May,2016, Part 3, I Am A Global Warming Dubter and A Believer In Science: Past Forecasts Go Down In Flames, Ice Build Up At The South Pole and More

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.”This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims:

1) Yesterday, we discussed the reality that despite Al Gore predicting that the North Pole could be ice free by 2013, his forecast could not be any further from the truth. Others of his ilk have also forecasted a similar disaster for the South Pole. However, according to NASA researchers back in 2014, on September 19, 2014, the five day average of Antarctic sea ice area exceeded 20 million square kilometers for the first time since 1979. This data finding came from NASA’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Now, some NASA scientists involved with the work said that this is now perfectly normal from a global warming theory perspective. That global warming is changing weather patterns which is causing the South Pole to get colder and expand its ice pack. Yes, global warming is causing more iced to form in the South Pole. Think about that for a minute, warming = more ice. 

For all I know or do not know, they could be right: global warming is causing more ice at the South Pole. What I do have a problem with, though, from a scientific perspective, is that none of the historical forecasts of global warming predicted this situation, warming = more ice. Thus, it brings into doubt their theory since they obviously missed this phenomenon when they put their climate models together, which implies that they really do not understand what is going on. They provide many theories of why the South Pole is getting colder but that is all they have is theories. 

Again, they may be right. But they have no idea why this is happening which implies that they do not understand the whole climate picture which means, contrary to what Al Gore says, the “science is NOT settled.”

2) Continuing with the South Pole ice pack expanding story, maybe what we are seeing is just the long term cyclical changes to the climate, that we are in a period of time when the planet is a little warmer while at the same time the South Pole is getting bigger with humanity’s use of carbon fuel having no or little impact on the long term cycle. 

Consider a simple historical chart that was recently published on the Federalist Papers website:



Thus, if you believe the work done by these scientists, Cliff Harris and Randy Mann, the world and its climate has been much warmer in the past, long before mankind was using a lot of carbon based fuel sources. Their data shows that climate is a long term cycle with warming periods interspersed with cooling periods regardless of what species is dominant on Earth. In fact, based on their data and analysis, whenever solar radiation has decreased and volcanic activity has increased, global temperatures suddenly drop, often within weeks or months. Over time, this has caused 75 major climate swings throughout the Earth’s history.
Their findings are consistent with the work of CERN scientists several years ago where in laboratory conditions they showed that solar activity has a much bigger effect on climate than anything mankind does. That research was summarized at:http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.htmlLook at ALL of the data, not just the data that proves a pre-determined conclusion, that is all global warming doubters are looking for.3) Let’s finish up today with a brief look back at the major climate forecast screw ups over time. We have previously discussed many of these so we know the sources are good but I recently came across this brief history of climate mania proven wrong:

1. -Biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted in the 1970s that: “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” and that “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” Comments: While far too many people die from starvation every year, that is mostly caused by wars and bad politicians, not the climate devastation that Ehrlich predicted.
2. -In January 1970, Life magazine reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” Comment: While true in many Chinese cities because of fast economic growth, that is certainly not the case in just about every other city around the world and certainly not the case in this country.
3. -In January 2006 Al Gore predicted that we had ten years left before the planet turned into a "total frying pan." Comment: Wrong again, Al.
4. -In 2008, a segment aired on ABC News predicted that NYC would be under water by June 2015. Comment: Not even close.
5. -In 1970, ecologist Kenneth E.F. Watt predicted that “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000, This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” Comment: Even the global cooling scientists got it wrong.
6. - In 2008, Al Gore predicted that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap would be completely melted within 5-7 years. He at least hedged that prediction by giving himself “75%” certainty. Comment: Wrong again, Al.
7. -On May 13th 2014 France’s foreign minister said that we only have 500 days to stop “climate chaos.” The recent Paris climate summit met 565 days after his remark. Comment: No chaos.
8. -In 2009, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center head James Wassen warned that Obama only had four years left to save the earth. Comment: Obama could not even save his Presidency from incompetence never mind saving the world.
9. -On the first Earth Day, its sponsor warned that “in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Comment: Not quite.
10. -And another Earth Day prediction from Kenneth Watt: “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” Comment: So at one point in this scientific mess nitrogen was the problem, not carbon. My, how times have changed.

