December, 2019, Part 3, Another Politician Steals From Charity, Ocasio-Cortez Spouts More Idiocy, and More

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) Warner Todd Huston, writing for the Godfather Politics website on December 7, 2019, reported on a nasty situation in Pennsylvania:

• Movita Johnson-Harrell is a Muslim woman who was elected to the state legislature in Pennsylvania.
• She caused quite a commotion back at her swearing in ceremony this past March when she went nuts because the session was opened with a Christian prayer, a long running tradition and the religion of most people in the legislature, the state and the country.
• Rather than respect the tradition and the religion of choice of her peers, she called her legislature colleagues racists and Muslim haters.
• She then went way off the deep end by insisting that no Christian ever be allowed to pray in the state capital ever again.
• She finished up this childish rant by stating the prayer was an explicit attack on her personally.

Talk about being immature and selfish. Rather than sit quietly and respectfully allow other human beings to have their moment of peace and exercise their First Amendment rights, she goes off on a selfish and mean spirited rant.

But karma can be a bitch since she turned out to probably be just another greedy self serving, self enriching politician like so many others in the American political class:

• She has been arrested and charged with theft, perjury, and tampering.
• Seems she ripped off a kids’ charity she had founded for about $500,000.
• According to the article: “Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has said that an investigation has found that the Muslim politician spent the hundreds of thousands of dollars of the charity’s money on “vacations, designer clothing, luxury car payments, real estate purchases, past-due mortgage payments, and other personal expenses. Her theft knew no bounds.” 
• She has denied many charges of wrongdoing but not all of them.

Just another example of the low integrity, low life people that somehow continually get themselves elected and yet commit crimes of larceny and disrespect.

2) Amazon originally had planned to build a major headquarters facility in the Congressional district of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Besides bringing tens of thousands of high paying jobs to the district, resulting in a once in a lifetime bonanza of economic growth, the company vowed to the following:

• Amazon would invest $2.5 billion in developing the location for their headquarters location.
• This $2.5 billion would result in a load of high paying construction jobs and ancillary jobs and economic benefit to the area, e.g. food trucks to service the construction workers.
• Eventually Amazon would station 25,000 employees at the location, highly paid employees that would buy and renovate housing in the area, eat in local restaurants, go to local movie theaters, buy clothes from local merchants, buy furniture to furnish their new homes, spend money on local transportation, etc.
• Amazon promised to provide computer science course to 130 area high schools.
• Amazon promised to hire at least 30 people from a nearby housing complex to work in its call center.
• Amazon would help fund local infrastructure improvements.
• Amazon would help fund a new 600 seat public school
• Amazon would create a 3.5 acre waterfront park open to the public.
• Amazon would set aside 25,000 square feet for a“community facility use/artist workspace.”
• Amazon would set aside 10,000 square feet for an art and tech accelerator.
• Amazon would set aside 263,000 square feet for light manufacturing space.
• Amazon would set aside 10,000 square feet for workforce development and training space.
• Amazon would set up internships for high school students.
• Amazon, starting in 2020, would host semi-annual job fairs and resume workshops at the local housing complex for at least three years.

Again, a once in a lifetime economic gift was waiting for the people of Ocasio-Cortez’s Congressional district if she could just keep her mouth shut.

But alas, she could not. Her bad mouthing and stupid economic rationale ended up prompting Aazon to cancel their plans for her district and take the potential wealth machine elsewhere in the country including Nashville and the greater DC area.

But Amazon did recently announce that they would be renting office space in Manhattan, NOT Ocasio-Cortez’s district, for about 1,500 employees. This was a far cry from the 25,000 employees that would have come into her district along with the other perks listed above, none of which are going to happen in her district.

And yet somehow in her twisted and idiotic economic reasoning, she viewed this as a win and something she is proud of: “Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway – *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways.” She went on to tweet: “Me waiting on the haters to apologize after we were proven right on Amazon and saved the public billions”:

So she smugly thinks that she won the battle with Amazon? How is that type of reasoning even possible:

• Amazon is bringing 1,500 jobs to NYC rather than the 25,000 that were originally planned, i.e. only 6% of could have happened is happening.
• And these jobs are not in her district.
• Amazon is NOT bringing job training centers, construction jobs, call center jobs, parks, manufacturing, and a whole host of other benefits to her district.
• Amazon is not bringing the untold millions of dollars in economic development wealth and increases income, sales, and property taxes to her district.

