January, 2020, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: California and E. coli, Omar Under Criminal Investigation, Hurricane Ineptness In Puerto Rico, and More

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.

This will be our ninth and final political class insanity post for this month. Believe me, we probably could have done another half dozen or so, that is how crazy American politicians are becoming. Inane comments, bad priorities, bold face lies, inept legislating, the list is endless. After today, we will pick up this insanity theme again in early February.

Let’s get started:

1) Unfortunately, California politicians and how they have screwed up a once great state continue to make headlines everyday. In a recent post we went through the calamities that state politicians have caused Californians to endure:

• Homelessness continues to grow rapidly in the state while decreasing around the rest of the country, despite a strong national economy.
• Many state cities tolerate public defecation, public urination and public shooting up and use of illegal drugs.
• The state has hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded state government liabilities.
• The state has horrible public schools, horrible infrastructure conditions, and horrible forestry management skills, resulting in massive wildfires.
• The state has seen the rise of Medieval diseases such a typhus because of the growing homelessness problem.
• The state failed miserably in building a high speed rail line, wasting untold millions of dollars in the process.
• The state has some of the highest taxes in the country.
• The state has the highest poverty rate in the country.
• The state’s crazy and likely useless environmental laws results in some state residents paying over $5 for a gallon of gas, about double what the rest of the country pays.

Today we add another problem affecting the well being of Californians and it is very serious:

• California politicians’ inability to deal with homelessness has caused the homeless populations in their major cities to continue to grow even though we are in the middle of a strong economy and homelessness is going down outside of the state.
• Also, recent law changes in places like San Francisco have no longer made it a crime to defecate urinate, or shoot up drugs in public, that type of behavior has skyrocketed, forcing cities to create poop patrols to pick up the public defecation and power wash the cities’ streets.
• Unfortunately, this continual power washing of the streets of defecation and urination is having some serious environmental effects.
• According to California Health Line records: “We should all work together to clean up these hazardous waste and homeless sites before the whole city rot[s] away,” 
• President Trump tweeted about San Francisco last fall: “Very bad and dangerous conditions, also severely impacting the Pacific Ocean and water supply.”
• California’s rivers, coastlines and local streams are showing signs of high fecal matter, higher than state safety standards, as a result of the power washing and drainage of city streets because of the explosion in homeless public defecation and urination.
• Consider the real life experience of David Gibson, Executive with the San Diego Water Quality Control Board regarding homeless encampments: “I’ve carried 5-gallon buckets that were unambiguously being used as toilets. They were taking it to the San Diego River, dumping it there, and rinsing it out there.”
• The EPA has sent the state’s governor a letter about the problem and then told San Francisco that it was in violation of the Clean Water Act.
• As a result, dangerous E. coli bacteria levels are also getting to dangerously high levels.
• Some tests have come back that have exceeded the allowable level of E. coli by sevenfold.

I usually do not try to blame a specific political party, we have much disdain for ALL politicians. But in the case of California this is all on the Democrats. They have controlled most of the state government for decades, this is their problem and it is a disgusting and dangerous one.

2) Hurricane Maria did a real devastation job on Puerto Rico several years ago. Trump took a lot of heat about it being a bad recovery effort even though it was eventually found that the ineptness of the local political class on the island had a lot to do with the bad and slow recovery effort. Materials and supplies got to the island but the local government and the politicians that operate it could not get the stuff out to the places where relief supplies were needed.

Now, it appears that not only did relief materials and supplies make it to the island but those supplies are STILL sitting in a government warehouse years after the storm:

• An island emergency management government official was fired after it was discovered that there was a warehouse still stocked with Hurricane Maria relief supplies.
• The warehouse was filled with thousands of cases of water and other supplies from back in 2017.
• The island’s governor immediately fired Carlos Aceedo, the now former director of Puerto Rico's emergency management agency.
• The governor said: "There are thousands of people who have made sacrifices to bring help to the south, and it is unforgivable that resources have been kept in a warehouse." 

