May, 2014 the Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 3: What Should Have Been Done Vs. What Obama Did Continued

Two posts ago we laid out all of the Obama Care operations, strategies, and tenets that have already gone wrong and which are highly likely to go wrong in the coming months and years. Identity theft, higher deficits, higher national debt, higher insurance premiums, higher deductibles, loss of privacy, IRS harassment, failing government websites, millions of Americans losing access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and insurance plans, millions of Obama Care policy holders being denied access to the top medical facilities and doctors in the country, etc. The list seems endless.

We also explained how the legislation never had a chance of successfully reducing our ever escalating health care costs in this country since those that wrote it never understood the true root causes of our increasing health care costs: Americans smoke too much, Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, Americans do not exercise enough, the government restricts insurance company cost reducing competition across state lines, much needed medical tort reform never happened, etc.

Since Obama, Pelosi, Reid and other Obama Care architects never understood the root causes, we ended up with 2,500 pages of legal mumbo jumbo that created a Rube Goldberg-like subsidized government insurance program that will ultimately fail. The problem is that we have a public health crisis that is causing our higher and higher health care costs, we do not have a lack of insurance problem. High insurance costs are a symptom of the root causes, they are not the cause themselves.

Starting tomorrow, we will again start reviewing the unfolding disasters still coming out of the Obama Care legislation, much like we have done on a monthly basis since last August. Today and yesterday, however, we have gone back through our blog posts over the past few years and gathered up all of the suggestions that subject matter experts and informed, logical people have put forth to identify the true root causes of our high health care costs. That information leads one to the needed public health initiatives which should be put forth to resolve those root causes. We have also added some additional information and reports that we have not previously covered which also make our point.

I maintain that if we were successful in attacking the true root causes, as proposed below, the cost of health care would drop dramatically as would the cost of health care insurance, making it affordable for all who wanted it. The Obama Care approach, raising taxes to cover everyone with health care insurance without eliminating the underlying root causes is a fallacy solution.

The following observations, government and independent reports and analysis, success stories, and realities are in no particular sequence. However, at the end of the two posts I think you will agree that the Obama Care approach to the problem has missed the mark completely by focusing on health care insurance rather than health care solutions.

8) An article on smoking that appeared in the February 7, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, reinforced the high toll in lives, health, and costs due to smoking, as researched by the Surgeon General:

• Thirteen different types of cancer have been linked to smoking tobacco.
• Other ailments associated with smoking include vision loss, tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, impairment of the immune system, diabetes, erectile dysfunction, and ectopic pregnancy.
• The report calculated that smoking is the nation’s leading cause of premature death, killing 480,000 people a year.
• It also costs the nation up to $333 billion a year in medical care costs and lost productivity.

And the Washington political class annually insists on giving the tobacco industry hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies. Insane.

9) The May, 2014 issue of AARP’s Magazine discussed the widespread malady of diabetes. According to the article, almost 26 million Americans have diabetes, about 8% of the country’s citizens have it. 26 million is bad enough news but the trend is even worse, with that diabetes number having grown by 8 million people in just the past six years. 

The American Diabetes Association recommends losing weight, exercising, and a low fat diet are great ways to reduce the odds of getting diabetes. However, the article put forth some simple public health steps that everyone can take in their daily lives to reduce the spread of diabetes and thus, reduce the increasing costs of treating diabetes:

• Stop drinking soda since according to a recent Harvard School of Public Health review, drinking just one or two sugar sweetened sodas a day increase your risk of getting diabetes by 26%. This is a result of the wide spread use of high fructose corn syrup in non-diet sodas that is encouraged by the Federal government’s misguided subsidies of corn growers.
• Take a 15 minute walk a half hour after you eat and you will lower your post meal blood sugar levels for at least three hours, according to a recent study from George Washington University.
• Adopt the so-called Mediterranean diet which is rich in fish and heart healthy olive oil and you can reduce your chance of getting diabetes by a whopping 83%.
• People who sit around six to eight hours a day on their job are 19% more likely to get diabetes. Getting up and moving around for just two minutes every hour ups one’s metabolism enough to lower glucose levels and reduce the chance of diabetes.
• Include a weight lifting component to your exercise regime beyond just aerobic exercise and you will do a better job of managing the glucose level in your body.
• Eat your meals more slowly and you will usually end up eating less and reducing weight and the chance of getting diabetes.

Simple personal and public health initiatives that would go much further in reducing health care costs than whether of not you signed up for an Obama Care Bronze, Gold, or Silver insurance plan.

10) That same issue from AARP discussed research which found that one out of every three cancers can be prevented by exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, and eating right. The article points to six types of food to accomplish this reduction in your chances of getting cancer:

• Garlic and onions
• Milk
• Broccoli
• Dark, leafy green vegetables,
• Red Grapes
• Whole grains

It is that simple and you do not have to wrestle with a dysfunctional Obama Care website to get results.

11) A recent New York Times article that was summarized in the December 20, 2013 issue of The Week magazine reported that about 440,000 Americans dies each years as a result of preventable errors in U.S. hospitals. This means that one out of every size deaths in the country can be attributed to mistakes in hospitals. This makes these preventable deaths the third leading cause of death in the nation.

It does not matter whether you have a Gold, Silver, or Bronze Obama Care insurance policy since the legislation never really addresses this national problem and the associated costs caused by it. The good news is you have health insurance, the bad news is the hospital killed you anyway.

12) A mini-scandal and uproar occurred a few weeks ago when it was revealed that some doctors were receiving millions of dollars from Medicare every year for services rendered to Medicare patients. To make this number more understandable, and disgusting, a doctor getting $2 million a year from Medicare, and the American taxpayer, on average was getting about a $7,700 check EVERY business day of the year. I find it hard to believe that any doctor was providing that amount of quality and efficient medical service every day.

