Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Friday, May 10, 2019

May, 2019, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Corruption In Baltimore, Letting Terrorists Vote, and Impeachment Nonsense

Let’s get started:

1) Political corruption does not just exist in DC. Consider the latest local political class corruption at the city level down in Baltimore. According to Fox News, the mayor of Baltimore is resigning as more and more evidence of corruption crop up concerning her misdeeds. Catherine Pugh resigned as a result of state and Federal corruption investigations into whether she used sales of her self published book, “Healthy Holly,” to launder and hide monetary kickbacks.

Apparently, Hugh made political decisions and appointments in return for those benefiting from her decisions arranging for the bulk purchase of Pugh’s book. Fortunately, law enforcement found out about the arrangements and as a result a likely corrupt politician is out of a job and facing potential criminal charges.

2) Consider some of the major problems and issues facing the country today:

Medicare is going bankrupt.
Medicaid is going bankrupt.
Social Security is going bankrupt.
We have a major immigration, criminal, drug trafficking, and health crisis on our southern border.
We have millions of Americans who are homeless, hungry, sick, and drug addicted.
We have a Federal government debt of $22 TRILLION which will likely bankrupt the country.

Given these major issues that will likely affect every single American, what issue is Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders all worked up about? Sanders wants convicted felons still serving time in prison to be able to vote in elections. So murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and hardened criminals serving time should have the right to vote in his reality.

Even terrorists, those that have shot and bombed Americans to death or injury, should have a right to vote. Yes, even though their victims and ordinary Americans who died violently at the hands of murderers and terrorists and who were deprived their right to vote, and their right to live, can no longer vote.

Of all the major issues, this is what Sanders is excited about. Bankrupt social programs, a bankrupt country, hungry and homeless Americans, etc.. take a back seat to felons voting. I would bet that if you asked Americans where they would put the “let felons vote” issue in their rank order of most important national issues, the voting rights of felons does not crack the top 100.

Oh wait, someone actually did that survey. A Business Insider/Survey Monkey poll found that a whopping 75% of those polled thought this was a stupid idea. Only 15% said allowing violent felons still in prison to vote is a good idea. Of course, Congressional bimbo Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out in support of the idea showing continuing lack of good sense and right priorities.

Fortunately, it appears that most Americans have good sense and a good moral compass. If you commit a crime against society, you need to be held accountable for your deeds and pay the price, a price that includes suspending your right to vote. Unfortunately, politicians like Sanders do not have the same good sense and good moral compass. If they did they would not even consider allowing terrorists and murderers to vote after they denied their murdered victims that same right.

3) Politicians say the darndest things, we have proven that over the years oh so many times. Unfortunately, the insanity and stupidity never stops, as witnessed by the latest stupid statement by Congressman Al Green: “If we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.”

So inane on so many levels:

What is wrong with him getting re-elected if he wins the election, the voters and citizens should decide who is and who is not elected, not some impeachment infected Congress people.
Getting impeached means that Trump has been accused of crimes, not that he has been convicted or shown to be guilty so why not vote for him again, remember, in this country it is “innocent until proven guilty.”
Do these impeachment nuts realize that even if they bring impeachment charges that Trump will still remain in office? I constantly get the impression that these Democrats never read the Constitution and think that impeachment means removal from office, an incorrect assumption.
On what charges do these types of people think they will bring against Trump, you cannot impeach a President just because you do not like him personally.
Mueller spent two years, spent over $30 million, had a staff of nineteen lawyers, and reviewed lord knows how many documents and came up with nothing that would lead to impeachment. I doubt that this Congressman or his peers in Congress are able to match that effort in order to find impeachment worthy actions.

Two bottom lines here. First, Congress people, in the absence of hard, hard evidence hashed out in a trial, should not be dictating who voters can or should vote for, that is not how we a have a free country. Second, can we get off this impeachment kick, the Mueller non-event, and related, non-productive nonsense?

