October, 2014, Part 6 Political Class Insanity: A Poitician Votes Early and Often, $100,000 Presidential Drapes, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time to check in with the American political class to see what insanity they have wrought over the past month or so. It is always amazing to follow the exploits, quotes, and actions of our politicians and the government entities they operate to see how often idiocy, incompetence, and heartbreak are almost always the output from their actions.

We started dong these updates several years ago, usually taking one or two days every month to get all of their insanity covered. Unfortunately, over time, the insanity has seemed to accelerate almost exponentially, causing us to now have to take six or seven posts each month to get it all in. This month will be no different. As our foreign policy implodes, the economy stagnates, and the midtem elections approach, the insanity levels are intensifying daily.

To check out past instances of political class insanity in this post, simply go to the first week of each month and check out the posts that begin, “Political Class Insanity.” This is the sixth entry in this series for this month, with the first five posts appearing over the past few days. The first post in this update can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/10/october-2014-political-class-insanity.html

For the latest insanity, read on:

1) It seems that Democrats are always trying to get our political processes to a point where a photo id is not required, a piece of insanity that always baffles me. The act of voting is the truest form of democracy in our country that should be protected in order to protect the sanctity of every individual’s voice.

Plus, we have shown many times in this blog that research and reality proves that when states institute photo id laws, minority voting participation actually goes up, killing Democrats’ fears that photo id laws hinder minority voting. And finally, voting is a responsibility, is it too much to ask for a citizen to go to the relatively minor trouble of getting a photo id to vote?

The need for photo id voting laws became more evident with the recent arrest of a Democrat state representative in Connecticut who was arrested for illegally voting a whopping 19 times. The New Haven Register reported:

• Democratic State Representative Christina Ayala of Bridgeport, Connecticut was arrested on 19 voting fraud charges.
• Ayala is accused of voting in local and state elections in districts she did not live, the Chief State’s Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
• Ayala’s arrest warrant also alleges Ayala provided created fake evidence to state Election Enforcement Commission investigators that showed she lived at an address in a district where she voted while actually living outside the district.
• Ayala allegedly voted in various Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee elections, a municipal primary election and a state primary election between 2009 and 2012 in districts inconsistent with the location of her residence.
• She is also accused of voting in the Bridgeport state general election in 2012 in a district where she did not live.
• According to the Connecticut Post, Ayala’s mother, Santa, was also investigated by the Elections Enforcement Commission and the commission recommended criminal charges be filed against her also.

And this children, is why we need photo id and other stringent laws that prevent no one from voting once but prevent everyone from voting more than once or in an illegal voting district. To say there is no voter fraud going on is insane.

2) Government and the American political class can waste money in a myriad of ways and locations. For example, one of our most popular posts talked about how the Navy had built two ships, the USNS Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford, for $300 million and then decided they would not be needed. This resulted in the Navy spending another $10 million to scrap them before they were ever used. (for details of this spending atrocity go to the following site: 
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/07/us-navy-ships-for-sale-cheap-never-used.html)

But as we have often proven that you do not have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy taxpayer wealth. President Obama recently traveled down to my metro area, Tampa, Florida, to address the people who work and serve at the McDill Air force base.

David Rufful, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on September, 29, 2014, described how the President needed a podium from which to give his speech, a speech that only ran for 18 minutes. The stage from whence he spoke, the drapes behind him, and the sound system he used cost the taxpayers nearly $100,000, according to a contract made public by the Air Force. This comes out to an amazing $5,242.22 per minute for the 18 minute speech.

Are you kidding me? McDill is a huge facility, are you telling me that they had no sound system on site capable of serving the needs for this short speech? They had no podium or stage setting that already existed on site or which could have temporarily been put together for a short speech? Why did they need drapes at all, why not set up in front of a huge taxpayer funded plane? That would have been cheaper and more dramatic than really, really expensive “drapes.” 

These people have no respect for taxpayers or the taxes they work hard to pay for. $100,000 down the drain when a short distance outside of McDill there are no shortage of Tampa homeless Americans who theoretically could have been given a meal or two with that $100,000. There are probably a few Tampa veterans who could have been given a little better medical care for that money. Instead, we fed another politician’s ego with “drapes” for no reason. Insane.

3) As most Americans know, the ISIS hordes of terrorists are running rampant throughout Syria and Iraq. Too bad we did not know about them before they gathered strength. It would have been a lot easier taking them out before they got so big, powerful, and dangerous.

