- An October 14, 2010 Associated Press article covered how the largest Medicare fraud scam had recently been uncovered and shut down. According to the article, Armenian gangsters, not even American gangsters, used fake health care clinics and other methods to defraud the Medicare fund of $163 million. 73 people were arrested throughout the country. The article states that the "scope and sophistication puts the traditional Mafia to shame." Law enforcement officials labeled the head of the fraud operation as roughly equivalent to a traditional godfather of crime. Some of the group's undoings were instances where eye doctors filed claims for bladder tests, ear, nose and throat specialists performed pregnancy ultrasound tests, and a dermatologist billed Medicare for heart exams. The aggravating thing about this situation is why was it was this operation not shut down sooner? Why did it take so long, which allowed millions of taxpayer dollars to be sent out, before someone, somewhere realized that a dermatologist should not be doing heart exams? The scarier aspect of this bust is that these were Armenian gangsters. I am assuming that the Russian mob in this country are also involved in similar fraud operations, that some of the larger gangs in the country are involved, etc. When will they get shut down? And finally, the real depressing aspect is that while this is the largest operation ever uncovered for this type of fraud, it represents less than .2% of the overall suspected Medicare fraud. Nice effort, but still a long way to go. Unless much larger and more numerous shutdowns like this occur, when Obama Care kicks in you will see fraud numbers like you have never seen before.
- According to a short article in the October 8, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, another small town Mexican mayor was killed, supposedly by drug traffickers. He was stoned to death. and was the fifth Mexican mayor murdered in six weeks in drug cartel violence.. He was mayor only because the former mayor and city council resigned after the town's city council leader had also been killed. Also, an American was recently killed when he and his wife came under attack while jet skiing on a lake that separates Texas and Mexico. One of the Mexican investigators following up on the killing was also killed. We are facing unprecedented violence just south of our border as a result of our faulty drug policies and laws and no one in the political class seems to care. What will it take besides a dead American on vacation to sit up and realize that sooner or later this dreadful violence is going to come across the border?
- According to a Wall Street Journal report that was printed in the October 22, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, at least six dozen Congressional aides bought or sold shares in companies their bosses oversee. One aide invested in Bank Of America shares after he found out in advance that the bank had passed its so-called "stress test." The aggravating aspect of this situation, according to the article, is that this behavior is not illegal. Political class members and their staffs can legally trade on nonpublic information they learn on their jobs. Any other American doing this would go to jail for insider trading. Talk about irritating hypocrisy.
- In that same issue of The Week, a Washington Monthly article reviewed how one Senator, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, was holding up the nomination of Peter Diamond to a Federal Reserve Board seat because Shelby does not think he is qualified. This resistance is despite the fact that Diamond just won the Nobel prize for economics earlier this month. I am not necessarily mad at Shelby and I do not know whether Diamond is qualified (although the Nobel prize should carry some weight). I am aggravated that we allow one person in a country of over 300 million people to hold up legislation and appointments via antiquated Senate rules and courtesies. If Shelby has a problem, let him speak out and then vote yes or no. Don't stop the process by allowing a single individual to be a road block to legislation or appointments.
- According to an article in the October 22, 2010 issue of The Week Magazine, a Washington Post article reported that as part of Obama's stimulus plan, the Social Security Administration sent out 89,000 checks for $250 each to people who were dead or in jail. The prisoners, while not entitled to the checks, will be allowed to keep the money. There's another $22,650,000 of taxpayer money down the drain. A few irritating questions for the political class: how many teachers could that money have paid for, how many meals for the homeless could that money have paid for, how many vaccinations for the poor could that money have paid for, and most importantly, how many Social Security employees got fired as a result of this incompetence? Unfortunately, those politicians sitting on the Congressional committees that should have oversaw and prevented this waste get to continue in their committee seats, just another reward for their incompetence.