When are we going to get our priorities right in DC and start working the real issues listed above, not this impeachment fantasy and voting rights for murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. 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:

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

Sunday, May 5, 2019

May, 2019, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: California's Own Special Class of Political Class Insanity

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) In the previous post we pointed out that states that have the highest tax rates tend to have the highest out migration rates as its citizens flee to more tax friendly states to retain their hard earned money. California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have the highest tax burdens and are approaching or are already in a financial death spiral: the more they raise taxes the more likely tax paying residents are likely to flee the state which results in a tax revenue shortfall which usually results on politicians increasing tax rates and tax burdens which results in more citizens fleeing the state which makes tax revenues streams coming up short and the death spiral intensifies.

But the politicians running these states never seem to learn,with California politicians usually leading the parade that says raising taxes is always a good thing:

According to a recent article on the Godfather Politics website, California politicians are trying to pass yet another tax that would force restaurant customers to pay a 1% tax to combat global warming.
As we have previously reported, global warming ended about two decades ago but that does not stop many liberal and Democratic politicians from continuing to believe the myth of global warming.
This effort is called the Restore California Renewable Restaurants movement.
Initially, the proposed legislation would force restaurants to put a 1% levy on every restaurant customer’s bill but the customer could have the 1% tax removed.
Which is really a stupid condition since it will add to the cost of billing for restaurants since they will have to provide a first bill with the 1% tax and may then have to provide a second bill that removes the 1% tax, causing additional restaurant employee effort and expense.
And you know that eventually the California politicians will make this mandatory once it has been in place for a while.
According to the Sacramento Bee: “Restaurant owners have the option of charging customers an additional 1% on their bills that would go to help stop climate change. Payments will be gathered by the California Air Resources Board and spent on implementing carbon plans on farms and ranches across California, boosting healthy soil, according to the Perrenial Farming Initiative.”

More taxes for a dubious purpose which assumes that the government will actually be able to efficiently and effectively handle the revenue for the purposes proposed, a hope that is usually no fulfilled. Another reason for Californians to leave their higher and higher tax burden state.

2) But California politicians were not content with taxing meals, they also are working on another tax that I am pretty sure has never been done before:

A San Francisco politician, Gordon Mar, wants to assess a tax on any city company that files an IPO and offers its employees stock considerations as part of that IPO.
The politician justifies the tax by assessing companies "for the privilege of engaging in business in the city.”
In theory, the tax money would be used to support low cost housing for low income workers, education and other freebies.
Many liberals blame big companies and their high salaries for driving up housing costs and forcing people to leave the city to find affordable housing.
The problem is that many of these people no only leave the city but they leave the state to get out from under the onerous and mostly stupid taxes that state politicians constantly come up with.
A community organizer made the following stupid statement: “This year’s IPOs are going to create vast inequality and displacement, and we as a city need corporations to pay their fair share and be good neighbors. The IPO tax is one step toward that.”

“Pay their fair share and be good neighbors.” The reality that these people do not realize is that if you keep taxing businesses and over regulating them, they will soon no longer be your neighbors and you will get nothing, never mind an IPO tax. They can move their business to another state and avoid this type of nonsense and hassles.

Ask the people in NYC how this type of political attitude worked out for them. Amazon wanted to bring a major business operation and thousands and thousands of high paying jobs to the outer boroughs of NYC. Hundreds of cities across the country vied for this opportunity and NYC was fortunate enough to land the operation.

But then, clueless politicians, e.g. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, made it more and more difficult and a hassle to do business in the city and Amazon simply moved on. If the San Francisco politicians do the same inane things then they will suffer the same fate, existing businesses will leave and others will never consider moving to the city.

As always, rather than understand the root cause of an issue or problem, politicians think that simply collecting more taxes will resolve a problem that they do not comprehend. And as always, taxpayers get screwed and the problems never get resolved.

