October, 2021, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Taking Bribes, Shredding the Constitution, Failing to Protect American Lives, and Another Defund the Police Disaster.

Before we get to today’s insanity, please consider the following proposition: as many of you know, the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a historic and fatal endeavor. But the failure did not start just in the past few weeks, it has been a twenty year disaster. It has cost American taxpayers about a trillion dollars, has left thousands of our brave armed forces folks dead, maimed, or wounded and has resulted in an unknown but substantial number of civilian deaths.

Afghanistan has been a collective failure of multiple Presidential administrations and multiple sessions of Congress. Thus, please consider signing the petition below that calls for the immediate resignation of every member of Congress that has at least twenty years of service and the resignation of President Biden, Vice President Harris, and critical, and failed, members of the Biden Administration. They do not deserve to serve any longer given their miserable twenty year track record of death, destruction and waste in Afghanistan.

Also, if you are passionate about this topic and effort, feel free to pass the link along to others who might also feel the same way, i.e. incompetence should not be rewarded:

https://www.change.org/p/american-citizens-demand-immediate-congressional-resignations-for-the-twenty-year-afghanistan-debacle

Biden and others need to resign for dereliction of duty, incompetence and total lack of empathy. Nothing short of resignation is acceptable. Thank you.

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

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) Far too many times we have discussed how pathetically and fatally wrong the whole “defund the police” movement was and still is. Police forces and the respect for police forces was slashed by American politicians over the past year or so, resulting in increased violence, crime and deaths in American cities across the country.

Austin, Texas is just the latest city to be hit by the increased violence as a result of the increased idiocy of the city’s politicians:

• There have been 60 homicides in Austin so far this year.
• This more than any other year out of the 61 years that the police department has kept such records.
• This year’s homicide rate is 6.2 per 100,000 records, up from 5.0 in 2020, a 24% increase, and 4.2 homicides in 2016.
• According to a local news report: "The city's police force is also stretched thin, with officer shortages and a large chunk of the budget being cut."
• City politicians cancelled police department cadet classes and stripped a whopping $150 million out of the department’s $434 million budget, more than a third.
• According to the Austin American-Statesman: "Several acknowledge that the department is now left with a bare-bones patrol staff suffering unprecedented attrition. The council has reinstated cadet classes, but the first graduates won’t hit the streets until spring. The department has about 1,800 officers, roughly the same number it had in 2016."
• As a result of this political insanity, police forces no longer respond to “non-emergency” law breaking like theft, prostitution, burglary, etc.
• In these non-emergency cases, residents have to call 311, the city government number, and in some cases have had to wait weeks to get any help.

Disgusted citizens have launched an action committee, "Save Austin Now,” to get a proposition put on the ballot that would require that the police department in the city be staffed to have at least two police officers for each 100,000 residents.

Despite this common sense approach to the problem, the group has been met with resistance from city leaders, organizations, and activists that somehow put forth the ridiculous argument that increasing the size of the police force would not make the city safer.

There is no cure for stupid, as Austin politicians and their wacky defund the police effort has shown. We have asserted many, many times that a very basic function of government is to protect the lives and property of law abiding citizens. If a government entity cannot perform that primary function then it is a failure regardless of how well it does any other city function.

2) And the increase in crime is not restricted to Austin:

• According to the latest FBI crime statistics, murders in the country increased over 29% in 2020 vs. 2019.
• This is one of the largest single year increases in the country’s history.
• There were 21,570 murders in 2020, an increase of 4,901 vs. 2019.

Yeah, the defund the police effort has worked out just fine for the criminals, not so much for the victims.

3) The Obama administration was not a friend of the Constitution:

• It tracked down and killed American citizens around the world that were considered enemies or terrorists without giving those Americans their right to a trial and due process.
• They spied on journalists without court warrants or reasons, disrespecting and ignoring the First Amendment.
• They spied on millions of American citizens without court warrants or reasons, further disrespecting the First Amendment.
• They altered or faked information in warrant submissions to get the wiretapping court approval they needed.
• They used the IRS to harass political opponents, violating their First and Fourth Amendment rights.

And the examples of the lawlessness just keep on coming:

• Carter Page is a former Trump political campaign official.
• His work history included working with the CIA, the FBI, and the State Department.
• Given his work history, it is highly doubtful that he was in cahoots with Russian agents or sources, he probably had to undergo extensive background checks to work at the above agencies.
• But none of this information was provided by Obama’s agents when they applied for secret FISA warrants to spy on Page during Trump’s campaign.
• That warrant was an integral part of the Obama fake conspiracy to make it show that the Trump campaign was involved with Russian spies, a fairy tale that has been shown to be nothing more than a political ploy on Obama’s part.
• According to the Federalist, the FISA court “found violations of the government’s duty of candor in all four applications” and that the government “must temporarily retain, and potentially use and disclose, the information collected, largely in the context of ongoing or anticipated litigation.”
• In other words, Obama and his people broke the law and violated a basic tenet of the Constitution.

