Why I Wish Many Celebrities Should Just Shut Up When It Comes To Politics

Let me say up front that I have no problem with celebrities having opinions about life, politics and our nation, that is their Constitutional right. I would never deny them the ability to maturely express those opinions, to work on political causes that impassion them, or to vote for whom they see fit. They are American citizens and should be entitled to all of the rights and privileges of every American.

Given all that, I also conform to the old adage that freedom of speech and freedom to have an opinion does not give you the right to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater and endanger the lives and well being of other citizens. While you are entitled to your opinion, even if it is an opinion of hate, I would appreciate it if you would keep your hate to yourself.

Just because you are famous, it does not make your hate welcome. Given the deep divisions in this country and the prevailing stream of hate that constantly emanates from our political figures, hate, while Constitutional, will not help fix what ails the country.

I am on this kick today as a result of tweets on Twitter that were sent out during the Republican Convention, from actress Ellen Barkin, singer Cher, and actor Samuel L. Jackson. I will not repeat the vile language here. But suffice it to say that in very ugly and graphic terms, these Hollywood types were disappointed that other Americans, in this case Republican Americans, were not killed by Hurricane Isaac. Almost unimaginable that ordinary American citizens attending a political convention, exercising their freedom of speech, would have their demise wished upon them by an actress, singer, and actor.

[Note: Jackson has issued a subsequent tweet that apologized for his hate filled first rant, the authenticity of which has to be judged by everyone personally. Frankly, I believe the first, hate-filled tweet was more in line with his true feelings.]

Again, if you are filled with hate like these people are, I will defend your right to have that position and opinion, that is your right. But please, for someone like myself and millions of other ordinary Americans who want to see our nation's problems addressed and resolved, you are not helping the situation. We need more appreciation of our diversity, more trust of each other and our ability to compromise, more patience with those of us that have differing positions.

By hating each other, simply for having a different opinion or position, we start to look like the situation that George Orwell described in his novel, "1984:"

"This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious."

This was the original quote. It does not take too much imagination to get from this Orwell view of oppression to what like Barkin, Cher, and Jackson are putting us through in today's divisive political environment to get to the following edited version by simply changing just a few words:

"This is not to say that either the conduct of politics, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, politics is continuous and universal in all parts of the country, and such acts as name calling, personal degradation, accusations of unpatriotism, sexual degradation, verbal assaults, the reduction of whole groups of fellow citizens with opposing views to idiocy and reprisals against common Americans with opposing views, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious."

Orwell's Big Brother used the tactic of attacking one's enemy in whatever way possible as part of an overall strategy of diverting attention way from the government's oppression and incompetence. That is the Orwellian horror we are living through our political system today: it is okay to call the "other side" degrading names and insults and wish that they would die, it is not okay for them to do the same to us. In our outrage against other American citizens, we fail to notice how poorly our politicians serve our country, our democracy, and ourselves.

Until we start respecting the diversity of each other and each other's right to have contrary opinions, we will never solve the problems facing this country. We will continue to be the gladiators that destroy each other while the political class goes on their current track unabated up in the Coliseum stands.

But Barkin, Cher, and Jackson are not alone in their celebrity hate for any American whose views are not in lock step with them:

• TV personality Montel Williams once publicly hoped that Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachman would commit suicide by decapitating herself.
• TV host Bill Maher, a major donor to Obama’s 2012 Presidential Super PAC ( a $1 million donor), said on air that Republican Sarah Palin “would f*** Rick Perry if he was black.”
• Bill Maher also called Republican Sarah Palin a disgusting and derogatory female name that I will not repeat here.
• Playboy magazine’s online website offered a detailed analysis on why and how each of ten Republican women in politics should be hate raped.
• A local rap artist celebrity gave a Minnesota concert that was billed as the “F*** Michelle Bachman” concert (spelling out the entire f-word).

Celebrities are usually very good at what they do, whether it is acting, singing, or hosting a TV show. They have a right to their opinions. But I sure do wish they would bottle up that hate within themselves. Spewing out this hate, wishing death or sexual degradation on fellow human beings, is no way to overcome the obstacles to communication that their hate enhances, hate that plays right into the hands of noneffective and small minded politicians.