That will do it for today, more proof that being a global warming doubter and a believer in science is a sane thing to be. Us doubters are all for analyzing a potential problem and taking the right steps to fix the situation if it is a problem. Al Gore types have already pre-determined what the problem is and how to fix it, which always involves us giving up our freedom and wealth and giving it to powerful interests that people like Al Gore represent. In some situations this is caused a shake down, in the global warming world it is called saving the planet from what could very well be a myth.

More global warming insanity tomorrow.

May, 2016, Part 2, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Bill Nye Wants You In Jail and Al Gore Was Wrong Despite An Oscar Award

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in man made global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of man made global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims:

1) Bill Nye is the science guy. One would think that someone known as the science guy would want to look at all sides of a scientific argument or problem. That is what scientists do, look at all available data, research, and information and put together testable theories in the search for truth.

But apparently Mr. Nye is not a traditional scientist in this sense. Even though we have provided hundreds of examples in various forms that proves that global warming science is not settled, Nye thinks that those realities, scientists, and facts should be ignored.

Why did I reach that conclusion? In a recent interview by the Youtube channel, cfact, Nye implied that putting global warming doubters jail might be a viable option since he and non-scientists like Al Gore and Barack Obama know what is best for humanity. If it means trampling on the rights of Americans to have a different opinion, then so be it.

Throwing people in jail for having a difference of opinion, a difference that is justified in so many ways by so many scientists and research? Is that what the political class in this country has done to us, abusing the Constitution and the scientific method in one fell swoop? And suggested by someone, Bill Nye, who has a degree in mechanical engineering, a discipline quite far away from knowing anything special about climate.

You can see Nye’s implying that jail is a good option for global warming doubters at:

http://conservativevideos.com/bill-nye-the-science-guy-thinks-climate-deniers-should-be-punished-in-this-horrific-way/

2) Michael Bastasch, writing for the Daily Caller on May 3, 2016, went back in time to review the forecasts that were made in Al Gore’s Oscar winning movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” At the time of its release, the movie and it’s scary forecasts of climate disasters due to global warming were all the rage. What Mr. Bastasch found ten years later is that Gore’s “inconvenient truths” turned out to be anything but truth:

Claim #1 - Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa will be snow free within ten years.

Reality: There is still considerable snow on Mount Kilimanjaro and that snow is there 12 months a year. In a 2014 study, ecologists found that while the snow pack on the mountain may have shrunk a tiny bit over the past ten years, they concluded that the snow would be on that mountain top for many, many years to come:

“There are ongoing several studies, but preliminary findings show that the ice is nowhere near melting,” Imani Kikoti, an ecologist at Mount Kilimanjaro National Park, told eturbonews.com. “Much as we agree that the snow has declined over centuries, but we are comfortable that its total melt will not happen in the near future.” “Over the centuries,” long before man started using a lot of carbon based fuels. 

Claim #2: Gore claimed that the Earth’s temperature rise from man made carbon usage was “uninterrupted and intensifying.”

Reality: Beginning prior to the movie, global temperatures had already flatlined and continued to flatline for the next ten years. Until the recent El Nino, there has been no statistically significant warming of the Earth for more than 21 years. So much for uninterrupted and intensifying.

Claim #3: Storms and weather would become more frequent and intense as humanity continues to use carbon based fuels: “And of course when the oceans get warmer, that causes stronger storms. That same year that we had that string of big hurricanes, we also set an all-time record for tornadoes.”

Reality: But storms did NOT get more frequent and intense over the next ten years. As a Florida resident for the past ten years, we in this state have not had a major storm hit us since we moved here in 2005. While Hurricane Katrina was terrible and devastating, nothing close to it has happened since then even though humanity has used a lot of carbon based fuel since that storm.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an entity that has been the global advocate for global warming, eventually had to fess up relative to this claim, concluding in 2013 that there “is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century….[there has been] no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century” and “[n]o robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.”

This is a major confession since Al Gore shared the Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” with the IPCC.

Clain #4: The Arctic would be ice free within the next 50 to 75 years. This is the best kind of forecast to make since just about everyone alive today will not live long enough to see if Gore was right. He used the scare tactic that the polar bears would go extinct since they would have no ice to live on any more at the North Pole.

Reality: But rather than play it safe, Gore blew it when in 2008 he predicted that the North Pole would be ice free by 2013 which, of course, never happened. We have discussed the reality many times in this blog that Arctic ice pack is still quite robust and no where close to being extinct and melted. “I doubt the Arctic will be free of all ice in any summer, although the total area may well be greatly reduced in the future if it continues to warm there,” said Chip Knappenberger, a climate scientist at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Such a situation should not be overly worrisome, as there is ample evidence that it has occurred in the past and clearly, polar bears, and everything else up there managed to survive.”

