November, 2020, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Ocasio-Cortez Designer Clothes, The First Family Of NYC Wastes A Billion Dollars, and States Cannot Pay Their Bills

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 blog a lot about Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York City. Her ignorance and inane comments and plans were actually entertaining for a while as we wondered how anyone that naive about the world could be elected to Congress and actually vote on legislation. 

However, over time her ranting and self-centeredness and inability to understand reality and numbers got really tiring. Thus, we haven't done a lot about her lately since it was the same ignorance, the same stupidity, and the same inability to ever have a decent solution to any problem, just empty ranting. But we cannot let the latest bit of hypocrisy from her go by unnoticed:

• Recall in a previous post how she appeared at a public function about helping the poor and putting more socialism programs in place and yet was wearing a designer outfit that was priced at well over a thousand dollars, blatant hypocrisy.
• Well, she is at it again. 
• She was recently featured on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine wearing a $14,000 outfit.
• This behavior from someone who more than once portrayed herself as a friend of the working class and how she had a struggling background… until she could parade around in extremely expensive designer clothes.
• While wearing such expensive clothes she still continues to try and pass herself as a “working woman, that it is “legitimately hard being a first-generation woman … and being working class, trying to navigate a professional environment. … It continues to take me so long to try to figure out how to look put-together without having a huge designer closet.”
• Note that she does not deny she has a ”designer closet,” just that she doesn't have a “huge” designer closet.

I bet most of her constituents do not even have a “designer closet” of any size. Please, dress anyway you want, spend your money on any clothes, cheap or expensive that you want, but do not try to pass yourself off as a friend of the working class and the poor when you are wearing designer clothes that cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

2) Recently, we have been spending a lot of time reviewing the latest budget numbers of cities, states, and the Federal budget and the numbers in almost all cases are not good. Cities such as Chicago are likely to go bankrupt really soon, given the following financial death spiral realities:

• Chicago cannot pay its own current bills, never mind paying down billions and billions of dollars of unfunded future financial liabilities.
• Chicago is now the murder capital of the country which has endangered the lives of residents who are leaving the city much faster than people are moving into the city, taking their tax dollars with them and thus, making the city’s financial situation more bleak.
• The inept mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has had to grovel at the feet of employers not to leave the city because of the safety of their employees and property, taking more tax dollars and jobs with them as they abandon the city.
• The city’s municipal bond rating is just a shade above junk bond status meaning that it will be difficult for the city to finance its debt and revenue shortfalls with more debt.
• And since Chicago's home state of Illinois is probably going to be the first state to go bankrupt, it cannot provide any financial relief to Chicago.

New York, San Francisco and other cities are not much better off. But the cities are not the only government entities that are in serious financial shape:

• The watchdog group, Truth In Accounting, recently released its annual report, “Financial State of the States.”
• According to standard accounting practices, the report found that 39 states, (78%) did not have enough money coming in via taxes to pay off their bills.
• Total unpaid bills amounted to a whopping $1.4 TRILLION at the end of fiscal year 2019 BEFORE the added expenses of the covid fight kicked in.
• The report estimates that the states will see their 2020 fiscal year revenue reduced by just under $400 billion, making their ability to pay their bills in 2020 even more difficult.
• The states with the biggest unpaid bill problem are New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Massachusetts.

Since we have predicted that Illinois will be the first state to go bankrupt and that New Jersey will be one of the states that will quickly follow Illinois into bankruptcy, it is no surprise they are the top two states that cannot pay their bills.

3) Maybe one of the reasons that cities and states are going bankrupt is that they cannot keep track of the money they spend in order to decide if it is going to the right functions to address the right problems. Such is the case of New York City, our choice for the second most likely city to go bankrupt after Chicago.

It appears that the mayor’s wife is having trouble explaining how almost a billion dollars of city tax money not only went missing but failed to come close to fulfilling the objectives the money was intended for:

• Mayor Bill de Blasoi’s wife, Chirlane McCray, is in charge of a city mental health project.
• But according to reporting by the Daily Mail, she cannot adequately explain where and how her program has spent $850 million worth of taxpayer money.
• In the three years it took to spend the $850 million, the organization she heads, ThriveNYC, has generally been unable or unwilling to document how that money was spent and whether or not it actually did any good.
• ThriveNYC was supposed to have 417 metrics to measure its performance but according to reporting by Politico, the data for those metrics is minimal and what data does exist shows what a gigantic failure the program was.
• For example, one of the metrics was to screen 78,000 new mothers a year for post natal depression.
• But in a recent two year period, the program did not screen the 156,000 it was supposed to screen but screened just over 28,000, only 18% of the target.
• Even worse, it was supposed to help 12,000 to 15,000 new mothers over that time and ended up treating only 570, a tiny fraction of its metric goal.
• In another example, the organization records showed it had given out 190,000 MARCAN kits to those in need of opioid treatment but there is no record of how many of those kits were used and how many addicted people it helped.