The situation became much clearer on why these doctors were making so much money as explained in Business Week article that appeared last week. Using the drug Lucentis as an example, you can see why doctors make millions off of the American taxpayer with very little effort.

Lucentis is used to treat is used by ophthalmologists/eye doctors to treat macular degeneration. Medicare pays doctors 106% of the average cost of a drug when a doctors administers it to a patient. Lucentis costs $2,000 for one shot making it a lucrative drug for doctors to administer since they will, on average, get 6% of $2,000 for their efforts.

However, another drug, Avastin, works just as well as Lucentis but costs only $50 a shot. Thus, a doctor would make 40 times less in Medicare payments, 6% of $2,000 vs. 6% of $50, if he or she used Avastin vs. Lucentis. 

Given that almost half of the 50 doctors being paid the most by Medicare in 2012 were ophthalmologists, what drug do we think these doctors are using the most, Lucentis or Avastin with Medicare not caring one way or the other from a treatment and payment perspective? Given that Medicare pays out about $1 billion a year just for Lucentis, it is pretty clear that at least some of these doctors are milking a stupid Medicare payment system.

I do not believe anywhere in the Obama Care legislation does it require Medicare to stop being so stupid and wasteful. Just forcing the switch from Lucentis to Avastin would save upwards of $1 billion a t year and contribute substantially to reducing health care costs.

13) An article in the march, 2014 issue of AARP’s Bulletin reported on how the nation is addicted to unnecessary medical tests, unnecessary tests that also needlessly increase the country; overall health care costs. For example, an estimated $3 billion is spent every year on PSA screening of prostate cancer which many experts now say does more harm than good. Nearly a quarter of $1,000 colonoscopies performed in older people every year are most likely inappropriate.

Nearly two thirds of women who have had hysterectomies and half of all U.S. women over 65 with not cervical cancer history report having recent Pap tests even though the American College Of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends against this test for these women. Excessive use of MRIs for lower back pain likely results tens of billions of dollars worth of treatments that end up not working.

How many hundreds of billions of wasted costs could be saved each year if we got the unnecessary testing syndrome under control, a syndrome not addressed by Obama Care?

14) Okay, last example of how we could dramatically reduce health care costs in this country without needing a useless 2,500 page piece of legislation from Washington:

• In 1975, California passed the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) which, among other things, capped the amount of medical malpractice awards. Since then, the California cost for medical malpractice insurance has gone up 168% on average while nationally the cost has gone up 420%. 
• In the 1990s and again in 2003, Texas passed major medical malpractice tort reform. Since then, the number of malpractice awards have gone down 25% and the cost for malpractice insurance from the state's largest insurers is down over 50%. 
• In 2005, Georgia also capped malpractice awards and has seen the number of malpractice lawsuits go down 39% and medical insurance rates go down 18%. 
• The Congressional Budget Office estimates that medical malpractice tort reform would reduce the cost of medical insurance anywhere from 10-30%. And if you reduce the costs of malpractice insurance, you eventually would see those savings translate into lower overall health care costs.

Want to bet that the reason that national and rational medical industry tort reform was NOT included in Obama Care, despite the success at the state level, is that the American Bar Association and the legal cartel did not want to see their lucrative practices in suing doctors to dry up? Just a hunch.

There you have it. Fourteen easy ways to reduce health care costs in this country that truly address the root causes of that problem. No fancy Washington legislation, no corrupt and inoperable new Federal bureaucracy, no loss of freedom, no wasting of taxpayer wealth, no increased taxes, no disruption in millions of Americans lives. 

Just a straightforward approach to resolving a public health crises with public health strategies as oppose to using a massive and inefficient government insurance operation to resolve a public health crises. Eat healthier, exercise, stop smoking, clean up the existing inefficiencies and criminal fraud that exists to day and the country would easily save hundreds of billons of dollars every year. That is what root causes analysis does for you, something that Obama and the rest of the Obama Care advocates never did.

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

May, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care, Part 2: What Should Have Been Done Vs. What Obama Did

Yesterday we laid out all of the Obama Care operations, strategies, and tenets that have already gone wrong and which are highly likely to go wrong in the coming months and years. Identity theft, higher deficits, higher national debt, higher insurance premiums, higher deductibles, loss of privacy, IRS harassment, failing government websites, millions of Americans losing access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and insurance plans, millions of Obama Care policy holders being denied access to the top medical facilities and doctors in the country, etc. The list seems endless.

We also explained how the legislation never had a chance of successfully reducing our ever escalating health care costs in this country since those that wrote it never understood the true root causes of our increasing health care costs: Americans smoke too much, Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, Americans do not exercise enough, the government restricts insurance company cost reducing competition across state lines, much needed medical tort reform never happened, etc.

Since Obama, Pelosi, Reid and other Obama Care architects never understood the root causes, we ended up with 2,500 pages of legal mumbo jumbo that created a Rube Goldberg-like subsidized government insurance program that will ultimately fail. The problem is that we have a public health crisis that is causing our higher and higher health care costs, we do not have a lack of insurance problem. High insurance costs are a symptom of the root causes, they are not the cause themselves.

Starting in two days, we will again start reviewing the unfolding disasters still coming out of the Obama Care legislation, much like we have done on a monthly basis since last August. Today and tomorrow, however, we have gone back through our blog posts over the past few years and gathered up all of the suggestions that subject matter experts and informed, logical people have put forth to identify the true root causes of our high health care costs. That information leads one to the needed public health initiatives which should be put forth to resolve those root causes. We have also added some additional information and reports that we have not previously covered which also make our point.

I maintain that if we were successful in attacking the true root causes, as proposed below, the cost of health care would drop dramatically as would the cost of health care insurance, making it affordable for all who wanted it. The Obama Care approach, raising taxes to cover everyone with health care insurance without eliminating the underlying root causes is a fallacy solution.

