Showing posts with label state of the union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label state of the union. Show all posts

Monday, March 15, 2021

March, 2021, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Biden Creates A Humanitarian Disaster At The Border, Biden Cares More About Illegal Immigrants Than Americans In Need and Biden's Handlers Keep Him On A Short Leash

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

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

1) One trait of the of the American political class that we find happening over and over and what is disgusting is that these people care more about foreigners than they do about Americans. With millions of Americans homeless, hungry, drug addicted or having lost their job recently, American politicians would rather spend billions and billions of dollars overseas for other purposes or joyfully and expensively welcome illegal immigrants while ignoring needy Americans.

This trait is now bubbling up again as we see that thousands and thousand of illegal immigrants are heading for our southern border. Even though Trump had gotten the floods of illegal immigrants under control and had restored the rule of law when it comes to immigration, within weeks of becoming President, Biden has caused the old problems to arise again with a vengeance.

What is fascinating about Biden's failure in this matter is the reality that thousands of people assaulting our southern are all wearing identical Joe Biden shirts that read: “Please Let Us In.” Now I doubt that every one of these people went onto the Internet and decided to buy the identical shirt. There can be no other conclusion other than there is a sustained, organized and well financed plan to undermine our border security. How else do thousands of poor illegal immigrants get the same, identical shirt within weeks of Biden taking office?

It now looks like intentionally or unintentionally Biden is supporting the overrunning of our border for the gains of unknown people behind the scenes who are financing this illegal immigrant surge at the expense of American citizens’ safety and the sovereignty of our country.

2) Furthermore, not only are there forces at work here to undermine our democracy but the living and inhumane conditions at the border for everyone involved , both citizens and illegal immigrants alike, is not good:
  • Even Democrats are scared about the crisis Biden has caused on our southern border.
  • Democrat Congressman Henry Cueller, as reported by Axios, is scared about what Biden has unleashed on the border: “The Biden administration is easing up too much on unauthorized immigrants, citing their impact on his constituents, local hospitals and their potential to spread the coronavirus.”
  • It is actually refreshing to have a Washington politician such as Cueller care more about his American constituents than illegal immigrants from around the world, unlike Biden and the rest of Washington.
  • He is also correctly worried about the resurgence of smugglers coming back to life at the border, both human smugglers and drug smugglers.
  • Another Congressional Democrat, Vicente Gonzalez, is also showing some rare concern for his constituents: “Well, my concern at this in the recent weeks in my district, migrants who made it across the border, who even pass the line of MPPs [Migrant Protection Protocols], who were 5,000 folks that have been waiting for two years across the border, made it across the Rio Grande Valley, were processed and released. If that is the message that we send to Central America and around the world, I can assure you, it won’t be long before we have tens of thousands of people showing up to our border. And it’ll be catastrophic for our party, for our country, for my region, for my district, in the middle of a pandemic, in an area where we’ve lost over 3,000 people in my small congressional district. So, I think we need to have a better plan in place. I think asylum seekers should be able to ask for asylum and be processed in their home country or a neighboring country. And we shouldn’t have a policy in place that impulses people to make this 2,000 mile trek where cartels and human traffickers are enriching themselves.
In the midst of this crisis that Biden and others have created, it is refreshing to see actual Democrats in Washington care more about Americans than foreigners. Now, their concern may be a little selfish in that as conditions of the virus, crime, drug smugglers, etc. have a larger and larger negative impact on their voters, they may be worried they could lose their precious Congressional seat. But if this fear makes them do the right thing for their voters, then that is a good thing. Biden is certainly not doing the right thing for their voters.

3) It has always been our contention that Joe Biden is in a significant state of cognitive decline and that it was pure elder abuse that his family and party subjected him to both the rigors of a Presidential campaign and the office of the Presidency, the most stressful job in the world. He is unable to put together more than a brief coherent discussion or debate and the country is in serious danger because of his declining mental state.

He has gone almost two months without having a formal press conference, something that is unheard of in Presidential politics. Specifically, he is the first president in at least the past 100 years not to have a formal press conference in the first 33 days of being sworn in.

He cancelled his first state of the union message. His handlers, and that's all they are, apparently realize that he is not competent enough to answer questions in a press conference or coherently stand up in front of the nation and deliver any sort of message or speech.

One of his handlers is his press secretary, Jen Psaki. She put forth one of the most inane excuses ever, even for Washington, when pressed on why Biden hasn't had a formal press conference. Reuters correspondent Alex Alper recently asked her why Biden had not had a formal press conference yet: “So we’re 45 days into the Biden presidency and he has yet to hold a presser. At this point in past presidencies, every president from Reagan had addressed reporters, some of them multiple times. So why the delay and when can we expect the president to hold a press conference?”

To which Psaki anemically and comically responded: “Well first, as all you know, the president takes questions several times a week. He took questions actually twice yesterday, which is an opportunity for the people covering the White House to ask them about whatever news is happening on any given day. We look forward to holding a full press conference in the coming weeks before the end of the month. And we’re working on setting a final date for that. And as soon as we do, we will let you all know, but this president came in during a historic crisis, two historic crises, a pandemic like the country had not seen in decades and decades and an economic downturn that left 10 million people out of work. So I think the American people would certainly understand if his focus and his energy and his attention has been on ensuring we secure enough vaccines to vaccinate all Americans, which we will do by the end of May, and then pushing for a rescue plan that will provide direct checks to almost 160 million Americans.”

