Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Thursday, May 14, 2020

May, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: More Free POress Failures, Arrogance in the Chicago Mayor's Office, and Bad Priorities In California

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) We have often pointed out that a strong, aggressive, fair, and unbiased free press is critical to defending our rights and freedoms and uncovering scandals and misdeeds by politicians and government officials. We have also often pointed out how the journalism field and news industry in this country have failed to uphold those lofty and important pillars of freedom.

News reporting and journalism in this country today is a disgrace, amoral, and totally biased to preconceived notions, wants and TV ratings. And the American public has grown more and more tired of journalists and news people being out of integrity for a long time now. According to Gallup, 58% of those surveyed now have very little or no trust in the journalism industry today. That pessimism level was only 28% back in the late 1970s and has trended steadily worse since then.

Nowhere has this failure of the press to be unbiased, fair, and aggressive been more pronounced than in the recent Tara Reade situation. Ms. Reade was a member of Senator Joe Biden’s staff long ago. She has recently accused him of sexual molestation and digitally penetrating her during an encounter many years ago.

When similar accusations were made when Brett Kavanaugh was being considered for the Supreme Court, news outlets, news papers, and news pundits jumped on the accusations immediately and basically concluded that Kavanaugh was guilty of nasty sexual acts without any real proof, facts, or credible evidence, all of which melted away after a very bitter and biased investigation by Congressional Democrats. But the fact remains that the journalism industry in this country jumped on the first inkling of sexual accusation and went hard after Kavanaugh.

But now Ms. Reade comes forth with actually more proof of evidence that Biden is guilty than the Kavanaugh accusers ever had, and the news media, in all forms, somehow choke on their word processing programs:

It took the New York Times and Washington Post almost three weeks to even acknowledge that the accusations were being made.
CNN took over three weeks to even acknowledge Ms. Reade’s existence on their website and coverage after that was weak and flaccid.
And worst of all, National Public Radio (NPR), a left leaning, liberal organization took almost a full month to acknowledge the Reade situation, a fact that NP management recently admitted.
NPR reporter Asma Khalid, was assigned the Reade story back in March.
Despite the accusations, Khalid did not speak to Reade initially, claiming that she needed to do some research.Her editor at NPR, Kelly McBride, admits that the research process could have been finished inside of one week.
Khalid took nearly three weeks to do the “research.”
Compare that to the Kavanaugh situation where Khalid issued a report ONE DAY after the Kavanaugh accusations broke, i.e. she didn't take three weeks of research and then another week to put the story together.
Not only did it take so long to actually put the Reade NPR story together, Khalid omitted an interview she did with one of Reade’s friends that could have substantiated the claims that Reade has made.

Again, freedom, liberty and democracy relies on a strong and unbiased news industry to process the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Unfortunately, the biases that exist today across all major news outlets not only distorts or ignores the truth, it undermines our freedoms since now nothing is real, nothing is the truth when all news reporting is done for personal, political, or business gain, truth be damned.

2) Let’s go back out to Chicago. The Mayor of Chicago is Lori Lightfoot. She has placed the city under some pretty stringent stay at home rules. But she acted like a typical “do as I say, not as I do” politician when a few weeks ago she had a beauty salon open up, which violated her own rules, to get a haircut. Her response after getting called out for the violation was that she needed to look good since she was in the public eye. Never mind that she violated her own rules and put other Chicago citizens in danger.

But her hypocrisy has continued since that bad optic beauty salon visit:

She recently wanted “defiant churches” that she will take action against them if they hold church services in violation of her edicts, the edicts she ignored.
She had previously warned churches against holding services via what she called “educational outreach.”
Now, she is getting more aggressive and threatening unspecified action if she continues to be ignored: “We’re going to be communicating over and over again over the course of this week. I understand that people are getting anxious. But defying common sense and public health guidance only puts their congregations at physical risk. We’re going to continue to have that discussion but, if necessary, we are going to take action to make sure there is compliance to the stay-at-home orders.”
Cristian Ionescu, the pastor at Elim Romanian, called his church’s first in-person service in two months an “extraordinary success” and claimed that his church took extreme measures to protect church participants.
He went on to say that political leaders should have worked with the churches in the city and state to protect the First Amendment and the congregants rather than dictate terms and conditions for gatherings: “They should cooperate with us, not dictate to us. I take offense that they think they care more about our people than us.”
Joe Wyrostek, pastor of Metro Praise International Church had the same view: “I just feel like we were put at the back of the bus. We were not in any of the discussions. We have to stand up for ourselves at some point. We’ve lost trust in what they’re doing. We have to peacefully resist and see where it goes.”

