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Outside of Libya, our ever growing Federal budget deficit, and the Japan earthquake, subjects that we have covered extensively in recent posts, it has been somewhat quiet on the political front with very few outlandish or inane comments or actions to review. However, below are a couple of miscellaneous hits on political class behavior that leave you either scratching your head regarding their priorities or making you mad because many politicians really do not understand reality:
- During a recent Federal budget debate, Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, lamented the fact that proposed budget cuts of the Federal government budget might result in the elimination of the "Cowboy Poetry Contest" which is held annually in his home state.
Really, is this how we are going to go about deciding how to get our financial house in order, debating whether a poetry contest deserves government funding support? Our national debt has recently raced past $14.2 TRILLION and this is the best Senator Reid can come up with, whining about a poetry contest? Pitiful.
- USA Today reported on March 23, 2011 that four U.S. Senators want to get involved with and ban software applications that identify the likely locations for DUI checkpoints around the country. These applications are now available on a variety of electronic devices including smart phones. The Senators got together and sent letters to Apple, Google, and Blackberry to quit selling these applications on their devices.
Okay, I am definitely in favor of keeping drunk or impaired drivers off of the road. Most sane people would also. But ask yourself, in a poll of Americans, how high do you think "smartphone DUI applications elimination" would rate in the top 25 concerns of Americans? Does anyone think it would get ranked higher in importance or urgency above the escalating national debt, failing public schools, the failed war on drugs, home foreclosures, high unemployment, illegal immigration, high health care costs, high taxes, the divisiveness in the country, or any number of more important issues?
Bad, bad set of priorities when four Senators, and more wastefully, four Senate staffs, get together to draft and mail a letter on this topic. Pitiful waste of money and resources, you're U.S. Senators, work on the big issues.
- Without a national, sane, and coherent energy policy and strategy for the country, it is not surprising that the political class cannot develop rational energy programs. The most wasteful and useless program is the billions and billions of dollars that the Federal government has spent over the years promoting the development and use of corn based ethanol as an alternative energy source. Bjorn Lomborg, writing for Slate.com, recently had his article, "End The Ethanol Scam Now," summarized in the March 25, 2011 issue of The Week Magazine. According to Mr. Lomborg
- The Federal government spends $6 billion a year to promote ethanol use. [Note: the article specifically states this is for ethanol promotion, I believe the actual farm subsidies to grown corn for ethanol ethanol in this country is much higher]
- As a result of this effort, one sixth of the world's corn supply, enough to feed 350 million starving people for a year, gets pumped into American cars.
- This government emphasis on corn based biofuels actually increases greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere since forests are chopped down to plant more corn.
- According to the article. Al Gore admits that his support of corn ethanol was in part driven by his desire to get Iowa farmers' votes during his Presidential run.
Great, another political class program that accomplishes just the opposite of what it is supposed to accomplish. We spend taxpayer money to support a program that increases the world wide starvation level while not reducing emissions, brilliant. And pitiful.
- The March 18, 2011 issue of The Week Magazine had a snippet from the Washington Post which reported that House of Representatives Republicans have reintroduced Styrofoam cups and plastic plates into the Capitol cafeteria. These articles were banned when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House and she mandated the use of recyclable utensils and cups made from corn starch.
I cannot decide which is worse, the current Republicans who took time out of their schedule to make this change or Nancy Pelosi who took time out of her schedule to make the original change. Don't these people have better ways to spend their days and resources? Oh, yes they do, these better priorities are listed above under the section on why are four U.S. Senators worrying about software applications. I wonder if the use of corn starch based products under Pelosi's watch also contributed to world wide starvation by diverting corn products into plates?
It never ends, does it? Bad politicians working on bad priorities and coming up with bad policies and results. As a result, our financial wealth and taxes slip away as does our freedom and liberty to keep government minimal and out of our lives.
That is why Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is so important. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federally elected officials. By allowing these people to stay in office as long as they do has not worked. We need a way to refresh the process with new people and new ideas. Otherwise, the supplies in the Capitol cafeteria will keep changing, depending on what party is in charge. This is no way to run a country.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at 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
Steven Spielberg's fabulous movie, "Saving Private Ryan" appeared on TV last night. Watching it reminded me how brave and unselfish our armed forces were during World War II. The carnage and horrific experiences they went through, so vividly captured in the movie, were truly the stuff of heroes and legends. And they sacrificed, fought, and many died to protect our freedom that we try to still cherish and protect today.
In the context of their bravery, sacrifices, and noble deeds, it seems pretty sad how the country they fought for and the freedoms they protected are so poorly served today by members of the political class. Their actions, in many cases, are nowhere close to being classified as courageous and noble, they are just bad politicians acting badly:
- A February 10, 2011 Associated Press (AP) report recounted how a U.S. Congressman from upstate New York had resigned for sending a shirtless picture of himself to a woman he met through Craigslist. The Congressman, Christopher Lee, was serving his second term and is married with a young son.