Despite the failures, despite the shoddy bookkeeping and results tracking, the program has been given more funding and will spend over a billion dollars very shortly over its life with very little success to show for it. But that is how politics works, put a program out there, fund it, not have a clue whether it works or not and then fund with more taxpayer money. Insanity.

4) But it is not just de Blasio’s wife that wastes NYC taxpayer funds, apparently the mayor recently conceded that he also wasted a huge chunk of taxpayer funds:

• Three years ago, de Blasio put aside a whopping $773 million dollars to improve 100 of the city’s worst schools.
• After three years, that $773 million was only good enough to improve 25 schools to a degree that they were not considered the worst performing city schools.
• Thus, on average, $7.73 million was spent on each school and only 25 of them showed any significant improvement despite having a whopping $7 million or so poured into each of them.
• Adding insult to injury, 25 of those 100 worst schools were just closed or merged with other schools despite $7 million spent on each of them on average.

Even de Blasio knew when the failure was too great to continue, having recently terminated the program that has failed so miserably.

States cannot pay their bills, the First Family of New York wastes over $1 billion of taxpayer money, and Ocasio-Cortez’s hypocrisy and high fashion maintenance continues unabated. The inability of the American political class to do anything right continues to amaze and disappoint.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=loce+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&ref=nb_sb_noss

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

California Political Class Insanity and Socialism, Part 3: Bad Government Priorities, Bad Voting Processes and Cities Going Bankrupt

We have done any number of posts strictly focusing on the crises in different California cities, from going broke to large homeless problems to medieval diseases making a comeback. What was once the land of opportunity is now the land of impending disasters on several fronts, fronts we will be exploring in a series of posts.

Before going further, let’s review a few California realities we have covered previously:

• There are upwards of 30,000 homeless Americans roaming the streets of San Francisco.
• Without a home to go to, the city has made it legal to defecate, urinate,and shoot up drugs anywhere in the city including in public and on the streets of the city.
• This has led to a public health hazard and has caused the city to hire five full time government employees who go around the city each day in hazmat gear to pick up human feces and to clean the spot where it was found.
• Things are so bad that residents can use a city cell phone app to report where they found piles of feces.
• There are upwards of 60,000 homeless Americans in Los Angeles that is causing some of the same problems that are going down in San Francisco.

Public defecation and urination in LA is causing health problems in that city which has actually led to the outbreak of at least one medieval disease, typhus, and the concern is that the bubonic plague may also make a comeback, given how the exploding rat population has fed off of the garbage that homelessness causes.

The reason we are doing so is to point out that the state that has had the most far reaching intrusions into freedom and citizens’ lives, the state that has put its nose into every aspect of citizens’ lives, the state that has has misspent and overspent its way way down the road of bankruptcy, and the state that has reduced the freedom of its citizens the most is the state of California. The state is by far the most socislistic state in the union and has basically been ruled by a single party for decades, the Democrats. 

And since a number of Democratic candidates for President have basically declared themselves to be socialists, I thought it might be an interesting subject to explore what would happen if socialism took over the whole country. What would it look like if the country took on the aspects of socialism and Democratic rule that has swept up California. Warning: the future is NOT bright if California is the leading edge.

In our first two posts we discovered six current characteristics of living in California:

• The rate of sexually transmitted diseases is skyrocketing.
• Gas prices are about twice as much as the average price across the country.
• Citizens are enduring rolling electricity blackouts.
• Medieval diseases are making a comeback in Los Angeles.
• Solar panels do nothing for you when the electric company blacks out your area on purpose.
• San Francisco no longer feels like America.
• The state government financial situation is very bleak.

Let’s find out what other “adventures” Californians are living through:

1) America has been and should always be the land of the free where respecting others’ opinions is a given. But according to a recent article by Mairead McArdle, writing for the National Review website, California politicians not only force their control and ideas on California residents but they are trying to do the same with people outside of California:

• California politicians now have banned state sponsored travel to 11 states because they disagree with some aspect of those states’ laws and priorities.
• Iowa is the latest state to feel the “wrath” of California politicians.
• Apparently Iowa politicians do not want to use scarce Medicaid funds to pay for gender transition surgeries, preferring to use their limited funds for real sicknesses and real illnesses Iowans are suffering with.
• This ticked off California’s politicians so they put forth a ban that prohibits California state employees and college students to travel to Iowa using California state government money.

So, we know from previous discussions that there is a massive homeless problem in California, the state is going bankrupt, the state has seen the rise of Medieval diseases and the skyrocketing of STD disease rates, sky high gas prices and they are worried about what is going on in another state 1,500 miles away relative to tiny, tiny portion of the population in that other tiny, tiny state. Talk about bad priorities.

2)A recent report from KTLA discussed a voter registration study in California and the results were not good:

• Auditors found that in just a five month period that there were 84,000 duplicate voter registration records put on the voting books of California.
• In Los Angeles county there are 1.6 million more registered voters than there are eligible voters living in the county which is equivalent to having another city the size of Philadelphia in the state.
• Almost 20% of all counties in California have more registered voters than eligible voters.

