Showing posts with label student debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label student debt. Show all posts

Monday, December 13, 2021

December, 2021, Part 5, PoliticalClass Insanity: Ocasio-Cortez Still Denies Reality, Ocasio-Cortez Thinks You Should Pay Off Her Student Loan, and Biden Has Plenty of Failures But No Plans To Fix What Is Broken

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) We used to talk a lot about Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her ignorance and idiocy regarding governing and real life were really quite funny at one point in time, and made us wonder how someone so out of touch with reality ever got elected to Congress.

But overtime her ignorance and ranting became tedious and more idiotic. Everyone and everything that did not agree with her was either racist, sexist, or both. She proposed no solutions to any problems that had any basis in reality or chance of being effective. As a result, we have cut back on her rantings since they accomplished nothing.

But let’s get back to her latest idiocy. It is no secret that defunding the police departments across the country has resulted in skyrocketing crime. The numbers do not lie. But apparently she has a math deficiency since she continues to insist that defunding the police is a valid societal approach to crime. And her blindness to reality has led her down another path of ignorance:
  • It is no secret that criminal gangs have been attacking, overwhelming and stripping retail stores, especially in California, of products on the shelves.
  • These retail gangs have threatened the safety of both employees and customers with a retail security guard already being killed in California.
  • There is no doubt that this is a crime spree that is out of control.
  • Even a fellow New York Democrat, state assemblyman Dov Hikind, is aware of reality: “These crimes that are being committed, there are real victims out there.”
  • But Ocasio-Cortez insists that the retail gang crime spree, as with the other types of ever rising urban crime rates, is a myth, just does not exist: “A lot of these allegations of organized retail theft are not panning out.”
  • How she can say this with almost nightly news reports containing video of the crime spree, is beyond comprehension.
  • But Hikind knows better: “The bail reform she (Ocasio-Cortez) supports, in which criminals walk out before the police officer finishes the paperwork, is ridiculous, resulting in new victims. It’s entirely out of hand….Republicans are speaking out on this. Where are people from my Democratic Party? Are they blind? Maybe AOC is blind. She doesn’t see it.”
Kudos to Mr. Hikind for speaking out against a member of his own party. But he states the obvious. A primary purpose of any government is to protect the lives and property of the citizens they govern. Many government entities around the country are now failing miserably at this function as witnessed by the retail gang attacks on stores. And given that Ocasio-Cortez cannot even recognize the problem, she has no chance of resolving the crime problem that plagues mostly liberal cities across the country. So out of touch.

2) But one thing that Ocasio-Cortez does very well as it applies to long term politicians in Washington, is to take care of herself financially. She recently lamented that she had $17,000 in student debt and would like the American taxpayer to cover the debt she has incurred:
  • “I’m 32 years old now. I have over $17,000 in student loan debt, and I didn’t go to graduate school because I knew that getting another degree would drown me in debt that I would never be able to surpass. This is unacceptable.”
  • Obviously, in her mind, it is the fault of the world and not her because she did not go to graduate school even though untold thousands of average Americans go to graduate schools every year.
  • Keep in mind that Ocasio-Cortez earns about $174,000 a year as a member of Congress, about 2-3 times higher than the average household income in the country.
  • Keep in mind that this salary does not include the very robust benefits that Congress has voted itself over the years.
  • Keep in mind that has bought herself a Tesla electric vehicle, probably paying about $70,000 or so for the car.
  • And she wants average Americans, earning far less than her and not able to afford a Tesla to pay off her student debt?
  • To pay off her student debt and the student debt of everyone else who owes would cost about $1.6 trillion.
  • This means that every American household would have to pay out about $13,000 to cover the student debt of others.
So ridiculous for her to even think that American taxpayers are obligated to pay off her student loan. Would she be willing to pay off my mortgage? Would she be willing to pay off my neighbor's car loan? Of course not, that would cost her money. But she has no problem spending other people's money to pay off her debts. Again, has any politician ever been so out of touch with reality?