And yet she thinks she won?! How do you even begin arguing with such perverted and nonsensical logic like this? Twitter users, as usual, were brutally honest and correct in tearing up:

• “I’m thanking her! Amazon is going up in my town instead. We need the jobs!”
• “You realize you still cost your own district tens of thousands of jobs, right? And since Amazon isn’t building you also cost the city billions in revenue.” 
• “This is such an odd and sad victory lap. Lol.”
• “She caused a 25,000 job expansion in NY to go to 1,500 jobs in a rented space.” 

And she votes on legislation that affects us all. Idiocy.

3) Speaking of idiocy Democratic candidate Peter Buttigieg was throwing around some nonsensical words also:

• Some pastor, William Barber, was recently preaching that American citizens should not hold a grudge against illegal immigrants since these illegal immigrants were simply returning to their original homeland, land that the U.S. long ago stole from Mexico.
• Specifically: “We call people illegal aliens. Why can’t we just own in America that some of the people that are trying to come from Mexico here are coming back to land we stole? And the reason we took the land is because people wanted to keep their slaves?”
• Obviously the pastor is free to have and spout his own opinion, no one is disputing that.
• But to try and tie western expansion to the retention of slavery and to say that reason from over 150 years ago justifies unimpeded immigration into this country today is ridiculous on all levels.

Stupid stuff but according to news reports, Buttigieg sat in on the sermon and continually nodded in agreement, that “stolen land” from the 1800s justifies unrestricted immigration into this country today and even proposes that these illegal immigrants are somehow entitled to the this land within our boundaries.

This inspired applause from the congregation and agreement from Buttigieg. Which is stupid on many fronts for him as a national candidate. I doubt that the majority of Americans agree with this position of the pastor and Buttigieg, something you do not want to do if you are running for President. I think most would agree that Buttigieg wouid be seen as pandering to a vocal and very small minority audience that would be overwhelmed by others outside of this minority in an election. These views were voiced by some vocal Twitter users:

• “Oh great. First reparations, now return land (states) to Mexico? Which ones, LA and Texas ? Maybe LA won’t mind but I think Texans will have something to say about that,” said one user.
• “Let’s give away America in the name of tolerance.” 
• “So Spanish Empire descendants leaving land they conquered from Aztecs in Mexico and coming to California illegally are justified in that they are reclaiming land they stole from the Native Americans before it was stolen from them by descendants of British colonists. Seems legit.” 

Bitching and moaning about what happened hundreds of years ago is an exercise in futility since it does not matter today. Rather than have a mature, adult discussion and action plan of how to fix immigration today that protects our borders, protects Americans’ safety, but is humane and reason to outsiders is not going to happen when politicians like Buttigieg pander to every minority faction with a gripe without proposing real solutions.

That will do it for today: more pandering by a politician, more alleged criminal actions by a politician and more stupidity from our favorite gaffe machine from Queens, New York.

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

December, 2019, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Kamala Does Not Get Democracy, Another American Dies Because of "Sanctuaries" and San Francisco Is Still A Cesspool,

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

Let’s get started:

1) We have often talked about how local city politicians have turned the once beautiful city of San Francisco into a cesspool. It is a city no where it is not illegal to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in broad daylight on city streets. It is a city where the homeless population has grown to almost 30,000 with no solution in sight on how to fix any of these problems.

