Voter Fraud Explored, Part 1: Convictions in Indiana, Mayoral Bribery In New York City and More

I had delayed doing this post and the subject of election fraud for a while for a number of reasons. First, until recently, there was not really hard evidence that widespread election fraud had occurred in the November, 2012 elections. There were accusations, there was anecdotal evidence, there were rumors but that was it. Second, one would have hoped that this very basic democratic right, the one person one vote principle, was sacred to even the most corrupt politician.

However, today and tomorrow we will investigate the rumors, news reports, and for the first time, actual criminal convictions in voter fraud cases. We will do this now since the eruptions of political misdoings by the Obama administration have possibly rendered my assumption that no politician is that corrupt to undermine our election processes now looking pretty weak.

If a Presidential administration can abandon over 20 Americans in the middle of a terrorist attack in Libya, they probably have no qualms about fixing and rigging an election.

If a Presidential administration can use the IRS as a political weapon to undermine the freedom of speech and political activities of political opponents, they probably have no qualms about fixing and rigging an election.

If a Presidential administration can secretly go after and obtain phone records of news reporters and their new organizations, they probably have no qualms about fixing and rigging an election.

The following news reports cover the past seven months or so since the last election. They are usually local new reports since national news organizations rarely went after such stories, something they may regret now that they know that protecting the current President has gotten them nothing but secret seizures of their news reporting records.

The reports are wide ranging, from Florida to Ohio to North Carolina to Wisconsin. What is interesting is that the suspicions of election fraud occurred mostly in states and areas that most election experts viewed as toss up states in the November, 2012 Presidential election. The reports of election fraud did not occur so much in deep blue states or deep red states.

These lends credence to the reports being true in that the election fraud, if it existed, was meant to tip toss-up states into Obama’s favor. I say Obama’s favor since in most of the reports of fraud I came across in my research, it was rarely the Republicans who were looking to illegally and immorally tilt election results in their favor, usually only local Democratic Party operatives.

1) There has been one hard case of proven Presidential election fraud and that was in Indiana. A recent court verdict found four Democratic operatives guilty of election tampering, as outlined in an April 25, 2013 story by the South Bend Tribune:

• The former chair of a local Indiana county Democratic Party, Butch Morgan and party member Dustin Blythe, were found guilty in late April of conspiring to forge signatures on petitions to place Democratic candidates on the state Democratic Presidential primary ballot in 2008.
• Morgan was convicted on two counts of felony conspiracy to commit petition fraud and two counts of felony conspiracy to commit forgery.
• Blythe was convicted on nine counts of felony forgery and one count of felony falsifying a petition.
• Two other Democratic party operatives, Pam Brunette and Bev Shelton, who were also involved in the voting scam but who testified against Morgan and Blythe, will hear their sentencing for their actions in June at the same time that Morgan and Blythe are sentenced to prison.
• According to the article, the four guilty defendants were charged with the voting fraud last April, as the result of investigation by The Tribune and Howey Politics Indiana into suspected ballot petition fraud in the state's 2nd Congressional District and, more specifically, St. Joseph County.
• Only Morgan and Blythe had their cases go to trial since Shelton pleaded guilty to one count of felony forgery and one count of felony falsifying a petition as part of a plea agreement.
• Brunette pleaded guilty to one count of felony forgery, one count of felony official misconduct and one count of felony falsifying a petition.
• Morgan faces up to 22 years in prison, Shelton faces up to 11 years, Brunette faces up to 14 years, and Blythe faces up to 75 years.

So much for weak rumors and false accusations. We now know that at least in Indiana, Democratic Party operatives illegally manipulated the Presidential voting processes in the run up to the 2008 election and were convicted for their actions.

2) While most of the election fraud charges in the past seven months have focused on Democrats, not all of them were exclusive of Republicans. Staying in Indiana, the Associated Press reported on February 2, 2013 that a Hamilton County, Indiana jury found Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White guilty of six of seven felony charges. These charges included false voter registration, voting in another precinct, submitting a false ballot, theft and two counts of perjury. He was acquitted on one fraud charge.

We now have two proven cases in courts of law that voter fraud does exist, at least in Indiana.

3) A USA Today article from April 2, 2013 had an interesting twist on election fraud and corruption when a Democrat was arrested for trying to bribe his way onto the Republican ticket for mayor in New York City. A number of Republican politicians were also arrested for being more than willing to accept the Democrat’s bribes in exchange for voting hanky-panky.

New York prosecutors arrested and accused state Democratic Senator. Malcolm Smith, a seven-term Queens Democrat, of setting up bribes in an attempt to force his way onto the Republican ticket for the 2013 New York City mayoral race. He was one of six people charged as part of three bribery schemes that emerged from an undercover FBI investigation. So these politicians wanted to rig election choices before voters ever went into the voting booths.

The very sad part of the whole affairs as described in the article is that bribery and corruption is the way politicians operate in New York City, as witnessed by the following FBI wiretap conversation:

"That's politics. That's politics. It's all about how much," Halloran said, according to the criminal complaint. "And that's our politicians in New York. They're all like that, all like that, and they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can't do anything without (expletive) money."

These are the words of a current Republican councilman who was also charged and arrested in this bribery scheme to rig a mayoral election. How sad, how pathetic, how depressing to think we live in a free society where our vote is the ultimate voice of democracy, a voice that is drowned out by bribery and criminal activity.

4) In early March, 2013, prosecutors in Ohio arrested three people who allegedly voted multiple times or who voted using other people’s absentee ballots. According to news reports, those same prosecutors were also investigating other who voting multiple times or who voted using others voting privileges. Details of that fraud can be accessed at the following video clip:

http://www.westernjournalism.com/obama-supporters-charged-with-voter-fraud/

5) Consider a report from Marion County, Ohio during voting in November. When Marion County resident Joan Stevens tried to vote for President, she ran into a perplexing problem. When she touched the voting screen to vote for Mitt Romney, the machine lit up the name of Barack Obama. When she tried a second time, the machine lit up Barack Obama when she selected Mitt Romney. Knowing she did not want to cast her vote for Obama, she tried a third time and finally, the name Mitt Romney finally lit up.

She raised the alarm with voting officials on site who claimed they checked the machine in question and everything came up fine. This could just be a case of a one time computer glitch. But what if it wasn’t. Two weeks ago we never would have imagined that a Presidential administration would steal reporters phone logs. Since Obama won the state and its electoral votes by a very narrow margin, could these incident not been a glitch but a subtle way to swing votes to Obama?

How many voters were not as diligent as Ms. Stevens and just walked away thinking they had voted for Romney? The one characteristic of these types of “glitches” that were reported many times on election day is that no Obama voter ever came forward and said that the punched the Obama button and Romney’s name lit up, it was always the other way. Not proof but interesting in light of the latest sleaze out of this administration.

That will do it for today, we will continue tomorrow with the remaining sleaze of voter fraud. Remember, the only criminal proof of voter fraud has been found via criminal prosecution so anything else today and tomorrow is either just conjecture or coincidence. Or is it?