Usually, I would not care one bit what two consenting adults do with their lives. However, this is a U.S. Congressman who should be focused on addressing and solving the major issues facing the country today, not meeting women on an Internet site. He was not elected to start an illicit affair with a stranger he met on the web that could have exposed him to the potential to be blackmailed for the affair, a possibility that would likely not result in behavior that benefited taxpayers and voters. He should be focused on the major issues of our times. Certainly not noble or courageous, just plain stupid and self serving.
- This situation with this upstate New York Congressman is not to be confused with a similar affair from last year with another U.S. Congressman. At that time, Congressman Eric Massa resigned from Congress in the middle of an investigation into whether he sexually harassed male staffers. Certainly not noble or courageous.
- Politico reported on February 24, 2011 that Nancy Pelosi was to be honored by the Democratic National Committee via a praising resolution. However, prior to the ceremony where the resolution would be presented, the Congresswoman sent her daughter to the Committee's Resolutons Committee and said they both of them wanted to amend the resolution to make the Congresswoman look better by attributing more successes to her.
In my view, this is the outer limit of pomposity. If someone wants to recognize your achievements and honor your work, especially your political allies, I would think you should their praise in a humble but proud way. You do not let your ego run so amok that you insist in writing your own praise resolution. I have never heard a World War II veteran worry so much, or worry at all, what he or she had accomplished in service to their country. They did what the did heroically but humbly. They rarely, if never, embellished their record. Ms. Pelosi's behavior is certainly not noble or courageous.
- An Associate Press article reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently took on the issue of the legalized brothel industry in his home state of Nevada, "telling state lawmakers the time has come to have an adult conversation about Nevada's legal sex trade if the state hopes to succeed in the 21st century. His remarks to the state legislature was met with mostly silence.
Let's see: the United States is rapidly spending itself into bankruptcy, it is bogged down in two wars that drains our wealth and kills our soldiers every day, the Middle East is changing in ways that no one knows where it will end, our borders leak, and our schools still fail to educate. And now one of the top politicians and elected officials in the country is going after a legal industry that involves two adults freely indulging in a private interaction. Talk about lack of priorities. The Senator should be acting a little more courageously on getting our country's issues under control rather than lecturing adults how to behave. Certainly not noble or courageous, given the decisions the Senator should be making on behave of the country.
- An article in the February 18, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported how the Montana state Senate was working on adopting a "cowboy code" as a guide to the state's residents. This code urges state citizens to live each day with courage, be tough but fair, and always ride for the brand. The fact that the state needs jobs, revenue, and other needs makes you wonder why the state politicians are not tackling the tough issues facing their citizens as opposed to coming up with slogans.
Much like Senator Reid's obsession with brothels, the state's wasting of time and resources working up slogans allows them to look busy but avoid making the tough decisions needed to help the state resolve its issues. Certainly not noble or courageous.
- Another article in the February 18, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported that the latest approval ratings for the President showed an unbelievable dichotomy. 81% of Democrats approve of the job is is doing while only 13% of Republicans approve. This 68 point difference is the second largest gap ever with George W. Bush having attained a 76 point difference. But he needed a second term to get that bad.
How did President Obama get the nation so divided so quickly? Maybe standing back and remaining silent while those Americans that had reservations and had opposed the President's plans and policies were called un-American, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, racists, Ku Klux Klan members, enemies that needed to be punished and other derogatory names.
It certainly takes a serious lack of courage to stand by while fellow citizens that the President is supposed to be serving are denigrated by his allies. Certainly not courageous or noble and the divisive numbers show how poorly the President serves half of the U.S. population. Certainly not noble or courageous, and certainly not a leadership example like our brave armed forces.
These above examples are just recent events of bad politicians acting badly. It ignores the many other cases of adultery and the resultant lying (Clinton, MacGreevey, Spitzer, Ensign, etc.) and the numerous examples of politicians using their office for self serving purposes including the use of earmarks to fund their re-election campaigns via earmarks, granting themselves automatic pay raises every year regardless of how well the perform, and acting selfishly when bold and non-self serving actions are required.
The political class actions and performance are so often an affront to the freedoms that were so bravely protected over time by our armed forces, freedoms that are now at risk not from an outside force but from the actions of the very people that should be protecting them on the home front.
It is so sad that our political processes create a ruling class that display none of the positive and noble characteristics that our armed forces display today and which they displayed during World War II. Wouldn't it be great if Steven Spielberg could develop and film a movie that illustrated our courageous and humble our political class was. Unfortunately, if he did, it would be viewed as fiction, or worse, science fiction.
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
The title of this post comes from a longer quote that reads as follows:
"Every year, whether the Republican or Democratic Party is in office, more and more power drains away from the individual to feed vast reservoirs in far off places; and we have less and less say about the shape of events which shape our future."