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

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

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

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

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

Fun With Math - Making Our $16 Trillion National Debt Easy To Understand...and Fear

Sometime this week the U.S. Federal government exceeded the $16 TRILLION threshold of national debt. I found it ironic that the Presidential administration that has added more to that level of debt than any other previous administration, increasing it by about 50% in less than four years, is also having its Presidential convention this week. I would bet that these debt "accomplishments" will not be part of the agenda or any of the speeches.

$16 TRILLION is a lot of money, a whole lot of money. Let's play with some math to put $16 TRILLION in perspective:

1. $16 TRILLION is the number 16 with TWELVE zeroes behind it.
2. If every American household chipped in the same amount to pay off that debt, each household would have to write a check for about $140,000. Not going to happen.
3. Since the average household income is about $50,000 a year, every household would have to work almost three years, on average, to retire the debt and forego eating, leisure activities, buying clothes, going on vacation, paying taxes, paying for heat, etc.
4. Since the richest four hundred Americans have a total net worth of about $2.4 TRILLION,  even if the Federal government was able to seize their entire wealth and somehow liquidate it to pay off some of the debt, only about 15% of the national debt could be paid off.
5. Since the 400th richest American had a total wealth of about $1 billion, even if you confiscated the entire wealth of the next richest 400 Americans, you would still end up with considerably less than $400 billion or, at best, only another 2.5% of the national debt. In other words, even if you confiscated and liquidated the entire wealth of the richest Americans, you could not come close to paying off the national debt, a moving target that grows by a TRILLION dollars a year under this administration.
6. If you spent $20 million every day, beginning with the day Jesus Christ was born, you still would not have spent $16 TRILLION.
7. If you have 16 TRILLION one dollar bills and laid them end-to-end, you would circle the globe just over 60,000 times.
8. If you have 16 TRILLION one dollar bills and laid them end-to-end, you would stretch back and forth from Earth to Mars about 2,100 times.
9. If you have 16 TRILLION one dollar bills and stacked them into four equal piles of 250 billion bills each, each stack would reach from the Earth to beyond the moon.
10. 16 TRILLION seconds is over 500,000 years worth of time

You get the idea, I do not want to trivialize the dire economic straits the political class has put us in with more simple math examples. Not only are we in dire straits today, the $16 TRILLION has not made life any better for most Americans:

• Our health care costs are still going ever higher so the $16 TRILLION did not curb runaway health care costs.
• Our government is still fighting a lost war on drugs so the $16 TRILLION did not find a way to successfully address this losing war. We still have over 40,000 Americans who die from drug overdoses every year and we probably still spend more for incarceration than we do for treatment and prevention.
• We still do not have a sane, affordable, and environmentally friendly national energy plan so the $16 TRILLION did not solve our ever present energy problems, the latest manifestation of which is that the pump price of gas has doubled in less than four years, or since Obama took office.
• Our public schools, for the most part, are a disgrace when it comes to educating our kids relative to the rest of the world so the $16 TRILLION was not used to fix our dysfunctional public school processes.
• Many parts of our country are living with crumbling bridges and pothole scarred roads so the $16 TRILLION was not used to fix our infrastructure problems.
• We still have a major illegal immigration problem so the $16 TRILLION was not used to legally, fairly and compassionately integrate the current illegal immigrants into our society or was used to seal our leaky borders, giving the Mexican drug cartels virtually unfettered ways to smuggle drugs, guns, humans, and who knows what else into the country.

So, despite the Federal government confiscating and overspending our wealth to the tune of $16 TRILLION, we can safely say that they have not used that wealth to even begin resolving any of the major issues facing the country. This conclusion was also reached by an actual member of the political class who eloquently stated the reality of this farce a few years ago.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet stated the obvious in the Washington Post on September 3, 2010: "We have managed to acquire $13 TRILLION of debt on our balance sheet. In my view, we have nothing to show for it." He is right, we had nothing to show for $13 TRILLION worth of national debt and two years later, we already have $16 TRILLION worth of debt and nothing to show for it. 