Our 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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w 
 

Update: You Are Not Living In A Free Country If... - IRS Oppression, Press Intimidation, Callous Death In Benghazi

Many times in this blog we have painfully pointed out how we are no longer living in a free country. This may be tough news to swallow, it may be difficult to believe, but if you look at the facts, Americans now live under an oppressive, callous, selfish, vindictive Federal government and political class.

It has not happened over night. But over time, the political class has chipped away small pieces of our liberty until you wake up one day and realize that what at first were tiny little chips have become huge chunks of lost freedom. What we used to take for granted as free Americans is now viewed by the politicians in this country as their their domain, and their right to do as these please, paying lip service or no attention to the freedoms guaranteed by the inconveniences of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The past three weeks have made this trend all the more evident, with startling revelations that the IRS has been turned into a political weapon of the Obama administration to harass and burden Americans with opposing political and religious views and suppress their freedom of speech rights.

The press and journalism industry found out recently that this administration will do as they please to secretly spy on and obtain information on the inner workings of the press, suppressing the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

And the entire country found out that this administration holds the promise of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in contempt when someone in the Obama administration denied military relief and left over 20 Americans alone to die in the midst to a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Late last year, we laid out our case to prove that we are no longer living in a free country. The entirety of that post is listed below. However, to that list of shame from December, let us add the following transgressions against freedom that have come to light in just the past few weeks:

- You are no longer living in a free country when the political class uses the IRS to harass, threaten, and strong arm Americans and non-profit political groups that have a different political viewpoint than the current Presidential administration, as what happened with Tea Party and conservative citizens, political campaign donors, and political non-profit groups.

- You are not longer living in a free country when the political class uses the IRS to harass, threaten and strong arm peaceful religious organizations, as what happened with several Christian and Jewish religious organizations and non-profits.

- You are no longer living in a free country when the free press can have the phone logs of its reporters and telephones secretly taken with no apparent approval of a judge or grand jury proceeding, as what happened when the Associated Press learned that the phone logs of its reporters and its organization were secretly obtained by the Obama administration.

- You are no longer living in a free country when members of the political class can sacrifice innocent American lives to further their political gains, as what happened when military relief was denied to over two dozen Americans fighting a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

And you are no longer living in a free country, as witnessed by the following transgressions against freedom that we highlighted back in December:

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December 31, 2012

As we start the new year, one would hope that we could look forward to better times and better lives. However, in the U.S. democracy, that might be a tall order, given the obscene growth and reach of the Federal government in this country and the politicians that operate it. We have previously discussed this erosion of freedom and the perverting of liberty principles in the following popular post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-freedom-pyramid-where-it-is-and.html

Given this review of how a democracy should work, read the following and then you decide if you think you are still living in a free country:

- You are not living in a free country if your retirement medical care, via Medicare, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if a large percentage of your retirement cash flow, via Social Security, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your pre-retirement medical care, via the ramifications of Obama Care, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your ability to go to college, via student loans, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your ability to get a home mortgage, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if almost a third of your annual earnings go to taxes to support all levels of wasteful inefficient, and criminally infested government programs and entities.

- You are not living in a free country if the Federal government’s executive branch can commit U.S. military resources and taxpayer wealth to foreign military actions (e.g. Libya, Yemen, Syria) without Congressional or Constitutional approval.

- You are not living in a free country if the Federal government’s executive branch can independently and arbitrarily designate any American for assassination and then actually commit that assassination without due process of law (e.g. Anwar al-Awlaki).

- You are not living in free country when the Federal government can hold a U.S. citizen in prison for an indefinite period of time without due process of law if that government arbitrarily defines that citizen as a potential threat to national security (National Defense Authorization Act - NDAA)

- You are not living in a free country when a President can seize control of all forms of communications when it alone decides it is in the national interest (Executive Order - Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions)

- You are not living in a free country when the Federal government can collect and store every electronic communication any citizen makes (e.g. email, text messages) in massive data storage centers (e.g. Bluffdale, Utah) without due process, a warrant, or privacy protection.

- You are not living in a free country when the Federal government executive branch thinks it can affix a GPS tracking device to any citizen’s car without a warrant (see U.S. Vs. Jones decision).

- You are not living in a free country when the executive branch thinks it has the power to arbitrarily ignore judicial rulings and existing laws (e.g. Gulf Of Mexico drilling moratorium and DOMA).

- You are not living in a free country when government agents, via TSA, are allowed to legally grope and grab U.S. citizen’s body parts in the name of national security.

- You are not living in a free country if government and political class spending has rung up trillions of dollars of national debt that will eventually have to be paid by you, your children, and your grandchildren.

- You are not living in a free country if you privacy rights can be almost arbitrarily be violated by the Patriot Act and the NDAA legislation.

- You are not living in a free country when crony capitalism wastes billions of taxpayer dollars every year without any redeeming societal benefits (e.g. Solyndra, Fisker, Telsa).

- You are not living in a free country if your political leaders hold you and your opinions in contempt:

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - those Americans that opposed Obama's health care reform effort are un-American.
• Congressman Charles Rangel - those Americans that opposed Obama's health care reform effort are like the racists that opposed the civil rights movements in the 1960s.
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - American tourists that come to D.C. in the summer physically smell.
• Congressman Dick Grayson - those Americans with a different opinions from him are knuckle dragging Neanderthals.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - those Americans against the building of a mosque close to Ground Zero in New York City needed to be investigated.
• Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee - Tea Party members used to wear Ku Klux Klan white sheets.
• Congresswoman Maxine Walters - Tea Party advocates “can go to hell."
• Czar Van Jones - those opposed to the President's policies are a_ _ h_ _ _ s.
• Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats in Congress - Those Americans that support Tea Party principles are terrorists.

- You are not living in a free country if the executive branch can circumvent Constitutionally mandated government appointment reviews via a "czar" politburo.

- You are not living in a free country when politicians can use billions of taxpayer dollars, via earmarks, to finance their perpetual re-election campaigns.

- You are not living in a free country where politicians decide what private companies live (e.g. Citigroup) and what private companies die (e.g. Lehman Brothers.)

- You are not living in a free country when those in office can maximize their re-election chances with favorable gerrymandering of Congressional districts.

- You are not living in a free country if your selection of a Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party via the primary and caucus system can be overturned by a small cadre of insiders in the upper echelon of the party called "super delegates."

- You are not living in a free country when sitting politicians can automatically grant themselves annual pay increases regardless of how poorly they led the nation during the past year.

- You are not living in a free country when sitting politicians cannot be removed from Congressional committee posts regardless of how poorly they performed their jobs on those committees (e.g. Intelligence committee members who did not foresee the 9-11 attacks, Finance committee members who did not foresee the coming of the "Great Recession", Interior Department committee members that did not properly oversee the BP oil rig inspection process, etc.)

- You are not living in a free country when any level of government can seize your property for a supposedly fair price and turn it over to developers for a private sector development project.