What was once a respected government agency, one the very few, the FBI has devolved into a political hack government entity that has injected intself into the nation’s politics and not in a good, lawful, or Constitutional way.

4) We have shown many times that the corruption and greed of the American political class is not just with the politicians serving in DC, that politicians at all levels of government have a great history of corruption:

• The former mayor of Fall River, Massachusetts, Jasiel Correia, was recently sentenced to six years in prison after he was found guilty of corruption.
• He was elected mayor at the young age of 23 but his age was not a barrier to his corruption.
• He was found guilty of taking bribes from marijuana companies that wanted to open pot shops in his town.
• The judge in the case found the ex-mayor’s behavior reprehensible: “What I have before me is an absolute lack of remorse,a corrosive crime, it undercuts, it eviscerates a community. If we can’t trust each other, if we can’t trust our government, where are we? This is at the core of who we are...City Hall was for sale,”
• Correia claims he is innocent and although a few charges were eventually reversed and dropped, he is still likely going to prison for the charges that still remain.

The American political class, always putting themselves first rather than the people they represent.

Another day of American political class insanity: taking bribes, shredding the Constitution, failing to protect American lives, and another defund the police disaster.

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/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

 

November, 2019, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: The Tragedy Of The Minimum Wage, The Delusions Of California Politicians,and The Failure Of Common Core

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 often discussed the fallacy that raising the minimum wage rate results in better lives for those affected by that raise. Our latest expose’ was in the following post:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2019/11/november-2019-part-3political-class.html

Donald J. Boudreaux, writing for the Mercatus Center on October 31, 2019, showed, again, how bad it can become when politicians do not know the consequences of raising the minimum wage too fast:

• He starts off by stating what we have always said: “Minimum-wage legislation artificially raises firms’ costs of employing low-skilled workers. In consequence, some workers who would have jobs in the absence of the minimum wage are cast by the minimum wage into the ranks of the unemployed.”
• In other words, the good news is that you got a pay raise. The bad news is that you no longer have a job.
• The majority of economic studies on the topic of politicians raising the minimum wage arbitrarily support the reality that for the most part, raising the minimum wage results in less economic prosperity, especially for those at the lower end of the wage scale.
• And that lessening of economic prosperity is not just the reduction in the number of jobs available or the number of hours available to work.
• Many times to make up for the increase in the wage expense line, in order to survive, employers reduce other expenses to stay in business.
• Depending on the industry, employees end losing fringe benefits that have economic value to both the employer and employee including free meals, free employer supplied uniforms, employee discounts, overtime work, company picnics, comfortable break rooms, employee recognition programs, reduction in leaving early or coming in late to work opportunities, Friday happy hours, etc.
• According to Mr. Boudreaux: “When government raises the minimum wage, employers can reduce the amount of nonwage benefits paid to employees. And so even workers who keep their jobs at the higher minimum wage might nevertheless be made worse off because of reductions in the value of their nonwage benefits.”
• Thus, to offset the arbitrary increase in wages from economically ignorant politicians, employers will make up to five business operations adjustments: employ fewer workers, reduce the number of workers’ hours, cut the value of workers’ fringe benefits, work employees harder or mechanize workers’ processes.

And yet, politicians continue to think they know best, i.e. raise the minimum wage, and they always ending hurting the ones they think they are helping, the low income workers in the economy.

2) We have recently discussed the reality that California Democrats/liberals/socialists have turned the state into a stinking (literally) mess:

• There is widespread homelessness across the state with almost 90,000 homeless Americans in just the two cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
• The large homeless population and resultant garbage issues in Los Angeles have led to the resurrection of the Medieval disease, typhus, and a real concern that the bubonic plague might be next.
• The pipe dream to build a high speed rail line the length of the state resulted in the wasting of untold millions of dollars before it failed miserably.
• The state is about $200 billion short of what it will need to pay future unfunded state government financial liabilities.
• Due to the state’s politicians allowing homeless folks to defecate and urinate in the streets of the state’s major cities without consequences, this has resulted in severe environmental crises as the cities power wash away the feces and urine into storm sewers which washes into rivers which is in turn used for irrigation.
• And finally, due to mismanagement of the state’s forests, the state is being ravaged by wildfires, killing people and destroying homes and businesses, wildfires that have caused utilities to intentionally cause blackouts to minimize the chance of wildfires.

Thus, it is pretty obvious that the state’s politicians, and the government bureaucracies it oversees and manages, is not only useless in California but actually dangerous. New diseases, wildfires, wasted taxpayer wealth, homelessness, they have failed at everything they have touched.

