The History of Amerika’s Cartoon Government (part 2) (by ContraSuggest)

In part one of this series, we laid out much of the how, where, why, and when the corrupt Amerikan political system came into existence; how it persists in an even more dangerous form to this day, and how it has resulted in the wholesale destruction of the constitutional system created by the Founders.  Here in part two, we’re going to concentrate on the shape of modern-day political corruption in our state governments, specifically in New York State, where crooked, machine politics was practically invented.

It’s important here to understand the seductive and all-consuming nature of Amerikan political corruption.  Undoubtedly, from time to time there are some truly good men and women who decide to run for public office because they want to effect positive change.  Many of them eschew constitutional principles simply because they do not understand the constitutional system put in place by the Founders, nor do they care to. If that weren’t tragic enough, most soon discover the need to solicit lots of campaign cash from various special interests, and to make lots of campaign promises that are called-in once they’re in office.  If elected, legislators find it necessary to almost immediately start running for reelection; begin lavishing patronage jobs on friends and family members, possibly with good intentions (like trying to help friends or relatives who are out of work). Unfortunately, this practice precludes them from criticizing similar practices by other legislators, thus propagating a crooked system.  The need for electoral support and ever more campaign cash makes it difficult not to cave-in to special interest demands, like those of the public employee unions, who fill legislators’ campaign coffers with cash.  The crack-like addiction makes ‘going along to get along’ much easier than standing up against the forces of corruption.  As illustrated in part one, the New York (City and State) of the 1820s was the birthplace of the political instrumentalities and much of the “innovations” that accelerated the nation’s path toward wide-spread institutionalized corruption.  In the early 21^st century, New York is still the poster child for all that is destructive in American politics.    

Let’s consider how the surrender of New York State’s politicians to special interest pressures has nearly bankrupted the state, and overburdened citizens with crippling taxation and regulation.  Corruption in the funding of public programs has led the state to the brink of fiscal insolvency.  For the sake of brevity, we will concentrate on one notable area where financial corruption flourishes: New York State’s bloated Medicaid program.  The Medicaid program, mandated by the Feds and inaugurated in New York in 1966, was the brainchild of uber-liberal Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller.  Rockefeller was, in today’s vernacular, a RINO, who made a career of out-pandering liberal Democrats, and purposefully designed Medicaid to offer lavish medical benefits to the “poor”, while raking in the maximum amount of Federal matching funds (funding was to be shared in a 50-50 Fed/State split).  New York’s Medicaid bill was quickly pushed through the legislature with almost no real consideration or public review; amendments were recklessly added by legislators, one of which mandated that Albany would pick up only half of the state’s portion of Medicaid costs; the rest of the financial burden was pushed onto the local governments.  This assured that the program would be an unmitigated fiscal disaster from day one, and it got progressively worse as time wore on.  Today, the average NY county devotes more than half of its county taxes just to covering its state-imposed share of Medicaid costs. 

Medicaid benefits are controlled by city and county officials who, for many years, have used them as patronage.  The legislature in Albany continually turn a blind eye to the runaway costs of Medicaid, and the massive deficits that it creates, because they look at it as just another constituency service.  Hundreds of thousands of health-care workers (represented by their powerful unions), health-care providers, and those receiving medical and nursing home benefits, are bestowed with Medicaid dollars in return for campaign cash and votes on Election Day.  In New York City hospitals, for instance, local politicians exercise wide control over everything from supervisory appointments down to which departments will receive funding and which ones won’t.  In a criminally dysfunctional atmosphere like this, where Medicaid services are doled out as political rewards by apparatchiks of the inner city politburo, Medicaid costs have, and will continue to spiral out of control, and consume ever-increasing portions of state and local government budgets.