But it gets worse! If you go to the official White House budget website, $16 TRILLION is nothing compared to where the current administration's budget plans will take us in the next several years:

• According to the latest official White House budget numbers, another $3.44 TRILLION will be added to the Federal national debt by the end of year 2017.
• If this estimate holds true, every American household would be theoretically burdened with another $30,000 share of the overall national debt.
• However, this estimate requires that the economy and the resultant government tax revenue stream have annual growth rates of 17%, 11%, 7%, 7%, and 6% over the next five years.
• Given that the long term, average annual growth rate for the U.S. economy is about 3%, it is highly unlikely that these rosy tax revenue growth rates will hold and we will not add $3.44 TRILLION to our national debt by 2017, we will add significantly more.
• If we assume a much more realistic economic growth rate of 3% annually over the next five years and that the economic growth rate will generate the same growth rate in government tax revenue, than the actual increase in the national debt could more realistically expected to be about $7 TRILLION, or an additional $60,000 or so to each household's share of the overall debt.
• Thus, by 2017, each American household could be on the hook for about $200,000.
• This also assumes a most unrealistic assumption, namely that we do not suffer another recession between now and 2017 which would increase the additional debt even more.

An old saying goes: "When you are in a hole, stop digging." Obviously, the Obama administration, as illustrated by their current, official budget outlooks, have no real plans or ability to stop digging deeper into this national debt sinkhole.

These are scary, scary numbers. And what are our politicians likely worrying about today? Probably the following:

• Their five week vacation is already coming to an end.
• How can they get more money for their reelection campaigns.
• What do Romney's tax returns look like.
• What do Obama's sealed college records look like.
• When is my next five week vacation.

The case for implementing Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" has never been stronger. Step 39 would implement term limits for all Federal politicians immediately. It is obvious to people even within the political class establishment, see Senator Bennet's observation above, that the current people sitting in the White House and in Congress do not have the will, courage, ability, desire, or understanding/intelligence on how to fix this national debt disgrace. Their inaction and inattention will pose a potentially fatal blow to our democracy, our freedom, our careers, our retirements and our futures and our children's futures.

We are in deep trouble. We need new blood and new leadership very, very soon or we will never climb out of the $16 TRILLION hole the political class has thrown us into. We will explore this hole again next week, hypothesizing what could happen if the hole continues to deepen and review out plan to fill that hole in with at least $9 TRILLION in debt savings over the next ten years, with minimal pain to most Americans.

Please check back then for the details. Oh, by the way, keep in mind that the $16 TRILLION does not include the trillions and trillions of dollars worth of unfunded liabilities and future debt stalking within the Social Security and Medicare programs! 

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

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

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

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

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

Inaugural Monthly Political Class SANITY, September, 2012 - You Cannot Cure Stupid, 911 Good Samaritans, New Jersey Teachers Now Must Actually Teach

Every month since we began this blog over two years ago, we have dedicated time at the beginning of each month to the latest insanity, idiocy, and wasteful ways of the American political class at all levels of government. It has not been a pleasant trip, as we have uncovered and reviewed unbelievable greed, selfishness, and just boneheaded behavior from our politicians.

Their actions have resulted in major unresolved issues that persist over many decades, a crushing $16 TRILLION national debt, declining respect for the nation's political and government processes, a substantial loss of freedom, and a heavy tax burden for nothing in return.

However, there is a glimmer of hope. For the first time in what seems forever, we actually came across some rational, sane, and worthwhile activities and actions of the political class. Be warned: these small positive steps will not solve the issues listed in the previous paragraph. However, as we discussed yesterday, the road to sanity has to start somewhere, so let's begin with these small steps to a rational, minimalistic government operated by dedicated, courageous, and unselfish leaders.

1) Like most local governments over the past few years, the town of Milton, Washington has also suffered. According to Reason magazine, the town's tax base has shrunk from $4.9 million in 2010 to an expected $3.9 million this year. Rather than try to do what it did when its revenue base was 33% larger or raise taxes on already overburdened residents (typical political class responses), the politicians in Milton decided to do less, eliminating non-vital government services to meet its tight budget.

Milton cut deals with neighboring towns to share firefighting and library services, it eliminated the position of "activities director,"  and when an insurance consultant pointed out that unenforceable laws are a huge liability risk, the city council repealed many of its unnecessary laws, laws that were vague or unenforceable. One of the laws it repealed was the one that required bike riders to wear helmets.