The following observations, government and independent reports and analysis, success stories, and realities are in no particular sequence. However, at the end of the two posts I think you will agree that the Obama Care approach to the problem has missed the mark completely by focusing on health care insurance rather than health care solutions.

1) Several years ago, a report from the National Research Council had some very interesting findings, findings that continue to prove that Obama Care got the whole approach to solving the nation's escalating health care costs. The National Research Council is part of the National Academy Of Sciences, an independent organization of the Federal government. It is chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters. Thus, the government did not even listen to itself when it cobbled together the unfolding disaster know as Obama Care.

According to the report:

• The United States spends more on health care than any other nation in the world but has worse life expectancy than many other nations who spend less.
• The U.S. average life expectancy at birth for women is 80.8 years and 75.6 years for men.
• In France, women's life expectancy is 84.4 years and for men it is 77.4 years.
• In Japan, women's life expectancy is almost 86 years and for men it is 79.2.
• The report concludes that smoking and obesity are the primary drivers of the U.S.'s poor performance since, according to the findings, over the years, the U.S. led those unhealthy trends of eating too much of the wrong kinds of food and smoking too much.
• The report found in countries where women's life expectancy was high, there was a strong correlation with low smoking levels and in those countries where women's smoking levels were comparable to U.S. smoking levels, life expectancy was about the same as in the U.S.

Smoking and obesity are the primary drivers of the U.S.’s poor performance. Interesting, a possible set of root causes of bad BEHAVIOR for our high health care costs in this country? Note that the report did not find that lack of health insurance was the primary driver of poor health or high healthcare costs.

2) According to a March 25, 2010 Associated Press article, recent studies have shown that the incidence of breast cancer (190,000 new cases and 40,000 deaths every year in the U.S.) can be reduced by 25-30% through the modification of BEHAVIOR as it relates to smoking, diet, and exercise. “Modification of behavior” sounds like a need for a public health initiative, not a massive government health insurance initiative.

3) A March 28, 2010 article in Parade magazine reported that the New England Journal of Medicine found that reducing the daily intake of salt by just three grams by every American would "reduce the annual number of new cases of heart disease by 60,000-120,000, stroke by 32,00 to 66,000, heart attack by 54,000 to 99,000" cases. This would reduce annual health care costs by up to $24 billion a year. 

Another vote for the changing of BEHAVIOR, not the implementation of a government insurance bureaucracy. 

4) In a Fortune article in the March 1, 2010 issue, an interview of the head of the Cleveland Clinic asserted that smoking, poor diet, and exercise BEHAVIOR was the cause of 40% of the premature deaths in this country every year. Obviously, reducing the amount of premature deaths would significantly reduce health care costs.

The same article reported that these same bad habits and BEHAVIORS are responsible for 70% of the chronic diseases in this country such as heart disease and diabetes. Imagine how much health care costs and health care insurance costs would come down if you could eliminate 70% of the chronic diseases. 

Consider the other assertions made by the head of the world renowned Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Delose Cosgrove:

• In our current health care industry there is no incentive for staying well. 
• Obesity in America accounts for 10% of all health care costs. 
• At the Cleveland Clinic facility, all deep fryers were removed from the cafeterias, the menus were made healthier, the candy and soda machines were removed, free exercise programs were initiated for Clinic employers, free Weight Watcher memberships were made available.
• In the first year of this transformation, Cleveland Clinic employees lost amazing 120,000 pounds of weight, 60 tons. 
• From a smoking perspective, smoking was banned on the entire grounds of the Clinic, free smoking cessation classes were offered to both employees and the entire county where the Clinic is located, a lobbying push was made to ban public smoking everywhere in Ohio, and the Clinic stopped hiring smokers. In four years the smoking rate in the county went from 28% to 18%, a little less than the national average of 20%.

Smoking reduction and better eating habits, imagine that as a way to reduce disease and health care costs vs. getting everyone an expensive insurance policy.

5) Consider an article in a past issue of AARP's magazine. The article focused on the residents of Albert Lea, Minnesota which was a participant in the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project. This program started in May, 2009 and focused on lessons learned in so-called "blue zones" - regions in the world where people have a long life span. 

The lessons learned in these zones focus on exercise, good eating habits, connecting with others, and finding purpose in life. Outputs and activities from this towns efforts included fifteen healthy initiatives, among which were the following:

• Cooking classes to help people learn to eat healthier. 
• Formation of walking groups to get people more active and connected to others. 
• Construction of pedestrian-friendly paths. 
• Creation of community gardens. 
• Two thirds of the city's restaurants began serving health food options.

Within just five months, town residents participating in the program had lost three pounds on average which had added about three years to their estimated life spans. One resident, used her participation in dance classes to lose thirty pounds. Another resident has lost 55 pounds and has increased his life expectancy from 52 years to 78 years by eating smaller portions at meal time, walking daily, and doing community theater work.

A year later, according to the article, more and more people were walking, dancing, and bicycling. Residents had accumulated over 42,000 miles in distance traveled via exercise. Twenty two town employers now offer work-site wellness programs to their employees, which has resulted in over 1,000 free health assessments. 

These Americans are living healthier, living longer, and not contributing to our rising health care problems since they took personal responsibility for their health, not nameless and numerous government agencies

6) A December 24, 2010 article from The Week magazine reported on how Americans take in too much salt in their diet. The article reported that just a small reduction in that amount could save upwards of 100,000 lives a year that occur as a result of excess salt (a 13% decline), and the incidence of new heart disease and stroke cases would decrease by 11% and 8% respectively.

7) On October 17, 2013, the health.com website ran an article based on the latest obesity results and research from the Centers For Disease Control (CDC). The CDC reported that about one in three U.S. adults are obese from a body weight perspective. 

