October, 2014 Part 8 Political Class Insanity: Funding Pot Use With Welfare, Obama Out of Touch, and Harry Reid's Misplaced Koch Paranoia and Priorities

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time to check in with the American political class to see what insanity they have wrought over the past month or so. It is always amazing to follow the exploits, quotes, and actions of our politicians and the government entities they operate to see how often idiocy, incompetence, and heartbreak are almost always the output from their actions.

We started dong these updates several years ago, usually taking one or two days every month to get all of their insanity covered. Unfortunately, over time, the insanity has seemed to accelerate almost exponentially, causing us to now have to take six or seven posts each month to get it all in. This month will be no different. As our foreign policy implodes, the economy stagnates, and the midtem elections approach, the insanity levels are intensifying daily.

To check out past instances of political class insanity in this post, simply go to the first week of each month and check out the posts that begin, “Political class insanity.” This is the eighth entry in this series for this month, with the first seven posts appearing over the past few days.

By needing eight posts to cover just one month of political class insanity, we have set a record for this blog. Never before have we needed so much time to review so much wasteful spending, ineffectiveness, failed promises and other political misdeeds and foul ups.

Thus, based on this crude measure, our politicians are likely getting worse over time. Given the state of the country, that is not a good thing to observe and live through.

1) Yesterday, we discussed the fact that it is a long stretch of the imagination to believe that the very rich and wealthy people serving in Congress and the White house have any clue how many challenges the average American family faces each day. Their wealth, high paying salaries, and insulation from the everyday life of the rest of us often leads them to think that life is great outside of the D.C. Beltway since it is certainly great for them inside the Beltway.

The President recently showcased that ignorance in recent speeches relating to the economy where he boasted that job growth had been steady and that most Americans were better off now than five years ago. Things are going great in the economy, according to his rosy view point.

But are you and I and the rest of America better off under his economic guidance or misguidance. After his speeches, the press took over with the following reality headlines and stories:

Reagan’s seminal campaign question: ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ … But a similar message has failed to resonate for Obama primarily for one reason: …average family incomes have slipped.” (Reuters, 9/22/14)

The Obama Economy: ‘US Wages Have Gone Precisely Nowhere’

Bureau of Labor Statistics: “Real average hourly earnings increased 0.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, from August 2013 to August 2014.” (“Real Earnings, August 2014,” Bureau Of Labor Statistics, 9/17/14)

“US wages have gone precisely nowhere over the past year. Inflation-adjusted US hourly earnings growth was 0% in July compared to the previous year, according to just released stats.” (Quartz, 8/19/14)

“…anemic wage growth is dampening price pressures. Average hourly earnings adjusted for inflation rose 0.4 percent in August. Even so, they have risen only by that same amount over the past year.” (Reuters, 9/17/14)

Economic Policy Institute: “Inflation-adjusted wages have fallen for every income group in the past year except very low-paid 

workers, says an Economic Policy Institute study out Wednesday.” (USA Today, 8/27/14)

“Wages were stagnant or declining at all education levels, and those with the most schooling experienced the largest drops, according to the study. Hourly pay fell 2.7% for Americans with advanced degrees, 1.6% for college graduates, 1% for those with some college, 1.1% for high school graduates and 0.6% for people lacking a high school diploma.” (USA Today, 8/27/14)

Thus, according to the news reports and government numbers, everyone is getting slammed by this economy and those that are the highest earners and the most educated are getting slammed the hardest. So much for “being better off” as stated proudly by the President. We are not better off, with the only ones being better off, and more out of touch, are those that are making the bad economic policies in Washington, policies that protect them and emasculate us.

2) While the following example of wasting and abusing taxpayer wealth involves a relatively minor amount of money, it is a good example of how poorly government welfare programs are operated and how easy it is to divert taxpayer wealth from noble intentions to totally wasteful means.

According to reporting by the website, Colorado Watchdog, Colorado state regulators and politicians are ignoring a two-decade old state law prohibiting welfare recipients from receiving cash from ATMs in liquor stores and casinos. In the past two years, nearly a half-million dollars being withdrawn from such locations. This does not include the $12,000 that have been withdrawn from ATMs within Colorado marijuana dispensaries.

Apparently, the Colorado Department of Health and Human Services is aware of the violations, but doing nothing to stop them, according to the watchdog site. A spokesperson for the regulation agency in charge stated that the amount wasted by welfare recipients is too small to worry about. 

Really? Think about how many meals for Colorado’s homeless population could be provided by half a million dollars. How many drug addicts could be treated for half a million dollars. How many nights in a shelter could be provided for homeless folks for half a million dollars.

Yes, it is a small amount of wasted taxpayer wealth in the big scheme of things. But it would probably not be a small amount for a hungry, drug addicted or homeless Coloradan.

3) Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has been on the warpath against the Koch brothers, American business owners who contribute to a lot of political campaigns and causes, none of which are in alignment with Reid’s political views and ideology. He states openly that their outlandish amounts of money given to political causes are endangering our democracy and need to be stopped.

Reid has attempted to pass Senate legislation that is intended to not only stifle the Koch brothers Constitutional right to participate in the American political process but also would eventually stifle the First Amendment rights of all Americans.

He has devoted so much time to this Koch hatred that he has allowed over 300 House passed bills to sit unattended, undebated, and unvoted on in the Senate. He has put political means and hatred above the best interests of the country.

He has also failed to mention a number of realities relative to the Koch brothers political contributions:

• As far as Koch political campaign contributions, they rank 59th in the list of campaign contributors. In other words, there are 58 other entities that contribute more to the downfall of democracy than the Kochs, despite the Reid hatred. 
• The biggest contributor to campaign races, according to the OpenSecrets website, is ActBlue, a PAC that’s raised an immense amount of money, $121,099,109, since 1989 (99% of which has gone to Democratic candidates).
• Ranked 2nd on the OpenSecrets list is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, another entity whose contributions are almost surely all for Democrats like Reid
• The National Education Association, rounds out the top 3 with $60,510,533 raised since 1989, of which 57% went to Democrats like Reid.
• Other entities and individuals that contribute far more than the Koch brothers are various unions that are also likely mostly Democrat supporters.