As always, government is inefficient and often ineffective, whether it is resolving a dire homeless situation or not knowing there were thousands of cases of water sitting in a warehouse while thousands went thirsty in a time of crisis.

3) American Action News recently reported on how the FBI is now investigating possible illegal shenanigans of freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar:

• The FBI and ICE are investigating possible criminal behavior by Omar regarding her so-called “marital history.”
• It is alleged that Omar married her brother in 2009 in violation of the government’s refugee family reunification program.
• According to the Daily Wire website: “The Blaze noted that the “FBI SAC stated that the wide range of criminal activity suggested by the evidence against Rep. Omar may lead the FBI to expand the review to other federal departments” and that in recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Education inspector general have reportedly joined the investigation….The Blaze reported that ICE’s involvement in the investigation pertains to “questions about [Rep. Omar’s 2009 marriage],” which allegedly includes “eight instances of perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, up to eight years of state and federal tax fraud, two years of federal student loan fraud, and even bigamy.”
• In addition: “The Department of Education inspector general is reportedly looking into whether Omar’s 2009 marriage to a British citizen was “an attempt to facilitate federal student loan fraud, or other fraud involving higher education.”

The word karma comes to mind. Omar is a person who was an adultress according to the wife of the husband Omar had an affair with, she has numerous times expressed her hatred and contempt for Israel and the Jewish, and her tendency to call anyone with a different opinion than hers is a racist is getting old. Karma can be a bitch.

4) Given California has been such a central theme in this month’s political class insanity posts, let’s finish it up this month’s insanity with another California disaster:

• The latest data from the Census Bureau on poverty shows that California still has the country’s highest poverty rate as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure or “SPM.”
• California’s SPM poverty rate came in at 18.1% which edged out Louisiana at 16.5% and Florida at 16.2%.
• The states with the lowest poverty rates were Iowa at 6.7%, Minnesota at 7%, and Kansas at 7.8%.
• Thus, California had a poverty rate two and a half to almost three times the rate of the lowest poverty rate states.
• One of the strongest drivers of poverty in California is the high cost of housing which has been driven by political idiocy when it comes to housing rules, laws, and regulations.
• California is also in the dumps when it comes to homelessness, having the fourth worst homeless rate in the country at .33% (33 homeless people per 10,000 in population) and it also has the most homeless Americans than every other state.
• California is the worst state when it comes to unsheltered homeless folks since 69% of the homeless in California are likely to not be in any kind of shelter compared to the best performing state Massachusetts, which has over 95% of its homeless in shelter.

Someone once said that California is now a “North Korea with a tech industry.” Take away the Silicon Valley and Hollywood millionaires and this is a very, very poor state. The state politicians have taken a wonderful place with a large and varied economy and incredible natural resources and turned it into a third world country. High taxes, high poverty rates, high homelessness rates, high gas prices, high levels of regulations, no surprise that the state’s wealthy and middle class are fleeing the state.

So California politicians have ruined an entire state, Puerto Rican politicians ruined the relief effort for their citizens and Congresswoman Omar may have ruined her life and the lives of others with her alleged criminal actions. More insanity next month.

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

November, 2019, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: More Political Corruption, No To Sanctuary Cities, and The Press Sells Its Soul and Integrity

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) While most American politicians are ineffective, greedy, and useless, many are also criminals, with many of their criminal acts having previously been pointed out in this blog. Another example of potential and alleged criminality recently popped up relative to politicians in Puerto Rico:

• The FBI recently arrested eight people in Puerto Rico on alleged corruption activities including a Puerto Rican senator.
• The senator, Abel Nazario had been previously arrested on charges that he had forced all of his workers to donate two hours of wages a day to himself.
• He ended up agreeing to reimburse his workers $577,000 in lost wages that he had confiscated.
• Puerto Rico Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz requested Nazario’s resignation shortly after his latest arrest: “It is unfortunate for him and his family, but even more so for the people of Puerto Rico who watch with anguish events that lacerate the trust in government institutions.” 
• A spokesperson for Nazario said that he is innocent of all charges.