And yet the state’s politicians still do not get it:

• A lot of the wildfires in the state have been caused by sparking malfunctions of the Pacific Gas and Electric’s electric grid, sparks that have caused the wildfires.
• As a result, the state’s governor, said that changes have to be made, changes that may include having the state government take over the utility.
• Governor Gavin Newsom said the objective goal of any changes was to transform, Pacific Gas & Electric, into “one that better reflects our California values and will advance massive safety transformations beginning before next fire season.”
• Newsom has appointed an energy czar to figure out what to do including taking over the utility.
• Given the inability of the state’s politicians to get anything right, as illustrated by the list of failures above, does anyone really think that the state government and the politicians who operate it could efficiently, effectively, and safely operate an electric utility? Keep in mind that Pacific Gas and Electric is a regulated utility which means that the state government has always had oversight of the utility’s operation. 

And thus, the state, and indirectly the state’s politicians, have been a major factor in the failure of the utility to modernize and minimize wildfires. Yet, the governor thinks that he and the state government can get the job done. 

He and the state’s politicians have resurrected extinct diseases, have not resolved any aspect of the homeless problem and could not build a single track railroad system and yet then think they can operate a utility: State government representative Ro Khanna recently said in an interview that the state should nonetheless consider a takeover. “This is a case where public ownership would be much better.” Much better than what? Talk about being disillusioned and insane.

3) Common Core was a major Federal government undertaking that was supposed to make the U.S. public education system one of the best in the world. It is certainly not close to that today. Our kids usually do miserable on standardized tests when measured against kids around the world despite us spending so much more on education than other countries.

We have shown over the years what a failure Common Core has been when deployed around the country:

• Within a year or so of deployment in Maryland, the test scores of kids in every county plummeted rather than get better.
• Prior to being deployed in the state of Massachusetts, the schools in that state were ranked the best in the nation when it came to educating its kids.
• However, once Common Core was deployed it dropped to seventh best in a very short timeframe.
• Damning evidence that this approach to education was a failure despite spending billions and billions of dollars on it. 

And the latest results do nothing to disprove this failure:

• According to a recent article on the Western Journal website, the latest national standardized test scores were only marginally better than the results in 1992, 27 years ago despite spending untold billions and billions of dollars to improve those results.
• Math test results were trending upwards nicely until 2015 when that upward trend stopped suddenly.
• Not coincidentally, 2015 was about when Common Core was quite well established in our public schools.
• Results actually started going negative with fourth graders latest standardized test scores, just a little above previous scores.
• Eighth grade math scores were actually below where their scores were two years ago.

So, the Federal government, the bureaucrats that operate it, and the politicians that fund it and oversee it have been a complete failure when it comes to public education for at least the past 27 years. Common Core made our education processes worse, not better. We spent billions and billions of dollars to achieve this result. In the bigger picture, over the past three decades I would venture a guess that have spent trillion(s) of dollars to maintain a mediocre education system in this country. Insanity.

Okay, we learned today that: politicians continue to be ignorant when it comes to raising the minimum wage and the negative impacts it has on lower earning American workers, politicians continue to be arrogant, thinking they can run a utility company when the have proven they cannot operate anything else effectively or efficiently, and politicians continue to prove they have no idea how to improve education despite having and spending trillions of dollars to do so.

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 4, Polticial CLass Insanity: A Cowardly Viriginia Politcian, Common Core;s Death In Florida, and Pelosi's Continued Abuse Of Taxpayer Wealth

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) The state government of Virginia recently put together an abhorrent, repugnant abortion bill. That is my opinion but this is not the time to discuss the proposed legislation or abortion in general. This discussion is about a cowardly state legislator who made a fool out of herself once the heat came fast and hard from those that also found the legislation to be...abhorrent and repugnant:

• Keep in mind that this state politician CO-SPONSORED the legislation.
• She did not just vote for it or just support it, she CO-SPONSORED it.
• Once the heat came, she came up with the lame excuse that she would not have co-sponsored the abortion bill if she had read it more closely.
• Politician Dawn Adams sent out an email to her voters that she “did not exercise due diligence.”

So Ms. Adams, you are either a terrible legislator that goes around co-sponsoring legislation that you never really read or understood, especially legislation like this that is sure to be controversial, or you are a coward and a hypocrite who refuses to stand up for what you believe. In either case, lazy or cowardly, you are not worthy to represent your voters.

2) Common Core has been a disaster across the country, one that we have discussed many times. We showed that when Maryland implemented the Common Core curriculum, its test scores that were trending upwards took an almost immediately downward turn. Massachusetts, which traditionally had the top rated public schools in the country, soon found its ranking fall to seventh best almost immediately after implementing Common Core.