- You are not living in a free country when perceived and actual voter fraud casts significant doubt on whether or not your vote was counted fairly and if the true winner prevailed.

So let's review. Politicians control our pocketbooks, our health care, our retirement funding, who we vote for, invade our privacy, read our electronic communications, potentially manipulate our voting results, violate our property rights, and control our ability to get a mortgage or student loan while calling us names if we dare to disagree with them. Hardly sounds like the traditional definition of a democracy to me.

The beauty of this system, that the political class has worked out for themselves, is that they are able to keep us fighting among ourselves. This diverts our attention to the fact that our freedom and liberty have slowly been stripped away. We have reached a point in this country that a great portion of our lives is no longer controlled by our brains, our energy, our freedom, and our initiative but by about 600 people sitting in Congress and the executive branch of the Federal government.

We vehemently, and fruitlessly, fight among ourselves over relatively trivial issues while the political class strips us of our wealth and our liberty without ever solving a major issue:

• We are no closer to a rational drug policy in this country since Nixon declared War On Drugs in the 1960s, with this void allowing a narco state to develop just south of our border with Mexico.
• We are no closer to a rational and coherent national energy policy despite the oil crises from the 1970s.
• We are no closer to having world class public schools despite the warning of failing public schools from early in the Reagan administration and the expenditure of trillions of dollars since then.
• We are no closer to having a coherent and effective immigration plan and strategy.
• We are no closer to having an effective strategy for containing escalating health care costs.
• We are no closer to having a sane, balanced budget process for the Federal government with the political class spending trillions of dollars more than they bring in in revenue.

We no longer live in a free country and we have allowed the politicians to do it to us. That is why it is so important to begin the cleansing process and the restoration of freedom with the implementation of the following steps, some of which were laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:

Step 1 - reduce Federal spending by 10% a year for five years in order to tame our out of control political class spending.

Step 14 - implement specific and fair processes to eliminate the current gerrymandering process for Congressional districts.

Step 17 - eliminate the "Super Delegate" process

Step 19 - strengthen eminent domain laws to prevent the arbitrary confiscation of private property.

Steps 20, 21, 22 - Make the following changes to the Patriot Act to protect the privacy of citizens: review every section of the Act to see if each part is still really needed for national security, make it illegal to intercept any form of communications of a citizen without a judge-approved warrant, notify any citizen if they have been investigated and cleared by any government agency investigation, and finally appoint the members to the oversight committee of the Act, a committee that has never been staffed.

Step 28 - repeal Obama Care, an atrocity that imposes thousands of rules and dozens of taxes on the nation without solving the root causes of our escalating health care costs and replace it with the process described in Step 28.

Step 34 - implement a citizen approval process that would remove politicians from Congressional committees for gross dereliction of duty.

Step 37 - eliminate the Congressional process that automatically grants an annual pay increase to Congressional members, replacing it with a citizen satisfaction based pay system.

Step 39 - implement term limits for all Federal politicians in order to get some fresh thinking and problem solvers involved with the myriad issues facing America, "one and done."

Disband the czar process and restore the Constitutionally mandated checks and balances of our government processes.

Time is running out to fix what the political class has destroyed in this country from a liberty, privacy, freedom, budget, economic, and Constitution perspective. We have allowed this situation to arise and we are the ones that need to fix it. Otherwise, some morning we will wake up and realize that fifty years ago, Nikita Khrushchev got it right when he said:

"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright; but we'll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have communism. We won't have to fight you; we will so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands." Nikita Khrushchev, 1962

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To this ignoble list we now add the ghost of Nixon past: the political use of the IRS to go after political enemies and the destruction of the freedom of the press. Shameful, both on the political class and ourselves for letting this happen. What will you do about it? Take action or prove Khrushchev right?

Our 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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2013, Obama Care Update, Part 7: Drug Costs Rising, HHS Looking For Donations and More

This will be the seventh and final (for this month!) post that went through the many current and likely future disasters and fiascos that Obama Care will cause to befall the country, its economy, and its personal and economic freedoms. Looking at the facts that these seven posts have discussed, it is quite hard for a rational human being to still believe that this is the best way to resolve the nation’s ever rising health care costs.

As we have proven many times before, Obama Care never understood the root causes of our high health care costs and thus any of the solutions within it are highly unlikely to resolve the underlying problems. All the legislation does is create another huge, ineffective, and inefficient government bureaucracy.

Although this last post will do it for this month, I fear that next month we will need to run another series of posts that updates the continuing disaster that is Obama Care.

1) Democratic politicians, many of whom voted to approve Obama Care, seem to have growing concerns about the legislation. Seventeen Senators who previously voted for the law recently tried to repeal a new medical device tax that was in the legislation because it was causing economic stress on companies back in their home states.

One of the original active advocates of the law, Montana Senator Max Baucus, now calls the legislation a train wreck, a concern that has been voiced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A Democrat running for Congress in a special South Carolina election recently called the legislation problematic.

And now another U.S. Senator, Chris Coons from Delaware, interviewed by NBC news recently, openly stated that he has some real concerns about the legislation and that Congress needs to keep a close on eye it as it is rolled out.

Real concerns, train wreck, problematic. Feeling comfortable that this is going to work when these types of descriptions are attached to it?

2) A May 13, 2013 Associated Press article had some bad news for Americans who might come down with specific types of diseases in that Obama Care, and the implementation of the law in each state, may result in skyrocketing medication costs for those specific diseases. This is the exact opposite of what the legislation was supposed to do, i.e. reduce costs of medications for sick Americans, not increase the cost.

Details of the article include the following points:

• In an attempt to keep health care insurance premiums low, some states are likely to allow insurance companies to charge patients a larger share of the cost for expensive medications used to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other life-affecting chronic diseases.
• Such "specialty drugs" can cost thousands of dollars a month. In California, for example, patients needed these so-called specialty drugs for these specific types of diseases would pay up to 30% of the cost, a monthly cost that can run into the thousands of dollars.
• The article also cites the widely used cancer drug, Gleevec, asserting that a patient that needed Gllevec patient could pay more than $2,000 for a month's supply.
• Industry experts fear that many states will follow California's lead, a trend that would defeat the purpose of Obama's overhaul, because some of the sickest patients may be unable to afford their prescriptions.
• "It's important that the benefit design not discriminate against people with chronic illness, and high copays do that," said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, a data analysis firm catering to the health care industry and government.
• "You have to worry about a world where if you happen to contract cancer or multiple sclerosis, you are stuck with a really big bill," Mendelson said. "It's going to be very important for states to take a long, hard look at their benefit design."
• His company’s research shows that 1 in 4 cancer patients walks away from the pharmacy counter empty-handed when facing a copay of $500 or more for a newly prescribed drug.
• A spokesman for Covered California said state officials are trying to balance between two conflicting priorities: comprehensive coverage and affordable premiums.

And this last statement from the article kind of sums up the failure of Obama Care: it never resolved the underlying causes of our high health care costs, it just created a giant government bureaucracy that moves taxes and rules around but never solves the problem. California is trying to balance the two priorities of comprehensive coverage and affordable premiums. To really solve the problem, a good piece of legislation would solve the overall problem and not resort to “balancing priorities.”

