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We have spent the past two days reviewing some of the funnier, sadder, and more insane political quotes from our current set of politicians. This review has been keeping with our theory that we are currently being served by the lamest set of politicians in Washington in the history of our country. They somehow keep drawing high salaries and high benefits without ever resolving a single major issue facing the country.
Their ineptness is easily illustrated by their own words. Politicians that have no concept of simple math, e.g. you cannot have more people losing their jobs every week than which live in the country (Nancy Pelosi).
Politicians that would rather see American citizens who differing views from them on a issues “go to hell” rather than have a civilized, adult conversation about those issues (Maxine Walters).
Politicians that have no accurate concept of American history, e.g. Joe Biden who thinks that FDR went on television when the Great Depression hit, not knowing that the Great Depression hit before he was in office and before TV was more than a lab experiment.
Nowhere have we been able to find a recent politician’s quote that offered hope, change, insight, and solutions to our problems. All great American political quotes are attributable to politicians/leaders that lived long ago, e.g. Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Kennedy, etc. It could be that great leaders have greats words to say and great quotes and that is why we cannot find any form the current set of politicians running the country.
Unfortunately, we could not get all of the inane and stupid quotes into only two posts and need today to finish the job…for now. I am sure more evidence of the ineptness of the current political class will come forth, to be reviewed here, in the coming months.
One disclaimer before we finish up with up. I am sure that my liberal friends and family members will eventually tell me that I am biased in that I did not include George Bus quotes, Sarah Palin quotes, Mitt Romney quotes, etc. And they would be correct, I purposely omitted their quotes but for good reason. Bush, Palin, Romney, etc. are no longer in office and are unlikely to be in public/political office anytime soon.
They have really no impact on my life, my family, and my freedoms. Thus, I do not worry about what they say or think. I only worry about the knuckleheads that are in office today because every day, they negatively impact my life, my family, and my freedom at an alarming rate. Their incompetence deserves to be called out, using their own words. For all to see how poorly they are serving every one in this country.
Okay, let’s finish up the latest uncovered insanity quotes from the current political class.
1) ''I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.'' Former U.S. Senator and current Secretary of State John Kerry, on voting against a military funding bill for U.S. troops in Iraq, March 19, 2004. I guess he has all the bases covered and thus, cannot be wrong.
2) ''Our economy, I think, is still -- the fundamentals of our economy are strong.'' Senator John McCain on September 15, 2008. Shortly thereafter, major Wall Street banks collapsed, the economy imploded and the Great Recession started, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Kind of missed the boat on that prediction, Senator.
3) "In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking." Vice President Joe Biden. I am still trying to figure out how Paula Deen got so lambasted and screwed for something she said decades ago while this politician can get away with this kind of racist statement.
4) "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Former Senator and Vice President and current global warming maniac Al Gore. Sorry Mr. Gore, but…no…you did not create the Internet. Smart scientists and engineers created the Internet, not some Washington politician.
5) "We're seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point - they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn't ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there's a lot of tundra that's being held down by that ice cap." Congressman Henry Waxman. Thanks for the info, Congressman, I always wondered what was holding down the tundra and now I know.
6) "If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very very low crime rate." Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, DC. Yeah, that’s a shame that you cannot take out the murders, that really would have improved your crime results. But you cannot take them out. [I included Mr. Barry’s quotes since even though he is not currently in office, he has been known to reappear many times over in public life.]
7) "We'd like to avoid problems, because when we have problems, we can have troubles." Wesley Bolin, former governor of Arizona. It is amazing how many times troubles and problems spring up at exactly the same time. Uncanny coincidences.
8) "I am clearly more popular than Reagan. I am in my third term. Where's Reagan? Gone after two! Defeated by George Bush and Michael Dukakis no less." Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, DC. It’s called term limits, Mr. Barry, term limits.
9) "A zebra does not change its spots." Al Gore. Huh?
10) "Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.'' Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. I would bet that there are, indeed, at least a few studies that show carbon dioxide is harmful.
11) "We have a lot of work to do. It's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border." John McCain. What makes it extra hard is that Iraq and Pakistan do not share a common border.
12) "Can I explain to you what happened? First of all it happened during a period after she was in remission from cancer." Former Sen. John Edwards, on cheating on his wife. Well, that makes the adultery okay, she was in cancer remission when you had the affair, how very decent of you. Thanks for the explanation.
13) “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” Hillary Clinton. Spoken on her visit to Bosnia in 1996, contradicting every other account that said there was no threat or actual of gunfire. Clinton later said she "misspoke." How can you mispeak about people shooting guns at you? It either happened or it did not happen.
14) "I'm just not giving it up for f***in' nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there." ... "Give this motherf****r Obama his senator? F**k him. For nothing. F**k him.'" Former Illinois Governor, and current state penitentiary convict, Rod Blagojevich. Nice language, true leadership in those words.
15) “There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.” Barack Obama. This quote I find particularly disgusting and disgraceful, he has obviously not operated a small business of any kind and does not recognize the major sacrifices small businesses and their owners own make. To assert they did not build their businesses is the utmost Washington condescension of all time.
16) “No, no. I have been practicing... I bowled a 129. It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something." Barack Obama. Paula Deen syndrome again, how does he not got skewered for a heartless statement like this?
18) “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable.” Hillary Clinton, shortly before the country exploded and its long time dictator was toppled. Must come from the John McCain school of forecasting (see McCain quote above.)
19) “I had the great honor in seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person I was able to award the Medal Of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.” Barack Obama. But Monti died in 2006 and received the medal in 2009, the true definition of posthumously.
20) “Well, the good news is that emissions are down because of the economy.” Senator Claire McCaskill. Great news, Senator. If we can another ten or twenty million more Americans to lose their jobs then the air would be really clean.
21) “We used to have the best infrastructure in the world. We are the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad.” Barack Obama. Sorry, Transcontinental railroad, no such thing as the Intercontinental Railroad. Are you sure you were born here, given such a bad grasp of U.S. history?
I am going to finish this series with seven quotes from Hillary Clinton. I include them since up until recently she was a top member of Obama’s Cabinet, serving as secretary of state. She is highly likely to be a Presidential candidate in 2016. Thus, she will likely be in our lives at least for a little while longer.
Before we review her quotes, let me share an old saying that has guided me through the years: “The reason a person curses and swears is that they are not creative enough or intelligent enough at that moment not to curse or swear.”
Now, ask yourself, given the following Hillary quotes and my quote, do we really think that she is creative enough and intelligent enough to lead or become President when this is how she behaves around other human beings and how she treats other human beings? I cannot imagine other great leaders from our past behaving as she reportedly does.