Fascinating observation and how appropriate for life in America today. Many of us have an uneasy, gnawing feeling that we are no longer the land of the free, free to do as we please and to shape our future and the future of our families as we see fit. For a nation built on the principles of freedom, liberty, and personal responsibility, this is not a healthy condition.
Many times we have pointed out the numbing fact that American government, at all levels, confiscates over 40% of our earnings every year through taxes and fees, a confiscation level that:
- Restricts our ability to seek out and pay for the best education for our kids.
- Restricts our ability to expand or start our own business.
- Restricts our ability to contribute to our favorite charities.
- Restricts our ability to live and work where we would like.
- Restricts our ability to spend our hard earned wealth any way we would like.
- Restricts our freedom to live our lives as we see fit, not as some politician sees fit.
Any type of restriction is a hit to our freedom and by taking so much or our spending power in the form of taxes and fees, liberty is restricted to unheardful levels. And what do we get for these restrictions, what "vast reservoirs in faraway places" are the beneficiaries of our restricted freedom? These reservoirs are now deep, diverse, wide spread, and largely ineffective:
- Why do we still spend billions of dollars a year to garrison tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Europe, over twenty years since the Iron Curtain fell?
- Why do we still spend billions of dollars a year to garrison tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Japan, sixty six years after Japan surrendered in World War II and who has been a solid democratic country, a friendly ally, with a strong economy for decades?
- Why do we still spend billions of dollars a year to garrison tens of thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea, a country with one of the strongest economies in the world and which requires mandatory military duty, thus, having more than enough assets to protect itself from North Korea?
- Why do we still spend billions of dollars a year to garrison troops in Iraq, especially since our current President promised, but failed, during his campaign to wind down our military presence in that country?
- Why do we still give away billions of dollars every year to the agriculture industry in this country, the vast majority of which does not go to "family farmers" but ends up in the coffers of the major agricultural corporations, most of which are now enjoying recording breaking profits as world wide demand for American food products increases?
- Why did we spend billions of dollars to bailout auto companies and financial institutions whose sloppy, stupid, short sighted management was punished by the market forces and who deserved the same fate as ill performing companies received in the past: termination.
- Why do we continue to spend billions of dollars a year for various "corporate welfare" initiatives, initiatives that are little more than a re-election campaign donation source for incumbent politicians?
- Why do we continue to spend billions of dollars a year for a mammoth government bureaucracy that is redundant, wasteful, inefficient, and largely ineffective?
- Why have we allowed so much of our wealth and freedom to migrate to far away Washington D.C., a metro area that is now home to seven of the wealthiest counties in the country?
- Why do we continue to spend billions of dollars a year to support dictatorial regimes in faraway places who are faithful to us for as long as we pay for their loyalty, at the expense of freedom and liberty within their own borders?
Why, why, why? In total, the average American receives absolutely no benefit from sending their wealth to "feed vast reservoirs in far off places," whether these places are in the Far East, the Middle East, Europe, corporate boardrooms, or wherever. The only Americans who benefit are the politicians that control how and how much these reservoirs receive, usually in return for some help in funding their perpetual re-election campaigns.
Thus, our freedom gets a double hit when you think about it. By using our tax dollars to feed these reservoirs, we are less able to live our lives as we see fit to to our reduced economic independence.
Second, we are usually stuck with the same, non-performing politicians since they always have a head start on campaign funding, given their reciprocal arrangements with unions, auto companies, financial institutions, agricultural corporations, etc.: they pay out taxpayer money via budget processes and earmarks to the reservoirs and the reservoir recipients are more than willing, as proven by campaign fund raising tracking, to return the favor in the form of campaign donations. This reduces our freedom of choice when it comes to our elected representatives..
That is why the fifty steps to freedom outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so important if we are to drain these vast reservoirs of waste and start to shape events so that we can shape our own futures as we see fit, not as the political class sees fit. This is totally consistent with the insights embedded in the above quote.
By the way, who actually penned the quote above? Was it a member of the Tea Party who realized that government was draining our wealth and our liberty at the same time? Was it a contemporary journalist who recognized what is happening in this country today? Was it a courageous and current politician who understands first hand how wasteful government is today? No, the quote actually comes from William F. Buckley, Jr., and appeared in the November 21, 2010 issue of the Washington Post, but was written ALMOST FIFTY YEARS AGO.
Even back then, the political class and the government it runs was already creating vast reservoirs and diverting our wealth and freedom to those reservoirs. Let us hope that their fifty year head start can still be overcome. If the Egyptian people, with no tradition or history of freedom, can overcome thirty years of oppression where their freedom was diverted into a vast reservoirs of a secret police state, I am sure that with our over two hundred year tradition of freedom we can eliminate our reservoirs that Buckley writes so elegantly about.
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
