Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Friday, April 17, 2020

April, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Insanity From Around The World

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) Today let’s stay away from the coronavirus political class insanity and look at the regular, run-of-the mill insanity from our politicians and politicians around the world. Let’s start today with some insane waste of taxpayer money in Worcester, Massachusetts:

The politicians in that city wanted to provide a new, minor league baseball park for a minor league baseball team.
The first insult to the citizens of that city was to use eminent domain to condemn and then seize the property of two small businesses for the ballpark.
They then put up a whopping $100 million of city taxpayer wealth to fund the construction of the ballpark.
The patrons of the new ballpark will be the top minor league team of the Boston Red Sox.
Keep in mind that the Red Sox are one of the wealthiest major league baseball teams in the world, annually paying just their major league players around $200 million a year in salaries.
And yet the politicians in Worcester decided that they needed to put forth $100 million in city funds to lure the Red Sox minor league team away from their current ballpark in Rhode Island where that city’s politicians would only promise a whopping $38 million in stadium upgrades.
When the Worcester Business Journal asked 10 economists to evaluate the value of this investment, nine of the ten doubted the city would ever recoup its investment.
The lone dissenter of the ten just happened to come from Smith College and who had been hired by the city to justify this outrageous waste of taxpayer wealth.

The city of Worcester has just under 200,000 residents which means that each city resident, man, woman, and child theoretically put up $537 to fund the $100 million investment. Does anyone really think that those people will ever recoup their hypothetical $537 tax hit? They are all still going to have to pay for parking, hot dogs, tickets, etc.

They will never break even even though the $100 million went to support one of the richest team franchises in the world. How many more computers for the city schools could have been bought for $100 million? How many more teachers could have been hired for $100 million? How many city roads could have been fixed or improved for $100 million? Instead the city politicians gave millions of dollars to a billion dollar baseball team. Insane.

2) The following few pieces of insanity come from the April, 2020 issue of Reason magazine. First off, consider the “coincidence” that happened in the local government of Inglewood, California:

That city has a housing authority that has funding to subsidize the purchase of a first home for needy city residents.
Sounds like a decent program with good intentions.
Given that info, consider the backgrounds of a city employee, Jazmine Covington.
Ms. Covington worked for the city housing authority when the guidelines for the first time buyer housing subsidy program were being developed.
Her mother is the city’s acting budget manager.
And yet, given the background of these two folks, city government employees, guess who was the first person to get money from the housing authority to purchase her first home: none other than Jazmine Covington!
What a coincidence, a person who helped develop the guidelines and criteria for getting taxpayer money, the daughter of the city’s budget manager, she just so happened to get the first subsidy, again, what a coincidence.
The head of the housing authority, Roberto Chavez, tried his darndest to assure everyone that this selection of a city employee to get the first subsidy was totally kosher, no monkey business here: “There have been no violations of its policies nor special exceptions made for any entrant including Ms. Covington."
And further, the selection of Ms. Covington was via a lottery process and she just so happened to have the lottery pick her, what are the odds?

The bigger question, Mr. Chavez, is why she was in the lottery in the first place? I would think that a city employee is probably paid decently, more than most other lower income people who were probably more deserving and more in need of housing support. This could all be legit but given American politicians' propensity to take care of themselves and their friends and family first, I have my doubts.

3) Political class insanity is not just an American trait. Consider this insanity from Australia:

One would think that any investment in fire fighting in a city or other government entity would be solely to provide the most up to date and needed fire fighting equipment to fight fires.
I mean that is why fire departments exist, to protect the lives and property of the taxpayers who pay the taxes to staff, equip, and support their fire fighting capability.
That is not quite true in the state of Western Australia.
You see, they have a rule that says that if the value of any public building is to be over $2 million, then 1% of that cost must be diverted to buying and displaying works of art in that building.
Yes, rather than buy new and/or better equipment, some fire stations in that state have had to spend taxpayer money to buy art to be displayed in their fire stations.

To hell with saving lives, have you seen that wonderful oil painting next to the fire truck? Too insane to believe sometimes.