Such nonsense on so many levels:
  • First of all, randomly answering a few questions tossed to him here and there without much opportunity for follow up questions is not anywhere close to being an equivalent to a press conference.
  • Trump, who faced the same two crises, had daily and then regular press conferences during his years in office and during the pandemic crisis to keep Americans informed and provide leadership in the crisis.
  • Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, held a daily press conference while dealing with the pandemic and the resultant high unemployment, just like Trump.
  • In fact, Cuomo received a daytime Emmy award for having regular press conferences in the middle of the pandemic.
  • FDR, in the middle of the Depression, World War II, held his famous “fireside chats” to continually inform Americans what was going on relative to the Depression and war effort.
Leaders lead and that involves being out in front of voters and citizens and telling them what is going on and answer the tough questions that need to be asked in a crisis. FDR did it, Trump did, Cuomo did it, even Obama did it relative to the Great Recession when he came into office.

But Biden, no, his handlers know what would happen if he got up in front of an unscripted press conference or tried to deliver a major state of the union speech. The country, the world would realize that he is not capable of being the leader of this country or the free world.

And that is such a sad commentary on how broken our current political processes are. A gentleman in severe mental and cognitive decline somehow got elected President. We still maintain that this is a form of elder abuse that no person in their struggling twilight years should be made to endure.

That will do it for today: Biden is ducking his leadership responsibilities as President, Biden has caused a sovereignty, law and order, and humanitarian crisis at the border, and politicians care more about illegal immigrants than the welfare and needs of Americans.

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:

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


Wednesday, February 5, 2020

February, 2020, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: My Email To Nancy Pelosi

Madam Speaker:

I am 66 years old and:

- I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life.
- I did not vote for Trump.
- Rarely vote for a Republican for national office.
- When I lived in New Jersey I was a registered Democrat for a while.

Having said all that, your actions after the State of the Union message last night were disgusting and despicable. You ripped up the names and spit in the face of all of the Americans that were mentioned in the speech, from American heroes to Americans who suffered tremendous loss and tremendous success. You slapped the face of white and African Americans, of males and females, young and old. What possessed you to do such an evil, repugnant action? Is the hate in your heart so venomous that you would take it out on regular, real Americans? If this is what the Democratic Party represents today, then the points I made above are now null and void. I would never associate myself with such low life, childish behavior. You are an insult to your office and to the country.


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:

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

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





Tuesday, February 26, 2019

The Horrors And Destruction That Donald Trump Has Imposed On America...Just Kidding! Part 20: More Good Economic News, Cracking Down on Human Trafficking, and More

Before we start today’s discussion, let’s review my voting history: 
  • I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life. 
  • Thus, I did not vote for Trump. 
  • I have rarely voted for a Republican for national office in my life. 
About 2 years ago, many liberals, Democrats, and millennials were besides themselves with grief and fear because their pre-ordained queen, Hillary Clinton, was not elected President. Instead, Donald Trump was elected, an individual that these same people despised, hated, and feared, an individual they felt would endanger and possibly destroy the country and our democracy. For the past year and a half they fretted, worried and lashed out at anything or anyone that even remotely smelled of Donald Trump.

Given that Trump has been in office for almost two years, I thought, that as someone who did not vote for him, it would be a good idea to review the horror, trauma, and terrible things that Trump has subjected the country to in just 24 month’s time. This is obviously a very sarcastic comment when you take an unbiased look at what has happened during the Trump Presidency. 

The many previous posts we did on this topic identified over 200 good things that have happened to America and Americans since Trump became President can found by entering the phrase “the horrors and destruction” in the search box above.

It has been over a month since we updated this series so let’s catch up with the latest Trump administration accomplishments:

1- In a recent Gallup, 58% of those polled thought that the U.S. is rated “very” or “somewhat favorably” by the rest of the world, a 3% increase from last year and is now at the highest level since 2003.

2-The Trump administration is launching a global effort to end the criminalization of homosexuality, a dire situation that still exists in dozens of countries around the world, concentrated mostly in the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean, with U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest-profile openly gay person in the Trump administration, leading the effort.

3- In another recent Gallup poll, Trump’s approval rating in that poll has risen to 44%, the third highest level for his administration.

4- In a recent Rasmussen poll among likely voters, Trump’s approval rating has risen to 50%, higher than Obama’s approval rating at the same time in his Presidency.

5- According to a CBSNews poll, 76% of those Americans who watched Trump’s state of the union speech approved of his performance while only 24% disapproved of it, a three to one margin of difference.

6- The stock market, as measured by the Dow, is up a whopping 32% or so since Trump came into office.

7- The employment situation continues to improve month over month as almost 300,000 (296,000) new jobs were created in the month of January, 2019.

8-  Foxcomm, one of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world, agreed to proceed with it's plans to build a manufacturing and research facility in Wisconsin that will make liquid crystal display screens that can be used in small electronic products.

