November, 2021, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Stealing From The Government, Stealing From a School, and Another Government Tax

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) No Washington program was ever done efficiently, effectively and resolved the original problem. And that heinous tradition continues to this day as more taxpayer wealth gets wasted:

• Vinah Oudomsine of Dublin, Georgia, was lucky enough to receive an “economic disaster loan” as a result of the covid pandemic.
• The loan was part of a program to help business owners meet expenses during the pandemic’s darker days.
• But even though he lied on his loan application, the Federal government awarded him $57,000 for his business.
• But he ended up spending the entire amount of taxpayer generosity on a single, ultra valuable…. wait for it…. Pokemon card.
• His application claimed he started his business in 2018, now had annual revenues of $235,000 and had ten employees.
• And adding insult to injury, he also got a bogus loan from the Small Business Administration for $85,000.
• He faces up to twenty years in prison for his actions.

The good news is that they caught this alleged defrauder of the American taxpayer. The bad news: how many other people like him got away with stealing from the inept Federal bureaucracy?

2) Turns out that not only do ordinary citizens steal money but possibly government officials do also:

• Seth Andrew was a senior advisor in the Obama administration in the Technology Office of Education.
• He recently was arrested on three counts of Federal financial fraud.
• His arrest has caused him to lose positions in the Democracy Builders Fund and the Degrees of Freedom program.
• According to a news report: “Seth Andrew, 42, allegedly transferred funds from the Democracy Prep Public Schools reserve bank accounts in order to inflate his account balance and to qualify for a special mortgage deduction on his $2.4 million apartments, authorities said.”
• The amount of the alleged fraud is $218,005.
• After his arrest, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss issued a statement: “As alleged, Seth Andrew abused his position as a founder of a charter school network to steal from the very same schools he helped create. Andrew is not only alleged to have stolen the schools’ money but also to have used the stolen funds to obtain a savings on a mortgage for a multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment. Thanks to the FBI’s diligent work, Andrew now faces federal charges for his alleged scheme.”
• Andrew is married to Lana Zak, a high powered CBS News personality so it was not like he was homeless and broke, his wife is probably making a handsome sum in her position with CBS so his alleged actions are nothing more than pure greed.

Stealing from schools, a low class former Washington bureaucrat.

3) A little while ago we discussed a research report that showed in many states, mostly democratic/liberal states, over their lifetimes residents of those states spent upwards of 50% of their wages and income in taxes. That is an amazing number: almost half of what they earn from working their jobs and careers goes to government bureaucrats and politicians who most often spend those tax dollars on ineffective and inefficient government programs.

These taxes cover a wide range of areas: property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, gasoline taxes, utility taxes, sewer taxes, water taxes, motor vehicle fees and taxes, and many, many more. And just when you thought that government entities could not possibly come up with another way to rob us of our wealth, the city of San Diego comes up with a new tax:

• The city government of San Diego will soon be considering a tax on every mile that a resident drives.
• The preliminary estimate is that this “mileage” tax would be $.04 a mile.
• Thus, ordinary working people, truck drivers, sales people, taxi drivers, lawn businesses, pool businesses, etc. would now have to pay for the privilege of doing their jobs.
• An opponent of the tax, San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, said this tax was meant to “force everyone onto trolleys and buses” by pricing people out of their cars: “This proposal should never see the light of day. San Diegans already pay some of the highest prices to drive in the country. From the current gas taxes to a vehicle registration tax, San Diegans feel the effects in their wallets every day."
• This tax is supposed to help pay for the local government's plan to build a 200 mile, $43 billion regional railroad network.

A couple of obvious problems with this idea. First, it will punish the ordinary citizens who need their car to get to and from work and those that need it to do their jobs. Second, to think that any government entity, especially a local government entity, can successfully build and stay on budget for a $43 billion transportation project is surely a fantasy.

The state of California recently tried to build a high speed rail line along the coast and failed miserably, after wasting tens of millions of dollars on the failed project. The Big Dig transportation project in Boston years ago was supposed to cost a few billion dollars and ended up costing over $20 billion. 

Thus, what usually happens with today’s politicians and government bureaucrats, a huge transportation project gets started, falls behind budget and schedule and is eventually shut down after much wasted tax dollars. Or so much investment is already made even though the costs are going through the roof that the project is completed anyway, way above budget and usually short of expectations.

And the bigger issue here is how is this mileage tax going to be enforced? Is everyone’s car going to be fitted with a mileage tabulator and if so, who pays for that? Once you have a tracking device in a citizen’s car, you will know where and when that citizen was at all times, surely an Orwellian “1984” scenario. More taxes, less freedom, a typical American politician scheme.