3) This post did not start out to knock and mock California politicians but that is what it is turning out to be. First, we are going to tax what you eat and then tax your stock options with yet another new tax. But the heavy taxation extends far beyond high income taxes, food taxes, IPO taxes, etc., as pointed out in a recent article on the Liberty Planet website, “California’s Leftist Policies Are About To Implode:”

According to AAA, California has the highest gas prices and gas taxes in the country.
I am currently paying about $2.79 per regular unleaded gas in the Tampa Bay area which is significantly below the current average of $4.08 a gallon of unleaded that Californians pay.
This is almost 50% more per gallon than I pay Florida.
In Hawaii, which has to tanker in all of its gasoline way out into the Pacific Ocean, its average price for unleaded is only $3.62, $.40 cheaper than mainland California.
There are a lot of theories for the high prices in California including higher than average gas taxes and heavy over regulation of the industry that requires special blends of gasoline not required elsewhere which results in supply shortages which drive up prices.
Currently, California assess each gallon of gas at 41.7 cents.
But that rate is scheduled to go up to 47.3 cents in July, making state gas even more expensive.
This is on top of a so-called gasoline sales tax which assesses 2.25% per gallon.

That will do it for today, California and its spend crazy and tax crazy politicians. The very sad thing is that state taxpayers pay so much in taxes and get very little value for their dollar:

Homelessness is a large and growing problem with no solutions in sight.
Poverty is so bad that 40% of LA residents earn so little that they qualify for Medicaid despite a booming economy.
Public city schools stink at educating.
There are major infrastructure problems throughout the state.
The state’s unfunded liabilities are probably too large to ever be funded properly which will eventually lead to fewer benefits and even more taxes.

High taxes, low benefits, and a continuing deterioration of life. No wonder many people are leaving the state. More insanity to follow since the political class insanity is not restricted to California….unfortunately.

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

Saturday, May 4, 2019

May, 2019,Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Increased Taxation Means LESS Tax Revenue and NYC Goes Idiotic On Global Warming Hot Dogs

Let’s get started:

1) We have often pointed out how high taxation in liberal/Democratic controlled states is driving people to leave those states for lower taxing states. It is our view that humans basically want the freedom to run their lives the best way they see fit, not the way some politicians see fit. And taxing someone to death denies them that economic freedom to run their lives the way they want it to be run.

Too prove our point, again, consider some recent data at the state level, as reported by Warner Todd Huston of the Godfather Politics website.. Consider the states with the highest state level taxation burdens:

New York: 12.7 percent
Connecticut: 12.6 percent
New Jersey: 12.2 percent
Illinois: 11.0 percent
California and Wisconsin: 11.0 percent

If you look closely you will see that, surprise, almost all of them have been run by liberals and Democrats for decades. In fact, New York ,Connecticut, and New Jersey have ranked in the top three since at least 2005.

New Jersey actually takes the high taxation game higher in that the three highest tax counties in the country are all in New Jersey: Passaic County (8.79 percent), Essex County(8.27 percent), and Union County (8.13 percent).

These high tax rates cause citizens to take their hard earned wealth and leave those states. But where are they going? For the most part they are going to low tax states, including at least two (Florida and Texas), that do not have a state income tax in 2018:

Florida: 118,890
Arizona: 98,513
North Carolina: 70,628
Washington: 61,974
Texas: 57,173

The states that are losing the most citizens are:

New York: -167,328
Illinois: -144,343
California: -137,895
New Jersey: 1137,895
Massachusetts: -26,734
Connecticut: -15,646

This is not a good trend for those high tax states. New York, for example, the state which has lost the most citizens, is now facing a $2.3 billion budget deficit as the base of working and taxpaying citizens continues to decline. Which starts a financial death spiral: raise taxes and taxpayers leave and take their tax payments with them that creates a state government revenue shortfall which means it has to raise taxes again which drives more taxpayers out of the state which results in more tax shortfalls, etc., etc.

What often happens in these high flee states, is that legal and illegal immigrants come in behind the taxpaying existing citizens. These folks, and please do not call me racist when I discuss reality, tend to be less wealthy, more liable to be on welfare rolls, and thus do no contribute nearly the same amount to state government coffers that the exiting citizens once contributed.

For example, the state government of California spends a whopping $15 to $22 billion each year supporting illegal immigrants, many of whom pay no taxes at all. Bottom line from an old Rascals song is that “people want to be free.” And to be truly free you need as much economic freedom as possible.

And that is becoming less and less possible in certain states as the tax burden crushes people’s ability to make life decisions that they want to make. Raising taxes rarely results in a better life or a more efficient government, it just feeds the political class beast’s thirst for control.