All of these quotes are cited with the sources they come from, they are no made up on my part, I am just reporting them from other sources, none of whom to my knowledge have been sued by her for false representation of facts.
#1 “Where is the G*damn f**king flag! I want the G*damn f**king flag up every morning at f**king sunrise.” Inside the White House by Ronald Kessler, p.244- Hillary to staff at the Arkansas Governor’s mansion on Labor Day 1991.
#2 “F**k off! It’s enough I have to see you shit-kickers every day, I’m not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep your mouth shut.” America Evita by Christopher Anderson, p.90-Hillary to her State Trooper body guards after one of them greeted her with “Good Morning.”
#3 “If you want to remain on this detail, get your f**king ass over here and grab those bags!” The First Partner p.259- Hillary to a Secret Service Agent who was reluctant to carry her luggage because he wanted to keep his hands free in case of an incident.
#4 “Stay the f**k back, stay the f**k back away from me! Don’t come within ten yards of me, or else! Just f**king do as I say, Okay!!?” Unlimited Access by Clinton FBI Agent in Charge, Gary Aldrige, p.139- Hillary screaming at her Secret Service detail.
#5 “Where’s the miserable c**k sucker!” The Truth About Hillary by Edward Klein, p.5- Hillary shouting at a Secret Service officer.
#6 “You f**king idiot” Crossfire p.84-Hillary to a State Trooper who was driving her to an event.
#7 “Put this on the ground! I left my sunglasses in the limo. I need those sunglasses. We need to go back!” Dereliction of Duty p.71-72– Hillary to Marine One helicopter pilot to turn back while en route to Air Force One.
There you have it. Politicians that curse and swear like drunken sailors and are about as effective in getting things accomplished as drunken sailors.
Politicians that do not know American history.
Politicians that are lousy forecasters which makes them lousy legislators who cannot anticipate the future to any degree at all.
Politicians that insult those that work for them, Special Olympic participants, and Indians.
What a disgrace. Time to dump them all out of office and start again, because really, how much worse could it get:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Yesterday we continued to make our case that we are currently being served by the worst politicians in the history of Washington. Rather than cite facts and statistics about how poorly they are performing, yesterday and today we are letting their own words and quotes prove our points.
Some of those currently serving in many different capacities of Washington do not know basic American history. Others want citizens that have a difference of opinions with them to go to hell and various other-not-so-friendly places. Some of them are surprised when citizens actually expect them to read the proposed pieces of legislation that they need to vote on BEFORE voting. Others issue inane and bewildering quotes which really shatter your ability to believe what they say and to believe they have any kind of rational clue of how to solve the major issues of our times.
We will try to finish up this conversation today but the quotes keep coming and we will revisit this theory of totally inferior present day politicians in the months to come.
1) "170 million jobs could be lost." Congresswoman Maxine Waters. This was asserted as fact by the Congresswoman relative to the infamous Federal budget sequester from late last year that trimmed a very small amount out of the Federal budget. If you do some simple math based on the latest Census data you find that if she is right than about 74% of all adults in this country could lose their jobs as a result of a 2-3% cut in Federal government spending.
But wait Congresswoman, not every adult in America is working or has a job. Many are retired and do not want to work. Millions cannot find work. If your 170,000,000 figure is right, than probably EVERY working adult would lose their job as a result of the sequester. Idiotic.
2) “The system worked.” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. These infamous words were uttered after a would be bomber, the bomber who had hidden high powered explosives in his underwear, came within a faulty fuse of blowing up a full airplane over Detroit, an explosion that likely would have killed hundreds of Americans.
What system and how did it work? This would be bomber beat Napolitano’s airport security system at every stop and screwed up the end game thanks in no way to Napolitano’s “system.” He had the bomb, he had the fuse, he was in the plane, he was over Detroit, and the system worked? In what reality did it work?
3) “Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.” Nancy Pelosi. This is an oldie but a goodie from an insanity perspective. This was frantically uttered several years ago when Pelosi was Speaker of The House. Given that there are only about 314 million Americans in the country, of all ages, from infants through retired citizens, it is a little bit of a stretch to say 500 million Americans are losing their jobs EVERY MONTH. Again, must be in a different reality than me.
4) “We actually have not required in this law that you carry health insurance.” Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Huh? This is what happens when these dolts vote on legislation that they have not read. The whole underlying purpose of Obama Care was to force and coerce any American that does not pay for health care insurance to do so, whether they need to or want to.
That is why the legislation set up health insurance exchanges. That is why the IRS hired thousands of agents to seek out and fine and criminalize Americans that do not carry and pay for health insurance. Read the legislation, Ms. Wasserman Schultz before you spout out this incorrect nonsense.
5) “Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, ’Thank God, I’m still alive.’ But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again.” Senator Barbara Boxer. Of all the quotes we are reviewing, this is probably the only one that I cannot disagree with, I find it hilarious, but in the end, she really is correct.
6) “Everybody will have lower [health care] rates, better quality care, and better access.” Nancy Pelosi. These words were uttered a few years ago before people found out that Obama Care will drive up their health care insurance costs (not lower rates), that doctors were retiring in droves because of Obama Care burdens and regulations (not better care), and a death panel-like process was in place to decide what treatments to what types of people were affordable and allowable (not better access). Looks like she struck out on all three assertions.
7) “I don’t remember saying Obama Care would lower everyone’s premiums.” Nancy Pelosi. Whoopsie, you, Nancy you should have checked the videotape of herself promising lower premiums. This is why this set of politicians have all time lows as far as approval ratings and trustworthiness. They say stuff and then deny they said stuff. How could they ever be trusted?
8) “It [Obama Care] has been an amazing success story so far.” Senator Mark Pryor. Maybe in his world it has been an amazing success story but in America businesses are cutting back on hiring and expansion because of Obama Care, workers are getting their hours cut as a result of Obama Care, doctors are retiring in large numbers as a result of Obama Care, major facets of the Obama Care legislation have already been shut down as a result of failure (e.g. CLASS), major components of Obama Care have been delayed a year because of problems, 34 states have said “no thanks” to Obama Care exchanges, the cost of Obama Care has more than doubled since the original financial projections, Obama Care will add trillions of dollars to the already outsized national debt, over 90% of Federal workers surveyed do not want to be covered by Obama Care, Congress and the President broke the law by violating parts of the Obama Care law relative to how Obama Care applies to members of Congress and their staffs, Obama Care reduced Medicare and Medicaid future budgets by $700 billion in order to fund the legislation, the training for Obama Care “navigators” is woefully inadequate and behind schedule, and the data systems to run Obama Care are so far behind schedule that they have been termed an identify thief’s paradise.