4) Sometimes the first act of political class insanity leads to subsequent, even more insane acts of insanity to try and fix the first act. Such is the case in France:

Apparently in France, only a doctor can pronounce someone officially dead.
This act cannot be done by a coroner, pathologist, nurse, or anyone else.
In fact, a dead body cannot be moved until a real doctor certifies them as dead.
The problem in France is that there is a continually shrinking pool of doctors.
This has led to a growing problem, especially in rural areas, that if someone dies at home, the family sometimes has to wait days for a doctor to actually come by and actually make the pronouncement of death.
Rather than logically fix the problem, i.e. allow other trained and certified personnel to make the death pronouncement so that dead bodies do not stay around a family home for days, the brilliance of the French political class shown through.
The politicians in a town passed a law, according to the New York Times, that made it illegal to die at home.

Somehow dictating where one could be allowed to die was going to solve this idiocy.

You cannot make this stuff up: a local government dictating where you can die, spending valuable firefighting taxpayer money on works of art, nepotism in housing subsidies, and wasting $100 million on a minor league baseball team, uprooting upstanding small businesses in the process. Thus, as you can see, political class insanity rages on even during the days of the coronavirus insanity.

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, April 15, 2020

April, 2020, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Politicians Continue to Practice "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" and CNN Turns To Hollywood For Expert Medical Advice

1) We have already discussed how at least three U.S. Senators made suspicious stock share moves about the time they were receiving delicate and secret information about the coronavirus, a virus that shortly afterwards caused the stock market to tank dramatically. Obviously the suspicion of insider trading on secret government information arose almost immediately, forcing the Senators to try and tell us that it was all a simple coincidence that they were receiving secret and sensitive market information at the same time they were making strategic moves in their stock portfolios.

This reminded us of the old saying, “do as we say, not as we do.” Ordinary people go to jail for insider trading but apparently that rule does not apply to Washington insiders. And there is no bigger insider than Nancy Pelosi and now it appears she might also have been doing a little insider trading, via her husband, relative to the coronavirus crisis, as reported by Barron’s magazine:

Her husband, Paul Pelosi, according to Barron’s, made some very specific stock purchases late in February just as the stock market began tanking as a result of the coronavirus.
And although the purchases may not have been great financial winners, they are somewhat suspicious relative to what they were and the timing.
He invested a whopping $3.3 million in two established technology firms and a relatively new technology firm that just so happens to make an app that allows workers to to chart and communicate remotely with each other, a function that has heightened need in the midst of everyone staying safe at home and thus, working at home.
His stock option investments were in Google, Microsoft, and Slack Technologies, the remote communications app.
The Barron’s report found no evidence that he had ever before invested in any of these companies, all of which could be logically expected to do better than the majority of stocks in this pandemic environment.
Slack is the only one of the three whose stock price is higher this year but Microsoft and Google have outperformed the rest of the S&P 500 during the crisis.
The Pelosis had also purchased stock in Amazon and Facebook in January, two other stocks that should do better during and after the crisis than the rest of the stocks in the world.

As always, all of this may just be a coincidence and Pelosi and her husband were not making stock portfolio adjustments based on insider government information that Pelosi surely had access to. But given that Pelosi has a history of using and managing insider information to make a stock killing, e.g. her VISA IPO windfall, and others inside the Beltway have used insider information during this current crisis to minimize losses or look for secret gains, it bears an investigation to how these people, once elected to Congress, become fabulously wealthy in a short amount of time, a level of wealth no supported by their government salaries.

2) As you know, we have all been asked to bite the bullet and stay home and sheltered as much as possible to help the country fight back the coronavirus. The vast, vast majority of Americans have done their civic duty to do just that, stay at home, off the streets, and away from other humans. It is not a fun thing to do but Americans are generally compassionate people who care about others.

The situation was no different in Alton, Illinois. The mayor there had done what mayors and governors across the country have done, closed bars and restaurants and asked everyone to stay at home for the common good. Which was fine but what was not so good is that shortly after he made the edict to stay home, his wife was busted and arrested partying at a crowded bar in Alton, a bar and party in violation of the stay at home edict. Again, when it comes to politicians, it is often do as I say, not do as I do...or in this case what my wife does. The story can be followed in more detail at the following link:

https://teapartyusa.org/illinois-mayor-orders-citizens-to-stay-at-home-but-then-police-find-his-wife/

3) We have often made the case that an unbiased, focused, non-political, and hardworking press is critical to living in a free country. We need journalists and news organizations that are fair, hard hitting, and live a professional life filled with integrity and always seeking the truth. Or as someone once said something to the effect that journalism is all about correctness, context, clarity and communication. Those that practice pure journalism keep those in charge in line with their reporting that provides context to their correctness in a story that is explained and communicated with clarity.