9- Trump recently signed four pieces of legislation that will actively attack the huge problem of human trafficking including the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, the Abolish Human Trafficking Act, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act, and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

For those of you that have hated on Trump since day one, and given your obvious gross error in judgment relative to Trump given the over 200 accomplishments we have previously listed and the newest nine accomplishments listed above, let me ask that you to do us all a favor by implementing the following changes in your behavior and attitude:
  • Chill out, tamp down your TDS affliction. No matter how much you hate Trump on a sexist, personal basis, get over it. He is the legally and duly elected President, he will be around for a while so refocus your hatred on more constructive issues and matters. You will live a lot longer if you take your hatred out of your heart and soul and devote it to something positive.
  • I would really appreciate it if some of you would apologize to the Trump voters you have disrespected in some of the grossest terms possible over the past year. You have called millions of voters racists, ignorant, stupid, Nazis, KKK members, and other horrible names simply because you disagreed with their voting choice. No American should be called such disgusting names simply because they exercised their Constitutional rights to the best of their abilities. Plus, slandering over 60 million Americans is no way to unite the country and get it focused on the real issues facing us all.
  • More personally, I would like, no I am demanding, an apology from some of you for your slanderous and disgusting name calling because in doing so, you insulted and disrespected my sister, my family members, my friends, and my co-workers who simply voted their conscience. I will defend their right to vote anyway they wanted and will no put up with your childish and vicious venom and bile directed at them, very important people in my life.
  • And finally, I challenge you to read the following blog post, a post that shows quite clearly that it was hateful people like some of you and your silence during the Obama years that actually caused Trump to be elected. Thus, the people you hate for voting for Trump are actually looking back at you in the mirror:
https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-american-liberals-and-washington.html

If you were silent in the dozens of instances listed in this post then you were responsible for the very thing you hate: a Trump Presidency. Or put another way, a so far successful and productive Trump Presidency. Over 200 accomplishments in about two years is not too shabby despite many of you wanting both Trump and the country to fail.


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


www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

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




Wednesday, January 31, 2018

My State Of The Union Message To My Senator, Bill Nelson of Florida

Readers of this blog know that I have very little regard for most American politicians today, both Republicans and Democrats. But as a result of the despicable behavior Congressional Democrats displayed regarding the Office of the Presidency last night at Trump's State of the Union message, I fired off the following piece of my opinion and disgust to Florida Senator Bill Nelson:

Senator Nelson: 

Let me start off by saying that I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life (I am 64 years old), I did not vote for Trump, and I rarely have voted for a Republican for national office in my life. 

However, having said all of that, I was very disgusted with Congressional Democrats behavior last night at the State of The Union Message. No matter how much Democrats hate Trump, the office of the Presidency should still be respected. By not attending the meeting, by not applauding Trump's, and America's accomplishments over the past year (robust economic growth, low unemployment among all races, a wonderful tax cut that is giving middle and lower class Americans bonuses and lower tax levels, defeat of ISIS, etc.), by checking their emails in the middle of the speech, by looking like sour puss five years old that did not get their way, I can only assume that Democrats are more worried about themselves and their petty, childlike behaviors and temper tantrums than they are of working together to make America a better place. 

You people, Democrats, are being left behind, and unless you and the rest of your party start acting like mature adults rather than petulant toddlers, people like me will basically say screw you in November. I want to work with people that want to make real progress on real issues rather than people that roadblock EVERYTHING, the idiotic, non-productive, and immature tactic that people like Schumer and Pelosi are doing. Ignore at your own reelection risk

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

March, 2015, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: When NASCAR and Pigs Are More Important Than Citizens, Getting Drunk at the State Of The Union, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time once again to review the latest insanity and ineptness from the American political class. We do this review every month to prove our hypothesis that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. 

They waste hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth every year, they never resolve any of the major issues facing Americans today, they continually put their foot in their mouth with their idiotic statements and positions, and they operate government functions that are bloated and ineffective in delivering quality service to taxpayers. And worse of all, they have rigged the country’s elections processes so that their election and subsequent re-elections are almost guaranteed to ensure their mediocrity continues. 

To review the past examples of political class insanity just type in “political class insanity” in the search box above.

So lets get started on what is likely a multi-day review of their latest incompetence and insanity, with the first post in this series appearing yesterday:

1) It is no secret that the Obama administration has added more to the national debt than every other Presidential administration that came before it. Of the more than $18 TRILLION in debt that the country now owes, $8 TRILLION of that came just from the Obama administration. This $8 TRILLION comes out to about $67,000 for every American family in the country.

The Obama administration and the current Washington political class has added so much debt that the Obama White House now estimates that by 2021, the country will be spending more on interest from the national debt than on the entire Defense Department budget. Given that the current annual Defense Department budget is about half a TRILLION dollars a year, by 2021, on average, every American family will be spending over $4,000 a year in taxes just on interest payments alone. Insanity.

2) According to an article in the December 12, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently vetoed a piece of legislation that would have banned the use of restrictive gestation crates for breeding pigs that affect about 9,000 pigs in the state. As a former resident of New Jersey I do not have a position on whether this is a humane thing to do or not.

But as a former resident of New Jersey, I know there are far bigger issues that state politicians should be worried about and focused on than the comfort of 9,000 pigs:

  • The state’s unemployment level continues to run higher than the rest of the country.
  • The state’s long term unemployment rate continues to be one of the worst in the country.
  • The state’s cost of living and tax burden continues to be one of the highest in the country.
  • The state spends more and gets relatively less bang for its investment in education relative to many other states in the country.