Do these people never read a paper, read a magazine, or watch a news show to see what is going on in this country outside of the Washington Beltway? This is the most horrendous piece of legislation ever written and he thinks it is a success story. Given the above list of what is going wrong, I would hate to live through the Senator’s definition of a failure.
9) “That is not true, sir! We do not have an increasing national debt! For the past six to seven years we have been continuously driving that debt down and reducing it and it is NOT increasing.” Senator Mary Landrieu. Again, what planet do these people live on? According to the official White House budget history of the United States, available at the White House website, we see that the Obama administration has added over one TRILLION dollars a year to the nation’s national debt since he has been in office.
This is not a debated fact, one trillion dollars in new debt every year. This year this Congress and President will add between $600 and $700 billion to the national debt. In what reality is this not increasing the national debt? The really scary thing about Senators like this is that if they really do not think we are increasing the national debt, they will do nothing to fix the problem, despite the numbers that would smack sense into a rational human being.
For those liberal friends and family members of mine that refuse to accept the following quotes as real and true, I refer you to the following website where you can see those quotes actually being said by President Obama:
http://www.isthatbaloney.com/classic-obama-gaffes-all-in-one-what-the-adoring-media-will-not-show-you-video/
10) “We have traveled to every corner of the United States, I have now been in 57 states, with one left to go.” Barack Obama. Makes you wonder if he really was born Kenya if he does not know how many states there are.
11) “The time has changed for come.” Barack Obama. See what happens when he does not have a teleprompter.
12) “The [Supreme Court Justices] are charged with the vital task of applying principles put to paper more than twenty centuries ago." Barack Obama. So by this political math the Constitution was written around Jesus’ time, prior to America being discovered.
13) “The FBI can and will continue to adapt to new dangers. That you will be critical in leading the way in keeping this country safe. We are counting on you. There is much to celebrate from the FBI’s first 100 days.” Barack Obama. I would think that J. Edgar Hoover might have a problem with this since he was around almost a hundred YEARS ago when the FBI actually got underway.
14) “The reforms we seek [via the Obama care legislation] would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system.” Barack Obama. Well, at least he got one out of four correct.
15) “We want to halt the rise of privacy in that region.” Barack Obama. Between the NSA spying and IRS harassment, it looks like he is doing a pretty good job of stopping the rise in privacy in this country also.
16) “One of the huge advantages for America compared to countries like Europe, is we are constantly replenishing ourselves with hungry, driven people…” Barack Obama. Europe is not a country.
18) “Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel.” Barack Obama. I would hope so.
My gosh, these people are in charge of the Federal government and large parts of our lives. People that cannot speak coherently without a teleprompter. People that think increasing the national debt a trillion dollars every year for four years it NOT increasing the national debt. People with absolutely no math skills and who are not even close to knowing how many people live in the country. Washington, a place where the worst piece of legislation ever written is perceived as a smashing success. People who blatantly and publicly say things that prove again they did not read the legislation they voted on to approve.
I do not know if these antics belong on Comedy Central because they are so silly and inane of the SyFy channel because these politicians are truly dealing with a different world and different reality than the rest of us.
What I do know is that they need to be removed from office before they do more damage. The only way to do this, since they have already rigged the election processes to overwhelmingly favor incumbents, is via term limits. You can help make them history by joining our term limits drive at:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
Once out of office, maybe Comedy Central could use their talents. More lameness tomorrow since we could not get through it all today.
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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
We have been making the case for a while that the country is currently being served by the worst and most ineffective set of politicians to ever have been sent to Washington. Chronically high unemployment, sky high national debt, failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, leaky borders, the lack of a national energy policy and strategy, the shredding of our freedoms as laid out in the Constitution, cronyism, wasteful spending, etc., the atrocities and insults that are put on our backs as a result of these poorly performing politicians has never been greater.
We have been capturing what we call “political class insanity” at the beginning of each month in this blog. Three years ago when we started writing about political insanity, the monthly political class insanity recap usually took about one post to cover. Last month, it took nine days to cover, indicating that the antics, insanity, and lunacy of our politicians at every level of government is accelerating exponentially.
We will continue to explore our theory of the worst set of politicians ever today and tomorrow, not by their actions but by their own words and quotes. As you read over the next two posts, consider what our contemporary politicians are stating, spouting, and embarrassing themselves with today. Compare that to some of the historically great American politicians and their quotes:
- Abraham Lincoln: “Four score and seven years ago...”
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…”
- John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you,…”
- Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall...”
- Thomas Jefferson: "That government is best which governs the least…."
Most Americans have heard of and can recite these uplifting and stirring quotes from politicians out of our history’s past. Now ask yourself: can you think of any memorable quote that a more recent politician has uttered that is likely to stick out in American history from a positive aspect?
Of course, there have been a lot of memorable recent political quotes that stick out but not because they were positive, they were either insulting, inane, or disgraceful quotes that we have already covered and ridiculed in this blog:
- Remember when Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi asserted that the Obama care legislation had to be passed so that we could find out what was in it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoE1R-xH5To
- Remember when Congressman John Conyers got all in a huff and insulted because citizens actually felt he should have read the Obama Care legislation BEFORE he voted to approve it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACbwND52rrw
- Remember when Congressman Hank Johnson spoke at a House committee hearing on how he was worried that the Pacific island of Guam would actually and physically TIP OVER if we put too many naval resources on the island:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=congressman+htnks+guam+could+tip+over&view=detail&mid=C7FF551F39BE3D728B81C7FF551F39BE3D728B81&first=0&qpvt=congressman+htnks+guam+could+tip+over
Not quite Kennedy-like or FDR-like.
This verbal pieces of insanity and others can be found at one of the original posts we did a year or so ago on dopey politicians saying dopey things:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/03/dopes-democrats-offering-preposterous.html
But its been a while and so many other, both new and older, insane and inane political quotes have been found that it is worthwhile to review them. They would really be funny if they were not so sad and the authors of these quotes did not have such a large impact on our lives and our freedom.
Thus, these are your politicians speaking their own words, with a few snide comments from me:
1) ''When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, Look, here's what happened.'' Joe Biden. Nice quote but for the Vice President of the United States, an educated man with a law degree, and unfortunately a graduate of my alma mater at the University of Delaware to confidently state this and be so wrong is quite embarrassing. He apparently is unaware that FDR WASN’T President when the stock market crashed in 1929 and that only EXPERIMENTAL TV sets were in use at that time in our history. Not sure what reality the Vice President is referring to when he gets two major historical events wrong in the same quote.