This obesity epidemic costs the nation’s economy an estimated $270 billion a year due to health care costs and loss of productivity associated with obesity and overweight, according to a 2011 report produced by the Society of Actuaries. This cost burdens every U.S. household with an average cost of almost $2,400 a year.

That will do it for the first half of our theory, what should have been done vs. what Obama did, in the crisis of high health care costs in this country. Rather than making Americans healthier via a public health strategy of diet, exercise, and reducing smoking, his administration and supporters created a massive insurance apparatus that is expensive, inefficient, and ineffective. Why? Insurance plans and strategies do not resolve the undelrying public health care issues of obesity, smoking, and the government programs that encourage both. 

Tomorrow, we will conclude our analysis and theory that other, different steps should have been taken, based on a root cause analysis, vs. the wrong path that the Obama administration took, making a bad siutation worse.

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

May, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 1: What Failed and What Should Have Been Done

While we have spent the past few weeks recording the latest month’s worth of American political class insanity, have taken time to review the travesties and embarrassments from our nation’s idiotic tax code, and asked the question what would happen if Washington passed a law that no one obeyed, insanity coming out of the whole Obama Care effort has also been unfolding. 

We have spent many posts each month since last August trying to keep up with the idiocy of Obama Care and those that wrote it and continue to support it in the face of real world realities. Note: these previous posts can be accessed by the menu at the right hand side of this page. These realities continually to paint this legislation as the worst piece of legislation ever produced by Washington by the most inept set of politicians ever to sit in office in Washington. 

Before going into the details of the latest Obama Care disasters, let’s review the known disasters and review why Obama Care has no chance at all of fixing the problem of ever escalating health care costs in this country. A summary of what we have uncovered, discussed, and analyzed include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent and wasted on a Federal Obama Care website that did not initially work despite having three years of preparation.
• Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent and wasted on state level Obama Care websites that never worked or initially did not work despite having three years of preparation.
• The Obama Care websites were designed so poorly that they have been called an identity thief’s paradise and an identity thief’s “wet dream.”
• The expected long term cost of implementing Obama Care has more than doubled since the initial estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) when the legislation was originally passed.
• Even ten years down the road, the CBO estimates that tens of millions of Americans will not have health insurance coverage despite the fact that the whole purpose of Obama Care was to make sure EVERY American had low cost health insurance coverage.
• The legislation will conservatively add over one trillion dollars to the national debt load over the next ten years.
• In 45 states, expert actuaries estimate that the average cost of health insurance will ACTUALLY GO UP despite the promises made by Obama Care advocates that the legislation would substantially reduce health insurance costs. In fact, one of Obama’s biggest lies, note I did not say only lie, was that the average American family would see their health care costs go down by $2,500 a year.
• Speaking of lies, the President was awarded the Lie Of The Year in 2013 by the usually Obama-friendly Washington Post for his lie, uttered many, many times, that if you liked your current health insurance plan or your current doctor, you would be able to continue to keep that favored insurance plan and doctor.
• Millions of Americans lost access to their current health insurance plans as a direct result of the legislation, a loss that most did not want or anticipate, given the Obama administration’s lies.
• Many of those millions of Americans who lost access to their current plans as a result of the legislation found that Obama Care plans were seriously flawed relative to their life situation with many, many of them losing access to their doctors, their favorite hospitals, life saving and life improving drugs, and experiencing substantial increase in health insurance premiums AND deductibles.
• Top doctors and top hospitals have opted out of serving those covered by Obama Care insurance policies, denying top quality health care treatment to millions of Americans. i.e. the good news is that you have health insurance coverage, the bad news is that you cannot get health care treatment.
• The President and his administration many, many times broke the law and violated the Constitution by unilaterally altering implementation and rollout dates established in the law.
• The President and his administration many, many times broke the law and violated the Constitution by unilaterally changing the tenets and the requirements established in the law.
• The training for the so-called Obama Care navigators, those people that would help Americans sign up for Obama Care, received very sparse training and were never criminally background checked despite having access to Americans’ highly personal data, providing another avenue for identity theft. In fact, at least a handful of navigators were found to have serious criminal backgrounds.
• The whole operation is supposed to be managed by the IRS, one of the most inept Federal government organizations around, leaving little doubt that Obama Care will also not be run properly, efficiently or effectively.
• Many individual American citizens who dared to criticize the Obama Care legislation, both famous Americans and ordinary Americans, found themselves in turn being investigated by the IRS, likely for daring to criticize aspects of the legislation, a direct violation of the First Amendment rights.
• The legislation infringed on the freedom of religion rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution by forcing religious and non-profit organizations to violate their religious tenets or be in violation of Obama Care’s tenets.
• The legislation is forcing many businesses to put expansion plans on hold as a direct result of the legislation, contributing to the continued anemic economic growth over the past few years.
• The legislation has forced many lower margin businesses to turn their permanent workers into part time workers, working less than 30 hours a week, in order to financially survive the law’s dictates, further stunting national economic growth.
• Even worse, the law has forced at least hundreds and hundreds of companies to lay off American workers as a result of the additional business and financial burdens the legislation places on their businesses’ operations.
• The administration has insulted every American by giving special financial treatment to members of Congress and their staffs from a financial perspective but has not done the same for the rest of America, creating a tide of resentment that those who passed the stupid law do not have to abide by the stupid law they passed.
• The President and this legislation have endangered the financial well being of Medicare by proposing that $700 billion be stripped out of the Medicare program in the next ten years to make the Obama Care business case and benefits look better than they are.
• Obama Care insurance companies have already started to indicate that 1) they may have to significantly raise Obama Care premiums in 2015 given the likely sub-optimal mix of younger and healthier Obama Care policy owners and older, less healthy Obama Care policy owners and 2) these same insurance companies might be entitled to bailouts, ala General Motors and the major banks several years ago, as a result of a deal they got included in the legislation to protect their companies’ profitability.