Thus, if you are in need of a “free” medical check up or a “free” mammogram, you may think Obama Care is great because it balances in your favor. But if you have cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, or other serous diseases, you are just out of luck because Obama Care got balanced in such a way to make your life more expensive, not less expensive, more dangerous, not less dangerous. Nothing is free in life, and certainly not in Obama Care. Your free was the result of making someone else’s health calamity less free. A real solution would never result in having to make this balancing choice.

3) When Obama Care was jammed through the legislative process, its supporters pointed to their analyses that showed it would take less than $900 billion to implement the program over ten years. Just a few years later, Congressional Budget Office analyses predicted that the ten year implementation costs had about doubled to over $1.7 TRILLION, not a good trend.

And now that onerous cost may be understated as we recently learned that the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Katheleen Sebelius, has been going to various non-government entities, hat in hand, asking them, pressuring them to actually contribute to the roll out of the legislation since HHS feels it does not have enough money in its budget to do the rollout properly.

This action becomes particularly distressing in light of the news this week that the Obama administration, via its control of the IRS, had vindictively acted against Americans and political groups that were at odds with the positions of the administration. Could this asking for funds from private entities be another Obama administration shake down along the lines and philosophy of the IRS Mafia-like actions?

At least one person, and probably many more, think this type of be government behavior may have crossed the line into criminal actions: “To solicit funds from health-care executives to help pay for the implementation of the President’s $2.6 trillion health spending law is absurd,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said in a statement. “I will be seeking more information from the Administration about these actions to help better understand whether there are conflicts of interest and if it violated federal law.”

Even if the Secretary’s actions were not criminal, it is just another example that shows the supporters of this legislation were either clueless when they put it together relative to the unbelievably high costs that are coming to light or deliberately lied about the true costs to get the legislation approved. Whether the reasons were criminal, ignorant, or liars, the bottom line is this law is a disaster of historic proportions.

4) An Independent Journal report from April 19, 2013 reported on an analysis from The Society of Actuaries (SOA) that estimated the cost of individual health insurance plans on Obama Care exchanges will rise more than 80% in some states in 2014. Overall, the SOA report predicted that medical claims per member will rise 32% in the individual plans expected to dominate the Obama Care exchanges next year.

Why will this happen when the overall objective of Obama Care and its exchanges was to REDUCE costs of individual insurance plans? According to the analysis, elderly and sick people will likely join the exchanges at much higher rates than younger, healthier people who are more likely to risk paying the penalty for not buying health insurance than actually buying it.

And since the law is set up to make it virtually impossible for the government to force people to pay the penalty for non-insurance coverage, the revenue anticipated into Obama Care will not occur while the health care costs of old and sick people actually in the exchanges will actually soar. Not rocket science, but common sense found lacking again in those who wrote this disastrous legislation.

5) A May 15, 2013 United Liberty website article summarized some research findings relative to small business owners and what Obama Care will do to them:

• Results of a recent Gallup poll of small businesses found that 48% of them expect Obama Care to have a negative impact on their business while only 13% expect it to have a positive impact.
• The United States Chamber of Commerce recently reported on a separate opinion poll of small business owners that showed massive confusion about Obama Care’s components and the finding that 41% of business owners surveyed had already held off on hiring new workers as a result of Obama Care.
• Another 38% in that survey said they had held off on expanding their businesses because of Obama Care.
• The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Obama Care will decrease the labor force by 800,000 workers over the next 10 years.
• A recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that only 35% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the law, while 40% have an unfavorable view. More than have of respondents support changes to Obama Care or outright repeal.

Is there any doubt that Obama Care is one of the leading reasons why the true unemployment rate is still up around 14% and over 20 million Americans cannot find full time jobs?

6) A Newsmax article from May 5, 2013 reported on the massive communications and miscommunication issues surrounding Obama Care’s rollout. Since the lynch pin of Obama Care is getting uninsured Americans to enroll in the law’s insurance exchanges to purchase health care insurance, if that does not come about, the entire legislation collapses on itself.

The reason? The law’s financials and mechanics requires healthy younger Americans to give up some of their wealth and purchase health insurance so that this money can than be diverted to cover others who cannot afford insurance and those generally older Americans who likely need more medical resources to stay healthy.

In other words, the government needs to take money from Paul (generally younger, healthy Americans) to pay Paul (generally older, less healthy Americans). This gets back to the “balancing act” discussed above. Obama Care never resolved the underlying root causes of our high health care costs, it just tries to move around wealth and taxes and insurance fees in a constant balancing act.

But the ability to get all of these younger Americans to purchase health care insurance faces a wall of ignorance:

• A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 77% of Americans know little or nothing about Obama Care health insurance exchanges.
• 40% falsely think Obama Care reforms create a government panel to make end-of-life decisions for people on Medicare.
• An April survey of 1,003 people by HealthPocket, a company that helps consumers find health care insurance, found that the law's penalty for not buying coverage would not induce most 25-to-34-year-olds or 18-to-24-year-olds to purchase it.
• The Newsmax article points out that a major communications vehicle for the entire legislation program allocates just $600,000 each for 13 states.

7) One last word of disgust on the whole Obama Care affair, this one from Democratic Senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin. and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on health care, said in a recent New York Times article that he was extremely upset with Mr. Obama’s action to transfer budget funding from public health prevention programs and use it to publicize the Obama Care: “I am greatly disappointed — beyond upset — that the administration chose to help pay for the Affordable Care Act in fiscal year 2013 by raiding the Public Health and Prevention Fund.”

So rather than use taxpayer wealth to change underlying bad life style habits that lead to high health care costs via public health initiatives, a really good way to get down health care costs, the President has decided to use that well intended money for a PR campaign. Pathetic.

That will do it for this month. The bad news is overwhelming, the good news is non-existent relative to Obama Care. It is truly shaping up as the worst written, worst thought out piece of legislation ever written and approved. And probably the worst news is yet to come, something we will pick up and cover next month. Until then, stay healthy because under this law you probably cannot afford to get sick.

Our 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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

May, 2013 Obama Care Update, Part 6: Neener/Neener I told You So and More Bad News

This is the sixth in a series of posts that are reviewing the current situation relative to Obama Care. It has not been a pleasant journey through the first five posts, with the identification of skyrocketing legislation costs, past supporters of the legislation finally realizing what a disaster this law is, a growing and likely ineffective government bureaucracy to administer this fiasco, and the fact that the law will never come close to attaining its objectives, probably making things worse in the country’s health care industry.

Today’s post fails to wrap up these saddening current events since even this sixth post will not be enough to cover how poorly constructed, poorly financed, and poorly implemented this legislation is becoming.

1) We have already discussed the crumbling financials of Obama Care in detail. We reviewed how the original estimated cost of the law has already doubled. How government experts themselves now estimate that the legislation will add trillions of dollars to our national debt. And most importantly, how it now looks like the cost of health care for American citizens and American businesses will rise even more dramatically, the exact opposite of what the legislation and its supporters claimed would happen.