As an FYI, recall that we have shown a number of studies that proved that the polar bear population is large and growing despite Al Gore’s predictions of gloom and doom.

Claim #5: If Greenland’s ice sheet melts because of man made global warming, it will dump a load of cold water into the Atlantic Ocean and cause a new ice age, i.e. global warming will cause an ice age because the cold water changes the Gulf Stream: “At the end of the last ice age, as the last glacier was receding from North America, the ice melted and a giant pool of fresh water formed. An ice dam on the eastern border formed and one day it broke.”

Reality: Australian scientists totally killed the theory that the Gulf Stream, or AMOC, was weakening because of global warming or any other reason: “Claims of strengthening or reducing of the AMOC are therefore pure speculation,” the scientists wrote in a research paper published in March, 2016. 

So much for the “science being settled,” as Al Gore had loudly and and often proclaimed. For a film that was so bold in it’s predictions, it certainly was so wrong in being accurate in it’s predictions.

That will do it for today but we still have a lot of science and realities to discuss on why it is rational and sane to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. Those discussions to happen in the coming days, assuming Bill Nye had not thrown us in jail by then.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2016, Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Another Busted Forecast, Mere Thoughts Cause Global Warming, and The Science Is NOT Settled

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.”This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims:

1) Courtney Kirchoff, writing for the Louder with Crowder website on September, 2015, reminded us how insanely wrong climate forecasters have been over the years. Back in 2007, a global warming advocate and scientist predicted that by 2013, in just six short years, the ice caps would have completely melted, as published in a 2007 BBC article: “Their latest modeling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years (2013).”

The advocate, Professor Wieslaw Maslowski, actually admitted at an American Geophysical Union meeting that the 2007 prediction had “underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.” Well, yeah, let’s state the obvious, since the poles are still frozen with ice and snow and have not disappeared as predicted. But that did not stop him from doubling down on his global warming expertise when in 2013 he predicted that his adjusted predictions would now accurately predict that the ice caps would be gone by the summer of 2016. Like this year. 

Unless I have missed something in the news, I think the good professor also got this latest forecast wrong. Nowhere did I read that the ice caps are close to becoming nothing but melted ice and that the polar bears have all drowned and the coastlines around the world have been flooded out. 

Which is why people like me become global warming doubters: how many times have we been told that we are on the brink of global warming catastrophes and nothing happens? After the hundredth time or so you stop paying attention to the gloom and doom predictions and continue to yearn for an adult discussion on the climate using ALL of the available science and data, not just the science and data that backs up one side or the other.

2) Sometimes global warming advocates go bonkers trying to blame anything remotely possible on global warming, We have previously covered hysteria from global warming advocates that claimed digging squirrels up in the tundra were causing global warming...even though those squirrels have been digging up there for centuries. Another scientist claimed that beavers building dams were causing global warming...even though beavers have been building dams for centuries. These are just two of the insane reasons that advocates claim are causing global warming.

But a new theory might be the most insane of all. Ashley Rae Goldenberg, writing for the MRCTV website on May 11, 2016, told us that an MIT conference was going to explore the question: "Is Islamophobia Accelerating Global Warming?” Yes, now the mere thought of something can cause global warming.

This is not a joke. A recent MIT event hosted by the university’s Ecology and Justice Forum in Global Studies and Languages, run by University of Melbourne professor Ghassan Hage, examined, “the relation between Islamophobia as the dominant form of racism today and the ecological crisis.”

Here is the flyer for the event:



I have a college education and an advanced degree but I still could not understand the synopsis of the talk that is highlighted on the bottom of the flyer: “[The talk] looks at the three common ways in which the two phenomena are seen to be linked: as an entanglement of two crises, metaphorically related with one being a source of imagery for the other and both originating in colonial forms of capitalist accumulation. The talk proposes a fourth way of linking the two: an argument that they are both emanating from a similar mode of being, or enmeshment, in the world, what is referred to as ‘generalised domestication.’”Huh? Are you kidding me? Thoughts now cause global warming to accelerate? You cannot make this stuff up.3) A favorite tactic of global warming advocates is to claim that “the science is settled,” with the implication being if you disagree with their views you are a scientific imbecile. Of course, we have shown hundreds of times over the years that scientists, researchers, realities, and other facts that prove the science is not settled and that if anything, the reality of manmade global warming is becoming more of a myth every day.The Inquistr website recently ran a story in which noted scientists put forth their opinions on why the science is not settled:- Dr. Leslie Woodcock is an emeritus professor of Chemical Engineering and Anayltical Science at the University of Manchester in England. He also a former NASA scientist and has a long list of other scholarly credentials. Here is his take on man made global warming and climate change: “The term ‘climate change’ is meaningless. The Earth’s climate has been changing since time immemorial, that is since the Earth was formed 1,000 million years ago. The theory of ‘man-made climate change’ is an unsubstantiated hypothesis [about] our climate [which says it] has been adversely affected by the burning of fossil fuels in the last 100 years, causing the average temperature on the earth’s surface to increase very slightly but with disastrous environmental consequences. The theory is that the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuel is the ‘greenhouse gas’ causes ‘global warming’ — in fact, water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and there is 20 time more of it in our atmosphere (around one per cent of the atmosphere) whereas CO2 is only 0.04 per cent. There is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 has significantly increased in the last 100 years. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t mean anything in science, it’s not significant…”“Even the term ‘global warming’ does not mean anything unless you give it a time scale. The temperature of the earth has been going up and down for millions of years, if there are extremes, it’s nothing to do with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it’s not permanent and it’s not caused by us. Global warming is nonsense.”- Dr. James Lovelock was considered almost a founding member of the man made global warming theory back in the day. Despite his once revered position in the global warming movement, he now describes the movement as becoming like “a religion, and religions don’t worry too much about facts” and that “It’s just as silly to be a denier as it is to be a believer. You can’t be certain.”Lovelock has also publicly stated: “… In fact, receding Arctic ice rebounded between 2012 and 2013, growing by 29 percent into an unbroken patch more than half the size of Europe and within 5 percent of what it was 30 years ago, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Last month near the South Pole, a Russian ship carrying scientists and tourists traveled to the bottom of the Earth so passengers might document global warming and shrinking ice caps. But the ship got stuck on ice that was thicker than at any time since records started being kept in 1978.”- Dr. Patrick Moore is a Greenpeace co-founder who has also publicly expressed the opinion that: “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years… no actual proof, as it is understood in science, actually exists.”The science is not settled, at least according to these three distinguished scientists and experts...along with the dozens of others we have previously discussed in this blog.That will do it for today. More proof that the science is not settled as it relates to man made global warming, more lunacy from advocates on possible causes of mythical global warming, and another huge miss on predicting the impacts of global warming. More tomorrow.

May, 2016, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: A Smoker Cessation Component That Ceases Nothing and Sories of Heartbreak From Across the Country

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Today we will finish up the latest disasters from Obama Care and spend some time reviewing the personal stress, trauma, and expense that Obama Care has introduced into the lives of our friends, family members, and neighbors:

1) One of the potentially good things Obama Care said it wanted to do was to financially penalize smokers in order to nudge them towards stopping their smoking habit and get healthier. It was a good idea but as always, a horrible approach to resolving the issue.

As we have discussed many times, Obama failed in his healthcare legislation because he tried to solve a public health problem with a bad insurance approach. His plan was to force smokers to pay more for Obama Care insurance policies but the law has no way of checking if Obama Care policy owners who were smokers were actually being honest. According to a recent article by Kaiser Health Services:

• Independent surveys estimate that 17% of Idaho residents are smokers but only 3% of Idaho Obama Care policy owners say they are smokers.
• In Kentucky, more than one in four state residents smoke but only 11% of Obama Care policy holders in the state are paying the smokers’ surcharge on their insurance premiums.
• In Minnesota, 15% of state residents smoke but only 5% of Obama Care policy holders in the state are stating they are smokers and paying the surcharge.
• While 17% of all Americans are smokers, only 7% of Obama Care policy holders nationwide are paying the smoker surcharge.

So we have either a major statistical fluke or massive lying by Obama Care smokers which defeats the whole purpose of Obama Care, to get smokers to stop smoking by forcing them to pay more for insurance. Rather than focusing on getting smokers to actually quit smoking with smoking cessation strategies, we end up with millions of Americans turning into liars to save some money and doing nothing to stop smoking.

As a result of this lack of common sense, non-smokers who have Obama Care policies will end up paying more for their insurance coverage going forward since the Obama Care mechanics never found a way to make smokers pay for their probable higher healthcare and medical costs down the road. Just another unfolding disaster.

