Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Friday, March 9, 2018

March, 2018, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Sex Scandals In Nashville, Sex Scandals In The FBI, An Absentee Judge And More

It is the beginning of 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) Although we almost exclusively focus on politicians screwing up or government bureaucrats not doing anything right, here is a case, from the Joe For America website, that shows even members of the judiciary are not immune to wasting taxpayer wealth and resources:

Kahlilia Davis was elected to being a District Court Judge in Michigan’s 36th District in January 2017.
She was to be one of 30 judges in that judicial circuit.
Apparently, the other 29 actually show up for work but Ms. Davis was the exception to that simple rule: Until early March, 2018, she had not showed up for work once.
And in a move of brash chutzpah, she then sued her boss, Nancy Blount, the chief judge of the circuit, for having the audacity of removing Davis from her position “based on your demonstrated inability to perform her duties … you, Judge Kahlilia Y. Davis, are hereby prohibited from presiding over any 36th District Court cases.”
Talk about insanity: as an elected offical you do not show up for work for over a year, drawing a salary of over $170,000 during that time period, and you sue your boss when you do decide to return. Nice vacation if you can get it.
But it gets worse since you wonder how bad our election processes have become that someone like this actually got elected since she had a Federal, $35,00 lien once placed on her property for non-payment of property tax, she lost a lawsuit for $16,000 that Ally Financial hit her with, she was sued and lost in 2015 on another case, and she has filed for bankruptcy at least twice.

Insanity.

2) Lelan Yee, a California state politician, was once the darling of the gun control crowd. However, he paid the price for not actually being an actual gun control advocate:

Yee was arrested by the FBI on March 26, 2014 on charges related to public corruption and, wait for it, gun trafficking.
Yes, gun trafficking despite being a vocal gun control advocate.
He was trying to buy automatic firearms and shoulder launched missiles from an Islamic terrorist organization in the Philippines.
Yee then tried to re-sell them but ended up selling them to an undercover FBI agent.
Fortunately, he was recently sentenced to prison for these hypocritical actions, running guns while being an active gun control advocate of American citizens.
Yee hypocritically once claimed that: “It is extremely important that individuals in the state of California do not own assault weapons. I mean that is just so crystal clear, there is no debate, no discussion.”

He could face up to eight years in prison once sentenced for his crimes, certainly a just reward for such insanity and garbage from a selfish greedy politician.

3) The politicians in Washington have had a lot of sex scandals lately, from President Trump to Senator Franken to numerous Congressmen. But apparently Washington politicians do not have the market cornered when it comes to improper sexual conduct, it apparently was also rampant in the FBI:

The FBI inspector general has issued a report that details widespread instances of sexual misconduct within the FBI.
The report and analysis specifically identified a sample of 14 incidents of sexual harassment and improper sexual relationships within the FBI.
These 14 incidents go back to at least 2014 when James Comey was the FBI director and Obama was President.
Two of those FBI people, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, were operating an extra marital affair while in the midst of investigating Trump and possible collusion with the Russians, betraying both of their spouses.

Maybe if FBI personnel were not so busy doing each other they would not have missed the obvious dangerous signs that the recent school shooter/murderer blatantly displayed in Florida, signs that were missed or ignored by FBI officials.

4) Speaking of sex, let’s review what trouble a Tennessee politician has got herself into:

Megan Barry is the mayor of Nashville, Tennessee.
She recently admitted that she had a sexual affair with the former head of her security detail.
While this is bad, what is worse is that they may have used taxpayer money to carry out her extramarital affair.
The Nashville Police Department has been investigating both of their cell phones and they may have identified nude photos that proves they intimately traveled together on government business.
The date and time of when the photos were taken correspond to times that the head of security was on the clock and was being paid out of his department’s taxpayer funded budget.

Another day, another political sex scandal. Makes you wonder when these people find the time to do the people’s work and not do each other.