From a freedom perspective, the reason why they killed the helmet law was very refreshing. The politicians realized that riding a bike without a helmet and doing other dangerous activities could lead to injury but that it was not the duty of the government to intrude on personal decisions.

A council spokesperson summed it up quite nicely: "Of course you should wear a helmet. But this is a parents' issue - parents need to be supervising their children, making sure their children are well dressed and have helmets on. Wearing flip flops and shorts and no helmets on skateboards and bikes is just stupid." And the government, no matter how hard and how expensively it wants to intrude into our daily decisions and freedom, cannot cure stupid.

Better to focus on the most important issues and resolve them than try to enforce many unenforceable rules and laws and get nothing resolved. Kudos to Milton, Washington politicians for recognizing reality: focus on the important issues, get creative with limited resources, and trust citizens to understand what is best for them.

2) Until recently, if two friends were using illegal drugs and one of them overdosed, the other friend faced a tough dilemma: if they called police and EMTs for their overdosing friends, they faced the real possibility of being arrested for illegal drug usage. If they did not call for help, their friend would suffer further damage and possibly death. Just another perverted consequence of our lost war on drugs: citizens die for no reason because of our existing drug laws.

Fortunately, there are some scattered politicians across the country who recognize that protecting the lives of citizens, even if they are using illegal drugs, is more humane and passionate than boosting drug arrest statistics. Starting with New Mexico in 2007, followed by seven other states, a series of 911 Good Samaritan laws were implemented. These laws offer immunity from prosecution laws that arise during emergency response situations.

Thus, in our example above, the non-overdosing friend could feel free to call for help for his endangered friend without worrying about being prosecuted for illegal drug use. Since Reason reports that there are over 40,000 overdose deaths a year, the spread and publicizing of these types of laws would go a long way to reducing the death rate.

This is how politicians and government should work. Rational laws that provide a tangible benefit to its citizens at minimal cost. Kudos to 911 Good Samaritan laws.

3) Earlier in August, the state government of New Jersey enacted a far reaching, positive first step in reforming what ails our failing public education processes in this country despite what had been one of the more stubborn, state wide teacher unions in the country. Politicians dealt a heavy blow to the oldest teacher tenure law in the country:

• Democratic State Senator Teresa Ruiz spent two years drafting a bill to reform the 103-year-old teacher tenure law and tie teacher job security to student performance, legislation that was signed by the state's Republican governor, Chris Christie.
• This cooperation proves that bipartisanship is actually possible in our divided nation.
• Under this legislation, all teachers will have to undergo annual evaluations based primarily on student performance.
• Any teacher who receives two consecutive negative evaluations can lose tenure.
• The hope is that these evaluations and repercussions will not only lead under performing teachers to seek other career options but also encourage talented, tenured teachers to maintain strong teaching performance.
• The legislation also changes the process for gaining tenure. Under the current system, all teachers, regardless of performance and talent, receive tenure after only three years of employment.
• The new law stretches the amount of time teachers must teach beyond three years before being awarded tenure, and teachers must achieve two positive evaluations in their first three years in the classroom to stay in the good graces of the process.

Great first steps to improving public education for the kids of New Jersey. It begins to treat teachers like other workers in other industries: perform your job to at least minimal standards, keep your job.

Now, it does not get rid of the other major stumbling block to improving public education. New Jersey, like most other states, allow their teachers' staffs to function under a seniority process, i.e. first in, last out. When teaching staffs need to be reduced, those teachers with the longest tenure, regardless of how lousy they are at their job, get to keep their jobs vs. younger but possibly better teachers on staff.

But this legislation is a great first step. Kudos to the Democrats, Republicans, and teachers' union in New Jersey who have come up with a rational, logical, and fair solution to a major problem. Rational, logical, fair: three adjectives you rarely associate with any American politician.

Three pieces of good news, politicians delivering value added services with minimal cost. Its a small start towards sanity but it is a start.