2) “An hour late, oh give me a f**king break.” Joe Biden. This was caught on a live microphone when he was speaking to a former Senate colleague after arriving on Amtrak at Union Station in Washington, D.C., March 13, 2009. Nice language, Mr. Vice President…for a sailor or a Teamster.
3) “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” Barack Obama speaking when storms and tornadoes swept through Kansas. Actually, the death toll was a little lighter, it was only 12 dead, not ten thousand. Missed by just a little. He wonders why many Americans do not believe a thing he says or a promise or statistic he utters.
4) ''Take your f**king tampon out and tell me what you have to say.'' Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, addressing a female staffer during a meeting, as reported in the book 'The Promise' by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. From the Joe Biden school of language communications.
5) ''It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'' Barack Obama Mr. President, could it be that you are the antipathetic one to those that are not like YOU?
6) ''His mom lived in Long Island for ten years or so. God rest her soul. And- although, she's- wait- your mom's still- your mom's still alive. Your dad passed. God bless her soul.'' Joe Biden. The VP was talking about on the mother of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, who was very much alive at the time of the VP’s speech, Washington, D.C., March 17, 2010. Why bother about details of who is or who is not alive.
7) “'UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It's the Post Office that's always having problems.” Barack Obama. The President was trying to make the case that the Federal government would be good at running and controlling all aspects of your personal health but his logic seemed to be off about...180 degrees.
8) “Today we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace.” Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee. Ms. Lee is just a little behind in catching up on her history lessons since while this quote was issued recently, there has not been two different Vietnams since, oh… 1975 or so, 38 years ago.
9) “President Obama's top priority right now is a 3 letter word...JOBS.” Joe Biden. An indictment of our education system‘s math curriculums, our political system, and unfortunately, my college alma mater again.
10) “I stand here as a freed slave because this Congress came together.“ Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee. She looks good for being about 180 years old or so and having survived slavery. Her former slave owner was unavailable for comment since he died over a hundred years ago.
11) “This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned — the Tea Party can go straight to hell.” Congresswoman Maxine Walters. Just what you want from an elected leader in a democracy, a leader who wants those that hold an honest difference of opinion from her to just go to hell. Not quite the right way to go about uniting the country and actually getting something of substance done.
12) "Let us all remember who the real enemy is. The real enemy is the Tea Party... the Tea Party holds the Congress hostage." Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. Let’s review: The Democrats control the White House. The Democrats control the Senate. In the House, only a handful of Republicans could be considered “Tea Party” candidates since the Tea Party has only been around for a few years. But somehow these few people hold Congress hostage. The real enemy is not a $17 TRILLION national debt. It is not the Taliban. It is not Al Qaeda. It is not chronic unemployment. It is a few people in Congress. One of us is living in a different reality of who the enemy is. And remember, the small handful of Tea Party people in Congress were elected by American citizens who are not the enemy, Congresswoman Wilson.
Politicians that do not know how to count. Politicians that do not know history. Politicians that are bitter and vindictive to all with a contrary opinion to theirs. Politicians that do not understand that they are supposed to read the legislation BEFORE they vote on it. Politicians that do not understand island geology.
But these are the same politicians that write, sometimes read, and often vote on legislation that usually negatively affects every American. And the saddest part of all: we are not close to being done with stupid things politicians say and mean. More tomorrow.
In the mean time, consider visiting and joining up our drive for term limits at:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
Because really, given what we just reviewed , the insanity, the ignorance, and the forgettable words and thoughts of today’s politicians, how much worse could it get with term limits?
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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
I guarantee this will be the FINAL Obama Care unfolding disaster review for this month. It seems that as we get closer and closer to the rollout of major Obama Care components, the bad news, dreadful implications, and idiocy are spewing forth ever more quickly. As soon as we get a few blog posts completed, more bad news shows up.
Our first entry into this month’s Obama Care review can be accessed at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
The final disasters can be read below:
1) According to a website for Federal employees called FedSmith.com, a survey that the website managers recently conducted found that less than 3% of U.S. Federal workers want to give up their current health plans and join Obamacare. 92.3% of Federal workers think that they should continue with their current health insurance program, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Just 2.8% think they should be required to join Obama Care exchanges and 4.9% are not sure.
“There is apparently little debate among the Federal workforce. Federal employees do not want to be part of the new system… Employees who are already retired have a much stronger negative reaction to being moved to a new system,” FedSmith.com noted.
Wow, I thought Obama Care was supposed to be this great health care insurance program that every American would want to be a part of. Apparently not, when a whopping 92.3 % of Federal workers say “no thanks.”
And given that a Congressman, Dave Camp, has proposed legislation that would force ALL Federal employees off of their current health care insurance program and onto Obama Care, serious petition writing is going on within the Federal bureaucracy with Federal employees to oppose such a move. You cannot say Obama Care is a good thing for American when over 90% of those working in the government itself say it is not a good thing for them.
2) The Personal Liberty Digest website did a nice job of summarizing what Obama Care really is in a posting to its website on August 14, 2013:
- Obama Care puts you into a system of medicine that treats symptoms rather than providing cures.
- Obama Care doses you down in pharmaceuticals that often do more harm than good and cause more symptoms that must be treated by more pharmaceuticals.
- Obama Care limits your treatment options and takes decisions that should be made between you and your trusted doctors and puts them in the hands of a massive new Federal bureaucracy.
- Obama Care was written by the medical-industrial complex to ensure a steady stream of new customers and guaranteed payment from government coffers— is fraught with little nuggets showing that the whole system as designed is a huge fiasco.
- And Obama Care is probably is the biggest fraud perpetrated on the American people since Social Security:
- The IRS, which was recently uncovered to be sharing private data of Tea Party group members and conservative political donors, is in charge of compiling and securing data on all Americans and ensuring compliance.
- Security testing for the Obamacare database, entrusted to the aforementioned and obviously criminal IRS, is months behind schedule and won’t be completed before Obamacare kicks in this fall.
- IRS employees, tasked with overseeing Obamacare, have asked to be exempted.
- That promise “If you like your current health plan, you can keep it,” was a lie.
- Congress and Congressional staff have been exempted, meaning what’s good enough for you isn’t good enough for them.
- Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is shaking down companies the HHS might regulate.
- Despite the delay in implementation of the employer mandate (an unConstitutional action by Obama fiat), employer fines will continue to grow at rates far greater than inflation.
