This is your reminder that beautiful, mass produced, UNIFORMLY SLICED white bread was invented by a German American from Iowa, not by @iowahawkblog

 

Ann Coulter's best tweet ever

 

"America is an idea, not a place, not a people" is the BIG LIE mantra of neo-conservatism and libertarianism. 

If that's true, one should be able to explain it, write it down, teach it, and put it into practice successfully anywhere. No need to come here for it.

And of course it isn't just an idea. Millions come here and never come to learn it anymore. Millions more aren't taught it in school anymore, and don't see it in practice at home anymore.

That's why the country is a mess.

A famous Italian-American once had it figured out, as I, a German-American, once had it figured out. He starts in, in earnest, at about minute ten:

The continuing crisis of housing bubble-itis

Housing prices in 2017 are overvalued north of 40%. The index commensurate with the pre-1993 period should be about 142 but is instead 203.

Adam Tooze notes US house prices relative to the rest of the world are low but still run ahead of Italy and Germany.

What would happen if 44 million German Americans and 17 million Italian Americans went back home looking for a bargain? 

"Improper" drawing of congressional districts is not the problem, improper restriction of the number of districts is

To Fix Our Democracy, First End Gerrymandering:

Gerrymandering, the pervasive practice of drawing congressional districts for political purposes, owns a great deal of responsibility for the dysfunction of our government and the loss of trust among Americans in their government.

This story is a smokescreen obscuring the real problem, which is that Congress voted decades ago to stop the growth of representation. Gerrymandering is simply the problem you face after committing the offense of fixing the number of districts.

By 1930 the number of congressional districts had grown to 435, more or less naturally as required by the Constitution and the Census every ten years. The number would have kept growing, but the natural process was halted, by a bigoted, power hungry Congress.

The very people who are supposed to represent us stopped the growth of representation and fixed it at 435 in the 1920s, because they could.

The original First Amendment, never ratified with the rest of the Bill of Rights for want of but one vote, would have ensured the natural growth of representation with the natural growth of population in perpetuity by a formula. The argument was over the formula, so our forebears punted the problem, and the issue was never settled. Post-WWI, however, alarums began to sound over the expansion of the Congress to include lots of new representatives for America's burgeoning German-American population, so the Congress voted to fix representation at its then current level, 435, so they didn't have to sit next to the evil Hun in their own Capitol. (The Congress also effectively halted immigration, but that's another story).

So in 1930 one US representative held the power of the purse over 283,000 Americans, on average. Fast forward to today and a US representative can steal from 757,000 of us at a stroke, on average. How their power has grown, and how coveted the seats! Now you know why it takes $10 million to win one.

Just to get the ratio back down to 1930 levels, we'd have to have 1,163 congressional districts today instead of the 435 we do have.

Adding them would dramatically reduce the power the current 435 have over us, which is why it doesn't happen. Nancy Pelosi would have to herd 582 cats to get anything done instead of 238. And with 1,163 representatives, it's unlikely Nancy Pelosi would be the Speaker in the first place.

Redrawing the lines of this tyranny which they exercise over us isn't the solution. That's simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The power hungry House is the biggest impediment to our democracy. Ironically, a bigger House is the answer, because it returns power to the people.

Yep, you guessed it, the inventor of sliced bread was white . . . and German-American . . . and from Iowa

Ve haf vays ov makinck your lunch qvicker.

The horror. The horror.

Otto Frederick Rohwedder (1880-1960)

Hey Mexico, I'm eating your refried beans . . .

And you can kiss my sweet German-American ass.

Middle Class: The 30-30-30 countries according to wealth distribution are primarily Germanic

The following are the countries with relatively equal sized lower, middle and upper classes in 2013, meaning roughly 30% have wealth under $10,000, roughly 30% have wealth $10,000 to $100,000, and roughly 30% have wealth in excess of $100,000 up to $1M:

USA: 31-33-31

Austria: 28-32-37

Germany: 29-33-35

New Zealand: 26-34-38

Qatar: 25-38-35

Taiwan: 23-45-31

HR 3762 should have been on Trump's desk on January 20th, but Republicans were too full of themselves for that

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/24/its-true-trump-didnt-pledge-obamacare-repeal-in-64-days-he-pledged-it-in-one/?utm_term=.87eb1e98525d

We'd be long into tax reform by now.

Day One repeal of Obamacare my sweet German-American ass.

German Americans still the largest ethnic group in 2013 at 46 million

The Economist reported here in February:

German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46m Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33m) or England (25m). In whole swathes of the northern United States, German-Americans outnumber any other group (see map). Some 41% of the people in Wisconsin are of Teutonic stock.

That figure is down from 51 million before 2009 and from 50 million in 2009, so evidently the German American population is declining by about 1 million per year. 

I Built This Blog, And Obama Can Kiss My Sweet German-American Ass

And I approve this message, too.

German Americans Continue As USA's Largest Self-Reported Ancestral Group

So Wikipedia, here, citing Census data:

German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry and comprise about 51 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group. California, Texas and Pennsylvania have the largest numbers of German origin, although upper Midwestern states, including Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, have the highest proportion of German Americans at over one-third.