It goes without saying that the potential for voter fraud and the destruction of one’s right to vote and their First Amendment rights is very high when the error range of your voting processes are so screwed up.

3) In our last California post we discussed the reality that the state of California has far more unfunded future liabilities than it has assets and tax revenue streams to pay for those liabilities. In fact, according to the Truth In Accounting organization, every California taxpayer would have to write a check to the state government for about $21,800 just to cover the debt shortfall, assuming that the shortfall does not get any larger, a highly unlikely event in that state.

The $21,800 is not the only check Californians would have to write from a debt perspective, seems that local government politicians have also dug their voters and constituents a deep debt hole at the city level:

• While Truth in Accounting gave the state government of California an “F” rating relative to its financial situation, it gives the city of Los Angeles a “D” rating, not much better.
• Every taxpayer in the city of Los Angeles would have to write a check for $6,000 to eliminate the unfunded debt liability of the city, meaning that a Los Angeles resident would have to spend $27,800 to keep their city and state governments from going bankrupt.
• But LA residents get off easy since if they lived in San Francisco they would have to write a check for $22,800 to help eliminate the deep debt hole that their city politicians have dug for their city, bringing their total debt burden to a whopping $44,600 to keep their city and state governments from going bankrupt.
• And the city debt burden per taxpayer is also bad in other California cities, $21,100 in Oakland, $4,000 in Sacramento, and $7,200 in Anaheim.

Thus, state politicians have created giant holes of unfunded liabilities at both the state AND local levels, holes that can only be filled by large increases in taxes or eventual bankruptcy.

So, what did we learn today about California politicians:

1. They have really bad priorities, worrying about a nit of an issue over a thousand miles away when major issues in their own state go unresolved.
2. Local California governments still do not know how to run an efficient and effective voter registration program.
3. It is not only the California state government that is likely headed towards bankruptcy because of its pathetic handling of the state’s financial obligations but local city politicians have also dug major debt holes for their city residents.

Combining the past three posts we see that the state of California, a laboratory for socialism and intrusive politicians, has resulted in: high rates of sexually transmitted diseases and the comeback of Medieval maladies, financial ruin, rolling electricity blackouts, bad priorities of politicians, high taxation, high homelessness rates, high gas prices, and a voting registration process that is out of control and open to massive fraud.

If California is a leading edge for the rest of the country, then this is the world we can expect.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

California Political Class Insanity and Socialism, Part 2: White Collar Typhus, Rolling Blackouts, Not of This Country, and Financial Disaster

We have done any number of posts strictly focusing on the crises in different California cities, from going broke to large homeless problems to medieval diseases making a comeback. What was once the land of opportunity is now the land of impending disasters on several fronts, fronts we will be exploring in a series of posts.

Before going further, let’s review a few California realities we have covered previously:

• There are upwards of 30,000 homeless Americans roaming the streets of San Francisco.
• Without a home to go to, the city has made it legal to defecate, urinate,and shoot up drugs anywhere in the city including in public and on the streets of the city.
• This has led to a public health hazard and has caused the city to hire five full time government employees who go around the city each day in hazmat gear to pick up human feces and to clean the spot where it was found.
• Things are so bad that residents can use a city cell phone app to report where they found piles of feces.
• There are upwards of 60,000 homeless Americans in Los Angeles that is causing some of the same problems that are going down in San Francisco.
• Public defecation and urination in LA is causing health problems in that city which has actually led to the outbreak of at least one medieval disease, typhus, and the concern is that the bubonic plague may also make a comeback, given how the exploding rat population has fed off of the garbage that homelessness causes.

The reason we are doing so is to point out that the state that has had the most far reaching intrusions into freedom and citizens’ lives, the state that has put its nose into every aspect of citizens’ lives, the state that has has misspent and overspent its way way down the road of bankruptcy, and the state that has reduced the freedom of its citizens the most is the state of California. The state is by far the most socialistic state in the union and has basically been ruled by a single party for decades, the Democrats. 

And since a number of Democratic candidates for President have basically declared themselves to be socialists, I thought it might be an interesting subject to explore what would happen if socialism took over the whole country. What would it look like if the country took on the aspects of socialism and Democratic rule that has swept up California. Warning: the future is NOT bright if California is the leading edge.

In our first post we discovered three current characteristics of living in California:

• The rate of sexually transmitted diseases is skyrocketing.
• Gas prices are about twice as much as the average price across the country.
• Citizens are enduring rolling electricity blackouts.