It is certainly easy to lose trust in elected officials when they violate their own rules to get their hair looking nice. The purpose and skill of a politician is leading and peacefully coming to a consensus that addresses any many issues and concerns as possible across all parties. Dictating what one should do and not do is not leadership, it is authoritarian.

3) One last piece of local political class insanity to finish up today. We have often pointed out how screwed up the state of California is, from huge unfunded budget liability holes to failing schools to crumbling roads to a dysfunctional housing market to an enormous homeless problem to higher and higher taxes.

Thus, given these critical issues. One would hope that local and state opticians were hard at work, focused on these issues that probably touch every single resident of the state and not in a good way.

But you hope would be crushed when you find out what one state politician’s priorities are:

Evan Low is a California state assemblyman.
In February, he introduced legislation that would make it illegal for retail stores with 500 or more employees to have separate boys and girls sections for clothing and toys in their stores.
Of course, such requirements would increase store merchandising costs which would either reduce the stores’ profits or much more likely result in higher prices for consumers and shoppers in those stores.
Higher prices for absolutely no reason.
The basis for this proposed law is that the 9 year old daughter of a member of Low’s staff told Low that she did not like it when boys and girls clothes and toys were separate sections.
As a result, the desires of a nine year old, California may soon require private stores to merchandise their stores according to the whims of a 9 year old.

So rather than work on the budget holes, the homeless problem or probably dozens of other, much more pressing and important issues, this politician is taking advice from a 9 year old on an issue that really is not an issue. I am sure that if you took a poll of Californians about what are the top 50 issues their families face, the separate retail merchandising of boys and girls products does not crack the top 100. And yet this politician is wasting taxpayer wealth and resources on this nonsense.

Nonsense in California, nonsense in newsrooms and nonsense in Chicago, no wonder things are screwed up when politicians and news people have such lousy priorities and moral standards.

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

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

May, 2020, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Bodily Function Issues In New Jersey, Looking a Gift Horse In The Mouth In NYC, and Tesla Fights The Bureaucracy

1) We have often pointed out how stupid and ignorant American politicians can be. Congressman Hank Johnson once stated in a Congressional hearing that he was worried that the island of Guam could actually flip over in the Pacific Ocean if too many Navy resources were stationed there. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Congresswoman, once stated that the Constitution was 400 years old and that her very own Congressional district was 50 feet below sea level (it isn’t). New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was shocked that when he allowed hardened, convicted criminals out of jail because of the corona virus many of them committed more crimes, shocking. And of course, New York Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, whose ignorance and verbal gaffes are far too many to review here.

In the context of such stupidity, the governor and other political figures in New Jersey have recently upheld this long tradition of being so out of touch with reality:

As a result of the coronavirus, which hit New Jersey very hard, the governor had shut down all state parks and most other forms of recreation for New Jersey residents.
Of course, this type of stay at home edict likely resulted in extreme cases of cabin fever for state residents.
But the governor, Patrick Murphy recently reopened the state parks as the virus started to subside and as a result, New Jerseyans flocked to the state parks to get out of their homes and get some fresh air.
But for some stupid reason, the governor decided that while he would agree to reopen the parks, he ordered that the restroom facilities at those parks remain locked and not usable by park visitors.
Of course, any sane person would know what would happen, as an article on the Godfather Politics website explained with the following title: “New Jersey Opens Parks, Closes Restrooms, Complains About ‘Inordinate Amount of Urine and Feces’ in Park”
Government officials were hopping mad that an “inordinate amount of urine and feces being left behind.” in the recently reopened parks.
What did they think was going to happen as residents started hiking through the parks that they were going to hold their expulsions until they could drive out of the parks and find another place to go to the bathroom?
Well, they actually did believe that, since State Police Superintendent Pat Callahan said: “We understand restrooms are closed, but people should be planning accordingly and should not be urinating in bottles and leaving them behind,”
He went on to say there would be “zero tolerance” for anyone not holding it in until they could leave the park to find other facilities.
Even the governor got into the act threatening that the state police would cite you for a violation and that “you’re not going to get a warning if we catch you.”
The insanity continued in that 1) he threatened to shut down the parks if this behavior continued and 2) continued to order that the restrooms continue to be locked and off limits to park visitors.
Nowhere have state government politicians or officials explain and defend why the restrooms were locked to begin with and will continue to be locked even though the parks are open.