What a mess on so many levels. The saddest thing about the whole disaster is that the legislation has virtually no chance of resolving the problem of ever escalating health care costs because the legislation never attacked the root causes of those high costs. If you do not understand the underlying problem, you have no chance of ever resoling that problem. And that is why Obama Care will eventually implode and fail but still severely damage the economy, Americans' health, and our freedoms and liberties.

What are those root causes? They include the following:

1. Americans eat too much.
2. Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, much of which is the result of the government subsidizing the infection of our food chain with too much fattening high fructose corn syrup, courtesy of its misguided crop subsidy programs.
3. Americans smoke too much, helped in part by the government subsidizing the growing of tobacco over the years to the tune of billions of dollars, artificially keeping the wholesale cost of tobacco products low.
4. Americans do not exercise enough, resulting in the most overweight and obese nation in the world.
5. The medical tort system is in need of drastic reformation, reformation that when executed at the state levels reduced health care costs.
6. Cross state border competition restrictions imposed by the government reduces in state competition for health care insurance policies, increasing costs.
7. The administration never took the time to understand where the money goes once a person pays for a medical treatment, I.e. they never “followed the money” to see where the true underlying costs are, costs which then could be attacked and reduced.
8. The bureaucracy to operate our current health insurance system adds layers and layers of cost and reviews to the health care industry, adding even more to overall costs.
9. The government’s current, large, health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, lose tens of billions of dollars every year to criminal fraud, lost dollars that could be used to attack these root causes at no additional cost in the form of consumer and business taxes.
10. America is aging which means there is likely to be a growing prevalence of age related diseases in the future (e.g. certain types of cancers, dementia, Parkinson’s disease), all of which will overwhelm our health care infrastructure, a situation not addressed by the Obama Care legislation.

Creating a massive and inefficient Rube Goldberg government process based on a piece of legislation that was well over 2,000 pages does nothing to address these root causes. That is why it will fail and fail dramatically and expensively. 

Over the next week or so, we will review additions to the above list of Obama Care disasters and failures that have arisen in just the past month or so. However, before we get into some of that new depressing news, tomorrow we will try and take a more optimistic view of what could be done to address the true root causes of our high health care costs and what is actually being done outside the realm and capabiity of the Washington political class. 

There is hope but that hope is based on absolutely nothing coming out of the Washington political class. Remember, their policies and legislation have helped create the problem we are in the middle of 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:

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

Will The Center Hold, Part 3: More Calls For A Convention Of The States, Humping The Feds on Hemp, and More

This is our third post this past week on how the middle core of the country might be coming apart as the Washington political class becomes more and more oppressive in its policies and overreach. This is causing state governments and individual citizens to push back agaiinst the oppressive tactics of the Federal government which is hindering the states’ and individuals' rights and freedoms as laid out in the Constitution. This wide ranging pushback raises two critical questions for our nation’s future:

• What if Washington passed a law that no one obeyed?
• If this behavior became widespread, would the center of the country hold or would the Federal government as we know cease to exist?

Never in the history of our country has Washington been held in such low regard and contempt. Issues causing this friction range from gun control to overbearing and ineffective education requirements to Federal land grabs, to Obama Care resistance, etc.

The nation has stayed united through depressions, recessions, world wars, a civil war, the Nixon administration and a range of other problem eras. However, it remains to be seen where the current friction across the country will take us.

The first two parts of this series can be viewed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/will-center-hold-april-2014-part-1.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/will-center-hold-april-2014-part-2.html

1) Common Core is the Federal government’s idea to institute a one size fits all educational curriculum across the country. However, early reviews on the effectiveness of such a single focused mentality for all kids in all schools are are not good. That ineffectiveness has caused a multitude of states to opt out of all or some of Common Core’s requirements, a slap in the face to the Federal government which is trying to control the education of our kids, a job that was traditionally handled at the local and state government level.

A concerned mother (by the way, this mother works as a literary consultant to urban schools so she probably knows a little about English tests besides holding a PhD in English) investigated the English class  Common Core material in some detail after her ninth grade daughter had an experience with a Common Core English test. The daughter came home and told her mother that:

• “These are such weird questions.” 
• “This test is crazy.” 
• “This is a stupid, impossible test.”

Given that teenagers can often be a little overly dramatic, the mom decided to try to answer a few of the Common Core tests for herself. She was so shocked by the material that she wrote a letter to the President to describe the many problems the material presented to ninth grade kids. The critical paragraph of her letter goes as follows:

“I have a Ph.D. in English, I’ve been in college and high school classrooms for over 20 years, and for much of that time I’ve trained and coached high school English teachers. I was shocked that the ninth grade test included an excerpt from Bleak House, a Dickens novel that is usually taught in college. I got seven out of 36 multiple choice questions wrong on the eleventh grade test. And I had no idea what to do with this essay prompt on the third grade test.”

If a highly educated, PhD holding woman cannot ace a ninth grade test in her area of specialty, who thinks that a seventh grade kid can? And if that is truly the case, what educational value did those seventh graders receive? I am not saying all tests should be easy. School should be hard and challenging, but not impossible. This is just one reason why many people are telling Washington to kiss off on Common Core, it does not work, much like just about everything else that Washington politicians touch.

Her entire letter can be viewed at:

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/04/132870-mom-writes-president-obama-letter/

2) Many states are moving forward and calling for the so-called “convention of the states,” allowed under Article V of the Constitution. This Article allows for a convention to be held to install changes to the Constitution once two thirds of the states, 34 states, pass resolutions or bills calling for a convention. Never before in my memory do I recall anything close to the states taking the initiative to push back an over reaching Federal government.