- Employers are increasingly resorting to part-time workers to avoid Obamacare fines.
- Young people, considered the linchpin of the Obamacare Ponzi scheme because they will be paying into the system but using few of the benefits, are learning what it’s going to cost them and are saying they want no part of it.
- It is causing insurance premiums to rise exponentially.
- The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates employers will pay around $106 billion in penalties between 2014 and 2022 for not meeting the law’s insurance requirements. That’s $106 billion employers won’t have for growing their businesses and creating more job opportunities.
- The “Cadillac tax” provision included in the bill is going to send more cities, already struggling with high-cost pension plans and insurance coverage for its employees, into bankruptcy.
- A rule establishing a maximum limit in the out-of-pocket expenses people may have to spend on their own health care will be delayed until 2015. This means those with chronic illnesses like cancer and severe disabilities may incur thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket expenses.
- More Americans than ever—a significant majority–oppose it.
- And hundreds of favored businesses and unions have received exemptions that aren’t available to everyone.
We have covered most of these fiascos already but it is nice to have them so nicely summarized in one place. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong? Three years after this disaster was enacted, this is where we are less than 50 days before a major piece of it is supposed to go live. Pathetic.
3) This latest disgrace from Obama Care is just now getting some news attention so I do not know where it is going but it is a very troubling story. A South Carolina state legislative bill recently passed the house in the state government of South Carolina but failed to be passed in the state Senate.
The bill is supposedly in response to a piece of the Obama Care legislation that will violate the Fourth Amendment rights of every American family by allowing a government authorized representative to enter and inspect a family’s home based on a very shaky and non-specific set of circumstances, circumstances that do not have to be justified prior to the home inspection, i.e. no due process.
According to the Health and Human Services’ website, your family will be “targeted” if you fall under the “high-risk” categories below, even if there is no evidence, suspicion, or justified cause to do so:
- Families where mom is not yet 21.
- Families where someone is a tobacco user.
- Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities.
- Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.
If this was the only thing wrong with Obama Care it is enough to shut it down. Where in our heritage, history, or mindset is it alright for government agents to force an inspection on a family’s home without just cause and without due process?
You are no longer living in a free country when this kind of garbage is legal. Obama Care in this situation just shreds the Constitution. The potential for abuse and misuse is unbelievable when the sanctity of one’s home no longer exists.
4) The Society of Actuaries released a detailed report in March relative to Obama Care. The report itself can be accessed at:
http://cdn-files.soa.org/web/research-cost-aca-report.pdf
Bottom line of their professional analysis: the cost of health care for individual policies will rise about 32% on average across the country with some states seeing health care insurance costs going up over 60% in some states and over 80% in two states, Ohio and Wisconsin.
So much for health care costs going down 2,500% as a certain President once claimed.
5) And finally, consider this insightful observation by the Against Cronyism website. They nail the whole issue squarely on the head. Obama Care is not about helping a minority of Americans with their health care costs. As the website points out, there are ways to do that at a much lower cost than the disaster that is Obama care.
This effort by the Federal government is about power and control and that is why the simple, less expensive approach was not used. It does not give the political class and the their business cronies enough control and power over what should be our private health care decisions and fates (my bold faced emphasis added):
There isn’t really an argument to be made anymore (though many will continue to make it anyway) that the ACA is going to be beneficial for most people. Will it benefit many insurers? Yes. Will it benefit the pharmaceutical industry? Absolutely. And some people will have coverage who did not before. Unfortunately it’s the wrong kind of coverage.
We should be focusing on catastrophic coverage and on those who cannot find health insurance due to a pre-existing condition. These 2 issues can be dealt with within the market at likely a much lower cost than the looming train wreck (as Max Baucus the Democratic head of the Senate Finance Committee said he feared the implementation of Obamacare likely would be).
But this is simply not good enough for those who have long dreamed of nationalized healthcare. There must be wellness visits, and birth control, and who knows what else. It is about tying the individual more tightly to the state. If the government controls healthcare, it ultimately controls you. That is what this whole effort is fundamentally about, not insuring the uninsured. At least not primarily. (Though many well meaning people continue to think that this is what Obamacare is about.)
If it was about keeping people out of bankruptcy after a cancer diagnosis, or helping people get the insulin they need to survive, this could be done at a fraction of the cost of Obamacare. But that’s not the big orange. The real prize is government control of a huge piece of the American economy. And that is why this very flawed and huge law was rammed through.
Well said. Freedom is at stake in this issue, not just health care. “If the government controls healthcare, it ultimately controls you.” And thus, the death of liberty and the death of democracy.
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:
Term Limits Now:
http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Okay, apologies up front. Over the past six days we have been examining and reviewing the many disasters and fiascoes that were spawned as a result of Obama Care. One would have thought six days would have been enough.
We reviewed the long list of root causes underlying our high health care costs and how Obama Care addresses almost none of them.
We reviewed how Obama Care is causing American workers to lose salary hours, reducing their take home pay.
We reviewed how Obama Care is causing business owners to pull back on hiring and business expansion, stunting overall economic growth in the country.
We reviewed how the underlying systems to support the rollout of some major components of Obama Care are far behind schedule and are likely to not be ready when scheduled.
We reviewed how the inadequate training of Obama Care “navigators” and the inadequate data systems security protocols will turn Obama Care’s processes into an identity thief’s paradise.
We reviewed how seven million Americans, per the Congressional Budget Office, are likely to lose access to their current health care insurance programs, the exact opposite of what Obama Care was supposed to do.
We reviewed how Americans are likely to experience severe sticker price shock when they see how substantially higher their health care premiums are going to be under Obama Care.
We reviewed how smaller hospitals are likely to see severe economic days as Obama Care raped the Medicaid and Medicare budgets to fund its own processes.
We reviewed how every reputable opinion poll over the past few weeks has shown that the majority or at least plurality of Americans see Obama Care as a bad thing, respondents think that they will end paying more for health insurance, and are scared about losing their current health insurance options.
We reviewed how Obama and other politicians are illegally changing aspects of the legislation without going back through the proper legislative Congressional approval of those changes.
And after all of this review, we still have not covered all of the problems, given the new problems that have arisen just in the past week or so. Rather than wait until next month when we do another set of reviews, we thought it was important to get the following insanity out there for your review and depression:
1) The family of NBC news outlets have always been the most biased in their reporting when it comes to Barack Obama. They often come off as just another arm of the President’s public relations department. Thus, when someone like NBC News airs a news segment that is critical of Obama Care you know that it must be a bad piece of legislation. Consider the following quotes taken directly from the broadcast of such a piece on August 13, 2013:
- The NBC Nightly News segment concluded that there would be adverse impacts of Obama Care on the people it intends to help, leaving some “with no insurance and a pay cut.”
