November,2019, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Hypocrisy, Stupidity, and Congressional Sexual Threesomes

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) One of the worst human characteristic to have in my opinion is hypocrisy. It involves lying, dishonesty, and the denial of reality. Hypocrisy is never in short supply when it comes to the American political class where they always want to tell/command us what to do but often want that advice or order to not apply to them. This eventually results in a top down government culture and the loss of individual freedoms.

Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren displayed this sin recently:

• According to a recent article on the Freedom Outpost website, Warren promised to “crack down” on school choice to help public schools keep more of the taxpayer wealth that now goes to private schools.
• Many parents turn to private schools, charter schools and other alternative schools because the public school processes in this country do a horrible job educating our kids.
• For the most part, these alternative schools do a much better job at education than government controlled public schools.
• And yet Warren’s son went to an elite private school, bypassing the public school education option.
• Thus, it is okay for her to seek and get the best education option for her kid but it is not okay for ordinary Americans to do the same.
• And many times school choice options help lower income and minority kids to get a better education since they often live in the poorest performing school districts.
• In Warren’s own, hypocritical words: “To keep our traditional public school systems strong, we must resist efforts to divert public funds out of traditional public schools.”

But in the denial of reality, our public schools in general are not strong and thus, Warren misses the entire reality of the situation.

If she and other members of the political class would fix the public school problem, there would be no need or desire for private or charter schools or other alternative education options. But she misses the root cause of alternative schools and would rather maintain the status quo: lack of choice, inferior education of our kids, less freedom, and most importantly, the political support and financial resources of teacher unions.

2) Sometimes you just shake your head and try to logic through what a politician was thinking when he or she comes up with a stupid idea. This recently happened with some proposed legislation in the state government in New York state:

• According to a recent article on the Godfather Politics website, there is a proposed law being debated in the New York state legislature that would give convicts the right to vote.
• These are not ex-convicts that have served their sentences, these are currently jailed criminals.
• Democratic state senator Kevin Parker is proposing the law: “If an incarcerated individual can be counted as a whole person in the census, then why can’t their vote be counted in an election?” 
• A convict would be allowed to vote in the voting district he or she lived in prior to going to prison even though that criminal would likely no longer live in that district….because they were in prison.
• Thus, someone who no longer lived in the voting district would be able to decide what happens in that district.

Such idiocy. Think about it: someone commits and is found guilty of a mass murder. This murderer would still be able to vote even though the many people he killed would no longer be able to vote because they were dead. Commit a crime and there should be consequences, including the forfeiture of voting rights until society says that person has served their time.

The good news is that even some Democrats see what an insane idea is: “If an individual has committed a crime and is incarcerated, they have lost the right to vote. They should serve their sentence and not be allowed to exercise a right they once held,” Long Island Democratic Sen. Monica Martinez said.

Oh, by the way, it may not be good will why this bill is being proposed. Given that studies show that 60% of locked up criminals lean Democrat, the cynic in me suspects that this has nothing to do with voting rights but with getting more votes to skew election results.

Maybe if current politicians worried more about failing public schools, widespread drug addiction, homeless and hungry citizens, etc. rather than this nonsense, life would be better for a lot more, law abiding citizens.

3) One would hope that the leaders of a nation have some kind of decent moral code. That they lead by example and represent what a nation is all about. In addition, you do not want a leader to be subject to blackmail possibilities because of their less than stellar behavior.

But that is very often not the case with American politicians as we see with this latest example of political behavior:

• California Congresswoman Katie Hill recently announced her resignation from Congress due primarily to an affair she had with a young female staffer.
• Apparently her affair with this female staffer also included threesome sex romps with the staffer and Hill’s husband.
• Her resignation was also moved along with the publication of nude photos showing her engaged in sexual activity and drug use.
• Thus, she has taken the trust of her constituents and thrown it all away while in the process of subjecting herself to possible blackmail possibilities if someone of lesser repute had gotten hold of those photos.
• But in true, juvenile style of American politicians, it was not her fault since according to Hill: “This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation.’