But why focus your legislative efforts on issues that affect most of the state’s residents when you can develop and pass legislation that focuses on 9,000 pigs. Horrible, horrible political priorities.

3) But New Jersey is not alone in state politicians that are focusing on the wrong priorities. The city of Charlotte, North Carolina invested over a $100 million of taxpayer funds to help build the NASCAR Hall of Fame in the city. Unfortunately, this investment is not paying off since only 400,000 people are visiting the Hall Of Fame each year while the city planners expected over 800,000 to show up annually. 

This 50% attendance shortfall has resulted in the city having to put up another $5 million of taxpayer funds to pay off some of the debts that the Hall Of Fame has incurred in addition to the $137 million in debt it incurred to build the Hall. Additionally, banks who invested in the project will get back about a third of which they invested and royalties to NASCAR have been suspended for the near future.

As with New Jersey, I am sure there are far better needs and issues that city lawmakers and politicians should have been spending their time on than building a white elephant of a hall of fame. Bad priorities.

4) According to a recent article written by Tyler Durden that appeared on the www.zerohedge.com website, the United States and the inferior lawmaking ability of the nation's politicians have resulting in two depressing facts:

  • The United States has the highest prison and jail incarceration rate of any country in the world.
  • This high incarceration rate has greatly diminished the punitive and preventive effective of crime and criminals.
Just another example of politicians coming up with a solution that makes the original problem even worse. Details of these conclusions include the following facts and realities:

  • There are about 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. 15 states have total populations less than 2.3 million.
  • There are more Americans in prison than the combined populations of Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming.
  • The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population by 25% of its prisoners.
  • One out of every three black men will spend time in prison or jail.
  • 2.7 million kids across the country have a parent who is jail or prison.
  • The U.S. imprisonment rate has grown by 400% since 1970.
Despite the every increasing incarceration rate, a recent study and research effort from the Brennan Center For Justice at the NYU School of law found that this increased incarceration rate has had a limited effect on crime rates over the past two and a half decades. One reason driving this diminished effect on crime is that a lot of those currently wasting away in prisons and jails are there for non-violent and victimless crimes such as illegal drug use. 

Author Durden writes: “America’s incarceration rate has become so saturated that it has absolutely no meaningful impact in lowering crimes rates anyway. The time for prison reform and the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences is long overdue.”

Thus, politicians’ efforts to make us safer are not having any real effect any longer while costing billions of dollars in taxpayer wealth to make us the most imprisoned planet in the world. Something is worn here, something is insane here.

U.S. imprisonment rate per 100,000 people since 1880:



5) It is not uncommon in life for a person to turn to alcohol when they are really depressed or really bored. Not sure what the reasons were for Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg getting a little unsober at the recent Obama state of the union speech but who can blame her? She had to sit still for a long time while listening to empty promises and arrogance from the President of the U.S.
Justice Ginsburg had drunk so much pre-speech wine that she actually nodded off in the middle of the state of the union proceeding. She apparently was unaware that she passed out during the speech until she returned home and got a call from her granddaughter saying, “Bubbe, you were sleeping at the State of the Union.”But the Justice had enough integrity to admit she was not sleeping: “The audience — for the most part — is awake because they’re bobbing up and down all the time and we sit there, stone-faced, sober judges. At least I wasn’t 100 percent sober because before we went to the State of the Union we had dinner. Justice Kennedy brought in … it was an Opus something or other, very fine California wine that Justice Kennedy brought, and I vowed this year just sparkling water, stay away from the wine. But in the end, the dinner was so delicious, it needed wine to accompany it.”Again, who can blame her? This President has made more promises that never got fulfilled, has spent more tax money that has resulted in minimal improvement in Americans’ lives, has violated more laws and Constitutional tenets than any other President, and continues to shower himself and his family with golf rounds, international vacations, and privileges of royalty to the extent that no other President would have dared to do. At least viewers at home could turn off the President and go to another TV channel. Justice Ginsburg had no other option than to overdrink and pass out to escape the depression and boredom that is the Washington political class on display at the state of the union message. So what did we learn to today from the political class insanity we reviewed:
  • Obama’s budgets will eventually crush the country and its economy.
  • New Jersey politicians worry more about pigs than citizens.
  • North Carolina city politicians worry more about NASCAR than citizens.
  • We are the kings of incarceration relative to the rest of the world.
  • Even Supreme Court Justices are being driven to drink by the Washington political class.
More reasons to drink due to politicians’ ineptness 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.bankruptingamerica.org

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






Thursday, February 5, 2015

February, 2015, Part 5,Political Class Insanity: Chewing Gum Embarrassments, Foreign P)licy Failure In Yemen, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again for the our monthly review of political class insanity. We believe that the nation is living through the worst set of politicians to ever hold office in this country, from the President down to the local mayors. Our current politicians never resolve any problems facing Americans, waste untold billions of dollars every year, and operate government programs that never deliver what they promise, always miss their deadlines, always go over budget, and often make the original problem even worse. And these shortcomings do not include outright criminal activity, a topic that will be an integral part of this month’s insanity review.