So, sex scandals from Nashville to Washington, a gun control politician who was running guns, and a judge that does not think that she needs to actually judge to get paid. As always, you cannot make up this type of insanity. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Monday, March 5, 2018

March, 2018, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Ignorance, Vanity, Racism, and Guilt Of The Current Set of American Politicians

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let's get started:

1) We often associate political corruption with those in Washington but rampant political corruption also exists at all levels of government including local government, as recently reported by the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call newspaper:

Apparently Allentown, Pa. mayor Ed Pawlowski was recently found guilty on a whole slew of corruption charges.
He was found guilty on 47 charges during his trial and not guilty on 7 charges.
Most of the charges centered around kickback situations where he “traded contributions to his campaigns for favorable treatment that helped donors get work from the city.”
A co-conspirator was also found guilty.
He is likely facing up to ten years in prison according to the laws he was found guilty of breaking.

The good news is that a bad politician finally got what the law said should happen to any lawbreaker. The bad news is we don't know how many other like him in all levels of government are getting away with what he caught doing.

2) In any function of government, whether it is executive, legislative or judicial, we should always want the most qualified candidates for those jobs. This is true not only in government but also in business: why would you put someone less qualified to do a job in a job when there was someone better qualified?

Well, apparently that it is how Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer thinks: rather than filling a recent judicial opening based on qualifications he wants judgeships to be filled based on the race of the candidate, not on the qualifications of the candidate:

The Senate recently had to vote on whether a gentleman named Marvin Quattlebaum should fill a court vacancy in the South District Court in South Carolina.
Schumer, as is required under the Constitution, is one of 100 Senators who, in our check and balance system of government, gets to determine if that person should be approved for that judicial seat.
One would hope that those 100 Senators would base their decision to vote for or against that nomination based on the credentials and abilities of that individual, in this case, Mr. Quattlebaum.
But not Schumer, he opposed the nominee not because he was not qualified, not because he would not make a good judge but because Mr. Quattlebaum had the nerve to be born to white parents: “The nomination of Marvin Quattlebaum speaks to the overall lack of diversity in President Trump’s selections for the federal judiciary. Quattlebaum replaces not one, but two scuttled Obama nominees who were African American.”
So apparently it is now an important criteria in selecting judges that their ethnic background be taken into account and the ethnic background of who they are replacing also be taken into account, their credentials and abilities be damned.

This is racism in one of its purest forms: pre-determining an outcome based on race rather than experience or ability. It undermines the entire process of getting the best candidate to fill the position. If Schumer thought Quattlebaum was not qualified, that is certainly his Constitutional perogative to say so. But to reject a candidate out of hand simply because of his race is pure racism at the highest levels of government in this country.

3) If you are having a discussion or debate with someone, you would hope that the person you are debating actually knows what they are talking about.Otherwise, you quickly realize you are arguing with ignorance and why waste your time arguing with someone who knows nothing what they are talking about.

Such was the case with one of our most vocal and yet ignorant politicians of the day, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. In a recent Independent Journal Review article that was covering Wasserman-Schultz try to make the case for more gun control in light of the recent school shootings, she made the following argument: “We moved legislation in the House at that point. We did not — we were not able to get the 60 votes for those proposals in the Senate. But that's not an excuse. I mean, these issues, making sure that we can do something about eliminating military-style weapons from society and only making sure that people who are in the military can utilize them rather than civilians and making sure that we don't have high-capacity rapid-fire magazines that allow mass killings and whose primary purpose is only to achieve that, that's going to solve this problem.”

“Rapid fire magazines?” Sorry, Congresswoman, there is no such thing as rapid fire magazines. The rifle holding the magazine determines whether or not it is “rapid fire,” the magazine itself has nothing to do with the rate of fire. Becomes really difficult to take a politician seriously when their ignorance is on this subject or any subject is so obvious.

4) Let’s conclude the insanity today with a recent Obama speech where he actually claimed that “We [his administration] didn’t have any scandals.” He made this ignorant statement at a recent MIT event, an event that was kept very private and secret with no transcript of his remarks given out to the press.