Oh, wait we did know about them before they got so big. However, since we just found out that the President of the United States had only attended about 40% of his daily intelligence community briefings over the years, often out of town on vacation, golf excursions, or political fund raising, it is no surprise the matter was not addressed and resolved when a minimal amount of effort would have done the job.

The Washington Times recently reported, as have other news sources, that the White House and the President have been given detailed daily briefings on the activities of the Islamic State and their relentless spread of terror for well over a year. These U.S. intelligence community briefings and analyses warned that the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group was gaining strength in Syria and was on the verge of seizing territory deep inside Iraq, where the Iraqi military was struggling to respond.

Thus, the taxpayer gets screwed again. We probably spend tens of billions of dollars a year on the national security intelligence apparatus that is run by Washington only to have it all go waste when the President of the United States opts out of the daily briefings by that apparatus almost 60% of the time. Money wasted and the lives of many, many civilians and soldiers killed by this laxity in attention to a real terrorism threat.

4) Eric Holder, attorney general of the United States recently announced his resignation, to happen once a successor to his post has been named. I could probably make a strong case that Mr. Holder was likely the most inept, lawless, politically driven, and arrogant attorney general in the history of the country. However, I will make that case on another day. 

Given his performance in office, one would think that it is impossible for his approval ratings to be lower than other members of the Obama administration. However, if you thought that, you would likely be wrong. As of a recent opinion poll, he is only the third most reviled former or current Obama administration official.

According to a recent YouGov poll, only 26% of Americans have a favorable view of the attorney general. 37% have an unfavorable opinion of Holder. Pretty pathetic ratings. But believe it or not, there are two former members of the Obama administration that grade out even lower.

Only 19% of those polled had a favorable opinion of former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius while 41% had an unfavorable opinion of her performance, climaxed by the disastrous rollout of the Obama Care legislation. But even she could not outdo, in a negative way, the dismal performance of former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. When he resigned, only 18% of the public viewed him favorably while 40% viewed him unfavorably.

As we have observed many times before: in an educated country that has over 300 million citizens, is it too much to ask to find three people that could have done better jobs and been viewed more favorably than these three sub standard performers?

Another day, another day of varied pieces of political class insanity: pathetic approval ratings of important government figures, $100,000 for drapes and a microphone, a President who probably golfs and fund raises more than attending national security briefings, and a current politician that has taken the Chicago voting mantra, “vote early and vote often,” to heart.

More insanity tomorrow, we are just getting warmed up.

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

July, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Bonus Post: Pelosi Flunks Geography, Biden Claims Poverty, Voter ID Laws Are Good For Voting and More

I know that we promised yesterday would be the last post in this month’s update to our political class insanity series. However, since we made that vow, more insanity from the politicians across the country has come tumbling in. Rather than wait another month to review it, let’s try to finish this past month’s insanity up today.

1) We have often successfully made the case that politicians are more interested in extending their careers in office and self enrichment than resolving the major issues facing the country today. Given that the current set of politicians have never resolved any major issue, the back half of that statement is easy to verify.

The front half is also pretty easy to prove. The news show “60 Minutes” did the best job of that a little while ago when they showed how insider trading was against the law for every American except the Washington political class and their staffs. This loophole, created by the Washington political class, has enabled them to trade stock and legislative favors for self enrichment while in office. 

We have also reviewed how sitting politicians act on laws and government activities that benefit their spouses and their spouses businesses. The most recent case of such spouse enriching involves New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen. The Boston Globe recently reported that in 2009, Jeanne Shaheen’s husband served as a consultant for a company named Ultrawave Labs.

It seems that in 2009, Ultrawave Labs received $78,000 in Federal stimulus funding for company research. No big deal there, lots of companies got economic stimulus funding. However, rather than recuse herself from a conflict of interest perspective, Senator Shaheen voted to approve the funding to a company that her husband had an active financial interest in. As always , worse than the crime is the cover up after the crime, as illustrated by the Globe’s reporting: “The Shaheens declined multiple requests for interviews and would not answer most detailed questions about their investments and connection to the firm.” 

A New Hampshire paper followed up with an editorial that correctly points out how this type of behavior is typical of the crony capitalism that perverts and pervades Washington: [Senator Shaheen] “should have recused herself from voting on the stimulus bill because of its funding of Ultrawave. She will have to answer for the consequences of that vote. But it seems to us that the real issue here is Shaheen’s willing participation in the pay-for-play scheme that is the federal appropriations process. Shaheen complains about big-money influence in politics while engaging in the very behavior that encourages companies to hire lobbyists and senators’ spouses to obtain the connections necessary to access federal money. This is crony capitalism – and Jeanne Shaheen is one of the cronies.”