Thus, one reason why America is in such bad shape is that Reid is chasing the 59th campaign contributor to political activities at the neglect of actually developing and passing legislation to help America. An insane set of priorities for a Senate Majority Leader.

And in reality, if you look  at other activities of the Koch brothers, they are doing much more for humanity with their resources than Reid, or the other 500 or so politicians in Washington, are doing with their resources, according to a recent report form the Independent Journal Review:

• Koch Industries employs about 100,000 globally (60,000 in the US alone).
• Koch companies support more than 200,000 US jobs and “about $11.8 billion in compensation and benefits.”
• Of Koch companies’ 60,000 US employees, approximately one-third are unionized.
• Koch Industries and the Charles Koch Foundation’s partnership with the United Negro College Fund has resulted in a “$25 million grant that will provide nearly 3,000 merit-based awards to African American undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctorate students seeking scholarship assistance.”
• Globally, Koch companies “have earned 917 awards for safety, environmental excellence, community stewardship, innovation, and customer service.”
• Koch Industries has sponsored the Special Olympics in Wichita, Kansas for the past 33 years.
• “Through the Helping Heroes initiative, Koch companies have contributed nearly $230,000 to emergency response organizations in communities where they operate since 2011.” Koch’s Georgia- Pacific Bucket BrigadeTM program, “has contributed more than $1 million to fire units in communities where the company operates to meet critical needs, as well as provide educational materials to schools.”
• Through the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, Koch has contributed or pledged “more than $1.2 billion to cancer research, medical centers, educational institutions, arts and cultural institutions, and to assist public policy organizations.”
• David Koch’s charitable foundation also provided $100 million to New York Presbyterian Hospital to build a new ambulatory care center, as well as $28 million to research causes.
• Yet another major Koch grant contributed $100 million to research cancer at MIT.
• Flint Hill Industries (a Koch company) earned a Clean Air Award from the Environmental Protection Agency

Again, given the 59th ranking of the Koch brothers in political contributions in the context of their other contributions to humanity, I maintain that it is Harry Reid who has a bad set of priorities that is hurting America vs. the 59th worst financiers of the American political process.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity. We have set the record by needing a full eight days to get through all of the wasteful pending, stupid quotes, ineffective governing, bad priorities, most out of touch, and other nonsense from the worst set of American politicians to ever hold office.

My fear is that we set the record while the Washington politicians were off on a two month vacation, not returning to Washington until mid-November. What happens when the return and pick off where they left off their insanity back in September? Heaven help us

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Will The Center Hold, October, 2014 Update, Part 1: Telling Obama Care, School Lunches, and Statehoold To Hit the Road

Every month or so we revisit the theme and interesting question of whether or not “the center will hold?” In other words, given the rebellion and push back that state and local governments along with individual citizens have been giving to Federal government dictates and laws, do we get to at point in this country where the Washington political class and machine issue a law or edict and the rest of the country simply ignores it?

It certainly seems like we have never seen so much objection and hostility to Washington. As Washington and its politicians overreach and over demand relative to Constitutional limitations, the rest of the country has pushed back on a number of major issues:

• Obama Care
• Medicaid Expansion
• Gun Control
• Common Core
• Spying on Citizens

These are just a few of the various issues that have the rest of the country looking for ways to escape out from under Federal mandates and laws. To see past examples of how extensive this push back has become, enter the search term “will the center hold” in the search box above.

Let’s take an inventory of the latest rebellious acts underway around the country:

1) We have often cited opinion poll numbers that show the country’s citizens regards for Congressional politicians is at a historic low and the approval rating for the Obama administration has been steadily dropping over the past year or so. 

Thus, it should come as no surprise when a recent Reuters news report cited a reputable polling organizations finding that about 25% of the nation’s citizens supporting the concept of their state seceding from the union. Details of the poll include the following:

• The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted from August 23 through September 16.
• 23.9% of those polled said they either strongly supported or tended to support the idea of their state breaking away.
• 53.3% of almost 9,000 respondents strongly opposed or tended to oppose the notion.
• The desire to get out from under Washington generally cut across party lines and regions, though Republicans and residents of rural Western states are generally warmer to the idea than Democrats and Northeasterners with more than a third of Western area poll respondents supporting the concept.
• The poll found anger with Obama's handling of issues ranging from healthcare reform to the rise of Islamic State militants driving some of the feeling along with the childish and long term Washington gridlock also being a major driver of the 23.9%: "I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference anymore which political party is running things. Nothing gets done," said Roy Gustafson, 61, of Camden, South Carolina, who lives on disability payments. "The state would be better off handling things on its own."
• From North Carolina: "That [Obama care] has really hurt a lot of people here, myself included. My insurance went from $40 a week for a family of four up to over $600 a month for a family of four," said Brittany Royal. "The North Carolina government itself is sustainable. Governor (Pat) McCrory, I think he has a better healthcare plan than President Obama."
• From Texas: "Texas has everything we need. We have the manufacturing, we have the oil, and we don't need them," said Mark Denny, a 59-year-old retiree living outside of Dallas.
• As the national debt gets more and more out of control due to wasteful Washington spending, as economic conditions continue to languish at historical lows, as no major issues ever get resolved by Washington, at what point does the center not hold and we go from 23.9% to a majority of Americans saying enough is enough, we want to go it alone. 

When does the majority conclude that it could not get any worse under a different course, a course that we are more likely control vs. dictates from far away that suppress freedom and economic vitality? Will the center hold?

2) An issue that we have not discussed much at all in this series but one that is growing in aggravation and agitation is the imposition of new school food guidelines by the Federal government, an imposition and legislation that is supposedly driven by First Lady Michelle Obama. 

Let me say upfront, that healthier eating habits should be a national priority. The country and many, many of its kids are overweight or obese, leading to higher incidences of ill health and higher health care costs to treat the obesity problem. This is a public health care crisis that should be addressed by a public health care initiative to instill healthy eating habits in American families over time.

Having said that, the wrong way to do it is to have the Washington political class pass and enact a law that mandates instant changes in the way the country eats. Just because a Washington bureaucrat dictates that a kid in a far away state can only consume so much fat, salt, and sugar at their school’s lunch table does not mean it is going to happen.

