February, 2024, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: A Senator Goes To Jail But A Speaker for the House Does Not, Politico Loses More Credibility, and Treason At The Federal Reserve

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of efficiently operating any level of government in this country.

Even their best efforts are almost always ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.

1)Bob Mendenez is a former New Jersey U.S.  Senator that was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for corruption after he was found guilty in Federal court. But as we  have discussed over the years, corruption is kind of standard operating  procedure and one of the  most tenured member of Congress is alleged to be steeped in  corruption:

• Podcaster Joe Rogan and former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, discussed the alleged corruption and self enrichment of Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House.

• According to a New York Times article, Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, are worth about $240 million, up from $171.4 million that they were estimated to be worth in 2021. 

• Thus, they upped their net worth by almost $70 million in three short years.

• “Her estimated net worth has increased significantly since 2008 thanks in large part to the success of her husband, Paul Pelosi, who is a venture capitalist and property investor. It’s not possible to know the precise net worth of members of Congress as they are only required to provide a range of values in their financial disclosures and not specific dollar amounts,” Newsweek noted.

• In 2024 alone, the Peloissi return on investment was much higher than just about every professional investment company in the country, an amazing 720% return on investment over the past decade.

• Thus, given these numbers many allege that her husband drives his investment decisions by insider government information that his wife has provided to him over the decades.

• While this corruption has never been proven, a smart persons(s) has come up with a solution to the alleged insider trading.

• They have developed a phone app called Autopilot which tracks the Pelosis’ investment decisions with the logic being that you too can get outstanding investment returns by simply doing whatever the Pelosi family does.

• According to Rogan: “Oh, it’s so good.  I’m not really a stock market person. I don’t pay attention. But, I do know people that are very invested in the stock market. And ‘Pelosi stock tracker’ is legit. Like, you could find out what she’s buying and you should buy it. She’s a really good stockbroker Rod. She’s super good at it.”

I guess that if you cannot prove corruption and stamp out corruption, you  might as well profit off of it via the app. Maybe Menendez just went about it the wrong way.

Note: long ago we reported on a little bit of shady dealings that Nancy Pelosi was allegedly involved with as it pertains to the VISA credit card IPO:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/11/final-proof-of-undeniable-corruption.html

2)We have often asserted that the country can survive bad politicians, e.g. Nixon, Carter, Biden, etc. However,  it will not survive a corrupted press. When the mainstream media in a country becomes a mouthpiece for the political class, then the checks and balances that an unbiased press should be providing in a democracy becomes non-existent.

Only someone with blinders on can say that the mainstream press has not devolved into a mouthpiece for liberal and Democratic politicians. And recent disclosures again prove how corrupt and out of integrity the  mainstream press has become:

• Marc Caputo and Tara Palmeri used to be “journalists” for the left leaning news site, Politico.

• They recently admitted that Politico was guilty of covering up the dirty laundry and other laptop scandal of Hunter Biden’s infamous broken laptop computer.

• Many believe, and opinion polls support their view, that if the public knew what the Biden crime family and Hunter Biden were up to, it would have swayed the 2020 presidential election to Trump.

• Caputo has now publicly proclaimed that when he tried to report on the laptop in October 2020, Politico executives told him to shut up and not report on any aspect of the laptop: don’t write about it, don’t talk about it, don’t tweet about it.

• Instead, Politico wrote about the now debunked and outright lie that Trump and Russia were partners in “disinformation.”

• Palmeri verified his position, that despite doing a real journalist's job and doing in-depth research over several  months, Politico executives also squashed her efforts.

• Caputo also said that his bosses told him to back off in 2019 about a tax problem Hunter biden had back then.

We can survive corrupt and  bad politicians, we cannot survive corrupt and bad journalism.

3)Let’s stay on the corruption angle and go to the Federal Reserve:

• A former Federal Reserve official was recently indicted for allegedly giving China confidential economic data that was developed by the Federal Reserve.

• Federal authorities arrested John Harold Rogers and accused him of conspiring with Chinese intelligence officers while working as an economic advisor to the Federal Reserve.

