Unfortunately, I have been thinking recently about the various political class topics and actions that have made me mad, sad, disappointed, or make me feel like we have all been had by our politicians. Their actions listed out below are seemingly unrelated except for the fact that if these situations and events are allowed to happen, there is that much less time and effort that is being spent on fixing the major issues facing the country today.
- According to a blurb in the July 16, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, a recent public opinion poll from the Marist Institute reported that 26% of Americans do not know that we as a nation won our independence from the English. Some respondents within this 26% cited France, China, Mexico, and others as the country we gained our independence from. This is both an indictment of our public education system and a threat to our freedom going forward if we have so many citizens that do not have even a basic knowledge of our history of freedom and liberty. Makes me sad to think of the trillions of taxpayer dollars we have spent on public education over the past few decades and this is the low value we received for our investment.
- An Associated Press article from July 23, 2010 reported that while the government was paying tens of billions of dollars to various financial institutions, those same institutions were paying out $1.6 billion in compensation to the institutions' executives that got those companies in trouble in the first place. Plus, the Obama administration will not try to recover any of that taxpayer money because the administration's pay czar thought shaming the financial institutions was punishment enough. Yeah, right. They were so ashamed that they all still cashed the checks. Makes me mad about how poorly constructed and how poorly executed the whole bailout/TARP process was and how unprepared the political class was once the financial situation deteriorated so quickly.
- Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the few people in Washington that knows how to analyze and solve a problem and who is not bashful of telling the truth, no matter how ugly it is, is being considered to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the latest financial regulatory overall law establishes. Regardless of what you may think of the law or Ms. Warner's ability, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby does not want Warren to head up the organization because she is "trying to change everything." Better we should change nothing and stay in the mess we are now? (The Week magazine - August 6, 2010 issue). Apparently, we have been had by the current set of Washington politicians, they do not want to move the country forward, they are content to keep it where it is.
- According to an article in the Washington Post, as summarized in The Week in the August 6, 2010 issue, 75% of the lobbyists who work for oil and gas companies previously worked for the Federal government, more than twice the rate than any other industry. The lobbyists for these oil and gas companies include eighteen former members of Congress and dozens of their former Congressional aides. Now, the BP oil spill might have still happened if government officials, both past and present, had not been so chummy with the same companies they are supposed to be regulating, but in the future, could we find a way to prevent even the faintest hint of favoritism by prohibiting politicians from going to work for any lobbyist organization for some predetermined number of years after the politician's term expired? I am mad that this type of nepotism exists in such a vital and dangerous part of our economy.
- By now, most people should be aware that there may be a House Of Representatives trial in the fall to consider thirteen charges that have been leveled at Congressman Charles Rangel by a House ethics committee. These alleged infractions include misusing his office resources and tax and disclosure violations. What makes me mad here, but does not surprise me, is that regardless of what party is in charge, the corruption goes on and on. Nancy Pelosi said she would drain the swamp of corruption when the Democrats took over, but apparently that may not be the case. Given that the charges were made by the peers of Rangel, I am assuming they must be very strong, too strong to ignore. What I dread is that political sniping that will go on in the fall, elections season, while this trial is underway. You can bet no substantial issues will be debated, no problems solved, no solutions put forth. Pure, unadulterated political in-fighting serving no one's purposes accept the politicians.
- Not to be outdone, the same ethics panel will likely be putting forth ethics charges against Congresswoman Maxine Walters for violating a House rule that members not exert improper influence that results in a personal benefit, that members not grant or accept special favors for themselves or family members that could be viewed as influencing official actions, and a rule that member's conduct must reflect creditably on the House. The sad part of these charges, if true, is that others in the Congress have not been reprimanded for similar actions. Senator Daniel Inouye did the same type of influence peddling in the bank regulation arena that Walters is accused of doing and nothing has happened to him. At least one member of the House was actively trading bank and other financial institution stocks in her personal portfolio while serving as a member of a Congressional committee that was deciding what banks would get bailout money and how much they would get. This is called insider trading and certainly falls under the special favors violation but nothing happened to these people either. Thus, while I am sad that at least two members of Congress allegedly traded off of their positions for personal gain, I am also disappointed that other known members of Congress did the same but have not been punished. Seems we have been had, regarding Pelosi's claim of draining the swamp of corruption when so many members of Congress are still knee deep in that corruption swamp.
- Several months ago, Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State and someone who should have very little say in domestic economics, gave a speech where she pontificated that some Americans actually earn too much money in this country. Those ridiculous statements came to mind this past month when she and her husband spent between three million and five million dollars to marry off their daughter. I guess Federal employees and retired Presidents are not among those Americans who make too much money. If anyone can spend five million dollars on a wedding, I would think they would fall into Hillary's bucket of making too much money, unless, of course, the ones spending so much money are her and Bill. Makes me mad that politicians can be such hypocrites.