These arrests come in the atmosphere of other corruption events including a Federal case involving people that may have charged the local government for services that were never provided. That investigation has already charged the former director of the Puerto Rico Senate Government Affairs Office with corruption crimes.

Another day, another set of corrupt American politicians.

2) Around the country, local liberal Democratic politicians have decided to break Federal law and not help the Federal government enforce existing immigration laws. Specifically, they have declared their cities so-called “sanctuary cities” where illegal immigrants can live, commit crimes, collect welfare without fear of ever being called to justice because they broke the law.

This has resulted in American citizens being more likely subjected to criminal elements within the illegal immigrant community via rapes, robberies, and murders. This increased violence against Americans is usually ignored by liberal politicians who care more about coddling illegal immigrants, including violent criminal elements, than protecting American lives.

However, one city finally and emphatically pushed back on this illegal immigrants first preference:

• Although there are far more Democrats than Republican voters in Tucson, Arizona, that did not stop law abiding Americans from expressing their extreme displeasure at local politicians for making their city a sanctuary city.
• In a recent ballot proposition for that city, a whopping 71.4% of voters rejected a motion to make their city a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants.
• While every Democrat on the Tucson ballot was elected, the 71.4% vote against becoming a sanctuary city shows that Americans of all political stripes reject this concept of protecting illegal immigrants and criminals from existing U.S. law.

Finally, a bit of sanity when it comes to protecting Americans vs. protecting illegal immigrants. And they were not the only set of voters to uphold the rule of law. Voters in Sussex County, New Jersey also voted by a two to one margin that they want their county law enforcement officers to cooperate with Federal immigration and ICE officers in the area of illegal immigrant law breaking. 

This is in line with at least three other New Jersey counties whose voters oppose sanctuary cities and a slap to the face of the state’s Attorney General who arbitrarily declared, without voter approval, that the entire state of New Jersey is a sanctuary for illegal immigrants and illegal immigrant criminals.

These voter voices are in direct opposition to the immigration views of Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders who is opposed to any form of deportation for illegal immigrants including those that commit violent crimes against American citizens. But why would an American politician care about what Americans think, this has rarely happened in the past and in Sanders case, is not happening today.

3) With all of the impeachment nonsense going on, the Jeffery Epstein murder/suicide affair has kind of disappeared form the news. But that was until it was recently reported that ABC News spiked a story a few years back that would have proven pretty conclusively that Bill Clinton was a close friend of pedophile Epstein and may himself have indulged with Epstein in the sexual abuse and rape of under aged girls:

• Project Veritas recently released video of ABC News anchor Amy Robach complaining that ABC refused to air an Epstein news story she had worked on.
• The story was not complementary to Bill Clinton and his Epstein connections.
• The clear implication is that releasing this certainly newsworthy story back in 2015-2016 would have had a serious detrimental impact on Hilary Clinton’s Presidential campaign.
• But as the biased mainstream often does, ABC decided that journalistic integrity could be ignored since airing the story would not help out their liberal political comrades.
• And to further damage their already paltry integrity, ABC pressured CBS into firing the person who broke the story of ABC’s heinous behavior, a person that had moved over to work at CBS since breaking the ABC suppression.
• According to Breitbart News: “The Huffington Post’s Yashar Ali, citing two sources familiar with the situation, said Thursday morning that CBS News has “fired the staffer in question.” This comes after ABC informed CBS that they had determined who accessed the footage of Amy Robach expressing her frustrations about the Epstein story,” noted Ali.”
• Robach also expresses her belief, based on her research for the story that Epstein was a murder victim, he was not a suicide victim: “So do I think he was killed? A hundred percent, yes I do, He made his whole living blackmailing people. There were a lot of men in those planes, a lot of men who visited that island, a lot of powerful men who came into that apartment.”

