Showing posts with label taiwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taiwan. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

March, 2024, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Biden's Economic Failures, Biden's Foreign Policy Failures, Hochul's Law and Order Failure, and Oregon's Drug War Failure

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country. 


Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.


1)We have often made the case that whatever the American political class touches or works on goes down the drain. The objectives are never met and a lot of taxpayer  money is wasted.


Oregon politicians illustrates the point perfectly:


  • A few years ago the state of Oregon basically legalized hard drugs.

  • One can make a strong case that this was the right move from a freedom perspective, that people should be able to put anything they want in their bodies regardless of what the political class deems appropriate.

  • In addition, current drug laws on the books have done nothing to stop the drug addiction plague in the country so why not try another approach.

  • Unfortunately, the Oregon approach was not the right approach.

  • There is a potential new law going through the legislative process that would re-criminalize hard drugs in the state and goes after dealers who peddle their poison close to schools, drug treatment centers, parks, and halfway houses.

  • Two years after the decriminalization law was passed, overdose cases in the state increased 20%.

  • In one single day in March, 2023, 11 people died  from an overdose, a rate of about 4,000 deaths a year.


Nice try but no success. Whatever addiction support the state politicians thought would offset the looser drug laws did not stop the death train of addiction. Just another failed political class effort.


2)A very, very basic role and tenet of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the citizens they serve. No matter what successes they have elsewhere, the failure to execute this basic government makes their tenure in office a failure.


Given this reality, it is pretty obvious that the political class in New York have failed in this basic government responsibility:


  • New York City’s streets and subways have experienced a significant increase in violent crime in the past few years.

  • For example, city subway crime is up 13% over the past year.

  • Thus, given the failure to control crime and homicides, New York governor, Kathy Hochul, has decided to station National Guard troops in the subways in a desperate last ditch effort to control the rampant crime.

  • She is worried that the crime rate is causing anxiety among commuters and subway riders and which may lead to people not using the subway system.

  • She obviously does not  think  that the NYPD is up to the task of controlling crime in the streets and subways and  is thus, a failure of the city’s political class to rein in the terror of violent crime.


This is obviously a desperation move by desperate politicians and their failure to to execute that basic government tenet,  protecting the lives and property of its citizens. And while this may work to lessen crime, nothing says “we live in a third world country” than basically having armed troops deployed to protect citizens.


3)Washington continues to be unable to control or understand inflation as the latest inflation numbers from the government point out:


  • The inflation rate for January was 3.2%, 60% higher than what the Federal Reserve and the country thinks is appropriate and fair.

  • Prices were up .4% in January over December, an annual rate that would be even higher than 3.2% if maintained.

  • The average cost of a gallon of gas was $3.08, up from $2.39 a gallon on the day Biden was elected, up about 30%.

  • Food prices continue to run more than 20% since Biden took over.

  • Overall inflation is up 17% over the past three years.


And yet Biden still does not get it, that his policies have restricted energy exploration and availability, driving up costs that reverberate through the entire economy. His huge deficit spending budgets are also a main driver of this persistent and damaging inflation. And yet he blames greedy companies and his ridiculous concept of “shrinkflation” for his economic ignorance. And his ignorance makes us poorer everyday.


4)Speaking of failures, Biden also continues to fail miserably when it comes to foreign policy:


  • His answer to the Ukraine/Russian conflict is to just continue spending taxpayer money on weapons for the Ukrainians, he has no diplomatic plan or strategy to actually end the conflict, just continues to feed it with weaponry: he has not met or talked to Putin, he has not forced the United Nations to help in at least a truce process, his secretary of state has met a grand total of one time with the Russian foreign minister, a complete and utter failure.

  • China is likely to invade Taiwan in the not too distant future and Biden has done nothing to diffuse that potential conflict except to ask Congress for more taxpayer money to buy weapons for the Taiwanese government.

  • North Korea continues to build up its nuclear and conventional arms arsenal.

  • The Hamas/Israeli conflict rages on with no successful  effort from the Biden administration to end that conflict, with Biden basically being  ignored by all sides involved.


We live in a much more dangerous world than when Biden came into office in January, 2021 and he and his State Department have  shown absolutely no ability to function and positively influence world events. 