- The state of California has been flirting with state government insolvency and cash flow problems for several years now. This has resulted in dramatic cutbacks in state services, state aid to cities, and the laying off of state employees. Given the dire economic straits that every level of government faces in California, what is a San Francisco government commission proposing? The commission wants to outlaw pet shop sales within the city limits. Yes, they have proposed that you not be able to operate a pet shop in San Francisco. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, with the state hemorrhaging red ink, services being cut back, failing public schools, crime, etc., do we really think that studying the elimination pet shops issue is the optimal use of city resources and time? Should there even be such a commission in these hard times? Would it not be better and have a bigger impact on more people to take whatever effort and resources this commission is wasting and put them to better use? Makes me sad that government wastes so much effort and money on trivial issues.
- An article by Abigail Field on the AOL Daily Finance website from June 30, 2010 reported that government regulators were lax in their fiduciary duty regarding AIG. In testimony in front of a congressional panel, an ex-executive of AIG, Joseph Cassano, reported that the government bailed out AIG obligations at 100 cents per dollar amount demanded by the banks that AIG insured. Cassano testified that the government did not have to pay full value since the terms of the AIG contracts with the banks allowed the government to negotiate substantially lower payments. As a result, the American taxpayer paid much more than was required to bail out AIG's commitments to banks such as Citi and Goldman Sachs. As taxpayers, we have been had.
= An Associated Press article from July 27, 2010 reported on the follow up investigation into what caused a fatal Washington DC Metro train crash last summer that killed nine people. While the investigation proved that a bad electronic circuit was at fault, the bigger finding was that the National Transportation Safety Board found and stated that the government agency running the Metro had been warned about safety deficiencies for 15 years prior to the crash and that the Metro organization "fostered a culture of indifference to chronic safety issues." Great, not only is this government agency incompetent, they are also deadly, with Americans dying as a result of their culture and indifference to safety. Makes me mad that citizens' safety is put at risk by any government entity who should be protecting the public, including the National Transportation Safety Board who knew of the Metro problem for 15 years but did nothing to get their recommendations implemented.
= A recent blurb in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine reported that the Federal government had ordered far too many flu shots last flu season, medicine that had now gone bad, requiring that 40 million does be destroyed. Makes me sad that the Federal government could not do a better planning job and been more efficient with their flu preparation since the cost of the destroying the 40 million does was over a quarter of a billion dollars ($260 million), money that could have been used so much more effectively, if only to start paying down the national debt.
- I came across a recent YouTube video of Congressman Peter Stark of California and his recent town hall meeting. Asked by a constituent where the power and limits of the Federal government started and stopped, the Congressman stated his view that the Federal government could do anything thing it wanted to do, i.e. the five hundred or so people sitting in Congress could do anything they wanted, the Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned. We have been had, we actually thought that our politicians took an oath to uphold the Constitution, guess that oath did not have much meaning, at least for Representative Stark.
= A July 30, 2010 article from the Associated Press reviewed a current issue in Washington regarding how much power the FBI should have in gaining access to Americans' online and electronic communications behavior in the fight against terror. Currently, the FBI can get access to anyone's records without a court or judge's approval, the agent in charge only needs to write up a national security letter. The interesting statistic in this area was the fact that from 2003 to 2006, there were 192,499 national security letter requests, or about 1234 every week. Are there that many terrorism threats that we need to access Americans' records over a thousand times a week? Makes me mad to think that we are quickly entering a George Orwell/1984 environment where the government can do just about anything it wants as long as it somehow works the word terrorism into its national security letters. Hey, maybe Congressman Stark is right after all.
- There was one recent happy note, as it regards American politicis. According to a report in the August 6, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, Senator John Ensign is fighting a legal and ethics battle as a result of having an affair with an aide's wife. He felt the need to start a legal defense fund to help in this battle, which was established in May. So far, the defense fund has accumulated a grand total of $10, and that $10 came as a result of a contribution from Ensign himself. Thus, maybe this is a first sign that Americans are getting fed up with the poor performance and unethical behavior of the leaders in Washington.
There you have it, I'm mad, I'm sad, and I am tired of being had by the American political class. That is why November is so critical, we need to dump the incumbents out of Congress and start over with people that will focus on the top priorities and issues, will respect individuals' freedoms and liberty, will actually cure the corruption problem in Washington, will stop making ridiculous and hypocritical statements about Americans, and will take a strong and renewed interest in protecting the wealth of American taxpayers so that wasted flu doses and mismanagement of AIG type bailouts never happen again.
Peter Goodman of the New York Times, as reported in the July 30, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, nicely summed up a lot of Americans' feelings when he was writing about how the White House, scientists, engineers, and a multinational oil company could not control the Gulf oil leak: "After the Wall Street collapse, the intractable war in Afghanistan, and the bitter political warfare in Washington, Americans are rightly asking: Is there anyone we can trust?" Not if they all leave sad, mad, disappointed, and with a feeling of being had.