Journalist John Stossell recently did a film documentary on the deteriorating city conditions. His report included the following random yet sad observations and quotes from those in the know about the downfall of a great American city:

• Stossell came away from his investigation with the impression that San Francisco is now the slum by the bay.
• The city found it necessary to create a permanent maintenance staff, “Poop Patrol,” that goes around the city on a daily basis to scoop up human defecation from the city’s streets.
• Stossell quotes an urban planner in his reporting: “One urban planner told me, “I just returned from the Tenderloin (a section of San Francisco). It’s worse than slums of India, Haiti, Africa!””
• Stossell’s on site reporting from the city caused him to compare the living conditions in the streets to slums he has seen firsthand in Haiti and India.
• Quoting one local resident: “There’s shit everywhere. It’s just a mess out here.”
• A lot of the thousands of homeless on the streets are victims of mental illness but San Francisco authorities mostly leave the mentally ill on the streets to fend for themselves.
• In 2015, there were 60,491 formal complaints to the police about vagrancy, aggressive panhandling, and going to the bathroom in public and yet only 125 people out of the over 60,000 complaints were ever arrested.
• On resident told Stossell: “It’s nasty seeing people shoot up -- right in front of you. Police don’t do anything about it! They’ll get somebody for drinking a beer but walk right past people using needles.”
• Crime has also risen significantly with 85 cars broken into on a daily basis throughout the city.
• Although the homeless problem is reaching crisis proportions in the city, for decades politicians have tried, and failed, to fix the problem: current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein was once mayor of the city and she once proudly announced that she was putting the homeless in hotels: “A thousand units, right here in the Tenderloin!” It did not resolve the problem.
• Current California governor Gavin Newsom was mayor of the city when he boasted that “We have already moved 6,860 human beings.” It did not resolve the problem.
• In 2018, former city mayor Mayor Mark Farrell proclaimed, “We need to fund programs like Homeward Bound.” It did not resolve the problem.
• Stossel points out that strict and sometimes idiotic zoning laws and regulations make it impossible for a developer to build low income and moderate income housing which contributes to the homeless crisis.
• As an example: “For years, developer John Dennis has been trying to convert an old meatpacking plant into an apartment building -- but it has taken him four years just to get permission to build. “And all that time, we’re paying property taxes and paying for maintenance. I will do no more projects in San Francisco.””

Just another example of politicians that make bold promises that always end up being unable to resolve any issue of any kind. Decades and billions of dollars are wasted and in the case of San Francisco, the situation just got worse. Insanity.

Stossell’s entire video reporting can be viewed at:

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/john-stossel-san-francisco-has-become-the-slum-by-the-bay-bad-laws-cause-citys-homeless-crisis

2) We have often discussed the reality that politicians in Washington are so out of touch with reality and life outside of their lavish and exclusive lifestyles inside the Beltway. For example, we once reported that, “Congresswoman, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell who issued the following insane observation: Illegal immigration is “really not affecting American people.””

That of course is an inane, so out of touch observation and perception of reality. Every year thousands of American citizens are killed, raped, or robbed by illegal immigrant criminals. I am pretty sure that the victims and families of victims would disagree quite strongly with her idiocy. 

And even those not directly affected by violent criminal acts by illegal immigrants, end up paying over $100 billion a year to handle our illegal immigration crisis, from detention centers, to law enforcement, to housing, to food stamps, to crime, to funding pregnancies of illegal immigrants. Recent Department of Justice statistics showed that 64% of Federal criminal arrests are of non-citizens, most of which are likely illegal immigrants. I am sure that the rapes, murders, robberies and other crimes these 64% committed did affect a lot of American people.

To that list of American citizen victims that the Congresswoman claims do not exist, we add another victim in a sad piece of irony:

• Sean Buchanan had been a long time advocate for illegal immigrants.
• He had often cited Trump’s position on illegal immigration as racist and compared Trump to Hitler.
• Sadly, Mr. Buchanan’s life came to an end when he was driving his motorcycle on a Colorado highway and illegal immigrant Miguel Ramirez Valiente drove into Mr. Buchanan’s lane and killed the father of five.
• Valiente had avoided deportation for being here illegally because he was hiding in a so-called “sanctuary church.”
• Valiente was arrested and charged with reckless driving and driving with a revoked license.
• ABC News Channel 7 Denver interviewed a close acquaintance of Valiente who claimed that he was “an alcoholic and an abuser.” 
• He had previously been arrested for reckless endangerment in 2011 and domestic violence in 2016. 