And that kids is just one way to get rich being a politician in America.

2) What would a political class insanity post be without a quote from Nancy Pelosi? Given a recent visit to see firsthand the growing crisis and humanitarian disaster that is expanding at our southern border, Ms. Pelosi showed her complete lack of geography and history skills: "This is a community with a border going through it. And this crisis — that some call a 'crisis' — we have to view as an opportunity," Pelosi said at her press conference in Texas. So, in other words, the United States and Mexico are just one big happy country that some poor fool drew an arbitrary boundary right through the middle of? Out of this world thinking.

3) We recently a short series talking about how things are not what they appear to be, that the political class makes up myths to energize their base and keep themselves in office by keeping myths and falsehoods alive. The post in that series that discussed voter id laws can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/06/destroying-political-class-myths-part-2.html

In two instances, Georgia and Texas, we disproved the political class myth, using real data and research, that reasonable voter id laws do not inhibit voting by minority groups. In fact, in two states that had recently implemented voting id laws, voting by people in those minority groups actually skyrocketed, debunking the efforts of Eric Holder and President Obama to overturn laws that may actually help increase minority voting turnout.

To follow up on that reality, consider a list of actions that every American cannot due without providing official government identification. The list was put together by Ashe Schow on August 14, 2013, writing for the Washington Examiner:

1. Purchase alcohol

2. Purchase cigarettes

3. Open a bank account

4. Apply for food stamps

5. Apply for welfare

6. Apply for Medicaid/Social Security

7. Apply for unemployment or a job

8. Rent/buy a house, apply for a mortgage

9. Drive/buy/rent a car

10. Get on an airplane

11. Get married

12. Purchase a gun

13. Adopt a pet

14. Rent a hotel room

15. Apply for a hunting license

16. Apply for a fishing license

17. Buy a cell phone

18. Visit a casino

19. Pick up a prescription

20. Hold a rally or protest

21. Blood donations

22. Buy an "M" rated video game

23. Purchase nail polish at CVS

24. Purchase certain cold medicines

But according to certain people in this administration, requiring an id to vote should not be needed even though it affects an underpinnings of our democracy and freedom. Insanity.

4) Getting back to voter id laws. We have previously shown that when the states of Georgia and Texas implemented common sense voter id laws, the voting rate in minority communities actually went up substantially despite requiring legitimate citizens to prove they were legitimate citizens and voters.

Judicial Watch recently completed a similar study in North Carolina. They compared the voting of minorities in the 2010 elections, which were held prior to the state’s voter id law going into effect, and the voting rate of minorities in the similar 2914 elections after the law went into effect. They found the same trend: while voting rates increase across all sub groups of citizens, voting rates went up even higher in minority groups. 

Which makes you wonder while Eric Holder and the Obama administration want to gut this state law also, a law that actually does what Holder and Obama want to happen, increase the voting rate of minorities. Insane.

5) Vice President Joe Biden was recently speaking at the White House Summit on Working Families when he tried to show his connection and empathy with working class and middle class families. He claimed, despite being in Washington for decades, and drawing salaries during those years substantially higher than the average household income level that he supposedly owned no stocks and had no savings: “But I got a great pension and I get a good salary,” Biden said to applause.

What a man of the people, what a regular guy, struggling to survive like the rest of us, and Hillary Clinton, in these tough economic times. But is this truly the reality of Biden’s financial situation? Probably not since:

• Buzzfeed reported that when Biden joined the Obama ticket in 2008, he was indeed the poorest Senator but as the fact checker PolitiFact pointed out at the time, poorest Senator was still far wealthier than the average American.
• USA Today reported that in this year’s White House financial disclosure, Biden listed assets “valued at $276,000 to $940,000, including a rental property owned jointly with his wife, Jill,” 
• We have previously reported in this blog that not only do the Biden’s own this rental property but they have the gall to rent it out to the Secret Service to use to protect the Bidens, which of course is paid for by the American taxpayer.
• Time magazine’s Zeke Miller pointed out that contrary to what Biden stated at the meeting, Joe Biden definitely owns a savings account in his own name.
• And finally, other news sources claimed that the reason that Biden does not have a savings account or stock holdings in his name is because much of the family assets are listed not in his name but in his wife’s name. 

Thus, while technically correct in his statements, he is in a gray area when making such claims as long as he is married to his current wife and has access to the assets in her name. I always wonder what politicians are thinking when they try to push such stories that are really deceptions:

• Do they really believe their own deceptions and lies as reality? 
• Do they think we are too stupid to believe their own deceptions and lies? 
• Do they think no one will fact check their own deceptions and lies because they lie so well?