Which brings us to a rare positive, good piece of political class insanity:

• According to the Shark Tank website, the new governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, asserted that he will issue an executive order to terminate Common Core in Florida.
• DeSantis said that, “Let’s get this right. We want high quality (education), we want to demand excellence, but we want to do that (reform) in a way that’s responsive to the concerns we’ve had over the years.”
• Rather than rely on the Federal government, a thousand miles away to force standardized and bad education standards on every kid in the country, an effort that has failed miserably, De Santis claims that all state citizens will have the opportunity to provide input to the Education Commissioner for developing the state’s education standards, i.e. bottoms up participation in education vs. the Federal government top down dictate process.
• As a first step to fixing what Washington broke, DeSantis also stressed that he wants to identify ways to make civics education a priority in Florida: “Civics education was something that I promised during the campaign….and it will pay dividends for us far into the future.” 

The real political class insanity is that the Federal government, mostly via the Obama administration, probably wasted billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on a failed education process. At least DeSantis is finally fixing what the Feds broke.

3) Nancy Pelosi has always been, in our eyes, the prototypical useless politician. She somehow manages to get herself reelected time and time again without ever producing anything worthwhile, be it as a regular Congress person or as Speaker of The House. Her verbal gaffes have been classic, showing her to be out of touch and useless when it comes to resolving the major issues of our times.

But her gaffes and inabilities have never slowed her down when it comes to abusing and using taxpayer wealth to her own benefit:

• Judicial Watch, a Washington watchdog group, recently came across a bunch of government documents under the Freedom Of Information Act relative to Pelosi.
• Apparently, she has some expensive tastes when it comes to flying around the world.
• In 2015, she took a group of people, including politicians and their spouses, on a trip to Milan, Rome, and Naples.
• There they enjoyed private tours of the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, a viewing of Vinci’s “Last Supper” and other private tours/viewings.
• They then took a flight over to Kiev in the Ukraine.
• And no fast food for them on the trip since trip their included a meal at the high end James Beard American Restaurant restaurant in Milan, where “more than 30 award-winning chefs from across America will take turns, on a rotational basis, to prepare dinners,” the Milan City Guide reported at the time.
• The average price for a meal at this place: $200 per person, taxpayer funded of course.
• Cost to the taxpayers for this junket: almost $185,000.

Fortunately, Trump shut down another of her planned boondoggle trips, this time to Belgium, Egypt, and Afghanistan in order to get her to focus on the government shutdown.

But this type of ego boosting waste is not new to Pelosi. When she was Speaker under Obama she used military planes often for her vacation like excursions, racking up over $2 million in travel expenses, expenses that included $101,429 in in flight expenses for food and alcohol. 

During just a single trip, Judicial Watch found documents that showed she and her travel partners drank “Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Baileys Irish Cream, Maker’s Mark whisky, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewar’s scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.”

So, whenever Pelosi pulls the holier than thou act on us, keep in mind that she has been living high and mighty non taxpayer dollars for a long, long time.

That will do it for today’s insanity: Pelosi abusing taxpayer wealth (nothing new here), hopefully the death spiral of an expensive and failed Federal program Common Core, and a cowardly or lazy Virginia politician that does not know what she it sponsoring when it comes to legislation. More insanity to follow.

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

April, 2018, Part 3,Political Class Insanity: The Failure Of Government In Education and the Failure Of The New York Times To Be Unbiased

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 often talked about one of the biggest recent failings of the Federal government and Washington political class, the failure that is known as Common Core. Common Core was an attempt by Washington to impose a standardized educational system across the entire country with the objective of improving the education of our kids in this country. It is no secret that we severely under educate our kids despite spending untold amounts of money to attain such a failure.

Places that have implemented many of the components of the Common Core curriculum have seen education results get worse, not better. Massachusetts, which once had the best track record in educating kids relative to the other 49 states, has fallen to seventh best after implementing Common Core tenets. The state of Maryland saw its educational attainment levels DROP after implementing Common Core principles: 

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/10/will-center-hold-october-2014-part-2.html

So it is refreshing when a Washington bureaucrat actually agrees, finally, that Common Core has failed miserably:

• The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal website recently ran an article that was an interview with Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education,.
• DeVos recently spoke exclusively to The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey after her Department of Education released what’s known as the “nation’s report card” which again showed the failure of the Federal Government to improve education in this country.
• DeVos talked about how the the National Assessment of Educational Progress report showed that that there had been only minimal gains in education effectiveness.
• She said that if anything, our education processes are worse than than they were 35 years ago when Reagan first focused on our educational deficiencies.
• Despite Common Core and spending probably trillions of dollars on education, the latest results show that only 37% of our fourth graders and only 36% of eighth graders are proficient in reading.
• Only 40% of fourth graders and 34% of eighth graders are proficient in math.
• According to DeVos: “We have invested billions and billions and billions of dollars to try to focus on the lowest-performing schools, and the lowest-income students. And yet the results for those students continue to, in most cases, decline.”