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

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

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

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

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

September, 2012 Political Class Insanity - Part 3: More Dodd-Frank Failures, Americans Subsidizing Cars They Cannot Afford, Amtrak Food Waste, And More

Today is the final of a three part series on the latest insanity from the American political class over the past month or so. So far we have reviewed how people associated with Solyndra were more focused working on how to get more taxpayer money from Washington than they were in putting together a viable company, how employees at GSA were living the good life with high bonuses and high salaries that were totally out of line with their job responsibilities, how California keeps finding money it thought it had already spent and more.

Today will take a look at some the smaller, but still annoying, cases of politicians acting foolishly. The good news is that tomorrow we will run our first ever post of politicians actually doing some sane and reasonable things that do not waste money and do not detract from our freedom. A small glimpse of hope for our future.

However, we have to first slog through the last part of this month's insanity, lunacy, and idiocy from the American political class:

- According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the August 17, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, Amtrak lost $834 million on its food and beverage services over the past ten years or about $83 million a year, or almost a quarter million dollars a day, 365 days a year. Amazing that any organization, even a government organization, can lose so much money so quickly just on food and drinks.

The article blamed the astronomical losses on poor management, waste, and employee theft. Despite being in the train management industry for decades, it is apparent that the political class and the government agencies it operates have learned nothing on how to be efficient and effective. Imagine how much they lose every year on the non-food components of operating a train system. Then imagine how much they would lose if they ever went ahead with their ill conceived and unnecessary high speed train pipe dream.

- As we have discussed many times in this blog, the criminal collapse of the financial services firm, MF Global, is the poster child for how poorly the Dodd-Frank financials services industry reform legislation was written. The collapse of MF Global was one of the biggest bankruptcies in the history of the country and Dodd-Frank's components that were supposed to identify these types of crises before they occurred failed miserably.

Additionally, according to an article in the June 22, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, the bankruptcy trustee charged with trying to recoup the $1.6 billion of customer wealth that was lost has issued a preliminary report. The report indicates that CEO and former prominent member of the political class, Jon Corzine, and other company officers will be implicated in the loss of that customer wealth. It appears that these thieves "willfully used segregated customer accounts to cover its own shortfalls."

Failed legislation and a former politician involved in shady financial dealings. No surprises here.

- We have previously discussed the political cronyism and the insanity involving the Obama administration and Tesla Motors. Tesla recently announced that it had begun production on its first model, Model S. It is a $97,000 all electric sports car. An article in the July 27, 2012 issue of The Week magazine reviewed how stylish and easy to handle the car is, with the ability of the car to go 265 miles on a single battery charge.

The article also reviewed the insanity of the whole subsidy program for Tesla, a program that received a $465 million taxpayer funded loan. Several things wrong with this program:

• First, why should average taxpayers shell out their tax dollars to fund the development of expensive cars that they will never be able to afford?
• Why should average taxpayers shell out their tax dollars to fund the car rebates given to the likely wealthy purchasers of all-electric vehicles like Tesla vehicles?
• Remember, Tesla executives and financial backers have also been heavy contributors to Obama's and other Democrats' election campaigns. This fact might explain the previous two points.
• The article goes on to explain that the follow up Tesla model will cost $50,000, also far beyond what the average taxpayer and subsidiser of the Tesla loan guarantee can afford.
• The article states that production and sales of Tesla autos MIGHT get to only 8,000 a year.
• Let's say they can get to 8,000 a year. This 8,000 a year run rate is only about .05% of the market for total cars sales in the U.S. every year, hardly worth risking half a billion dollars of taxpayer wealth.

Stupid, cronyism program where taxpayer wealth is taken from the poor and middle class and funneled to what the article calls "another six figure toy from President Obama to his rich west coast friends." Well said.

- The June, 2012 AARP bulletin contained an article that reviewed the latest analysis from Pew Center. According to the Pew research, 1.8 million Americans who are on our voter rolls will not be able to vote this November. Why? They are dead.

These 1.8 million records are part of a larger pool of 24 million inaccurate or out-of-date voter records. This comes out to one out of every eight people on our voter roles. Disgraceful. Another example of where the political class and the government entities it operates have learned nothing over the decades and centuries on how to do their jobs effectively and correctly.