When a politician makes an inane statement like this you have to sit back and wonder: does he think that we are so enthralled with with he has to say that we ignore the reality of how many scandals he presided over or is he so vain that he actually believes this nonsense? No scandals? Seems to me I remember quite a few:

You ran one of the least transparent Presidencies of all times as pointed out by the White House Correspondents Association and other journalism organizations.
You lied about the true cause of the Benghazi terrorist attack in front of the country and the world.
You shredded the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans when you weaponized the IRS to deter Republican, Tea Party, and conservative organizations from getting non-profit approval from the IRS.
You broke domestic and international laws and treaties and placed military grade weapons and equipment in the hands of violent drug cartels via your failed Fast and Furious program.
You shredded the Fourth Amendment rights of millions of Americans by collecting just about every electronic communications they made without due cause and without a legitimate warrant process.
You lied hundreds of times about what Obama Care would do the health care and health insurance of millions of Americans by falsely promising they could keep their doctors, their health care plans, and current hospitals when you knew full well that was not going to happen under your signature Obama Care legislation.
You allowed your Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to operate a money laundering/crime syndicate scheme under the guise of the faux Clinton Foundation charity which grossly and personally enriched the Clinton family.
You allowed your Secretary of State to use an unsecured computer server in her home, breaking lord knows how many government tenets and laws.
You allowed numerous high ranking people in your administration, including yourself, to use fake email ids in violation of existing Federal laws.
You made Freedom of Information Act requests very difficult and time consuming to obtain and in the process violated both the spirit and the law of that piece of legislation.
You weaponized the intelligence operations in this country to go after journalists that were simply critical of your administration, e.g. James Rosen, Sharyl Attkisson and others.
You traded highly dangerous terrorist leaders for a sole Army deserter named Bowe Bergdahl while ignoring the grief and sorrow of families of soldiers who lost their lives or who were wounded looking for the deserter.

Let’s stop here, anymore would be overkilling an obviously vain or ignorant statement of the former President. Either way, vanity or ignorance is not a trait we should encourage in our political leaders but they are two traits that are usually stronger than integrity, brains, and will.

That will do it for today’s political class insanity: a former President is ignorant or vain, a current Congresswoman is ignorant, a current Senator is a racist, and a mayor is guilty. Quite the array of “leaders” we have leading the country today. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Our Horribly Broken Election Process, Part 3 - The Second Half Of A Solution

We have never been big fans of any American politician in this blog. We find them either cowardly, stupid, or greedy and often criminals. The list of their transgressions in each of these categories probably numbers in the hundreds when you go back through our previous posts.

Probably their worst trait of all is that they rig the system to make themselves rich, comfortable, and often above the law. They give themselves high pay and great benefits. They are in session in Congress for less than half the year. They are given multi-week vacations that they try to call “recesses.” They find ways to do insider trading on stocks and companies based on non-public information relative to potential and real legislation. And they spend so much time doing this stuff for themselves that they never get around to resolving the major issues facing the American public.

Several days ago we did a post on one particularly egregious abuse of the system by politicians:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/washington-corruption-train-keeps-on.html

Today, we are proposing a second set of basic changes that need to be made to our political processes that hopefully will get people in office that want to focus on resolving the big issues facing Americans today rather than have the existing types of politicians continue to remain in office where their only focus is self enrichment. The first set of changes can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/03/our-horribly-broken-election-process.html

1) The Federal Election Commission is supposed to ensure that everyone complies with existing election laws. It is in reality a farce that serves as a facade to legitimate election practices but really is nothing more than an exercise in doing nothing. It is staffed by an equal number of Republican and Democratic political hacks so that if anyone on the FEC actually wanted to prosecute someone for violating election laws it would never have the majority of votes needed to proceed.

Think about it: when was the last time you heard of the FEC successfully going after someone who violated election laws? Because you know for sure, given the lack of integrity and ethics within the current political class, these people are not morally or criminally pure.

Rather than appointing do nothing political yes men and women to the FEC, it needs to be staffed with experienced criminal prosecutors so that justice supersedes the political needs and wishes of those in office and in charge. Only then, when politics are taken out of the FEC staffing, will election laws actually mean something.

2) For Presidential debates, every candidate that has a mathematical chance of winning the Electoral College should be included in the debates. As we have often said, while there may be two political parties in this country, there is only one political class. While that political class has two wings, Democrats and Republicans, their aims are always the same: maintain power and continually stay in office to continually enrich themselves. Their different political stances are more marketing ploys than solutions.

Thus, in the last Presidential election, the Libertarian Party and Green Party candidates should have been included in the debates. Not only would that provide a fresh dimension to the debates, it would have forced Trump and Clinton to actually present solutions to issues rather than just attack each other to satisfy their bases. The Greens and Libertarians would have brought real solutions to the table and who know, actually caused some voters to finally vote for someone outside of the current and ineffective political class caste.