Pretty depressing stuff. Trillions of Federal dollars spent with nothing in return. But DeVos did show a positive sign, pointing to the state of Florida and what could happen when Washington bureaucrats and politicians get out of the education business and let the more local forms of government decide how to educate their local kids:

• Twenty years ago, the state of Florida was one of the worst, if not the worst state, in educating its kids.
• It then set about putting in place local educational reforms that it felt served its kids better.
• Today, Florida kids have the fourth best state ratings when it comes to fourth grade math and reading and fifth best state ratings when it comes to eighth grade reading and eighth best state ratings when it comes to eighth grade math. 

It can be done, it just cannot be done by the overarching and overreaching Federal Government. Or as DeVos says: “The last thing we want to see is another mandate from the federal level.” 

Well said, and probably true in many other areas, not just education.

2) It is not just the American political class that is broken, our freedom of the press is threatened by a news and journalism industry in this country that for the most part has lost any sense of impartiality. News outlets now have well deserved reputations for favoring one side of the political spectrum vs. others. Fox News favors the right side, just about every other national news outlet favors the left side, e.g. CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.

A quick bias example was pointed out in a recent blog post we did. The New York Times pretended that they had done a comprehensive analysis which showed that Barack Obama had lied less than twenty times during his eight years as President while Donald Trump had lied over 800 times in his first year in office. 

We easily showed this was total garbage, easily doing a quick Internet search which came up with a single YouTube video that showed Obama himself lying three dozen times on a single Obama Care issue. We then found a second video that showed Obama himself lying another three dozen times about another facet of Obama Care. Thus, within two minutes our “research” showed that Obama had lied at least six dozen times on only two different topics while the “extensive” New York Times research turned up only a handful of lies:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/12/december-2017-part-5-political-class.html

Now, according to sa recent NewsMax article, we have another blatant bias of the New York Times:

• On a regular basis, the New York Times publishes a top selling book list, something it has been dong for a very long time.
• Author Jerome Corsi current has a new book out that is a runaway bestseller, “Killing The Deep State: The Fight To Save President Trump."
• The book debuted as number 10 in the market in the non-fiction hardcover category as reported by Nielsen BookScan, a premier national book sales tracking process.
• Despite this hot selling book’s national numbers, the New York Times has decided to not even list the book in its book tracking process despite selling more copies than other books that the Times did list.
• For example, according to Nielsen, Corsi’s book should have held the number four spot on the Times bestselling list.
• It has sold more copies than ten other books that the Times did list.
• The number four spot on the Times is held by "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," by Michelle McNamara, even though it sold hundreds of copies less than "Deep State" did according to Nielsen tracking.
• In fact, Corsi’s book has sold more than twice as many copies than many of the top 15 books on the Times list and was in the top ten on Amazon’s best seller list earlier this month.
• Corsi had the following reaction: "They don't want any book that will support President Trump, who they detest, to be on The New York Times bestseller list. Even if the book legitimately outsells most of the other books. It's completely disgraceful and dishonest. But again, The New York Times is disgraceful and dishonest these days."

So given that the New York Times is so blatantly left wing in these few instances, how can anyone trust that the serious news they report is not biases, slanted, ignoring facts and realities, and generally not honest? And this trait makes them just as big a threat to our freedoms and liberties as the dishonest and useless politicians that are in office today.

Failure of the Department of Education and the failure of the New York Times, two very serious problems that face our country today. More insanity to follow.

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

February, 2016, Part 3, Will The Center Hold: Welfare Reform, State Takeover of Federal Land and Suing Over Amnesty

We occasionally do a review of the theme, “will the center hold.” Given the ever growing reach and encroachment of the Federal government and Obama administration into state matters and citizens’ lives, we have often reported on the increasing pushback against that overreach. From everything from Obama Care to Common Core to gun control to NSA spying, Americans are reasserting their right to tell the Federal government and Washington politicians that citizens in this country hold the power, not them.

Which has led us more than once to contemplate what would happen if Washington enacted a law or the President executed an executive order and the rest of the country simply ignored it? Would the center hold or would we be looking at serious fissures within the country? 

For a few days we have been reviewing where the rest of the country is telling Obama and the Washington political class to stop their power grab and overreaching into our lives: 

1) As you or may not know, in many western states, the Federal government owns/controls more than half of the entire ground area of the state. This has ticked off state citizens and politicians for a long time since they feel that they should be in control of their local areas, forests, parks, etc. and not be forced to deal with dictates from far away Washington. Up until recently, this was not a front burner issue with anyone.