2) Let’s finish this month’s review of the unfolding disasters of Obama Care of personal stories of horror that Obama Care spawned. We have done this before in other Obama Care posts based on stories of real people from the following website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

You will see many of the problems that we have discussed before: higher premium costs, higher deductible costs, more narrow doctor and hospital networks, loss of access to favorite doctors and hospitals, loss of insurance from their employees, etc. This is the reality that Obama Care has caused at the individual and family level (My emphasis added):

ED -OHIO: Even after the administration made hundreds of improvements to the troubled Obamacare website, many people are still encountering difficulty. Ed Anderson, a graphic designer from Columbus, Ohio, who was recently bumped from his wife’s insurance policy for reasons relating to the new law, discovered that his family’s monthly premiums will double even if he chooses the most inexpensive plan available to him through the new federal insurance exchange in his state.

Anderson said he and his wife currently pay a monthly premium of $460 through Blue Cross Blue Shield. But now that he can no longer stay on his wife’s plan, he will have to get his own coverage. The most inexpensive option would cost him a $428 monthly premium. And he and his wife can’t qualify for a federal subsidy because their joint income exceeds the cutoff. The new insurance policy will cost the Andersons an extra $5,000 a year in premiums alone.

“When you’re trying to keep your house, pay car insurance and put your kid through college, it’s tough,” Anderson said. Everything we do is going to be affected by this. Getting groceries, eating out. Going anywhere. It’s just crazy.”

MARCUS - SOUTH DAKOTA: The problem is that millions of Americans, like me, simply cannot afford insurance. The estimates for mid-level plans by the Kaiser Family Foundation (I’d check directly on Healthcare.gov, but the site has crashed every day so far since Oct. 1), show that premiums for my family of five will cost almost $300 a month after subsidies. When it comes to my family’s budget, you might as well be asking me for $3,000,000 a month. There is no way that my family can afford to throw away that much money every month for a plan that still has a high deductible.

[. . .] My point is that we can throw all the insurance money we want at health care, but it won’t solve the problem of getting Americans (especially low-income Americans) the medical care we need. Until the cost of health care is dealt with, the individual mandate will just be another financial burden weakening an already-fragile working class.

JANETTE - CALIFORNIA: The chiropractor who expects her premiums to rise, the 60s-something company manager who has to pay for maternity coverage, the Simi Valley contractor and many others who make at least $46,000 a year -- they all pound away at the same rhythm.

They say the middle class is once again getting tattooed, this time by President Barack Obama's health care reform. "However you look at it, the son of a gun lied to us," said Janette Ramsey, a Bakersfield business owner with a weekend home in Ventura. She's losing her current coverage and expects to pay $50 more a month for a policy with nearly double the deductible.

"I think it's an abomination," she said. "... I'm going to pay more and get 100 percent less."

ERIN - MASSACHUSETTS: I lost coverage with doctors in my area. It's not right and it's not fair. The current federal government and their policies are detrimental to the health of my business and my family.

STEVE - WASHINGTON: My out of pocket co-pays have almost tripled... :{ !!!

LYNN - ILLINOIS: Thanks to OBAMACARE many of us will lose our employee health insurance due to the cost rose 60% in 2 years. Starting 2015 we will be left to find our own coverage.

DR. DANIEL CRAVIOTTO - CALIFORNIA: Daniel is a physician who wrote an op-ed in WSJ expressing his frustration with ObamaCare: 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dictates that we must use an electronic health record (EHR) or be penalized with lower reimbursements in the future. There are "meaningful use" criteria whereby the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells us as physicians what we need to include in the electronic health record or we will not be subsidized the cost of converting to the electronic system and we will be penalized by lower reimbursements.

Across the country, doctors waste precious time filling in unnecessary electronic-record fields just to satisfy a regulatory measure. I personally spend two hours a day dictating and documenting electronic health records just so I can be paid and not face a government audit. Is that the best use of time for a highly trained surgical specialist?

[. . .] 

Meanwhile, our Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have significantly declined, let alone kept up with inflation. In orthopedic surgery, for example, Medicare reimbursement for a total knee replacement decreased by about 68% between 1992 and 2010, based on the value of 1992 dollars. How can this be? Don't doctors have control over what they charge for their services? For the most part, no. Our medical documentation is pored over and insurers and government then determine the appropriate level of reimbursement.

I don't know about other physicians but I am tired—tired of the mandates, tired of outside interference, tired of anything that unnecessarily interferes with the way I practice medicine. No other profession would put up with this kind of scrutiny and coercion from outside forces. The legal profession would not. The labor unions would not. We as physicians continue to plod along and take care of our patients while those on the outside continue to intrude and interfere with the practice of medicine.