But let’s do a little I told you so. This escalating of health care costs is a surprise to only those that wrote the legislation. Clear thinking Americans and experts knew this was going to happen years ago, the politicians either did not believe basic math or did not understand basic math.

In a May 27, 2013 post on Liberty News website,

http://www.libertynews.com/2013/03/obama-2009-premiums-to-drop-3000-sebelius-today-not-so-much-in-fact-theyre-going-to-rise/

the website owners went back through history and reviewed what the experts were saying about Obama Care a few years ago. You will see that the disaster we see unfolding today because of the legislation was fully predictable when the legislation first appeared and was enacted (bold and italics added by me for emphasis):

******************************

I) In 2009, the Wall Street Journal determined:

“No Big Cost Rise in U.S. Premiums Is Seen in Study,” said the New York Times, while the Washington Post declared, “Senate Health Bill Gets a Boost.” The White House crowed that the CBO report was “more good news about what reform will mean for families struggling to keep up with skyrocketing premiums under the broken status quo.”

Finance Chairman Max Baucus [the same Max Baucus that now claims Obama Care is a “train wreck”] chimed in from the Senate floor that “Health-care reform is fundamentally about lowering health-care costs. Lowering costs is what health-care reform is designed to do, lowering costs; and it will achieve this objective.”

Except it won’t. CBO says it expects employer-sponsored insurance costs to remain roughly in line with the status quo, yet even this is a failure by Mr. Baucus’s and the White House’s own standards. Meanwhile, fixing the individual market—which is expensive and unstable largely because it does not enjoy the favorable tax treatment given to job-based coverage—was supposed to be the whole purpose of “reform.”

Instead, CBO is confirming that new coverage mandates will drive premiums higher.

II)  In 2010, Forbes determined:

If you’re thinking the legislation will tamp down overall health care spending, reconsider. Policy analysts ranging from the neutral Congressional Budget Office to the HMO lobby see no abatement in the growth rate of health care spending.

That sector of the economy is growing at a 7.4% annual rate, says actuarial firm Milliman. Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, thinks the Senate bill would expand health spending by $234 billion above current projections.

The premium hikes will result from cost shifting, better known as passing the buck.

III) In 2010, Reason magazine determined:

…contrary to what the administration and its supporters claim, under ObamaCare, insurance would probably get more expensive, and any decrease in rates for some would come at taxpayer expense.

Meanwhile, President Obama was telling people they would see a 3,000 percent drop in the cost of their premiums, and probably get a raise!

IV) Fast forward to today according to Liberty News:

Some people purchasing new insurance policies for themselves this fall could see premiums rise because of requirements in the health-care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Tuesday.

Ms. Sebelius’s remarks come weeks before insurers are expected to begin releasing rates for plans that start on Jan. 1, 2014, when key provisions of the health law kick in.

Premiums have been a sensitive subject for the Obama administration, which is counting on elements in the health law designed to increase competition among insurers to keep rates in check. The administration has pointed to subsidies that will be available for many lower-income Americans to help them with the cost of coverage

*****************************
“…could see premiums rise as a result of the health care law.” This was not supposed to happen folks but it took the Washington political class three years to see this disaster, as witnessed by the prime implementer of the legislation, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, whereas many Americans saw this happening as far back as 2009.

When you claim that something will reduce costs and then turn around and openly admit it will increase costs, there is no other word to describe your efforts than “Failure.”

2) Mike Ruff owns eight Five Guys burger franchises that employ 150 people, many of them full time employees. At a Heritage Foundation event in early March, this small business owner pointed out the likely impacts on his business and employees:

• The many added costs of the Obama Care legislation are going to have to be passed on to his customers in the form of higher food costs.
• He estimates that Obama Care will take the ENTIRE profit of one of his restaurants to pay for Obama Care‘s impact.
• He is also holding off on opening three new Five Guys franchises until the Obama Care regulations are fully understood and he understands if this can be done profitably.
• He may be forced to transition many of his full-time burger cooks and other employees to part time status if the health care insurance premiums become too onerous and unaffordable under Obama Care regulations.
• He estimates that additional healthcare insurance costs under Obamacare could total $60,000 annually for his small business.

Again, please explain to me how this legislation is helping America when it will escalate health care insurance costs, reduce hours for working Americans, cause many covered Americans to lose existing health insurance, and stunt economic growth?

The video where Mr. Ruff explains this reality can be accessed at:

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/03/12/five-guys-owner-burger-prices-will-go-up-due-to-obamacare-55197

3) Consider a different but similar story of a small business owner relative to Obama Care, as reported in the March 20, 2013 issue of the Washington Post:

• Jody Manor has operated a small cafe and catering company for nearly three decades in Old Town Alexandria.
• Six years ago he purchased an adjoining building, and recently he started searching for a second location for expansion.
• Whether he moves forward with expansion depends on the price tag of the health care insurance requirements mandated by Obama Care.
• Manor’s company employs 45 people. If he brings in just five more, his business would soon be subject to new minimum coverage standards under the 2010 law and he does not know whether his current health plan would meet this threshold of coverage or how his insurance premiums might skyrocket.
• “These changes are less than a year away, and I still have no information about how much our premiums are going to cost,” said Manor, owner of Bittersweet Catering, Cafe and Bakery. “It definitely gives me pause when thinking about adding another location.

Two different food businesses, same quandary. Bad legislation followed by bad planning which is causing so much uncertainty that businesses are stuck in nowhere land relative to understanding how to keep their business alive and profitable and not break the law. Federal government and political class, neither has a clue what is going on.

But the steady beat of stupidity and fiasco continues on tomorrow where we review even more of the disgrace, disaster, and disappointment that is Obama Care, possibly the worst piece of legislation ever written in the history of America. Hopefully, one more post will finally get all of the disgraces, disasters, and disappointments up to date, at least for now.

Our 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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w  

Memorial Day, 2013: A Soldier's Story and The Obama Scandals

This post original ran several years ago, also on Memorial Day. I am rerunning it again today to celebrate those brave Americans who fought, and sometimes died, in our past to protect our life, liberty, and freedoms. These thanks also extend to current members of our armed forces who are carrying on the tradition of their peers through the ages today

I think that it is especially appropriate in light of the serious, serious attacks on our freedoms that have come to the forefront in the past month. Unfortunately, these latest attacks and affronts to our freedoms do not come from tyrants and maniacs from far away.

These attacks are originating within elements of the American political class. The harassing of Americans via the IRS, the secret obtaining of news outlets telephone logs and sources, the coercion of religious organizations to violate their tenets and beliefs for a political program that is in conflict with these beliefs, and other egregious actions trample on our basic rights including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious choice, etc.

Our veterans did not fight and die in the face of foreign evil just to have their sacrifices be nullified for selfish, short term political gain. Hopefully, their many examples of courage and bravery provide us with the wisdom and strength to fight tyranny today and in the future, from both foreign AND domestic tyrants.