Let’s find out what other “adventures” Californians are living through:

1) There are about 60,000 homeless Americans wandering the streets of Los Angeles. This has resulted in public defecation, public urination, and mountains of trash in the streets. All of this has led to an explosion in the rat population. Which is where we pick up the story:

• Apparently the medieval disease, typhus, has made a comeback in LA.
• And it is not only the homeless population that is danger, Los Angeles City Attorney Elizabeth Greenwood is suing the city for $5 million.
• She is claiming that she came down with typhus as a result of a rat infestation at her workplace...city hall!
• Keep in mind that typhus is spread by infected fleas on rats.
• The disease causes high fevers, headaches, and muscle pain.
• The disease dates back hundreds of years and had been mostly eliminated in modern societies because of improvements in sanitation and living standards.
• According to Dr. Negeen Farmland, a physician for the Saban Community Clinic, who often goes into the homeless population to treat those in need: "Typhus ... was something that was eradicated so many years ago. To have that come up again tells you that how bad the situation is."
• According to Ms. Greenwood, the disease, “felt like someone was driving stakes, railroad stakes through my eyes. It absolutely disabled me."
• Celebrity doctor,  Dr. Drew Pinsky, claims that typhus is not the only medieval making a comeback in LA, saying that the plague and tuberculosis are also making a comeback.
• City spokespeople insist that there are no typhus carrying fleas in the city hall.

But Ms. Greenwood is just one of many new typhus cases so wherever she got it is really immaterial to the bigger picture, she has it, which gives you an idea of how unhealthy LA has become.

2) According to a Freedom Outpost website article by Alicia Luke on October 13, 2019, Californians are getting a rude awakening because their politicians have forced many of them to install and use solar panels:

• It appears that even if you have solar panels on your home or business, in all likelihood you still have no electricity when the electric company goes to intentional blackouts.
• You see, the vast majority of solar installations feed electricity to the electric company’s grid during the daylight hours and the electric company gives back electrical power at night or on overcast days.
• There is no storage of solar panel electricity in someone’s home of business unless they also purchased expensive batteries.
• So when the electric company goes to an intentional blackout mode like what is going on in California now, solar powered buildings may just as well had no panels since those panels are useless in blackouts.

So, let’s review: California politicians, i.e. Democrats, mandate and encourage residents and businesses to convert to solar power at great expense. But those who put out the big bucks for solar energy are just as helpless when the local utilities go into intentional blackout mode, making solar power owners just as much in the dark as their neighbors who do not have any investment in solar energy.

3) I can give you statistics and news reports of how the socialism policies of California have brought disease, high taxes, public defecation and urination, skyrocketing housing prices, and other challenges for state residents. But let me refer you to an article by someone who once thought that San Francisco was one of the greatest cities in the world. But now, he says that, “San Francisco no longer feels like its in America”:

https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/16/san-francisco-no-longer-feels-like-its-in-america/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=san-francisco-no-longer-feels-like-its-in-america&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWWpjME9USTVNamN5TWpVNSIsInQiOiJJRG9temErcG15eW9WWklKZWVxMXJJMjBGSWVJdWdzVDRzeVdVT1Z1bUlCeXRPZXM4aEZiZVdrSlwvYUluSGhiWEp3YVBBcHpcLzhSUk56WlJyaE8yU3FHeWdGeXJYVkdhV2lCekpLQVwvalFnY0E2Rno1SlAwMWQyZjJCMDNqT0s3TCJ9
4) Let’s finish up today’s California lesson in socialism and the agony and failures it causes by going to a wonderful website run by an organization called “Truth In Accounting.” These folks do deep dives into the financial status and condition for every state and many major cities to get a true financial picture of what is really going on with a government entity’s financial condition. In the past, state and local governments have used accounting tricks to hide the true financial picture of a government. This website does accounting the right way to get rid of the hiding places and portray a true financial picture.

As you will see from its work, it is not just the living conditions that are deteriorating rapidly in California, the financial picture is not that great either. In fact, it has earned a grade of “F” from Truth In Accounting’s analysis because:

• The state will have about $114 billion in assets to pay its future, expected bills and costs.
• But it will face $389 billion in total liabilities that need to be funded, leaving it $275 billion short of what it needs to pay its current commitments and expected costs.
• To theoretically cover this shortfall, every California taxpayer would have to write a check for $21,800 to help the state government not go bankrupt.
• But that number is probably too small since California politicians have not shown any propensity or desire to get spending under control so the financial situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.
• This financial situation makes it the 43rd worst state in the union according to Truth In Accounting’s analysis.
• State politicians have committed California taxpayers to pay over half a trillion dollars in future government employee retirement benefits in the coming years but they have not funded over $220 billion of the half a trillion dollar liability.
• The state also has almost $134 billion in bonds that will have to be paid off in the future.
• If every taxpayer did give the state’s politicians $21,800 to pay off the financial hole these politicians dug, then that would be money that could not be used to grow the economy and create jobs for the residents of the state. That money is strictly used for non-productive payoff of debts. But if the economy stops growing than there would be even less tax revenue coming into the state government which would make the debt crisis worse which then leads to a financial death spiral.
• In any case, as the state government gives more and more of its tax revenue to pay off its staggering F-rated debt load, that is less and less money available to improve schools, fix roads and bridges, help the thousands of homeless, etc. And thus, the quality California life goes out the window.