Now there will be state police resources on potty patrol rather than actually protecting people from real crimes because of this unreal stupidity. Just when you think that the insanity could not get any worse, my former state of New Jersey proves that assumption wrong.

2) There is no doubt that New York City was not only the hardest hit metro area in the country from the coronavirus but the politicians in that city were the worst when it came to coming up with smart policy and advice to minimize the damage. The mayor told his citizens in early March to go out to restaurants and bars since the virus was not passed on by food or drink, an inane and probably fatal suggestion to make.

The city board of health as of late January/early February insisted that maybe there was one case of the virus in the city, and that was it, a statement that was obviously and fatally wrong. The state governor decided it would be a good idea to send elderly virus patients or potential patients to nursing homes, a breeding ground for the virus. As a result over 5,000 New Yorkers died in nursing homes, well over 20% of all virus nursing home deaths in the country.

And last but no least, the mayor and governor pleaded for help from anyone that would provide it for what they falsely assumed would be a tidal wave of infected NYC city people, causing the Federal government to ship them a large number of ventilators, send in a Navy medical ship to the city, and rush in other supplies.

Other folks and charities also chipped in personnel and resources. But one charity who set up a facility in NYC to help those in need because of the virus was treated pretty harshly by local politicians:

Samaritan's Purse is a Christian charity organization.
They set up a FREE medical facility in conjunction with the city’ Mount Sinai hospital to care for the sick.
The organization happens to oppose lesbian and gay causes.
And for that, not the fact they helped and healed the sick for free, they are getting heat from city officials who only recently were crying and pleading for help in treating the ill.
At no point and under no accusations did the charity refuse to medically treat anyone regardless of their religion or sexual orientation.
Despite setting up free medical services, despite not denying those medical services to anyone, New York Governor Cuomo recently said that the charity would have to pay taxes in the state.
The charity has also come under attack for their anti-gay and Christian orientation despite the need and their charitable efforts to indiscriminately help others.
Keep in mind that Mt. Sinai asked for the charity’s help and they set up a 68 bed field hospital, again not charging anyone or any organization the expenses for doing so.
Despite all of this, Cuomo is somehow holding the charity financial liable or offering free services, ‘I am not in a position to provide any subsidies right now,” in other words, the charity will have to pay state taxes, including any taxes on income they might earn while operating in NYC, despite the fact that state politicians and state medical facilities asked them to come into the state and city to help out in the crisis.
Cuomo hid behind the state’s large budget deficit to justify the taxation: “{We] have a $13 billion deficit. So there’s a lot of good things I’d like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say I’m gonna spend more money when I can’t even pay the essential services.”
The governor ignores the two realities that 1) any taxes paid by this charity would be a nit of a nit relative to $13 billion and 2) the city somehow found the money to pay for 500,000 free meals for Muslims, a cost that I would bet far exceeds and tax revenue the charity would pay.
But Cuomo is not the only state politician to look a gift horse in the mouth, with state senator Brad Hoylman describing the charity’s relationship with Mt. Sinai “poisonous” and city Council Speaker Corey Johnson said he found it “extremely troubling “ that the charity was offering free medical service to over 300 people of all religions and sexual orientations.

I have no idea how to respond to this political class insanity. People are dying, people are very sick, the government asks for help, a charity responds by erecting a 68 bed field hospital at its own expense, it medically treats over 300 people at no cost and shows no discimsintaiton based on sexual orientation or religion. And yet, some politicians somehow, some way, actually find a problem with that situation in the middle of a medical crisis, with at least one of them indicating they would rather have citizens go untreated than have them healed by a group that they have an issue with its religion position.