Stealing from the government by citizens, stealing from schools by a former government bureaucrat, and stealing from citizens via a mileage tax, lots of stealing going on as a result of an incompetent and overreaching political class.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

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

 

 

Voter Fraud Review - Part 3

One of the most important cornerstones of our country and our democracy is the ability to elect people to office to carry out the wishes of the citizenry. The bedrock of that concept is that one person has one vote which makes all of us equal under this doctrine, rich or poor, white or black, young or old, every vote should be legitimate and count as one person voicing their own opinion in the voting booth.

When this principle of one person one vote is violated or appears to have been violated, the whole foundation of our democracy and freedoms is undermined. We can never be quite sure if the election results actually reflect the will of the people or if those election results have been skewed by incompetence, deceit, criminal behavior, and anti-freedom forces.

I have people in my life that pooh pooh the idea that there is massive voter fraud in this country, either intentional or unintentional, due to incompetence or deceit of government officials and politicians. We are going to take a look at their hypothesis that voter fraud is insignificant over the next few days. I think that when we are done, you will agree that our voting processes are badly broken and possibly criminally broken and skewed and that unless actions are taken to restore the faith in our election processes, the country and the freedoms we enjoy are in serious trouble.

1) Over the past few days we have showed many examples where there is nation wide voter fraud going on, either through incompetence or criminal fraud. Donald Trump has claimed that this situation existed during the entire 2016 Presidential campaign and set out to do something about it. He set up a commission that was planning to look into voting fraud and deal with it to protect the integrity of our voting processes and democracy.

The state of Colorado decided to help Trump weed out voter fraud. According to the Washington Examiner, shortly after Colorado agreed to turn over state voting records over to the effort, hundreds and hundreds of people across Colorado’s voting districts started to withdrawal their voter registrations. 

In Denver alone 175 people pulled their voter registrations immediately. In Arapahoe County, Colorado, 160 people pulled their voter registrations immediately even though the usual rate over the same time period is usually around 10.

The obvious conclusion is that these were fraudulent voter registrations, either being pulled by people that were ineligible votes or were fake registration altogether. If they were legitimate voters who wanted to voice their positions on the issues, what reason would they have to pull their registrations in light of being investigated?

It is great that even the threat of investigating voter fraud results in likely fraudulent voters going underground. Unfortunately, 14 states have decided not to help Trump and America ferret out voter fraud in their states, further leaving the integrity of our voting processes in doubt.

2) Let’s move over to the state of Virginia and see how bad that state is faring relative to voter fraud and voting irregularities. According to a May 31, 2017 article on the Federalist Papers website by Robert Gehl:

• A report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PLIF) found that over 5,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in Virginia sponsored elections.
• These 5,000 illegally registered voters were eventually removed from the voting records. 
• But they were removed not because of any kind of government investigation but because they self-reported that they were not legal to vote.
• Which leaves the question that if 5,000 people honestly removed themselves from the voting rolls, how more thousands who were not that honest are still on the voting registration lists and still illegally voting in Virginia?
• According to PILF President, Christian Adams: “At the instruction of [Virginia] Governor McAuliffe’s political appointees, local election officials spent countless resources to prevent this information from spilling into the open. From NoVa to Norfolk and all urban and rural points in between, alien voters are casting ballots with practically no legal consequences in response.”

Another state and another state with a substantial issue of voter fraud and irregularities.

3) Let’s keep the voter fraud issue rolling and look at a national picture of voter fraud, as painted by an analysis and research by the Election Integrity Project of Judicial Watch, as reported by Deroy Murdock and the National Review website on August 11, 2017:

• The basis of their analysis was data from the Census Bureau’s 2011-2015 American Community Survey and July, 2017 data from the Federal Election Assistance Commission.
• Their analysis covered data from 38 states and overall resulted in an estimate that says there are at least 3.5 million more people on U.S. election rolls than citizens that are eligible to vote.
• 462 counties across the country had more voters registered than eligible voters in those counties.
• These 462 counties were 18.5% of all the counties studied.
• The most blatant example was Harding County in New Mexico which had 62% more registered voters than adults living in the county.
• Washington’s Clark county had 54% more voters than citizens eligible to vote which represents at least 166,811 “ghost” voters.
• California’s San Diego county had at least 810,966 ghost or over registered voters while Los Angeles county, at a 112% ratio of registered voters compared to eligible voters, had 707,475 ghost voters.
• But according to Judicial Watch, LA County employees told Judicial Watch that the real ratio in LA County is 144%, not 112%.
• In total, all of California counties have at least a whopping 1,736,556 ghost voters.
• According to Judicial Watch President, Tom Fitton: “California’s voting rolls are an absolute mess that undermines the very idea of clean elections. It is urgent that California take reasonable steps to clean up its rolls. We will sue if state officials fail to act.”
• Other states found to have significant numbers of ghost voters, enough to swing a Presidential election and the resultant Electoral College votes, include Colorado: 159,373, Florida: 100,782, Iowa: 31,077, Michigan: 225,235, New Hampshire: 8,211, North Carolina: 189,721, and Virginia: 89,979. 
• Note that Hillary Clinton won both Colorado and New Hampshire with winning popular vote margins that were far less than the number of ghost voters registered in each of those two states.
• Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and co-chairman of Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity: “When you have an extremely large number of stale names on the voter rolls in a county, it makes voter fraud much easier to commit. It’s easier to identify a large number of names of people who have moved away or are deceased. At that point, if there is no photo-ID requirement in the state, those identities can be used to vote fraudulently.” 
• The CBS network affiliate in Chicago in October, 2016 compared local voting records with the Social Security Administration’s master death file and found that, “the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.”
• The CBS network affiliate in Los Angeles reported in May, 2016 that at least 265 dead voters had voted in southern California “year after year.”

Distressing examples of actual or perceived voter fraud situations across the country, possibly enough to upset and taint Presidential elections. But many (Democratic) politicians do not want to fix what is an obvious affront and danger to the integrity of our voting processes and democracy:

• Democratic Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed common sense legislation earlier this year that would have required investigations of elections in which ballots cast outnumbered eligible voters. 
• When Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott tried to follow Federal law and clean up Florida’s voting records by removing 51,308 dead voters from the voting rolls, Obama’s Justice Department field a Federal lawsuit to stop him from doing another common sense deed to protect voting integrity.

Given that most of the most blatant voting irregularities are occurring in so-called blue states , e.g. California, New Mexico, Colorado, etc., and Democratic politicians go out of their way to stop common sense voting reforms, I think it is pretty obvious who benefits most from voting atrocities and fraud. 

More distressing tales of voter fraud 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

April, 2017, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Corruption and Economic Ignorance

It is the beginning of 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. 

Today and for all of the insanity posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy." 

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) We have often pointed out how politicians are usually idiots when it comes to economic affairs. Their economic policies are usually useless, dangerous, and/or ignorant of economic theory and common sense. Such is the case in the state of New York that recently celebrated the raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.

But like every other location that raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, the politicians involved never anticipated the consequences of their actions. If you raise a company’s wage expense budget line, then that company has to find other ways to compensate by lowering expenses and costs in other parts of their operations since they usually cannot make up the difference in expenses by increasing their revenues. The increasing of the minimum wage does nothing to increase demand and revenue.

And for most companies, the easiest place to reduce costs to offset increased wage rates is in the personnel area of their budget, i.e. fire workers. In this case, the good news is that if you had a job you would be making at least $15 an hour. The bad news, and reality, is that because the political class raised the minimum wage, you do not have any job at $15 an hour.

Such was the case in a recent NBC News report which reported on a New York college cafeteria operation that fired ALL of its employees because of the increase in the minimum wage. Instead, the cafeteria has installed “food-dispensing” machines that will take the place of the entire cafeteria staff at that college. Great, a raise in the minimum wage caused unemployment to go up, go figure.

Well, we have figured that any number of times in this blog. From Los Angeles to parts of the state of Washington, the raising of the minimum wage always results in higher unemployment as businesses, trying to stay profitable and in business, end up investing in technology that does not have to be paid a higher minimum wage. Always happens, but politicians are always too stupid to understand this basic economic principle. As a result, more people are now paid $0 an hour since they have been fired because of a higher minimum wage. Insane.

2) But it is not just in New York state where there is this economic insanity as it relates to the minimum wage. According to a recent article by Breitbart:

• An analysis of the San Diego restaurant industry has shown that just in that one California city, restaurant jobs have gone down by a whopping 4,000 position in the just the past year since the city raised the minimum wage.
• And San Diego raised the minimum to only $11.50 an hour, not the $15 an hour that other places have done, e.g. New York state.
• As always, raise the minimum wage and you end up raising the unemployment rate at the same time.
• “If job growth in the restaurant sector had just kept pace with the state’s performance … the industry could have created 5,200 jobs instead of the 1,300 that took place,” Lynn Reaser, chief economist of the Fermanian Business & Economic Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University.
• Forbes Tim Worstall’s article about what happened in Seattle was referenced in the Breitbart article, where that city also raised the minimum wage which also resulted in lost jobs, jobs that would have normally been staffed by less wealthy citizens, giving them no job and no wages at all.