3) If you live in Kansas and are a Democrat, your Presidential vote usually means nothing since the state overwhelmingly usually votes Republican. That means ALL of the Electoral College votes in that state become Republican, all citizen Democrat votes in that state become meaningless.

If you are a Republican in California, your Presidential vote usually means nothing since the state overwhelmingly votes Democrat. That means ALL of the Electoral College votes in that state become Democrat, all citizen Republican votes in that state become meaningless.

Thus, the solution becomes, and it is a solution that already exists in a handful of states, is that Electoral Votes in a state be somehow based on the number of votes for each Presidential candidate in that state. For example, if 35% of the voters in California voted for a Republican candidate, than 35% of the Electoral Votes in what state should be assigned to the Republican candidate. Similarly, in Kansas, if 35% of the votes were for the Democratic candidate, than 35% of the Electoral Votes in that state should be assigned to the Democratic candidate.

What happens now is that there really is no reason for a Democrat in Kansas or a Republican in California to vote for President. Their votes, under the current process, have no chance of making any difference. In addition, the candidates know that. Thus, a Democrat is rarely going to put any effort into the voters in Kansas since the payoff is likely nil. A Republican is rarely going to put any effort into the voters in California since the payoff is likely nil.

Apportion Electoral votes on the percentage of voters who voted for each candidate in each state and no voter will be disenfranchised like they are now.

4) Most American workers are paid on some type of merit system. If an individual or their team or their company does better, that worker is usually rewarded. If they perform worse, than the rewards are less or non-existent. Only in Congress and the office of the President can you be a complete screw up and still get high salaries, rich benefits, and a slew of other benefits.

This has to end since if you have no skin in the game, i.e. as a politician you get rich regardless of how little you accomplish, then you tend to not focus on getting anything substantial accomplished. Thus, we need to implement an annual customer/voter satisfaction survey process that determines whether or not Washington politicians get highly rewarded for accomplishment or get punished with low rewards for being total screw ups.

Besides determining whether or not survey voters, selected at random, think Congress and the President actually accomplished anything worthwhile, part of the survey would also be to measure and reward based on how civil and cooperative they were with each other. Given the poisonous atmosphere in Washington today it is not a surprise that nothing gets accomplished, given all of the name calling, slandering, and backstabbing. Make cooperation a major part of the pay determination and maybe, just maybe these people can start cooperating with each other rather than backstabbing each other to the country's detriment.

5) Once Presidents leave office , they now become multi millionaires, it is a fact of life. And yet, even though they get richer and richer, the American taxpayer must continue to pay for their security and pension and benefits even though they could easily pick all of those expenses from their personal wealth. Thus, as outlined in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” once an ex-President's income or wealth exceeded a certain threshold, they would become responsible for their own security and retirement expenses, not the taxpayers.

While these government expenses savings would not do a lot of offset the Federal government’s $20 TRILLION national debt, it would be a nice symbolic and leadership effort to show that the American taxpayer does not have to pay for the expenses of an increasingly royalty class of wealthy ex-Presidents.

That will wrap up our second set of simple changes that would make our democracy more viable, our government more cost effective and most of all, our politicians more accountable to the people and not their personal enrichment. Today’s American politicians are an embarrassment to the country, our democracy, and the hard working Americans who make their luxurious lifestyles possible. It has to end.

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:

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Our Horribly Broken Election Process, Part 2 - The First Half Of A Solution

Probably their worst trait of all is that they rig the system to make themselves rich, comfortable, and often above the law. They give themselves high pay and great benefits. They are in session in Congress for less than half the year. They are given multi-week vacations that they try to call “recesses.” They find ways to do insider trading on stocks and companies based on non-public information relative to potential and real legislation. And they spend so much time doing this stuff for themselves that they never get around to resolving the major issues facing the American public.

Several days ago we did a post on one particularly egregious abuse of the system by politicians:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/02/our-horribly-broken-election-process.html

Today, rather than do specific examples of abuse, we are proposing a set of basic changes that need to be made to our political processes that hopefully will get people in office that want to focus on resolving the big issues facing Americans today rather than have the existing types of politicians continue to remain in office where their only focus is self enrichment:

1) As we laid out in the post above, one of the first changes we need to make to our political processes involves leftover campaign funds. What should happen is that after a political campaign is over, regardless of whether or not that candidate won or lost, he or she should have no more than six months to liquidate their leftover campaign funds.

