.

- As the country drowns in TRILLIONs of dollars in red ink, the political class is viciously fighting itself to decide whether or not National Public Radio should continue to receive $450 million in Federal subsidies every year. The ship is sinking in red ink and they are trying to decide which direction to point the lounge chairs in. $450 million on our $14 TRILLION deficit is to small to even be worth calculating.

To further illustrate how stupid this discussion is, in the context of the bigger issue of insolvency, the March 25, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported that NPR has a loyal audience of 26 million listeners. If each of them contributed less than $1.50 a month to the operation of NPR, the organization would cover the $450 million easily. If a listener does not think NPR provides $1.50 worth of value a month, then why should non-NPR listeners, via the subsidy, have to pay? When will the political class get beyond such idiocy and start making serious inroads to our devastating national debt?

- The March 25, 2011 issue of The Week also printed a short blurb from a recent Wall Street Journal edition. According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. households have cut their debt burden to the lowest point in six years. The level of debt is down to 116% of disposable income, substantially down from its peak of 130% in 2007. Thus, under tough economic times, mature adults running the nation's households know that they must cut expenses and get their budget under control.  This mature adults' description does not apply to the Washington political class since rather than reducing debt over the past six years, they have set record high debts.

Some simple math: if the political class reduced it debt load from 130% to 116% (about 11%), you could make the rough calculation that over $400 billion would be taken out of the Federal government expense stream. Now you are talking real financial management if our politicians would just match the behavior of most Americans.

As always, bad priorities, bad laws, and insane views of reality, all from your political class, updated every day, every week, and every month, just like our national debt and diminishing freedom.



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 http://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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment