December, 2014, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: The Hottest U.S. Senator, More Wasteful Pentagon Spending, And More

It’s the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from America’s politicians. Whether it is wasteful spending, inane quotes, faulty government operations, or insulting the American public, there is always new material spewing forth from these people, usually enough to fill up half a dozen or so posts every month. Given what we know today, this month should be no different as the insanity seems to be expanding exponentially from those in office today.

This is our seventh installment this month and we are getting near to the end of the latest insanity from our politicians. A lot of what you will see today comes from events that happened this past summer. It is only now that we have been able to get through the recent insanity that we can now review older, but still crazy, political class insanity. With any luck and no more political shenanigans, we might be able to wrap up this month’s political class insanity with this post (but don’t bet on it.)

1) According to an October, 2014 New York Times article, soon after U.S. military forces defeated the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, caravans of trucks started to bring pallets of $100 bills to Andrews Air Force base outside of D.C. The money came from accounts of the former Iraqi government and was being sent to Iraq to try and kick start the economy and new Iraqi government that was to replace Hussein.

In total, over an 18 month period, between $12 and $14 billion in cold cash was sent into Iraq and an additional $5 billion was returned to the country by electronic transfer. Where that money ended up and what it was used for then became a mystery.

So much of a mystery that a special inspector general had to be appointed to find out what happened to the cash. Stuart Bowen drew that assignment and while he found that a lot of the money probably was used as intended by the new Iraqi government, billions of it were unaccounted for. Finally, he had a breakthrough and proved that about $1.5 billion of physical U.S. cash had been stored in a bunker in rural Lebanon.

However, given his findings, no one seemed to want to do anything about it. According to the article, the Bush administration showed no interest in tracking it down and retrieving it, the Obama administration followed suit, and the Iraqi government also decided not to take steps to retrieve it. All of these administrations along with the FBI and the CIA refuse to discuss the missing billion dollars plus.

It is not easy to transport, lose, and store $1.5 billion or so. This is not pick pocket money. Yet, despite the large amount of money, nobody in the political class in Washington is interested in getting it back before it can be used for nefarious purposes. $1.5 billion in U.S. cash can buy a lot of terrorists a lot of weapons. But apparently no one in Washington cares. Insane.

2) Washington Democrats, including the President, have often tried to divide the country by claiming that Republicans have declared a “war on women” and Democrats are the only ones helping women in the country. We have previously pointed out how hypocritical this propaganda is since many famous Democratic politicians have been caught cheating on their wives, not something an advocate of women should be doing, lying and cheating on women:

•  Former President Bill Clinton
• Former New York State District Attorney Eliot Spitzer
• Former New Jersey Governor James MacGreevey
• Former U.S. Senator John Edwards who not only cheated on and lied to his wife he did these dastardly acts while she was battling cancer and fighting for her life.

There are many others but you get the idea. To this ignoble list of insulting women, we add a recent quote by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who publicly declared at a recent campaign fundraiser: “We in the Senate refer to [New York U.S. woman] Senator Gilibrand as the hottest member.” Yes, nothing says you respect women than to refer to them in public as the “hottest.” Such insane hypocrisy.

3) Throughout this week and previously months’ political class insanity posts, we have often pointed out how inept the Pentagon is when it comes to managing taxpayer money. And now thanks to a recent article from Businessweek, that was summarized in the August 8, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, we now know that the average major Pentagon acquisition program comes in at 40% over budget. 

As just one example of how incompetent the Defense Department is at logistics and procurement, Businessweek points out that even when the Defense Department purchases prescription drugs for members of our armed forces, it ends up paying a whopping 60% more than what Medicaid pays for the same drugs.

You really must be incompetent when you are 60% more incompetent than the dysfunctional Medicaid process, a process we have previously reported loses anywhere form $30 to $40 billion a year to fraud and waste. Pathetic disregard for taxpayer wealth and as always, I doubt that anyone who is responsible for this irresponsible spending ever lost their jobs or were otherwise penalized for their ineptness.

4) Political class insanity and incompetence is not restricted to Washington. A Reason magazine article from the November, 2014 issue reported on what is happening in Colorado as a result of the gun control legislation that state passed last year. Part of that legislation required that all private transfers of weapons go through a background check similar to the kinds of checks that gun stores have to do.

So how is that working out? According to the article, the state expected that there would be about 420,000 background checks as a result of the law in the first two years after enactment. One year after enactment there have been only 13,600 background checks or only about 7% of what the state politicians expected. So either the politicians did a really lousy job of estimating the impacts of their law or citizens of Colorado are simply ignoring a law that many found repugnant to begin with. 

In either case, a lot of legislative time and effort was spent on a law that is having little real world impact, not a surprising outcome when talking about American politicians today.

5) One last piece of insanity for today and it is also a doozy. Nick Gillespie, writing for the Against Cronyism website, cited an Associated Press report back August that stated that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had actually paid an Amtrak secretary $854,460 over a twenty year period for confidential information on Amtrak train passengers. A secretary, a secretary in a different federal agency, twenty years, over $854,000, unbelievable.

Amtrak’s inspector general FINALLY uncovered the shenanigans after twenty years. Also unbelievable was the fact that the secretary was allowed to retire without any other significant repercussions or punishment. 

Even worse, according to the inspector general’s report and the Associated Press reporting, Amtrak could have lawfully and legally obtained the same information for free over those twenty years through a standing joint drug enforcement law enforcement organization that includes both DEA and Amtrak’s own police force.

Keystone Kops could not be any more screwed up. One agency of the Federal government paying a secretary big bucks in another Federal agency for confidential customer information that they could have obtained for free. Again, you cannot make this stuff up.

Although I promised that this might be the last insanity post for this month, I have to take back that promise. I could not it all into this post. Tomorrow will be the last insanity post for this month, not necessarily because we covered all of the idiocy but because it is too depressing to go beyond tomorrow.

Until then, please consider visiting our term limits website and join the cause to clean out Washington of the insane and the insanity:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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

June, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Another ATF Screw Up, Democratic Adultery, Government Spying, And More

Okay, I think this will be the last post on this month’s political class insanity. It has been a bumpy ride as we learned that the ATF has had its storage facility robbed of a quarter ton of explosives, how John McCain would rather work on ESPN issues than real national issues, how the French political class are trying to tax some of its citizens at a tax rate over 100% of their earnings, and various other political class acts of lunacy, waste, and idiocy.

Today should end the insanity for another month or so. Today, we will start out with some insanity courtesy of Reason magazine. Reason is a fabulous monthly magazine that is dedicated to preserving freedom and liberty in this country. In their pursuit of that goal, they come across a lot of political class insanity that is summarized at the beginning of each of their issues. The following insanity comes from their June, 2013 issue:

1) Earlier this year. the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge the Federal government’s ability to put a U.S. citizen under warrantless surveillance, a law suit against a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA. That amendment allows the Federal government to intercept communications between someone inside the country and someone outside of the country.

The unbelievable reason why the lawsuit was rejected was apparently not because of the heinous act of the government spying on citizens but the fact that the plaintiffs could not prove they had been spied on and thus, had no standing to challenge the law. They could not prove they had been spied on since the government will not reveal who they are spying on!

According to the ACLU in 2012: “The Justice Department claims the plaintiffs should not be able to sue without first showing they have been actually been monitored under the program - but it also argues that the government should not be required to disclose if plaintiffs have been monitored.”

Well, the political class and the Federal government certainly tied this one up in a neat knot, along with the Supreme Court. We can spy on anyone we want and you cannot sue us because we do not have to tell you that we spied on you. Insanity and a definite threat to freedom from a growing and arrogant Federal bureaucracy.

2) Two posts ago we reviewed how the ATF had lost a quarter ton of explosives when robbers broke into the ATF’s supposedly secure bunker in Montana and made off with the explosives. Apparently, the ATF incompetence is not restricted to Montana, according to Reason magazine:

• In 2012, the ATF opened up a dummy retail store in Milwaukee which sold designer clothes, jewelry, and drug paraphernalia.
• The ATF agents hoped to use the store front to buy drugs and weapons from felons and make the appropriate busts.
• According to the primary local newspaper, the sting operation did not result in any major busts of drug dealers or criminal gangs.
• However, merchandise worth $35,000 was stolen from the store despite the fact that ATF agents ran the operation.
• Included in the stolen property was an actual machine gun, a fully automatic M-14 rifle, and an assortment of other guns.
• Although the store operation was shut down, the agents forgot to remove documents on site that contained the names and contact information of undercover agents in the field.
• The agents caused $15,000 in property damage the building that has yet to be paid.
• And worse of all, they ticked off the people living in the surrounding neighborhood who were unaware that criminals and other shady characters were coming into their neighborhood as a result of what turned out to be a useless and dangerous government sting operation gone bad.

The most insane piece of the escapade is that an ATF spokesman insisted that the store operation had made Milwaukee safer. If the ATF thinks that losing a machine gun and other weapons is a safety success despite no major arrests, they must think losing a quarter ton of explosives in Montana was a booming (so to speak) success also.

3) Anne Arundel County in Maryland recently lived through a little local political class insanity itself. Apparent, county executive John Leopold resigned his post after being found guilty of misconduct. No surprise there, just another politician found lacking in integrity.

What was surprising was that after he left office, his replacement discovered more than 500 secret security cameras that had been set up in county office buildings. The 500 cameras were monitored by a single person, a contract employee who reported directly to Leopold, the county executive who was forced to resign.

All of which raises a whole set of interesting questions:

• How was the former county executive able to fund the purchase, installation, and operationalizing for over 500 cameras? Does not look like the county has a good audit process in place.
• What was he looking for and what did he find as a result of the 500 cameras?
• Does he have to tell anyone that he secretly taped them or does he have the same power as the Justice Department who thinks they do not have to tell anyone they secretly monitored them?

Insanity at the local government level.

4) Many times we have reported on how powerful politicians somehow are always able to get sweetheart deals for their friends and relatives, always at the expense of the American taxpayer. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law’s company got a sweetheart deal from the Federal Department of Energy. Senator Diane Feinstein’s husband got in on the ground floor of California’s effort to build a high speed rail line.

Now along comes a Politico article from May 24, 2013. According to the article, as chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon has major influence over the Pentagon’s annual spending plan, making him and his committee very powerful entities within the defense industry. No problem so far.

However, the article goes on to point out that a California lobbying company run by the Congressman’s brother and nephews has landed five lobbying clients, according to current filed disclosure forms. Each client lists “defense” as an issue area. A little conflict of interest? Why shouldn’t the Congress have to be removed from this committee and go work on a government area that has nothing to do with defense since his close relatives are heavily involved in the defense industry. The appearance of conflict of interest is just as bad as actual conflict of interest.

But would make Congressman McKeon any different from the dozens, if not hundreds, of recent members of Congress who have made it a point to financially help out friends and relatives, as witnessed by the August 16, 2012 post we wrote last year, based on an investigative report by the Washington Post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-slime-sleaze-immorality-and_16.html

Disgraceful.

5) A recent special Congressional election in South Carolina resulted in former South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford being elected to fill the vacant House seat. For those of you that do not recall or never knew, Mr. Sanford was caught in an adultery affair while governor, bringing disgrace to himself and his office.

However, he has made a political comeback from this affair with his election to the House Of Representatives, a fact that must have really ticked off Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz who ranted recently about Sanford in an MSNBC interview:

The Republican Party continues to be the party of extremists, it doesn’t send a strong message to women in this country that the Republican party understands that they have gone way off the issues that are important to women when they election a candidate like Mark Sanford after his track record.

I could not agree with her rant more. Lying, adultery, and lack of integrity (not to mention lack of self control) should not qualities we would want in any politician. Including Democrats. You see, Ms. Wassermann-Schultz did not remember the ugly track record of lying and adultery that has been a hallmark of DEMOCRATIC politicians over the past few years:

1. Democratic President Bill Clinton: serial adulterer and liar.
2. Democratic New Jersey Governor Jim MacGreevey: adulterer and liar.
3. Democratic New York Governor Eliot Spitzer: adulterer and liar.
4. Democratic Senator John Edwards: adulterer and liar, with the added bonus of cheating on his wife while she battled cancer.
5. Democratic Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick: Text messaging sex scandal
6. Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner: Twitter sex scandal and liar.
7. Democratic New York Governor David Peterson: adultery.
8. Democratic Congressman David Wu, D: about two years ago he announced his resignation form Congress following allegations he engaged in "aggressive and unwanted sexual behavior" with a young woman. (CBS News, July 26, 2011.)

Going further back in time in the history of Democratic hanky-panky in their hall of shame:

1. Democratic Congressman Gary Condit: adulterer and liar, actions that may or may not have resulted in the death of the young woman involved with Congressman, Chandry Levy.
2. Democratic Senator Gary Hart: adultery affair with Donna Rice.
3. Democratic President John Kennedy: serial adulterer and liar.
4. Democratic Congressman Wilbur Mills: adultery affair with stripper, Fannie Foxx

So Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, I could not agree with you more but it is mostly because of this list of shameful Democratic politicians and the track record of their abuse of woman and their own wives.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity. I need to go wash off the slime and disgust that the American political class continues to generate and spew on the country and its citizens every month. As always after reviewing their insanity, Step 39 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” becomes ever more attractive. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians so that they would be “one and done.”

Given the disgraceful behavior of our current set of politicians, how much worse could it get if we just replaced all of the incumbents with new faces with new ideas?

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

Not Making Their Parents Proud - Recent Antics Of The American Political Class

Seems like their has been a recent rush of bad behavior from three members of our political/government class, behavior that will definitely place at least one of our politicians in jail, may land another in jail, and has already led to the resignation of a high ranking member of the Obama administration. But before we get into the details of these three folks, let's do a quick review of other politicians that have been caught acting badly the past few years and whose antics have been given renewed press coverage lately, given the recent outbreak of bad politicians acting badly:

1. In 2004, Connecticut Governor, John C. Rowland resigned and served 10 months in prison for accepting gifts from state contractors and lying about it.
2. Also in 2004, married New Jersey Governor James MacGreevey resigned after confessing he had given a sensitive state government, homeland security-like post to his extramarital lover.
3. Ex-Illinois Governor George Ryan, was convicted in 2006 of steering state government contracts to friends and served prison time for his transgressions.
4. George Ryan is upholding a long criminal tradition in the state governor's office since four of the past nine Illinois governors have been sentenced to prison terms for criminal behavior.
5. Married New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008 after confessing to patronizing prostitutes and arranging for them to cross state lines, a criminal violation of the Mann Act.
6. In 2010, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford acknowledged an affair with a woman in Argentina, maintained through his misuse of state government money and resources.
7. Ex-Senator of North Carolina, John Edwards, will face trial in the near future for violating campaign financing laws when he allegedly used campaign funds from his Presidential campaign to support and cover up his extramarital affair, an affair that resulted in a child born out of wedlock, and an affair that was conducted while his wife battled terminal cancer.
8. Senator John Ensign of Nevada confessed to having an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff.
9. California  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced to admit to an adulterous affair and the father of a teenage child while in office.
10. President Clinton - too many bad behavior instances to review in this post.

Turns out all of these politicians were in one one form or another adulterers, liars, abusers of the power they controlled from their political office, or outright criminals. All of which could not have made their families (or their constituents) very proud.

They also did a horrible job of serving their constituents. If you are wasting time and energy maintaining an adulterous affair, maintaining a series of lies to cover up your bad behavior, abusing your power for your own enrichment, or conducting criminal activities, you cannot be focused on serving the Americans that placed their trust in you when they went to the voting booths.

To this ignoble hall of shame list of past politicians acting badly, three new members are have been recently inducted:

- Ex-Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in jail this past week for his antics while in office, including his desire to sell and profit by his responsibility to name the replacement for President Obama's vacant Illinois Senate seat. During Blagojevich's trials, we learned how he operated, shaking down businesses for campaign donations and other favors in return for favorable state legislative treatment, in addition to trying to auction the vacant Senate seat.

If you can find any positive attribute of Blagojevich's bad behavior, it occurred at his prison sentencing hearing where he at least stood up and took the blame and responsibility for his actions: "I caused it all. I'm not blaming anybody. I was the governor and I should have known better and I am just so incredibly sorry."

But taking responsibility for his criminal and disgraceful actions was not enough for the judge who accurately described the impact of his actions: "The abuse of the office of governor is more damaging than the abuse of any other office, except the President's. Whatever good things you did for people as governor, and you did some, I am more concerned with the occasions when you wanted to use your powers to do things that were only good for yourself"

Well said. Selfish, criminal behavior wiping out whatever good the Governor did elsewhere while serving. As discussed above, how much more good could have Blagojevich done for Illinois citizens if he was not so worried about his personal enrichment and had not spent so much time shaking down innocent Illinois citizens and businesses for campaign donations?

- Our second example does not include an elected official but a high ranking member of President Obama's administration. Top FAA administrator Randy Babbit resigned this week after being arrested for drunk driving when police pulled him over at night for allegedly drunkenly driving on the wrong side of the road in Fairfax City, Virginia. Within days of his arrest, Mr.Babbit had submitted his resignation.

What makes this case of bad behavior so bewildering is a number of conditions:

• Mr. Babbit's boss, Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood has been very actively fighting the problem of drunk driving on our nation's roads. Thus, the drunk driving issue should not have been an unknown priority of Mr. Babbit's superior.
• According to recent news reports on this incident, Mr. Babbit has had a long career in government transportation efforts, dating back at least to the Clinton administration. The drunk driving issue, either directly or indirectly, was probably part of at least some of those transportation assignments.
• And finally, Mr. Babbit

Bewildering and certainly poor judgement, judgement that only fortunately killed what appears to have been a stellar government career before it killed an unsuspecting traveler. As a mature adult, a professional expert, one would have thought Mr. Babbitt would have used better judgement. But we probably thought the same of Spitzer, MacGreevey, Ryan, Blagojevich, Clinton, Sanford, Ensign, etc. and they all disappointed us also.

But to his credit, at least Mr. Babbit accepted responsibility for his actions when he nobly and promptly submitted his resignation: "I am unwilling to let anything cast a shadow on the outstanding work done 24 hours a day, seven days a week by my colleagues at the FAA. They run the finest and safest aviation system in the world and I am grateful that I had the opportunity to work alongside them."

- And our third candidate today for admission to the political class/government hall of shame, the ex-governor of my former home state of New Jersey, Jon Corzine. Mr. Corzine was chairman of Goldman Sachs before he was forced out of the company and served New Jersey as one of its two Senators in the U.S. Senate. He left the Senate to serve one lack luster term as governor of New Jersey. After his defeat running for a second term, he took over the investment firm of MF Global.

In the past month, MF Global collapsed into bankruptcy, mostly as a result of bad investments in European bonds. Now, companies collapse all the time and go out of business for making bad business decisions so a Wall Street type bankruptcy such as MF Global should come as no surprise.

However, it was how it went out of business that has aroused suspicions, questions, and is resulting in criminal investigations and Congressional hearings:

* Given that the Sarbanes -Oxley legislation, that arose after the Enron and Worldcom accounting/financial scandals from a decade or so ago, was supposed to make corporate accounting more stringent and less likely to lead to fraud, how did over a billion dollars worth of MF Global customer investment dollars "disappear?"

Was Corzine and MF Global illegally using their customers' funds not to invest for their customers' benefit but using those funds to cover the loss of MF Global's own investment wealth? As an ex-Senator who actually voted on the Sarbannes-Oxley legislation, he should have no excuse for not understanding the accounting reporting requirements under this law and allegedly stealing a billion dollars of customer funds.

* Given all of the hysterics and labor of passing the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform act, shouldn't Corzine have been aware, as an ex-Senator, that this legislation also probably prohibited a company from co-mingling its funds with the funds of its customers? Given how big MF Global is (it was the eighth largest firm to go belly up in the nation's history) and the political background of Mr. Corzine, ignorance is unlikely a valid excuse. An ex-politician acting badly is probably a better reason for this billion dollar scandal situation.

* Even with the above two pieces of legislation, which failed the industry and American investors again, this bad behavior of allegedly misinvesting over a billion dollars of someone else's money might also just be a basic criminal case of fraud by a high ranking ex-politician.

But the most annoying and despicable part of this sad situation was some of the comments made by Mr.Corzine when he testified this past week in front of Congressional committees investigating this potential fraud. He has invoked the so-called Obama defense, i.e. "it's not my fault." This defense has been used by the President innumerable times to blame the Bush administration, the tsunami in Japan, the Euro crisis, and myriad of other people and situations for the many failures of his administration.

Consider a few of Mr. Corzine's testimony statements as reported by the New York Times and The Associated Press:

• When asked what happened to the $1.2 billion of customer funds his company managed, he replied: "I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date." In other words, not my job.
• When asked how this misplacement of $1.2 billion could happen: “I did not, however, generally involve myself in the mechanics of the clearing and settlement of trades, or in the movement of cash and collateral. Nor was I an expert on the complicated rules and regulations governing the various different operating businesses that comprised MF Global. I had little expertise or experience in those operational aspects of the business.” In other words, not my fault, even though I ran the company and I used to run the one of the biggest financial firms (Goldman Sachs) of all times, others handled or mishandled the money, not me.
• When asked who was to blame for the collapse of the eighth largest firm in U.S. history, the Associated Press reported that "Corzine deflected blame for the company’s collapse. He argued that he inherited a firm already doomed by his predecessors’ bad financial decisions." In other words, those that came before me are to blame for what happened (e.g. Obama's constantly blaming of Bush for everything that went wrong during Obama's first three years).

Now, to be fair, Corzine did testify it was his responsibility for what happened to MF Global and the missing customer funds. But as we see from his actual testimony, he was all to anxious to blame others that worked for him or who came before him at MF Global.

So let's review: lying, adultery, felonious acts of crime, blaming others, drunk driving, extortion, misappropriation of customer and taxpayer funds, their parents should be so proud.

We must find a way to reform all of our political processes so that we no longer elect people who end up in the political class hall of shame. We need high integrity people that would actually make their parents proud, and in the process, make the American voter proud. Cleaning up these processes include many, if not all of the following steps that were laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:

• Reduce the volume and the impact of money from outside, special interest groups who bankroll our politicians. (Step 6)
• Remove politicians from their Congressional posts for non-performance (Sep 34).
• Require all sitting politicians to sign off on a shared  values/integrity pledge every year so they at least have a concept of what good behavior looks like. (Step 38)
• Institute term limits for politicians so that they have a limited time in office, hopefully limiting the time they have for bad behavior and extramarital affairs.(Step 39)

We need more action and less antics from those that sit in our 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 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/

Saving Private Ryan and Bad Politicians Acting Badly

Steven Spielberg's fabulous movie, "Saving Private Ryan" appeared on TV last night. Watching it reminded me how brave and unselfish our armed forces were during World War II. The carnage and horrific experiences they went through, so vividly captured in the movie, were truly the stuff of heroes and legends. And they sacrificed, fought, and many died to protect our freedom that we try to still cherish and protect today.

In the context of their bravery, sacrifices, and noble deeds, it seems pretty sad how the country they fought for and the freedoms they protected are so poorly served today by members of  the political class. Their actions, in many cases, are nowhere close to being classified as courageous and noble, they are just bad politicians acting badly:

- A February 10, 2011 Associated Press (AP) report recounted how a  U.S. Congressman from upstate New York had resigned for sending a shirtless picture of himself to a woman he met through Craigslist. The Congressman, Christopher Lee, was serving his second term and is married with a young son.

Usually, I would not care one bit what two consenting adults do with their lives. However, this is a U.S. Congressman who should be focused on addressing and solving the major issues facing the country today, not meeting women on an Internet site. He was not elected to start an illicit affair with a stranger he met on the web that could have exposed him to the potential to be blackmailed for the affair, a possibility that would likely not result in behavior that benefited taxpayers and voters. He should be focused on the major issues of our times. Certainly not noble or courageous, just plain stupid and self serving.

- This situation with this upstate New York Congressman is not to be confused with a similar affair from last year with another U.S. Congressman. At that time, Congressman Eric Massa resigned from Congress in the middle of an investigation into whether he sexually harassed male staffers. Certainly not noble or courageous.

- Politico reported on February 24, 2011 that Nancy Pelosi was to be honored by the Democratic National Committee via a praising resolution. However, prior to the ceremony where the resolution would be presented, the Congresswoman sent her daughter to the Committee's Resolutons Committee and said they both of them wanted to amend the resolution to make the Congresswoman look better by attributing more successes to her.

In my view, this is the outer limit of pomposity. If someone wants to recognize your achievements and honor your work, especially your political allies, I would think you should their praise in a humble but proud way. You do not let your ego run so amok that you insist in writing your own praise resolution. I have never heard a World War II veteran worry so much, or worry at all, what he or she had accomplished in service to their country. They did what the did heroically but humbly. They rarely, if never, embellished their record. Ms. Pelosi's behavior is certainly not noble or courageous.

- An Associate Press article reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently took on the issue of the legalized brothel industry in his home state of Nevada, "telling state lawmakers the time has come to have an adult conversation about Nevada's legal sex trade if the state hopes to succeed in the 21st century. His remarks to the state legislature was met with mostly silence.

Let's see: the United States is rapidly spending itself into bankruptcy, it is bogged down in two wars that drains our wealth and kills our soldiers every day, the Middle East is changing in ways that no one knows where it will end, our borders leak, and our schools still fail to educate. And now one of the top politicians and elected officials in the country is going after a legal industry that involves two adults freely indulging in a private interaction. Talk about lack of priorities. The Senator should be acting a little more courageously on getting our country's issues under control rather than lecturing adults how to behave. Certainly not noble or courageous, given the decisions the Senator should be making on behave of the country.