But as the Obama administration has continued its overreach into the lives and freedoms of every American, the states are starting to get feisty when it comes to controlling their own state’s territories. The one state actually being proactive in potentially taking its state’s lands back from the Federal government is Utah. Utah’s state government recently completed a study that shows that there is legal reasoning and precedent that would allow it to challenge the Federal government’s control of Utah’s lands and turn control of those lands over to the state of Utah. 

If successful, states and their citizens across much of the west will be able to take far more control over their lands, their homes, and their economic future and not live under the dictates of a Washington political class that does what is right for themselves and not what is right for states’ citizens.

2) One of the biggest push backs that citizens and states have had to do against an overreaching Federal government is in the area of gun control. The Obama administration has been especially persistent in stripping the Constitutional gun rights of ordinary American citizens with a stupid public stance of protecting Americans from themselves. He and others of his ilk are oblivious to the reality that gun control measures do nothing to take the guns out of the hands of criminals and only end up making it more difficult for law abiding citizens to protect themselves. 

According to an article written by Teresa Monroe-Hamilton for the I Have The Truth website on January 31, 2016, two Tennessee state government politicians are really sticking to Obama and the other gun grabbers. They are putting forth legislation that states if a location insists on being a gun free zone and someone who has a valid, licensed and legal concealed carry permit gets hurt at the location, they can sue that location for not allowing themselves to protect themselves. 

This of course assumes that you survived the violent crime that got you hurt in the gun free zone. But such a law, if passed, might give a gun free zone advocate second thoughts about that status if they knew they would be sued for denying Second Amendment rights to someone. 

The logic of the legislation as explained by one of the politicians, state representative Jeremy Faison, goes as follows: “I believe in the Second Amendment; I don’t believe a person should be held back from having a gun. However, I also believe in property rights. If you have a business, and you don’t want guns there, you certainly have a right to do that. That being said, if you’re going to deny me protecting myself, then you should protect me. If you haven’t protected me, and you don’t allow me to protect myself, then I’m going to say it’s your fault if something happens.” 

I am sure that Obama would fume if he heard this logical, cogent argument. Consider this pending legislation in light of a recent tragic shooting where two police officers actually died responding to a call at a Panera Bread location. Panera Bread locations are official gun free zones, as proclaimed by the Panera management. Despite Panera being a gun free zone, a Panera customer brought a gun into the restaurant and ended up killing two police officers. 

As we have said many times before, criminals do not follow rules and laws, that is why they are criminals. That did not stop this criminal from ignoring Panera’s policy and the results were tragic. Gun free zones make it that much easier for violent criminals. In Tennessee, a more coherent gun free zone could be in the offing, regardless of what Obama thinks.

3) According to recent reporting by The Hill, 25 states are now part of a lawsuit that challenges Obama’s amnesty plans, claiming that his administration overstepped its limits by issuing work permits to illegal immigrants and promising them they will not be deported. The states who filed their opposition are: Texas, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. As you can see, many of the states that are part of the suit are in the southern part of the country where many of the illegal immigrants and the problems they bring are likely most intense.

What is interesting is that 12 states filed a legal brief to defend Obama's overreach and override of existing laws. Every one of those states are far away from most of the illegal immigrant problems with the exception of California, the land of fruits and nuts: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state and the District of Columbia.

Whatever, this promises to be a major lawsuit and one that pits states against the Federal government and states against states. Will the center hold? 

4) Utah is not the only people interesting in wresting control of their state’s lands back from the Federal government. Some people in Congress are also getting interested in curbing Federal government overreach into states land management:

• Oregon Congressman Greg Walden recently weighed in: “More than half of my [Congressional] district is under Federal management. They have come out with these proposals to close roads into the forests. The have ignored public input.”
• In 2014, Senator Ted Cruz proposed legislation that would prohibit the Federal government from owning more than 50% of the land in any one state.
• Nevada Congressman Cresent Hardy has introduced legislation that would prohibit the Federal government from buying any new land unless it could pass a balanced budget.

Unless something is done, there is a real chance that bloodshed is a potential outcome as the tensions over Federal use and dictatorship of western state lands become more intense. We had the Bundy/Fed standoff in Nevada a few years ago. We recently had the armed standoff in Oregon where there was a fatality. 

Last summer, citizens rallied around mine owners at the owners’ request to provide security at mines in Oregon and Montana after complaints about Federal land managers. In December, 2015, Phil Lyman, an elected official in Utah, got a 10 day jail sentence after he led a protest ride of all terrain vehicles through Federal land that had been closed to local access. Dangerous times.

The frustration of Federal bureaucracy encroaching on states’ lands is summed up by Erin and Jeff Maupin, cattle ranchers in Oregon that pay the Feds to allow their cattle to graze on Federal lands. They have tried to work with the Federal government representatives but come away frustrated by the overwhelming regulations on grazing and environmental issues: “We want somebody to make sure we’re doing it right. But it’s got to the point where there’s no common sense in it.”

