May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Bonus Post: The Obama Express Gets Indicted, More Medicare Screwups, and More

Okay, I know I promised that yesterday would be the last political class insanity for this month but not unexpectedly, new insanity popped up before I finished reviewing what insanity we already had. Thus, one more day, I promise, of the latest political class insanity from the most inept set of politicians this country has ever had to endure.

1) After President Obama was elected in 2008 as the first African American President, a string of Baltimore area convenient stores renamed themselves to Obama Express in his honor. Nice gesture but the following alleged criminal activities may result in the President ruing the day when he was thusly honored:

• According to a local television report, a Federal grand jury has indicted nine retail store owners in Baltimore City and Baltimore County for ‘food stamp trafficking’ at Obama Express stores.
• The indictments claim that the retailers redeemed the food stamps for cash and split the money with food stamp recipients. 
• The amounts totaled a whopping $7 million. 
• During these illegal transactions, the retailers provided no food, this was strictly a redemption of food stamps for cash criminal activity.
• To avoid detection, the defendants/retailers often debited the funds from the card in multiple transactions over a period of hours or days, resulting in the defendants obtaining more than $6,898,000 in EBT deposits for transactions in which the stores did not provide food.
• The suspects are all facing up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Pretty ironic that the President who has spent and wasted more on food stamps and food aid than any other President in the history of this country would have a set of retailer stores named after him that allegedly abused the food aid system to the tune of $7 million worth of taxpayer wealth.

2) Most Washington politicians leave office much wealthier than when they enter office. Not only do they make more than three times what the median U.S. household income level is, reputable news sources such as “Sixty Minutes” have shown that they take unfair advantage of their positions of power and insider information to further enrich themselves in ways that would be illegal for other Americans to do so.

Given how they rigged the system, it is surprising when you find a long term Washington politician who actually has a negative net worth despite the money making opportunities available to politicians in Washington. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz somehow has a personal net worth of NEGATIVE $1.04 million. That makes Ms Wassermen-Schlutz the 3rd poorest member of Congress, according to the website Rollcall.com.

Ms. Wassermann-Schultz has two home mortgages that are taking up the bulk of her debt, totaling $750,000 for both of them. Additionally, she has more than $350,000 in personal and home equity loans, plus an enormous credit card debt of more than $50,000. 

I personally could not care less what her financial status is except for the fact that she sits on the House Appropriations Committee, a committee which has the power of appropriating money to Congress. This scares me since if she cannot manage her own personal financial life, I cannot imagine what havoc she is causing to the country’s financial status. Given the high rate of unemployment and our $17.5 TRILLON national debt, is there a direct cause and effect relationship here? 

3) The following political class insanity crosses over the line from disgraceful to disgusting. According to an April 28, 2014 article in the Chicago Tribune, a former Illinois state representative politician, Keith Farnham, was recently arrested and charged with using both personal and state-owned computers to trade hundreds of images and videos depicting child pornography and engaging in graphic online chats in which he allegedly bragged about sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl. 

The Federal criminal indictment alleges that Farnham, possessed two videos depicting child pornography on a computer that was taken from his state office in a week before his sudden resignation in March. Investigators also linked an email account used by Farnham to a online website in which he chatted with other users about his sexual preferences. Those preferences alleged included sexual encounters with young girls, preferably younger than 12 years old. Disgusting if true.

Now, I am pretty sure that this type of behavior is not rampant across every member of the political class. However, according to the one bad apple spoils them all theory, it is pretty hard to respect and follow these types of people when this behavior comes from a politician. Why child pornography has a special place in hell for those that practice it, let’s not forget the adultery, lying, thievery, and other bad behaviors that constantly emanate from our politicians and how that behavior destroys whatever respect and dignity we ever had for the profession and its members.

4) In previous posts we have reviewed the government estimates that put the criminal fraud infecting Medicare and Medicaid at between $90 and $110 billion a year. A recent Business Week article quoted a 2012 article in the Journal Of the American Medical Association that put that estimate anywhere between $30 and $98 billion a year. In either case, there are tens of billions of dollars wasted via these two Federal government programs every year, waste and fraud that has been going on for decades without the Washington political class having the will or the smarts to fix the problem.

Examples of how bad the fraud and insanity is and how deep it goes was provided elsewhere in that Business Week article:

• Medicare paid a California doctor over half a million dollars in 2012, one of many doctors the Federal government paid even though many of them had had their medical licenses revoked, had been disciplined for gross malpractice, battery, and violating drug laws.
• One cardiologist, Robert Graor, continued to bill and be paid by Medicare despite the fact he had previously been convicted, not accused, of stealing over $1 million from the Cleveland Clinic in 1995 and was barred from practicing medicine in Ohio.
• Graor simply got a new medical license in New Mexico and in 2012 billed Medicare for over $660,000.
• The California doctor mentioned above billed Medicare for $538,742 worth of services in 2012, performing 6,000 services for only 42 patients, performing on average a whopping 143 services for each patient.
• His billing records indicate that on average he spent two and a half hours with each of patient on each visit, a highly unlikely ratio.

The article points out that Medicare investigators recovered over $4 billion in misspent funds in 2013. But if the criminal fraud is actually about $98 billion, then recovering over $4 billion is less than a 5% recovery rate, making this a very lucrative and low risk criminal activity. And even if you do get caught, as the California doctor and Cleveland Clinic doctor were, you still get to go back to the Medicare trough, since according to the article, both doctors are still listed as valid options on the Medicare website.

Okay, that will definitely do it for this month’s political class insanity. A Medicare program that is riddled with stupidity and fraud, at least one sexual deviant politician arises, a Congresswoman who has substantial input to the nation’s financial dealings but cannot manage her own finances, and the Obama Express stores are indicted for food aid fraud under the food aid President of the same name. Insane.

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