- An article in the February 18, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported how the Montana state Senate was working on adopting a "cowboy code" as a guide to the state's residents. This code urges state citizens to live each day with courage, be tough but fair, and always ride for the brand. The fact that the state needs jobs, revenue, and other needs makes you wonder why the state politicians are not tackling the tough issues facing their citizens as opposed to coming up with slogans.

Much like Senator Reid's obsession with brothels, the state's wasting of time and resources working up slogans allows them to look busy but avoid making the tough decisions needed to help the state resolve its issues. Certainly not noble or courageous.

- Another article in the February 18, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported that the latest approval ratings for the President showed an unbelievable dichotomy. 81% of Democrats approve of the job is is doing while only 13% of Republicans approve. This 68 point difference is the second largest gap ever with George W. Bush having attained a 76 point difference. But he needed a second term to get that bad.

How did President Obama get the nation so divided so quickly? Maybe standing back and remaining silent while those Americans that had reservations and had opposed the President's plans and policies were called un-American, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, racists, Ku Klux Klan members, enemies that needed to be punished and other derogatory names. 

It certainly takes a serious lack of courage to stand by while fellow citizens that the President is supposed to be serving are denigrated by his allies. Certainly not courageous or noble and the divisive numbers show how poorly the President serves half of the U.S. population. Certainly not noble or courageous, and certainly not a leadership example like our brave  armed forces.

These above examples are just recent events of bad politicians acting badly. It ignores the many other cases of adultery and the resultant lying (Clinton, MacGreevey, Spitzer, Ensign, etc.) and the numerous examples of politicians using their office for self serving purposes including the use of earmarks to fund their re-election campaigns via earmarks, granting themselves automatic pay raises every year regardless of how well the perform, and acting selfishly when bold and non-self serving actions are required.

The political class actions and performance are so often an affront to the freedoms that were so bravely protected over time by our armed forces, freedoms that are now at risk not from an outside force but from the actions of the very people that should be protecting them on the home front.

It is so sad that our political processes create a ruling class that display none of the positive and noble characteristics that our armed forces display today and which they displayed during World War II. Wouldn't it be great if Steven Spielberg could develop and film a movie that illustrated our courageous and humble our political class was. Unfortunately, if he did, it would be viewed as fiction, or worse, science fiction.


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


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

United States' Leaders Vs. The World's Leaders - Who Wins This Smackdown?

It can get pretty depressing talking about the American political class. Problems such as the failed war on drugs, public schools that do not educate, lack of a national energy program, escalating health care costs, skyrocketing national debt, annually increasing budget deficits, higher and higher taxes, unacceptably high unemployment numbers, trivial partisan bickering and sniping, continuous political ethics violations, of which the alleged Charles Rangel and Maxine Walters scandals are just the two latest in a long series of ethics lapses, moral lapses such as those committed by Clinton, Spitzer, Foley, Ensign, MacGreevey, Sanford and others can really bring you down. And we as taxpayers, pay for this shoddy behavior to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars over the past few decades.

But are we the only country that suffers these types of politicians or do other countries have real leaders instead of real politicians? Are other countries moving forward on the major issues of the time or are they also bogged down in mud slinging re-election campaigns and working on trivial issues that never positively impact a significant portion of their populations? In a non-scientific survey of what other nations are doing on major issues of our time, I came up with the following areas where foreign politicians actually display leadership traits and actually get things done on issues that matter:

• Portugal's leaders took the courageous step a few years ago and decriminalized possession of illegal drugs. As a result, drug usage actually went down when possession was decriminalized, more users went into rehab programs, and drug enforcement costs went down. In the United States, nothing has been done to address our failed war on drugs, resulting in increasingly large prison populations based on illegal drugs and the development of a violent, almost narco state just south of our border with northern Mexico. Over forty years after Nixon declared war on drugs, we are no closer to having a sane drug policy in this country that is enforceable, logical, and compassionate.
• Argentina's leaders recently passed legislation that legalized gay marriage. They recognized that we are all humans with distinct values and tastes which should not be isolated and condemned but should be recognized and given the full benefits of other citizens. In the United States, the Federal government maintains the ant-gay marriage law, Defense Of Marriage Act, and refuses to repeal the discriminatory "don't' ask, don't tell" policy of the armed forces. We are all Americans, we should all be treated equally in all aspects of life. Unless of course, acting against homosexuals, or any piece of our culture and society, can get politicians some cheap, discriminatory votes.
• We have known that our public school system was a failure relative to educating most of America's kids back in the early 1980s when a Reagan commission issued the landmark report, "A Nation At Risk." Despite the warning, almost thirty years later, public schools continue to eat up large chunks of taxpayer money while turning out mediocre students. The National Center For Educational Statistics, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, tracks how well 4th and 8th graders are doing in math and science education around the world. Their website contains the latest results of country by country comparisons and the results for the U.S. are not good. In science, we ranked 8th for fourth graders and 11th for eighth graders. In math, we ranked 11th for fourth graders and 9th for eighth graders. In all four categories we trailed Russia, England, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan and in some of the categories we also trailed Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and South Korea. Thus, some countries' leaders have been able to put together higher quality education systems than the United States, despite our spending the most money on education than any of those nations ahead of us.
• In the 1970s, we as a nation became painfully aware of how dependent we are on foreign sources of energy as a result of the oil embargoes. Since then, our political class has done virtually nothing in developing a national energy policy and strategy that would result in less expensive and less vulnerable sources of energy. While our politicians did nothing, what have foreign leaders done in the area of solar power? According to the website, http://www.pvresources.com/, which tracks large scale solar electricity facilities around the world, the United States is soundly beaten in the area of generating electricity from the sun. According to the website, 52 of the largest, top one hundred world wide facilities generating electricity from the sun are in Spain, 24 of the top one hundred facilities are in Germany and only 5 of the largest facilities are in the United States. The Spanish solar facilities generate over 800 megawatts of electricity a year or 17.3 megawatts per million Spaniards, the German solar facilities generate almost 500 megawatts of electricity a year or 5.9 megawatts per million Germans, and the United States solar facilities generate only 91 megawatts of electricity or .29 megawatts per million Americans. From another view, these numbers show that on a per person basis, Spain gets almost 60 times more energy from solar than the U.S. while Germany gets over 20 times more energy from solar than the U.S. Clearly, some nations' leaders have been able to accomplish energy independence much better than our political class.
• Moving from solar to wind energy, consider a Time magazine article from February 25, 2009 about wind energy in Denmark. In the late 1970s, right after the oil embargo shocks, the Danish government implemented a program to take advantage of their winds. As a result, the Danes now get almost 20% of their electricity from wind turbines (Spain also scores a success story here, getting 10% of their electricity from wind), the Danes have reduced their carbon emissions over 13% from 1990 as a result of their wind energy, and they are the market leaders in wind technology and manufacturing. We get very little of our energy needs from wind technology. Oops, our politicians lose again relative to having a long term vision in both the wind and solar world relative to other world leaders. Imagine if our politicians had the strategic and long term energy vision of the Germans, Danes, and Spaniards. Imagine if we were getting 20-30% of our energy from wind and solar, numbers that seem very realistic given what other countries have accomplished. Do we think that our failed invasion of Iraq would have happened and the TRILLION dollars or so we incurred as a result of the invasion could have been used to offset our deficit or lower our taxes? Would we have stationed U.S. troops throughout the Mideast, deployments which inspired bin Laden to launch the 9-11 attacks? So much good could have happened if our politicians had acted intelligently and with urgency over the past four decades in this area like other nations did.
• An article in the September issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine reviewed the economic situation in Brazil. Economists expect the Brazilian economy will grow over 7% this year while the U.S. economy will struggle to grow 3%. Credit rating agencies have raised the credit rating for Brazil based on the growth policies instituted by Brazil's leaders and their ability to keep their national debt levels under control, unlike the politicians in the United States who have run up dangerously high debt levels. As a side note, the top income tax rate in Brazil is only 27.5%, 7.5% less than the U.S. top tax rate. Do we think that Brazil figured out that high taxes stifle growth while our politicians have not yet figure that out? the article goes onto explain how many economies in South America are looking stronger and stronger as we go forward, based on how well their leaders have managed their respective financial affairs.

I am not an international expert, much more scientific work would have to be done to accurately figure out who has the most functional leaders in the world. But consider just the following small set of examples. If we had leaders that had the illegal drug foresight of Portugal, the compassion of Argentina, the energy strategy of Spain, Denmark and Germany, the educational wherewithal of the Far Eastern nations, Russia, England, Latvia, and other countries, and the economic skills of some South American nations, we would have it pretty good in the United States.

Also, with these skills and results, I doubt Congress would still have its current dismal approval rating of only 20% since they would have actually accomplished something to benefit the country and it's citizens, and not just themselves. Reading the news reports and listening to the news shows, one is left with the impression that American politicians see getting elected as the end game. It used to be that getting elected was the means to the end, you got into office to make noble changes. Now you get into office to enrich yourself. As a result, the world moves ahead of us in so many areas while our politicians look inward for their own benefit and not outward for our well being. Can anyone say term limits?


Our new 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.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

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

This and That Of Recent Political Class Insanity

Today's post will touch on a host of recent acts of political insanity that our good politicians have graced us with. No act by itself is big enough to fill an entire post but together you continue to get the feeling that we are governed by people that have neither the ability, the will, the intelligence, or the humility to lead this country to better times.

Senator John Edwards Sex Tape - as most of us know, Senator Edwards has finally admitted to having an extramarital affair and a child out of wedlock why his wife tried to recover from cancer. After initially denying having an affair and then denying the child was his, he has finally admitted to both acts and the additional act of trying to cover up both. A North Carolina judge involved with all of these shenanigans now wants to view a so-called sex tape that shows Edwards having intercourse with the woman of his affair. Rather than go into details of the judge's actions, let us just remember that this Senator came relatively close to becoming either President or Vice President of the United States. While what he does in his private life is usually no one else's business, by being a public figure of such prominence he forfeits some of that privacy. Affairs and cover ups probably require a lot of work and fibbing, energy that should have/could have been better spent serving his current and possible future constituents. Makes you wonder if others in Washington and other political offices (see: Spitzer, MacGreevey, Clinton) are so busy having affairs and covering them up, maybe that is the reason the proper amount of attention has not been spent solving real, national problems.