2) We do a continuing series of blog posts centered around the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” Just about every month we discuss the insanity of people and politicians who think that they cannot be incorrect about how mankind is messing up the climate. We have shown via research, numbers, statistics and reality how wrong they have been for the past forty years.

In the 1970s and early 1980s we were told by “climate experts” that a new ice age was about to hit with devastating consequences. It never happened.

Then we were told by the same people that global warming was destroying the climate and we had to something before we burned up the planet and ourselves. It never happened, global warming stopped about two decades ago.

When the global warming myth imploded we were then told a more generic disaster was coming, “ climate change.” In that way those advocates that had been wrong for fifty years could not be wrong again: gets too cold, it’s man made climate change. It gets too hot, its man made climate change.

And now the New York City mayor is taking the whole man made climate change paranoia to a new low:

According to a Godfather Politics article by Warner Todd Huston on April 26, 2019, the New York City mayor wants to ban hot dogs in the city to combat global warming.
Bill de Blasio wants to remove hot dogs and all other processed meats from schools and government run cafeterias.
Specifically: “The plan will cut purchases of red meat by 50 percent in its city-controlled facilities such as hospitals, schools, and correctional facilities. The new commitment builds off of the Meatless Mondays campaign that was adopted by all NYC schools in 2017.”
De Blasio is very proud of this idiocy: “It is a difficult plan. It is a necessary plan. … Estimates that tell us that we have only 12 years to get it right. Let’s be clear, we have until 2030 to change things fundamentally, or our lives won’t be the same.”

My gosh, let’s consider a few realities before we ban hot dogs:

Global warming stopped about twenty years ago so Mr. Mayor why are you fighting yesterday’s myth?
Pardon me if I am a little skeptical about your earth is going to end in 12 years, folks like yourself have been predicting these types of catastrophes for fifty years and have NEVER been right, what makes you think you are right now?
Let’s keep in mind that China and India, forget the rest of the world, plan on building over 2,500 coal burning power plants over the next 12 years so do we really think that forcing New Yorkers not to eat hot dogs will offset the carbon burning of over 2,5,00 new coal burning power plants?

It must be nice to be a mayor who has resolved all of the problems of your city: schools are great, there is no crime, no homelessness, no crumbling infrastructure, a mayor can now take on China and India from a carbon footprint perspective. It’s the old story: politicians do not know how to resolve real issues so they waste time and energy and fake outrage over stupid stuff that citizens could care less about.

Insane politicians that keep raising taxes and then are bewildered when every leaves their state and a bewildered city politician who has the most insane priorities. A typical day of political class insanity.

P.S.: Mayor de Blasio, please go to the following link to see why we do not believe that the world is going to end in 12 years, much smarter people than you who were actually scientists predicted the end of the world and were always wrong:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and_25.html

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

Thursday, May 2, 2019

May, 2019, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Social Security Still Going Bankrupt, Bad Priorities, and Minimum Wage Laws and The Hardships They Cause

Let’s get started:

1) We have often talked about how quickly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are hurtling towards fiscal insolvency with a recent Congressional Budget office report estimating that these three programs have $82 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities over the next 30 years. If you add in the current Federal government national debt, which is over $22 TRILLION, and the $7 TRILLION or so in state government unfunded liabilities, we see that the American political class has run up a debt tab for the next 30 years of over $100 TRILLION. Given that most estimates of the TOTAL amount of wealth in this country is less than $100 TRILLION, we see that we as a country owe more than what we are worth.

But there was a little bit of good news recently coming out of Washington:

Every year the Social Security Administration does a 75 year view of the fiscal status of the Social Security program.
In 2017, the estimate for unfunded Social Security liabilities was $43.7 TRILLION over the next 75 years.
Thus, a rough estimate shows that every American household would have to pay an incremental $4,660 a year for 75 years just to cover the unfunded Social Security liabilities.
This does not cover the taxes that would have to be paid to cover the funded liabilities of Medicare and Medicaid.
But good news! The 2018 estimate shows that the unfunded liabilities estimate is now only $42.1 TRILLION.
This would translate to every American household paying an incremental $4,490 a year for 75 years just cover the unfunded liabilities.