The twisted morass of corruption and mismanagement is dizzying; consider the following:  New York State’s Medicaid budget is far bigger than California’s, a state which has over twice the population of NY.  Fraud runs rampant in the system (estimated to be in the double-digit billions), yet the Medicaid budget balloons every year (spending tripled between the 1980s and the early 2000s), while the fraud investigation unit gets smaller and smaller.  Despite a huge oversupply of state hospital beds, the powerful 1199 Healthcare Workers Union has continually blocked any cuts that would eliminate surplus jobs or hospitals.  Thanks to the mismanagement of Medicaid, New York State is hemorrhaging money, continually increasing taxes and regulations, going deeper and deeper into crippling debt, while doctor reimbursements continue to be reduced, and health care choices for the truly poor become more and more restricted.       

A complete list of New York’s Cartoon Government abuses would run far too long to include here; unfortunately the state’s Medicaid debacle is emblematic of how most government programs are run in the Empire State.  Education is another fraudulent cesspool of back-room deals and budget busting corruption.  These abuses are very much part of the crooked political culture in other states like New Jersey, California, Michigan, Illinois, and many others.  Our national woes will continue until these abuses are at least greatly curtailed; the first step to fixing our system is to identify the problems, which is what I am attempting to do with this series of posts.  Stay tuned for part 3.

Ten Solid Reasons Not To Vote for Hillary Clinton (Her Life of Lies, Scandal and Demagoguery) by ContraSuggest

With the exception of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton is the politician whose popularity most astounds me.  I understand that a certain percentage of her backers are leftist political zombies who will support high-profile, self described “progressive” politicians no matter what.  But what’s the excuse for the rest of her supporters?  A strong case can be made that Hillary is nothing more than a pandering, unqualified political phony of the highest order.  After years of examining the woman’s public life, her education and career, it’s still hard to conclude exactly what she believes and why she believes it.  Are her politics more the product of empty career-advancing pragmatism, or hard core leftist convictions?  Not to mention that her resume and accomplishments are weak, relative to the trust that her libtard supporters place in her.  If her candidacy for president hadn’t been derailed by the Obama juggernaut during the 2008 Democrat Party primary, she would most certainly have been elected president. 

Most recently the Democrat Party’s propaganda arm (aka the New York Times) published a 7,500 word report on the Benghazi affair designed to absolve then Secretary of State Hillary of any wrongdoing in the Sept. 11, 2012 disaster.  It’s looking increasingly likely that she will capture the 2016 Democrat nomination for president, should she decide to run.  Given America’s current dim-witted and toxic socio-political zeitgeist, I seriously doubt there’s a Republican out there who can take her; so there’s a damn good chance we’d better get used to eight years of “Madame President.”  So why are most people in this country poised to vote for this empty pantsuit who fashions herself a “progressive”, after eight years of the wholesale destruction visited on the nation by progressivism under Oba Mao?  Well to be honest, I have no idea, and I’m through trying to diagnose the collective mental illness of the American electorate.  But through a quick review of Shillary’s career, I now offer ten solid reasons why electing her president is a monumentally stupid idea (there are hundreds of reasons, of course, but I distilled it down to 10 for the sake of brevity).  

1. The Anti-American Flower Child.  Hillary is firmly a child of the radical, counter-cultural 1960s, in whose fires her ideology was forged.  In the late 60s she attended Wellesley College, where her senior honor’s thesis was dedicated to the application of the theories of Saul Alinsky.  No one would argue that Alinsky is a far-left radical; his infamous, seminal book, Rules for Radicals, teaches how to use lies and distortions to discredit political enemies.  His theories have influenced a multitude of self-styled “community organizers” (aka. shit-stirers), from Ralph Nader to Jesse Jackson.  Hillary’s thesis was withheld from the public until the Clinton’s left the White House in 2001.

2. Hillary, Defender of Scum.  After graduating, Hillary moved on to Yale Law where she aided in the legal defense of Black Panther Party members accused of murder.  For those who don’t know, the Panthers were/are a militant Black Power organization founded in the 1960s by the radical racist murderer Huey Newton and his cohorts, that advocated the overthrow of the US government.  Newton proclaimed: “we make the statement, quoting from Chairman Mao, that Political Power comes through the Barrel of a Gun.”