Similar frustration come from Leland Pollock, a commissioner in Garfield County, Utah: “The land policies now are, basically, lock it up and throw away the key. It’s land with no use. The local economy’s really suffered as a result. Grazing has been reduced. We used to have a thriving timber industry — that’s all but gone.”

Will the center hold and more importantly, will someone else get killed as Americans push back on the meddling of the Federal government in their lives and homelands out west?

5) One last topic for this month’s edition on “will the center hold?” Starting in early 2016, all able bodied welfare recipients in 23 North Carolina counties will receive government checks only if they work. Specifically, in order to get food assistance, food stamps, under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, these people must work, volunteer, or train at least 20 hours per week in order to continue to get food assistance.

Welfare recipients have 90 days to find a job after the rules take effect. When the state of Maine did a similar program, it found that its welfare roles dropped by 80%, saving state taxpayers a bundle of money. I would assume the same effect will happen here with North Carolina taxpayers feeling the benefit. If only the Federal government would do the same types of common sense things would every American taxpayer get the benefit.

So today we learned that another state is showing the Federal government how to save on welfare costs, a number of states and their citizens and politicians are in the process of trying to figure out how to get the Federal government out of controlling their states’ lands, and half the states are suing the Federal government over amnesty to protect the interests and safety of their own citizens,

Never have so many pushed back so hard on Washington which raises the scenario: what happens when Washington issues an edict and the rest of the country ignores it and yawns in its face? Interesting, and increasingly dangerous times, we live in.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2016, Part 2, Will The Center Hold: Praying In West Virginia and Common Sense Welrare Programs Clean-ups

We occasionally do a review of the theme, “will the center hold.” Given the ever growing reach and encroachment of the Federal government and Obama administration into state matters and citizens’ lives, we have often reported on the increasing push back against that overreach. From everything from Obama Care to Common Core to gun control to NSA spying, Americans are reasserting their right to tell the Federal government and Washington politicians that citizens in this country hold the power, not them.

Which has led us more than once to contemplate what would happen if Washington enacted a law or the President executed an executive order and the rest of the country simply ignored it? Would the center hold or would we be looking at serious fissures within the country?

For a few days let’s review where the rest of the country is telling Obama and the Washington political class to stop their power grab and overreaching into our lives: 

1) Most of the posts in this blog review the ineptness, the incompetence, and idiocy of the American political class. But that is not to mean that there are not a very small sample of politicians across the country that are trying to do the right thing for the country, its taxpayers, and the Constitution. They are actually using common sense and staying in integrity, traits that are in short supply with the overwhelming percentage of politicians.

But by using common sense, these good politicians are often fighting back against the overreaching and bad attitudes of the Federal government and the Obama administration. The first example of this behavior we will discuss today involves the state politicians in North Carolina who recently decided that if you are receiving taxpayer wealth via welfare payments, than you should have to pass a drug test to receive them. Because seriously, if most taxpayers have to take a drug test to get hired in many jobs, why shouldn’t those taking taxpayer wealth be subjected to the same requirement?

And if the taxpayers were no longer forced to support drug addicts, then eventually the hope would be that the tax burden on those taxpayers would eventually go down. Or those saved funds could be used to help the truly needy, our veterans, our homeless, our hungry.

The details of the North Carolina fraud crackdown include the following details:

• The state has begun testing all individuals receiving welfare benefits.
• While the initial results come from a small sample, 24% of the first batch of welfare recipients tested positive for illegal drugs, as reported by the Raleigh News and Observer.
• 89 people were tested in the first batch and 21 were found to test positive for illegal drugs, and thus, 24%.
• Some people who think that welfare users should not be drug tested will point to the small sample size and pooh pooh the results.
• However, 70 welfare recipients never showed up for the test and thus, had their benefits cut. The obvious assumption is that a lot, if not all, of the 70 would have also tested positive for illegal drugs.
• If all of the 70 welfare recipients were addicted to illegal drugs, than the total number of people that were supposed to be tested is 159 and 91 would have been drug addicts in the worst case, a percentage of 57%. Thus, the range of probable drug addicts that taxpayers were supporting ranges from 24% to a whopping 57%.

I am pretty sure that the Obama administration would be against this type of common sense approach to being compassionate and being worthy of safeguarding taxpayer wealth. In the past, the administration wanted there to be no restrictions, work or otherwise, on welfare recipients. North Carolina is telling the administration to back off when it comes to common sense approaches to welfare.

If the these early results hold true, than the state can reduce its welfare budget by upwards of 57%. Some of this money could be returned to taxpayers in the form of lower future taxes and some of it could be used to help those addicted to get treatment help. In either way, the North Carolina way certainly beats the Obama way.