When will politicians learn to stay out of economic affairs and let the market handle everything? Whenever politicians think they are economic geniuses they hurt the most vulnerable in the world, denying them jobs when their ill fated policies restrict economic growth. Idiots.

3) Alright, let’s get out of the economic realm and get back into just plain old political corruption. Consider some ethics and corruption problems that the American Outlook website reported on relative to a sitting Congressman:

• Congressmen Luis Gutierrez from Illinois is an open advocate of illegal immigration into America and it appears that there might be other illegal acts that he is into.
• According to a recent report from the Washington Free Beacon, Gutierrez paid both his wife and daughters hundreds of thousands of dollars from his election campaign funds over the past five or six years.
• While this is not strictly illegal, it is illegal for the candidate to personally gain from funds raised for an election campaign, meaning if not illegal, it is certainly unethical.
• His wife pulled down over $44,000 in his 2010 campaign, making her the top recipient of cash from that campaign, and then duplicated that feat in the 2012 campaign when she pocketed $93,000.
• Her $93,000 was a full 25% of what his campaign committee disbursed for the whole campaign.
• In his next two campaigns his wife pocketed $175,000.
• His daughters also got paid during these campaigns.

Must be nice to take money from people under one pretense and then give it out to family members. Outside of Congress I believe this is a felony. Must be good to be a member of the protected political class.

4) But Gutierrez is not the only unethical person in Congress. According to reporting by the Constitution website:

• Congressman Alcee Hasting recently got exposed when it came to light that he had given his long time girlfriend over $2.5 million over the past 20 years, keeping her on his payroll as his highest paid employee even though she was not anywhere close to being his most important staffer.
• But he and Gutierrez are not alone in this type of unethical behavior since the Washington Free Beacon recently reported that Congresswoman Maxine Walters has paid her daughter over $600,000 since 2006 from campaign funds.
• Her daughter served as employee on her mother’s campaign committees.
• But this is not the first time she has dabbled in unethical and/or illegal activities since in 2010 Waters was brought up on three separate charges by her peers in the House, even after Congressman Barney Frank told her not to get involved in advocating for a bank in which she had financial interest, breaking an important ethics rule that requires Congressional “members to behave in a way that reflects creditably on the chamber.”
• The bank she advocated for, OneUnited, was in financial trouble and Walters' husband owned a sizable amount of OneUnited stock that would have been worthless if the bank went bankrupt.
• Waters also violated a House rule prohibiting lawmakers from using their positions for financial gain, as well as a government ethics statute banning the dispensing of “special favors.”
• But again, we should not be surprised since various government watchdog groups have often cited her as one of the most corrupt politicians in Washington.

Just another set of examples where the concept of term limits becomes more and more attractive every day and with every unethical and corrupt act of the American political class.

That will do it for today’s and this month’s political class insanity review. Today we see that existing members of the political class in Washington know nothing about economic and everything about enriching themselves. Insanity. More of the same next month, guaranteed.

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

"Power Corrupts But Power Also Attracts The Corruptible" - More Political Class Corruption

We are constantly talking about the rampant corruption of American politics from a variety of perspectives. We have talked about how crony politics and capitalism resulted in tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth being directed to President Obama’s fund raisers’ alternative and solar energy companies, all of which went bankrupt or contributed nothing to the good of society:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/10/obama-adminstrations-bad-bets-on.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/10/stench-from-solyndra-continues-to-rise.html

We have talked about how Washington Democratic politicians preach that Americans need to pay more taxes while they actively go about immorally and illegally avoiding their fair share payment of taxes:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/01/january-2013-political-class-insanity_3.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/01/politicians-creed-do-as-i-say-not-as-i.html

And we have covered just general corruption in many posts including a series beginning with the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-slime-sleaze-immorality-and.html

Today will be an update on a variety of political corruption activities from a wide range of political spectrum, an update that comes on the heels of the recent news that now former Illinoi Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife will be going to jail for misusing and abusing campaign funds for their own personal, vain purchases:

1) Four Troy, New York Democratic politicians and political “operatives” recently pleaded guilty to voter fraud felony charges:

• Investigators uncovered their plot to rig election results by abusing the absentee ballot process.
• They were able to get their hands on absentee ballots of voters in their voting districts, forging signatures and submitting them with the votes they wanted to be registered.
• How easy was it to pull off this abuse of democracy? One of the Democrats who pleaded guilty stated “that faking absentee ballots was a commonplace and accepted practice in political circles, all intended to swing an election.”
• What types of voters were abused by this practice: “The people who are targeted live in low-income housing, and there is a sense that they are a lot less likely to ask any questions.”

