Influencing An Election?

Yesterday was the special election to replace the vacant congressional seat in Georgia District 6. Republican Karen Handel easily won the set over Democratic challenger John Ossoff.

Prior to the election, the campaign of Karen Handel sent me several emails asking for donations for her election effort. On principle I didn’t sent any money because I don’t live in the district and I believe that the constituents should support the candidate of their choice and not be influenced by my “outside money”.

As to living in the district, John Ossoff couldn’t vote for himself yesterday because he doesn’t live in the district that he was planning to represent.  I guess that doesn’t matter if you’re a Dem.  There was a New York Dem senator whose last name started with a “C” and ended in “…linton”  who didn’t live in the state of New York before she ran for office in that state.

Regarding “outside money”, it looks like Democrats don’t hold the same values as myself. They collectively pumped in $31,000,000.00 dollars to attempt to get Ossoff elected. Most of the money came from the People’s Republik of Kalifornia! There were some statistics that the bulk of the PRK moeny came from the Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills areas of the PRK. Rich tech billionaires and Hollyweird wealth.

The interesting part is that Ossoff received about 121,000 votes.   I would guesstimate that 80% of those votes are hard core Dem that would vote along the party line.  That leaves about 20%  or 24,000 folks that are the so called swing voters. That works out to almost $1300.00 paid by the wealthy for each losing swing vote!  Maybe Ossoff should have campaigned by saying, “F*** any platform, I’ll have my rich PRK  backers give everyone who votes for me $1300 when I’m elected”.

That’s a lot of borscht to try and buy an election, using a Russian reference because of course only the Ruskies could possibly be behind any election manipulation!

It’s Just A Fee, Not A Tax…

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti committed $100 MILLION to help the homeless back in 2105. Later he corrected himself and committed $138 MILLION.  As a good politician, he made the commitment of city funds without actually having a budget to do so. It’s great to be able to spend other people’s money, even before you steal it from them.

A significant portion of the funding is to come from “Linkage Fees“.

I’m not a financial wizard, hence I needed to look up what a “linkage fee” is. What Los Angeles City is implementing is “linking” a $5 per square foot “fee” on commercial development and a $12 per square foot “fee” on residential development to get the funds. The “fees” would be collected before a building permit would be issued.

You can read the FAQ on the “linkage fee” HERE

I always like how the politicians write these things up. It’s a “fee” not a “tax”. If they said, “we are implementing a new tax on construction”, I bet that there would be a lot more upset people. Quietly implementing a new “fee structure” to a program that is already “fee” based goes by mostly unnoticed. That’s why pols get paid the big bucks!

Just to put things in perspective, according to homeadvisor.com, the average cost of new residential construction for a 2000 square foot house, which by the way would be subject to the “fee”, is $150 per square foot.  The “linkage fee” is basically an 8% new construction TAX.

Hey it’s only $24,000 that you are giving to Consigliere Garcetti when you kiss his ring.

Besides, that’s just walking around money for the Hellywierd elite.

A Simple Question

Why is it that the “weatherman” (okay you PC police, weather-non-gender-specific-person) often times can’t predict the weather for the next day, and people just laugh and say “you know they are quite often wrong“.  However when they predict flooding, polar bears starving, mass extinction, island countries disappearing underwater, millions of people dying, droughts, floods, and cats sleeping with dogs 100 YEARS IN THE FUTURE, many if not most people declare that as an UNDENIABLY ACCURATE FACT?

How about we try what Dr. Michael Crichton suggested and have the “climate experts” commit to a 10-year prediction and let’s see how good the computer models are before we continue on the path of economic self flagellation.