Insanity no matter how you cut it.

That will definitely do it for this month’s political class insanity. Today we learned that nepotism and crony capitalism is still alive, at least in New Hampshire politics, that Nancy Pelosi likely flunked geography in grammar school, that needing a valid id is necessary for most aspects of life even if some politicians find it necessary to vote as an insult, and Joe Biden plays fast and loose with words and claims about his family’s wealth. Insanity all around.

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

Political Class Myth Busting, Part 3: Voter ID Laws Are Not Racist, Koch Brothers Are Not Evil, and Al Qaeda is NOT On The Run

We are having a little fun over the past two days at our politicians’ expense, exploring the many myths that the politicians of this country would like us to believe. You see, if we believe the myths that they create than we are more likely to vote for them to resolve the unreal issues and problems associated with these myths. 

[Note: I thought we could finish the myth deconstruction in two posts but we will need at least today to finish up what is becoming a very interesting and apparently widespread problem, courtesy of the American political class.]

But what if what they tell is not the true reality? What if we are getting all worked up and headed in the wrong direction for a mythical problem that does not exist or for a mythical solution that resolves nothing? All it does is send us chasing our tails while the same inept politicians get reelected over and over based on nothing more than their own greed, their rigging of the election processes, and the myths that they feed us and control us with.

So starting yesterday, we are going to look behind the myth curtail and reveal what is the true reality. With that truth we may finally start resolving some of the major issues of our times. Lord knows the political class has failed miserably over the past fifty years in eradicating poverty, winning the lost war on drugs, fixing our failing public schools, securing our borders, etc. 

Maybe it is because we have allowed them to work on myths that they created and not the true problems of our age. Keep in mind the following wise words of Groucho Marx over the next few posts: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” Sounds like myth building to me.

1) Democrats and Harry Reid in particular have been in a rage and temper tantrum recently because business people known as the Koch brothers had the nerve and audacity to legally contribute to political causes and candidates that were not democrats or Harry Reid. Reid is in such a lather that he wants to destroy the First Amendment and its free speech guarantee to punish the Koch brothers.

Wow, these must be some really evil dudes if Harry thinks it is worthwhile to destroy our freedom of speech in this country. Or is the Koch brothers evil just a political myth by the liberal wing of the political class? Are they that evil?

Probably not, and a prime piece of evidence to refute Reid’s evil Koch brother myth was a recent announcement by the United Negro College Fund (UNCF that it had recently received a $25 million grant from Koch Industries, Inc. and the Charles Koch Foundation. The partnership and $25 million will be used to provide nearly 3,000 merit-based awards to African American undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctorate students seeking scholarship assistance. 

It will also help strengthen the 37 UNCF-member Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by helping them offset funding shortfalls from other sources.

Specifically, the major elements of the donation include:

• $18.5 million to be used to provide scholarships for exemplary students with demonstrated financial need and an interest in the study of how entrepreneurship, economics, and innovation contribute to well-being for individuals, communities, and society. Funds will also be used to provide an annual summit, mentorship opportunities, and school programs.
• $6.5 million is provided for general support to HBCUs and UNCF, with $4 million set aside for the 37 UNCF-member HBCUs and their students to provide financial relief related to the Parent PLUS loan crisis.

My gosh, Reid is right. These are evil, evil men. How dare they give tens of millions of their dollars to African American students to further their education! They must be stopped.

No, they should not be stopped exercising their First Amendment rights and their human rights to help others, regardless of the myth Harry Reid weaves so for political gain.

2) Remember the 2012 election campaign? President Barack Obama was fond of claiming that Al-Qaeda is “on the run.” Was and is that a political myth to serve a political purpose or was that reality? 

A recent data intensive study by the Rand Corporation would say that this is surely a myth and the reality is that Al-Qaeda is far from on the run. Instead, the premier terror organization and its offshoots may actually be flourishing. The Rand study quantified the following realities:

• The number of Islamic terror groups has risen 60% since 2010, a period of time that was concurrent with the Obama administration being in office, it has nothing to do with the Bush administration.
• There has been a 300% increase in terrorism attacks since 2010 according to the Rand Corporation count.
• In total, there were 950 terrorism attacks worldwide since 2010.

If you add in the resurgence of an Al Qaeda faction that now threatens to overrun Iraq, it is pretty clear the Obama’s prior to the 2012 elections that Al Qaeda was on the run was mjurely mthical in nature, probably concocted to help win an election than to face the reality of a growing threat of terror around the world.