Eve Of Financial Destruction - We have had some recent fun pointing out how the Obama administration and the entire political class was spending so much money that they did not have, resulting in a skyrocketing national debt, that we were on the "Eve Of (Financial) Destruction," a takeoff on the hit protest song from Barry McGuire in the late 1960s. In those posts, we predicted that at some point in time, so much runaway spending would start to spook those people and nations, both domestic and international, who buy our bonds and debt. They might begin demanding higher interest rates as the potential for defaulting on those bonds rises. This potential seemed to be a little far fetched until today. In an Associated Press (AP) article today, AP reported that there was a record drop in foreign holdings of U.S Treasury bills and bonds in December, 2009. This could possibly indicate that some people in the world are getting a little antsy about the high deficit levels that the political class is incurring. A lot of the drop was due to the Chinese government dumping their U.S. Treasury holdings. Is this just a one time dip in demand for U.S. debt or the beginning of a trend where our debt will not only be rising but the cost to service it will also be higher? Who knows, but the concept of starting to get government spending under control (Step 1 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government") might be a good idea to start implementing today before the trend actually materializes.

Senator Evan Bayh Not To seek Re-Election - Senator Bayh announced today that he will not seek re-election. Seems the Senator is very discouraged that the bickering and sniping in Washington was resulting in gridlock and not advancing any solutions for the issues facing the country. Well, duh? Many of us could have told him that years ago. The American political class has not solved any problem of consequence in over 40 years including the War on Drugs, the lack of a national energy policy and strategy, failing public schools, social programs heading for bankruptcy, etc. and he just recognized the ineffectiveness now? The sad part is he is probably in the minority when it comes to realizing how poorly we are served by those in the political class.

Subsidizing High Pro Athletes - A short article from the February 8, 2010 issue of Sports Illustrated, quoted ex-Pittsburgh Steeler Jerome Bettis. According to Mr. Bettis, the reason a lot of NFL players do not want to play in the Pro Bowl is because, "You have to offer them more money. If the players make 50 grand, 100 grand, that's different. But 25 grand? They can pass on that." Now, I believe in free markets and capitalism, any American is entitled to make as much or as little money as they want and their abilities will serve them. However, I do take offense to Mr. Bettis's comments and how out of touch they are with today's realities. If a person is fortunate enough to have a job in this economy, they probably are not making $100 thousand a year, never mind $100 thousand to play one football game. Now I would not endorse having the government regulating salaries in any industry. However, that does not mean that these astronomical salaries for today's pro athletes should be subsidized by ordinary Americans. Thus, Step 49 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" should be implemented so that Americans can still make as much money as they want and can but that companies, including pro sports franchises, cannot take these outrageous salaries as a corporate tax deduction to be subsidized by the rest of us.

Obama and Foreign Relations - I have been hammered by friends and family this past year of how well Obama will represent the United States in the eyes of the rest of the world, improving our foreign relations and statue in the world. After a year in office, lets see how well he is doing:

• According to an article in Suddeutsche Zeitung by Hubert Wetzel, as reported in the February 19, 2010 issue of the The Week magazine, "The diplomatic world knows no greater rudeness than to skip a planned summit - and to announce that cancellation through the media." The summit being referred to is annual U.S. European Union Summit to be held in Spain in May. According to the article, the administration did not even involve its ambassadors in snubbing the Summit and the non-attendance has resulting in a lot of time planning the Summit to be wasted, embarrassing the host, Spain's President Jose Luis Zapatero.
• After giving a speech at an Egyptian university earlier in 2009, no apparent progress has been made in defusing the Israeli/Arab/Palestinian problem. Nothing. For someone who promised so much in relation to negotiating and bringing parties together, nothing has happened that could not have happened under Bush, not that I want Bush back either.
• Speaking of the Mideast, the Iranians have forestalled Obama for over a year now, all the while increasing its ability to produce a nuclear weapon while the Obama administration has done nothing significant to deter them. Threats have not been followed through on, deadlines have lapsed without repercussions, and current sanctions are not effective since the Iranians have probably accelerated their nuclear ambitions over the past year. Hardly a diplomatic victory for the administration. He has not gotten any further than Bush, while during his administration the Iranians are that much closer to having the Bomb.
• Speaking of nuclear weapons, Obama has not had much more success with the North Koreans than Bush. Results are similar to Iran, the North Koreans ability to deliver a nuclear bomb is one year further along without any positive diplomatic developments.
• In an article by Thomas Vampouille in Le Figaro, as reported in The Week magazine, it is reported that Obama has insulted President Nicolas Sarkozy of France many times the past year. The most blatant insult was when Obama sent a letter to Sarkozy but addressed it to Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac. Other insults included rejecting Sarkozy's suggestion to overhaul the world's financial system and his efforts to advance efforts for Mideast peace.

All of these conditions do not look like like the diplomatic miracle many thought Obama would be. In fact, his record does not look much better or different than what we had under Bush.

Thus, despite a different administration, the insanity continues. Politicians have affairs and then spend more valuable time and resources covering it up, athletes are upset that they do not get even more outrageous salaries that are subsidized by the American taxpayer, the financial eve of destruction seems a lot closer today than yesterday, no problems ever get solved, and our diplomatic standing and effectiveness is no better today than it was a year ago. The concept of voting out all incumbents in November gets more attractive everyday, how much worse would it be to have new people sitting in Congress?



Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.