That will do it for today's political class insanity, a litany of failures of American politicians: Biden’s  foreign policy failures, Biden’s economic policy failures, New York’s inability to control urban crime failures, and Oregon’s failure to understand and treat the drug epidemic. Wow, it seems that you could not do any worse even if you tried to be a failure.


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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



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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:


Sunday, November 12, 2023

November, 2023, By The Numbers: The Economy and Biden's Numbers Sink Together, Rampant COVID Fraud, Congressional Hypocrisy and More

 On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political class tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.


1)Hundreds of times in this blog we have discussed the reality that the Federal government has gotten so big and the politicians and bureaucrats that operate so inept that hordes of billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted every year. Medicare and Social Security fraud, out of control Pentagon spending, stupid foreign aid projects, etc The list of wasted dollars seems endless.


And one of the  most recent AND  most  corrupt government programs was the COVID programs the Federal government put in place to help workers and businesses get through the pandemic crisis. But as always, the wasteful spending and fraud in the COVID crisis was monumental:


  • In the latest investigation of COVID fraud, the Department of Justice has charged 371 people with defrauding the Federal  government via its various COVID relief programs.

  • The dollar value of this fraud is a mind blowing $836 million.

  • At  least 63 of those 371 people being charged were hardcore gang members.

  • These latest fraud examples and ripoffs are in addition to  the 3,000 individuals that have already been investigated by the Department of Justice with it being estimated that these 3,000 people criminally took $1.4 billion in COVID funds.

  • A previous investigation found that a single COVID relief program, the Paycheck Protection Program, handed out $200 billion in fraudulent payments.

  • The folks accused of stealing these taxpayer dollars spent their ill gotten gains on luxury cars,  private jets, vacation homes, and other high end products.

  • In one successful conviction, a real  estate agent was given a three year prison sentence for stealing $381,000 to buy a Bentley high end car, an apartment and had plastic surgery done.

  • The only good news is that 119 people have pleaded guilty or have been  convicted of their fraud which led to $231 million being recovered.


The good news is some of the criminals have been  found guilty and some of the money returned. But most of the money and most of the criminals will probably never be recovered or prosecuted for their stealing. Another out of control government program that not only wasted taxpayer wealth but prevented these taxpayer dollars from actually helping out people in need during the COVID pandemic.


2)According to research and polling done by the Center Square Voters’ Voice poll:


  • 66% of likely voters say that the country is heading in the wrong direction.

  • A mere  24% say it is heading in the right direction.

  • 57% of those polled disapprove of the job Biden is doing while 43% approve of his performance.

  • Potential reasons for the pessimistic results of the poll is that the national debt is nearing $34,000,000,000,000 and Biden's border policies have  allowed over 10 million illegal immigrants to  enter the country.


The  amazing number from this poll is that somehow 43% of those polled actually approve of Biden’s  performance, given the economic failures, the immigration failures, and the diplomatic failures of this administration. I challenge anyone to point out anything that Biden has done well, one thing.


3)One reason for Biden’s bad approval numbers is that the real life economic numbers are not good:


  • Latest unemployment numbers show that the unemployment rate rose to 3.9% in the last month.

  • This was higher than expected.

  • Employment fell by 348,000 and the number of unemployed increased by 146,000.

  • The labor participation rate decreased by 201,000.

  • The average hourly earnings rose less than expected.

  • Alfredo Ortiz is the CEO of Job Creators Network and he pointed out that inflation is up almost 20% under Biden and gas prices are up over 50%


Prices are up, unemployment is up and Biden’s approval numbers are down, the numbers do  not lie and the numbers are all related.


4)The following numbers have been reviewed far too many times in this blog:


  • At any one time, there are likely up to 600,000 homeless Americans living on the streets.

  • Given food inflation, 17 million Americans are frequently facing food availability crises.

  • Well over 100,000 Americans are likely to die this year because of drug overdoses, driven by Biden’s porous borders and failed immigration policies.

  • Despite Obama Care, 26 million Americans do not have health insurance coverage.


And yet, given these millions of Americans in need, the following is being debated in Washington: Biden wants Congress to approve giving $100 billion to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Each one of these countries represents a failed diplomatic effort of the Biden administration. 