***********************************

No political ranting and raving today. No pointing out how the politicians continue to screw up the country, constantly denying and depriving us of our freedoms and liberties to the benefit of their political careers. Today is a day of remembrance, of the millions of Americans that have served the country in the past and in the present, many times sacrificing their lives for our freedom and liberty. Please spend a few minutes today thinking of them in any way possible and remembering that many of our fellow citizens and family members are on the front lines around the world today, facing serious danger, but unselfishly protecting us.

One soldier in particular is on my mind today. My father served in World War II with the 203rd Engineer Combat Battalion. It is my understanding that the 203rd came ashore at Omaha Beach in June, 1944, served across France, was involved in the Battle Of The Bulge in late 1944 and eventually made its way into Germany. It was destined for the Pacific Theater but had those plans cancelled when Japan surrendered. He was honorably discharged in late 1945.

I say that it was my understanding because my father rarely spoke of the war, I had to find out this information from secondary sources. He did not brag about his service, he did not boast of the battles he may or may not have seen, he did not regale us with tales of heroism.

It is also my understanding that he is not alone in this approach. Stories abound of similar attitudes among World War II veterans. They did what had to be done, often at great cost, to protect the country and the ideals it stands for. They did not consider themselves heroes, they just did what had to be done. They then returned to become regular citizens and got on with their lives. No egos, no self-centeredness, just a dedication to country and family.

I never thanked my father for his service in the fight for liberty and freedom, not sure growing up that I fully understood the sacrifices he and others made for us. I would like to do that today, seventeen years after he passed away. I would also like to hope that our politicians eventually realize what great costs have been expended to keep us free and that they re-dedicate themselves to maintaining freedom, for all Americans in so many different ways.

Making freedom the core of their service in politics and government should be their highest priority, not their re-election. May they for once forego their own egos and self-centeredness, for the good of the country, like our military people have done for centuries.

May, 2013 Obama Care Update, Part 5: Running Out Of Money, Cannot Collect The Money, Going To Cost Us More Money

Okay, this is the fifth and unfortunately, not the final post this month on the tragedy that is Obama Care. The fact that our monthly reviews get longer and more disastrous is not a good trend, especially since as we get closer and closer to full implementation, the bad surprises are likely to come quicker and become more dire.

1) A May 6, 2013 report by CNBC laid out how the Federal government was going to enforce the mandate that every American buy health care insurance or be fined for not having the insurance. This component of the legislation is critical to the entire financial integrity of Obama Care. It is supposed to force healthy Americans, generally younger Americans, to pay money for health insurance coverage. This pot of money from generally younger Americans will somehow then be used to fund health care for less healthy Americans, usually older Americans.

The IRS is tasked with the job of finding and fining those nasty Americans who dare not to purchase health care insurance, undermining the financial integrity of Obama Care. But do not hold your breath waiting for the IRS to do this job effectively, as laid out in the CNBC report:

• The law severely limits the IRS’s ability to collect penalties and fines.
• The IRS can only ask an American for the Obama Care fine money, but there are no civil or criminal penalties if that American refuses to pay it.
• The IRS cannot seize bank accounts or dock wages to collect fines and penalties.
• No interest accumulates for unpaid penalties.
• The only recourse the IRS has under Obama Care is to withhold tax refunds to collect the penalty but ONLY if someone overpaid taxes.

To accomplish this withholding of funds, the IRS will some how have to match its massive income tax records with yet to be created massive Obama Care records that identify what Americans should pay Obama Care fines and penalties. Who actually believes they will be able to accomplish this massive data match?

But it gets worse. The Treasury Department, according to CNBC, stated the cost for all of this IRS enforcement is expected to total $881 million for years 2010 through 2013. But former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress in 2012 that he and the IRS would need another $13.1 billion for the job in 2014. Another political class cost estimate that is insanely off target if Mr. Shulman is to be believed.

Bad planning with inadequate funding, totally expected from the political class.

2) The Townhall website reported on another Obama Care disaster on May 4, 2013, a disaster that had also been reported by other news sources. An Obama Care component, the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, has almost burned through its $5 billion budget years earlier than originally planned.

Now, Health and Human Service Secretary Sebelius has proposed that the states that run the administration of the program find a way to pay for it themselves. Remember, Obama Care was supposed to use Federal funds and taxes to pay for most of Obama Care’s features and programs. Now, before the entire legislation is even completely rolled out, another component is under dire financial strain, endangering the operation.

The basis of this latest problem is that the legislation capped spending on the program at $5 billion, and the money is running out because the beneficiaries turned out to be costlier to care for than expected. Advanced heart disease and cancer are common diagnoses for the group. Duh, who would have thought?

Obama did not ask for any additional funding for the program in his latest budget, and a Republican bid to keep the program going by tapping other funds in the health care law failed to win support in the House last week. Thus, no one in Washington is smart enough to come up with a solution to another failing aspect of the law.

State officials say one likely consequence of the money crunch will be a cost shift to people currently in the program, resulting in drastic increases in health care insurance premiums and copayments. Additionally, the real fear is that those sick people in the program might just drop out of the program because of the increased expenses.

Thus, the Obama promise to that this legislation will reduce Americans' health care costs and provide more insurance coverage is imploding from ignorant planning and over promising while under funding.

3) The closing paragraph from the Townhall article neatly summed up the overall Obama Care report card so far:

Republicans should have pushed harder to fix this program, but the issue brings up that Obamacare was poorly designed and poorly implemented from the start. It turns out that if legislation relies on moving pieces, state partnerships, and delayed implementation, the legislation is just poorly designed.

Succinct and accurate: poor.

4) The United Liberty website on February 2, 2013 reported on a General Accountability Office (GAO) analysis that determined Obama Care could cost taxpayers and the national debt about $6.2 TRILLION in the long-term if cost-savings measures in the legislation do not work.

The GAO report was requested by Senator Jeff Sessions, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. The analysis explains that the “effect of PPACA [Obama Care] on the long-term fiscal outlook depends largely on whether elements designed to control cost growth are sustained.”

What is the chance of these costs actually working? If you believe one of the foremost experts in the field of healthcare, those chances are pretty low. In Congressional testimony in 2011, Richard Foster, Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was asked by Congressman Tom McClintock for a simple true or false response on two of the main assertions made by supporters of the law: that it will bring down skyrocketing health care costs and will it let people keep their current health insurance if they like it.

On the cost control issue, “I would say false, more so than true,” Foster responded.

Who should we believe that costs will be contained by Obama Care: the head actuary for Medicare and Medicaid or politicians in Washington? Given the historical lack of trustworthiness of the politicians in Washington, I bet on the actuary.

5) Even the Federal Reserve Board is coming to the realization that Obama Care is a drag on the economy. The Federal’s Beige Book, released on March 6, identified Obama Care as a factor in slowing hiring and employment growth.

The Beige Book is published eight times a year and it details the economic activity in the 12 different Federal Reserve regions. As this most recent report explains, “Employers in several Districts cited the unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act as reasons for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff.”

