The American Political Class - "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" Today: The Bad, Part 1

This week we are going through a number of posts under the theme of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” stealing a title from an old Clint Eastwood movie. Yesterday, we looked at some of the good things going on in the country. 

When you write a blog like this, it can get kind of depressing as we watch our political class operate government in such a way that incompetence is rampant and rewarded, taxpayer wealth is abused and wasted, and the politicians in office have neither the will or the ability to truly resolve the major issues facing Americans. They are more intent on personal self-enrichment and staying in office.

Thus, it was good yesterday to get away from the disaster that is the American political class and talk about some good things going on in the country ("The Good"), all being executed and put forth for the betterment of Americans by private citizens doing the right thing. This is opposed to waiting for the politicians to do the wrong thing or do nothing but costing us a lot for their non-productive efforts.

However, today and probably tomorrow, we have to dive into the “The Bad” part of our theme. “The Bad” items discussed below are mostly concerned on how Americans feel about the state of the country, the state of their lives, and their attitudes towards the people causing most of the problems in this country, namely the current set of politicians. Never has a set of politicians been so ineffective or so demoralizing to the citizens of Americas, as we review “The Bad” conditions and feelings prevalent in America today:

1) According to a recent survey by Pew Research:

• The opinion that the United States is No. 1 in the world has dropped significantly in just the last three years.
• Pew found that only 28% believe that the U.S. “stands above all other countries in the world.” 
• 58% say it is “one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others.” 
• 12% said that there are other countries “that are better.”
• Just three years ago, well within the current Presidential administration and current members of Congress, 38% said the U.S. was No. 1 compared to only 28% today, a whopping 26% decrease.
• 52% of Republicans said America stood above the others but that feeling has decreased has dropped to only 37%, a decrease of 28% in just three years.
• In 2011, 33% of Democrats said America “stands above” others while today only 25% believe that, a decrease of about 24%.
• And most depressing for the future of this country, Americans ages 18-29, are at the bottom of those who view the nation as standing alone in greatness with only 15% of those under 30 express that view today, down from 27% three years ago, a whopping decrease of 44%.
• Even senior citizens, the most optimistic about America, have seen a 20% decline in three years in their attitudes, shrinking their optimism about the country to 40%, down from 50% in 2011.

Thus, we seem to be a nation suffering a crisis of confidence, and nothing that I have seen from the current set of American politicians give me any indication or hope that these negatively trending attitudes and emotions will get reversed any time soon. 

2) Maybe one reason we are feeling so bad about our current environment is that a recent opinion poll from Gallup found that from a freedom perspective, we see ourselves as no better than 33rd in the world vs. other countries. Yes, we are no longer number one, we are number 33! This is out of 135 countries that were polled.

Other findings from this poll include:

• Only 79% of Americans say they’re satisfied with their freedom to choose what to do with their lives, down from 87% in 2008. 
• The top five nations where people feel most satisfied with their freedoms are New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates. 
• At No. 33, the United States is shamefully stuck between Bahrain and Cameroon, from a perception of freedom perspective.
• And not only are we an embarrassing number 33, stuck between two countries that most Americans could not find on a map, we are trending lower over time, of the 100 countries where Gallup measured changes in freedom during the past five years, 75 of those coountries registered an improvement in freedom, 21 registered a decline in freedom, and four stayed the same. 
• Besides the United States, consider some of the other nations within the group of 21 who also suffered declines in freedom, just like us: Syria and Afghanistan are in the midst of wide spread armed conflicts, Tajikistan and Thailand are suffering through major political turmoil, and Luxembourg, the most prosperous of the decliners, has become a target of U.S. and European authorities going after tax evaders with foreign accounts. Nice company to be with.

The historic feeling and pride of living in “the land of the free” seems to have taken a beating relative to most of the rest of the world, a world that seems to be gaining freedom while we continue to lose ours.

But this should not be a surprise since the Washington political class, and especially this Presidential administration, has crushed freedom in so many ways including:

• Assassinating American citizens without due process of laws and trials.
• We have a Presidential administration that views the IRS as a political tool and oppressor rather than a tax collection agency.
• Spying on just about every American’s private electronic communications under the false premise of “national security.”
• Passing such onerous laws including the Patriot Act and the NDAA legislation that allows our government to hold citizens without trial or due process in jail or prison for an indefinite amount of time.
• Piling on so many tax burdens that freedom of choice is significantly curtailed when we have to spend about half of working lives just to pay for all of the taxes at every level of government in this country.

I am not surprised that we think our freedom is declining when we look at what the political class is doing to our Constitutionally guaranteed freedom, our lives, and our wealth.