As we have said before, we now half expect an American politician to be crooked, corrupt, greedy, and caring more about themselves than the country and its citizens. But it is even more distressing when the press, an entity that is supposed to report on the misdeeds of politicians and put forth truth regardless of who it might hurt or expose, protects those in power. 

The press should be a steady rock of integrity and truth. Instead, as this recent ABC news suppression story shows, it is no longer an unbiased defender of liberty and justice.

4) And finally, let’s talk about Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. You know her, she was elected to Congress in 2018 and since then has bad mouthed the country, Israel, downplayed the 9-11 attacks, and called just about everyone who disagrees with her a racist. 

But behind this holier than thou facade we may have a set of criminal activities on her part:

• She is now under Federal investigation over the possible abuse of her campaign finance dollars.
• It seems that she may have, allegedly, have taken her lover on vacations that were paid for with campaign funds.
• According to the Daily Mail: “Peter Flaherty, chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center last month filed an amended version of a complaint he had lodged earlier into Omar’s campaign spending, following DailyMail.com’s revelation she was having an affair with her finance chief Tim Mynett.” 
• At the time, Omar was still married to her husband, Ahmed Hirsias, as was Mynett.
• The Daily Mail reported that the Federal Election Commission is being asked to investigate whether Omar campaign’s illegally paid Mynett’s company funds for their private vacations.

More “holier than thou” nonsense from a Washington politician if true.

So, today we learned that: political corruption exists everywhere including Puerto Rico, Americans are starting to say “no” to having their city be a sanctuary city, the mainstream press continues to sell their soul, and Omar has some explaining to do.

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

September, 2018, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: Lying and Corruption In Puerto Rico And Obama's Delusions

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) We have often raised the question is do politicians lie because they actually believe their lies or do they lie because they think that we are too stupid to not know the truth. In either case, they are still liars relative to reality and history.

In our opinion, Obama was one of the greatest lying American politicians of all time. He was so good at lying that we once devoted an entire post to his multitude of lies:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/search?q=end+of+an+error+%2B+lies

Here are a few other sources of Obama's multitude of lies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpa-5JdCnmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44kyHOPEZV8

Although he is no longer President, he recently made a public appearance to give a speech and showed that he had not lost the ability to tell a lie, despite the settled reality. During a speech he made the statement that Benghazi was a “conspiracy theory.” Really? A conspiracy theory? Let’s look at the facts:

• Four brave Americans died during the attack on American assets in Benghazi.
• Without the heroism of two former Navy Seals, upwards of two dozen Americans would have died from this terrorist attack.
• But in Obama’s eyes, Benghazi was the result of “the politics of resentment and paranoia” and while Obama failed to rescue these Americans in a timely manner, it is the Republican Party where there are “wild conspiracy theories – like those surrounding Benghazi.”

Benghazi was not a wild conspiracy theory: it was a blatant terrorist attack on an American consulate that resulted in the unnecessary death of four Americans. The Obama administration then lied to the country and the world when Susan Rice spread the false rumor that some obscure video caused the attack and when Obama went in front of the world at the UN and repeated the same lie. Lied while in office, still lying out of office.

2) Lying, corrupt politicians are not restricted to Washington D.C., the gene of political corruption may also extend offshore to Puerto Rico:

• A Puerto Rican mayor and two former government employees were recently arrested on public corruption charges.
• Their charges include misallocating $8 million in Federal and local government funds.
• The suspects are the mayor of the town of Sabana Grande and the former directors of finance for the northern town of Toa Baja. 
• The arrested mayor, Miguel Ortiz, is accused of defrauding the Federal government of nearly $3 million in a scheme that began in 2013 and ended in 2016.
• Ortiz allegedly stole taxpayer money to finance local projects at costs that were much higher than were justified, causing contracted companies to attain higher than necessary profits which allegedly resulted in $33,000 in cash finding its way back to Ortiz.