So sad that we have gotten to the point when allowing people to go sick or die is more important in a time of crisis than making a political point with a segment of the population.

3) We have often talked about how the state of California is going down the tubes in oh so many ways:

It has by far the largest unfunded budget deficit liability in the country.
It has the worst public schools systems in the country.
It has the worst homeless problem in the country.
It has made it not illegal to publicly defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs anywhere at anytime including in public venues and streets.
The results of power washing the public defecation and urination from city streets down the storm drains has led to increasing levels of deadly water pollution in the surrounding bodies of water.
Medieval diseases such as typhus have reemerged at least in LA because of the massive homeless problem.
Average wage levels are so low in LA that 40% of the population make so little that they qualify for Medicaid.
Its dream bullet train concept died after gross mismanagement by government officials and millions and millions of wasted taxpayer dollars resulting in….nothing.
It has one of the highest overall taxation levels, if not the highest, in the entire country.
It has made petty theft such as shoplifting non-criminal resulting in an explosion of crime.
Its restrictive housing rules and regulations have made the cost of housing go sky high, pricing many people out of the home ownership and rental markets.
Many state residents have escaped to other, more reasonably priced, lower taxed, safer, and better places to live and do business, putting even more pressure on the budget fiasco.

One of the best descriptions I have heard of present day California is that it “is North Korea with a tech industry.” Masking a lot of the problems is the reality that a lot of large and small high technology firms are based on California which results in a lot of business tax dollars and high earner technology worker tax dollars.

In fact, we have previously reported that if a relatively small number of California’s wealthiest people leave the state, the state government revenue stream would take a tremendous hit. And we may be seeing the very beginning of the wealthiest actually take those steps to leave, as measured by the words of one of the country’s richest individuals and California state resident:

Elon Musk is one of the great business thinkers and innovators of our time.
Besides being most famous for creating a major luxury car brand from scratch, Tesla, he has been an innovator in many other areas.
He is not a dumb man and he is a very wealthy man who pays a lot of California taxes both business wise and personally.
But now he is a very angry man in that Alameda County in California, the county that is home to his Tesla car manufacturing facility, will not let him open up his factory because of the virus crisis even though he says he will comply with all of the rules and standards of social distancing on the job.
The state has set forth parameters for manufacturing businesses to open that Tesla could meet but that state has allowed local counties and towns to overrule the state guidelines and refuse to let him business like Tesla to reopen.
To which Musk said screw it and claimed that he will be moving his Tesla assets to another state, taking workers, himself, jobs and a lot of state tax revenue with him.
In addition he has filed legal actions against the county: “Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant ‘Interim Health Officer’ of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense! Frankly, this is the final straw,. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.”
Texas and Nevada politicians were more than happy to welcome this news and Tesla's potential economic boost to their states.
Politicians in California, however, do not seem to recognize what this means, with one state politician tweeting, “F#$2 Elon Musk,” hardly the type of mature, adult conversation one should probably have to save the jobs and the tax revenue for the state.

Remember, if California loses its tech industry, then it is nothing more than North Korea: poor, under educated, tax starved, and a horrible place to live. And right now, it looks like the state’s politicians are fine with that potential and growing reality.

That will do it for today: government reacting childishly to a big source of tax revenue, politicians abusing a charity that was saving lives, and politicians who have no common sense when it comes to bodily functions.

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

Monday, May 11, 2020

May, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: The Sad, Sad Decline Of Joe Biden and How Dangerous That Is For The Country

Today’s insanity is completely attributed to Joe Biden. As we have said in the past, everyone stumbles over their words once in a while, saying stuff that they did not mean. However, Biden has made an art of saying insane, stupid, and inappropriate things at inappropriate times.

We have also said we feel sorry for him. Given his cognitive decline due to whatever causes, the fact that Democratic Party powers continue to put him up front in their bid to take over the White House is a form of elder abuse. It is our non-medical opinion, based on experiences with our family, that he needs medical help and support and to put him out there continuously where he constantly makes a fool of himself is sad and despicable.

