3-25-22 Nearing Midnight: Greed and Corruption in America

Nearing Midnight: Greed and Corruption in America – Todd Strandberg - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/ The collapse of most empires is not the result of warfare. The downfall of most of them has been triggered by moral decay. When greed and corruption become widespread, the fabric of society begins to break down. The left likes to blame the nation’s problems on the rich. They claim, if we just make them pay their fair share, America’s difficulties will be resolved. We could tax the richest 1% of Americans at a 100% rate, and we would still not have enough money to fix the nation’s financial woes. Our key monetary problem is not the lack of taxpayers. We simply have too many people receiving money from the government. The New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the nation down a dangerous path. The welfare state system has grown with each new president adding his own program to the mix. The people’s addiction to federal handouts reached a new low during the pandemic when the state paid citizens $6 trillion to not work. The recent surge in Covid cases makes me wonder if more stimulus checks will be called for. More than a year after the vaccine was rolled out, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to their highest level on record at over 265,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by the Omicron variant. New cases per day have more than doubled over the past two weeks, eclipsing the old mark of 250,000 set in mid-January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University. The Omicron variant is less deadly than the original virus but is vastly more contagious. Johns Hopkins also said that it’s possible that 60% percent of the population could contract the virus. It is unthinkable that we would spend another $6 trillion on Covid. Few people protested the previous stimulus checks, so they would gladly take any new money. The greatest damage is not that our national debt went from $22 trillion to $29.5 trillion. The stimulus caused millions of people to drop out of the workforce. Our lawmakers love to hand out cash, but they also like to enrich themselves with government money. They do so by investing in companies that benefit from the bill they pass. Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell are two of the dumbest members of Congress. You would think they were both financial geniuses if you looked at their stock accounts for the year 2021. Nancy had a return of 56%, and Mitch had his stock account rise by 67%. Both of them beat the top 12 money managers on Wall Street. The best performer was David Shaw, with a return of 42%. Despite bipartisan support for prohibiting members of Congress from buying and holding individual stocks in office, Pelosi recently said that lawmakers should be allowed to make trades while serving. “We’re a free-market economy,” Pelosi told reporters during a news conference. “They should be able to participate in that.” It’s not fair to the average investor to have Congress trading on knowledge that could have a profound impact on stock prices. If we are going to allow members of Congress to trade on inside information, we might as well allow them to sell their votes to the highest bidder. When Joe Biden came to office, it’s pretty much a given that his son Hunter Biden was going to use his father to make money. Hunter has a long history of moral failings. He has a fondness for a variety of drugs. Over the past two decades, Biden has been in and out of rehabilitation several times. He fathered a daughter with an Arkansas stripper and then claimed to have never met the woman. The president’s son was part owner of a venture involved in the $3.8 billion purchase by a Chinese conglomerate of one of the world’s largest cobalt deposits. Hunter opened an art gallery, which has some wondering if people who buy one of Hunter’s paintings will be able to use the acquisition to influence his father’s administration. The White House has made it clear that Hunter is free of any safeguards. Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to commit to “basic transparency” about Hunter’s involvement in that Chinese investment fund during a White House Press Briefing. She also refused to admit his infamous laptop is authentic. “The president’s son is not an employee of the federal government, so I’d point you to his representatives,” Psaki snarked after being asked about the China connection. She used the same lame excuse back in February: “He’s a private citizen — I would point you to him or his lawyers on the outside on any update.” Greed and Corruption have become so profound in America, I think there’s a 100% chance that we will suffer a financial meltdown. The reason for my certainty is that most people have lost the ability to see the danger that is headed in their direction. “The way of the wicked is as darkness. They know not at what they stumble” (Proverbs 4:19).