3. Corporate Cowboy AND Defender of the Little Guy?  Over the years Hillary has benefitted greatly, both financially and politically, from her cozy relationship with the Wal-Mart Corporation.  She served as corporate council on the company’s board of directors; the company provided and paid for all of the Clinton's air travel during the 1992 presidential campaign; just prior to running for president, Hillary held thousands of shares of Wal-Mart stock; when she wrote her book “Living History,” it was marketed through Wal-Mart, and she visited Wal-Mart stores all over the country to do book signings. It’s no secret that Wal-Mart’s policies concerning their workers’ health care coverage, salaries and anti-union efforts have often come under fire from labor unions and other leftist dimwits, but nary a peep from Hillary.  The self-proclaimed crusader for the little guy, union advocate, and champion of a higher minimum wage has been largely silent about Wal-Mart’s “anti-worker” policies.  Despite these facts she has always shared enthusiastic union support and endorsements, along with support from Wal-Mart.  Politics certainly makes for strange bedfellows, especially when one is as big a public fraud as Hillary Clinton

4. Investment Genius?  In the late 1970s, when BJ Clinton ran for Governor of Arkansas, Hillary invested $1,000 in cattle commodities futures and, with the help of a friend who was general council for Tyson Foods, one of the state’s biggest businesses, saw that turned into $100,000, in a mere 6 months.  When questioned about how she managed this rapidly profitable investment strategy, she responded that she “read the Wall Street Journal.”  This may be ancient history, but it reeks of the corporate insider image that Hillary claims to oppose

5. Whitewater Witchery.  In the late 1980s, the Clintons invested in the Whitewater real estate project, and Hillary performed legal work for Morgan Guaranty Savings and Loan, which invested in the project and whose failure cost the Federal Government (the taxpayers) $73 million.  Whitewater later became the subject of congressional hearings and an independent council investigation, both of which were impeded when Rose Law Firm billing records were subpoenaed in July 1994, but were not found until they turned up in the residential quarters of the White House in January 1996 (hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes; put it in your pantry with your cupcakes).  Independent Council Robert Ray ended the investigation in September 2000, claiming that he could not prove that the Clintons had been involved in criminal activity, or that they concealed information from investigators, or obstructed justice.  In his final report in March 2002, Ray noted that Rose Law Firm records were found in the family quarters of the White House in January 1996 and that three witnesses told investigators that they saw her (Hillary Clinton) “carrying what had the appearance of the billing records in July 1995”; but he said that the evidence was insufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.  You be the judge

6. A Demagogue Goes to the Senate.  Toward the end of Bill Clinton’s administration, Hillary saw longtime NY senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s retirement as an opportunity to beef up her weak presidential resume.  The Clintons pulled out every stop during their final year in the White House to ingratiate themselves with New Yorkers, assigning an interest to the state and certain constituencies there, that they would not otherwise have expressed.  The failure of NY’s Republicans to run a strong candidate, the Clinton’s star power, and the impenetrable ignorance of downstate voters, combined to hand the office of senate to carpetbagger Hillary on a silver platter  

7. More Phony Baloney.  As senator, Hilary’s tired, shrill and recycled rhetoric was prone to hyperbolic fancies, describing the Bush administration’s domestic agenda as “radical,” bent on dismantling the “central pillars of progress in our country during the 20^th century” and seeking “to undo the New Deal.”  In reality, Bush presided over a wholesale expansion of the welfare state; he was responsible for ballooning the nation’s debt far beyond that of any other presidential administration up to that point in history.  Hillary showed herself to be a phony, class warfare demagogue of the basest variety

8. Old Blood and Guts.  After securing a spot on the Armed Services Committee, tough girl Senator Hillary, voted for the then politically popular Iraq use of force resolution.  For several years she defended her vote, stating that it was necessary but that we should not stay forever, yet fell short of saying we should establish a withdrawal date.  As the war drew on, the military situation deteriorated and public approval began to fall away.  Now eyeing a presidential run, Hilary had to curry favor with the anti-war left in the Democrat Party, and (SURPRISE!) changed her position strictly for political reasons.  If you need further proof of this assessment, consider this excerpt from Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ 2014 book Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the Iraq surge had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary.  …The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political.  To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”  ‘Nuff Said!