Such a shame that the island and its residents are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria in 2017 and these folks are possibly finding ways to enrich themselves with government funds that could certainly be better used for hurricane recovery.

3) Let’s stay in Puerto Rico and discuss the latest scandal of corrupt and ineffective politicians. After Hurricane Maria hit, the Democratic mayor of San Juan lambasted Trump for slow support in the recovery efforts. Her tantrum might have been a little more believable if she was not filmed during her tirade standing in front of mounds and mounds of relief supplies that her government was not moving out to the damaged areas of the island.

And recently she continued her tirade but again, her tantrum seemed a lot less believable. Why? According to news reports:

• Millions of water bottles with clean drinking water were recently found rotting out in the open, water that was intended to help the island residents recover from the hurricane.
• The 12 million water bottles, paid for by American taxpayers, were found rotting on an airport runway in Puerto Rico.
• Thus, the recovery supplies got to the island but local politicians like San Juan mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz, was so busy trying to make political points that the water never got to those that desperately needed it.
• The 12 million bottles were piled onto over 19,000 pallets at the airport.
• A year after the hurricane, much of the unused water supplies are now useless.
• This is what 8 million rotting bottles of taxpayer financed water looks like:

And yet rather than work using this taxpayer gift, the San Juan mayor continues to spend her time spouting off about Trump. Insanity.

This finishes today’s insanity discussion: hypocrisy and corruption in Puerto Rico and delusions in Obama’s world. One more post on political insanity for this month to follow.

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

The Abysmal Fiscal and Financial Skills Of American Politicians

We have often discussed how absolutely horrid the American political class has been in managing the fiscal affairs at all levels of government in this country:

• The Washington political class has run up a whopping $20 TRILLION in national debt, doubling the debt in just the eight years of the Obama administration.
• The per person Federal debt comes out to roughly a $61,000 debt burden for every man, woman, and child in this country, or almost a quarter of million dollars for a family of four.
• Just the three state governments of Illinois, New Jersey, and California have hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities coming due in the coming years.
• The state government of Illinois is so dysfunctional that they have not been able to pay out state lottery winners due to their budget crisis even though they continue to sell state lottery tickets, a bait and switch strategy that would get everyone else thrown in jail for running such a fraudulent scam.
• Local governments across the country like Detroit, Michigan and Stockton, California have filed for bankruptcy protection since they already could not meet their fiscal obligations and promises.
• And Puerto Rico was a financial and economic basket case before it was devastated by Hurricane Marie.

What often happens is that these politicians at each level of government get themselves and their constituents into a death spiral: they need more tax revenue to fund the financial promises they made which depresses economic growth which reduces tax revenue which results in higher tax rates which depresses economic growth more, etc., etc.

We recently came across a useful analysis from the League Of Power website by Mark Patricks which offered the following question and then proceeded to try and answer that question: “Which American Cities and States Will File Bankruptcy Next?” His analysis updated many of the discussion we have had and have listed above on how the political class are pretty inane and useless when it comes to fiscal sanity:

• The state of Illinois recently raised its state income tax 32% as it has entered into the fiscal death spiral.
• The unfunded government liabilities, outside of the Federal $20 TRILLION national debt, is between $5 and $8 TRILLION, a hole that even massive tax increases may not resolve.
• Political promises are so bad in Chicago that over 60% of the city’s tax revenues goes solely to supporting the pension requirements of retired city workers and the city’s massive debt load, leaving less than 40% of the tax revenue to be used for schools, roads, etc.
• According to the article, “Lubbock, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Austin, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Honolulu, Hawaii; Dallas, Texas; Oakland, California; Phoenix, Arizona; Houston, Texas; and Los Angeles also have huge liabilities that are just under the range of Chicago's.”
• In each of these cities, at least 50% of their tax revenue is used to fund their city’s past promises on pensions and for debt payment.
• JP MorganChase says that any city with a figure of more than 30% of their tax revenue being used for pensions and debt management will find it difficult to invest in infrastructure, bond repayment, pensions, non-pension spending, and other expenses.
• JP MorganChase estimates that the city of Honolulu could only fix its budget problems with at least a 30% hike in taxes or a 76,000% increase in worker pension contributions, either of which will likely never happen in time to avoid an eventual fiscal implosion.
• City government pensions in Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, and Pittsburgh are considered by JP MorganChase to be in “crisis” mode since their future pension payouts are funded at 55% or less with Chicago’s funded pension payouts are only at 23%, a level that will drop to a mere 15% in 10 years if nothing is changed.
• A study by the moving company, United Van Lines, found that the top six states with the highest out migration rates have an average taxpayer burden that is five times higher than the nine states with the highest in migration rates, which is part of the death spiral discussed above: the higher the taxes the more likely citizens will move to more tax-friendly states which leaves their past states with a smaller tax base which requires higher tax rates which drives up more out migration and the death spiral is in place.
• Chicago was found to have the highest out migration rate, not surprising given its putrid fiscal situation and high tax rates.
• Not only is Chicago in an out migration and economic death spiral, but the whole state of Illinois is in the same condition, having led the country in the out migration rate for three years in a row.
• But this situation in Illinois is not surprising since Forbes ranked Illinois as having the 46th worst tax burden in the country BEFORE the state raised income tax rates 32%.
• In lower taxed northwestern Indiana, on the Illinois border, home construction was up 19% in 2016 while in Cook County, Illinois, home of Chicago, home construction is down 6%.
• As people have migrated out of Chicago, home values have dropped leaving the city with one of the highest rates in the country for mortgages being “under water,” i.e. the amount of mortgage owed is more than the value of the homes.

Economic death spirals all over the country as people decide how best to keep their hard earned money away from politicians that have over promised goodies to their voting blocs over the years without regard to the fiscal consequences. And people will do what is best for themselves and their families and move to situations where they get to keep more of what they earned.

The really sad part of the whole fiscal insanity of American politicians is that while we have these mountains of debt we have nothing to show for it. Our roads, bridges, and dams are falling apart across the country. Our public schools still under educate our kids. Our electric grid is outdated and subject to attack and disruption. Our social welfare programs, Social Security, Obama Care, Medicare, and Medicaid, are rushing quickly into insolvency. We have no national energy strategy or plan to make us energy independent. We have not cured the major diseases of our times including cancer, Alzheimer’s and dementia illnesses, Parkinson’s disease, etc. We have nothing despite the tens of trillions of dollars in debt.

So don’t worry about Trump and the Russians. Don’t worry about Hillary and the Russians. Don’t worry about any other issue at the state, local, or Federal levels. Because unless we fix our debt problem very soon, that dam is going to break and the red ink that it is holding it back will wipe out every other paltry political issue that exists today.

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

How To Really Fix The Economy (Without Using Economic Theory)

Yesterday we discussed the massive failure that the American political class has incurred over the past few years when it comes to operating a healthy, growing economy. All of the recent political class economic programs have failed miserably relative to their objectives including Cash For Clunkers, First Time Home Buyers Rebate Program, mortgage salvation programs such as HAMP, and worse of all, the economic stimulus program. All these economic failures did was to add to the skyrocketing national debt without providing any long lasting economic benefit.

The economic stimulus program was the worst culprit, if only because it wasted the most amount of taxpayer money, $830 billion, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office estimates. The economic models used to predict what would happen with increased government spending were disasters from a prediction perspective. They were fatally flawed in the assumption that one dollar in government spending would miraculously multiple many times over to create a cascade of economic growth. This did not happen. In fact, we quoted academic sources yesterday that estimated for every $1 spent in the economic stimulus program, far less than one dollar in benefit was received.