Again, a sad, tragic story for his family. But just another example to show how Congresswoman Mucarsel-Powell is clueless when it comes to understanding what is really going on in the country. And if you cannot understand the reality of a problem you have no chance of resolving that problem. And Congress has shown many times how inept it is when it comes to creating a viable and SAFE immigration plan for the country.

3) Kamala Harris is a U.S. Senator from California. Up until the past week or so she was also a Democratic Candidate for President. She is now a failed Democratic candidate for President since she has shut down her effort due to lack of funds and more importantly, a lack of a cohesive plan for the country that resonated with any type of American. 

Now, Kamala Harris is also a black woman. Thus, as expected, many liberals are attributing her failed campaign to the standard liberal boogeymen, racism and sexism and not the fact that she failed miserably to connect with the country.

And maybe one reason she did not connect is that even though she is a Senator, she has a very ignorant grasp of what it means to live in a free country. At a recent political gathering she discussed the high cost of healthcare in this country, a real issue that affects millions of Americans. That discussion is a good thing.

Unfortunately, her plan to attack the high costs makes her look more like a Soviet dictator than someone in Congress who has promised to defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights along with our freedom. She promised the crowd that if drug companies did not reduce the cost of drugs she would take drastic, totalitarian action: “I will snatch their patent. So that we will take over. And yes we can do that. Yes, Yes, we can do that. Yes, we can do that. It’s a question of if you have the will to do it. I have the will to do it.” “We” in this case is the government and the politicians that operate it.

Uh, no Kamala, you can't do that. And if you tried you would be destroying the very fabric of this country, leading the government to forcibly take anything you own, anything you have developed, anything that you invested in at the whim of some politician who does not understand democracy. Charge too much for drugs, we will confiscate your proprietary patents that you probably invested millions of dollars to create. Charge too much for food, will confiscate your farm and operate it as a government bureaucracy. Charge too much for gasoline, we will confiscate your refineries.

You get the idea, the government, which is really nothing more than a set of usually lame and ignorant politicians, cannot go around stealing private property in whatever form it is in. For a potential Presidential candidate to think that it is okay is very, very scary. Also, everytime that has been done, government confiscation, form the old Soviet Union to current Venezuela, the results have been a catastrophic decline in the quality of life for citizens since as we all know, government stinks at doing anything efficient and effective.

So today we learned that: A Senator and Presidential candidate has no idea what living in a democracy and a free country entails, a Congresswoman has no clue how illegal immigration often violently affects Americans, and San Francisco liberal politicians STILL have no idea how to operate a major city, turning it a public cesspool and illegal drug shooting gallery. 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

December, 2019, Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Elizabeth Warren's Horrible Priorities and New Jersey Going Bankrupt

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) Consider some of the major issues facing the country today:

• Social Security and Medicare are fast approaching fiscal insolvency with over $80 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.
• Tens of thousands of Americans die from drug addiction related causes every year.
• Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling.
• Every day thousands of American kids are abused and often killed by their abusers.
• Our public education system is generally a failure.
• Millions of Americans are homeless and/or hungry every day.
• The world is a very dangerous place, from the Middle East to Russia to China to North Korea.

These problems will likely affect just about every American at some point in time. But what is Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren all excited about these days:

• Long, long ago, American soldiers massacred hundreds of native American women and children in what is historically called the massacre at Wounded Knee.
• This was certainly a heinous crime against humanity and probably 20 soldiers should not have gotten the Medal of Honor for committing such atrocities.
• In fact, we would probably agree with Warren’s assessment of the tragedy: “The horrifying acts of violence against hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee should be condemned.” 
• But this event happened well over a hundred years ago, anyone who was alive when it happened is dead.
• And yet given this timeline reality and the fact there are so many other pressing issues facing current day Americans,, Warren is wasting everyone’s time by writing and introducing the “Remove The Stain Act” legislation.
• This legislation would revoke the Medals of Honor of 20 U.S. soldiers who participated in the slaughter.
• And she is not the only member of Congress wasting everyone’s time since a Democratic Congressman in the House has introduced a similar bill.
• A press release from her office showed how pompous and self important this effort is: “The horrifying acts of violence against hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee should be condemned, not celebrated with Medals of Honor. The Remove the Stain Act acknowledges a profoundly shameful event in U.S. history, and that’s why I’m joining my House colleagues in this effort to advance justice and take a step toward righting wrongs against Native peoples.”