And it is not happening. School districts across the country are rebelling against this new Washington dictate and dumping the guidelines that the law put forth. The schools are finding that kids are not eating what Washington wants them to eat, resulting in millions of dollars in food being scrapped every day, kids not getting enough nourishment at lunch, and school districts running into serious financial troubles since the revenue from selling school lunches is way down.

The situation has gotten so bad that a recent article by Victor Skinner, writing for the Education Action Group, showed that schools in Missouri and Alabama have already bowed out of the Federal school lunch program despite losing Federal dollars to stay in it. The article found that: “Those schools and numerous others across the country are ditching the federal regulations and the funding that comes with them to save their cafeteria programs, which have experienced a nose-dive in sales and skyrocketing waste since the new rules were implemented in 2012.”

A large high school in Missouri, Norte Dame High School, saw lunch participation rate drop by half. They turned to local restaurants to provide healthy food that actually tasted good, as opposed to the healthy but badly tasting Federally mandate food to make sure kids actually ate lunch.

Saxony Lutheran High school also did the same thing: “We want to make sure we’re serving a well-rounded, healthy, balanced meal,” Saxony principal Mark Ruark told SEMissourian.com. “We don’t think the current federal guidelines give kids enough calories to sustain (them), especially those in extracurricular activities. Kids will not eat what doesn’t taste good.”

At Cleburne County Schools in Alabama, lunch participation dropped by 29 percent under Michelle Obama’s and Washington’s edicts. A local mom, Maria Gilbert, is quoted in the article saying that her children will no longer eat school food. Her 11th grader says it’s “nasty” and has opted to bring microwave food from home. at least until the school removed the appliance from the cafeteria. Gilbert said she’s often forced to find a quick meal for her famished kids after school, AnnisonStar.com reports. 

In Ohio, it’s the same problem: “We are seeing a trend where meal counts are going down just because students aren’t accepting all the changes that are taking place,” Ohio School Nutrition Association member Jeni Lange told ABC.

A National School Nutrition Association survey found food waste is up in 81.2 percent of schools nationwide, and a study by Cornell and Brigham Young universities estimates the waste at $4 million per day. Students in Los Angeles schools alone are throwing away $100,000 in food per day, ABC reports.

In a Vermont school district, school employees devised a plan to “repurpose” their lunch waste as feed for about 3,000 hogs at a local pig farm. In Medina, Ohio, volunteer parent Marcie Henning is taking advantage of the massive waste in her district to feed the homeless and less fortunate.

You get the idea. Again, Washington never understood the root causes of a problem, the need to educate parents, families and kids about the need to eat better under a public health approach. Instead, Washington tried to fix a problem they did not understand and the unforeseen consequences by dictating a top down solution that, like Obama Care, has no chance of working.

As result, kids are eating less and going hungry, school district financials and revenues are being devastated, and the country’s unhealthy food chain is unchanged. When we see our kids going hungry and our tax dollars being fed to hogs, how long will the center hold?

3) One more quickie for today, we will conclude this update to our "will the center hold” series tomorrow. The Washington Examiner recently did a piece on this concept and how the relationship between the Washington elite and bureaucrats and the rest of the country has probably never gotten this dicey. 

The article points to Obama Care as one of many drivers in this resistance to Washington. It cites the reality that 36 states said no to the Obama administration relative to setting up Obama Care health insurance exchanges, forcing the Federal government to do it by itself in those three dozen states. Another 20 or so states decided not to expand Medicaid within their borders as they were allowed to do under Obama Care.

I could be wrong, but from my history classes I do not remember any state that said they were not going to participate in Social Security or Medicare or any other major Federal initiative. This recent resistance seems to be a new phenomena. And according to
Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a Texas public policy think tank, it seems I am correct: “This is the biggest push back that I’ve seen in my lifetime, even more so than, I think, you had in the Civil Rights era. There’s this growing sense out there, that there are areas that are the purview of states, and the states ought to be allowed to do that.”

So I am not alone in wondering if the center will hold. From Obama Care to secession to something as simple as school lunches, the center in Washington is dictating and the rest of the country is saying hold up or something worse. More rebellion and resistance tomorrow as we try to figure out "if the center will hold."

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2014, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 1: Court Guts the Legislation and Obama's Promised Savings Still Lost In Space

Yes, the world has been a mess lately. Fighting in the Gaza Strip, downed airliners, Russians fighting Ukrainians, the economy still stagnant, Iraq begin torn apart, Syrian civil war still killing thousands, veterans still not getting the proper medical treatment, a border that is a humanitarian crisis, etc. In the background though, has been the continuing and unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

We have had to devote many posts every month to this fiasco since last August. The fallout from the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by Washington just keeps on giving and messing up Americans’ lives. This month is no exception. We will probably need most of this week to cover it all, that is how bad the law is many, many months after it was rolled out in such a disastrous manner last fall. 

As with previous months, we will likely stop talking about it this month not because we ran out of material but because it can get so depressing going over the damage the legislation is doing to lives, health, freedom, and the economy.

1) The most recent, most fascinating and likely most uplifting news about Obama Care we have ever seen came about last week as a result of a court decision. Before we get into the decision, let’s review how Obama and his Congressional cohorts set up the law in the first place:

• The centerpiece of the legislation was the concept of setting up state government developed and operated health insurance exchanges.
• These exchanges were to be online, Internet portals where theoretically a person could log on to the exchange’s website, put in some personal and financial information, and be offered a wide ranging set of Obama Care health insurance policies to choose from to insure themselves and/or their families.
• Additionally, if the person or family applying via the exchange for insurance had a low enough income level, they would be offered Federal subsidies to help defray the cost of their Obama Care insurance policy.
• If a state did not establish an Obama Care exchange in their state, an option that was written into the law, then citizens in those states could still get Obama Care insurance coverage via the national Federal online insurance exchange.
• The Obama administration offered two incentives to encourage the states to set up their own Obama Care exchanges. The first incentive was monetary support for the programming and development of the state’s exchange software.
• The second incentive was the requirement that those Federal subsidies to help defray the cost would only be available to citizens in states that had built their own online Obama care exchange. Anyone who got their Obama Care insurance via the Federal exchange were explicitly made NOT eligible for subsidies in the legislation.