Obviously, the accuracy of predicting something out 75 years is nothing more than a well educated guess. But we now have two separate estimates from two different government organizations who have basically come up with the same conclusion: there is very little chance that Washington politicians will be able to find enough wealth to cover the promises they made for Social Security and Medicare.

2) Given the grave status of the fiscal status of Social Security and Medicare, one would hope that Washington politicians are working diligently to resolve or at least mitigate the dire financial conditions of major government programs that tens of millions of Americans rely on. But readers of this blog know that hoping that Washington politicians do the right thing and have the right priorities is usually a sucker bet. Consider what some of the Democratic Presidential candidates are focusing on recently:

Social Security is going bankrupt but Bernie Sanders is fixated on giving current murderers, rapists, and pedophiles the right to vote.
Medicare is going bankrupt but Cory Booker is fixated on giving reparations to the descendants of slaves from over 150 years ago.
There are tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare and Elizabeth Warren is fixated on giving away taxpayer wealth to people who have never gotten around to paying off their student loans.

We are doomed when major, major crises are considered secondary to the shallow, selfish political aspirations of politicians.

3) Another topic we talk a lot about in this blog is the continuing reality that whenever a government entity raises the minimum wage, the people that this raising is supposed to help, those in the lower wage levels, actually hurts the economic status of these needier citizens. Almost always the pay rate goes up while the number of jobs available go down, leading to our favorite saying: “the good news is your wage rate went up. The bad news is you are no longer employed.”

Consider recent events concerning the minimum wage in the states of Massachusetts and New York. Warner Todd Huston, writing for the Godfather Politics website on April 27, 2019 explains:

After raising the minimum wage in their states, Massachusetts and New York found that the net economic change for its workers in those states was negative.
The raising of wage rates resulted in job reductions, store closings, and reduced hours for those lower wage workers who still had a job.
Forbes explains: “The ugly side is the payroll tsunami they unleash for smaller businesses, already under stress from soaring healthcare costs and rents.”
Making businesses pay more for wages is often enough to tip the balance from staying in business and paying workers and going out of business and taking those jobs down the drain with them.
This is what happened to a 200 year old restaurant in Boston, Durgin-Park, which could not bear the increased minimum wage that state politicians had imposed on the restaurant owners.
Not only were workers thrown out of work, getting wages now of $0 per hour, but a Boston institution that had survived depressions, recessions, wars, and other challenges was killed off because of the economic ignorance of state politicians.
A franchise owner in New York state stated his challenge: “First, we have to cut overtime. Next, we have to lay people off, if we want to stay in business.”
In New York City proper, the minimum wage went up 15% from the 2018 level this year which was on top of a 34% increase in 2018 over 2017.
These oppressive wage increases caused 76.5% of full service restaurants to cut workers’ hours in order to stay in business and cope with the increase wage expense of their eating establishments, this according to a survey done by the NYC Hospitality Alliance.
In addition, 36% said they actually cut jobs, putting a lot of people out of work.
Government statistics support these findings since according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the number of restaurant jobs was growing at a robust 8% annual growth rate in 2012, in the past two years that growth rate has been -2%.

As always: “The good news is your wage rate went up. The bad news is that you no longer have a job.” Unfortunately, the idiots in state governments that exercise their economic ignorance still have their jobs.

Okay that will do it for the first political class insanity for this month: economic ignorance, bad priorities, and Social Security still going bankrupt. 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:

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

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Friday, May 10, 2019

May, 2019, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Corruption In Baltimore, Letting Terrorists Vote, and Impeachment Nonsense

Sunday, May 5, 2019

May, 2019, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: California's Own Special Class of Political Class Insanity

Saturday, May 4, 2019

May, 2019,Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Increased Taxation Means LESS Tax Revenue and NYC Goes Idiotic On Global Warming Hot Dogs

Thursday, May 2, 2019

May, 2019, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Social Security Still Going Bankrupt, Bad Priorities, and Minimum Wage Laws and The Hardships They Cause

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