Over the past week, we did an in-depth, multi-day analysis of how the Obama administration has failed in an epic way across five dimensions. As you will see over the next week or so, it is not only the President that is an epic fail in the American political sphere today. So, let’s get started, it is going to be a long trek as the political class came out of the holiday season with more incompetence than ever before.

This is the fifth post in this month’s insanity series, the first post can be accessed at:

XXXXXXX

1) The Federal government is supposed to equally represent all states and citizens equally, it is above the individual state governments, in theory. But when the President of the country and boss of the Federal government comes from the thugocracy of Chicago politics, that is apparently a concept that does not apply. 

A recent study by Reuters and the Brookings Institute found that between 2009 and 2013, the first term of the Obama Presidency, solid Republican voting states saw their share of Federal government funding for various programs drop by as much as 40%. Solid Democrat states and swing states saw only a 25% drop in Federal funding for the same programs.

For example, Texas Republican Congressman John Culberson claims that he has had an unbelievably hard time securing Federal funding for legitimate purposes for use in Republican dominated Texas such as border control, harbor dredging, and basic aid for a chemical plant explosion aftermath: “The Obama administration approaches the federal government the same way the Chicago machine politicians approach the Chicago public treasury: it’s to be used for their own benefit.” 

John Hudak of the Brookings Institute supported the Congressman’s conclusions: “In the context of the Obama administration, swing states and blue states are doing better than red states. I would suggest these numbers would tell us there is politicization going on.”

In the White House response to the allegations, they did not even use spell check in a long and rambling defense that said nothing important and never addressed what apparently is a real abuse of taxpayer tax funding: “The administration supports allocating federal grants based on objecitng (sic) criteria that will help protect taxpayer dollars and ensure that lawmakers are responsible and accountable to the American people.” Blah, blah, blah, a lot of words saying nothing.

This is how fall we have fallen relative to the integrity and righteousness of the politicians in this country: they use our own tax dollars as political weapons based on how we vote, a serious disregard for our First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom. But when the President is a Chicago city community organizer, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that he has elevated Chicago style mob politics to the national stage.

2) The Taliban used to rule Afghanistan. They would kill and torture people for having different political, sexual, and religious views than theirs. They sheltered Bin Laden as he made the plans for the terrorist attacks on 9-11. They recently marched into a school of kids in Pakistan and slaughtered over a hundred of them in cold blood. If any group fits the definition of a terrorist group, it is the Taliban.

Unless it is the Obama administration doing the defining. It recently declared via a White House spokesperson that the Taliban were not terrorists, they are an “armed insurrection.” Really? In my view, an armed resurrection goes out and fights the armed forces of a foe. They do not suppress the freedom and lives of their own citizens, they do not attack civilian populations with the intent to spread fear and terror, and they certainly do not invade a school to slaughter innocent kids.

This is why more and more people see the insanity and stupidity of the Obama administration and why the level of trust in this administration is at a very low level. After all of the lies about Obama Care, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the politicalization of the IRS, etc., no way we should believe this word play that the Taliban are not terrorists.

The following comic kind of summarizes the contortions the Obama administration is going through to avoid stating the obvious(from the www.youngcons.com website):


SYPq0yf


Read more at http://www.youngcons.com/white-house-releases-official-terrorist-identification-chart/#iMAi37C0UD5rKO8O.99


We have truly fallen down the Orwellian rabbit hole with this administration, recalling what George Orwell wrote in his novel, 1984: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” As many of us suspected all along, this administration’s foreign policy is pure wind and this position on the Taliban and misunderstanding of reality is the worst insanity yet.


3) During the state of the union address, the President proposed there be “free” community college funding for students that maintained certain standards. We have already covered the reality that 1) this is a stupid idea, given how few people actually get a college degree via community college and 2) it is really not free, taxpayers would be paying an expense that motivated students should be paying.

The President had the hairbrained idea of paying for this “free” program by taxing the earnings that American families earned on what was supposed to be tax free college savings programs. If this tax idea got implemented. families would be paying taxes twice, once by investing for their kids’ college with post tax dollars and then having their earnings taxed again even though the original idea of the savings program was that by using post tax dollars, savers would not have to pay taxes on those invested dollars ever again.

The scary thing about this program is that it would not take long for families to figure out that their college savings programs were useless due to the double taxation, would have pulled their money out of the accounts, and then Obama would not have had any funding for his free program. A ten year old could figured out that logic reality but apparently no one in the White House has a clue how the real world works.

When the rest of the world, both Democrats and Republicans and regular citizens pointed out how stupid this funding idea was, the White House did an abrupt u-turn and decided not to tax the earnings on college savings accounts. Mark Horne, writing for the Political Outcast website, summed up the stupidity and embarrassment quite nicely: “The Obama team is really getting incompetent. I don’t want to go too far with this because, for all we know, the entire program was a distraction from another agenda the President really cares about. But still, even if it was only PR, it was a public loss. It is a humiliation. From now on, if he attempts to do anything more with “middle class economics,” people will snicker.”

Snickering, humiliation, public loss, incompetent, he sums up this administration and the larger Washington political class quite nicely.

4) Speaking of humiliation and incompetence, let’s go overseas for the latest examples of such from the Obama administration. The President recently visited India on a state visit during which he appeared with the Indian Prime Minister at a major, public parade. 