Thus, the writers and supporters of the law thought they had everything covered by offering the two incentives, exchange development money, and subsidies to only state exchange customers, and that these incentives would be enough to get most, if not all, states to develop their own exchanges.

However, their logic backfired when a large majority of state governments said no thanks to both incentives and defaulted their citizens to the Federal exchange, an option that the legislation prevented those people from getting subsidies. When the backfire became clear, the Obama administration blatantly ignored the legislation itself and illegally proclaimed that everyone, regardless of what exchange they used, would get subsidies, a clear violation of the language of the law.

Well, it did not take long for the lawyers and lawsuits to get started and last week the DC district court ruled that the administration had violated its own law by unilaterally voiding the Federal exemption portion of the law. If this decision holds throughout the appeals process, millions of Americans would lose financial help in paying for their Obama Care policies which would likely result in the great many of them cancelling their Obama Care insurance policies.

Renee Nal, writing for the Liberty Unyielding website, had the following observations and media clips regarding this potentially fatal ruling for the worst piece of legislation ever enacted:

• The majority of people who sign up for Obama Care are expecting to be subsidized by the taxpayer in order to keep their insurance affordable but the ruling “threw out a federal regulation that implements key subsidies that are vital” to the survival of the Affordable Care Act.
• According to Reuters: “The ruling has the potential to cripple the implementation of the law by making health insurance unaffordable for many people.
• According by the Daily Caller last month: “According to the data from federally-run Obama Care exchanges alone, subsidies will cost $11 billion — and if state-run exchange customers qualify for subsidies at the same rate, Obama Care subsidies will total $16.5 billion for 2014 alone. The Congressional Budget Office last projected that subsidies would cost $10 billion in 2014.” That money would now be reduced dramtaically as a result fo the court ruling: good news for taxpayers, bad news for many policiy holders.
• As reported last month by Newsweek, “[A]bout 85 percent of the 8 million people who have enrolled in private coverage under Obama Care sought subsidies, according to the administration."

Since the majority of Obama Care insurance customers got their policies via the Federal exchange, a majority of people who signed up for Obama Care will lose access to their expected subsidies. Once the subsidies go, Obama has the nation right back where it started four years ago and we would have wasted four years and billions and billions of dollars to insure and subsidize a very low percentage of customers. Pathetic piece of legislation.

2) The Heritage Foundation also had some thoughts and analysis on the court ruling and the potentially fatal impact it might have on the legislation:

• Heritage finds that there will be severe ramifications if the decision survives appeals. First, as we explained above, only customers who got insurance coverage through a state exchanges would be able to get Federal subsidies. 
• Individuals who used the Federal exchange would face costly premium increases as their subsidies were terminated.
• Since the Obama care employer mandate penalties are linked to the availability of the subsidies, employers would now not be subject to the penalty in those states that did not establish a state exchange, taking the pressure off of businesses in those states to offer insurance to their employees or face fines.
• Those states would now have a competitive business advantage over states that forced their in state businesses to comply with Obama Care, a factor that would encourage business development to a grow faster in those non-Obama Care exchange states.
• Since some states did such a horrible job of setting up their state exchanges, many of them are terminating those state efforts and forcing their citizens to use the Federal exchange which would likely result in even more people not being eligible for Obama Care subsidies.

Heritage sees very few good options for the Obama administration as its key piece of legislation starts to unravel. They could try to amend the law via Congressional action but that is unlikely since the Republicans now control the House and the majority of Americans, as measured through opinion polls, do not like the legislation and want it terminated.

Additionally, many states who initially opted to not establish an exchange did so because by 2015 states are required by law to fund the operating expenses of the exchanges on their own. Furthermore, grant funding that was originally included in the law to help states establish state exchanges is gone, and it is highly unlikely Congress would be willing to appropriate additional funds toward this endeavor.

What a mess. People who thought they were getting low cost, subsidized insurance will now have that subsidy removed, likely resulting in cancelled policies, likely resulting in higher insurance rates for those Obama Care policy holders that still remain, likely resulting in more policies getting cancelled as premiums go up, likely resulting in insurance companies wanting to get out of the business of Obama Care altogether unless they get taxpayer bailout money, etc., etc., etc. 

This death spiral would likely terminate the law under its own incompetence and weight, which would be a good thing. However, as we mentioned above, we would have wasted four years and billions of dollars and be no closer to resolving the problem of ever rising health care costs. Maybe if Obama had listened to his critics back in 2009 and 2010 rather than assuming he knew best, progress on this problem would have been made rather than picking up the remnants of his own making.

3) Mark Meckler,wirting for the American Spectator had some interesting and depressing observations about Obama Care that we have touched on before but which are worth reviewing again here:

• Recall that the President promised that the average American family would see their health care bill go down by about $2,500 a year.
• But a county-by-county study by Forbes and the Manhattan Institute found that the average cost for individual, i.e. non-employer provided insurance, insurance policies actually rose by 49% on average rather than going down by $2,500 over the past few years. 
• The people whose rates go up most are those who are young, healthy, and/or male which is not surprising since the whole underpinning of Obama Care was to get healthy, younger people to pay for the health care and insurance of older, sicker people.
• The Forbes study found that individual health insurance rates went up in 80-90% of U.S. counties.
• The law is going to force about a million low income people to pay up by assessing a financial penalty for those that did not sign up for an Obama Care policy.
• Think about the idiocy of that last statement. A low income American who cannot afford health insurance is going to be forced to pay a penalty for being so poor and after paying the penalty will still not have health insurance. Insanity.

That will do it for Day One of this month’s coverage of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. Many more disasters 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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Real State Of The Union, Part 1: What Americans Think

It is no secret that for most Americans, the state of the nation, regardless of what Obama said in his recent state of the union message, is not good:

• Over 20 million Americans are either unemployed or underemployed. 
• The national debt has already broken through the $17 TRILLION barrier, currently at about $17.3 TRILLION, burdening current and FUTURE American generations with an enormous debt load. The per person debt load for every Americans is well over $50,000 today and growing.
• Economic growth after the last recession has been the most anemic post recession growth in the past century.
• Our foreign policy has been a total failure to contain the bad guys and support the good guys around the world.
• Obama Care is endangering individual American’s health, lives, economic opportunities, and job prospects without resolving the problem of high health care costs in this country.
• Crony capitalism is alive and well and growing quickly as a result of a corrupt Washington political class.
• That same political class has shown no ability, will, or intelligence to attack and resolve the major issues and problems of our times.