Think about how many needy Americans could be helped with the $100 billion  that Biden needs to cover up his diplomatic failures:


  • That $100 billion could feed the 600,000 homeless Americans three meals a day for just over 5 years.

  • That $100 billion could give those 17 million hungry Americans $113 a week  to help pay for groceries for a year.

  • That $100 billion could give drug addiction support and help to 16 million Americans.

  • That $100 billion could give $3700 to each of those 27 million uninsured Americans to help pay for health insurance.


You get the idea, even if the total $100 billion could not all be distributed to those in need, there has to be a better approach to help Americans than shipping hundreds of billions of dollars around the world.


5)Several members of Congress have  seemingly forever been harping on  the failed concept of “defunding the police.’ They somehow thought that if police forces were decimated from a personnel and budget perspective, that crime would go down and citizens would be safer.


We now know how stupid that concept is: wherever police forces were defunded, crime and violence skyrocketed and citizens were far less safe. These folks are directly responsible for the unnecessary deaths of people who would likely be alive today if the whole defund the police concept had never taken root in  some of our crime riddled cities.


But their hypocrisy on this issue was recently uncovered. While these people have opened up their residents to danger, they were certainly making sure that they themselves would not be exposed to their fallout from defunding the police:


  • Congresswoman Cori Bush used over $730,000 from her campaign budget to hire private security to protect herself.

  • Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used over $270,000 from her campaign coffers to protect herself with private security.

  • Congresswoman Ilhan Omar used over $125,000 to protect herself with private security.

  • Bush actually paid her husband $75,000 from her campaign budget to pay for private security.

  • Keep in mind that every Congressional  member is provided separate security by U.S. Capitol Police so these expenditures were in addition to their government protection.


Just another example that happens so often with American politicians, “do as I say,  not as I do.”


That will  do  it for today’s numbers: Congressional hypocrisy, sending money everywhere but to needy Americans, Biden’s numbers continue to sink in line with the economy’s, and COVID fraud is an embarrassment to government programs.


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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



***********************************************


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:

Monday, October 1, 2012

October, 2012 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Standing At The Urinal, Spying At The FDA, Not Doing Just Fine and More

As our regular readers know, every month we do a set of posts regarding the latest insanity and idiocy from the American political class across a wide spectrum of government entities and actions. Unfortunately, over time, one post has not been enough to review each month's craziness and sadness emanating from our politicians. This trend remains true again this month, as we will need the next two posts to get it all in.

1) According to a short blurb in the May 14, 2012 issue of Business Week magazine, in the first quarter of 1982, about 65% of all American homes were owned, not rented, in America. In the next thirty years, the American political class rolled out expensive program after expensive program to get that home ownership rate higher, regardless of the credit and debt risks.

Their actions resulted in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needing close to $200 billion (and growing) worth of taxpayer wealth to bailout these government mortgage entities, massive bailouts of banks who lent the money to increase home ownership levels, and the Great Recession that devastated the economy and the lives of millions of American families.

According to the Business Week analysis, as of the first quarter of 2012, thirty years later, the home ownership rate in America is....65%. In other words, the decades' long effort of our political class to increase home ownership is right back to where it was in 1982. Unfortunately, in order to get nowhere in thirty years, trillions of dollars of taxpayer and home owner wealth was destroyed to get nowhere.

2) According to an article that appeared in Politico earlier this summer, although the Dodd-Frank financial reform law was passed over two years ago, only about 37% of the required regulations outlined in the law have actually been written by their deadlines. At this rate, it will take almost six years to write the regulations that support the intentions of the legislation.

In six years, the whole world of both finance and politics could change drastically, making one wonder why the law was even passed at all if its effects will not be felt for a very long time. In the real world, such incompetency would be dealt with by firing those for not doing their job in a timely manner. In Washington, this laxity and laziness is just business as usual.

3) A Wall Street Journal article that was summarized in the July 6, 2012 issue of The Week magazine reported that more than 3.5 million Americans, aged between 45 and 64, were unemployed as of the end of May, three years after the recession supposedly ended. The Journal called this reality “an unprecedented rate of long term unemployment rate for workers in their prime working years.” Thus, despite what our President might believe, the private sector is not doing “just fine” for this group of experienced American workers.