Of course, the journalism profession and those that practice journalism in this country today do very little of the above. The mainstream media has devolved into political camps where news reporting is biased, intentionally taken out of context, and not communicated in a fair and balanced manner.

Probably the worst purveyors of this false journalism has been CNN. This entity has gone from being a beacon of truth in the news industry to a hack organization whose biased reporting is so obvious that their viewership has plummeted over the past few years.

They currently rank viewership wise far behind other cable news and far below a multitude of other cable shows including the Food Channel and the Hallmark channel. In other words, rather than spend time watching the news from CNN more and more people are turning off their TVs to CNN and are watching some mushy love story movie or Cupcake Wars.

They have done themselves any favors with their coverage of the coronavirus crisis. Rather than bringing in smart and experienced people in the fields related to the crisis they have decided that bringing in celebrities to talk about the crisis is a good journalistic move:

Recently they brought in actor Sean Penn to discuss the coronavirus crisis, not an epidemiologist, not a medical doctor, not a medical researcher, Sean frigging Penn, an actor who I don't even think has ever even played a doctor in the movies.
They then got a tiny bit better when they brought in screenwriter Scott Burns to discuss the virus.
Yes, Scott Burns did write the screenplay for the movie, Contagion, a movie about a virus type outbreak, but he is still only a screenwriter.
And finally, when the network did a town hall segment on the virus they brought in, not a famous doctor or researcher, they brought in famous basketball legend Magic Johnson who has fortunately survived the AIDS virus, a virus that has absolutely nothing to do with the current coronavirus and absolutely nothing to do with medical knowledge.

If a news organization cannot take itself seriously, trying to pass off an actor, screenwriter, and a basketball legend as people who somehow have something constructive to add to the coronavirus crisis then there is no reason for us to take them seriously.

And when you cannot take a large news organization seriously or consider them truthful and worth you time watching, then democracy and freedom eventually suffer.

That will do it for today’s insanity: more hypocrisy from the American political class, from Alton, Illinois to Washington DC and the collapse of integrity and truth within the journalism in this country continues to endanger our democracy and freedoms.

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

Sunday, April 12, 2020

April, 2020, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Joe Biden Still Talking Gibberish, The FBI Goes Lawless Rogue,and The WHO Proposes the End Of Freedom

1) We have given many examples of why Joe Biden is not cognitively fit to be President of the United States, He misstates facts, he forgets where he is, he makes up history that never happened, and he has trouble stringing together coherent sentences. We have expressed sympathy for his cognitive decline, insisting that those who prop him up and force him to undergo the rigors of running for office are encouraging a form of elder abuse.

He recently demonstrated this type of behavior again:

The coronavirus crisis has been compared to the massive 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 that wiped out a large percentage of the world’s population.
History and current references to the epidemic are always clear that it was in 1918.
But apparently Biden is having a tough time comprehending the simple facts around this deadly virus, recently stating that, “We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and … correct the public health.”

Not only did he not get the date of the Spanish Flu right, I have no idea what he is saying, it is gibberish. Again, those around him that push him forward for a run for the Presidency are doing his health a great disservice and again, perpetrating a form of elder abuse.

2) The FBI is supposed to be an organization of highest integrity, the national law enforcement force that should be protecting the lives, property, and rights of every American citizen. But recent audit findings by Department of Justice Inspector General Micheal Horowitz continue to show how out of control, how lawless, and how dangerous the FBI was to basic American rights when James Comey was running the operation:

FISA is a Federal Justice Department process that is basically a secret court that issues warrants and subpoenas on very secret and dangerous suspected criminal activity.
Comey’s FBI went through the FISA secret court process a number of times to get warrants to spy on the Trump Presidential campaign.
Horowitz had already found and published a bunch of irregularities and criminal activity regarding the Trump campaign, specifically Carter Page, within that campaign.
Horowitz went back through 29 other FISA applications and found that every single one of those applications had significant, shady problems.
He found that the FBI abused its power and scope of jurisdiction by forging paperwork and outright lying when they claimed on the FISA applications that the information they were basing the applications on had been verified to be correct even though they had not done the verification or lied about the verification.
The verifications are supposed to be “scrupulously accurate” on all facts within all FISA applications.
In 4 of the 29 applications that Horowtiz examined the verifications process was not even done, never mind be done under incorrect or false pretenses.
The other 25 applications all had “apparent errors or inadequately supported facts.”