3) Let’s do a quick review of Joe Biden’s first eleven months in office:
  • He completely botched the Afghanistan withdrawal to try and get a cheap political stunt for the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, resulting in unnecessary deaths of American service personnel and Afghan civilians.
  • He left behind hundreds of Americans and possibly thousands of Afghan allies behind Taliban lines and at the mercy of these butchers and he has no plans to rescue them.
  • Overall inflation levels have hit levels not seen in thirty years and he has no plans to fix the problem.
  • Inflation levels for durable goods have hit levels not seen in 40 years and he has no plans to fix the problem.
  • Energy inflation levels had seen gas prices rise about 50% and home heating energy prices soar even higher with no plans to fix the problem.
  • Crime is rampaging across American cities and he has no plans to fix the problem.
  • The American economy's supply chain process is broken and he has no plans to fix it.
  • He has insulted a host of longtime U.S,. allies (France, England, others) and has no plans to fix the problem.
  • He has emboldened Russia, China, Iran, and other enemies of the country, endangering the freedom and lives of people living in the Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel and has no plans to fix the problem.
  • His approval ratings for both himself and his Vice President continue to trend downward with no plans to fix the problem.
  • Covid is still a major health problem and he has no plans to fix the problem.
  • Russia and China are rapidly moving ahead with hypersonic weapon development and he has no plans to counteract this new threat.
  • His domestic spending plans and proposed plans will accelerate the growth in the national debt even higher, leading to the eventual financial collapse of the U.S. economy.
  • He has opened up the borders to a surge of unvaccinated, criminals, drug cartel members, and possibly terroristic individuals with no plans to fix the problem.
  • He has no plans to provide for the basic support of needy Americans, the hundreds of thousands of homeless Americans, the millions of hungry Americans, and the untold number of Americans in need of drug addiction help.
Bottom line: the country is in bad shape and Biden has no plans to fix any of the problems facing every American. You would hope that he would be busily dedicated to working with the best minds in the country and government to fix what he has mostly broken and fix what he inherited. But no, he would rather go on television and hang out with a Hollywood liberal:
  • He recently spent time appearing on the “Tonight Show” with famed Hollywood liberal, Jimmy Fallon.
  • This is part of the White House’s new public relations blitz to shore up Biden’s cratering popularity rather than shore up his actual performance as President, a really bad set of priorities.
  • During the interview with Fallon, he came up with the following gibberish response, a trademark of his current mental state, gibberish: “Well look, here’s the deal. I think that it’s uh, we’ve been in less than a year, um, a lot has happened, look, people are afraid, people are worried and people are getting so much inaccurate information to them. I don’t mean about me, I mean about this…their situation, and and so they’re, you know, they’re, they’re being told that you know, Armageddon’s on the way.”
  • Of course, he went on to blame Trump, much like his former boss, Obama, blamed George Bush for his failings, despite being in office for almost a year and having a Democratically controlled Congress.
  • And yet he has failed on so many fronts it is pathetic, probably making him a worse president than Jimmy Carter, once recognized as one of the least effective Presidents of the past 100 years.
But at least Carter never blamed everyone else for his failures, he was an adult who accepted responsibility. Biden is not that adult, he would rather incoherently parade around on late night TV while Americans suffer at the gas pumps, in Afghanistan, in their soon to be very cold homes, and at the food checkout lines. So very bad priorities.

That will do it for today: Ocasio-Cortez is still out of touch with reality and still greedy and Biden has been a failure along every perspective imaginable.

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Thursday, November 19, 2015

November, 2015, Part 4, By The Numbers: The Economy Stinks and These Federal Reserve Charts Prove It (Continued)

This is the fourth post among a few days worth of discussion of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.

The numbers we will look at this week will often have a common thread running almost through all of them: the views, positions, and opinions of the majority of Americans are often the exact opposite of the views and related actions that our politicians own. Since we are supposed to be living in a representative government system one would hope that the laws, rules, and government functions that our politicians oversee reflect the thinking, hopes, and views of the American citizenry.

As the numbers will usually show, that is nowhere close to reality, which I think reflects two underlying negative trends:
  1. American politicians vote and act for their own personal interests first, Americans’ interests and well being being of secondary consideration. If a politician’s actions can get them more votes or more campaign cash for their perpetual reelection campaigns, than that is their priority, usually not the priorities of their constituents.
  2. Second, I personally believe that today’s American politicians take care of their special interest friends and financiers first and foremost, and the interests of those special interest friends (e.g.unions, corporations, lobbyists, etc.) are usually not in alignment with what the majority of Americans have as their priorities.
Keep these two possibilities in mind as we go “by the numbers” for this week and try to show the major disconnect between what Americans want and what politicians are doing:

Yesterday, we reviewed the latest monthly economic statistics from the Federal government. Although there were a few glimmers of economic hope, for the most part those glimmers are still being overwhelmed by the overall economic situation:
  • The labor participation rate is still bouncing around at the same low levels not seen for the past four decades. 
  • Almost 14 million Americans are either unemployed or are working at part time jobs even though they would prefer full time jobs. 
  • Minority unemployment rates are still much higher than the total national unemployment rate. 
  • Over 45 million Americans are still receiving Federal food assistance every month.
These are the short term economic results and numbers. They are not good. But the Daily Caller recently published some long term trend data from the Federal Reserve Board and guess what: the long term economic results and numbers are just as bad. 

Yesterday, we looked at five of the nine long term trend charts that the Federal Reserve recently published. Today, we will look at the final four charts but the results, numbers, and conclusions are still the same: Washington politicians probably could not have screwed things up worse if they had tried to.

6) As we discussed yesterday, and many times previoulsy, the number of people and the amount of taxpayer wealth spent on food assistance every month, while down slightly, is still more than double higher than what it was prior to the recession and six years AFTER the recession ended (click on chart for a larger view):

7) Student debt is rapidly approaching a whopping $1 TRILLION, is about nine times higher than what it was prior to the recession and has skyrocketed since the recession ended. And since a lot of this debt is guaranteed and backed by the Federal government, there is a good chance that American taxpayers are going to get caught with this bad debt and investment at some point in time.

8) Twenty five years ago, the Democrats in Congress and the White House decided it was worth risking trillions of dollars via taxpayer backed loans to credit risky home owners in order to increase the homeownership level of American families. Twenty five years later, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent to bail out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other financial institutions, the home ownership rates for American families is actually lower than where it was back then. As with the other Fed measurements, the rate of homeownership decline has accelerated AFTER the recession ended.

9) And finally, this last Fed chart shows that not only have wages stagnated during the Obama years but American median family income is less than it was was in 1998. While bouncing back somewhat since the recession ended, the median is still below where it was prior to the recession and lately its improvement trend has been flattening out.



That will do it for today. But the results and conclusions from the nine Federal Reserve charts we have reviewed over the past two days charts definitely prove three things: the Obama administration, the current Congressional members, and Federal bureaucrats have saddled us with tremendous amounts of debt, stagnant wages, and tepid job creation. Seems you could not do a worse job managing the economy if you were trying.
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