Again, this was a terrible chapter in American history. But Congress already formally apologized for it back in 1990. Nobody remotely involved in the event is alive today. It will not bring back the dead or embarrass those whose medals are revoked. And it certainly will not positively impact the major issues of our time listed above.

What it is is simply another example that people in Congress have no idea how to fix the real issues of our times and go about wasting their time and our taxpayer dollars on issues that will have an infinitesimal impact on the vast majority of Americans, especially those that are homeless, hungry, drug addicted and in need. A waste of time.

2) We have often shown and proven how either Illinois, California, or my original home state of New Jersey will be the first U.S. state to go into bankruptcy. Their politicians have overspent way beyond the state government’s ability to eventually pay for all of the fiscal liabilities those politicians have incurred. 

As a result, these states have entered into a financial death spiral: as more and more liabilities become due, the state politicians have to raise taxes. And as they raise taxes, more and more residents and businesses leave the state to avoid the high taxes which results in a state tax revenue shortfall which results in higher taxes and more people leaving and the death spiral is in full force.

We recently came across a 2017 analysis by a gentleman named Dan Mitchell who wrote on October 15, 2017 that:

• His Article, “New Jersey’s Continuing Fiscal Decay” did a nice job summarizing how New Jersey politicians have sacrificed the state’s long term financial health for their own short term political gain.
• He points out that even back in 2017 the state had the highest property taxes in the country which caused many people, including myself, to leave the state for less expensive living conditions.
• He says those high taxes have to go up even higher to fund the state’s pension and health care costs for retired state government workers.
• Mr. Mitchell cites evidence that the state’s current set of politicians still did not get the death spiral concept explained above since in 2017 they were still clamoring for more money to be spent on education and the pension system which, of course, will drive up taxes.
• The state in 2017 contributed only $2.5 billion to the pension system where more than twice that much was needed from a future liability perspective which means the unfunded future liabilities will continue to grow.
• There had been past efforts to increase the taxation of millionaires living in the state but that tax was estimated to bring in only $600 million.
• And the state would probably never see anything close to that much since those millionaires at some point would just leave the state to avoid the heavier and heavier tax burden.
• When Maryland did such a tax play several years ago it found out the hard way that money and wealth walks: even though the state had raised the tax rate on millionaires they receive less tax revenue from millionaire despite the high tax rate due to millionaire migration out of the state.

So even when faced with a mountain of debt, politicians are too stupid to stop the spending. Their solution is always more taxes and not less government spending. As a result they keep increasing the future financial liabilities down the road and higher and higher tax levels. Eventually this entire mess will implode on itself and bankrupt the state. 

3) How close are states like New Jersey close to bankruptcy, given the inane and stupid financial and spending policies of their state politicians? Much closer than you or any of the inept politicians want to believe. Consider an example from the death spiral theory discussed above relative to a very rich FORMER New Jersey resident:

• According to New York Times article, David Tepper is a billionaire hedge fund manager.
• He lived in New Jersey for 20 years where the top state income tax rate is 8.97%.
• Several years ago he moved himself and his hedge fund company, Appaloosa Management, to Miami, Florida.
• Florida has no state income tax so right off the bat he saved himself from paying 8.97% of his income to the state government of New Jersey.
• Tax experts cited by the Times estimate that New Jersey lost hundreds of millions of dollars a year in taxes from just Tepper’s move.
• If we assume, for illustration purposes, that the state lost $200 million a year from Tepper’s move, and that the income tax revenue for the state in 2019 is $16.2 billion as reported in the state budget, than Tepper cost the state 1.2% of its income tax revenue stream.
• That is a lot of state income tax money to lose to a SINGLE taxpayer and this reduction is year in and year out, not just a one time loss.
• If only ten billionaires leave the state, than possibly 10-15% of the state’s income tax stream is lost.
• And since politicians never cut spending, they need to raise taxes to cover this 10-15% shortfall and the death spiral has begun as the higher taxes drive out more and more wealthier taxpayers.
• In fact, the How Money Walks website, a fabulous website for looking at state level financial death spirals, estimate that from 1992 to 2016, a 25 year period, New Jersey lost $18.3 billion in adjusted gross income to just the state of Florida and this was before Tepper left for Florida.
• Overall, New Jersey lost a whopping $35 billion to all other states on a net basis.

Such, arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity of the state’s politicians. Their fiscal irresponsibility is almost criminal. And it will drive any number of states like New Jersey into bankruptcy, as Mr. Mitchell explains: “…states with the highest tax rates on the rich are growing increasingly dependent on a smaller group of super earners for tax revenue. In New York, California, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey, the top 1 percent pay a third or more of total income taxes. Now a handful of billionaires or even a single individual like Mr. Tepper can have a noticeable impact on state revenues and budgets. …Some academic research shows that high taxes are chasing the rich to lower-tax states, and anecdotes of tax-fleeing billionaires abound. …In California, 5,745 taxpayers earning $5 million or more generated more than $10 billion of income taxes in 2013, or about 19 percent of the state’s total, according to state officials. “Any state that depends on income taxes is going to get sick whenever one of these guys gets a cold,” Mr. Sullivan said.”

It is sad that the states with the highest tax burdens, e.g. California, New Jersey, Illinois and Connecticut, are also in the worst fiscal shape because their politicians got drunk with spending. You would think that the state’s with the highest tax burdens would be the most financially stable. 

Back in the 1960s, New Jersey had no state income tax and no state sales tax and there was never any talk of budget shortfalls or going bankrupt. The state now has the highest property taxes in the land, high income tax rates, and a hefty sales tax and bankruptcy is on the horizon. You cannot make up this insanity.

That will get us a good start on this month’s political class insanity. Elizabeth Warren focused on fixing a non-problem from over a hundred years ago rather than focusing on fixing today’s problems and politicians continue to being totally inept and stupid when it comes to basic economic and fiscal theory and discipline.

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

Wastebook 2019 - The Washington Wasteful and Stupid Spending Machine Marches on

For years, various Republican Senators have published an annual report on wasteful spending by the Federal government. That’s the good news. The bad news is that these annual disgraces have done nothing to deter Washington politicians and bureaucrats from continuing to waste our hard earned tax dollars on nonsensical programs and projects.

The 2019 “Wastebook” has recently been published. As you read just a very, very small sample of the wasteful spending outlined below, keep in mind the following realities:

• The country is rapidly heading towards a whopping $23 TRILLION national debt, a lot of which was driven by stupid projects like the ones listed below.
• These program examples below serve very few Americans and in some cases serve no Americans at all.
• Social Security and Medicare are hurtling towards fiscal collapse, wouldn’t the money wasted below be better spent to help fix these programs that affect tens of millions of Americans?
• Millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, drug addicted and facing other crises, wouldn’t the money wasted below be better spent to help these Americans in need?

Keep these points in mind as we review seven incredible wastes of taxpayer money which help no American in need and fix none of the Federal government’s financial crises:

1) Washington sent $708,466 to England to study how zebrafish react once they are addicted to nicotine. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded a five year project “that involves actively addicting its subjects, zebrafish, to nicotine.” The objective of the study was supposed to “identify genes affecting vulnerability to addiction by screening lines of mutagenized zebrafish for core behaviors associated with addiction: sensitivity to drug reward and impulsivity.”

How matter how fancy you write the objective it is still a waste of tax dollars. Plus, even if you were going to waste over $700,000 on stupid research at least the NIH could have done was waste it on American scientists doing stupid research and not pay foreign scientists doing stupid research.

2) The State Department bought a statue created by Bob Dylan for $84,375 that was displayed at the U.S. embassy in Mozambique. Seriously? An $84,000 statue to be displayed thousands and thousands of miles away in a third world country? Who came up with this stupid idea and worse, who approved it? Bob Dylan is an American rock and roll star. He is not a famous sculptor who could justify such a purchase and I would bet that just about every citizen of Mozambique has no idea who Bob Dylan is.

3) But the NIH was not done wasting our money. It wasted a whopping $4,658,865 to study the connection between drinking alcohol and ending up in the local hospital emergency room. Heck, I you could have answered this “research” question for far less money: the more alcohol you drink, the higher the probability you will be ending up in an emergency room.

Back in college, myself and others conducted this experiment many times using our own beer money. And yes, drinking a lot of alcohol leads to stupid decisions which sometimes gets you hurt. But according to the NIH report: “Most recently, the researchers have pursued three goals. The first includes looking at alcohol use in the six hours before an injury, as well as the type of injury that brought patients to the ER, such as “traffic [accidents], falls … near drowning,” etc., in consideration of several factors in different countries, including legal restrictions on alcohol. Second, they are “estimat[ing] relative risk (RR) of injury related to alcohol consumption volume (dose-response relationship) by cause of injury,”. Lastly, they are “estimat[ing] alcohol attributable fraction (AAF) by cause of injury…” 

In layman’s terms: are you more likely to hurt yourself if you drink alcohol? Of course you are. And even more disgusting is that some of that $4 million was spent in foreign lands (“several factors in different countries”) getting foreigners drunk. The least they could have done is keep the drinking domestic.

4) The State Department spent $300,000 on something called the “Debates and Model U.N. Competitions in Afghanistan.” I have no idea what these debates are but come on, who thinks that these debates are necessary? Plus, the grant stated that the debates had to be conducted in English in Afghanistan where far less than 10% of the population speaks English. 

5) Even though some would claim that the D.C. metro subway system is the best in the country, those who ride it everyday, including my relatives, would strongly disagree with that statement. Flooding, service outages, fires, and often massive delays are a regular part of the Metro experience.

And to reward those operating such an inept system the Washington politicians gave the Metro $153 million this past year. If the system is so great, let the riders of the system pay to cover its operating costs. No need to burden taxpayers form Montana, Kansas, or anywhere else to pay for the operations of the local D.C. Metro.

6) The American taxpayer spent $33,921,175 to provide textbooks for Afghanistan students. Education is a great thing but should the American taxpayer be putting out over $33 million in a single year to educate students halfway around the world?

To add insult to injury, many of the textbooks never got out of the warehouse where they sat useless to any kid. Additionally, reports showed that the textbooks, used or sitting idle, were of the poorest quality from an education and physical quality perspective.

7) Not content to waste American taxpayer dollars in a failure to educate Afghani kids, the Washington bureaucracy spent $22 million trying to improve the education system in Egypt. Again, the basic question is WHY? Given the sad state of public education in this country, why didn’t those dollars stay in this country and fix our education system?

There you have it, just seven examples among the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars wasted every year by Washington. Consider a few alternative examples where this money could have actually benefited Americans:

• The above wasted dollars of just these seen examples add up to about $214 million.
• We have previously cited sources that estimated, on average, it costs about $2.80 to feed an American homeless person.
• Thus, the money wasted on the above seven projects could have provided over 73 million meals to American homeless and hungry citizens.
• If we assume that the average salary for an American teacher is $60,000 then the $55 million wasted on failed education efforts in Afghanistan and Egypt could have hired over 900 teachers for a year to help with our failing public schools.
• Since the average annual treatment for an opioid drug addict is about $6,500 a year, that $214 million could have treated about 33,000 Americans struggling with a drug addiction for a year.

You get the idea. So much could have been done for so many needy Americans instead of wasting $214 million on stupid science experiments, failed education programs around the world and other worthless efforts. This happens every year and still the American political class does nothing to stop the waste. They are too concerned with their own careers, their own greed, and their next election to really do the right thing for America and hard working American taxpayers.

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