May, 2018, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: More Politicians Accused Of Sexual Misconduct, Nancy Pelosi Goes Racist, and Sheila Jackson Lee Fails Math

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

Let's get started:

1) Diamond and Silk are two African American women who became YouTube and Facebook Internet stars for supporting Donald Trump. They had over a million followers on Facebook and had made quite a name for themselves by exercising their First Amendment rights in a logical, sane, non-hateful, and non-violent way.

However, since their views did not match up with the liberal, left leaning folks at Facebook, Facebook shut them down for no good reason. This upset millions of Trump supporters and caused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to get grilled and embarrassed in a Congressional meeting when he flaccidly and poorly tried to back up from the canning of Diamond and Silk. 

Eventually Facebook crawled back to Diamond and Silk, largely because of the exposure they received from cancelling a popular Trump supporting Facebook account. This pissed off our favorite inane Congress person, Sheila Jackson Lee. 

You remember our past discussions about the Congresswoman. She wanted to know if the Mars Rover would be driving by where Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. She thinks the Constitution is over 400 years old. She thinks that there are still two Vietnams, North and South, with North Vietnam ruling South Vietnam. A rocket scientist she is not.

And now we know that she is not a math genius. Check out the video link listed below where she was questioning Diamond and Silk at a Congressional hearing. The basic idiocy of her questioning is simple:

• On April 11, 2018, Diamond and Silk were interviewed on TV and said that even though Zuckerberg told Congress that they were being restored to Facebook active status, as of April 11th, they had heard nothing from Facebook.
• On April 12, 2018, Diamond and Silk finally heard via a Twitter contact that they were being restored to Facebook.
• And yet the good Congresswoman insisted that Diamond and Silk lied about when they had heard from Facebook and thus, lied in the TV interview.

If this woman did not vote on laws that affect us all, her idiocy and incompetence would actually be both funny and pathetic:

https://www.facebook.com/DiamondandSilk/videos/1063875393761573/UzpfSTEwMDAwMDAxNTQ5NTY2NjoxOTEzNjIyNzY4NjQ4MjIx/

The epitome of political class insanity and ineptness.

2) Nancy Pelosi was once Speaker of the House early in the Obama Presidency. She has been a discussion point many times in this blog of the many inane, idiotic, and nonsensical comments she has made over time:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/12/nancy-pelosi-comedy-central-or-syfy.html

The Republicans eventually took control of the House and she lost her Speaker position. She was recently interviewed about the possibility of Democrats regaining control of the House and whether or not she still had enough pull to become Speaker of the House again, given that many Democrats are urging a change in their party’s leadership. At that point she issued the following racist comment:

“It’s important that it not be five white guys at the table, no offense,” Pelosi said, referring to the top two leadership spots in the House and Senate and the presidency. “I have no intention of walking away from that table.”

Can you imagine what would have happened if a white male member of Congress had something like that referring to minority men and women? Pelosi would have been leading the witch hunt. But when she says it, no racism cries at all. Pathetic.

3) We have not discussed the sexual predator and misbehavior of many politicians for a while but let’s get up to date on some of the latest politicians’ alleged sexual misconduct actions (remember that all of thee people are assumed innocent until proven guilty):

• LA County Lisa Bloom recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of a sixteen year girl, a girl that has alleged that current Congressman Tony Cardena drugged the girl and proceeded to sexually abuse her.
• Cardena is also accused of threatening the girl’s father in order to keep the alleged assault secret.
• The lawsuit says that the girl has accused Cardena of drugging the girl with a funny tasting water before sexually abusing her back in 2007. 
• Although Cardena’s attorney denies the accusations, there is likely something to the accusations since according to California law, the girl had to first convince a judge there was at least an element of truth to the situation before the accused perp’s actions could be made public, as in this case.
• According to the lawsuit, Cardena is accused of drugging the under age girl with a glass of water after a round of golf, causing her to drop to the ground (without losing total consciousness) after which Cardena carried the girl to his girl to drive her to the hospital.
• During the 30-45 minute ride to the hospital, Cardena supposedly “reached into her shirt [to rub] her breasts and also reached down her shorts.” More to follow.
• A few months ago, Amanda Renteria, a California Democrat running against the incumbent Lieutenant Governor accused the incumbent of engaging sexual misconduct.
• In Pennsylvania, a state government lawmaker was arrested and accused of engaging in sexual harassment and that taxpayer money was used to quietly settle the matter.
• Multiple women have come forward to accuse Congressman Ruben Kihuen of Nevada of sexual misconduct and although he has denied the accusations, he shortly thereafter announced that he was not running for reelection.
• California state Democratic politician Matt Dababneh has been accused of sexual misconduct by two different women which caused him to immediately announce that he was not running for reelection.

Given that past year of proven sexual misconduct by politicians at all levels of government, what are the odds that all of these [politicians are innocent? You decide.

That will do it for today’s insanity: sexual misconduct accusations against politicians flying all over the place, Nancy Pelosi going all racist, and Sheila Jackson Lee still going all stupid. More insanity 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.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

November, 2014, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Politicians For Sale, Lost War On Poverty, More Wastebook Waste, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity that has been dumped on us by the worst set of politicians to ever hold office in the history of this country. From wasteful spending to bad priorities to general ineffectiveness, the insanity rolling out of Washington and other political centers and governments around the country seems to be accelerating as the idiocy of our political times increases.

Last month we set a record by needing almost two full weeks of posts to get all of the insanity documented and discussed. Given what I see today, we will be hard pressed not to get close to or exceed that record of insanity this month. It keeps getting worse and worse and the effectiveness of the political class gets less and less.

This is our fourth post in this month’s series so the insanity continues to flow out of the political class and into our lives, our wallets, and our freedoms:

1) It is election time so it is no surprise that the many moneyed interests across the country are donating millions of dollars to various political campaigns in the hope of eventually billions of dollars in return via tax breaks, favorable legislation, etc. The top donors according to a recent Politico article to our broken political processes, in just the third quarter of 2014, are:

• U.S. Chamber ($28.4 million)
• National Association of Realtors ($18 million)
• U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform ($9.1 million)
• General Electric ($5.3 million)
• Boeing ($4.4 million)
• CVS Health ($4.3 million)
• NAM ($4.3 million)
• American Hospital Association ($4.3 million)
• American Medical Association ($4.2 million)
• Comcast Corporation ($4.2 million)
• Koch Companies Public Sector ($4 million)
• The National Association of Broadcasters ($4 million)
• Google ($4 million)
• National Cable and Telecommunications Association ($3.8 million)
• PhRMA ($3.7 million)
• United Technologies ($3.6 million)
• Lockheed Martin ($3.4 million)
• AT&T Services ($3.5 million)
• American Chemistry Council ($3.2 million)
• Occidental Petroleum ($3.2 million)

Just these twenty entities gave the political class almost $123 million in the past three months. Does anyone really think that the politicians that received these funds care more about our needs than those that gave them millions and millions of dollars? 

Never has there been more of a need for Step 6 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” a step that would allow only individual American citizens to contribute to political campaigns. No businesses, no unions, no PACs, no industry trade groups, etc. should be able to contribute to political campaigns. Only individual citizens, exercising their individual First Amendment rights, should have a say in financing political campaigns.

2) Cato recently pointed out that the War on Poverty recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Passed during the Johnson administration, this war was supposed to eliminate poverty in the country. According to Cato, the American taxpayer has spent $19 TRILLION in this “war,” making it the most expensive war in the history of the country

What do we have to show for our $19 TRILLION:

• About 46 million Americans, about one out of every seven, need monthly government food assistance.
•  The poverty rate of today is about 15%, about what it was fifty years ago.
• Millions of Americans are homeless and millions cannot afford basic medical care.
• As we reported a few days ago, much of the middle class cannot afford the luxuries that used to be taken for granted by the middle class so imagine how much worse off poorer Americans are if the middle class is under such financial assault.

Einstein once said that “the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” After fifty years and $19 TRILLION our politicians must truly be insane, doing the same things and programs over and over, since the war on poverty has been lost many times over.

3) We have already discussed some of the bigger wasteful spending follies that Senator Tom Coburn uncovered within the Federal budget earlier via his latest “Wastebook” research late last month at the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/10/wastebook-2015-unrelenting-wasteful_27.html

But since then we have come up with a few more from the Senator that are just as absurdly wasteful of taxpayer wealth:

•  The Federal government spent $190,000 to study compost digested by worms.
• It spent $297 million for the purchase of an unused mega blimp.
• It spent $1 million on a Virginia bus stop where only 15 people can huddle under a small roof. 

Almost half a million dollars spent on stupidity. As we said when we first discussed the Senator’s research, how many drug addicts could have been treated for half a million dollars? How many meals for the homeless and hungry could have been provided for half a million dollars? A half a million dollars is a very, very small part of the Federal government’s budget but it would be a very large part of a homeless American’s day.

4) And while Americans are going hungry, homeless, and unemployed, how is the Washington political class treating themselves? It must be a nice feeling to know that you can control how much you get paid even with such a pitiful performance while in office:

• The Speaker of the House currently gets an annual salary of $223,500, and will receive a payment of roughly that amount, depending on the years of service, for the rest of his life. 
• He gets paid this amount regardless of how poorly Congress and the political class performs in serving the country and its citizens.
• This $223,500 is about five times what the median U.S. household earns in a year.
• But that is probably at the lower rung of Congressional retirement benefits according to Cato. For example, Nancy Pelosi will not receive annually $223,500 for life, but roughly double that amount since 1) she is a member of Congress, 2) she is currently the House of Representatives’ Minority Leader, and 3) she is a retired Speaker of the House. 

ŸAnd Lord knows she is certainly not worth anywhere near that much, given her pathetic track record while serving in Congress.

Several steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” would remedy this disgrace and wasteful spending:

1. Step 37 would subject Congressional pay to an annual “customer/voter satisfaction” survey with the results determining how much Congressional members are paid, based on selected performance criteria
2. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, preventing them from every accumulating so many nonproductive years in Congress and pumping up their retirement benefits at taxpayer expense.
3. Step 41 would prohibit any member of Congress with a net worth of over $3 million from drawing a salary or pension from their service in Congress simply because they can afford to go without such compensation, given their personal wealth. Serving the country should be a calling, not a career.

The political class should not control their pay treatment and pension levels, we should, based on their performance, not their greed.

Another day another set of insanity. Overpaid and unaccountable politicians overseeing useless government expenditures to a failed $19 TRILLION failed war on poverty to the rich getting richer via the political process not via investment and hard work. More insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Help Wanted, Lawyers and Legal Resources, To Fight The Invisible Empire, Part 3: Suing The Political Class To Save Our Democracy

Three previous posts this week were focused on how ordinary Americans might be able to retake control of our democracy since the Washington political class seems to be very uninterested in protecting our democracy and doing their Constitutionally required jobs:

• On Monday we reviewed the massive $46 TRILLION lawsuit that has been filed in Brooklyn Federal court in an attempt to reverse the banking cronyism that has resulted in the political class redistributing taxpayer wealth to Wall Street bankers and others (“banksters”) in return for campaign donations and political support.
• On Tuesday we reviewed how delinquent and inept our politicians in Washington have been in carrying out their Constitutional and legal mandates when it comes to putting together coherent and detailed budgets on time.
• On Wednesday, we reviewed the dire financial situation we are in as a nation, mostly as a result of our politicians being unwilling or unable to do their jobs, most notably implementing coherent and rational budgets as required in the timeframes required.

These three posts lead us up to today’s proposal. Since it is obvious that our needs and priorities are not compatible with the election and personal enrichment priorities of the politicians in Washington, we need a new approach to reclaiming our democracy. The political class controls the country’s election processes via gerrymandering of Congressional districts, using taxpayer funded earmarks to buy support for their continual reelections, controlling the membership and activities of the toothless Federal Election Commission, allowing billions of dollars from organized entities (unions, corporations, PACs) to overwhelm individual citizen needs and priorities, etc.

This control does not mean we should not take steps to continue to regain control and get back to election processes that actually reflect the desires of ordinary Americans. Many of these steps are outlined in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” and also include the critical step of instituting term limits so that all Washington politicians are “one and done.”

However, using the $43 TRILLION lawsuit as a new paradigm, we need to go to court to reduce the power, corruption, cronyism, and liberty reduction activities of our political class. This post proposes two approaches. After reviewing them below, we will ask for support and guidance on how to move forward on this track.

Before going into the two judicial processes, let’s review some recent Federal government budget results and disasters:

• Recall from our posts earlier this week that the U.S. Senate, and consequently the entire Federal government, has not passed a comprehensive, coherent, and Constitutionally mandated Federal budget since April, 2009.
• Thus, for fiscal years, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, the American political class has failed miserably in accomplishing one of the basic requirements of their job description.
• If we go to the official White House budget website, (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals), we see that from 2010 through the expected results of 2013, the Federal government will have spent $14.658 TRILLION.
• In that same timeframe, the Federal government collected $9.837 TRILLION in taxes/revenue, incurring a spending deficit of $4.821 TRILLION.
• I contend that this $4.821 TRILLION deficit would not have occurred if there had been actual budgets passed and adhered to, like what is supposed to happen in our democracy.
• There are about 315 million Americans living in the U.S. today.
• If we divide the deficit spending over the past four years by the number of Americans, I contend that because of the lack of a formal budget, the political class has illegally overspent its revenue stream and wasted taxpayer wealth to the tune of about $15,000 per American ($4.8 TRILLION deficit divided by 315 million Americans.)
• We recognize that Congress has the power, as laid out in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, to collect taxes: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United State.
• However, under the Constitution’s Appropriation Clause, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 and the laws on budget processes that have been implemented to support the Appropriations Clause, Congress and the Federal government are required to pass and adhere to timely budgets: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
• The Heritage Foundation provides a coherent definition of what is required as a result of this clause: The Appropriations Clause is the cornerstone of Congress's "power of the purse." It assigns to Congress the role of final arbiter of the use of public funds. The source of Congress's power to spend derives from Article I, Section 8, Clause 1. The Appropriations Clause provides Congress with a mechanism to control or to limit spending by the federal government. The Framers chose the particular language of limitation, not authorization, for the first part of the clause and placed it in Section 9 of Article I, along with other restrictions on governmental actions to limit, most notably, executive action.
• Given these two clauses from the Constitution and the Heritage Foundation’s interpretation that the Constitution requires Congress have a mechanism to control or limit spending, we contend that by not passing detailed budgets in any year since 2009 that Congress, specifically the Senate, has failed to implement the mandated mechanisms to control or limit spending, resulting in catastrophic and unnecessary deficit spending.

This deficit spending has resulted in every American being burdened with an unnecessary $15,000 of national debt. Thus, we intend to sue Congress, specifically Harry Reid and the Senate, for damages to the tune of $15,000. This $15,000 could be paid in any number of ways:

• Harry Reid, as Senate Majority Leader, and the reason for the failure to produce a Federal budget for the past several years, could write us a personal check for $15,000.
• The members of the Senate Finance Committee and Budget Committee, all of whom bear some responsibility for not doing their jobs and building annual Federal budgets, could all chip in individually to come up with the $15,000 total.
• The least attractive option, but one that we could accept, is for the $15,000 to come out of Federal tax streams. The unattractiveness of this option is that those responsible for the budget and deficit crises do not feel the pain of their negligence.

However, we would consider an alternative settlement in lieu of the $15,000:

• As a result of his inability to lead the Senate to the completion of one of its most basic duties, producing a coherent annual budget, Harry Reid would step down as the Senate Majority Leader and never chair another Senate committee as long as he was in Congress.
• The Congress and President would agree to a new law that would suspend the salary payment and all benefits of the President, members of the House of Representatives, or members of the Senate whenever a mandated budget deadline is missed. Their salary payment would commence again once they fulfilled their budget development responsibilities but they would never regain the salary that was loss because of their tardiness. Its called accountability in the real world and accountability comes with consequences.
• If two consecutive annual budget deadlines are missed in either the House or the Senate, the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority Leader would be permanently removed form those positions.

That’s the situation and that’s the strategy. There has to be another way to levy accountability on these Washington politicians who are failing to execute a primary responsibility of their position, developing and adhering to a responsible budget. By making them accountable, either by writing a $15,000 check or suspending their pay, we hope to finally make them do their job.

However, I am certainly not a lawyer, legal expert, or have any idea how to start and operate this process. Thus, if there are any readers, with any kind of legal expertise, out there that feel this might be a worthwhile effort to finally make politicians subservient to the needs of Americans and not to their own self enrichment and political careers, please consider helping us out.

I believe that there are two options available:

1. Sue the Federal government locally in my home area of Tampa Bay, either in small claims court or any other local venue.
2. Sue the Federal government in Federal court and make this effort a class action suit on behave of every American whose family will eventually have to pay upwards of $15,000 for the government’s wild, budgetless spending.

I am pretty sure if this is done properly that media and press attention would be quite wide. It is a novel approach to make government efficient and effective as opposed to what we have been living with over the past several years. I believe that the last thing politicians want is to be called out into the sunshine of accountability and this approach would hopefully do just that, with the resultant media coverage and pressure.

Is this a pipe dream and just a flight of whimsy? Possibly, but I know of very few other ways that we could use to finally get the Federal government under control, get its spending under control, make the politicians in Congress actually do their job, and save our fiscal future for our kids and grandkids. Can anybody out there help get this approach launched?

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

Final Proof Of Undeniable Corruption, Immorality, and Greed of The American Political Class

Most of us have long suspected that the American political class had devolved to a state where personal political careers and wealth have now taken precedence over the good of the country, relative to most of our politicians. Rather than truly addressing and resolving issues in the right way for the right reasons, seems many of our politicians would prefer to take the cowardly approach and do nothing or do the wrong thing for the country rather than endanger their re-election and personal enrichment efforts.

We have reported on these situations many times in the past in this blog:

- In our September 1, 2011 post we reported on a analysis by two university professors of the historic stock market returns of Washington politicians' personal portfolios. Seems that both Democrats and Republicans serving in Congress, but especially Democrats, have historically outperformed the stock market's overall returns with their own stock portfolios. The study analyzed results over decades across hundreds of different politicians so the sample size is more than ample to draw conclusions from.

Given that these same politicians have not outperformed in any other facet of their jobs, it becomes suspicious that they would do so well in this area of personal enrichment vs. the rest of America's investors, i.e. you and me and professional investors. At that time, we raised the distinct possibility of insider trading of Congressional politicians because of their outstanding stock market performances. Coincidence or corruption?

- In our October 4, 2011 post, we reviewed a few of Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid's documented investment strategies over the past few years. According to John Ransom, writing for Townhall.com on September 30, 2011, in 2008, one month before oil prices took a historical plunge, the good Senator sold between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of energy stock holdings he held in the Dow Jones Energy index.

Shortly thereafter, he purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of health care holdings in the Dow Jones Health Care Index, at a time when he was considering rewriting the nation's health care laws. Coincidence or corruption?

- Also from our October 4, 2011 post, consider the shenanigans of Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite. According to an article that was written by John Frank for the June 30, 2009 St. Petersburg Times.ne day before the House of Representatives approved a massive bank bailout plan in October, 2008, the Congresswoman bought stock in Citigroup, one of the major banks that received a significant portion of the bank bailout funding.


About two weeks later, on the day Treasurer Henry Paulson announced he would invest $250 billion of taxpayer money in nine major banks, the Congresswoman bought stock in Bank of America, one of those nine banks. Coincidence or corruption?


- On November 11, 2011, Money News reported on accusations that at about dozen lawmakers and their senior aides bragged about how much money they had earned in the stock market based on insider trading-like information that they knew ahead of the general public because of their government positions.


The article included the following details:

• The insider trading dollar amounts ranged from a few thousand dollars to six figures.
• Much of the insider trading involved companies that were likely to be brought before Congress for investigations, an act that usually resulted in a negative impact on a company's stock price. By shorting a stock ahead of that information being public, Congressional figures could and did make out sized profits.
• The huge profits were being made by people that had no serious background or past history of success in picking winners and losers in the stock market.