2) A recent article by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, writing for the Heritage Foundation, described some actions Maine politicians have taken in the same vein as what they did in North Carolina. But before describing the incredible results these politicians attained in the area of saving taxpayer wealth, consider the following statistics:

• Over one trillion dollars was spent on various forms of welfare last year including welfare payments for food, housing, medical care and social services.
• This comes out to over $8,000 for every American household.
• Federal food assistance is the country’s second biggest welfare program.
• In the year 2000, 17.2 million Americans were receiving Federal food assistance.
• In 2015, 45.8 million Americans were receiving Federal food assistance, two and a half times more in just 15 years.
• The fastest category of people getting food assistance in recent years has been among able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs), going from 2 million in 2008 to 5 million today. These are work-capable adult between the ages of 18 and 49 who do not have children or other dependents to support.

One reason for the incredible increase in ABAWDs getting food assistance is that the Obama administration did not require these types of people to actively look for work in order to get the welfare benefits. In light of this reality, Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, recently established work requirements on Maine welfare recipients who are without dependents and able-bodied. Alternatively, these people could also enroll in job training or do community service, a meager six hours per week.

Despite a major communications effort to ABAWDs in Maine, very few people enrolled in the training and community service programs. This resulted in those people losing access to their welfare benefits. And the drop in people receiving benefits was an amazing 80%. The number of people in the welfare program went from 13,332 to 2,678 in just four months. 80%.

Thus, now we have two states that are showing the Federal government how to stay compassionate for those less fortunate in our society but respecting taxpayer wealth by cracking down on the fraud within the welfare bureaucracy. And they are doing it in the face of a Presidential administration that would rather not clean up the mess they created in the welfare society of today. If this same effort and same results were done on the national level under Obama, the Heritage Foundation estimates that:

• Annual taxpayer savings would be $8.4 billion a year.
• Additional reforms of the food assistance bureaucracy would get another $9.7 billion in annual savings.
• Combined, these savings would come out to over $150 for every U.S. household from just cleaning up a single Federal government program.

As we said before, a small percentage of American politicians are doing the right thing relative to common sense and taxpayer respect.

3) The American News website recently reported that Massachusetts also has gotten into the clean up welfare act. One driver of the effort is that the state found out that $2.39 million in welfare benefits went to people who had been dead between 6 and 27 months.

As a result, legislation is moving through the Massachusetts state legislature to require that fingerprinting be implemented in the welfare programs to ensure that those entitled to welfare, and only those entitled, receive those benefits. The legislation passed by a vote of 158-0 in the house and is waiting for approval in the state senate.

More common sense.

4) Let’s leave the world of cleaning up welfare programs that the Feds screwed up and talk about a state fighting back against the Federal government’s intrusion into the energy industry via Obama’s Clean Energy Plan. This plan wants to cripple the U.S. coal industry in the name of man made climate change that may or may not exist. And that crippling will have disastrous effects on the state of West Virginia.

West Virginia is one of more than two dozen states that are pushing back on the Clean Energy Plan through the court system. Those states recently won a Supreme Court round when the Court ruled that the plan could not go into effect until all legal challenges had been met, certainly a legal defeat for the Obama administration. But in West Virginia, they are also pursuing another avenue of push back against the Federal government.

West Virginia citizens got together and set aside January 31, 2016 as a day of prayer for coal miners. According to reporting by the Heritage Foundation, on that day: “A congregation of pastors, businessmen, and lawmakers will seek divine intervention in one of the nation’s hardest-hit coal economies. Doubtless, though, many will ask for deliverance from what they consider a man-made crisis.”

Roger Horton, president of Citizens For Coal: “West Virginia’s absolutely in dire straits. The point we’re trying to stress is that we need a higher power to change the hearts and minds of those who want to destroy Appalachia.” At least in this case, when the Federal government gets too intrusive and stupid these folks are calling on an even higher power to overcome the stupidity. 

Remember, the Obama administration is trying to kill the domestic coal industry at the same time that the rest of the world is on track to build 2,400 new coal fired power plants in the next few years. Thus, anything that Obama succeeds in doing to destroy the coal industry in this country will be dwarfed by the huge increase in coal burned around the world. Even John Kerry, the Secretary of State is on record saying that anything the U.S. does for the environment in this area will be nothing compared to what the rest of the world has planned. All it does is wipe out thousands and thousands of American jobs for no environmental gain.

And the folks of West Virginia are pushing back, both legally and religiously. 

That will do it for today's edition of “will the center hold.” West Virginia citizens uniting in more than one way to push back on the Federal government’s overreach on coal and at least three states telling Washington we will run common sense, efficient and compassionate welfare programs,unlike what the Washington political class does, and in the process save taxpayers loads of money.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w