3) Two days ago we showed that more stringent voter id laws in Georgia coincided with a substantial increase in voting by minorities. Yesterday, we discussed the fact that the same thing happened in Texas, tighter voter id laws and rules coincided with higher voting rates by minorities. 

This runs counter to myth perpetuated by the likes of Eric Holder, Barack Obama and other liberals that voter id laws are bad for the voting rights and abilities of minorities, that somehow requiring an American to prove who he or she is is somehow a terrible injustice. Thus, we had two examples and the realities and numbers to prove that this is just another political myth meant to improve political careers rather than have fair elections.

To put a third stake into the heart of this myth, consider a recent poll of 1,025 registered voters that was conducted by Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw and Company research during the second week of May, 2014:

• While over of the African Americans included in the poll supported the President on a wide range of issues (overall - 86%, economic matters - 89%, Obama Care - 83%), a majority (51%) of those African Americans also supported state level voter id laws and rules.
• This would imply that African Americans support the President on a range of issues but break away significantly from him, and the myth of voter id laws, when it comes to voter id laws, being much more accepting of them than the President.
• There was also strong majority support in this poll among every individual demographic that was surveyed, which included political affiliation, gender, race (black and white) and educational attainment. 
• Overall, 70% of those surveyed supported "state laws that require voters to show a valid form of state- or federally-issued photo identification to prove U.S. citizenship before being allowed to vote," while only 27% opposed them.

Thus, the majority of African Americans, at least in this survey, which should be representative of the general African American population, would agree that the myth that voter id laws suppress African American voting is indeed a myth. Consider what some prominent African Americans had to say about the overall myth and this survey in particular:

"Requiring identification to prove who you are at the polls just makes good sense," said Project 21's Christopher Arps of Missouri, the founder of the black conservative social network Move-on-up.org. "Voter ID laws protect the overall integrity of our electoral process and safeguard every citizen's right to cast a ballot in his or her own name."

"A majority of black Americans in this poll found nothing inherently racist about showing an ID to vote. It discredits the progressive talking point that black Americans uniformly see voter laws as racist and an attempt at voter suppression," said Project 21's Kevin Martin, a small business owner and U.S. Navy veteran. "It also shows that progressives who claim to represent the black community are not listening to us on this issue. Perhaps it is because they only seek to use our community to further their own agenda."

Project 21's Horace Cooper, a former professor of constitutional law and former leadership staff member for the U.S. House of Representatives opined: "It is critical to the notion of self-government that only lawfully registered voters participate in elections, and that is why over seven of 10 Americans support it. While Attorney General Eric Holder tries to convince the media that voter ID is somehow anti-black, even blacks disagree. The truth is that voter ID gives all Americans -- black, white, yellow and brown -- the confidence that their vote matters and it will count."

"It should come as no surprise that a majority of blacks support voter ID," said Horace Cooper. "Voter ID is a popular and commonsense tool, popular with all Americans that ensures that real bona fide Americans are casting the votes to determine who our elected officials will be and what policies they will promote."

That will do it for today. Today, we destroyed the myth that just because an American contributes to political opponents does not make them evil, as witnesses by the charitable ands generous work of the Koch brothers. We crushed the Obama myth that Al Qaeda :was on the run” with real life data from a world-renowned consulting firm. And we continued to crush the myth that voter id laws are inherently anti-minority and suppress minority voting rates.

Believe it of not, we still have a few more myths to crush. We have crushed nine so far over the past three days but need one more day to crush the last two myths, racism in America and income inequality. Again, our reason for crushing these myths is so that the country can finally put is focus and energies towards resolving real problems that face the majority of Americans rather than tripping down the mythical rabbit holes that politicians dig for us, holes that benefit their political careers but distract us from reality.

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

Destroying Political Class Myths, Part 2: Voter ID Laws Help MInorities, Guess Where Racism Pervades, and Gun Control Is Good For Violent Crimes

We are having a little fun today and yesterday at our politicians’ expense, exploring the many myths that the politicians of this country would like us to believe. You see, if we believe the myths that they create than we are more likely to vote for them to resolve the unreal issues and problems associated with these myths. 

But what if what they tell is not the true reality? What if we are getting all worked up and headed in the wrong direction for a mythical problem that does not exist or for a mythical solution that resolves nothing? All it does is send us chasing our tails while the same inept politicians get reelected over and over based on nothing more than their own greed, their rigging of the election processes, and the myths that they feed us and control us with.