Coincidence or corruption? I think most honest Americans would conclude that all of these incidents are examples of political class corruption, immorality, and greed.


Now, some in the political class would claim that this last piece of corruption information cannot be trusted because it was made by Jack Abramoff, a former lobbyists who was convicted of corruption himself and who has served time in jail.


I would usually agree with such a stand but not this time. First, if anyone should know about corruption, it should be Abramoff since he was the king of corrupt special interests years ago. Second, a recent story that appeared on the CBS show "60 Minutes" not only verifies that this type of behavior exists but went so much further in explaining how and who was deeply involved in the corruption. (You can see the entire,unabridged  "60 Minutes" story at
http://lonelyconservative.com/2011/11/nancy-pelosis-insider-trading/)


According to the "60 Minutes" report, almost everyone in the country is subject to insider trading laws and compliance. This includes ordinary Americans, anyone serving in the executive branch of the Federal government (e.g. the President, the Vice President, etc.), and Federal judges. The only people excluded from having to comply are...members of Congress, the same people who wrote and passed the laws on insider trading that exclude themselves from being prosecuted for such actions.

Just when you think you have heard every conceivable sin, shortcoming, and outright immorality from our politicians, you come across this travesty. They have cleared the decks for themselves to make grand sums of money in the stock market by using insider government trading information.

Examples from "60 Minutes" included the following:

• John Boehner, currently the Speaker of the House, made a serious investment in health care insurance stocks shortly before he led the legislative effort to defeat a key component in Obama's original health care reform bill, a component that would have depressed health care stock prices if not defeated. With the component's defeat, health care insurance stocks rose and made money for Mr. Boehner. Coincidence or corruption?
• Several years ago, then Speaker of the House Dennis Hasert, made some land acquisitions in Ohio. He then worked to adjust Federal highway projects so that a new Federally-financed highway would run close to his newly purchased land, significantly increasing the land's value when he sold it.
• Congressman Spencer Bachus also seemed to do pretty well with insider information. The "60 Minutes" story was apparently inspired by a recently published book, "Throw Them All Out," written by Hoover Institute fellow Peter Schweizer. According to Schweizer, Bachus and Nancy Pelosi got secret briefings from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who basically told the legislators that it was "a matter of days before there is a meltdown in the global financial system.”  Bachus went out shortly thereafter and invested about $7,000 to short the stock market. When the stock market did start to collapse, he was able to cash in the investment for almost twice what he originally put out just a few days before. He also shorted General Electric four times after Paulsen told him GE bond sales were having problems. Coincidence or corruption?

Terrible, terrible, immoral behavior. Which brings us to our favorite member of the political class, Nancy Pelosi. According to the story, Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House, and her husband had access to at least eight IPO offerings over the past few years. As most of you know, we ordinary Americans rarely get in on a ground floor, the most lucrative financial time, in any IPO offerings.

The most troubling and potentially corrupt IPO was for the Visa IPO back in 2008. Ms. Pelosi purchased 5,000 IPO shares on the first day of the Visa offering at $44 a share. She sold it within days when the price had reached $64 a share, a profit of about $100,000.

What makes this so very troubling is prior to the Visa IPO offering there was a legislative effort within the House of Representatives to impose credit card fee limits on companies such as Visa. Obviously, if such legislation passed, it would certainly put a damper on Visa's stock price, and would depress the earnings and gains of anyone who invested in the Visa IPO.

That legislation was mysteriously never able to see the light of day prior to the IPO date. The legislation eventually did become law but the driver and leader in the legislation was the Senate, not the House, and passage happened well after people like then- Speaker of the House Pelosi had made their substantial gains off of the IPO offering. Coincidence or corruption?

I really do not know what to say. No more proof is necessary to finally declare that we have allowed a privileged, spoiled, selfish, and, because of the insider trading disaster, an immoral set of people to take control of the country for their own benefit and personal enrichment. Immoral, I cannot come up with any better word to describe this insider trading insult to the American taxpayer and citizen.