But, hey, that is just my opinion. What does the rest of America think about the state of the union? Over the next three days we will take some time to review the latest opinion polls from various sources and see if I am right or if most Americans are happy about the direction of the country.

1) The fabulous Bankrupting America website recently looked at a current opinion poll that was fielded by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, timed to coincide with Obama’s state of the union address. This is what they found relative to how Americans feel about the state of the nation:

• The 63% of respondents who currently think the nation is going down the wrong track attained a peak among the months in which Obama has delivered his state of the union addresses in the past. 
• Only 28% think the nation is on the right track, less than half that think it is on the wrong track.
• In an open-ended question within the survey, NBC News/WSJ found that Americans offered more negative than positive descriptors about the direction of the nation (62% negative, e.g. “down hill” or “disaster” or “hard times” vs. 27% positive, e.g. like “hopeful” or “improving”).
• 71% of respondents said that they are “somewhat” or “very” dissatisfied with the direction of the nation’s economy. 
• This compares to 64% in June 2013.
• 48% of the respondents feel that Obama Care is more of a bad idea than 34% who think it is a good one. 
• In fact, 42% strongly say it’s a bad idea.
• For the first time ever in a state of the union month, more Americans were seen disapproving than approving of the President's job performance, 51% vs. 43%.
• These comparisons of approval vs. disapproval have swung negative by 13 percentage points in the past 12 months.
• 39% of respondents said that the country is worse off than when President Obama took office vs. 31% said we are better off and 29% said we are in the same place.
• Ninety-one percent of respondents said that it is an “absolute priority” for the Obama administration and Congress to create jobs. 
• Also ranking high, 74% said that reducing the federal budget deficit is also an “absolute priority.”

Unfortunately, given what Americans’ priorities are, job creation and reducing deficit spending, have been two of the major failures of this administration and the political class. Their economic ignorance has been on full display over the past five years and it is not pretty in either theory or the reality of anemic economic and job creation performance.

2) Not to be outdone prior to the state of the union speech, a poll of Americans from the Washington Post and ABC News found that:

• 63% of Americans have either little no confidence Obama will make the right decisions.
• 49% of respondents answered that Obama is trustworthy and honest and but a whopping 48% answered that the President of the united States is NOT honest and trustworthy.
• 52% of the respondents said that Obama does not understand the problems of people like them, a finding that is up substantially from just two years ago.
• 51% indicated that they felt Obama is not a strong leader. 
• Obama’s disapproval rating came out at 50% with 41% of respondents disapproving strongly.
• Only 23% of the respondents said they support him strongly. 
• Overall, 50% of Americans have an unfavorable impression of the President.

What is amazing is that when Obama took office, his approval and likeability levels were in the unheard of 70-80% range. To have fallen so far and accomplished so little, especially since his party controlled Congress for the first two years of his Presidency, is also unheard of but not unexpected, given the state of the union and the economy.

3) Well, we now know that Americans think the country is on the wrong track and are not real happy about the President’s performance and role in that wrong track perception. But what do Americans think about the economy? According to the latest monthly consumer sentiment poll from the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan survey:

• U.S. consumer sentiment slipped in January, mostly caused by lower expectations among lower- and middle-income families.
• The overall index on consumer sentiment came in at 80.4, down from 82.5 in the December survey.
• Not only was it down, it was below the median forecast of 83.5 among economists polled by Reuters.
• The survey's tracking measure of current economic conditions fell to 95.2 from 98.6 and was substantially below a forecast of 98.5.
• The survey's gauge of consumer expectations slipped to 70.9 from 72.1 and below a forecast of 74.2.
• According to survey director Richard Curtin: "Upper-income households benefited from continued strong gains in income as well as increases in stock and home values. Low- and middle-income households were mainly concerned about lackluster growth in employment and income, and anticipated less improvement in long-term prospects for the economy."

So not only do we not like the direction of the country and the leadership of the President, we are not really crazy where the economy is and where it is going.

4) A Quinnipiac University opinion survey from early January found the following detailed results, and negative findings, relative to the Obama Presidency:

• 53% of respondents disapprove of the President’s performance while 41% approve.
• 49% of women disapprove of his performance while 44% approved and 58% of men disapprove while only 36% of men approved.
• Across all income brackets and across all age brackets more respondents disapprove of Obama’s performance than those that approve of his performance.
• Only 9% of Republicans approve of his performance, only 35% of Independents approve with 58% disapproving, while 81% of Democrats approve of his performance.
• 49% of respondents said the President is not honest and trustworthy while 46% somehow said he was.
• 51% of respondents said the President was not a strong leader while 46% said he was.
• 50% of respondents said the President does not care about their needs and problems while 48% said he does.
• He received a negative 61% negative rating for his handling of Obama Care, a negative 58% rating on his handling of the economy, a 60% negative rating for his handling of the Federal budget, a negative 51% for his handling of foreign policy, and in the one bright note, a positive 52% rating on his handling of terrorism.

That will do it for today, we will continue with the mood of the country tomorrow. But so far we know that, in general:

1. Americans think the economy and the nation are heading in the wrong direction.
2. Americans do not approve of the President’s overall job performance and his performance on most major issues.
3. Americans do not find the President trustworthy, honest, or caring.
4. Americans faith in the economic direction of the country is declining.

Otherwise, the state of the nation and our moods and hopes are in great shape.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: General Motors Owes Us Billions Of Dollars, The Pentagon Owes Us Trillions of Dollars and More

It’s the start of another month which means its time again for as review of the latest insanity, wasteful spending and corruption that has recently occurred from the American political class. We have done these monthly reviews since 2009 and two clear conclusions have emerged:

• The ineptness and lunacy of how the political class behave has grown exponentially since 2009. What used to take a day or so to review now usually takes at least a week.
• We are suffering through the worst set of politicians this country has ever had to endure. Major and minor problems never get resolved and any efforts that do get put together by the political class just seem to make a bad situation worse.