How then do you help the economy grow? Today, let's look at three real life situations where less government spending intervention in the economy actually spurred economic growth. The first two examples have actually happened in real life, giving them the advantage over economic theory which we now know failed horribly in real life. The third example is an analogy using the concept of water in a swimming pool and also uses no economic theory, just common sense.

We have already written about this first example but it is worth reviewing again in light of the continued failure of the economic stimulus program. At the end of World War II, the United States needed to do a massive retooling and refocusing of the domestic economy, going from a wartime based economy to a peace time based economy very quickly. Why? There was no longer a need to produce military goods and there were millions and millions of service men and women coming home to look for a job. Today's political class would have introduced a massive economic stimulus spending program, with the corresponding increase in government taxes and budget, to "create jobs."

Fortunately, the political class in 1945 did the exact opposite:

• From 1945 to 1948, the government actually decreased its size and spending by about 68%, going from a Federal budget in 1945 of $92.7 billion to a much smaller size of under $30 billion by 1948.
• During that three year time frame, the economy grew by over 6% a year, going from a GDP of $223 billion in 1945 to over $269 billion by 1948.
• Despite millions of ex-military people flooding the job market, unemployment never went above 4% during the same time period, a level of unemployment that today's politicians would kill for.

Let's review: 1940s government spending is slashed, economic growth skyrockets, and unemployment is kept under an unheard of 4% despite the massive influx of new workers. This is the exact opposite approach of the economic stimulus program. The government expanded in size (as did the national debt) but economic growth has been anemic, unemployment has been stubbornly high, and there was no massive influx of new workers.

If you read the history of this time period from an economic perspective, there actually were economists of the time that never believed this non-interventionist government approach would work. They recommended that the government continue to fund the war time factories and continue to produce unneeded wartime munitions and weapons in order to create work for people. Never mind, that the output of their effort would never be used in the economy, it would just burn through taxpayer resources to create work.

This is eerily similar to the the recent economic stimulus package which also created work but not long lasting, economy building, permanent jobs. Thankfully, the politicians of the 1940s ignored the  advice of these economic wizards and let the economy sort itself out, which it did magnificently. High growth, minimal government taxes, expenditures and debt, and low unemployment. It was that simple.

Let's jump ahead 65 years to present day reality and review what is going on down in  Puerto Rico. I learned of the following from an interview done in the June, 2011 issue of Reason magazine. The subject of the interview was Luis Fortuno who is the current governor of Puerto Rico. Highlights of the interview article include the following:

• When he became governor in 2008, he found a fiscal situation that was far worse than he imagined.
• As soon as he came into office he found that the government did not have enough money to make payroll, necessitating the need to get a loan for the basic function of paying government employees.
• The bond rating agencies were about to classify Puerto Rico bonds as junk status.
• Within two years, he had reduced government spending by 20%, had started to lower taxes across the board, and had averted the junk status rating for the bonds of Puerto Rico.
• He did all of this despite the fact that Puerto Rico's budget was worse than the budget shortfall of any state in the union, coming up 44% short of the revenue needed to cover current expenses at the time.
• In addition, unemployment in Puerto Rico was 17%.
• He set a cost cutting example by cutting his own salary by 10%, the salaries of his cabinet secretaries and the size of government contracts by 15%.
• Within two years he had reduced government employee headcount by 17,000 people on a total base of 140,000 or about 12%.
• He recently reduced government employee headcount by another 4,000.
• He accomplished the reduction by encouraging retirement or providing employees incentives to start their own businesses and leave government employment.
• Unemployment is still high at 14.5% but is down from a high of 17% (a 15% reduction) and is still trending downward.
• For the first time in five years, Puerto Rico is finally seeing positive economic growth indicators.
• He also slashed both corporate and personal income tax rates but still expects to have a balanced budget by 2013.
• The beauty of his tax reduction strategy is that if the budget is not balanced by 2013, some of the future tax reductions will not happen. This encourages all taxpayers to stay on top of their politicians to to get spending under control. Otherwise, taxes go up, a tremendously clever leveraging approach.
• When he took office, Puerto Rico was dead last regarding the relative size of the budget deficit in comparison to the fifty states. Today, it has improved all the way up to 20th, improving its budget situation over 31 other states.

