Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country.
Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.
Lately it seems like the insanity is getting more frequent and more intense as politicians continue to fail us all. Let’s look at just for of the latest examples of political class insanity:
1)We have often talked about the shooting gallery that is the city of Chicago, where dozens of people are shot every week in an endless stream of violence. And the local political class has no idea how to stop the crime, stop the violence, and stop the homicides.
But Chicago is not the only major U.S. city, almost all of which are run by liberals and Democrats, with a violence problem and which has a local political class which has no idea how to stop it:
Washington D.C. recently hosted its 100th homicide of the year, less than half way through the year.
It has been 20 years since this many murders happened this quickly in the District.
According to a D.C. police press release: “In 2022, the 100th homicide was recorded on June 24. In 2021, the date was July 10. Over the past 10 years, the average date that we have reached this grim marker is October 25.”
According to Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton: “This increase in crime is due to D.C. Council’s implementation of misguided ‘police reform’ legislation. The Council’s actions have had a chilling effect on professional and responsible policing and caused over 1,200 police officers to leave the agency.”
And yet in light of this violence, the D.C. town council actually put forth legislation to weaken criminal penalties for carjacking and homicide, indicating that they still do not have a clue to what is going on and how they are endangering their citizens’ lives.
Fortunately, Congress overruled and struck down the legislation, something they have the power to do.
All of which has resulted in police resignations, which are outpacing retirements, and recruiting new police officers has been very very difficult.
The fact that the U.S. District Attorney for D.C. declined to prosecute 67% of the people arrested by police in the District may account for the police staffing crisis: why bother arresting perps when the chances they will be prosecuted is so low?
As we have said so many times before, a basic, basic function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the people they govern. No matter how well they execute other functions, if they cannot protect their citizens they are failures as political leaders. And much like Chicago, the politicians in D.C. continue to be abject failures.
2)We have often discussed and have been tracking the migration patterns of residents and businesses in the country. It has become quite obvious, and is becoming more and more obvious every day, that people are leaving high tax, high crime, and low quality of life cities and states and heading towards other areas of the country where they enjoy much more freedom to live their lives they way the want: lower taxation, lower government regulations, lower crime, etc.
The cities that are losing residents and business at an ever increasing rate include Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and a few others. Their home states, including California, New York. Illinois, and New Jersey, are in the same boat. This out migration causes the city and state tax bases to shrink which results in lower tax revenue for the government which raises tax rates to make up the difference which causes more residents and businesses to leave and the financial death spiral is in place.
And this situation is not helped when a member of the local political class actually comes out and encourages citizens to flee their state, given the oppression and idiocy they see happening:
A California politician who is a senator in the state legislature is actually encouraging Californians to “flee” the state based on recent legislation that was passed by the state government.
The legislation would hold parents guilty of child abuse if they did not “affirm” their kid’s personal gender identity.
In other words, politicians in the state now feel they have the power to dictate to parents how to raise their kids.
Senator Scott Wilk issued the warning relative to Assembly Bill 957 which says “a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child.”
In other words, child abuse now includes a parent not supporting a kid’s gender preference, and not doing so would be a violation of a kid’s health, safety, and welfare.
This issue could also help sway custody rights in a divorce if one parent decides to affirm their child’s gender preference while the other does not, a dangerous criteria for determining the best interests of a child.
According to Wilk: “In the past, when we’ve had these discussions, and I’ve seen parental rights atrophy, I’ve encouraged people to keep fighting. I’ve changed my mind on that — if you love your children, you need to flee California. You need to flee.”
Amd Wilk plans to take his own advice: “I love this state. I’m not going to stay in this state because it’s just too oppressive. I believe in freedom, and so I’m going to move to America when I leave the legislature.”
As we have always said, people naturally want to be free. Free to keep their hard earned wages, free of government regulation and now we can include the matter of being free from the government and its politicians dictating the gender of our kids. This so smacks of 1984 and the Communist Manifesto, two instances where the government overrules parental rights. Insanity.
3) Apparently it is not just sensible Americans that are moving out of high priced, high taxed government entities to places where they are free to keep their hard earned wages. Consider what the idiots in the Norwegian political class have done to their citizens from an over taxation perspective:
Apparently Norwegians who earn over the equivalent of $135,000 a year are classified as “rich” by the government.
Thus, they not only incur high income tax rates on their current year income but they are also assessed another tax, a wealth tax, of .85% on top of that current year income tax rate.
For example, if a “rich” Norwegian has a net worth of say $1 million, they would pay an additional tax of $8,500 on that wealth they have accumulated.
That is bad enough but the Norwegian political class is going to hike that wealth tax to 1.1% later this year.
And citizens that earn over $1.8 million are assessed an additional wealth tax of 1.3%.
Not unexpectedly, the rich Norwegians really do not like such heavy taxation.
According to news reports, 30 of the wealthiest Norwegians have simply packed up and fled the country to places where they will get to keep a much higher percentage of not only their income but also their accumulated wealth.
These 30 total more than the number of rich folk who have left the country in total over the past 13 years.
Thus, it appears the Norwegian government will end up with LESS tax revenue despite the higher tax rates since they now have a smaller tax base of rich people to lean on.
Most of the wealthy leaving Norway are settling in low tax Switzerland.
Norway’s richest man, Kjell Inge Røkke, recently moved to Lugano, Italy to escape his home country’s wealth tax increases.
As a result, Norway lost $16 million in taxes a year just from him: “This was not what I wanted, but the toughened and increased tax rules of the current government means that I, as the founder and responsible owner, have no choice.”
People just want to be free, whether it is here in the U.S. or in Norway. A few years ago the state government in Maryland decided to further stick it to their citizens that were earning over a million dollars a year via a higher state income tax rates. Within a few short years they were getting less tax revenue from the state’s millionaires even though they were assessing those millionaires at a higher tax rate. Many of the state's millionaires just moved to a lower taxed state, Maryland’s higher tax rates be damned.
In California, a state that we believe is one of the most likely states to go bankrupt first, an amazing 1% of the population accounts for a whopping 50% of the state’s income tax stream, making the state government very vulnerable to out-migration of the wealthiest state residents. And that is exactly what is happening as businesses and residents leave the state for more freedom with a strong migration out of Hollywood leading the way to less taxed environments (e.g. Mark Wahlberg, Scott Baio, Matthew McConaughey, Rob Schneider, etc.).
In almost all cases, the government does not have an under taxation problem, they always seem to have an overspending problem. And rather than fix their overspending problem, they continue to raise taxes which continues to erode their tax base which continues to reduce their revenue stream and eventually their financial house of cards collapses into bankruptcy.
That is enough insanity for today: high taxation rates make people move, whether in California or Norway, California politicians seize control of parents rights, and another liberal city and its politicians continue to fail at protecting their citizens’ lives.
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