So, in our first California post we learned that:

1. The rate of sexually transmitted diseases is skyrocketing.
2. Gas prices are about twice as much as the average price across the country.
3. Citizens are enduring rolling electricity blackouts.

In this post we learned that:

1. You do not have to be homeless to get a medieval disease in Los Angeles, even white collar workers who work in the LA city hall can catch typhus.
2. Solar panels as required or suggested by Democrats in the state mean nothing when you have to suffer through unexpected and days long intentional electric company blackouts.
3. Someone who once loved San Francisco now thinks that it does not feel like you are in America any more when you visit the city.
4. The state government’s financial situation is worthy of an F and will eventually lead the state to bankruptcy.

Again, what was once possibly the greatest place to live in the country is now probably one of the worst places to live, likely do to the socialism mantra and failed programs that Democrats have brought to the entire state.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

February, 2019, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Cities Going Bankrupt, Food Stamp Fraud at The Strip Club, and Democrats Out of Touch With America

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) We have previously reported how much in debt the Federal government and state governments are in:

• The Federal government national debt recently broke through $22 TRILLION.
• The Congressional Budget office estimated that the Federal government is looking at $82 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities, mostly Social Security and Medicare.
• State governments have about $7 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.
• Total state and Federal debt and unfunded liabilities: $109 TRILLION and growing.

Given that the total wealth of the entire country is less than $100 TRILLION (and a lot less than $100 TRILLION depending on your data source), the country now owes more money than what it is worth.

But it is not just states and the Federal government that have a huge debt problem:

• Truth In Accounting (TIA) is a nonprofit, politically unaffiliated organization composed of business, community, and academic leaders interested in improving government financial reporting.
• It researches and publishes an annual analysis, “Financial State of the Cities.”
• Unfortunately, their latest analysis of 75 of the most populous cities in the country found that 63 of these cities cannot pay their bills, if real accounting methods were used, and have a total unfunded liability debt load of almost $330 billion.
• Much like the state and Federal governments, most of this unfunded liabilities is related to pension and health care costs of government retirees.
• “This year, pension debt accounts for $189.1 billion, and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) – mainly retiree health care liabilities – totaled $139.2 billion. Many state and local governments are not in good shape, despite the economic and financial market recovery since 2009,” Bill Bergman, director of research at TIA. 
• The five cities in the worst shape are New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Honolulu, and San Francisco.
• These five worst cities and Dallas, Oakland, and Portland all got F grades from the TIA.
• NYC has set aside reserves of $4.7 billion but needs to have $100.6 billion to cover its expected liabilities.
• In Philadelphia, the city would have to access every city taxpayer a one time levy of almost $28,000 to cover its city debt while San Francisco would have to bill every taxpayer almost $23,000 to cover its debt load.
• The TIA concluded that local politicians are just plain lying when presenting the current and future financial picture to voters: “Unfortunately, some elected officials have used portions of the money that is owed to pension funds to keep taxes low and pay for politically popular programs. This is like charging earned benefits to a credit card without having the money to pay off the debt. Instead of funding promised benefits now, they have been charged to future taxpayers. Shifting the payment of employee benefits to future taxpayers allows the budget to appear balanced, while municipal debt is increasing.”

Wow! Politicians who lie and who cannot manage money. Who knew?! 

The scary part of all of this is that this debt at all levels of government has been piling up in a record length economic recovery and prosperity. Imagine what happens when the next recession hits, and it will hit: fewer jobs, smaller tax revenue streams, more debt and the financial death spiral is underway. This will result in fewer and fewer benefits to retirees at all levels of government as tax rates increase as politicians desperately try to extend the Ponzi Scheme of debt. Scary indeed.

2) One of the things that the Washington political class does really, really bad is make sure that our hard earned tax dollars are not wasted. Consider one instance where they failed miserably to do so:

• After a five month undercover operation, a strip club in Dayton, Ohio lost its liquor license because it accepted Federal food stamps in exchange for lap dances and the purchase of drugs.
• Undercover agents used over $2,400 in food stamps to buy lap dances and drugs including cocaine heroin, and fentanyl
• As a result, Sharkey’s Bar has been shut down and criminal charges filed against both employees and patrons for drug trafficking, food stamp trafficking, aggravated shipment, distribution of heroin, and other offenses.
• This is the second Ohio strip club shut down for using food stamps to purchase strip club services..

This helps you understand why millions of American go hungry every day and why we have a $22 TRILLION national debt. The good news is that these two abusing businesses got shut down, the bad news is there are probably many more out there that are doing the same thing.

3) A lot of politicians want the government, in other words themselves, to have much more power over the government bureaucracy, your money, and your freedoms. They somehow think that they know what is best for 325 million individual Americans.