- According to a blurb in the July 16, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, a recent public opinion poll from the Marist Institute reported that 26% of Americans do not know that we as a nation won our independence from the English. Some respondents within this 26% cited France, China, Mexico, and others as the country we gained our independence from. This is both an indictment of our public education system and a threat to our freedom going forward if we have so many citizens that do not have even a basic knowledge of our history of freedom and liberty. Makes me sad to think of the trillions of taxpayer dollars we have spent on public education over the past few decades and this is the low value we received for our investment.
- An Associated Press article from July 23, 2010 reported that while the government was paying tens of billions of dollars to various financial institutions, those same institutions were paying out $1.6 billion in compensation to the institutions' executives that got those companies in trouble in the first place. Plus, the Obama administration will not try to recover any of that taxpayer money because the administration's pay czar thought shaming the financial institutions was punishment enough. Yeah, right. They were so ashamed that they all still cashed the checks. Makes me mad about how poorly constructed and how poorly executed the whole bailout/TARP process was and how unprepared the political class was once the financial situation deteriorated so quickly.
- Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the few people in Washington that knows how to analyze and solve a problem and who is not bashful of telling the truth, no matter how ugly it is, is being considered to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the latest financial regulatory overall law establishes. Regardless of what you may think of the law or Ms. Warner's ability, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby does not want Warren to head up the organization because she is "trying to change everything." Better we should change nothing and stay in the mess we are now? (The Week magazine - August 6, 2010 issue). Apparently, we have been had by the current set of Washington politicians, they do not want to move the country forward, they are content to keep it where it is.
- According to an article in the Washington Post, as summarized in The Week in the August 6, 2010 issue, 75% of the lobbyists who work for oil and gas companies previously worked for the Federal government, more than twice the rate than any other industry. The lobbyists for these oil and gas companies include eighteen former members of Congress and dozens of their former Congressional aides. Now, the BP oil spill might have still happened if government officials, both past and present, had not been so chummy with the same companies they are supposed to be regulating, but in the future, could we find a way to prevent even the faintest hint of favoritism by prohibiting politicians from going to work for any lobbyist organization for some predetermined number of years after the politician's term expired? I am mad that this type of nepotism exists in such a vital and dangerous part of our economy.
- By now, most people should be aware that there may be a House Of Representatives trial in the fall to consider thirteen charges that have been leveled at Congressman Charles Rangel by a House ethics committee. These alleged infractions include misusing his office resources and tax and disclosure violations. What makes me mad here, but does not surprise me, is that regardless of what party is in charge, the corruption goes on and on. Nancy Pelosi said she would drain the swamp of corruption when the Democrats took over, but apparently that may not be the case. Given that the charges were made by the peers of Rangel, I am assuming they must be very strong, too strong to ignore. What I dread is that political sniping that will go on in the fall, elections season, while this trial is underway. You can bet no substantial issues will be debated, no problems solved, no solutions put forth. Pure, unadulterated political in-fighting serving no one's purposes accept the politicians.
- Not to be outdone, the same ethics panel will likely be putting forth ethics charges against Congresswoman Maxine Walters for violating a House rule that members not exert improper influence that results in a personal benefit, that members not grant or accept special favors for themselves or family members that could be viewed as influencing official actions, and a rule that member's conduct must reflect creditably on the House. The sad part of these charges, if true, is that others in the Congress have not been reprimanded for similar actions. Senator Daniel Inouye did the same type of influence peddling in the bank regulation arena that Walters is accused of doing and nothing has happened to him. At least one member of the House was actively trading bank and other financial institution stocks in her personal portfolio while serving as a member of a Congressional committee that was deciding what banks would get bailout money and how much they would get. This is called insider trading and certainly falls under the special favors violation but nothing happened to these people either. Thus, while I am sad that at least two members of Congress allegedly traded off of their positions for personal gain, I am also disappointed that other known members of Congress did the same but have not been punished. Seems we have been had, regarding Pelosi's claim of draining the swamp of corruption when so many members of Congress are still knee deep in that corruption swamp.
- Several months ago, Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State and someone who should have very little say in domestic economics, gave a speech where she pontificated that some Americans actually earn too much money in this country. Those ridiculous statements came to mind this past month when she and her husband spent between three million and five million dollars to marry off their daughter. I guess Federal employees and retired Presidents are not among those Americans who make too much money. If anyone can spend five million dollars on a wedding, I would think they would fall into Hillary's bucket of making too much money, unless, of course, the ones spending so much money are her and Bill. Makes me mad that politicians can be such hypocrites.