So starting yesterday, we are going to look behind the myth curtail and reveal what is the true reality. With that truth we may finally start resolving some of the major issues of our times. Lord knows the political class has failed miserably over the past fifty years in eradicating poverty, winning the lost war on drugs, fixing our failing public schools, securing our borders, etc. 

Maybe it is because we have allowed them to work on myths that they created and not the true problems of our age. Keep in mind the following wise words of Groucho Marx over the next few posts: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” Sounds like myth building to me.

1) Yesterday, we learned that what Eric Holder, the Justice Department, and President Obama tell us about voter id laws are truly a myth, at least in Georgia. In that state, there is now definitive proof that five years after a state voter id law was put in place, minority voting rates have skyrocketed, showing no ill effects of the myth that voter id laws are inherently racist and meant to depress minority voting activity. 

Well, guess what? The same myth recently got destroyed in Texas where analysis of the real world also showed that reasonable voter id laws do not inhibit minority voting rights or activity.

Highlights of recent Texas voting activity reveals the following realities, as reported in a recent NewsMax article: 

• Voter turnout nearly doubled in Texas after a new voter ID law was put in place.
• This happened despite the fact that recent voting and elections were not major or national in scope, a fact that could account for increased voting activity.
• There were nine proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution in the latest round of elections and voting.
• The number of votes tallied was nearly double the number of people who voted in 2011 in a similar type of election. 
• All nine measures were approved by this election, and dealt primarily with taxes and state budgets, not normally high interest topics for voters.
• According to political experts of all bends and positions, a doubling of the voting crowd was a far from expected result.
• The increased voting volumes were not all white voters by any stretch of the imagination. 
• For example, Hidalgo County with a substantial Hispanic population, with over 90% self identifying as Latino, the number of county voters quadrupled from 2011. 
• During that last round of Texas constitutional amendment voting, approximately 4,000 Hidalgo individuals voted in the election whereas that number exceeded 16,000 in the most recent similar election. 

So now we have destroyed the voter id voter suppression myth in another state with actual, real life data that shows if anything, voter id laws are at least not detrimental to the voting patterns and rates of minorities and may actually increase them.

2) Northeast liberals like to tell the rest of the country how tolerant and advanced they are culturally, racially, and socially. But at least in the area of school segregation, none of those attributes are true, they are a definite myth, according to a recent report and analysis from UCLA’s Civil Rights Project.

The Project found that public school students in New York continue to be severely segregated by race and are increasingly isolated by race and class as the proportion of minority and poor students continues to grow. The Civil Rights Project looked at trends in school enrolment and segregation from 1989 to 2010 at the total state level and regional levels.

Consider some of their findings specific to New York City:

• A majority (19 out of 32) of the city’s Community School Districts (CSDs) had 10% or less white students in 2010. 
• 73% of charters across New York City were designated “apartheid schools” (less than 1% white enrollment) and 90% percent were intensely segregated (less than 10% white enrollment) schools in 2010. 
• Only 8% of charter schools were multiracial with over a 14.5% white enrollment. 
• While magnet schools across New York City had the highest proportion of multiracial schools (47%) and the lowest proportion of segregated schools (56%) in 2010, 17% of magnets had less than 1% white enrollment and 7% had greater than 50% white enrollment, with PS 100 Coney Island having a white proportion of 81%.

So much for the myth that liberal northeast being so much more racially advanced than the rest of the country from a myth perspective: “In the 30 years I have been researching schools, New York State has consistently been one of the most segregated states in the nation--no Southern state comes close to New York,” commented CRP Co-Director Gary Orfield. “Decades of reforms ignoring this issue produced strategies that have not succeeded in making segregated schools equal. It is time to adopt creative school choice strategies to give more New York children an opportunity to prepare to live and work effectively.”

So much for the perceived rednecks and racists down south, at least relative to the state and city of New York. 

3) Obama has been almost fanatical in his desire to shred the Second Amendment and greatly restrict the ability of stable Americans to own guns. He and others like him in the liberal camp of politics seem to believe two very simplistic myths:

1) Myth 1: If the political class and the government it operates made it unlawful to own guns, there would be no guns in either law abiding citizens possession or in the hands of criminals.

2) Myth 2: If we reduced the overall number of guns in the country, violent crime would miraculously go down and go down dramatically. The converse of this myth is that the more guns there are in the country, the higher the crime rate will go.