1) There is little doubt that the leaders of the Palestinian government will not rest until Israel is wiped off the face of the Earth. In the past couple of years we have seen them divert humanitarian aid from their own people to make underground tunnels that they had hoped to use to invade Israel and bring death and destruction to Israelis. We have seen them launch extensive fire bombing attacks to try to burn Israel to the ground. Any rational person can see that the future of Israel and the health of its citizens is under attack by the Palestinian leadership and terror groups.

But apparently none of that bothers Biden:

Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently, Biden promised that if elected president, he would start sending financial aid to the Palestinians.
This would reverse a Trump policy which correctly identified the Palestinian leadership as terrorists and cut off aid, aid that was used to attack Israel.
Specifically: “A priority now for the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace should be resuming our dialogue with the Palestinians and pressing Israel not to take actions that make a two-state solution impossible. I will reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, find a way to reopen the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, and resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump Administration stopped.”
These funds were withheld under the Taylor Force Act, named after a U.S. citizen that was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in March, 2016.
But Biden’s distaste for Israel goes back decades including the time he threatened to cut off aid to Israel if they keep building settlements.

Even if you agree with Biden, consider this reality: Millions of Americans have lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus crisis, millions of Americans are homeless, hungry or drug addicted in this country, millions of American kids go to substandard schools, etc. But Biden would rather send U.S. taxpayer wealth to a terror organization halfway around the world than use that money to help Americans in need. Insane.

2) And it is not like Biden has a huge success record in foreign affairs, be it in the Middle East or elsewhere:

Robert Gates was a Secretary of Defense during the Obama/Biden years.
In a recent TV interview Gates said that while Biden was a nice guy, he was usually wrong when it came to foreign policy.
When asked if Biden would be a good President, he said “I don't know,” hardly a ringing endorsement from a fellow Obama administration peer.
In fact, he said Biden has been wrong for decades in the foreign affairs arena.
The best he could offer is that he knew he could lean on Biden if he was experiencing a personal crisis, hardly a trait critical to managing foreign policy.

A weak assessment of a former peer, not one to build confidence for a Presidency.

3) We have often pointed out how important a free press and journalistic integrity is in a democracy. A free, aggressive, and unbiased press is critical to protect our liberties and expose corruption of all sorts by those in power.

Unfortunately, those in the journalism profession today for the most part have lost their integrity, unbiasedness, and morals when it comes to truthful reporting. They are almost always slanting the truth, distorting reality, ignoring facts that run counter to their personal or corporate positions, and generally propagating fake news, be it for career advancement or TV ratings.

This unfortunate and dangerous trend was recently demonstrated by a leader within the journalism industry in this country:

Politico is an online news source that has a long history of favoring liberals and Democrats regardless of the need to be unbiased.
This observation was further confirmed when Politico founder, Martin Tolchin, recently proclaimed in a letter to the New York Times that the sexual accusation of Tara Reade against Joe Biden needs to be ignored since it may endanger Biden’s run for the Presidency.
This position was taken despite liberals and Democrats view during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings that the very same type of charges need to be thoroughly investigated, that Kavanaugh should be held guilty until he proves his innocence, in the light of what turned out to be false and fairy tale accusations of sexual assault.
Rather than not be a liberal hypocrite, he said he wants the Reade charges totally ignored in order to support a “coronation” of Joe Biden as President.
He goes so far to say that Biden would never be a great President, that he would be “good enough.”
As long as Trump was not reelected, Tolchin, is fine with a subpar President (Biden) even if it means being a hypocrite to the nth degree and ignoring Tara Reade’s very credible sexual assault accusations.

The hypocrisy is unbelievable. Screw the potential reality that a woman was sexually assaulted, we need to throw out our principles in order to prevent a Trump election win. You know for sure that if Reade had accused Trump, Tolchin would be one of the first people in line calling for an extensive investigation of that accusation.

But Reade’s alleged experience is so inconvenient for liberals like him, that he is willing to throw away the precedent people like him set with Kavanaugh for purely political reasons. Certainly a lack of morals, integrity, and unbiasedness, all of which is the pervading mindset in the news and journalism industry today.