- President Obama and the rest of the Federal level Democrats are constantly harping on the fact that if they had not risked hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in the bail out of the banks back in 2008, the banking system would have collapsed and led to a world wide economic depression. However, we have already reported in this blog that many of the banks returned their bailout money within six months of receiving it, indicating that maybe things were not so dire as we were led to believe. A bank probably cannot go from the brink of extinction to the picture of health in a few short months just because they received bailout money. The more likely scenario is that the banks saw a free lunch that they sat down to eat, only to find out that the lunch came with a bunch of conditions, including limits on executive pay, that made banks give back the money as soon as possible. Furthermore, we now learn from a Wall Street Journal article that appeared in the October 8, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, only 279 U.S. banks have actually failed since 2008. According to my research, there are currently 8,430 FDIC insured banks in the country, over 9,500 credit unions in the country, and other banks that are not FDIC insured. If you divide the number of banks that failed by the total number of banks in the country, you see that only 3.3% of the banks have failed in the past two years. The number goes down to 1.6% if you include the number of credit unions that surely picked up some of the slack when these 279 banks went under. The article goes on to point out that another 829 banks are at risk of failure. If you assume worse case, i.e. that all of these banks fail, you are still only looking at 13% of all banks and 6% of all financial institutions including credit unions. Thus, this charade that we were on the brink of a banking catastrophe is hogwash. There would have been enough banks, along with the FDIC, to provide consumer protection and other financial options if this small percentage of banks had failed or do actually fail. It is so aggravating that the political class constantly assumes we are too dumb to do the math in these types of situations.
- A recent blurb in the Organic Gardening and Farming magazine was recently brought to my attention. The magazine recently reported that total U.S. energy consumption in 1973 was 75.7 quadrillion BTUs. That has now grown to 101.6 quadrillion BTUs, a 34% increase. Our energy imports since 1973 have gone up a whopping 137%. The article failed to point out that since 1973, the American political class has come up with exactly zero effective national energy policies and strategies, leaving us ever more dependent on carbon based fuels and tenuous foreign sources of energy. Very aggravating and frustrating.
- According to a recent Business Week article, nine years after we militarily entered Afghanistan, we have yet to capture Bin Laden (the original intent of the occupation), we have allowed the Taliban to regroup and dominate southern Afghanistan, we are supporting a corrupt and ineffective central government, if we were to leave tomorrow the Taliban would likely prevail and come into power again, we have suffered almost 10,000 dead and wounded service men and women, and we have spent over $400 billion in military and reconstruction dollars. This waste of time, energy, lives, and money goes far beyond irritating and aggravating, it enters the realm of disgusting. So much cost and so little to show for it. And rather than finding a doable and intelligent solution and an end to the insanity, Obama mostly cares about not "losing the Democratic party," i.e. politics trumps our troops safety and our investment of time and dollars.
- Step 5 - aggressively step up the investigation of fraud and criminal activity as it relates to all government programs to stop the leaking of hundreds of billions of dollars year that eventually end up in the hands of criminal enterprises.
- Step 14 - stop the gerrymandering of Congressional districts that have been used to virtually assure the re-election of incumbents in the past.
- Step 26 - convene a panel of drug experts from various fields to finally come up with a coherent national drug policy and strategy that helps with addiction, minimizes the criminal aspect of illegal drugs, and helps to destroy the Mexican drug cartels and their related violence.
- Steps 23, 24, 25 - implement these three steps to finally come up with a coherent and doable national energy policy that is environmentally friendly and relieves our dependence on foreign energy sources.
- Step 34 - remove politicians from their committee posts if they do not properly oversee or perform their jobs over the areas of government they are responsible for, e.g. those committee members sitting on the Social Security committees that missed the snafu of sending taxpayer money to prisoners ands dead people, should lose their committee posts.
- Step 39 - institute term limits so that we can regularly get rid of the aggravating, irritating, and criminal people that are always seem to get re-elected.
Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com
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