But this is not new news. Federal Reserve presidents have cited Obama care as a hiring drag for a few years now. In 2010, the Federal Reserve Bank president of Atlanta said, “We have frequently heard strong comments to the effect of ‘My company won’t hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.’”

There is little more clarity on what the new costs are going to be for business owners as we get closer to the full disaster that is Obama Care. This is why three different Federal Reserve regions have directly linked Obama Care to slower hiring, resulting in persistently high unemployment levels and anemic overall economic growth.

The Federal Reserve thinks that this legislation will stunt growth, the head actuary of Medicare and Medicaid thinks this legislation will substantially add to the national debt, the IRS has virtually no way to make the insurance mandate component effective, and early components of the law are already running out of money with no plan to make them solvent short of increasing the premiums of the component. Unfortunately, the bad news continues tomorrow relative to the ever growing nightmare called Obama Care.

Our 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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
 

May, 2013 Obama Care Update, Part 4: The Bad News Never Ends

This will be the fourth post this month relative to the impending and unfolding disaster known as Obama Care. And four posts will not be enough as we will need at least five posts for this monthly update of the Obama Care disaster.

So far we have found out that people are losing work hours as a result of the legislation, that former supporters are now backtracking from their support of the legislation, that the legislation has no chance at all of being successful since it did not attack the true root causes of our escalating health care costs, that the cost of the legislation is going through the roof, and that words such as train wreck, problematic, silly, horror show, etc. are accurate descriptors of the legislation.

Today will be a clean up of the disasters we have not discussed so far:

1) A USA Today article from December 30, 2012 correctly predicted that many Americans would see their work hours reduced as a result of Obama Care. Excerpts from the article include the following insights:

• Ernie Canadeo, president of EGC Group, a Melville-based advertising and marketing agency with 45 employees, planned to add 10 next year but now says he may add fewer so he's not subject to the legislation‘s requirements.
• Rob Wilson, head of Employco, a human resource outsourcing firm, says other companies already over the 50-employee threshold plan to add more part-time workers or cut the hours of full-timers.
• Wilson goes on to predict that other companies will hire more temporary workers, whom they won't have to cover.
• Nearly half of retailers, restaurants and hotels will be affected by the law, according to the article. Since low-wage workers in retail, restaurants, and hotels are widely available, it often hasn't been cost-effective or necessary for employers to offer them coverage
• "I think you may see employees with fewer hours as a consequence," says Neil Trautwein, vice president of the National Retail Federation.
• Thirty-one percent of franchisees surveyed recently by the International Franchise Association said they plan to pare staff to get under the 50-employee threshold.

More proof that Obama Care will result in current employees getting fewer hours to work, resulting in them earning less income while still not getting health care insurance and also stunting overall national economic growth. A loser on all counts.

2) On February 11, 2013, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the Virginia General Assembly has now affirmed Gov. Bob McDonnell’s decision to order Virginia state agencies to cut back part-time employee hours to no more than 29 a week to avoid triggering a requirement under the Obama Care legislation to provide health insurance to employees.

Thus, it it is not only restaurants, hotels, and retailers that are feeling the budget pressure from the legislation, now government agencies are also cutting back workers’ hours to protect their budgets’ integrity.

3) A Florida based Sun Sentinel newspaper article from February 22, 2013 summarized the growing doctor shortage in the state of Florida, partially driven by Obama Care’s expansion of Medicaid:

• Number of doctors in Florida today: 44,804
• Number of Florida people with health insurance coverage today: 15 million
• Number of insured residents expected in 2014, including a Medicaid expansion as a result of Obama Care: 17 million to 17.5 million
• Percentage of physicians expected to retire in the next five years: 5,600
• Percentage of Florida doctors who are accepting new Medicaid patients: 59%

So the total number of current Florida doctors will decrease about 12-13% within five years while the number of insured Medicaid patients could increase by as much as much as 16-17% but only about 59% of the remaining doctors will accept the new Medicaid recipients. Fewer doctors, more patients, dwindling access for those new patients and no Obama Care component to address these less than positive trends. Train wreck.

4) The Americans For Tax Reform website reported on March 5, 2013 that the General Accountability Office tabulated that the IRS has 47 different taxes and regulations it must enforce under Obama Care. And the IRS is not ready to execute these new responsibilities:

"It is unprecedented in recent history, the amount of responsibility the IRS is being given in an area that most people don’t think of as an IRS function...[t]his is going to lead to problems, sir...“[t]hey have to determine what enforcement mechanisms they’ll employ … how they go about determining who to audit and who not to."

Treasury Inspector General for the IRS Russell George
March 5, 2013
Testimony before House Committee on Appropriations

“This is going to lead to problems.” Could not have said it better but the fact it comes from an actual IRS Inspector General lends credibility to this new impending Obama Care disaster. According to the GAO, Obama Care will result in the IRS having to collect new or higher taxes in at least twenty new areas. Given that the IRS has readily admitted that it fails to collect over $380 billion a year from existing tax evaders on existing taxes, who in the world thinks that all of a sudden they can do 47 more functions with any kind of efficiency, fairness, and effectiveness?

You can review this 47 item wish list at the following link:

http://www.atr.org/reasons-irs-unprepared-enforce-obamacare-a7504?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+americansfortaxreform+%28Americans+for+Tax+Reform+RSS%29

No chance in hell the IRS can pull this off.

5) A March 18, 2013 article by the Heritage Foundation, based on But first, remember that Obama promised Obama Care would “cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year”? As 2014 and full implementation of Obama Care gets closer, it is almost absolutely certain that this will be another Obama promise or lie that will never get fulfilled as insurance costs, as analyzed by many independent sources, are surely likely to skyrocket.

Heritage points out that two tenets of the legislaiotn will have the greatest impact and be the biggest drivers of higher health care costs:

Age rating restrictions. Obamacare limits variation in premium costs to a ratio of 3 to 1 based on age. But as Heritage research shows, “The natural variation by age in medical costs is about 5 to 1—meaning that the oldest group of (non-Medicare) adults normally consumes about five times as much medical care as the youngest group.” This means that under Obamacare, young adults will pay significantly higher premiums than they would have prior to Obamacare, and older adults will pay only slightly lower premiums.

New benefit mandates and cost-sharing rules. Heritage expert Ed Haislmaier explains, “The new law adds a number of health care services that insurers must cover and in some cases restricts the ability of insurers and employer self-insured health plans to impose limits on the amount of services patients can consume. This combination will drive up health plan costs and premiums for both individual insurance and employer-group coverage.” In addition, Obamacare prohibits cost sharing on many preventative services, which will dramatically increase utilization of those services—pushing premiums even higher.

Heritage goes on to point out a study done by staff members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, working with committee staff people from two Senate committees, a study which compiled over 30 cost studies to project how much health care insurance premiums will rise by each state (double click for a larger view):

As you see from the state by state table the staffs compiled, Americans can expect their premiums to go up in the near future and go up very substantially regardless of what state they live in. So much for the hollow promise of REDUCING health insurance premiums via Obama Care.