And the sad thing is that they do not see anything wrong with this immoral behavior. When the "60 Minutes" reporter, Steve Croft, asked Ms. Pelosi about her IPO behavior at one of her press conferences, her answer was both incoherent and bordering on indignant that someone could even imply she ever had a conflict of interest.

In press releases from her office later that day, she attacked the writer of the book, "Throw Them All Out," as being a discredited conservative.  In other words, she attacked the person and not his information or his process. The "60 Minutes" report showed how the writer and eight of his aides had meticulously gone through official financial records to ensure the book's accusations were accurate. She also accused CBS and "60 Minutes" of a "right wing smear," failing to mention in her press releases that the story also illustrated the same type of immoral behavior of several Republicans.

Ms. Pelosi did not refute that she had participated in the Visa IPO or had made a ton of money in the process. She did not refute that she had participated in many other IPOs while in a powerful position in government, Speaker of the House. She did not refute the fact that she had received highly sensitive and highly valuable advance information from Bernanke and Paulsen. She did not refute the fact that Congress had exempted her and her comrades from the very laws that every other American had to abide by. She tried to turn it into a political issue and attack the person, the messenger.

Obviously, three actions have to take place to fix this immorality:

1. Short term, we need to force Congressional members to make themselves subject to the same insider trading laws as the rest of us.
2. We need to tighten up information sources within government so that pending government actions are kept as secret as possible, as compared to the situation today (as referenced at the end of the "60 Minutes story) so that no one, either inside the Beltway or outside, gets sensitve and valuable insider information.
3. And the most important action is to implement Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" which calls for the Constitutional establishment of term limits for all Federal politicians, "one and done." There is no other way to deal with this immorality, the current set of politicians in Washington do not deserve to serve any longer, given the rampant corruption we constantly see.

When Pelosi became Speaker of the House in 2007, she boldly declared that she and the Democrats were going to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Congress, Instead, it looks like she and her peers in Congress built a dam and the corruption is as deep as ever. "One and done," it cannot happen soon enough.

One additional note: According to a recent blurb in Roll Call, and published the November 18, 2011 issue of The Week Magazine, the 500 or so members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion, a whopping 25% increase over their collective wealth in 2008. The 50 richest lawmakers account for 80% of the wealth and the median net worth is about $513,000.

How many ordinary Americans do you know who made a 25% return in their personal portfolios in the past two years? Why wouldn't the 50 richest lawmakers serve their country for no salary and no benefits since they obviously can afford to serve, without suffering financial distress, if they did not collect salary or benefits. Wouldn't that be the moral, courageous thing to do.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available, at http://www.loathemygovernment.com .It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respectfreedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

1. 

Nancy Pelosi: Becoming More And More Irrelevant (Hopefully)

We have had a lot of fun at Nancy Pelosi's expense in many posts in the past. She has been just such a fertile ground of political class insanity. Consider some of her finer moments:

• When Congress was trying to decide whether or not to extend unemployment benefits further, she made the not quite so sound economic proclamation that sending out unemployment checks is one of the absolute best ways to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Taken to its logical conclusion, her assertion implies that the more people that are unemployed, the more jobs will be created.
• When promoting some legislation to help the unemployed, she reacted angrily at the slow pace of the negotiations, claiming that "500 million Americans are losing their jobs every week." Since there are only about 300 million Americans in the country, not all of whom are old enough to work, it appears that she counts in a different way than most of us.
• As the opposition to the passage of Obama Care grew, she proclaimed that we had to pass the massive, 2,000+ page bill in order to find out what is in it and hold our disagreements until then. Why we could not know what was in the bill beforehand is still a mystery to me. Is it possible that she did not even know what was in it at the time? Was Congress that much out of control under her reign that they were passing stuff that they did not know what it was? Given that Attorney General Eric Holder initiated legal action against the state of Arizona over its illegal immigration law even though he had not read the twelve page document, it is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Funny stuff, in a sad, pathetic way. Fortunately, she is no longer the Speaker of the House, having lost her seat when the Republicans took control of the House Of Representatives in November. However, she is still a source of perplexing statements and views of reality, making one wonder the same thing that Frasier Crane was thinking in an old "Cheers" episode when he asked Cliff Clavin: "What color is the sky in your world, Cliff?"