4) As I understand it, the Federal Reserve Board has been buying trillions of dollars worth of bank assets, via its so-called “quantitative easing” strategy, in order to get more cash into the hands of the banks who might then loan this new found cash to businesses and consumers to spur the economy. Besides being a fancy name for “printing money,” the strategy does not appear to be working.

According to an article in the August 27, 2012 issue of Business Week, these banks now have about $1.7 TRILLION more in deposits than they have out in loans. This gap is the largest it has been in two years and is continuing to get larger and larger as the banks take this new found cash and use it for their own investments rather than investing it in the economy.

Thus, the American taxpayer via the Federal Reserve, is pumping wealth into the banks in this country so that they can speculate and invest it for their bottom line and profits, not for the economy. As always, the taxpayer gets screwed, the banks get rich, and the politicians get more campaign cash for the reelection from the bankers.

5) Recall that the Federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA) was busted for spending $832,000 worth of taxpayer money on a self serving Las Vegas party for themselves. Fortunately, the wasteful spending was uncovered by the Inspector General, Congress got involved, and many of those responsible for the waste were fired.
However, according to a recent Associated Press report, it may be that many employees in the GSA did not get the message that illegal activities are not to be pursued. The article reported on an alleged scam where the GSA promised to give a Federal tax break to building contractors it might hire in exchange for the contractors writing a check, payable to the GSA, for 19% of the tax break’s value.

In many areas of the real world, this is called a kickback and is almost always illegal. It appears that GSA managers are trying to get their own GSA budgets augmented via this kickback scheme and bypassing, to some extent, the need to go before Congress and the regular government budget setting processes. Obviously, the American taxpayer loses here when any government bureaucrat can hand out tax breaks in order to enhance their own operating environment. Disgraceful.

6) According to some recent research from the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who consider themselves lower class has grown from about 25% of the population four years ago to just under one third of the population today. Since four years ago, we have supposedly been in an economic recovery mode for three of those four years, but the perception of lower class has grown by about 33%. So much for the private sector doing “just fine,” at least from a self perception perspective.

7) From a George Orwell “1984” perception, consider an article from the July 27, 2012 issue of The Week magazine. Apparently, the FDA was being operated so poorly and incompetently that many FDA employees were blowing the whistle on the bad behavior, informing Congressmen, lawyers, and other officials of what was actually going on within the FDA.

Rather than fix the problems, FDA management decided to go after the whistle blowers. According to the article, the FDA setup a surveillance program to find out who in their organization was snitching. Their program resulted in the capture of over 80,000 FDA employee emails in an attempt to root out the whistle blowers rather than solve the problems. U.S. Senator Charles Grassley was properly outraged by the FDA actions, saying that “the FDA is discouraging whistle blowers,” and “they think they can be the Gestapo and do anything they want.”

If the government spies on itself rather than fixing its own problems, there is little doubt it would spy on its own citizens rather than fix its own problems.

8) I guess we should not be to discouraged by the incompetency and greed of our politicians since political class insanity and idiocy is not restricted to the U.S. The September 7, 2012 issue of The Week magazine showed such insanity from around the world.

In Russia, political opposition leaders to Russian President Vladimir Putin claim that the President is spending mega bucks on outrageously lavish palaces, yachts, and jets, many of which he has for his own personal use. To get to and from his palaces, coastal homes, and luxury ski lodges, he can choose from his fleet of 13 helicopters, four yachts, and 41 airplanes, one of which has gold plated bathroom fixtures. Lenin and Marx must be turning over in their graves.

In Taiwan, the government has started a campaign to encourage men to sit down in public restrooms rather than stand in front of a urinal to relieve themselves. The official reason for the taxpayer funded effort is to produce less of a mess in restrooms. You cannot make this stuff up when it comes to politicians and wasteful spending. I find it hard to believe that there are not better uses for these government funds than to change the urinal habits of Taiwan’s male citizens.

That is enough for today. The insanity and idiocy will continue tomorrow, as will the continued wasteful spending of politicians everywhere.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of our times.

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