Look, what consenting adults are doing in their own private moments is of no concern to me. But this is a member of Congress we are talking about, a person with tremendous influence and power over the affairs of the country and all Americans. Use some common sense and do not be so stupid as to open yourself to the possibility of blackmail and embarrassment. 

Stupid Congress person, stupid voting ideas, and blatant hypocrisy, the American political class never ceases to surprise and disappoint when it comes to stupid.

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

February, 2017, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Spending Money We Do Not Have On Efforts We Do Not Need

It has been several weeks since Donald Trump has been sworn in which means at some point in the future we may run out of material to talk about. With the demise of the Obama administration, eight years worth of wasteful and excessive spending for nothing in return, foreign affairs blunders, Obama Care disasters, and assorted other administration and government blunders and screwups might end with the onset of a new administration. Trump may usher in a new paradigm of government actions that are limited, effective, cost efficient, and protective of the Constitution. If so, then this blog would run out of material to discuss and would have to be shut down.

But I doubt it. Even if Trump is truly a different type of President, he is still fighting over 500 embedded and entrenched politicians in Congress and thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats who will not go peacefully into the night for the good of the country. I wish him well and hopefully he can fix at least some of the myriad of problems the American political class creates everyday but until then, enjoy the latest political class insanity from Washington and beyond:

1) The biggest insanity of the Washington political class is the reality that it has spent $20 TRILLION more than it collected in tax revenue and we have very little show for this obnoxious overspending. Our public schools still generally under educate our kids, our infrastructure of bridges, roads, and tunnels is crumbling, we no longer have the top armed forces in the world, major government social programs such as Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency, etc.

And things are not likely to get better in the near future unless major changes are made to how the Federal government operates. According to a recent analysis by the Fix The Debt organization, if current spending trends continue, we will soon return to annual TRILLION dollar deficits:

These results are based on the latest research by the Congressional Budget office (CBO).

The following conclusions fall out from the above chart and analysis:

• The largest eight years of spending deficits by the Washington political class happened during the Obama administration.
• Four of those Obama annual deficits exceeded a mind boggling TRILLION dollars a year.
• The other years would have likely been much higher but tax increases reduced the deficits somewhat.
• By 2027, the deficit could be a devastating $1.4 TRILLION in a single year.
• By 2027, the deficits will be about 5% of the annual national economy and since annual economic growth is almost never much more than 3%, the Federal debt burden will grow without a corresponding rise in economic growth to support it.
• The driver in the long-term debt will be mostly rising health costs (Medicare and Medicaid) and an aging population. 
• In addition, about two-thirds of the projected $2.6 trillion increase in the budget between 2017 and 2027 is for Social Security and health care.
• Interest on the debt will be the fastest growing part of the federal budget, nearly tripling in dollar terms and almost doubling as a share of the economy.
• The CBO warns that “high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences for the budget and the nation.” including lower wages, reduced flexibility to react to unexpected crises like a recession, and increased probability of a fiscal crisis, i.e. default.

A lot of wasted spending without many societal benefits in return, wasteful spending that could lead to the collapse of the economy and our democracy and cause that collapse in the relatively near future. And the current set of Washington politicians have neither the will, knowledge, or guts to make the necessary changes in government spending. Insanity.

2) One way we get these tremendous overspending deficits is by allowing the Federal government and the bureaucrats and politicians that operate it to focus and spend wealth on absolutely stupid programs and efforts. Elizabeth Harrington, reporting for the Washington Free Beacon on January 22, 2017 examined a set of incredibly stupid and crazy regulations for the Feds that appeared during the Obama administration:

- Before looking at the specific examples of stupid spending, Ms. Harrington points out that the Obama administration created a record 97,110 pages of Federal regulations for almost 4,00 new Federal rules and regulations during its time. These outrageous new regulations costs the economy an estimated $350 billion a year or about $2,800 for every U.S. household.