So, yes, voter fraud does exist, the type of political fraud that undermines our freedom and democracy at its core. And even worse, it appears to be an accepted practice, at least in the Troy, New York area where taking advantage of the poor in our society is an accepted practice. Disgraceful.

Thankfully, they were caught and will be going to jail for what I consider treasonous acts because if a democracy cannot have faith in its democratic processes, faith in the democracy will end.

2) An Associated Press March 14, 2013 article reported on a massive set of arrests regarding the misuse and abuse of a military/veterans charity which has already led to the resignation of the lieutenant governor of Florida:

• Florida's lieutenant governor resigned and nearly 60 other people were charged in a scandal regarding a veterans charity that may have been nothing more than a front for a $300 million gambling operation.
• In turns out that the charity may actually be operating about 50 Internet parlors with computerized slot machine-style games.
• Law enforcement sources say the charity gave very little to veterans while charity officers and employees spent millions on themselves, their boats, beach front condos, and high end imported cars.
• According to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi , the alleged scam is "callous" and "despicable" and it "insults every American who ever wore a military uniform."
• Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll was not among those charged but resigned a day after she was questioned by investigators.
• The investigation involved 57 arrest warrants and 54 search warrants issued in Florida and five other states: South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Nevada and Pennsylvania, and law enforcement organizations had seized about 300 bank accounts containing $64.7 million, as well as sports cars and other property.
• Criminal charges are will likely include racketeering, conspiracy, money laundering and possession of slot machines.
• Apparently this is only the first wave of arrests, involving those that directly ran and profited from the felonious activity but another wave of arrests may involve others involved in lobbying and donations to political entities and efforts.

These are arrests, they are not proof of guilt, that question will have to be answered by the courts. But it is not a stretch to assume that political operatives and politicians are corrupt and abusing a segment of our population, in this case our veterans. If true, this is also disgraceful behavior by a disgraceful class of people.

3) The March 1, 2013 issue of The Week magazine reported on the corrupt exploits of the former mayor of San Diego, Maureen O’Connor. Seems that Ms. O’Connor took $2 million from a charity that had been established by her late husband and gambled it away, a fact that she does not dispute. Another politician apparently taking advantage of the more disadvantaged in our society.

But at least her excuses and reasons for taking the millions of dollars are creative. She claims that she had a “grief gambling” problem as a result of her husband’s death. In other words, it was not her fault. In addition, if that excuse was not enough, she also claimed that a brain tumor caused her to do it, she is not responsible for taking $2 million from a charity.

I am not a doctor or medical professional, I am not qualified to know if “grief gambling” is a true affliction or if her brain tumor made her do it. She has been given two years to pay back the debt by the courts, let’s see if she makes good with her fraud and corruption or if it was just another politician caught with their hand in the corruption cookie jar.

4) According to a CBS report from their Washington DC affiliate on March 11, 2013, a recent Pew Research survey found the following:

• Only three out of every ten Americans on average trust the decisions made by the government.
• This finding continues the downward trend over the years.
• These results are historic lows and are consistent across all subsets of Americans surveyed.
• According to the survey’s writers, “Since Barack Obama’s first year in office, public assessments of the federal government dropped nine points. Most of the change was among Democrats and independents, as the level of favorable views of government among Republicans was already low.” Thus, this is not a “Bush” problem, it is an Obama problem and crisis and a problem with every sitting politician.

Given the corruption, incompetence, selfishness, and elitist attitude of government and the political class, it should come as no surprise that we do not trust our elected officials. With record high and persistent unemployment, crony capitalism, skyrocketing national debt, wasteful spending, voting for self enrichment rather than the good of the country, the inability to resolve major issues such as our failing schools and high health care costs, it should not be a surprise the trust level is so low, it is a surprise that there is any trust level at all.

Just more examples from our real life politicians and why several steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” are critical in fixing what ails our political class and our democracy:

• Step 6 would allow only individual citizens to contribute to political campaigns, removing the money and corruption that comes when lobbyists, corporations, PACs, unions, and other political cronies get involved with our less than stellar politicians.
• Step 14 would stop the gerrymandering of Congressional districts.
• Step 34 would remove politicians from Congressional committees when those committees do not do their oversight jobs.
• Step 39 would impose strict term limits on all Federal politicians making their time office “one and done.”

An old saying goes as follows: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I think our writings on political class corruptions proves these points beyond a doubt.

But another saying, less well known, but also true, goes as follows: "Power corrupts but power also attracts the corruptible.” We need to change our political process so that not only do elected politicians behave and act with integrity but also that we start attracting Americans to politics that are not corruptible in the first place.

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