- The state of California has been flirting with state government insolvency and cash flow problems for several years now. This has resulted in dramatic cutbacks in state services, state aid to cities, and the laying off of state employees. Given the dire economic straits that every level of government faces in California, what is a San Francisco government commission proposing? The commission wants to outlaw pet shop sales within the city limits. Yes, they have proposed that you not be able to operate a pet shop in San Francisco. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, with the state hemorrhaging red ink, services being cut back, failing public schools, crime, etc., do we really think that studying the elimination pet shops issue is the optimal use of city resources and time? Should there even be such a commission in these hard times? Would it not be better and have a bigger impact on more people to take whatever effort and resources this commission is wasting and put them to better use? Makes me sad that government wastes so much effort and money on trivial issues.
- An article by Abigail Field on the AOL Daily Finance website from June 30, 2010 reported that government regulators were lax in their fiduciary duty regarding AIG. In testimony in front of a congressional panel, an ex-executive of AIG, Joseph Cassano, reported that the government bailed out AIG obligations at 100 cents per dollar amount demanded by the banks that AIG insured. Cassano testified that the government did not have to pay full value since the terms of the AIG contracts with the banks allowed the government to negotiate substantially lower payments. As a result, the American taxpayer paid much more than was required to bail out AIG's commitments to banks such as Citi and Goldman Sachs. As taxpayers, we have been had.
= An Associated Press article from July 27, 2010 reported on the follow up investigation into what caused a fatal Washington DC Metro train crash last summer that killed nine people. While the investigation proved that a bad electronic circuit was at fault, the bigger finding was that the National Transportation Safety Board found and stated that the government agency running the Metro had been warned about safety deficiencies for 15 years prior to the crash and that the Metro organization "fostered a culture of indifference to chronic safety issues." Great, not only is this government agency incompetent, they are also deadly, with Americans dying as a result of their culture and indifference to safety. Makes me mad that citizens' safety is put at risk by any government entity who should be protecting the public, including the National Transportation Safety Board who knew of the Metro problem for 15 years but did nothing to get their recommendations implemented.
= A recent blurb in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine reported that the Federal government had ordered far too many flu shots last flu season, medicine that had now gone bad, requiring that 40 million does be destroyed. Makes me sad that the Federal government could not do a better planning job and been more efficient with their flu preparation since the cost of the destroying the 40 million does was over a quarter of a billion dollars ($260 million), money that could have been used so much more effectively, if only to start paying down the national debt.
- I came across a recent YouTube video of Congressman Peter Stark of California and his recent town hall meeting. Asked by a constituent where the power and limits of the Federal government started and stopped, the Congressman stated his view that the Federal government could do anything thing it wanted to do, i.e. the five hundred or so people sitting in Congress could do anything they wanted, the Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned. We have been had, we actually thought that our politicians took an oath to uphold the Constitution, guess that oath did not have much meaning, at least for Representative Stark.
= A July 30, 2010 article from the Associated Press reviewed a current issue in Washington regarding how much power the FBI should have in gaining access to Americans' online and electronic communications behavior in the fight against terror. Currently, the FBI can get access to anyone's records without a court or judge's approval, the agent in charge only needs to write up a national security letter. The interesting statistic in this area was the fact that from 2003 to 2006, there were 192,499 national security letter requests, or about 1234 every week. Are there that many terrorism threats that we need to access Americans' records over a thousand times a week? Makes me mad to think that we are quickly entering a George Orwell/1984 environment where the government can do just about anything it wants as long as it somehow works the word terrorism into its national security letters. Hey, maybe Congressman Stark is right after all.
- There was one recent happy note, as it regards American politicis. According to a report in the August 6, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, Senator John Ensign is fighting a legal and ethics battle as a result of having an affair with an aide's wife. He felt the need to start a legal defense fund to help in this battle, which was established in May. So far, the defense fund has accumulated a grand total of $10, and that $10 came as a result of a contribution from Ensign himself. Thus, maybe this is a first sign that Americans are getting fed up with the poor performance and unethical behavior of the leaders in Washington.
There you have it, I'm mad, I'm sad, and I am tired of being had by the American political class. That is why November is so critical, we need to dump the incumbents out of Congress and start over with people that will focus on the top priorities and issues, will respect individuals' freedoms and liberty, will actually cure the corruption problem in Washington, will stop making ridiculous and hypocritical statements about Americans, and will take a strong and renewed interest in protecting the wealth of American taxpayers so that wasted flu doses and mismanagement of AIG type bailouts never happen again.
Peter Goodman of the New York Times, as reported in the July 30, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, nicely summed up a lot of Americans' feelings when he was writing about how the White House, scientists, engineers, and a multinational oil company could not control the Gulf oil leak: "After the Wall Street collapse, the intractable war in Afghanistan, and the bitter political warfare in Washington, Americans are rightly asking: Is there anyone we can trust?" Not if they all leave sad, mad, disappointed, and with a feeling of being had.