Unbelievable. The leading law enforcement entity in the country was in effect breaking the law over and over to get the FISA warrants and access they wanted, truth and integrity be damned. When the government and its law enforcement functions are allowed to operate outside of the law and limits set by Congress, then democracy and freedom is in extreme danger.

3) We supposedly live in a free country, a country where government interference in our lives is kept to a minimum. Now, you can make the argument quite easily that our freedoms have eroded over time as the American political class has expanded the functions of government and in the process interfered more and more in our lives from a privacy, financial, and freedom perspective. But you can probably also make the case that we are still probably one of the freest nations in the world although the trend is not good.

But now a high ranking executive within the World Health Organization, someone who is not even an American, is suggesting a massive intrusive into our lives and our freedom:

Keep in mind that the World Health Organization, WHO, has been at the forefront of fighting the coronavirus and has been doing an incredibly bad job in that role so their credibility is not high at this point in time.
Dr. Michael Ryan is the executive director of the WHO’s emergency program entity.
Showing no regard for freedom, privacy, property rights, and human decency, he recently suggested that government should invade people’s homes and remove anyone within that home that has the coronavirus.
Specifically: “In most parts of the world, due to lockdown, most of the transmission that’s actually happening in many countries now is happening in the household at family level. In some senses, transmission has been taken off the streets and pushed back into family units. Now, we need to go and look in families to find those people who may be sick and remove them and isolate them in a safe and dignified manner.”
First of all, invading someone’s home with Gestapo like tactics can never be done in a safe and dignified manner.
Second, the invasion of privacy of knowing someone in the house had the virus is overwhelming since I am assuming that if someone went to the doctor and was found to be sick, the doctor would have them admitted right away.
In the absence of a doctor’s visit and diagnosis, is Ryan proposing that the government and police go door to door, test those that live at a home, and then pull them out for isolation if they test positive? This would be nothing more than living in a dictatorship.

Look, the virus is bad. But the vast majority of people survive the infection. A large percentage of people get the virus but exhibit no symptoms. And a large percentage of people never get the virus at all. To sacrifice our freedoms, to allow government authorities to enter our homes and take people away for a very small percentage of the population would be the end of freedom in this country.

History shows us that once liberty is breached a single time, the second time government finds it a lot easier to breach and we eventually slide down the slippery slope to tyranny. If Ryan and the WHO had done their job properly at the beginning he would not be proposing such dangerous nonsense now.

That will do it for today’s insanity: Joe Biden still out of touch, the corruption and lawlessness of the FBI, and the trampling of freedom as proposed by the WHO.

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

Friday, April 10, 2020

April, 2020, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Biden Is Still Clueless, The Mayor of Chicago Is Both Vain and Dangerous, and Pelosi's Priorities Are Still Repugnant

1) Over the past few months we have many times pointed out the stupid, inane, and sad things that Joe Biden has said on the campaign trail. He wants to be President of the United States and yet he forgets facts, he makes up facts, he forgets where he is, he makes up false histories, etc.

It is very sad on two counts: first, he certainly appears to be having some serious cognitive problems and to prop him up and parade him around with these problems getting worse and worse is a form of elder abuse. Second, there is no way, given his recent incoherent and often antagonistic behavior, that he is fit or capable of being President.

Three of his better insane comments from recent appearances:

In South Carolina Biden claimed that he had personally negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement with Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping.
Unfortunately, Deng had been dead for 23 years when the Paris Climate Agreement came about.
Specifically, “I’m the guy that came back after meeting with Deng Xiaoping and making the case that I believe China would join if we put pressure on them.”
At the same gathering, Biden put forth the following statement regarding gun control: “Who in God’s name needs a hundred rounds in a bullet, in a clip, with a gun you have?”
I have no idea what that means as does every other human being.
But he wasn’t done with his incoherence: “Where I come from, you don’t get far unless you ask. My name’s Joe Biden. I’m a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. Look me over. If you like what you see, help out. If not, vote for the other Biden.”
Again, huh? He is running for the Presidency not the Senate and who is the “other” Biden?

Scary that this person has gotten this close to actually being a candidate for President.

2) We have often pointed out how societal norms and laws seem to be requirements for most of us but merely suggestions for the American politician. We all go to jail for insider trading but as we have pointed out over the years, American politicians get rich off of insider trading with the knowledge of secret government information but never go to jail. Recently, New York Mayor de Blasio decided that it was okay for him to go to the gym in the midst of the coronavirus crisis even though his administration had cut off gym access for every one of his constituents.

And this privilege gene was again on display recently in Chicago:

Despite having placed a “safer at home” edict on the Chicago city residents, the mayor decided that she really needed to look her best for the news cameras.
Thus, even though her orders had shut down beauty parlors across Chicago for ordinary folks, she exempted herself from her own order to go to a beauty parlor and get her hair cut.
Even worse, pictures that arose out of her violation of the safer at home order showed that no masks were used to minimize the chance of infection of herself and those with her when she got a haircut.
She tried to justify her actions and really just dug a deeper hole for herself: “I’m in the public every day. And candidly, my hair was not looking the way it did. I thought maybe I’d do it myself, but I knew that would be disaster.”
In other words, I should look good but the hell with the rest of you.
She then, like a good politician, tried to change the topic: “But I think what really people want to talk about is, we’re talking about people dying here. We’re talking about significant health disparities. I think that’s what people care most about.”

This is a prime example of what true leadership DOES NOT look like. Pompous condescending, arrogant, and insulting, those words do not begin to capture the hypocrisy that is the American political class.

3) We have touched on this subject before but let’s revisit it again with more data. Nancy Pelosi showed her disregard and basic non-caring attitude regarding Americans suffering from the coronavirus crisis by holding up and then holding hostage the economic stimulus legislation that was so badly needed to support American families and business.

Rather than put together a clean bill with no frills and wasteful spending in order to get the stimulus going as fast as possible, she roadblocked the legislation until she got her wasteful and useless priorities in the bill. Priorities that had nothing to do with the healthcare and economic crises facing Americans.

It is now coming out what BS went into and what delayed the aid to Americans in need:

$10.8 billion for African agencies, agencies that have nothing to do with Americans in need.
$25 million for the Kennedy Center in Washington DC so that Washington politicians could still go to the opera and plays even though the board of directors of the Center consists of very rich people that could have easily coughed up the $25 million for a priority that had nothing to do with Americans in need. [Note: despite getting $25 million in free taxpayer money the Center still fired all of its employees making the job situation in America even worse.]
Sunscreen manufacturers are mentioned 49 times in the legislation and also got a boatload of money which had nothing to do with Americans in need.
Pelosi made sure that she and her House of Representative friends got something out of the bill with an additional $25 million going to them for salaries and other expenses.
The Post Office also got bailout money because they cannot run a profitable delivery business like UPS and FedEx does, a bailout that has nothing to do with Americans in need.

I am sure there are dozens if not hundreds of other things that Pelosi forced into the legislation, holding it hostage and delaying relief to millions of Americans. Her priorities and attitude are despicable, repugnant, and evil.

So, in summary: Biden is clueless, the mayor of Chicago is vain and a danger to others, and Pelosi is, as we just said, despicable, repugnant, and evil. Insanity all around.

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

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

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Friday, April 17, 2020

April, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Insanity From Around The World

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

April, 2020, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Politicians Continue to Practice "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" and CNN Turns To Hollywood For Expert Medical Advice

Sunday, April 12, 2020

April, 2020, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Joe Biden Still Talking Gibberish, The FBI Goes Lawless Rogue,and The WHO Proposes the End Of Freedom

Friday, April 10, 2020

April, 2020, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Biden Is Still Clueless, The Mayor of Chicago Is Both Vain and Dangerous, and Pelosi's Priorities Are Still Repugnant

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