4) To add to the untold number of other gaffes and missteps he has taken over the past few months, consider what Biden said during a recent interview regarding America's place in the world: “I would get much more engaged in the world, we can’t step back. If in fact, for example, we solve the problem in the United States of America and you don’t solve it in other parts of the world, you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to have travel bans, you’re going to not be able to do, have economic intercourse [my emphasis] around the world. There’s a lot, look, when America goes alone, when America is first, it’s America alone.”

In total, the statement is kind of garbled and says nothing. But what in the world is “economic intercourse?” Again, an occasional misspeak is only human. But he continues to misspeak in just about every interview with “economic intercourse” either a Freudian slip or a concept that no one in the world knows what he is talking about, probably including himself.

5) See if you can figure out his response when during a CBS interview he was asked if his son’s dealing with China would be dangerous to his campaign: "My son's business dealings [in China] were not anything what everybody that he's talking about, not even remotely, number one." Huh? Nonsensical.

6) One last Biden bit for today and this one is quite sad, it reinforces our opinion that putting him up in front of the press and the country is a form of elder abuse. During a recent morning interview on MSNBC by Mika Brzezinski, he was asked about Tara Reade’s accusations that he digitally penetrated her when she worked in his Senate office and whether he would release any of his government records to see if there was any validity to her claims:

Brzezinski asked: “Are you certain there was nothing about Tara Reade in those records? … Why not approve a search of her name in those records?”
Biden said that there is nothing in those records and that they did not contain personnel files.
She then asked if Biden would allow a much more focused and narrow search of the records, searching only for Reade’s name to which he replied…. Nothing, simply 15 seconds of silent, dead air in which he looked confused, befuddled and totally out of touch with reality.

It was a sad, sad sight, an elderly man being put on the spot with a fair question and he completely loses any sense where he was or what to say. The exchange can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-left-dumbfounded-15-disastrously-awkward-seconds-unable-answer-tara-reade-question/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=flagandcross-newsletter&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=firefly

It is so sad that his cognitive abilities have deteriorated so much, that he has trouble forming coherent sentences and responding to quite straightforward questions. That he has reacted violently and aggressively to those that have a different opinion than his.

And again, it is a form of elder abuse to keep putting him through the ringer of running for President. He should be getting help and support to get him through his troubles, not paraded around as a placeholder because liberals hate Trump so much.

But I don't want someone in the White House who is as clueless and out of touch as Biden has presented himself to be regardless of what I think of Trump. Biden is too dangerous to be President and make Presidential decisions or be President and have unknown sources behind the scenes make decisions for him, not accountable to the American voter.

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 9, 2020

May,2020, Part 4,Political Class Insanity: How The American Political Class, and Specifically New York Politicians, Failed Miserably With the Coronavirus Pandemic

Today we will be looking at how poorly the American political class handled the coronavirus pandemic in this country. There is no doubt that the coronavirus is a nasty virus, it kills and incapacitates people.

But it doesn't kill an overwhelming number of people. It does not incapacitate an overwhelming number of people. In fact, the vast, vast majority of people never get it or get it with no or minimal symptoms. It does not seem to bother children, only the elderly and/or those with respiratory problems. This is not the black plague. This is not smallpox.

And yet, we have shut down the country and wide areas of the economy, we have incurred trillions and trillions of dollars in additional debt, we have destroyed countless businesses, and made life miserable for just about everyone in the country. And as we will see today, the vast majority of this nastiness was because the American political class, and the government entities it operates, were not prepared, made stupid decisions, overreacted, and generally screwed up everything.

1) How widespread was the virus? Was it as bad as the politicians and the pliant press, anxious for ratings, made it out to be? Consider the numbers as of May 4:

According to reporting by the Daily Signal, over 50% of the counties in this country have recorded ZERO deaths from the virus.
1,639 counties (52%) have had zero coronavirus deaths as of May 4.
447 counties (14%) have each reported 1 death.
443 counties (14%) have reported 2-5 COVID-19 deaths.
183 counties (6%) have reported 6-10 deaths.
94 counties (3%) have reported 11-15 deaths.
348 counties (11%) have reported more than 16 deaths.
Thus, 89% of the counties in this country had less than 16 deaths.
New York and New Jersey have incurred 38% of all cases nationwide and 48% of the deaths nationwide from the virus.
Only 10% of the states, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California have accounted for 54% of the cases and 61% of the deaths.
Yakima county in Washington state had 1,203 virus cases, probably more than entire states have had.