With those two happy thoughts, let’s see what the politicians have done to us this past month.

1) The Associated Press reported on November 21, 2013 that the Federal government would sell its stake in General Motors by the end of the year. The government became a major owner in the company when it unnecessarily bailed out GM during the Great Recession.

The article reported that the American taxpayer will lose about $10 billion on the deal. This means that about every U.S. household spent about $90 each to keep the company alive in its present form rather than let the bankruptcy courts do their thing and have the General Motors bankruptcy cost the American taxpayer nothing. 

But the article goes on to explain that:

• The company currently has $26.8 billion in cash. This raises the obvious question: if the company is so flush with cash, why is it not paying back its entire debt to the American taxpayer, wiping out the $10 billion shortfall?
• General Motors has added 3,000 workers since the Great Recession. Dividing the 3,000 new workers into the $10 billion unpaid debt results in a cost per U.S. job created of $3,333,333 per job created. In other words, the promise that the bailout was good economic policy since it would create jobs is nonsense if it costs over $3 million to create one new job.
• Despite having $26.8 billion in cash reserves, the company has not paid any income taxes for years because it was able to shed its debt but carry its accumulated losses forward and avoid Federal income taxes, another hit to the U.S. taxpayer.

Just another bad bailout deal that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars with nothing in return.

2) Consider a recent news report from Reuters which disclosed how ridiculously poorly the Defense Department manages its financial affairs:

• The Pentagon cannot account for $8.5 trillion dollars of taxpayer money Congress has appropriated the Department of Defense since 1996.
• For the fiscal year 2012, it is “impossible to determine” how much of the $565 billion for the Pentagon budget was used for what it was supposed to be used for.
• According to the article, there exist numerous examples of unnecessary military spending in the Pentagon; there is about a half trillion dollars in unaudited contracts with private companies, and often there is no way to tell whether goods and services were ever actually delivered to the Defense Department.
• This is not a new problem since Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in September, 2001 that there were possibly $2.3 TRILLION in Pentagon spending that couldn’t be tracked. In other words, twelve years have gone by and nothing has been done to track TRILLIONS of dollars in wasted taxpayer wealth.
• The article lays out just one of the problems by describing how every month Defense Department employees were told by their superiors to make up false numbers in the monthly accounting ledger entries to make them jive with other government agencies' reports even though they were wrong.

Such incompetence and falsifying accounting reports would get normal citizens arrested and thrown in jail for fraud. But nothing happens, no one is fired, no one goes to jail when the government does it and wastes TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars over the years. No wonder we have a $17 TRILLION national debt.

3) We have often made the comparison on how Washington D.C. is actually a true life replica of the capital city in the “Hunger Games” books and movies. In the “Hunger Games,” ordinary citizens from around the country are heavily taxed in order to subsidize and support an outrageously lavish life style for the elite ruling class in the capital city.

A November 18, 2013 article from the St. Louis News Dispatch newspaper reinforces that image and reality, “D.C. Awash In Lobbyist, Contracts, Wealth:”

• During the past decade, the D.C. metro area has added 21,000 households whose earnings place them in the top 1% of all U.S. households with no other metro area even coming close to matching this growth rate.
• In 2010, a single Virginia Congressional district received $43 billion worth of Federal contracts, almost as much as the whole state of Texas received.
• Much of the wasteful spending is a result of 9-11 and the gigantic and unbridled increases in national defense-related spending, spending that was mostly unable to be tracked (see above).

The article goes on to describe the lobbyists feeding frenzy and government spending frenzy in the D.C. metro area. The very sad part of what is going on is that it's economy is not based on producing valued goods and services, it is based on lobbying for better tax breaks, favorable legislation, a bigger cut of unnecessary spending, etc. Very little societal benefits are resulting from this Hunger Games scenario.

I will not go into the gruesome details of how the American taxpayer is being fleeced by this environment, as laid out by this excellent, well researched article. You can read the extensive details at:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/d-c-awash-in-contracts-lobbying-wealth/article_53336d9b-a75f-5a1a-bb19-d46d3186a960.html

4) What would a month be without a major failure from the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), those wonderful folks at airports that grope you on a random basis? In 2007, the TSA started the SPOT program, “Screening Of Passengers by Observation Techniques.” The program was supposed to train some TSA employees to stand around and just watch people, identifying those travelers that were acting suspicious, stressed or afraid, and could be terrorists.

A billion dollars and five years later, the General Accounting Office has issued a report that finds that SPOT is no more effective than random suspect targeting:

The meta-analyses we reviewed — which collectively included research from over 400 separate studies related to detecting deception conducted over the past 60 years — found that the ability of human observers to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral cues or indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance (54%).

Which raises an interesting question: why didn’t the Federal government do this comprehensive study BEFORE spending a billion dollars? Since they studied research from the past 60 years, the analysis could have been done five years ago before the taxpayer wealth was wasted. Insanely poor planning. But given the TSA history of poor planning, this is not surprising.

This will do it for today but there is plenty more insanity to cover in the next several posts. Keep in mind that probably the only way to minimize the insanity, given the incompetence of our current politicians, is to reduce the amount of taxpayer money they can waste. 

We need to get them focused on a much smaller set of functions and issues since they have proven that they currently cannot control any spending, cannot control a wasteful government bureaucracy, they cannot control the insanity. Maybe if we shrunk government and focused only on a few major issues, they might eventually resolve an issue. Today that focus does not exist and no issues, small or large, are ever resolved.

This was the main purpose of Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” This step would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years, resulting in a much leaner government focused on a much smaller but overall more important set of priorities. Keep this proposal in mind as we go through the stupid wasteful spending and activities of the American political class over the next few days.

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:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Political Class Insanity Special Edition Part 3: Syrian Madness,Nobody Wants War Except Obama and Other Realities

This is our third post in a series that is looking at the poltical class insanity idea of using U.S. military force against the government of Syria for allegedly using poison gas on its own citizens. Our first two posts that show how idiotic and dangerous such an intervention would be can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special_8.html

Let us continue our discussion today, looking at more public opinion findings on such a military excursion and other sources of news and reality that continue to show how useless and potentially dangerous such a limited military attack would be.