From Myth 1 perspective, over the years the political class has made it illegal to possess booze, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, or other drugs and also made it illegal to be a prostitute, a pimp, or to have an abortion. Despite the declaration that these actions were illegal, citizens and criminals continued to possess booze, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and to engage in prostitution, pimping, and having abortions. 

How does anyone believe that applying the same restrictions to gun possession will have a different result than these actions? Insanity and purely illogical to think otherwise. Myth destroyed by simple logic.

The second myth of crime rates can be destroyed by a few simple charts of reality:








Two takeaways from these two charts:

• Despite the Second Amendment, the violent crime rate has been reduced by almost half over the past twenty years or so.
• As more and more people have gained access to the ability to carry a concealed weapon, the nation’s violent crime rate has gone down, not up as the myth makers would like us to believe.

As a finally myth killer, consider the city of Chicago which has both one of the most restrictive gun possession laws in the country and also one of the highest violent crime rates in the country. Less guns = more violent crime, more guns = less violent crime. Myths destroyed. 

For an update on this myth destruction in action, consider the following recent news report from Chicago, home of the really, really strict gun control laws and where seven people were killed and 28 wounded by gun fire in just one weekend:

http://prepperchimp.com/2014/06/10/chicago-death-toll-from-fri-to-mon-7-dead-28-wounded/

So what political class myths did we destroy today:

1. In Texas, like in Georgia yesterday, voter id laws have had little or no negative impacts on minority voter rates and may have actually had a positive impact.
2. The Deep South is not nearly as racist and segregated as the great liberal state and city of New York at least when it comes to schools.
3. Gun possession reduces violent crime, it does not increase violent crime.

That is why we must always deeply and suspiciously examine what politicians tell us. They are in the myth selling business rather than the problem resolution business. Perpetrating their myths helps them sow confusion and hate without working at their jobs, ensuring their perpetual reelection and self enrichment.

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

Destroying Political Class Myths, Part 1: No Child Left Behind, Voter ID Laws,and Global Warming

We are going to have a little fun the next few days exploring the many myths that the politicians of this country would like us to believe. You see, if we believe the myths that they create than we are more likely to vote for them to resolve the unreal issues and problems associated with these myths. 

But what if what they tell is not the true reality? What if we are getting all worked up and headed in the wrong direction for a mythical problem that does not exist or for a mythical solution that resolves nothing? All it does is send us chasing our tails while the same inept politicians get reelected over and over based on nothing more than their own greed, their rigging of the election processes, and the myths that they feed us and control us with.

So starting today we are going to look behind the myth curtail and reveal what is the true reality. With that truth we may finally start resolving some of the major issues of our times. Lord knows the political class has failed miserably over the past fifty years in eradicating poverty, winning the lost war on drugs, fixing our failing public schools, securing our borders, etc. 

Maybe it is because we have allowed them to work on myths that they created and not the true problems of our age. Keep in mind the following wise words of Groucho Marx over the next few posts: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” Sounds like myth building to me.

1) One of the biggest national initiatives under the Bush administration was the move to try and improve education in this country. He tried to do so under the banner of “No Child Left Behind. (NCLB). 

According to a late 2013 Education Action Group article by Ben Velderman, 89% of Congressional members voted for NCLB, which became law in 2002. Politicians supported the NCLB legislation because “it represented the first major effort by the federal government to impose academic accountability, through annual standardized testing, on public schools that received federal assistance.”

But liberals and Democrats pounded it for what they positioned as ineffective and an expensive failure. That became the storyline and assumed truth of this program that spend tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth.

But was total NCLB failure the reality or the political class myth?

According to Mr. Velderman’s article:

• Paul Peterson, director of Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance completed an in-depth analysis of NCLB in 2013 and wrote a very credible defense of the legislation based on real data, more than a decade after the law became a reality.
• He goes as far to seriously call it one of the Bush administration’s “crowning achievements.”
• Using 2012 math and reading scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Peterson found that NCLB helped African-American and Hispanic students make “remarkable gains” in learning.
• Additionally, it actually helped close the achievement gap between white and minority students” “For the first nine years, the average gains (in reading and math scores) were six points annually for African-Americans, five points for Hispanics and three points for whites. Over that stretch, the test-score gap closed by two to three points each year, on average. While minority students did not attain the proficiency NCLB expected, the record shows steady positive momentum.”
• Unfortunately, according to the Peterson, those gains came “to a virtual halt” after the Obama administration decided to stop enforcing most of NCLB’s primary provisions and offered waivers to states that signed up for more lenient rules implemented by the Obama administration.
• According to Peterson, minority students benefited under NCLB largely because the law forced schools to produce learning results or face a series of penalties.
• In other words, the law held people accountable for results, a novel idea when it comes to government programs and employees.
• This notion of accountability was another key to NCLB’s success, according to Peterson, since it required that students’ test scores be made public. Letting parents and taxpayers know how much (or little) their students were learning in school put pressure on administrators and teachers to step fix their broken educational processes. But that transparency has been lost under the Obama administration, an administration that was supposed to be the “most transparent ever.”