3) But bad things are not just happening to our freedoms and confidence. Consider some bad economic trends that are probably also hammering at and causing our declining attitudes:

• Median household wealth is still substantially lower than it was before the Great Recession. 
• While there has been recent small improvements in the jobs data, many of the new jobs for American workers come with pay that is lower than it used to be, assuming they can find a job at all. 
• Lower pay impacts economic freedom which has probably leaked into the feeling of declining political freedom that Gallup measured above. A loss of economic freedom impacts our realm and spectrum of life choices in other areas of our lives.
• A recent article by USA Today found that the American Dream, loosely defined, costs a typical family of four roughly $130,000 per year. 
• Given that the median US household income is only about $50,000, and declining, at least 50% of American households are probably making less than half of the income needed to live the “American Dream,” according to USA Today. 
• Living the “American Dream” used to be attainable by just about anyone in the country with the will to work hard to attain it. Maybe not so much any more. 
• The supposed economic recovery that followed the Great Recession and began in 2009 has been the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression years of the 1930s and history tells us how depressing and bad those economic times were.

4) A recent article in the Against Crony Capitalism website, written by Nick Sorrentino reported on recent government data that found the weak and badly limping economy has resulted in only 47.7% of adult Americans working full time. Mr. Sorrentino put forth the following opinions and data:

• Loads of Americans people are just barely getting by economically.
• Americans are going into debt to buy food with more than 46 million Americans relying on government food assistance or ripping off the program. 
• With such a bad job situation, many Americans have tried to make a living off of government disability programs, with those programs seeing record applications.
• Workers’ overall wages have been declining in a serious way since 2008 when they are adjusted for inflation. 
• The average American household brings in 7% less in real terms than it did 6 years ago. 
• Many recent college graduates still can’t find jobs and those who do find jobs are often underemployed from either the number of working hours or working in jobs that do not require their college education.

As the number of people working at jobs they like and at wages they can live comfortably with continue to decline, at what point does the economy and society collapse? Since we have already crossed over the 50% threshold, i.e. there are more people not working than who are working, we may be closer to that default and collapse than we think. 

Things are bad and getting worse so ask yourself: do you really think that the fools in Washington, the very same people that got us into this fix with faulty economic policies and economic ignorance, have any chance of somehow miraculously getting smart and wise in our lifetimes? 

More "Bad" tomorrow followed by two days of "Ugly" so hold on.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The American Political Class: "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:" Today The Good

Writing and reading this blog can get a little depressing. Our overall intention is to always show the shortcomings and ineptness of our political class and the government operations they run in order to find ways and compromises to fix what they have broken. By doing so, we hope to protect our liberty and freedom and preserve our personal wealth that all of us have worked hard to create.

But it can get depressing, considering the track record of our current set of politicians:

• Government operations lose hundreds of billions of our tax dollars a year to waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud.
• The economic ignorance of our politicians has resulted in the worst economic recovery in the past hundred years, leaving tens of millions of Americans under employed or unemployed and has negatively impacted the wages and earning power of most Americans.
• Their inability to run an efficient government n Washington has resulted in a national debt of almost $18 TRILLION, imposing a theoretical debt of about $57,000 on every single American, young and old alike.
• They have trampled on our freedom via such acts as the NDAA, the Patriot Act, using the NSA to spy and collect all of our electronic communications, using the IRS to stifle our First Amendment rights of free speech, using other pieces of legislation to stifle our freedom of religion rights, etc.
• The government operations they are supposed to operate are cesspools of inefficiencies from the Veterans Administration that cannot service the medical needs of our veterans to the IRS that cannot collect the hundreds of billions of tax dollars a year that go unpaid by tax evaders to the government immigration organizations that cannot secure our borders, etc.

Yes it can get depressing when you realize how much we pay in taxes for how little in societal benefit we get in return from the political class. And, unfortunately, over the next few days we will review even more of that incompetence under this week’s theme of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” of the political class.

However, before we get to The Bad and The Ugly, let’s spend some time today talking about some of The Good that is actually going on in America today. Today’s discussion is a hodgepodge of feel good stories that individual Americans are working on and succeeding at, efforts that are making life a little better for those around them.

As would be expected, these efforts do not include the political class since to do so would probably turn these feel good stories into just another set of government disasters. These Good stories are not meant to be all inclusive. I am sure there are millions of other good things being done by individual Americans today that would be impossible to document in this blog. 

But let the following efforts make for a nice diversion away from the failures of our politicians and a reconfirmation that Americans are smart, hardworking, and can solve many of our problems without the “help” of government or politicians.

1) Suvir Mirchandani is a 14 year old middle school student from Pittsburgh who put together a science project that uncovered an ingeniously simple way for the Federal government to save an estimated $138 million a year with one simple change in government operations. He calculated that printer “ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume” according to news reports covering his discovery.

Suvir calculated that if the Federal government simply forced all government operations to switch its print font from Times New Roman to Garamond, the efficiencies gained from using this different but still perfectly fine font style would save the Federal taxpayer $138 million a year in ink costs. His discovery and findings came out of a science project that sought to reduce operating expenses within his Pennsylvania middle school.

His process apparently evolved from the following logic trail:

• By analyzing different typefaces, Suvir found that Garamond would take up far less space on a page than other fonts.
• Taking up less space meant using less ink and saving money. 
• He then researched the huge amount of material that the government prints using less efficient type fonts and found that the annual Federal budget is $1.8 billion for printing-related expenditures.
• After analyzing five different government documents, Suvir found that using Garamond reduced coverage (the space covered by ink per page) by about 29% when compared to the original font used on each document. 
• Since a Government Services Administration study estimated that ink costs constituted 26% of all government printing costs, $467 million in 2014, he determined that by implementing his recommendation, the Federal government would save $136 million in ink costs every year by a simple font change. 
• He took his logic and calculations a step forward and took it down to the state and local government level where he found another $97 million in annual savings for the taxpayer.