1) Consider some research findings of Americans that would tend to be political aligned with President Obama:

• The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) recently released some survey results of its members.
• Their findings find that more than 57,000 of its activists weighed in, and 73% of them opposed the U.S. taking military action in Syria. 
• Just 18% supported strikes, and just 14% said the U.S. should go ahead unilaterally if it can’t find any allies.
• A majority of the PCCC activists don’t even believe President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry are being honest when they lay out their justifications for taking military action.
• Four out of five said they believe U.S. action will lead to deeper involvement in the civil war.
• “In the last 72 hours, we surveyed PCCC members across the nation – in every state and congressional district. We’ve received over 57,000 responses so far, and a clear result: Your progressive base stands firmly against bombing Syria,” said Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, co-founders of PCCC.

Another group of American check in with their  views and it does not support bombing Syria.

2) It is not just bombing Syria that Americans are overwhelming against, seems the country is also overwhelmingly against supplying arms to one side of the Syrian civil war, as identified by PEW research from this past June:

• Overall, 70% of those surveyed oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government rebel groups in Syria.
• Only 20% favor supplying weapons to one of the sides in this civil war.
• These findings are little changed from December of last year (24% favor) and support is down slightly from March, 2012 (29% favor).
•  About two-thirds (68%) say the U.S. is too overcommitted to get involved in another conflict, and just 27% disagree. 
• The public also has questions about the opposition groups in Syria: 60% say that they may be no better than the current government.
• Majorities of independents (74%), Republicans (71%) and Democrats (66%) oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria.
• Nearly identical majorities of Democrats (69%), independents (69%) and Republicans (68%) also believe that U.S. military forces are too overcommitted to get involved in another conflict.
• Independents (66%) and Republicans (64%) are most concerned that the opposition groups in Syria may be no better than the current government, but 52% of Democrats also agree with this statement.

No bombing and no getting involved by supporting the rebel side with military equipment. The findings and feelings prove that this is not a partisan argument, Republicans, Democrats, and Independent Americans are together in opposition to both military actions, supplying arms and sending in cruise missiles.

3) On August 24, 2013, the Heritage Foundation laid out five logical and fact based reasons why militarily attacking Syria is a very bad idea, both long term and short term (the following words are lifted directly from their post, I hope they do not mind since their reasoning was so succinct and to the point, much better than any summary I could have written):

1. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine is not adequate justification for direct military intervention. This dangerous doctrine, promoted at the United Nations, undermines U.S. sovereignty by arguing for an obligation of nations to intervene. As Heritage’s legal expert on sovereignty matters, Steve Groves, explains:

“A doctrine that compels the United States to act to prevent atrocities occurring in other countries would be risky and imprudent. U.S. independence—hard won by the Founders and successive generations of Americans—would be compromised if the United States consented to be legally bound by the R2P doctrine. The United States needs to preserve its national sovereignty by maintaining a monopoly on the decision to deploy diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, political coercion, and especially its military forces.”

2. A vital U.S. interest is not at stake. The U.S. does have an interest in the resolution of the conflict, but military force should be reserved for areas where the U.S. has a compelling need to act in defense of its own interests. There are other and more prudent options for advancing U.S. interests to help resolve the conflict.

3. It would not be a wise use of military force. Military force should be used only if there is a clear, achievable, realistic purpose. Missile strikes are unlikely to deter the Assad regime and prevent further abuses. Rather, the U.S. risks escalating its involvement in the crisis.

4. Missile attacks would only make President Obama look weaker. Much like President Clinton’s ineffective cruise missile strikes on Osama bin Laden’s terrorist camps, strikes would only be seen as a sign that the U.S. is lacking a clear, decisive course of action. The Middle East would see this as another effort from the Obama Administration to look for an “easy button” and lead from behind rather than exercise real, constructive leadership.

5. It would distract from what the U.S. should be doing. Rather than attempting to intervene directly in the conflict, the U.S. should be working in a concerted manner with other countries in the region to hasten the end of the Assad regime and deal with the refugee crisis, the resurgence of al-Qaeda, and the destabilizing efforts of Iran and Hezbollah

Well said, virtually no upside and plenty of downsides.

4) Back on May 5, 2013, Reuters ran a report that cited United Nations experts concluding that rebel forces, not Syrian government forces, had used sarin gas in civil war action. U.N. human rights investigators had gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte: "Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

This is not to say that the government did not use poison gas in the latest incident of civilian dying from exposure to poison gas. However, at least according to the United Nations’ experts, it is not out of the question by any means that the latest poison gas deaths were caused, either intentionally or accidentally by the rebel forces.

As we asserted in an earlier post, the Syrian government, with help from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah is winning the civil war. Why would they want to get outside forces, like the U.S. military involved by using poison gas on its citizens when their side is winning? Makes no logical sense.

Thus, what have we learned today? The vast majority of Americans, across all political and geographic divides, think arming either side in the Syrian civil war and bombing either side in the Syrian civil war is a very bad idea. The Heritage Foundation laid out a coherent and logical argument why U.S. military action is the wrong strategy for Syria at this time. And rebel forces have in their possession and have used poison gas before/. Who is to say that the latest use was not theirs, given that the Syrian government had nothing to gain by deploying poisons gas attacks.

Tomorrow we will talk about Syria but use the words and quotes of Americans, both inside and outside of politics, to show that  helping Obama save face for his ill advised and ill prepared threat of a “red line” dare to Syria is a dangerous and stupid waste of time and resources. 

Until then, if you want to avoid getting the U.S. involved in yet another doomed Middle East military adventure, please call your Congressional representatives and tell them to not support giving Obama permission to drag this country into another unsinkable Middle East conflict.

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:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w 

June, 2013, Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Dissing ESPN, Detroit Going Down, Chimps Living The Good Life, And More

This is the third in this month’s series on political class insanity. In the first two posts we learned that the Federal government has gotten so large that even when they try, the Washington politicians cannot catalog and track every Federal organization. We found out that the political class has spent money on a project to teach certain species of fish how to survive predator attacks. We have found out that the ATF was not able to secure a quarter of a ton of explosives that has recently been stolen by unknown robbers.