A recent article on the Capitalism Institute website reported how Alaska became the next state to call for such a convention. Highlights of the article include:

• Alaska’s Senate passed a resolution calling for a Convention of States, matching the Alaska House to make their application official. 
• Alaska joins Georgia as the only official applicants thus far, but states including Alabama, Arizona and Florida are close to making their applications official as well.
• A signature by the state’s governor is not necessary for the application to be valid, only passage through both houses of the legislature is required. 
• The Alaska resolution resolves “to call a convention of the states for the sole purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States that impose fiscal restraints on the Federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office of Federal government officials.” 
• If 34 states officially apply for a convention, Congress will be compelled to call it to order. 

The article explains that the likely agenda items at an Article V convention would be strictly limited to a balanced budget amendment, a Congressional term limit amendment, and possibly an amendment prohibiting Congress from exempting themselves or other government employees from the laws they pass.

This may be the only way to attack what has become a $17 TRILLION national debt burden, return us to a much smaller but hopefully much more effective Federal government as required by the Constitution, and the implementing of term limits so that we get rid of the entrenched and useless politicians that got the country into the mess it is in now in the first place. 

Heaven knows the current Washington political set has shown no ability or desire to do what has to be done, forcing states and individuals to ban together to use the only tool left to them, Article V.

3) Another recent article from the Capitalism Institute also announced that the state of Florida had also passed a binding resolution calling for a Convention of The States to reign in the Federal government. What is interesting about the convention of the states drive is:

• The effort is only about a year old.
• However, there are organized Article V teams already up and running in all 50 states.
• Seven states who are well ahead of the rest of the states and include Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New Mexico, and South Carolina.
• These states include a broad cross section of geographic areas from Florida in the most southeastern part of the U.S. to Alaska in the most northwestern part of the U.S. to Missouri in the Midwest to Arizona to New Mexico on the southwest, i.e. Americans across the entire country are fed up with Washington.

4) We recently came across another state government push back against the Federal government that we have not previously discussed. It is against Federal law for any American to grow industrial hemp in the country. Industrial hemp, it is my understanding, while a relative of marijuana, does not contain any of the mind altering properties of marijuana. 

I am assuming that the Feds have long banned it since it looks like real marijuana. Another theory I have heard in the past is that Dupont, who makes a lot of man-made fabrics, did not want to compete with the fabrics that could be developed from hemp and thus, successfully lobbied the Federal government to ban this competitive product. That crony capitalism story can wait for another day.

Industrial hemp has a lot of different uses across the world, it would provide a nice boost to American farmers by giving them another crop option to use or to rotate through their lands. To that end, on April 16, 2014, the state government Assembly of Tennessee took the final necessary steps to send legislation to the Tennessee governor, which if signed, would nullify the Federal ban on hemp in the state.

The Tennessee Assembly Bill 2445 was sponsored by State Representative. Jeremy Faison and it would mandate that the state authorize the growing and production of industrial hemp within Tennessee, Senator Frank Niceley was the chief Senate sponsor of the legislation.

Some media reports say that since hemp production is still banned on the Federal level, the Tennessee legislation will only take effect begin cultivation once the feds change the law. However, the legislation makes no such stipulation with regards to waiting on the Federal government since the bill reads:

“The department shall issue licenses to persons who apply to the department for a license to grow industrial hemp.”

According to Mike Maharrey, communications director for the Tenth Amendment Center, one word strengthened the bill considerably: “By including the word ‘shall’ in this legislation, it has a great deal of impact. This means that rather than keeping it open-ended like other states have done, hemp farming will be able to move forward in Tennessee whether the [Federal] regulatory bureaucrats there want it to or not.”

Wow, another state telling the Federal government to back off on another Federal law. Tennessee joins three other states that are also working to ignore or nulllify Federal hemp banning laws: Colorado, Oregon and Vermont have already passed bills to authorize hemp farming, but only in Colorado has the process begun. 

That will do it for now. Push backs against the Federal government meddling in a whole range of our lives including harmless hemp growing, a doomed-to-failure national education program, term limits, out of control federal spending, and more. Again, 1) what if Washington passed a law that no one obeyed and 2) will the center hold if the previous point becomes common place? Interesting times.

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

Will The Center Hold, April, 2014, Part 2: Taking back Western Lands, Forcing A Balanced Washington Budget, and Georgia Protects the Second Amendment

Yesterday was the first in a series of posts that will update the status of state governments and citizens pushing back on an overreaching and increasing ineffective and wasteful Federal government. The issues involved are wide ranging and include, but are not limited to, gun rights, education control and tenets, Obama Care, and others.

The questions we have posed in light of these unprecedented push backs and resistance include: 1) What if Washington passed a law that few of the states and citizens actually obeyed and 2) if no one obeys Washington's dictates, does the center hold or does the union dissolve into separate government entities with little or no connection to a Federal government? Interesting questions arising from an unprecedented time in our country's history, the uprising of state government and state citizens against an overreaching and increasingly intrusive set of Washington laws and politicians.

1) Today we start off with push back that we have not discussed before in this series, namely the desire of many western states and their citizens to get the Federal government out of the land ownership business within their states. In many western states, the Federal government owns and controls a large amount of state land or in some cases, the majority of state lands.

This has caused a number of conflicts and sore points over the years as a result of the Federal government's large and imposing presence and influence within a state. Local citizens and governments feel, often rightfully so, that a faraway Federal bureaucracy does not have their best interests as a priority when establishing national laws.

This was vividly illustrated by a Salt Lake Tribune article from April 14, 2014. The article summarized a recent meeting held by local and state officials and politicians in Utah that was convened to discuss and find ways to reduce the Federal footprint of land ownership and governance within their state borders. In other words, how could the states take over stewardship of Federal lands and hopefully do a better job ecologically, economically, and administratively than the historic ineptness of the Feds. 