- Bureaucrats at the Department of Labor put forth a mighty effort to eliminate the word “he” and “she” references from all Federal regulations. The labor participation rate in this country is at almost forty year lows, 94 million adult Americans are out of the workforce, the true unemployment rate is close to 10%, and millions of Americans cannot find a full time job, settling for contract and temporary work. And the highly paid Department of Labor employees are worried about the words “he” and “she,” as if there are no other labor issues facing Americans.

- The Department of Transportation, rather than focusing on keeping air travel safe from terrorists and bad planes and pilots, spent a lof time in 2012 to put forth rules and regulations that would allow pigs to fly as “emotional support” animals: “[I]f you determine that the pot-bellied pig is a service animal, you must permit the service animal to accompany the passenger to her seat provided the animal does not obstruct the aisle or present any safety issues and the animal is behaving appropriately in a public setting.” 

While transportation safety affects millions and millions of Americans, and what should be the only function of the Department of Transportation, how many people are affected by needing to have their service pig in the seat next to them on a plane? Insanely bad priorities.

- A major requirement of the Obama Care legislation was that people that had never worked in a restaurant, i.e. politicians, were dictating to restaurant owners on how to operate their businesses, namely the legislation required restaurants to post calorie information in their restaurants. This has cost the restaurant industry an estimated $1.7 billion, money that could not be used by restaurants to expand their businesses, hire more employees, or pay their employees more money. 

And all of this nonsense was for naught as we have discussed before since we have already reported on how virtually no one going into a restaurant consults these Obama Care signs for their calorie risk. They are going to a restaurant to have a good time and a good meal, not worry about their diets for a few hours.

Oh, by the way, the Obama Care legislation was so convoluted and stupid that it took 171 words to simply define what a “menu” is. Insane.

- The regulations associated with the American With Disabilities Act were finalized in 2012 and included the following insanity:

• The Federal government wrote a provision that forced store owners to let miniature horses into their stores if they are used as guide animals, provided “the miniature horse has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of the individual with a disability.”
• The regulations were very specific in that someone somewhere in the Federal bureaucracy went to the trouble of making sure that “ponies and full-sized horses are not covered.”
• The regulations also regulated the height of miniature golf courses, shooting ranges, and saunas.

I remember a Paula Poundstone stand up comedy act where she pointed out that no matter how bad a TV commercial is, you have to realize that someone actually wrote down those words to that bad commercial. That those words went through many rewrites and reviews by upper management. Same thing with this mess, how many taxpayer dollars were spent writing and rewriting these regulations for a very limited service miniature horse population.

- Not even Christmas was safe from over regulation. The Consumer Product Safety Commission instituted a regulation that deemed certain Christmas decorations a “substantial product hazard” if they did not meet the government’s standards for wire size, overcurrent protection, and strain relief. These regulations were very specific in that the regulations applied to “stars, wreathes, candles without shades, light sculptures, blow-molded (plastic) figures, and animated figures,” but not “solar-powered products.” A lot of writing, and rewriting, like the miniature horse nonsense we just discussed.

- And possibly the most inane regulation example of the entire Obama era were regulations that tried to control cow farts and flatulence. The objective was to somehow get cows to fart less in order to reduce the amount of methane that cow farts expel into the atmosphere. I am gagging just writing this. 

By spending taxpayer resources and wealth on these stupid efforts, the following issues and societal problems could not receive more help:

• Tens of thousands of Americans die every year from drug addiction, an issue that could have greatly benefited from the resources expended on the silliness above.
• Thousands of additional teachers for our public schools could have been hired from the resources expended on the silliness above.
• Thousands of additional medical resources could have been directed to the neglected medical needs of our veterans rather than the resources expended on the silliness above.

You get the idea, the spending priorities of the Federal government are so screwed up that we spend money on stupidity and we allow issues affecting millions and millions of Americans to continue to suffer. Insanity.

That will do it for today’s insanity. Spending money we do not have on projects we do not need. More insanity 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:


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