- Lisa Myers, a reporter involved in the segment, stated that NBC News “spoke to almost 20 small businesses and other entities around the country. Almost all said because of the new law, they’d be cutting back hours for some employees.”
- Additionally, a top union head told NBC News:”Wait a year, and you’ll see a tremendous impact as workers have their hours reduced and their incomes reduced.”
So, NBC News has found that Americans, small businesses, and unions do not like and fear Obama Care. These are the entities that are most likely to be impacted by the legislation so someone in Washington should be heeding their opinions before this disaster hit’s the proverbial fan.
2) Unfortunately, it appears that many people in the Obama administration are NOT heeding these opinions. In the same NBC News segment, Jason Furman, who is a top economic adviser to President Obama, said that he “sees no systematic evidence” that the health-care law is “having an adverse impact on the number of hours people are working.
No disrespect to Mr. Fruman, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this administration made him deny the reality that has been in the news, and reported in this blog, for at least the past two years. We have discussed the many businesses and government entities that have issued press releases or held news conferences announcing how they were cutting workers hours and cutting the number of jobs they could be filling all because of Obama Care.
To not be aware of these realities is very scary. It shows an administration that is either very out of touch with reality, does not want to know about reality, thinks that they can lie about reality, or really does not care what is happening to American workers. In any case, their actions are irresponsible and despicable.
3) Previously, we had discussed the fact that legal cases against Obama Care were moving forward and that many of them, according to experts, had merit and a real chance of succeeding. One of the suits, filed by the Oklahoma attorney general, made it through a major milestone this week when that attorney general, Scott Pruitt announced: “The court rejected the federal government’s argument that Oklahoma lacked standing to challenge the law, allowing us to proceed with this pivotal case. We’re optimistic the court will recognize what states have known for months that the IRS disregarded the law by making the large employer mandate effective in Oklahoma or in any of the 33 other states without a state health care exchange.”
Apparently, the legislation, as written and enacted, does not allow the Federal government to force itself, its tenets, and the IRS onto the 34 states that have rejected setting up their own Obama Care health insurance exchanges. The Supreme Court decision that said Obama care was legal also gave the states the right to opt out of the exchange process. Obama knows that if 34 states are not included in the overall Obama Care effort, the financials and momentum of the legislation collapses, which would be good news for America, bad news for Obama. The first step towards the potentially good outcome is in the books.
4) The American Action Forum website recently published a pictorial representation of what has to be done in the next 50 days to make Obama Care operational. Remember, these people have had three years to get ready for this major October 1, 2013 rollout.
According to the website, fifty major tasks have to miraculously come together in just 50 days for this monstrosity to have any chance of working. Take a look for yourself of what still has to be done and ask honestly yourself if this is not truly a “train wreck” (Senator Max Baucus’s words) ready to implode (double click picture for a larger view):

5) Consider the following articles that major news outlets have written over the past year or so and then decide if this fiasco has any chance of reducing costs, expanding coverage, or actually working, three years after they started working on its rollout:
- U.S. schools face tough decisions on Obamacare benefits - Reuters, August 14
- A Limit on Consumer Costs Is Delayed in Health Care Law - New York Times, August 12
- Congress wins relief on Obamacare health plan subsidies - Reuters, August 7
- In the Affordable Care Act, Some Children Left Behind - New York Times, August 7
- Obamacare months behind in testing IT data security: government - Reuters, August 6
- Obamacare's Challenge: a Skeptical Public - Wall Street Journal, August 5
- Concord: Half of Affordable Care Act call center jobs will be part-time - Contra Costa Times, July 25
- Marketing ‘Obamacare’ Shaping Up As Big Challenge - Associated Press, July 24
- Shutdown looms over ObamaCare - The Hill, July 23
- Obama asks Hollywood celebrities to help pitch ObamaCare enrollment - The Hill, July 23
- Doctors are skeptical and confused about ObamaCare, survey Finds - CNBC, July 22
- Obama extols health care law amid public doubts - July 18, Associated Press
- More Restaurants Replace Full-Timers, Concerned About Insurance - The Wall Street Journal, July 14
- Union Letter: Obamacare Will ‘Destroy The Very Health and Wellbeing’ of Workers - The Wall Street Journal, July 12
- White House Has Known For Months ObamaCare Implementation Wouldn't Work - National Journal, July 9
- Health insurance marketplaces will not be required to verify consumer claims - Washington Post, July 5
- Delay Stirs Broader Worries About Obama Health Law Associated Press, July 3
- U.S. to delay key health-reform provision to 2015 - Reuters, July 2
- A big Medicaid gap looms in Obama health care law - Associated Press, July 1
- NFL says no to promoting ObamaCare - Washington Post, June 28
- White House recruiting Hollywood stars for ObamaCare rollout - The Hill, June 25
- Newly insured to deepen primary care doctor gap - Associated Press, June 22
- Coverage may be unaffordable for low-wage workers - Associated Press, June 13
- Like your health care? You May Be Losing It - Associated Press, May 29
- Some unions now angry about health care overhaul - Associated Press, May 24
- UnitedHealth, Aetna and Cigna opt out of California insurance exchange - Los Angeles Times, May 22
- Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law - The Wall Street Journal, May 19
- Half of U.S. Small Businesses Think Health Law Bad for Them - Gallup, May 10
- Part-timers to lose pay amid health act's new math - Los Angeles Times, May 2
- Obama's Legacy: A Health Care Law That Hurts His Party - National Journal, May 2
- Reid: More funding needed to prevent ObamaCare from becoming 'train wreck' - The Hill, May 1
- Botched ObamaCare rollout tops Democratic fears for 2014 election - The Hill, May 1
- Democrats fret over ObamaCare as 2014 looms - Politico, April 30
- Lawmakers, aides may get ObamaCare exemption - Politico, April 24
- Baucus warns of 'huge train wreck' enacting ObamaCare provisions - The Hill, April 17
- ObamaCare Incompetence - Time Magazine, April 2
- Small Firms’ Offer of Plan Choices Under Health Law Delayed - The New York Times, April 1
- Kathleen Sebelius: ObamaCare Implementation May Cause Some Health Care Costs To Rise -Reuters, March 26
- Study: Health overhaul to raise claims cost 32 pct - Associated Press, March 26
- Senate backs symbolic repeal of medical device tax - Reuters, March 22
- Beige Book Says ObamaCare Is Costing Jobs and Sales - CNBC, March 6
Consider some of the words that the mainstream press are using to describe what is happening: train wreck, costing jobs, delays, costs to rise, fret, fears, angry, unaffordable, destroy, skeptical, confused, etc. Even if you do not believe me, check out some of these articles to find others’ pessimistic outlooks on how bad this legislation is going to be. Apparently everyone sees the train wreck coming but those that work in the White House and this administration.