Highlights of the meeting, as described by the Tribune, include the following:

• More than 50 political leaders from nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal, taking control of oil, timber and mineral-rich lands away from the Federal government.
• Utah Representative Ken Ivory, who organized the Legislative Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands along with Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder stated:"It’s simply time. The urgency is now.
• New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington also were represented.
• The article points out that this meeting was scheduled long before this month’s tense standoff between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Federal Bureau of Land Management over cattle grazing: "What’s happened in Nevada is really just a symptom of a much larger problem," an attendee and organizer said.
• Fielder, self described as "just a person who lives in the woods," said Federal land management is hamstrung by bad policies, politicized science and severe Federal budget cuts: "Those of us who live in the rural areas know how to take care of lands. We have to start managing these lands. It’s the right thing to do for our people, for our environment, for our economy and for our freedoms."
• Idaho Speaker of the House Scott Bedke claimed Idaho forests and land managed by the state have suffered less damage and watershed degradation from wildfire than lands managed by Federal agencies: "It’s time the states in the West come of age. We’re every bit as capable of managing the lands in our boundaries as the states east of Colorado."
• Attendees made the case that they see oilfields and other resources that could be developed to create jobs and fund education.
• The skyrocketing national debt was also seen as a reason to let the states have control of the lands to develop them since the Federal government’s debt threatens both its management of vast tracts of the West as well as its ability to come through with payments in lieu of taxes to the states. In other words, the states want to control their fates and no longer be dependent on the ability of the Federal government to pay for use of the lands, a probably wise position to take: "If we don’t stand up and act, seeing that trajectory of what’s coming … those problems are going to get bigger." 
• To be clear, the agreed to intent is not to take over those lands designated as national parks and wilderness created by acts of Congress Lockhart said: "We are not interested in having control of every acre. There are lands that are off the table that rightly have been designated by the Federal government."

Interesting times that for the first time ever there is such a widespread effort at the state and local effort underway to wrest control of major pieces of U.S. land away from the bureaucrats in Washington. Unheard of in the past. 

A push back on a major scale against a Federal government who has mismanaged the lands, possibly sub-optimized the lands for their economic value, and given the recent military type operation against Cliven Bundy in south Nevada, have become too heavy handed in dictating what happens locally throughout the west. Will the center hold if the states merely assert their control over the land where they live, ignoring the control the Federal government has asserted over the centuries?

2) The Washington Times recently reported that the state of Michigan became the 19th state to officially call for a convention of the states under Article V of the Constitution, specifically and only for the purpose of forcing the Federal government and the Washington political class to enact and abide by a balanced budget every year. 

Thus, almost 40% of the states have stated that the current operation of the Federal government and its wasteful budgeting processes need to be corrected and the states will take the initiative in doing so since the politicians in Washington have proven they are incapable of doing so. This action is a little different than the other push backs that the states and its citizens have taken where they are simply looking for ways to nullify or ignore Federal mandates and laws, be they in the areas of Obama Care, gun control, Common Core, etc.

In this case, the states and citizens are telling the Federal government to get its budget house in order and if the Feds do not do it, then the states will do it for them through a Constitutional mechanism. This is not a push back against an overreaching Federal government, this is a push back against an incompetent Federal government.

3) In late March, 2014, the Georgia legislature voted in overwhelming manner to protect the Second Amendment rights of Georgia citizens to possess and carry firearms. This is just another state that is preparing to ignore or nullify any potential gun control or seizure laws that come out of Washington.

The main tenets of the legislation include the following:

•Remove fingerprinting for renewal of Weapons Carry Licenses (WCL).
•Prohibit the state from creating and maintaining a database of WCL holders.
•Create an absolute defense for the legal use of deadly force in the face of a violent attack.
•Remove of the sweeping restrictions on legally carrying a firearm with a WCL in churches and bars, leaving this decision to private property owners.
•Lower the age to obtain a concealed WCL for self-defense from 21 to 18 for active duty military, with specific training.
•Repeal the unnecessary and redundant state-required license for a firearms dealer, instead requiring only a Federal Firearms License (FFL).
•Prohibit a ban on firearms in public housing, ensuring that the right to self-defense should not be infringed based on where one calls home.
•Codify the ability to legally carry, with a WCL, in sterile/non-secure areas of airports.
•Include a provision that would have the state report those persons who have been involuntarily hospitalized or have been adjudicated mentally deficient while also providing an ability for relief through an application process to the court system for the purpose of restoration of rights.
•Under a declared state of emergency, all law-abiding gun owners will not have their Second Amendment rights restricted or infringed by executive authority through Emergency Powers protection.

Another state expressing its state rights under the Constitution to protect and do what is best for its citizens, regardless of what Washington and the Federal government want or do.

Will the center hold when many states and their governments and citizens demand that they be in charge of the land that is local to them but far away from the Washington bureaucracy? Will the center hold when the states demand that the Federal government gets is budgeting and financial house in order or the states step in to force them to do it? Will the center hold when state gun control freedoms that are enshrined in the Constitution and state law are in conflict with Federal and Washington political class gun laws?

Interesting....and dangerous times we live in, especially if the center does not hold and a revolution against inept Federal government behavior, bureaucracies, and politicians ever gain enough momentum. Stay tuned.

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

Will The Center Hold, April, 2014, Part 1: Common Core Under Fire, Seceding States, and More

After ten days worth of posts looking at various forms of political class insanity, it is time to move on to other topics. For the next several days, we will be taking another look at a question we have posed in previous posts: Given the overreaching, illegal, and un-Constitutional actions of the Federal government and the Washington political class, and the push back from citizens and state governments, will the center hold? Or will the various issues and conflicts eventually result in the breaking apart of the republic and the dissolution of Federal government authority and effectiveness? 

Never before in our history have we been so close to the center of the nation not holding steady and solid. Through wars and depressions and recessions and civil rights movements and other crises, in my opinion we have never been closer to such a splitting of the nation. The fact that we are now closer than ever to such a center implosion speaks volumes of how power hungry, illegal, and incompetent the political class has become. 