But like every other problem that Americans politicians and government entities address, they went about handling this situation with a club rather than with any ounce of finesse. Rather than focus on the small, limited areas of problems geographically, they assumed the whole country was a problem and in the process killed economic vitality and personal freedom where no problem existed.

2) The New York Times recently ran an article that showed how the virus strain from New York City was the main driver of cases EVERYWHERE throughout the country. We will touch on the incompetence of New York politicians in the face of this virus below but their ineptness resulted in the following nationwide agony according to the Times:

Travelers out of New York City was the main driver in coronavirus fatalities and sickness across the country.
Results from a genetic tracking study showed that by early March the primary source of new virus infections around the country was the virus strain that originated in New York City.
Travelers from New York City spread their version of the disease before the city finally got around to doing what other parts of the country were already doing from a social distancing, enhanced hygiene and other preventive measures perspective.
As a result, according to the Times, NYC traveling residents “seeded” their version of the virus around the country.
The study came to these conclusions by examining the small mutations of the virus around the country.
According to Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health: ”We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that New York was the primary gateway for the rest of the country.”
For example, out west, 80% of the virus cases in Alaska, 69% in Wyoming, 70% in Texas, and 84% in Utah were of the NYC strain.
In the midwest, 72% of the virus cases in Minnesota, 78% in Wisconsin, 100% in Iowa, and 88% in Ohio were of the NYC strain.
In Louisiana, every virus case had the NYC strain.
In the Northeast, 81% of the Connecticut cases, 93% of the New Jersey cases and 92% of the Maryland cases were from the NYC strain.
According to the Times: “During crucial weeks in March, New York’s political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start. And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, the data suggest, as the disease was already spreading widely within the country.”
Remember, we have previously reported how NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, around March 10 encouraged New Yorkers to go about their business to go out to restaurants and bars, since the virus was not spread by food and drinks, the exact opposite advice that he should have been giving.
Also, recall that on January 31, the head of the NYC health department assured people that there was not a single case of the virus in the whole city despite reports that police officers were told by their leadership to wear medical masks if they were going into Elmhurst Hospital, a city hospital: “There are NO suspected or confirmed cases in NYC,” Health Department spokesperson Michael Lanza told the Eagle on January 31.
The article continued to report that on March 1, NYC had one “confirmed case of the virus” while these researchers estimate that over 10,000 city residents were already infected, showing that the head of the health department was truly ignorant of what was going on in his city or 10,000 secretly got sick between his January 31 declaration of not having a single case in the city and what the researchers found.

As a result of New York City and New York State not taking early actions like the Federal government did and other states did, it looks like a lot, a majority of the current virus cases, sickness and deaths, were directly a result of the NYC strain and the ignorance and slow reaction of government officials and politicians in that state.

3) Let’s do a quick review of how inept and out of touch with reality that NYC leaders were:

- On January 31, Michael Lanza of the NYC Health Department declared: “There are NO suspected or confirmed cases in NYC.” But we now know that there were likely hundreds if not thousands of cases already since the study mentioned above estimates that there were over 10,000 cases thirty short days later.

- In that same timeframe, New York governor Andrew Cuomo confidently and incorrectly proclaimed: "New York does not have one single confirmed case of the novel coronavirus, but we are taking every necessary precaution to protect against its spread into our state. We have been here before, and I want to remind New Yorkers that it is much more likely that they will be exposed to the influenza virus than to the coronavirus.”

- On March 10, NYC Bill de Blasio proclaimed: “If you’re not sick, you should be going about your life,” and that the virus “does not transmit through food and drink.” In other words, no problem, forget social distancing, go out and have a good time at your favorite restaurant or bar, social distancing is for other folks.

- In March Governor Cuomo insisted that virus patients that survived the virus be sent back to nursing homes which made him the only governor to take such an action, an action which imperiled the staff and residents of the state’s nursing homes. According to AMDA, the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, declared "admitting patients [into nursing homes] with suspected or documented COVID-19 infection represents a clear and present danger to all of the residents of a nursing home." Since over 5,000 of the state’s virus deaths were in state nursing homes, looks like the AMDA knew what they were talking about, looks like Cuomo did not know what he was talking about.