During the ceremonies and parade, the President was seen obviously chomping on a wad of gum, insulting both his host and the entire country of India. The Times Of India called the gum chomping an “ungainly sight.” Other criticisms flowed in from both India and the United States.

But this type of obnoxious behavior should be expected. During a trip to China, the President was observed chewing gum during a major international leader reception. Chinese critics were outspoken in their disgust: “...Chinese Internet users, accustomed to the highly formal standards of their stiff party leadership, quickly characterized the leader of the world’s most powerful nation as an impolite ‘idler’ and careless ‘rapper.’”

But it get’s worse. A few months before the China trip, the President was criticized for chewing gum during a solemn D-Day ceremony in France as Queen Elizabeth was being introduced.












Is it too much to ask for the President to know enough about common decency and political protocol to do the right thing? Apparently not and he continues to embarrass both himself and more importantly, the nation he is in charge of?

5) Let’s wrap up this month’s series on political class insanity with a little bit of foreign relations insanity and failure. Back in September, 2014, the President bragged about his successful anti-terrorism strategy that he had deployed in Yemen and Somalia: “This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort … using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”


His strategy has been so successful that the government he was in partnership with recently was overthrown and replaced with terrorists supported by Iran. The horrific terrorist attacks in the center of Paris were planned, supported and executed by Islamic terrorists operating out of Yemen. If this is what the President considers a success, I cannot imagine what his definition of a failure would be.

That will do it for the insanity of the political class this month. Wasteful spending, stupid quotes, embarrassing incidents, failed foreign policies, indictments of politicians, lousy government service, etc., the insanity of our politicians and the government operations they oversee is truly bad and getting worse.

We will move on to other topics starting tomorrow but rest assured that early next month we will be back with more political class insanity incidents and embarrassments.


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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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






Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Why Increasing Taxes, This Time For Free Community College Education, Is Still A Stupid and Insulting Idea

President Obama is giving his state of the union speech tonight. And one of the main pillars of his talk will be to set up a Federal program so that millions and millions of Americans can get a community college education for free, courtesy of the American taxpayer. 

Today we will not be discussing the merits and downsides of such a program. Tomorrow we will do that, showing once again how this President continues to come up with bad, non-strategic ideas that just end up wasting taxpayer wealth (see: Solyndra, A123, and dozens of other failed alternative energy efforts that burned through tens of billions of dollars for nothing in return, Cash For Clunkers that was actually a money loser for car companies, etc.).


Today we will focus again on our long held premise that no American, rich or poor, should pay one penny more in taxes until the Washington political class and this Presidential administration stop wasting hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of taxpayer dollars every year. This wasteful spending could be used for so much more good, including returning it to taxpayers, if not for the incompetence of the Washington political class.


As a point of reference as we go through, again, the many ways Washington wastes our money, the Obama administration has estimated that giving millions of Americans free community college educations would cost about $60 billion over ten years. Again, tomorrow we will discuss how this $60 billion idea is just another bad Obama Presidency idea.


Where could the Federal government, though, find $60 billion to pay for this free education program WITHOUT raising taxes:


1) One our most popular posts of all time discussed the disgraceful abuse of taxpayer money when the Navy built two ships almost to completion, at a cost of $300 million, and then decided that they were not needed. The Navy then spent another $10 million to turn the recently built ships into scrap metal. Just this single $310 million waste could have paid for almost 5.2% of Obama's community college idea.


That popular post can be accessed at:


http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/07/us-navy-ships-for-sale-cheap-never-used.html


2) We also reported previously that the State Department had spent $40 million on a consulate building in Afghanistan and THEN discovered that it would be able to withstand a terrorist attack. Thus, the building had to be abandoned after spending the $40 million. Combining this wasteful spending with the Navy ship example and just these two disasters could have funded almost 6% of the community college idea.


3) Obama commissioned a big study early in his Presidency to find logical and sane ways to reduce his own administration's out of control deficit spending. After a long and detailed study and analysis, the commission came out with its detailed recommendations, all of which were promptly ignored by this President even though he commissioned the study.


One major component of the study was the conclusion that $100 billion dollars could easily be taken out of the annual Pentagon budget without harming our national security. We have covered many stories that dramatically show how much waste and criminal fraud exists within the Pentagon operations so $100 billion is a very attainable goal.


Thus, if Obama had taken his own commission's advice, he could have easily paid for his ten year's worth ($60 billion) of his community college idea with ONE year's savings from Pentagon spending.


4) Staying with the Pentagon, we recently reported on a news report that found that the Pentagon on invested $46 billion in weapons systems that never saw the light of day. One would have hope that the viability or non-viability of a weapons systems would be known well before a whopping $46 billion was spent for nothing in return. 


Even if only half of the $46 billion could have been saved by better management, that single action, that $23 billion could have paid for more than 38% of the community college idea without raising taxes.