The first set of posts on this topic can be accessed starting at: 

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/03/will-center-hold-part-1-americans-and.html

1) In one sign of the growing disgust with Washington and this Presidency, news report indicate the Wisconsin Republican Resolutions Committee voted earlier this month to support a proposal establishing a state’s right, “under extreme circumstances, to secede” from the union. The resolution is gaining acceptance among many of the state’s disillusioned residents, many of whom are expected to weigh in on the matter during the state Republican Party convention next month. 

Not all of the state’s Republicans are excited about the idea, including the current state governor, Scott Walker: “I don’t think that one [the resolution] aligns with where most Republican officials are in the state of Wisconsin – certainly not with me.” 

But even if the governor is not interested, there is enough interest and frustration in this state for some of its political actors taking the radical step of thinking and discussing the pros and cons of secession. 

2) Common Core is a Washington effort to put in place a single Federal government curriculum for the nation’s schools. A lot of Americans are against such a domination of local teaching and schools from a faraway Federal government bureaucracy for a number of reasons: 

• Trying to impose a single teaching and education approach on all Americans will likely never work and will end up dumbing down the education process. 
• Early results from states and districts using Common Core materials have resulted in disappointing educational results.
•  Ceding control of local educational processes to a Federal government that has shown the inability to successfully operate any program is not attractive to parents and school districts that prefer to manage their own education processes that are tailored to their local needs. 

As a result of these concerns and others, many states are beginning to opt out of all or some of the Common Core’s components. Recently, South Carolina’s top education administrator announced that South Carolina is pulling out of the Common Core standardized testing group, Smarter Balanced. 

Superintendent of Education Mick Zais sent a letter to state Board of Education members informing them of the move. Zais was sprung to action on this issue as a result of pending legislation in the state legislature that would prevent South Carolina from using the Smarter Balanced tests in schools: “My recommendation was to get ahead of these actions of the General Assembly and show the members of the General Assembly that we believe exploring assessment options is the most prudent course of action for South Carolina.” 

Furthermore, Zais stated in a letter to the state board of education Suth Carolina: “I want to have a high quality assessment that meets the specific needs of South Carolina, at a competitive price. If we continue to focus only on Smarter Balanced, we lose any opportunity to consider alternatives… In consideration of the foregoing, and the discovery that I have the authority to withdraw South Carolina from its status as a governing state of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, and after full consultation with the Governor’s Office and appropriate members of the General Assembly, I am informing you that I am exercising that authority." 

The “most prudent course of action for South Carolina.” In other words, thanks but no thanks to Washington and the Common Core bureaucracy for his state. Just another example of a state treating Washington’s dictates as a suggestion and not a requirement. One of many states doing the same thing on many different issues. 

3) According to a recent article by the Heritage Foundation, South Carolina is not the only state of in the union actively working against the forced implementation of Common Core in their states:

• In Oklahoma, the state senate passed legislation early in April reducing the state’s involvement with Common Core’s national standards, although there is some dispute as to whether it would fully remove Oklahoma from the standards, or merely change the name of the standards. Governor Mary Fallin , a supporter of Common Core said in a statement that she “support[s] passing legislation that increases classroom rigor and accountability while guaranteeing that Oklahoma public education is protected from federal interference…” 
• The Missouri House of Representatives recently passed legislation to find a Common Core replacement. State Representative Kurt Bahr stated: “We’re going to create the process to have Missouri standards and Missouri assessments.” The Missouri legislation requires that by October 1, 2014, the state board of education must develop new academic standards by the following October 2015, in place of the Common Core, and adopt and implement these standards by the 2016-17 school year.
• The New Orleans Advocate recently reported that in Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal, who once was a Common Core supporter, is now encouraging the Louisiana legislature to formally remove the state from the Common Core aligned Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers (PARCC) test. This position was announced on the heals of him receiving a letter from eight members of the Louisiana State House of Representatives informing Jindal of his ability to opt out of the standards and encouraging him to do so. 

The Heritage report concludes with the following summary of state government push backs on Common Core and the Federal government: “Fifteen states have now made strides in halting or downgrading their involvement in the standards. Last month, Indiana became the first state to exit Common Core. This is promising momentum in the effort of states to reclaim their educational decision-making authority.” 

When was the last time anyone can remember 30% of the states telling the Federal government to take a hike relative to a Federal program? Will the center hold, at least relative to Common Core? 

4) In early April, Missouri’s House passed veto proof gun rights  legislation that allows Missouri to refuse to enforce past, present and future Federal gun control laws that are viewed to be infringements on gun rights, and state residents would have the right to sue law enforcement for enforcing such laws. The legislation is expected to also pass the state senate. 

The veto proof component of the legislation is important since the state’s Governor indicated that he opposes such legislation, having vetoed a similar bill last year that also sought to nullify some Federal laws. Despite the governor’s resistance, Missouri becomes one of nearly ten other states have passed some form of legislation attempting to limit federal regulation of firearms within their border. 

The Missouri effort also contains several other gun rights components including lowering the minimum age to get a concealed weapons permit and allowing designated school personnel to carry firearms in buildings. 

So let’s review. A growing number of states do not want Washington’s Common Core shaky education standards and tenets and the attached bureaucracy and restrictions, a growing number of states have more respect for the Second Amendment than the Federal government and the Obama Presidency, taking actions to protect the rights of their citizens, and some citizens in at least one state (Wisconsin) are seriously fed up with everything coming out of Washington, so much so that they are willing to split off and form their own country. 

Which raises two interesting questions, questions that we have posed in the past and questions that are becoming closer and closer to a reality everyday: 1) What happens if Washington passes a law and very few states and citizens obey that law? 2) With such widespread disrespect and ignoring of Washington directions, will the center hold? More disobedience and push back on an overreaching Federal government tomorrow.

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