Her latest strange remark was in response to the a set of proposed budget cuts that the House Republicans are proposing as a first set of steps to getting Federal deficit spending  under control. Before seeing her quote, recall that during the four years she was Speaker Of the House, the Federal government incurred some of its highest annual spending deficits by any measure:

• In absolute terms, during her tenure as Speaker, the Federal government spent over $4 TRILLION more than it collected in revenues. This imposed about an additional $40,000 debt burden on every American household.
• In relative terms, Federal spending as a percentage of our GDP was in the 10% range for some of those, more than three times what most sane economists would say is a safe percentage.
• In order to keep up with this 10% rate, the economy would theoretically have to grow 10% a year to keep up. We are happy when the economy grow 3%, never mind 10%.

The really sad part of this economic disaster that she presided over is that when she became Speaker, she declared that she would run the House Of representatives budgeting process as a "pay as you go system." In other words, no additional spending would be approved by Congress unless cuts were made elsewhere in the budget. This seems at odds with the actual results, unprecedented TRILLION deficits every year.

So what does she say when the Republicans want to start the long process towards fiscal control and discipline:

"Democrats are committed to fiscal discipline, starting with an aggressive attack on waste, fraud, and abuse in our Federal budget. But we will not do so at the expense of good jobs, a strong middle class, and a growing economy."

As usual, she provided no details on what this "fiscal discipline" would look like. We have no experience with Pelosi's version of fiscal discipline since we never saw it during her four years as Speaker. We never saw how the Democrats attacked waste and fraud since they never did it during her tenure as speaker. Obama's own administration last year admitted that almost $100 billion a year is lost to fraud and criminal acts through the leaking government health insurance programs.

CBS News reported on February 9, 2011 that Federal government job training programs are redundant and filled with fraud. It reviewed a Federal job training program in Iowa whose director misused taxpayer money, to the tune of $1.5 million, for illegal bonuses for herself and others, all of whom took hundreds of trips to casinos on work hours and on the taxpayers dollars. Another program in West Virginia found that its director illegally funneled $100,000 of taxpayer money to her son.

CBS went on to explain that the Federal government spends $18 billion annually on government job training programs but that is spread out over 47 different Federal agencies, most of whom serve the same people. Of the 47, only five of the agencies have ever been studied to see if their trainees got more jobs than those that did not go through the training. The report concluded that "finding examples of waste wasn't hard. It's not so easy to find evidence the programs work well."

How so very well said. Pelosi and the Democrats were in charge for four years. They cannot blame Bush for any of this, it all happened on their watch. And now they have "fiscal discipline" and they want "an aggressive attack on waste, fraud, and abuse." Please spare me the drama. She had her chance and she proved that she could not or would not (the end result is the same) run a sane, efficient and effective government budget and operations.

Hopefully, she will never get a chance again to be in any kind of power position, the country would not be able to stand her bungling and lack of focus. Over four TRILLION dollars in deficit spending in just four years. That comes out to over $115 million an HOUR that the government spent that it did not have on her watch. Unbelievable. She does not deserve any kind of second chance. Let's hope she stays as irrelevant as her public rantings make her out to be.

She should have followed some of the steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" if she really wanted to see what fiscal discipline and responsibility looks like:

1. Step 1 - reduce Federal spending 10% a year for five years by doing a ground up view of every government function and department, eliminating waste, redundancy, and programs that do not serve American citizens.
2. Step 5 - aggressively pursue and prosecute fraud in all government programs.
3. Steps 10, 11, 12 - a three step approach to reign in runaway costs in the Social Security System
4. Step 30 - bring back almost all foreign deployed U.S. troops as soon as possible, we can no longer afford to garrison the world.

As Pelosi makes herself irrelevant, the President needs to be very careful. A lot of the excessive deficit spending and waste and fraud in government programs happened on his watch also. That $115 million of deficit spending an hour is his number also. Unless he is careful, he may become as irrelevant as Ms. Pelosi if he fails to step up and display the courage to make the difficult cuts that the government needs to make. If he does not, his White House tenure might be half over already.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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