Over that six month period they should be able to pay off any legitimate outstanding debts as a result of the campaign and at the end of the six months, any remaining funds should either be returned to those that donated or the candidate should donate those funds to legitimate charities.

Those paying off of debts should be reasonable and pass the reality check. Those leftover funds should not be paid out to relatives and friends of the candidate just to enrich those that are close to the candidate. Also, as mentioned above, the funds should be liquidated even if the candidate won the election. He or she should start from scratch for the next election from a raising campaign funds perspective. There should be no carry over from one campaign to the next. Such existing carry over helps ensure that useless incumbents always seem to get re-elected since they have such a war chest of funds gathered over the years.

2) Once elected, a winning politician should put their investment portfolios in a blind trust and have no contact with the manager of that blind trust until they are at least one year out of office. Politicians often have secret, insider access to potential legislation that gives them an insider track on lucrative investments. In the private sector, such insider information is often abused and a crime. Inside Congress, such access to insider information is just another easy way to get rich.

Now, some people would say that this was already taken care of under the Obama administration when the STOCK legislation was passed. However, shortly after this legislation was passed, and which much less fanfare, another bill was passed which essentially gutted the enforcement capability of the STOCK law and rendered it toothless.

Politicians should not be able to get rich off of secret government information. Make them give up control of their investments to a portfolio manager they have no access to while in office and for a time period afterwards in case they know of pending legislation that they could still leverage once out of office.

To see how abusive politicians are of this insider information conduit, go to:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/washington-corruption-train-keeps-on.html

3) No politician should be able to receive campaign funding from anyone who does not have the ability to vote for that politician. For example, someone who is running for Senator from Kansas should not be able to accept campaign funding from someone living in New Hampshire. Someone running for Congress in a Congressional district in Utah should not be allowed to accept campaign funding from someone living in Oregon.

Very rich people and organizations have a lot of money to sway elections even though they don't reside where those politicians live. This distorts the election process and deprives local citizens the right to fairly select the candidates they want to serve them. If you cannot vote for a candidate, you should not be able to fund a candidate.

4) Speaking of funding, the only entities that should be able to fund a candidate’s campaign are private citizens. PACs, unions, corporations, trade organizations, etc. should not be able to fund and in many cases unfairly sway elections away from local citizens. The Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee freedom of speech to individuals, they do not guarantee freedom of speech to organizations.

5) If an elected member of Congress or the Presidency has a net worth of over $3 million, he or she should not be able to receive a salary or benefits at the expense of the American taxpayer. Many, many people in Congress are multi-millionaires, they do not need to draw a salary of $174,000 or so a year or receive extensive benefits, they can afford them without being a drain on the Treasury.

We have a $20 TRILLION national debt, denying ultra rich Washington politicians a salary and benefits will not cure that $20 TRILLION national debt but symbolically at least it would show that they are serious about getting out of control government spending under control.

6) Many current Washington politicians have been in office for decades and have presided over the worst performing government in our history. Despite over spending their revenue streams by trillions and trillions of dollars, they have been unable to resolve any of the major issues of our times. They have allowed the Federal government bureaucracy to grow like a cancer and become totally ineffective in serving the American people.

Which leads to a dire need for term limits. “One and done” should be the Washington creed. No decades long residency in Congress where the only thing that incumbent members of Congress do is enrich themselves and take long vacations.

Because really, seriously ask yourself: given the ineptness of today’s Washington politicians, how much worse could it get if they all got thrown out of office because of term limits and we started with a clean slate of people? At least then we might have a fighting chance to get something, anything resolved.

That will do it for today’s recommendations to fix what is broken in our political processes. The second half of our recommended changes will follow shortly.

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:

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Friday, March 9, 2018

March, 2018, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Sex Scandals In Nashville, Sex Scandals In The FBI, An Absentee Judge And More

Monday, March 5, 2018

March, 2018, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Ignorance, Vanity, Racism, and Guilt Of The Current Set of American Politicians

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Our Horribly Broken Election Process, Part 3 - The Second Half Of A Solution

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Our Horribly Broken Election Process, Part 2 - The First Half Of A Solution

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