There were other instances of insanity and lunacy from the political class this past month and they can be found at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/06/june-2013-poltiical-class-insanity-part.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/06/june-2013-political-class-insanity-part.html

But we are not done, as the following insanity shows:

1) The country has a national debt of about $17 TRILLION. There are over 20 million Americans who are unemployed or under employed. A very small percentage of this year’s college graduates are finding a job in their field, if they can find a job at all. Our schools still under educate our kids and our lost war on drugs continues to empower and enrich violent drug cartels. The cost of a gallon of gas is up about 80% over the past few years.

The country faces a lot of dire issues but what is a leading, long time Senator worried about, according to a short blurb in the May 26, 2013 issue of the Tampa Bay Times? Senator John McCain is upset, and plans to take legislative action, because cable and satellite providers charge their customers for receiving ESPN broadcasts even if they do not watch ESPN.

The Senator wants to pass legislation that would unbundle cable and satellite program offerings so that those that do not want ESPN do not have to pay for ESPN. If you asked Americans what are the most pressing issues for themselves and their families, do we think that ESPN bundling would make the top fifty or top hundred? Horrible set of bad priorities.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the reason these politicians work on these minor, idiotic issues is that they do not know how to fix the real issues that affect most of us. Rather than work on issues whose solutions constantly elude them, they work on stupid issues that they may be able to affect but which have little impact on the lives of most of us.

2) The Institute For Energy Research reported on a Department of Energy (DOE) report on its website on May 8, 2013:

• Remember that President Obama promised in 2008 to create 5 million “green jobs” by directing taxpayer wealth towards renewable energy companies and projects.
• These 5 million jobs would be created over a ten year period.
• However, the latest DOE report quantifies how that effort was going and the news was not good.
• Since 2009, the $26 billion that the DOE has given out in its alternative energy loan guarantee program has created….wait for it… a grand total of 2,298 jobs.
• This comes out to about $11.45 MILLION for each "green job" created.

Pitiful waste of taxpayer money. Even if the President was able to create 5 million jobs, at this rate the total cost to the American taxpayer would be over $57 TRILLION, more than three times the size of our current total national debt of $17 TRILLION.

But of course, at this rate, the President will never get close to 5 million “green jobs” in the next six years to meet his ten year goal. Just another example of politicians not having a clue on how economics works or how to be fiscally responsible with our hard earned money.

3) A May 13, 2013 Associated Press (AP) reported on how the inability of the American political class to understand economics or be financially capable may lead to the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States. The city of Detroit used to be the fourth largest city in the country. It used to have one of the highest per capita incomes of all cities in the country. But as the AP article points out:

• The first report by Detroit's state appointed emergency manager finds that the city is broke and at risk of running completely out of money.
• This would result in employees not getting paid, city worker retirees losing their pensions and current city residents seeing even deeper cuts in municipal services.
• The city’s net cash position, the amount of cash in its accounts after the bills are paid, was negative $162 million in late April.
• The current fiscal year’s budget deficit could be as high as $386 million even though just a few months ago it was thought to be only $327 million.
• The city’s long term debt is $14 billion.

Let’s be honest, the financials of the city are not likely to improve much unless it declares bankruptcy. The political class in Detroit has taken a proud city with a great financial future and destroyed it in less than fifty years.

4) Political class insanity is not unique to the United States.

One of the big whines of President Obama is that the wealthy in this country do not pay enough in taxes even though a very small percentage of Americans pay the overwhelming burden of Federal taxes. As we have claimed and proved many times in this blog, we do not have an under taxation problem in this country, we have a government over spending problem in this country.

The cause of our national debt, and the national debt of most countries in the world, is that governments spend too much money on non-effective and inane programs and projects. Such is the case in France, which in 2012 raised the top marginal tax rate to the insane level of 75%. In other words, French citizens whose incomes exceeds a certain level have to give the French government 75% of the amount they earned over that limit.

This nonsense, of course, has led to many wealthy French citizens to just simply leave the country to avoid this tax oppression, leaving the French government with less tax revenue than before the tax increase but the same amount of spending. A recent report from Reuters shows the insanity and the logical conclusion of this class warfare and tax the rich idiocy.

Due to a quirk in the law that raised the top marginal tax rate to 75%, more than 8,000 French households’ 2012 tax bills topped 100% of their annual income. Reuters said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a retro tax levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million).

Yes, the French political class is so insane and incompetent that it wants more than 8,000 of its citizens to give it over 100% of what those citizens actually earned in 2012. Even the American political class has not gotten that greedy or oppressive…yet.

5) Although not a great sum of money relative to overall annual Federal government spending, the following example from the Washington Guardian on February 9, 2013 is a great example of government spending that has gotten out of control over time.

According to the article from the Guardian, the National Institutes of Health, the government's medical research arm, is spending about $12 million annually to care for some chimpanzees that are currently and were formerly used for research,. This care is given to them in an animal retirement sanctuary in Louisiana.

Before going any further let me say I am for the humane care of all animals. It is probably a good bet that some of these chimps made contributions to society that were positive. They deserve to be treated well as they get older and are no longer needed for health related research.

However, in 2011, American taxpayers supported 713 animals at a cost of $11.6 million, according to NIH records. But in 2012, the price tag for their care rose to $12.4 million, even though NIH supported 40 fewer chimps at the sanctuary. Thus, the per chimp cost went up 13% in just one year, far beyond the rate of inflation.

But the cost rise pales in comparison to another measure. The $12.4 million annual cost is about half the annual cost to run the ENTIRE National Zoo in D.C. Something is wrong. Either the National Zoo is under funded and they do a remarkably efficient job or somehow the cost of running a chimp sanctuary in Louisiana is not being efficient.

Again, I am all for being humane to animals. But something is wrong when the cost of that humanity goes up more than six times the rate of inflation in one year and that cost is about 50% of the cost of operating a much larger government operation, the National Zoo. This is how government costs in any government organization gets out of control and how before you know it, we have a $17 TRILLION national debt.

Unfortunately, we are not done with the latest political class insanity. More to come 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.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w