9. Defining Hypocrisy: Hillary for President.  All through her 2008 primary campaign Hilary continuously made contradictory statements while pandering to different interest groups, and the press refused to call her on it.  I’ve already mentioned her spurious Iraq stance; her lies were legion, here are three more notable examples:    

• The New York Times released the Clinton's financials; it was revealed that Hillary made much of her money from the oil industry as she continued to demonize the oil industry.  The Clintons were heavily invested in Cisco Systems, a company that had been outsourcing jobs to India for years while she continued to demonize outsourcing, once again, pretending to be the indefatigable defender of the American worker. 
• Hillary commented to the Associated Press that President Bush could not take military action against Iran without congressional approval.  Two weeks later, she told an audience at AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that US policy must be unequivocal, that Iran cannot develop nukes; the military option wouldn’t be taken off the table.  So she told AIPAC that, as president, she'll take out Iran's nuclear capability with military force if necessary; but she told the AP that Bush, who was weighing the same threat, couldn’t do it without congressional approval (which she knew congressional Democrats would never grant him).  So as president she pledged to do whatever it would take to prevent Iran’s nuclear capability, which Bush could not do without congressional approval
• Clinton accused Obama of giving a “wink-wink” to Canada regarding his anti-NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) rhetoric.  It was then revealed that the Clinton campaign sent a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stating that he should take Hillary's anti-NAFTA rhetoric with a grain of salt.

10. Those Who Live In Glass Houses.  It’s inconceivable that someone who was an integral part of the scandal-ridden Clinton Administration would have the unmitigated gall to characterize the Bush administration as an example of corruption and cronyism run amok.  But that’s exactly what Hillary did.  Her husband's administration was an ethical disgrace; quantifiably far, far worse than the Bush administration.  When we heard this crap come out of her mouth we thought she must be kidding, but she was actually serious!  The Clinton Administration set some interesting records in the field of executive branch ethics, here’s a smattering:

• The most convictions and guilty pleas of friends and associates of any administration ever
• The highest number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation in history
• The most witnesses to flee the country or refuse to testify in the course of legal investigations (of the administration’s fund raising)
• The first time in history that the first lady came under criminal investigation
• The largest criminal plea agreement ever in an illegal campaign contribution case
• The first president to be held in contempt of court
• The greatest amount of  illegal campaign contributions ever on record
• The greatest amount of campaign contributions from abroad
• The first president to ever be disbarred   

Conclusion:

Hillary has always portrayed herself as a champion of the little guy; she’s “for the children,” for the “uninsured,” for the “poor,” etc.  In her own life she has always been about privilege, many of the things she’s achieved in her life have been handed to her, and in the instances where she has helped the downtrodden, one can’t help but think she’s done so only because she knew that the cameras were rolling.  Like many liberal politicians, Hillary has used taxpayer funded giveaways in exchange for public affections, and lots of votes.  I’m hard-pressed to find an unpopular policy position that Hillary has taken a stand on, and that she continued to defend in spite of its continued unpopularity.  Hillary appears to believe that it's better to be popular and wrong than unpopular and right.

The bottom line with Hillary is, what seems to be a contradictory nature, actually makes perfect sense; she's at once a far-left ideologue and a slippery, pragmatic, political phony whose leftist core beliefs are trumped only by her desire to attain political power.  She may seem to renounce her leftism when it suits her, but she always returns to form later, after she’s reaped the political benefit of her erstwhile “change.”  Consistency is irrelevant in Orwell’s America, and she knows it; she can get away with her chicanery ad infinitum.  To the small percentage of constitutional conservatives in this country, Hillary comes off as a left-leaning opportunist who lacks sincerity.  This has just as much to do with her speaking style, a disengaged, almost emotionless monotone, as with her seemingly contradictory positions.  Her behavior and her record to date indicate that, as president, she'd take a poll every 5 minutes or so and find a way to convince the public that their wishes are being served by a vast expansion of federal government power.  We know that the opposite is true, but first we have to convince Neo that the Matrix is real; a tall order indeed.