5) Every Federal government agency wastes tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars every year on downright stupid projects. These programs benefit no one except the people that get the Federal grant money to pursue their silly and near useless ideas. These inane ideas and expenditures include, but are certainly not limited, to the following real projects that taxpayer money has been spent on:



  • A study to estimate when dogs became man's best friend.
  • Development of a video game that simulated prom week.
  • The State Department spent money on pottery lessons in Morocco.
  • The Federal government spent $80,000 to study why the same college basketball teams usually ended up in the thick of March Madness.
  • It spent $1 million for analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names.
  • It spent $581,000 on whether online dating sites are racist.
  • It wasted $2 million to figure out that people who often post pictures on the Internet from the same location at the same time are usually friends.
  • The National Science Foundation spent almost $385,000 of taxpayer wealth to study "Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior, and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia."
  • The IRS spent $60,000 on a film parody of "Star Trek" and a film parody of "Gilligan's Island."
We could go on for days but you get the idea. While I think that the President's free community college idea is a bad one, it is certainly better than these stupid and useless studies and efforts. If he wants to fund his community college idea, fund it out of these stupid ideas, not raising taxes.

6) A recent article in the National Review reported that on average, every Fortune 100 company, some of the biggest companies int he world, receive $200 million a year from the Washington political class,courtesy of the American taxpayer. This comes out to about $20 billion a year. If Obama cut this off for just three years, he could fund his community college idea for ten years.

Some of the bigger recipients of taxpayer money include General Electric ($380 million), General Motors, ($370 million), and Boeing ($264 million).  If Obama is so serious about his community college idea, make these companies' shareholders pay for company operations, not the American taxpayer via increasing taxes on any American.

7) And finally, consider an analysis recently published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. According to their report, using the Federal government's own data and information:

  • In fiscal year 2013, the Federal government improperly paid out $106 billion across 13 government programs.
  • While outright criminal fraud was major factor in this wasting of taxpayer wealth, other factors including clerical errors, complexity of rules, and failure to confirm eligibility were also factors that could be corrected.
  • This waste is equivalent to over $900 a year for every American household.
  • Fixing 56% of this waste in just ONE YEAR could pay for the first TEN YEARS of Obama's community college idea.

The detailed analysis by wasteful government programs follow (double click on the graph for a larger view):












Such a disgrace, embarrassment, and insult to hard working, taxpaying Americans. Even worse, this list does not include the main Social Security program for retirees. Reputable sources we have cited in this blog put the wasteful and criminal fraud of that program at over $100 billion a year also, more than enough to fund the community college idea for well over ten years.


No American, rich or poor, should pay another penny in taxes, when these wasteful actions continue under this Presidential administration and Washington political class. Just like an American household, if you want something you cannot afford, economize your spending somewhere else. And in this wasteful government bureaucracy, the ability to economize is seemingly endless and easy to do.


Just because the Federal government could find the ways and means to pay for this $60 billion idea by tightening up its spending, does not mean it should. Tomorrow will be the discussion on why this is just another silly, free floating, non-strategic tactical plan from this President who has shown no ability to think strategically or to operate efficiently.



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












Friday, February 22, 2013

Obama's March Of Dimes...Into Oblivion

In his recent state of the union message, President Obama proposed that over two dozen new Federal government programs be implemented. In doing so, he spoke one of his more comical lines in his whole Presidency, stating that implementing these programs would not cost the American taxpayer a single dime. Which raises two conflicting questions:

A) If these programs do not cost a dime, how will they actually work and be implemented and how effective could they possibly be?

B) If they are going to be effective, shouldn’t they cost more than a dime?

More political nonsensical talk from an ineffective political leader. Especially this political leader, who has the annoying habit of throwing out these grandiose rhetoric ideas without any solid back up plans at all, never mind even pie-in-the-sky ineffective plans to back up his empty promises.

And why would we even believe that 29 new programs will not cost anything, given the Federal government’s mismanagement of trillions of taxpayer payers dimes historically:
  • Every year, Medicare and Medicaid waste or lose to criminal fraud over $100 billion (One trillion dimes).
  • Every year, Social Security wastes or loses to criminal fraud over $100 billion (One trillion dimes).
  • Every year, the IRS readily admits that it fails to collect over $380 billion from American tax evaders (3.8 trillion dimes).
We could cite hundreds of other examples of Washington political class financial mismanagement that cost Americans a lot of dimes and would cost Americans a lot more dimes of these new programs ever happened.

Consider four recent examples of wasted dimes that extend Washington’s tradition of wasting dimes:

1) A January 25, 2013 article on the CNN/Money website reported actual criminals, locked up in prisons across the country annually bilk the IRS out of millions and millions of dollars by filing fraudulent tax returns with the IRS from within their prison walls. Thus, not only are would-be convicts pillaging the American taxpayer from outside of prisons, actual convicts are also doing some pillaging inside prisons.

Details of this fraud include the following:
  • This tax fraud usually involves prisoners filing fraudulent tax refunds from their respective prisons using stolen or fake identities.
  • The prisoners often are in partnership with non-prisoners outside of prison, with all parties sharing in the cut of fraud that they execute.
  • In one variation of the scams, prisons access company annual reports in the prison library that list Federal tax ID numbers, and then claim they worked for these companies on phony 1040 forms that they file.
  • Other scams involve prisoners claiming wages from companies that are in bank bankruptcy proceedings since those wages can be harder for the IRS to track and verify.
  • Some prisoners scan obituaries, looking for people’s identities to steal to be used in filing the false tax returns.
  • Others use prison computers to file tax returns electronically online and have their fraudulent refunds easily and electronically deposited into the bank accounts of friends on the outside.
How embarrassing, the Federal government is so inept financially that even those already convicted can continue their crime sprees behind bars where their room and board is already being paid for by the taxpayers across this country. The article estimates that in 2010, prisoners attempted to fraudulently bilk the IRS for over $750 million and were successful in obtaining $35 million of taxpayer wealth.