• His arrangement with the Chinese stretched over 11 years, from 2010 to 2021, and he used the cover story of teaching at a Chinese university where he earned a whopping $450,000 salary, which should have been a sure tip off that he was up to no good.

•  He tried to cover his acts of treason by lying to Federal investigators in 2021.

Another day, another case of corruption, this time at the Federal Reserve.

That will do it for today: corruption in DC be it accepting bribes, self enrichment using insider government information or outright treason of the Chinese.

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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:

https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom

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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/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

July, 2021, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Possibly More Pelosi Corruption, "Birthing People" Replace Mothers, and Defund The Police Looks Even More Stupid

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) It has always been our contention, especially as it applies to long term Washington politicians, that for most of them, self enrichment is their primary priority, not helping the country. One of the most frequently discussed politicians we have discussed relative to this concept is Nancy Pelosi:

• She once postponed credit card industry regulation legislation until after VISA issued its IPO which resulted in her family profiting by about half a million dollars.
• In one of the first economic support programs that Pelosi put together for the pandemic she made sure that one of her husband’s companies. EDI, received about a million dollars in taxpayer support even though the Pelosi family is worth tens of millions of dollars.
• The Pelosis invested over $1 million in the electric car maker Tesla just a few weeks BEFORE Biden announced he was going to switch the entire fleet of Federal government owned vehicles to electric powered vehicles.
• Just before the economy imploded as a result of the pandemic, Paul Pelosi made some very substantial investments that came right after Congressional Hearings were conducted regarding the pandemic emergency.

And it never ends, given the recent Pelosi family investments:

• Paul Pelosi made some huge investments in technology companies a few weeks before there was a major antitrust vote in Congressional committees.
• The antitrust action was directed at tech companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google.
• In addition, these investments in Amazon were made a little before the Pentagon backed out of an agreement with an Amazon competitor (Microsoft) for a huge cloud computing project that would likely have big upsides for Amazon.
• He invoked call options to acquire 4,000 shares of Google at a price of $1,200, giving him an immediate net profit of just under five million dollars.
• The transactions were completed a week before the House Judiciary Committee vote on antitrust.

Of course, all of these profitable stock transactions and decisions could have been done in a vacuum with no insider trading information from Nancy Pelosi. Or, this could be just another Washington insider trading bonanza for a long term Washington political family.

What was even more insulting was a statement from Nancy Pelosi’s office which stated: “The speaker has no involvement or prior knowledge of these transactions,” and “in fact does not own any stocks herself.” Right, he never told her that he was investing over a million dollars to get millions more in profit. Insane to believe that was what actually happened.

2) Gas and food prices are rising dramatically. There is a drug cartel, human trafficking, humanitarian, and juvenile abuse crisis on the southern border. Russia, China, and Iran, sensing Biden’s incompetence, are running wild overseas. Crime and violence in Democratically controlled cities is increasing every day.

Yes, there are a lot of issues facing American today that one would hope that government employees and Washington politicians would be working on to resolve. But, alas, any kind of hope from them never seems to come true. They usually end up working on and wasting time and resources on trivial, nonsensical issues and topics, as was recently demonstrated at a Senate hearing:

• Apparently, the Biden administration, via Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, have decided that using the word “mother” is somehow inappropriate and that “birthing people” should now be used in all Federal documents.
• Yes, these discussions that led to this inane conclusion actually took place among government employees using taxpayer money to fund their salaries to come up with this idiocy.
• At a Senate hearing, Senator James Lankford confronted Becerra on this waste of time and effort by Federal employees.
• Somewhat sarcastically, the Senator asked: “I also noticed you changed a term in your budget work. You shifted from using the term ‘mother’ to ‘birthing people’ rather than mother. Can you help me get a good definition of ‘birthing people?’”
• Although a relatively straightforward question for Becerra since the word came out of his organization, he fumbled his response completely: “But I think if we’re talking about those who give birth, I think we’re talking about . . . I don’t know how else to explain it to you other than [that].”
• The Senator kept pressing: “Would you at least admit that calling a mom a ‘birthing person’ could be offensive . . . that they don’t want to get a ‘Happy birthing person card’ in May? Can you at least admit that term itself could be offensive to some moms?”
• This waste of time discussion came after another Biden official, at yet another Congressional hearing, said that Biden’s budget proposal’s use of the words “birthing people” is more inclusive and equitable: “There are certain people who do not have gender identities that apply to female and male, so we think our language needs to be more inclusive on how we deal with complex issues. Our official policy is to make sure that when people get service from their government that they feel included, and we’re trying to use inclusive language.”