That’s enough for today. But tomorrow is another day where I promise it will be the end of the bad news from Obama Care… 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:
Term Limits Now:
http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Over the previous four posts we have reviewed the latest disasters and fiascos that have continued to develop as a result of Obama Care. American workers seeing their work hours getting cut, Americans’ opinions of the legislation continuing to get more and more negative, and the infrastructure for implementing the law looking more and more that it will be an epic disaster and an identity thief’s paradise.
But possibly the biggest insult to all Americans is that the President, in cahoots with every politician in Congress, has recently arranged for members of Congress and their staffs to avoid the legal and financial requirements laid out in the law. This is a blatant violation of explicit language in the law that really should be an impeachable offense.
In a nation that thinks it is run by the rule of law and representative government, no politician, even the President, has the power to overturn an existing law that was properly enacted. This is nothing more than selfish politicians taking care of themselves and their friends and work colleagues.
This just another example of the “Hunger Games” mentality that exists within the political class in this country, where they get to do what they want for their own personal enrichment. Meanwhile, they stick us with the tab, whether it is an oppressive tax burden or oppressive laws like Obama Care that will negatively effect just about every American.
But rather than have me try to explain why this action is so despicable, let me step aside and let a gentleman named Michael G. Cannon explain how bad and insulting this action is. This article originally appeared in the online version of the National Review and was reprinted by the Cato Institute on its website.
******************************
Congress’s Obamacare Waiver
By Michael F. Cannon
This article appeared in National Review (Online) on August 6, 2013.
America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else. Consider how President Obama just gave Congress its very own Obamacare waiver.
Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased.
Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer. What’s an aristocrat to do?
“President Obama is buying votes from members of Congress — with stolen money.”
On July 30, I predicted that, even though he had no authority to do so, President Obama would waive that provision at taxpayers’ expense. On August 1, he ignobly obliged the aristocracy by decreeing we peasants give each member and staffer $5,000 or $11,000, depending on whether they want self-only or family coverage. It’s good to be king.
The president’s supporters, like courtiers of old, are trying to quell a peasant uprising by denying there were any special favors. The denials ring hollow.
Obamacare imposes two costs on members of Congress and their staff. First, it kicks them out of their current health plans, leaving them to buy coverage on Obamacare’s health-insurance “exchanges.” Second, it makes no provision for the federal government to keep paying $5,000 or $11,000 toward the cost of their insurance as the Treasury does today.
The second cost is by far the larger one; it amounts to a pay cut of $5,000 or $11,000. Many staffers were threatening to quit or retire early.
When the president’s supporters claim that Congress isn’t being exempted, they mean that Obama didn’t exempt them from Cost No. 1. Which is true. But he did exempt them from Cost No. 2.
Rescinding that pay cut may or may not have been the right thing to do.
But it’s still a break that ordinary Americans like Kevin Pace don’t get. Pace is an adjunct music professor at Northern Virginia Community College. To avoid penalties under Obamacare, his employer cut his hours — sticking Pace with an $8,000 pay cut.
Supporters say President Obama merely held Congress harmless. Exactly. Kevin Pace and countless others like him aren’t being held harmless, because they’re not members of Congress. As Kevin Pace put it, “This isn’t right on any level.”
Things would be unseemly enough if Congress’s Obamacare waiver were legal. But experts say the president had no authority to grant it.
That didn’t stop even Republicans from praising him, however. Tin-eared Representative Chris Stewart (R., Utah) gushed:
“There’s no question it was the right thing to do. Not just for me, but for my staff. Heavens, I have staff who don’t make much money. This would be a really big bite for them.”
Congressman, you also have constituents who don’t make much money, and who can’t make it appear out of thin air. Enjoy your waiver.
How was I able to predict the president would grant illegal subsidies to members of Congress? He’s a repeat offender.
Obamacare actually kicked members of Congress out of their current health plans and imposed that $5,000 to $11,000 pay cut immediately upon enactment in 2010. But President Obama just ignored that part of the law. He let members and staff stay in their current health plans and kept the taxpayer money flowing in their direction.
I predicted President Obama would give illegal health-insurance subsidies to members of Congress because he is already in his fourth year of doing it.
Pretty much all Americans can point to some part of Obamacare that they hate. Seniors hate the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which even Howard Dean calls “a health-care rationing body.”
Unions, teacher assistants, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and other school employees hate how the law is cutting their pay. Private-sector unions despise the “Cadillac tax” that forces them to fund subsidies their members don’t receive. Young adults hate the penalties for not buying health insurance. Okay, everybody hates those. In fact, a majority of Americans oppose the entire law.
But only Congress gets relief. Why?
Simple. President Obama doesn’t want Congress to reopen Obamacare. A significant share of congressional Democrats just voted to delay the individual mandate. With once-loyal Democrats now upset over how the law hurts them personally, who knows what else Congress would discard?
President Obama circumvented a potential legislative defeat by giving each member and staffer thousands of taxpayer dollars he had no authority to touch. He’s buying votes from members of Congress — with stolen money, no less.
******************************************
Very well said and just another insult thrown into our faces from a political class more worried about their own well being than the burdens they impose on us and the major issues of our times that they never resolve.
Given that the “rule of law” seems to be lost on the current set of low performing politicians in Washington, may we encourage you and your families and friends to join our grass roots movement to impose term limits on all Federal politicians, a movement that would rid us of these types of insults to our intelligence and our wallets:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
This is the fourth and final post in this series that is looking at the current facts, figures, impacts, and disasters that are occurring as a result of Obama Care. The results so far have not been pretty. Untrained implementers, processes open to severe abuse by identity thieves, Americans losing their jobs or work hours, more and more people finally learning that this is indeed the worst piece of legislation ever written, and a whole slew of other problems.
It is really sad that every month we find enough data, experiences, and realities to write about this unfolding disaster for days at a time. And as we get closer and closer to more major rollout dates of Obama Care processes and regulation, I am sure that the information will continue to get worse and worse.