- Cuomo also looks like a bumbling fool on other aspects of the virus. He whined that he needed 40,000 ventilators and whine some more when Trump said he did not need that many. He actually got fewer than the 40,000 but he eventually ended up giving hundreds of the reduced amount to other states, indicating he had no idea what he was talking about regarding the need for 40,000.

- Cuomo whined that he needed many more ICU beds to handle the virus workload so Trump sent up a Navy medical ship to New York, outdoor ICU tent facilities were set up, the Javits convention center was converted into a massive ICU ward and none of these facilities were used much, if at all. All Of which showed that Cuomo had no idea how bad the virus was initially and then overreacted when he did not know how bad it wasn’t going to be.

- Only recently has Cuomo ordered that NYC subway cars be taken off line from one a.m. to five a.m. every day to be sterilized, an action that should have happened 60 days ago if he had any understanding of how the virus could be spread from public contact sources.

- New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson also gave false assurances when he said on February 13 that fears of the coronavirus “are not based on facts and science. The risk of infection to New Yorkers is low. There is no need to avoid public spaces.”

Massive screw ups on a massive basis.

4) And last but no least. Let’s not forget how the Obama administration blew their part in the coronavirus disaster. Back early in his administration, the country had a flu epidemic with thousands dying from the flu. The Obama administration took months to act and by then the damage was mostly done.

But a study after the fact strongly suggested that the country needed to beef up its stockpile and inventory of medical supplies including medical masks. As the LA Times reported on March 20, 2020: ”After the swine flu epidemic in 2009, a safety-equipment industry association and a federally sponsored task force both recommended that depleted supplies of N95 respirator masks, which filter out airborne particles, be replenished by the stockpile, which is maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That didn’t happen, according to Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Assn.”

Thus, early on during the struggle to cope with the virus, the country faced a severe shortage of high end medical masks to protect the nation's health care workers, a shortage that Obama knew of and did nothing to fix eleven years ago.

You get the idea, from Obama to Trump to Cuomo to de Blasio to just about every other politician and high ranking government official, the response to the virus has been late, feeble, and in many cases lethal. The politicians that run this country and the government officials they oversee have failed again to protect the citizens of this country and have failed at great expense: deaths, sickness, lost wages, bankrupt businesses, and trillions and trillions of unnecessary national debt being created, debt that will accelerate the collapse of the economy and our democracy.

There is no need to point fingers at who specifically caused this disaster: it was the Chinese government who covered up the true veracity of the virus early on, it was the World Health Organization who covered up for the Chinese government and who told the world that this was bad not nearly as bad as it turned out to be and the American political class who bumbled their way through the past few critical months with either half ass answers, ignorant answers, or authoritarian efforts that represented one of a police state than a democracy, usually where such authoritarian measure were totally unnecessary. Insanity on an epic scale.

One final note: the press journalism outlets in this country also behaved disgracefully and without ethics in this crisis. Rather than report and educate the public on this crisis, they looked for the sensational stories, from DC to local medical facilities, it was all about sensationalism, not reality.

In fact, we know that CBS has faked at least two news stories and photo ops of the crisis to make it look worse than it was. We know that millions and millions of people either do not get the virus, get it with mild symptoms and survive or get it with severe symptoms and survive. The death rate is very small but you would never know it from the news reporting, it was sensationalism all the time, truth and reality be damned.

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

Thursday, May 14, 2020

May, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: More Free POress Failures, Arrogance in the Chicago Mayor's Office, and Bad Priorities In California

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

May, 2020, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Bodily Function Issues In New Jersey, Looking a Gift Horse In The Mouth In NYC, and Tesla Fights The Bureaucracy

Monday, May 11, 2020

May, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: The Sad, Sad Decline Of Joe Biden and How Dangerous That Is For The Country

Saturday, May 9, 2020

May,2020, Part 4,Political Class Insanity: How The American Political Class, and Specifically New York Politicians, Failed Miserably With the Coronavirus Pandemic

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