My gosh, to use a well known cliche, these people, from government bureaucrats to Congress people in Congressional hearings are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic as the boat sinks. Given all of the crises going on in the world today, this is what is taking up time and resources in Washington. Who knows what their next inane adventure might be, outlaw Mother’s Day and replace it with “Birthing People Day?”

3) One of the most basic, basic functions of any government entity should be to protect the lives and property of the citizens that the entity governs. If a government entity cannot do that well it is immaterial whatever else it does well if it cannot protect citizens lives.

For some crazy reason, mostly Democratically run cities decided that it was a good idea to take funding away from the city police departments and replace some police functions with “counselors” to defuse and control crime. Not surprisingly, the cities that executed such nonsense, e.g. Minneapolis, NYC, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, etc., have seen a dramatic rise in violent crime in their cities.

Now, recent research has shown how stupid the politicians in those cities were in actually knee jerk reacting to radical elements in their cities and reduced the funding and strength of their police departments:

• A justification for defunding the police is that young, minority citizens were being slaughtered by out of control police departments.
• But research by Ronald J. Allen, a law professor at Northwestern University, has proven how wrong and how deadly that false assumption is.
• Specifically: “there is indeed a slaughter going on, but not at the hands of the police.”
• Allen found that about 1,000 people are killed by police forces each year, a number that has stayed basically constant over the years, not gotten any better or worse.
• In reality and in contrast to the defund the police rhetoric, more white people are killed by police every year despite having much fewer interactions with police.
• In addition, the total number of homicides in the country varied between 15,000 and 17,000 from 2015 to 2019 but jumped over 20,000 in 2020, the beginning of the defund the police movement.
• Allen found data that shows that any reduction in police enforcement results in an almost immediate increase in violent crimes: “For example, the number of murders [in Chicago] increased from 480 in 2015 to 754 in 2016. Controlling for numerous variables, they determined: ‘Because of fewer stops in 2016, it appears that (conservatively calculating) approximately 245 additional victims were killed and 1,108 additional shootings occurred in that year alone.’”

Why is it so hard for defund the police liberal politicians to realize that reality shows that when you reduce the presence of police, crime and deaths go up? Unfortunately, this has caused hundreds and hundreds of unnecessary deaths across the country, all based on a faulty premise sitting on top of faulty data.

That will do it for today: more conflict of interest and self greed from Pelosi, the Biden administration plays semantics while other crises go unattended, and defund the police means more violence and death.

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/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

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

 

 

July, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Politicians Using The Coronavirus To Suck The Taxpayer Dry While Enriching Themselves

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) American politicians do very few things well when it comes to actions that benefit their voters and residents. But things they do very well include acting with a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude that almost always results in their own self enrichment and benefit. This reality will drive all of our political class insanity discussion today, beginning up in the state of Maine:

• Susan Collins is the Republican Senator from Maine and she is up for reelection this fall.
• Democrat Sara Gideon is her likely opponent.
• Gideon has been hammering Collins in ads, claiming that Collins supported the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that Congress passed to theoretically help American citizens and small businesses to cope with the coronavirus.
• Specifically, Gideon accuses Collins of supporting a program that created funding to bailout large corporations but abandoned small businesses.
• Gideon seems to forget that much of the legislation for the PPP was written by Nancy Pelosi and Democrats in the House and passed with the votes of most Democrats in the House and the Senate but Gideon ignores those facts and reality.
• The ads were such semi-blatant lies that even the liberal leaning, Democrat loving Washington Post could not help but give Gideon’s ads the second highest rating for false claims, three Pinocchios.
• Gideon also somehow forgot to mention that her husband’s law firm, Berman & Simmons, received over $1 million in assistance under the PPP.
• Her husband is a partner in the law firm and owns anywhere from a $250,000 to $500,000 equity stake in the firm.
• If his equity stake is as high as half a million dollars, then it is probably a pretty safe assumption that the equity value of the entire law firm and the partners that own it put the value of the firm probably into the millions of dollars.
• I am pretty sure that if you ask most Americans what a small business is they would refer to mom and pop stores and operations that are not worth millions and millions of dollars like this law firm is likely worth.
• Oh, by the way, the partners in the law firm are heavy contributors to Gideon’s political campaign fundraising, sending over $30,000 to the campaign in 2020.

So, the politician (Sara Gideon) lies about her opponent’s (Susan Collins) record while her (Gideon’s) husband takes advantage of her opponent’s support for the program that the wife criticizes. Do as I say, not as I do...or as my husband does.

2) Let’s stay with the “do as I say, not as I do” theme and jump across the country from Maine to California:

• Gavin Newsom is the governor of California and the nephew of Nancy Pelosi.
• Earlier in July, Newsom targeted some California counties with high virus rates and forced the wineries in those counties to shut down in an attempt to control the spread of the virus.
• He made sure that the county where his winery was located stayed open.
• In addition, businesses owned or tied to Newsom, Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis and two other top politicians in the state government all received PPP financial support.
• Newsom alone received somewhere between $150,000 and $350,000 from the PPP.
• Keep in mind that the purpose of PPP financial support was to help small businesses retain employees on their payroll and not close down or limit operations, something that Newsom did not do by exempting his winery from a mandatory shutdown.
• Newsom was asked by a reporter why his winery justified getting taxpayer support: "Some data released today by the federal government shows at least one business that you own received some loans to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic. I know that before you took office you placed those companies into a blind trust, but I'm wondering if you could address that issue and why the company that you own felt the need to receive that loan?”
• Rather than answer this delicate and embarrassing question, Newsom basically told the questioner to bug off: “You would have to ask the people that are running those businesses. It’s in a blind trust. Period. Full stop.”

As we find out more and more about the PPP it becomes more and more obvious that this intention of helping small businesses keep their employees onboard and their small business open for business in the face of the virus crisis was nothing more than a lie and a charade to help the political class enrich themselves. From a law firm in Maine to a winery in California, the politically connected and wealthy hogs are feeding at the trough of the American taxpayer, small businesses be damned.

3) Let’s move up the Newsom family tree and see how Nancy Pelosi, a prime architect of the PPP, is weathering the storm caused by the virus:

• First off, understand that Nancy and Paul Pelosi, her husband , are super rich, a lot of which came as a result of Nancy Pelosi’s shenanigans in Congress.
• According to Bloomberg News reporting, EDI is a firm of which Paul Pelosi is a major stakeholder.
• EDI is a limited partnership with an investment in the El Dorado hotel.
• EDI received PPP financial support of between $350,000 and $1 million.
• Paul Pelosi’s stake in EDI is listed as between $250,001 and $500,000.
• If his stake is worth upwards of half a million dollars, then the entire value of EDI is likely in the millions and millions of dollars, making it hardly a small business.
• And yet, somehow, PPP and taxpayer dollars ended up in the EDI coffers.

As with the likely million dollar law firm up in Maine, how an investment firm like EDI, also likely worth millions of dollars, ended up getting small business financial support from the PPP is despicable and disgusting. The corruption of Washington apparently knows no bounds when it comes to self enrichment and greed. How many pizza shops, tailors, small restaurants, etc. could have been saved and helped with the millions of dollars that went to wealthy law firms and investment firms? 

Soulless individuals sucking up taxpayer wealth when it was not necessary or in integrity to do so.

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

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