Wouldn’t it have been much better if the Washington political class had taken the time up front to understand what the root causes are of our escalating health care costs are and THEN developed plans to address those root causes? Instead, the failed to do that preliminary analysis work and in its place constructed a complex Rube Goldberg-like insurance monstrosity that will do nothing to address these root causes and will likely make a bad situation worse.
Consider the root causes of our high health care costs and how no one has been able to convince America that there are serious components of Obama care that will address these underlying drivers of high health care costs:
- Americans smoke too much.
- Americans eat too much.
- American eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
- The Federal government spends taxpayer wealth to support tobacco farmers who grow smoking products and farmers who grow unneeded corn that ends up as obesity inducing corn fructose in our food chain.
- Americans do not get enough exercise.
- The health care industry needs substantial tort reform, reform that has worked well at the state level in reducing health care costs.
- The health care insurance industry needs to be able to more readily compete across state lines, increasing competition for health care insurance and reducing prices.
- Americans are getting older but there is no national effort to remedy the effects of aging diseases such as dementia and certain cancers.
- The Federal government loses tens of billions of dollars every year via its Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs to criminal activity, tens of billions of dollars that could have been used to provide low cost insurance to the uninsured in America without Obama Care’s costly bureaucracy.
Instead of this coherent, problem solving-oriented approach, we get stuck with inane and expensive processes via Obama Care like the following examples illustrate:
1) Investor's Business Daily examined a recent Government Accountability Office report and its detailed information on insurance plans today in all 50 states, from the least expensive health insurance plans offered to a 30-year-old nonsmoker to the most expensive plans 55-year-old couples can buy. It then looked at the Obama Care insurance plans that were compiled by the state of Maryland for eight states that are putting together their state based health insurance exchanges and compared the cost of insurance today and the likely cost of insurance under Obama Care.
The results were not pretty relative to the claim that Obama care will reduce health insurance costs for Americans:
- In Ohio, the least expensive Obama Care "bronze" plan for a 25-year-old will cost $1,956 a year, a price that's almost three times higher than the cheapest plan in Ohio today.
- In Virginia, the lowest priced Obama Care "bronze" premium is $1,608, 252% higher than the cheapest policy available today.
- Maryland's least expensive Obama Care plan will be 83% higher than the lowest-cost plan sold in that state this year.
- Critics of these types of analysis, and thus, supporters of Obama Care, correctly point out that some of these plans will actually cost less because some people will get Federal subsidies to purchase Obama Care plans.
- However, not everyone will be entitled to Obama Care subsidies, based on their income level, and will be stuck with these higher costs.
- Other people who live in the 34 states that are not implementing Obama Care health insurance exchanges and by the law’s explicit language, they will not be eligible for any Federal subsidies.
- Other counter points to the supporters’ point is that even with the subsidies, the cost could also be higher. For example, Investor's Business Daily found that a young worker making $20,000 in Maryland, for example, would pay about $1,000 for the cheapest Obama Care plan, after the subsidy. That's still $278 more than the least expensive plan offered in the state today.
- It is difficult to believe that any subsidy will be enough to offset cost increases of like the 252% increase in Virginia or the 825 increase in Maryland.
So much for Obama Care resulting in significant cost savings for Americans when the buy health care insurance. Best, best case is that costs do not go up too much. Seems like a lot of energy and effort to get us no better and likely much worse than where we were prior to Obama Care’s attack on logic and sanity.
2) The biggest losers in the Obama Care legislation is likely to be younger Americans. Obama Care needs them to buy insurance plans so that the Federal government can take the wealth from these younger, healthier Americans and use it to subsidize health care insurance for generally older and less healthy Americans. It will be the biggest inter-generational transfer of wealth from younger Americans to older Americans in the history of the country.
As an example of what is actually underway as a result of this lousy legislation, consider an analysis and resulting graphic from the same Investor’s Business Daily article we discussed above (double click on the graph for a larger view):

The red bars in this graph are the least expensive Obama Care “bronze” insurance plans across eight states. The blue bars are the least expensive plan available to a young person on the market today. Not a pretty picture, with today’s plans substantially less expensive than anything Obama Care is spitting out. There is no way that cost health insurance goes down under Obama Care in at least these eight states even with subsidies.
The conclusion is obvious. If you are a young American, Obama Care is after your wealth in order to leverage your probable good health to fund health care for other, general older Americans.
3) Yesterday, we talked a little about how the infrastructure of Obama Care is really under the gun and behind schedule. The discussion focus of that problem was that the so-called Obama Care “navigators” are likely to be put in place without criminal background checks being completed (enhancing the hence of identity theft) and without adequate training.
Today’s infrastructure horror story comes from a recent article from Reuters:
- The government is months behind in testing data security for the main component of Obama Care: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1
- The missed data systems deadlines have pushed the government’s decision on whether information technology security is ready and secure to exactly ONE DAY BEFORE that crucial October 1st date, according to the the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general.
- Thus, data systems experts say the Obama Care exchanges might open with serious security holes or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.
- “They’ve removed their margin for error,” said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. “There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.”
- The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance because the government’s Obama Care systems have serious security holes.
- The Inspector General‘s report found that “Several critical tasks remain to be completed in a short period of time.”
- Any additional delays beyond one day would mean the government entity operating the Obama Care exchanges would not have the security testing information it needs to authorize know if they were entitled to subsidy support.
- One day leeway to have this thing working by October 1. No way the Federal government gets this right within the next 60 days. Take that to the bank.
- Since a 2002 law requires that government systems obtain a “security authorization package,” essentially the roadmap for keeping out hackers and preventing security breaches, implementing Obama Care without this common sense authorization would mean the government is in violation of its own law.
If the systems are not online and deemed secure by October 1, people could still apply for Obama Care exchanges but they would not know if the qualified for subsidies and how much they might get, probably delaying them for choosing and signing up for an exchange health care program, leaving them in health insurance limbo.
But enough bad news. We will do another update next month, a time that will be a mere weeks from the onset of a major component of Obama Care. How scary do we think that update will be?
That will do it for our own analysis and roundup of the unfolding disaster from Obama Care. Tomorrow we will step aside and present an analysis of Obama Care presented by the Cato Institute.
Cato's analysis and commentary is about how Congress and the President are breaking the law and allowing Congressional members and their staffs to side step the law’s financial burdens. It is a despicable act that 1) is clearly illegal under the law’s tenets, 2) is a slap in the face of the rest of America who will not get the same financial relief from Obama Care, and 3) reinforces the feeling that we are truly living in a “Hunger Games” world where the rulers in Washington get the best of everything and the rest of us are stuck with the remnants and the dregs of their decisions.
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