What a great story. A bold leader cuts taxes, reduces government spending, reduces the number of government employees, absorbs the slings and arrows of doubters and what happens: unemployment goes down, taxes go down and the government's fiscal situation gets dramatically healthier. This is not economic theory, this is the economic reality of today when a smart and courageous leader follows the tenets of freedom and makes government smaller and the people it is supposed to be serving, freer.

And everyone wins. Families get to keep more of their hard earned dollars, businesses have more money to expand and pay for more workers, and government is smaller and more effective as it narrows its focus onto only important priorities.

Two quotes from the article really fly in the face of the attitudes we get from our politicians in Washington:

"There are some that have a philosophy that the government can handle our money much better than we can. I totally disagree. I believe that, actually, people are working hard, sometimes with two or three jobs, to earn that money. They should keep it. And they know much better than any government how to handle it, starting with their own."

"Certainly the minority in our state legislature (have been sources of opposition). The unions have been trying to block us as well. But at the end of the day, there's nothing more powerful than individual freedom to start to grow and do better for yourself and your family. And that's more powerful than any union, any government, any party, and I'm convinced that that's why this (economy improvement) will be permanent."

I love this guy. A freedom lover, a guy who understands reality and human behavior, and whose ego is not so big that he thinks the world revolves around him. Totally contrary to those currently sitting in the White House and in Congress. And most importantly, he has a successful economic track record, they have a record of failure and futility.

Two examples from two different time periods with the same successful results. Freedom of choice, low taxation, and minimal government interference wins out. Seems funny that the New York Times never reviewed these two economic success stories, still stuck in the old failed theories that government knows best.

The third example is not based on actual economic success stories, just common sense. I came across this economic analogy of  a swimming pool on a chat room session and wanted to share it. The analogy likens the economy to the water in a large swimming pool. The political class has this brilliant idea that it wants to grow the economy. How does it do it?

Simple, it takes water out of the left side of the pool and carries it over and pours it into the right side of the pool. While the pouring process may have increased the water on that right side of the pool, the effects are limited and minimal since the water eventually equalizes out, with no net gain of water or economic activity and growth.

The problem is that government spending does not create wealth, it does not create water. It simply takes wealth out of the economy (the left side of the pool), repackages it as economic stimulus (the right side of the pool) and nothing is gained.

In fact, you could make the case that water is lost (i.e. economic vitality is lost) as the politicians splash water onto the pavement in the process of moving it. This would be equivalent of spending stimulus money on such inane economic stimulus projects as insect investigation in Africa and replacing windows in a government building that was not in use and will likely never be in use.

The wealth and money they took out of the economy on the left side of the pool would have been much better spent and spent more efficiently if it had been left in the hands of individuals, families, and businesses. They would have had enough ingenuity to find a water hose and actually increased the amount of water in the pool. The political class could not even find the tax cheaters that got awarded stimulus money, never mind finding a water hose and using it.

The stimulus program is a bust, it turns out to be nothing more than moving water form the left side of the pool to the right side of the pool, losing water int he transfer process. It has not reduced unemployment, it has not led to significant economic growth, and it's negative impact on the national debt will last for decades to come. Truman in World War II and Fortuno today have shown the way to economic growth, a way that works and nobody, not even the New York Times, can argue with success.

Note: we will cover more of the Fortuno interview in future posts, seems like this individual truly understands the limited role of government in our lives and the need for government to focus on major issues only, seriously increasing the potential for success.




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