Despite this national embarrassment, Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration have been hassling and trying to block numerous states from the simple act of fixing what is wrong. One part of the government is trying to fix what it broke while another part of the government is trying to prevent the fixing to be done. Insanity.

- In another recent example of why Dodd-Frank is a disaster, an article from the July 30, 2012 issue of Business Week reviewed the rise and fall of the Peregrine Financial Group in Cedar Falls, Iowa. For nearly twenty years, the management of Peregrine had appeared to be a very successful investment company.

In reality, however, the management had actually been running a scam, a scam that had allowed the owner, Russell Wasendorf, to skim $200 million from his customers. The deal finally came unraveled this year but not before Wasendorf had unsuccessfully tried to kill himself.

The suicide note found next to his body contained the confession that he had used fake documents and bogus account statements over the twenty years to carry out his fraud. He was able to avoid detection from both industry overseers and the SEC by using a post office box that he doctored up to look like the address of a bank branch and he confessed to using simple tools like Photoshop, EXCEL, scanners,  and regular printers to doctor up the necessary documents.

When the Feds finally got access to his accounts, they found that Peregrine only had of $6.3 million of real wealth while the fake documents showed that the scam was presenting $221.7 million on hand. Another embarrassment for Dodd-Frank, the SEC, whose annual $13 billion budget does not appear to be worth what we are paying it, other state and Federal regulatory entities, and the political class which cannot seem to do anything right.

- According to a CNNMoney.com article that was summarized in the June 22, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, the average American family's net worth dropped almost 40% from 2007 to 2010, according to the Federal Reserve Board. The loss in dollars went from $126,400 to $77,300.

This drop wiped out 18 years worth of financial gain by the average American family. Coincidentally, the Democrats took over both the House and Senate in Congress in the beginning of 2007 and the Presidency in early 2008. Just saying.

- Just when you think you have identified all of the stupid spending items in the Obama economic stimulus plan, you find another boneheaded waste of money. According to government records analyzed by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the Obama administration gave MSNBC almost half a million dollars worth of advertising money to hype the false success of the stimulus program.

Given that MSNBC is usually nothing more than a PR extension of the Obama political machine, this appears to be nothing more than a political payoff for favorable coverage on the TV network. It certainly cannot be construed as a worthwhile use of taxpayer money, hyping one's own failures. How much better use could half a million dollars been put to helping out unemployed Americans from a job training perspective rather than idiotic TV advertising?

- Reason magazine is always a great source for political class insanity. The latest issue had the following gems of idiocy:

1) This past May there was a grisly assault in Miami of one man against another that is too graphic to describe here. The attacker was reportedly on a synthetic stimulant known as "bath salts." The political class was so taken back by the attack and the bath salts report that for once in their lives jumped into action. Legislation quickly was written and approved that would ban the sale of the chemicals that go into typical bath salt production.

However, the day after the ban legislation passed the final Congressional hurdles, the Miami area medical examiner came out with the toxicology tests of the attacker. It seems that the attacker had not a trace of bath salts or any other drug in his body with the exception of marijuana. Thus, even when the political class acts quickly, they still act foolishly, using misinformation and, as always, never understanding root causes of a problem.

2) Jacob Clark was recently summoned for jury duty for the second time in the past seven years. No big deal except for the fact that Jacob is nine years old. The first time he was called for duty was when he was two years old. Still do not think we have a voter registration problem?

3) Tim Morris of Virginia recently got a voter registration form for his dog Mozart. Not only is Mozart a dog who should not be allowed to vote, Mozart has the double embarrassment of having been dead for two years. Still do not think we have a voter registration problem?

These instances of political class insanity would be funny if they were not so serious and wasteful. We have gotten to a point where government has gotten so large and so unwieldy that it cannot help but trip over itself, resulting in the idiocy we report on every month.

That is why Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is so important. Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years. Not only would such a plan get us to a balanced budget, it would also force politicians to focus on far fewer but far more important issues. Hopefully, this focus would resolve some major issues without the embarrassing missteps we have reviewed over the past three days.

As promised, tomorrow we will issue our first "Political Class" SANITY post where we actually congratulate politicians for doing some things right. The examples are small in statue and small in number but we have to start somewhere.



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

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

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

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

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/