A 14 year old kid from Pittsburgh, working in a very logical and straightforward manner, found a simple way to save the American taxpayer over $200 million a year. Over 500 politicians in Congress and the White House and millions of government workers were unable to do what a 14 year old did for a school science project. Kudos to the kid, shame to the political and government establishment.

2) If a 14 year old American can save government operations $200 million a year by simply changing print fonts, what can a dedicated 19 year old do? Consider the work of 19 year old Boyan Slat. Boylan was worried that our oceans have become giant garbage dumps for all types of debris but especially plastic debris that never decomposes and contributes to huge swaths of oceans turning into giant plastic dumping grounds.

As a result of his concern, he developed an ocean cleanup process and apparatus that he is estimated to have the ability to remove over 7 million tons of plastic from the oceans every year. Details of his brilliance and his invention include the following highlights:

• His invention consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the oceans of world. 
• Rather than moving through the ocean trying to scoop up debris, the array would span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel. 
• The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from plankton, filtered and stored for recycling. 
• While in school, Slat started an effort that analyzed the size and amount of plastic volume in the ocean’s garbage patches. 
• His final analysis and research paper went on to win several prizes, including Best Technical Design 2012 at the Delft University of Technology. 
• He continued to work on and further develop his concept during the summer of 2012 and went on to establish The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a non-profit organization which is responsible for the development of his technologies. 
• By removing ocean debris, his solution annually could potentially save hundreds of thousands of aquatic animals and reduce pollutants (including PCB and DDT) from building up in the food chain. 
• It could also save millions of dollars every year in clean-up costs, lost tourism, and damage to marine vessels. 
• He estimates that cleaning up all of the oceans could be done in as little as five years, using his invention.

Here we have a 19 year old american coming up with a technology that could save the world’s oceans from mankind’s garbage. The Federal government’s EPA, to my knowledge, never came close to having such a wide ranging yet simply elegant approach to helping out in a major environmental problem. But a 19 year old working alone did what a large Federal agency, whose budget is in the tens of billions of dollars every year, could not come up with.

More details of this effort can be accessed at:

http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/03/19-year-old-student-develops-ocean-cleanup-array-that-could-remove-7250000-tons-of-plastic-from-the-worlds-oceans.html

3) Spencer Collins is a nine year old from Leawood, Kansas who wanted to share his love of books and reading with his friends and neighbors. Given that desire, he set up a book trading operation in his front yard, a process also referred to as “take a book, leave a book” for people that wanted to trade reading material with each other.

Collins’ "mini library" started operating on Mother’s Day after his grandfather gave him the colorful, handcrafted box as a gift made out of reused and recycled materials. The box where people could exchange books is about twice the size of a freestanding mailbox. Thus, it was nicely done and not overwhelmingly large, just the right size for Spencer’s library or book exchange passion.

His effort was an overnight success: "When they put it up I thought it was kind of cool," neighbor Ken McGregor told local TV station KCTV. "I would see the grandparents sit there and read to their kids. Kids will look around, pick up books, and read. Seems like it's kind of fun."

Kids reading, parents and grandparents reading to kids, a community service from a nine year old. How cool is that. Well, apparently not cool relative to the local set of politicians. The local politicians decided that Spencer’s library had to be shut down and removed since his box violated the town’s building code, which prohibits freestanding edifices in front yards. The nine old kid was also threatened with a trip to court and a fine if the library was not removed. 

Fortunately, Facebook and other forms of social media exist. Later news reports indicated that public pressure via tens of thousands of social media contacts shamed the local Leawood politicians into allowing an exception to the ordinance and saving nine year old Spencer from prosecution and a criminal record for helping people find pleasure in book reading.

Three kids making great and positive contributions to other people’s lives via saving taxpayers money, cleaning up our valuable oceans, and helping get people and families together to read vs. playing video games. Imagine how much more good our kids could be doing to help the world of the political class in America stepped up their game to fix our broken public school systems and processes in this country. 

These three kids are shining examples of what can happen with an empowered and educated set of citizens. A set of citizens that are not taxed and over regulated to the point of oppression and exhaustion by a government bureaucracy that crushes free thinking and solution based approaches to the major issues of our times.

Good deeds and good intentions exist in this country. They just do not seem to exist in the hearts and minds of our politicians, whose only priorities always seem to be their own perpetual reelection and their own self enrichment. These dual, selfish priorities prevent them from doing good things and deeds like what three kids, Spencer, Boyan, and Suvir, have done for us.

Unfortunately, we must leave “the Good” behind after today and revert back to “The Bad” and “The Ugly” of the American political class over the next few days. Savor the elegance and efforts Spencer, Boyan, and Suvir as we go forward with the less ineffective, less than elegant missteps of our politicians.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w