But according to s recent Godfather Politics website article by Warner Todd Huston, Americans seem to have a and different and better view of what is going on in reality:

• While politicians may think they are the be all and end all when it comes to handling the matters of the country, according to a recent Gallup poll, Americans view government, and consequently the politicians that run it, as the nation’s biggest problem.
• Gallup asked a sample of Americans what were the biggest problems facing the country and then reported those problems that attained at least a 3% response rate.
• The largest issue identified was government as the biggest problem facing the country at 19% with immigration second at 16%.
• According to Gallup: “These data come from a Gallup Dec. 3-12 survey, conducted as a looming budget impasse between Republicans and Democrats threatened to shut down the government. The government has commonly been cited in recent years as the most important problem facing the country, with the problem having received or been tied for the most mentions — 22 times in the last 24 months.”
• 22 times in the last 24 months, and probably further back than that, indicates that this is not a one time fluke in the measurement, it is a trend that Americans view government as the biggest problem facing the country today.
• Only 3% of those polled viewed gun control as the biggest issue facing the country today.

What makes these findings so hilarious is what Nancy Pelosi and Democrats/liberals are focusing on:

• They want to make government more intrusive in our lives with such inane and impossible programs like Medicare For All, the New Green Deal, free college, etc. but Americans view them, the government and politicians, as the biggest problem facing the country.
• They want to open up our borders to any and all people to immigrate into this country be they drug cartel members, crime syndicate members, terrorists, disease carrying individuals, etc. but Americans view these types of behaviors and immigration in general as the second biggest problem facing the country today.
• They want to institute broad ranging gun control laws but Americans view gun control as a very, very minor issue facing the country today.

Could a bunch of politicians be any more out of touch with what Americans want done in the country today? Probably not.

That will do it for today’s insanity: politicians out of touch with the issues American find important, more food stamp abuse and criminal fraud, and financially strapped cities and the coming debt bomb that will bankrupt them.

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

Why Do The States In The Worst Financial Shape Also Have The Highest Tax Burden? A Lesson In Reality and Economics For Ocasio-Cortez

People, mostly Democrats and liberals, constantly want to raise Americans’ taxes to fund programs that never work and often cause more damage to an existing problem. The problem is that raising taxes often backfires on these folks since Americans are very good at protecting their assets or politicians never to do the math to understand the idiocy of raising taxes.

We have previously discussed what happened when the state of Maryland raised the tax rates for state millionaires. Although they raised the tax rates on millionaire earners they ended up getting LESS tax revenue from millionaire earners since these folks just moved to other states:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-overtaxing-rich-is-usually-stupid.html

We have discussed the idiocy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who wants to raise the tax rate to 70% on Americans’ income over $10 million. She thinks that raising tax rates just on these high earners high income will fund such socialistic pipe dreams like Medicare For All, free college, the New Green Deal, etc. The problem is she did not do the simple math analysis of IRS records, something we did which we showed her 70% tax rate would fund a only tiny, tiny portion of only one of the programs listed above, never mind funding most, if not all, of the programs:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2019/01/january-2019-part-8-political-class.html

Raising taxes rarely works, as we will see below.

According to a recent article on the Godfather Politics website by Warner Todd Huston on January 2, 2019:

• Blue states, or highly liberal and Democratic states, usually earn a grade of F when one analyzes the state government’s financial health.
• This is a finding by the watchdog organization, Truth In Accounting.
• This organization recently released its ninth annual “Financial State of The States” analysis.
• The report is “a nationwide analysis of the most recent state government financial information. This comprehensive analysis of the 50 states’ finances includes the most up-to-date state finance and pension data, trends across the states, and key findings.”
• But they are not alone since 40 states do not have enough financial resources to pay all of their bills and liabilities.
• The ten worst are traditionally heavily Democratic states with the exception of Kentucky.

Sad state of affairs that is going to blow up on some state governments in the very near future. Keep in mind that these state politicians have managed to get their states in such desperate financial shape despite us not having an economic downturn in about ten years. Imagine how quickly things will go down the toilet when the next recession hits.

The thing that is so ironic is that the states in the worst economic and financial shape usually have the highest taxes and tax burdens on its residents. In other words, these states got into dire financial straits not because they did not tax enough but because they spent too much, as the following analysis shows.

The worst states from a financial perspective in descending order are:

1. New Jersey
2. Connecticut
3. Illinois
4. Kentucky
5. Massachusetts
6. Hawaii
7. Delaware
8. California
9. New York
10. Vermont

As we stated above, nine of the ten are blue states or liberal/Democratic states.