We will try to wrap this nonsense tomorrow but as soon as we write and discuss the latest disaster from Obama Care, new disasters and fiascos pop so no promises on whether tomorrow will be the end of the agony for this month.

Our 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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
 

Obama Scandal Number Three - Using and Abusing The IRS For Political Gain

This is the third in a series of introductory posts where we begin the long process of trying to get our arms around just three of the disgraceful political scandals that the Obama administration has recently brought down on itself and the American people:

1. The Benghazi consulate terrorist attack and cover up.
2. The unauthorized and secret confiscation of confidential telephone logs of Associated Press news reporters by the Obama Justice Department.
3. The use of the IRS to hamper, harass, and intimidate American citizens and organizations that held political opinions contrary to the Obama administration’s positions and opinions.

We have covered the first two scandals listed here in the past two days at a very high level of detail in order to get a basis established to jump forward from with more details in the near future. Today, we will look at the third, and probably most disgraceful scandal. It involved violating the freedom of speech rights of millions and millions of Americans, the use of the IRS to suppress political activity and speech for any group and any American who held and holds political opinions in opposition to Obama’s.

The basis of this first cut at this scandal comes from a May 15, 2013 Associated Press article entitled, “AP Exclusive: IRS Knew Tea Party Targeted in 2011.” Although this article’s information is almost a week hold as I write this and a ton of other revelations and law breaking have come to light since May 15, it is a good starting point, with the later breaking news to be filled in in a near future post.

Highlights from the AP story include the following details and atrocities:

• High level/executive officials knew their employees were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an IRS inspector general's report.
• These findings are likely in conflict with public statements previously made by the IRS that only lower level IRS agents were involved, statements made by the IRS commissioner.
• We know that much of this information must be true because the IRS actually publicly apologized for what it called "inappropriate" targeting of certain, and always conservative, political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
• Despite apologizing, the IRS press release did reaffirm its stance that no higher level IRS employees were involved in the targeting.
• But the inspector general’s report is going to claim that on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, the head the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, was told at a meeting that groups were being targeted.
• Specifically, at that meeting, she was told groups with "Tea Party," ''Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being singled out for additional and burdensome scrutiny, the inspector general report says.
• The 9/12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck. In a statement to the AP, Beck asserted that this news was not news to him and other conservatives.
• But apparently this news to Ms. Lerner did not deter the IRS probably illegal and at least disgraceful targeting since the report says that on Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to, "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement," many of the issues that Tea Party and other conservative groups are focused on.
• Simultaneously, committees in Congress were writing letters IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to express concern because Tea Party groups were complaining of IRS harassment. Thus, the head of the IRS was aware of these charges and claims over a year ago.
• In fact, Shulman was adamant in his denials testifying before Congress that, "There's absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people" who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman said at the House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing. Thus, Mr. Shulman is either being dishonest, under oath, in testimony to Congress or had no idea that this sort of illegal and despicable behavior was going on the very organization he was supposedly in charge of.
• The IRS has not said when Shulman found out that Tea Party groups were targeted.
• Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican. His 6-year term ended in November. President Barack Obama has yet to nominate a successor.
• The agency was being run by an acting commissioner, Steven Miller. but he just got relieved of duties by the President.
• The IRS said in another recent press release that the IRS believes the timeline in the inspector general’s report is correct, lending credibility to the conclusions and findings of the report.

That gives you an idea of the background. The IRS now acknowledges that Tea Party and Conservative political groups were singled out for burdensome harassment simply because of their free speech-guaranteed freedoms. However, the IRS would have you believe that their executive managers were so incompetent that they themselves should not be blamed or held accountable for these hideous actions because some very low level IRS agents did bad things.

Reactions to this disgrace were right on target for anyone who believes in a free country, the First Amendment, and the adult exchange of ideas and conflicting opinions:

• Congressman Charles Boustany, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's oversight subcommittee, said the inspector general’s report "raises serious questions as to who at IRS, Treasury and in the administration knew about this, why this practice was allowed to continue for as long as it did, and how widespread it was. This timeline reveals at least two extremely unethical actions by the IRS. One, as early as 2010, they targeted groups for political purposes. Two, they willfully and knowingly lied to Congress for years despite being aware that Congress was investigating this practice, This is an outrageous abuse of power. Going after organizations for referencing the Bill of Rights or expressing the intent to make this country a better place is repugnant. here is no excuse for this behavior."
• Congressman Dave Camp is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee:"The admission by the agency that it targeted American taxpayers based on politics is both shocking and disappointing. We will hold the IRS accountable for its actions."
• Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for the group Tea Party Patriots: "We must know how many more lies they have been telling and how high up the chain the cover-up goes. It appears the IRS committed crimes and violated our ability to exercise our First Amendment right to free speech. A simple apology is not sufficient reparation for violating the constitutional rights of United States citizens. Therefore, Tea Party Patriots rejects the apology from the Internal Revenue Service. We are, however, encouraged to hear that Congress plans to investigate. Those responsible must be held accountable and resign or be terminated for their actions."

The IRS has acknowledged that some of the harassment from IRS agents included the demand for information that the agents had no right to access in addition to information that was not related to the request for non-profit status:

• Lengthy, intrusive questionnaires and forms.
• The forms asked for information about group members' political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.
• The IRS also listed for lists of financial donors.

The number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400. To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati.

Lerner said on Friday this was done to develop expertise among staffers and consistency in their reviews. As part of the review, staffers look for signs that groups are participating in political activity. If so, IRS agents take a closer look to make sure that politics isn't the group's primary activity.

Even after the apology, the information coming out about Congressional testimony, and the inspector general’s report, Ms. Lerner was still sticking with quickly weakened excuse of why only Tea Party and conservative groups and individuals were harassed: "It's the line people that did it without talking to managers. They're IRS workers, they're revenue agents."

Bad things happened, rights were trampled on but it is not our fault. But we should not expect anything different from the Obama administration since nothing is ever their fault. It is always someone else’s fault or the fault of a natural disaster or the fault of the Republicans or the fault of fate of line agents...

But consider this Ms. Lerner: according to a recent USA Today article, for 27 consecutive months, beginning February, 2010, not a single tea party application was approved for non-profit status. So either for 27 months, IRS management was completely out of touch with what was going on within its organizations or we have a lot of people either lying or in denial when it comes to trampling the freedom od speech rights of millions of Americans. In either case, many IRS executives either need to be fired from their jobs and/or put in jail.

Okay, that sets up on these three scandals going forward. More to come, none of it any good, as we move forward on these three disgraces to liberty in the next week or so, after we finish up our monthly review of the unfolding Obama Care disaster and related scandals.

Which is not to be confused with the Fast and Furious disaster and scandal.

Which is not be confused with the poor Obama administration economic management disaster and scandal.

Which is not to be confused the Obama administration’s alternative energy crony capitalism scandal…..

Our 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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w