So, what was supposed to be the worst bill ever passed turns out to be not so bad, according to an education expert from a university that will never be mistaken for a right leaning, conservative, Republican institution. The sad thing is that the Democrats and Obama, in this case of myth building, destroyed something that was working to some degree and replaced it with nothing that is working to no degree.

But somehow they got the myth established and minority kids, the people they brag they support, are the losers.

2) The Obama administration, via Eric Holder and his renegade Justice Department, have been going around the country and pressuring state government’s to abandon or severely water down their voter id requirements for elections. The mythical reason for the crackdown was to avoid the Jim Crow restrictive voting rules and laws of the past, laws that restricted the voting ability of African Americans. Holder’s public reasoning was that tight voter id laws restrict minorities’ abilities to vote.

The real reason, in many peoples’ minds, was to loosen voting rules so much that voter fraud could be practiced on a wide spread basis. What is reality and what is a myth of Holder’s intentions does not matter in this case. Late last year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published the results of its investigation into how Georgia’s strict voter identification had affected the voting behavior of different demographic groups. The tight voter id laws had been in effect for about five years. 

Their findings kill the Holder myth that tight voter id laws suppress minority voting volumes:

• While it is a reality that the tighter Georgia state voter id laws failed to catch a single documented case of voter fraud, it did not suppress minority voting in the state either.
• The paper’s analysis found that during the five years of tighter voter id rules, minorities are actually turning out to vote at a higher rate than the rate that their population of their demographic is growing: “Turnout among black and Hispanic voters increased from 2006 to 2010, dramatically outpacing population growth for those groups over the same period,” according to reporter Shannon McCaffrey.
• Elections data reviewed by the paper’s research proved that black voters election participation actually rose by a whopping 44% from 2006, before the law was implemented, to 2010. 
• The increase for the Hispanic population during the same period was even more impressive, 67%. 
• As a benchmark, voting turnout among whites rose only 12%.

Thus, according to real life data, the Obama administration was perpetrating myth, at least in the state of Georgia, when they claimed that voter ID laws were discriminatory and detrimental to minority voting. Minority voting rates increased during the five years after the tighter restrictions took hold: “If you look at the numbers, they clearly show that critics of this law were wrong,” Hans von Spakovsky, a former legal counsel to the Justice Department’s civil rights division who now works for the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the newspaper. “Their argument has always been it would depress turnout, but it didn’t happen — quite the opposite.”

Political myth destroyed by real life results. And really, given how easy the state of Georgia made it to get a valid id to vote besides making getting the id for free, shouldn’t the price of citizenship include at least a little effort on the part of citizens to get an id to exercise their right AND privilege to vote?

3) One more myth destruction for today. For well over as decade, we have been bombarded with politicians telling us that we had to give up a lot of our wealth and a lot of our freedom because of global warming. Passively implied in this campaign, or this myth, was the reality that we were giving up these precious things, our wealth and freedom, to politicians which would increase their control over our lives.

But what has happened to global warming over the past 17 years or so? In reality, the myth died on the vine since global warming stopped a long time ago despite the dire warnings and forecast models of the political class’s climate scientists:









That is why the myth had to be adjusted in mid stream by the political class. After almost 18 years of no warming and the failure of almost every climate forecast model to take this into account, we now have a rebranded new myth called “climate change.” But like most myths, how can we believe this new political class myth when the old myth they so passionately and vehemently defended for decades turned out to be false?

So what is the lesson learned today? The political class stays in power and office by manufacturing myths to excite their base and show how important they are. In reality, the myths are not important because they never resolve real issues but we end up paying with our wealth and freedom for very little in return.

I once worked for a boss whose favority saying was: “There is nothing more devasting to an opinion [or in our case, a myth]than the right number.” The No Child Left Behind failure myth was destroyed by the number analysis done by a Harvard professor. The voting id laws prevent minorities from voting myth was destroyed by a newspaper research effort of real life data and numbers. The global warming myth is destroyed by simply looking at a single graph's numbers. Boy, who thought destroying political class myths could be so much fun? More fun at least through 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