On the other hand, the top ten states are nearly all controlled by the Republican Party. The top ten, most financially secure states include:

1. Alaska
2. North Dakota
3. Wyoming
4. Utah
5. South Dakota
6. Idaho
7. Tennessee
8. Nebraska
9. Oregon
10. Iowa

Wallethub does an annual analysis of which states have the heaviest tax burden. Turns out, many of the states in the worst financial shape, almost always Democratic states, ALSO have the highest overall tax burden according to WalletHub (the states that are common to the worst financial condition and highest tax burden have a star next to their names):

Most heavily taxed states:

1. New York *
2. Hawaii *
3. Maine
4. Vermont *
5. Minnesota
6. Connecticut *
7. Rhode Island
8. Illinois *
9. New Jersey *
10. California *

So, seven of the highest tax burdened states somehow are also in the top ten of states in worst financial condition.

The following states have the highest income tax rates with a star placed next to those that also make the ten worst financially strapped states:

1. New York
2. Hawaii *
3. Maine
4. Vermont *
5. Minnesota
6. Connecticut *
7. Rhode Island
8. Illinois *
9. New Jersey * 
10. California *

So six of the top ten states with the highest income tax rate also fall in the top ten list of states in dire financial shape.

Conversely, the following states have the lowest overall tax burden with those that are also in the best financial shape marked with a *:

1. Alaska *
2. Delaware 
3. Tennessee *
4. Florida 
5. New Hampshire *
6. Oklahoma
7. South Dakota *
8. Alabama
9. Montana
10. Virginia

Thus, four of the lowest taxed states are also in the top ten most financially secure states. Thus, from this analysis and looking at the data of all 50 states, we see a pretty strong relationship between taxation and financial condition, namely the heavier the state tax burden the more likely that state is in worse financial shape than states that have a lower tax burden.

Thus, raising taxes is often a recipe for failure in that the amount of revenue that politicians expect to receive from increasing the tax burden often does not materialize. But politicians continue to spend more and more of a state’s wealth, eventually driving that state's government into financial crisis mode while reducing economic growth and economic freedom of that state’s residents. 

And yet politicians like Ocasio-Cortez continue to think that the solution to all of life’s ills is to simply raise taxes, a historically erroneous assumption that has caused havoc on the financial future and viability of both the the Federal government and dozens of state governments.

Conclusion: the government that taxes the least governs the best, the numbers do not lie at least when it comes to financial viability of the governing unit.

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

September, 2014 By the Numbers, Part 1: Sinkhole States Vs. Sunshine states

On a semi-regular basis we do a series under the theme, “By the numbers.” In this series we look at the latest statistics, trends, and facts that are going on in this country, usually focusing on how the American political class, via their ineptness at doing anything right, is constantly screwing up our lives, our economy, and our democracy, based strictly on the reality of the numbers at that time.

I once worked for a boss whose favorite saying was: "There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” Politicians do not like to deal with numbers, it messes up their political message and spin as they try to create a different, false reality in our minds. However, the numbers are the numbers and the reality of our lives, numbers devastate opinions.

A famous NFL football coach once said you are only as good as your record. You might think you have a great, talented team with excellent coaching but if you have a losing record, than the reality is that you do not have either a talented team of excellent coaching, the numbers, unlike politicians, do not lie.

More importantly, you cannot expect to resolve an issue or make life better and easier for Americans if you do not have the right, correct numbers to tell us where we are within the reality of those issues. For example, claiming the economy is doing great, even though almost twenty million Americans are still looking for good employment, does not allow you to focus on that twenty million number. The false claim forces you to waste time and resources trying to create the false impression that the economy is doing well. It diverts attention and problem resolving resources and attention to the lie and not reality.

So let’s take a few days and go “by the numbers” to see where America’s reality truly is today.

1) It is no secret that the Washington political class has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Its outlandish and wasteful spending habits has given rise to an unbelievable $18 TRILLION national debt. This is equivalent to a debt burden of about $56,000 for every man, woman and child living in the country today.

But state level politicians have also done a pretty good job in certain states running up very high debt levels, levels that will have to be paid at some point in time by the residents in those states. The Heritage Foundation recently took a look at some numbers that were put together by the Truth In Accounting organization which looked at state government debt burdens across the country:

• Truth In Accounting is a Chicago based non-profit that developed a measurement/set of numbers that calculated the amount of money each taxpayer in their state would have to pay to eliminate the financial debt hole the state government has gotten itself into.
• Taxpayer burden was estimated by determining each taxpayer’s share of state debt after setting aside capital-related debt and assets, leaving primarily unpaid pension and retirement health promises.
• Their report identified the so-called “Sinkhole States,” these are states that will put the highest debt burden on their states' residents.
• The states with the worst debt numbers according to their analysis are Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Hawaii with Connecticut being the worst and Hawaii being the fifth worst.
• The analysis also identified the best states, the so-called Sunshine states from a debt load perspective.
• These best states start with Alaska being the most debt burden free or who have no debt followed by North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and South Dakota.
• In other words, Sinkhole States have substantial unfunded pension liabilities to be paid by future taxpayers while Sunshine states, states with taxpayer surplus or littke debt, fund pension costs and other state costs during the year employees earn the benefits, and the money is set aside for that year.
• Connecticut has an overall budget shortfall of $61.4 billion, which breaks down to $48,100 per taxpayer.
• Thus, the state debt level debt burden for Connecticut residents is almost equivalent to the amount of money those residents would owe the Federal government to pay off the Federal debt.,
• Truth in Accounting concluded from their analysis that most of Connecticut’s state employee retirement benefits have been promised but not funded.
• At the other end of the spectrum, Alaska was found to be in the best financial shape with a budget surplus of $13.5 billion, or $46,900 per taxpayer. Thus, Alaska has enough money to pay state employees’ retirement benefits and other outstanding bills with currently saved funds, placing no debt burden on future residents.
• The report concludes very simply that states like Alaska and other Sunshine states are in good financial shape because the legislators and governors have only promised citizens and employees what they can afford to deliver. 