Now, in the big Federal budget picture, this does not sound like a lot. But consider two things:
  1. This is the IRS estimates of what is going on. Who knows how accurate these estimates are. The IRS could be lowballing the estimates to minimize their embarrassment in not being capable or they really do not have a handle on the extent of the fraud and it is much worse than what they can identify.
  2. Second, theoretically this $35 million could have been used to put armed police professionals in over 600 U.S. schools in order to prevent future Newtown-like school shootings, a much better use of the resources than allowing criminals to continue their crime sprees in prison.
In any case, this losing $35 million, or 350,000,000 dimes every year is a testimony to ineptness of the Federal government.

2) The Bankrupting America website carried an interesting but depressing article on January 30, 2013 about how another Federal government program wastes billions and billions of dollars every year via incompetence
  • An important, comprehensive report from the Government Office of Accountability (GAO) reported that $108 billion of unemployment benefits and other government appropriations went towards “improper payments” over the past several years.
  • These improper payments often went to the wrong person or were issued in the incorrect amount.
  • Citing a Roll Call article: “No business would allow this much of its budget to be wasted. Sadly, this is business as usual in Washington, and solutions are tough to come by.”
The website goes on to give examples of what this wasted $108 billion in taxpayer wealth could have been used for in order to illustrate the extent of the waste:
  • On an average American household basis, this error rate would have reduced that average household’s monthly income by about $200 a month. This is $200 that they could not have used for food, gas, and other expenses, a significant drag on a household’s financials, an economic drag repeated over 110 million times across every U.S. household
  • The $108 billion could also be used to buy 366,000 Ferraris.
  • It also could have been used to make 101 million mortgage payments at $1061 per month.
To this list we would add the calculation that the $108 billion that was wastefully distributed could have put one armed police professional in every U.S. school for about 15 years, a much better use of the 1,080,000,000,000 dimes.

3) An Associated Press report from February 8, 2013 reported that the U.S. Post Office lost $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012 or about 13,000,000,000 dimes. This loss came despite the fact that billions and billions of dollars were spent on the November elections, a lot of which ended up funding mailings from the various candidates and other political entities. Thus, the better measure of the slumping Post Office financials iis not the loss of $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012 but the loss of $3.3 billion in the comparable timeframe of 2011 where there was no major election spending.

But this should come as no surprise. We reported on the mess that was the Post Office over a year ago in September, 2011:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/09/political-class-when-it-comes-to-post.html

In that post we quoted Senator Joe Lieberman’s warning that “we must act quickly” to fix the red ink problems of the Post Office. Apparently, that warning did not get the right attention since seventeen months, later the dimes keep getting wasted due to Post Office inefficiencies.

Quick note: this is not meant as a knock against the management of the Post Office. Back in September, 2011 and now, management seems to have a good handle on what is happening to their industry and what could be done to adjust the Post Office operations to address those changes, e.g. their recent announcement to stop Saturday mail deliveries. It is the political class that is dithering while our dimes slide away, not those employees and executives that recognize the need to change.

4) And finally, a case where the number of dimes being lost is actually incalculable. That, at least is the conclusion of a GAO report on their audit of the Federal government financials. In a massive audit of the entire Federal government, the GAO report concluded the following:
  • Our report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statements illustrates that much work remains to improve federal financial management. Further improvements are urgently needed.
  • Certain material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting and other limitations on the scope of our work resulted in conditions that prevented us from expressing an opinion on the fiscal years 2012 and 2011 accrual-based consolidated financial statements.
  • About 34 percent of the federal government’s reported total assets as of September 30, 2012, and approximately 21 percent of the federal government’s reported net cost for fiscal year 2012 relate to the Department of Defense (DOD), which received a disclaimer of opinion on its consolidated financial statements.
  • Because of significant uncertainties, primarily related to the achievement of projected reductions in Medicare cost growth reflected in the 2012, 2011, and 2010 Statements of Social Insurance, we are unable to, and we do not, express opinions on the 2012, 2011, and 2010 Statements of Social Insurance, as well as on the 2012 and 2011 Statement of Changes in Social Insurance Amounts.
  • Material weaknesses resulted in ineffective internal control over financial reporting for fiscal year 2012.
  • Our tests of compliance with selected provisions of laws and regulations for fiscal year 2012 were limited by the material weaknesses and other scope limitations discussed in our report.
In other words, the Federal government’s accounting processes are so screwed up that we have no idea what is going on or how many trillions of dimes are wasted every year. How scary is this report, the Federal government is so messed up that trained auditors cannot unravel the mess.

All of these examples get us back to the original discussion on Obama’s two dozen plus new programs. If he and the rest of the Washington political class were actually doing their jobs and watching over our dimes, they could fund their additional programs and it truly would not cost the American taxpayer a dime in additional taxes. They could put armed police professionals in every U.S. school to protect our kids. They could do a lot if they just started watching and caring for our dimes.

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