One of my favorite things to hate in politics is when politicians --at all levels and all political parties-- lie and take credit for things they did not do and, in most instances, had nothing to do with.

One of those are claims of creating jobs, which is absolute horseshit. I have to stress, everyone does it. This is not about any one political party.

The current administration is claiming to have created ten million jobs. This is nothing less than preposterous. And yet, they keep repeating it daily. Because, you know, if you repeat something enough times it magically becomes true.

What really bugs me about these things is that the press never questions any of these claims. Politicians are never asked to "show the work".

I mean, if you say you created one or ten million jobs, surely you are able to present a document with data at a sufficient level of granularity to confirm this. A list of programs enacted by the regime in charge matched with the precise number of jobs created ONLY because that program was enacted.

This never happens. They all lie about this stuff. Do the masses truly believe this? If not, do politicians actually think everyone is stupid? Maybe we are. The evidence on that front is clear: The people who rise up to the top of each party and are elected into office rarely represent the best and the brightest we have to offer. In fact, in most cases these people would be ambulance chasers and bad used car salespeople if they didn't get into politics. And yet we elect them and hand over the reigns. I just don't get it.

As a simple example of things that are incomprehensible:

Why is it that we don't have a law that imposes severe penalties for politicians who lie to the public?

Imagine hiring an accountant, doctor or lawyer with the proviso that they are protected from the consequences of lying. You accountant can lie to you about your finances and there's nothing you can do about it. Anyone can see this is not a good idea. And yet, this is exactly what we have in politics. They can lie publicly, on national media and elsewhere and the consequences are exactly zero.

Some might say: Well in cases of national security and other circumstances it might be necessary to not present facts as they might exist.

I suppose I can see that argument at some levels, not all. It would have been a great idea to have a requirement for truth in what preceded the Iraq war. I think everyone can agree on that. However, I can concede circumstances might exist where telling us the truth could be detrimental. Don't know what those might be, let's just stipulate this could be the case.

OK, well, let's treat that the same way we treat search warrants and other matters: The politician has to go to a judge, present evidence in justification for having to promote a lie and obtain approval. The lie is documented and so is the decision-making process. Maybe that's a way to get around it.

Imagine a world where politicians would not be able to lie about national or international issues as well as attack their opposition with lies. I don't know about you, but would think that would qualify as progress.

Oh, yeah, maybe we can apply similar rules to the media as well.