We are really, really screwed as American taxpayers when you look at the debt numbers around the country. We have allowed the American political class to overspend what the country could afford. At some point, probably pretty soon, this debt bomb is going to explode at either a state level or the national level with devastating downside effects. The numbers do not lie, even if politicians do.

2) But maybe things have started to explode already. Let’s take the Truth In Accounting analysis to a few different levels and see how the numbers compare. 

Let’s stay with the Sinkhole and Sunshine states identified above and look at the current unemployment rates in each state:

Sinkhole States:

• Connecticut - 6.6%
• Illinois - 6.8%
• New Jersey - 6.5%
• Massachusetts - 5.6%
• Hawaii - 4.4%

Sunshine States: 

• Alaska - 6.5%
• North Dakota - 2.8%
• Wyoming - 4.4%
• Utah - 3.6%
• South Dakota - 3.7%

Thus, unemployment levels in four out of five Sunshine States are well below the national average (6.1%) while the Sinkhole States have three states out of five above the national average. Could it be that there is a direct relationship between out of control state government spending and the financial health of that state. i.e. the bigger the debt burden the higher the unemployment rate? Possibly, based on these unemployment numbers and realities so let’s explore this hypothesis further.

3) A recent number analysis by the Tax Foundation looked at the relative value of $100 across the country. A state level value of over $100 would mean that the buying power of residents in that state have more buying power relative to a $100 benchmark. A state who had a value under $100 would be getting less value for their money.

Let’s see what the value of $100 is both the Sinkhole states and the Sunshine states:

Sinkhole States:

• Connecticut - $91.41
• Illinois - $99.40
• New Jersey - $87.64
• Massachusetts - $93.28
• Hawaii - $85.32

Sunshine States: 

• Alaska - $93.37
• North Dakota - $110.62
• Wyoming - $103.73
• Utah - $103.31
• South Dakota - $113.38

A few observations:

• State residents in all five Sinkhole states get less than the national value for their $100, with some of them getting far less than $100 worth.
• Four out of five states in the Sunshine states get more than the national value for their $100, with some of them getting far more value than the national average.

Now the numbers are getting interesting. Sunshine states, the lower debt burden states, have lower unemployment and get better value for their money than Sinkhole states. Could it be that high debt levels stymie economic growth and well being? Let’s look at another set of numbers.

4) One could make the case that taxation levels would logically be higher in Sunshine states since they must have collected more money in taxes than Sinkhole states in order to keep government debt levels low. However, that would be a very wrong assumption to make if we look at the top state income tax rates in each of the states:

Sinkhole States:

• Connecticut - 6.7%
• Illinois - 5.0%
• New Jersey - 8.97%
• Massachusetts - 5.2%
• Hawaii - 11.0%

Sunshine States: 

• Alaska - 0.0%
• North Dakota - 3.22%
• Wyoming - 0.0%
• Utah - 5.0%
• South Dakota - 0.0%

A few observations:

• The top state income tax rates in Sunshine states are at or far below the top state income tax rates in Sinkhole states.
• Three of the top Sunshine states do not even have a state income tax.

Thus, the exact opposite is true from our hypothesis above: the states with the highest debt burdens have accomplished this even though they also have the highest tax burden. Amazing way to get less value for your money, high tax AND high debt.

The numbers do not lie. It appears that government entities that tax at higher and higher levels run up more debt, have worse economic growth and unemployment numbers and create an economic environment that gets state residents less value for their money.

These state levels results could be used to postulate why the national economy has been so anemic since the recession. The Federal government has incurred record amounts of debt while raising taxes only to see stubbornly high unemployment and a withering of the purchase power of households and Americans.

Maybe the Washington political class should take the advice that the character George Constanza did in a Seinfeld episode where he did the exact opposite of what his instincts told him do. Rather than running up debt and raising taxes, which has accomplished nothing from an economic perspective, why not curb debt and wasteful spending and reduce taxes? The Sunshine state numbers prove that they got it right and the Federal government is nothing more than a pathetic character in a TV sitcom.....or a bigger version of the Sinkhole states.

More depressing numbers 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w