That will do it for this month’s Obama Care disasters. A smoker penalty that penalizes no one and stories of hardship and heartbreak across the country because of what Obama Care has done to millions of Americans. Still no doubt in my mind that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. More disasters sure to come by next 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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2016, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Whacking Small Business Employees, Helping Illegal Immigrants and More

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Yesterday and today, and possibly longer, we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) MRCTV recently ran a piece on a real life business and the real life struggles Obama Care has placed on a business owner, his business, and especially his employees. According to writer Steve Bannister on May 19, 2016:

• Testifying in front of a Congressional small business committee, CEO Tom Kunkel of Full House Marketing and Printing in Maryland said that Obama Care forced him to stop helping his employees pay for their individual, personal health care plans.
• IRS directive “Notice 2013-54 prohibits businesses from assisting with their employees’ individual market health insurance.”
• Cohen testified: “I was just stunned. I could no longer help my employees with health care expenses. Mid-year, I had to tell my employees I could no longer reimburse them for health care and that they were essentially on their own.”
• If Cohen continued to help his employees he would be fined $100 a day per employee, a penalty that would shortly put him out of business.
• A small business industry organization, NFIB, estimates that 912,000 businesses are affected by this ridiculous rule since 16% of the country’s 5.7 million small businesses had been helping out their employees with payments of their individual health insurance payments.

The impact of such nonsense is drastic as Kunkel pointed out since many of his employees lost access to their current health care plans when he was forced to stop helping them out financially and one employee had to go without her cancer medication for a month: “I had several employees who could not afford their premiums without my contribution. Since they were mid-year in their plans, they were forced to cancel insurance, reenroll in a lower cost plans, and then start over with a new deductible for the year. It was very difficult. One of my employees has cancer, and was not able to get his prescription refilled for over 3 weeks because of the new plan. He also had to pay his deductible all over again. It was a heartbreaking situation. I do not believe this is what lawmakers intended when they created the law.”

Here is an employer, and hundreds of thousands others like him, trying to do the right thing for his employees and the government via Obama Care has this asinine ruling. A major unfolding disaster of Obama Care.

2) We have previously discussed the reality that over half of the 23 Obama Care co-ops that were created by the law have already gone out of business, that 8 of the remaining 11 are on a financial death watch, and that only one out of the 23 has actually been profitable. According to Heritage Foundation writer Melissa Quinn, the Obama administration is changing its rules again as it relates to co-ops in a desperate attempt to get outside investors to invest in what were supposed to be independent competitors in the marketplace.

Now, in reality, whether anyone is insane enough to invest in these co-ops is yet to be seen. The 11 co-ops that have already gone out of business easily lost over $1 billion of taxpayer money. And according to Politico, the remaining 11 co-ops lost $400 million across all of them last year. In exchange for investing in any of these losers would allow the investors to place one or more people on the co-op’s board of directors. 

Given that major health insurance companies have already gotten out or have openly discussed getting out of the Obama Care business, it is doubtful that any sane investor would think that this is a good business opportunity and will see it for what it is: a major, desperate change in Obama’s vision for the co-ops which have been mostly losers from day one.

And given that the reinsurance program that we discussed yesterday is ending, the remaining co-ops will get less financial support from the reinsurance pool that has helped offset a little bit of their losses. An investment for losers, much like the larger Obama Care disaster.

3) Nicholas Fondacaro, writing for the MRCTV website on May 12, 2016, reported that the mainstream media, in this case, the large television networks, decided NOT to cover the fact that Obama Care and Obama suffered a major legal defeat recently. That defeat was the judge and court ruling that Obama had illegally and un-Constitutionally decided to use general taxpayer funds to fund Obama Care subsidies.

This should have been a big news story as it shows how the Obama Care train is coming off of the tracks. But instead, the networks continue to protect this President despite his massive failures in the Obama Care world and other areas of his failures. This story was big, it showed how desperate the administration is to salvage its landmark program that is in the beginnings of its death spiral. But good journalism and truth are often lacking with the news departments within the large networks today.

4) One of the biggest promises of Obama, which turned into one of the biggest lies, is that under no circumstances would Obama Care be made available to illegal immigrants. When Congressman Joe Smith yelled out that Obama was a liar during an Obama State of The Union speech when he said that illegals would not be eligible for Obama Care’s benefits, he was crucified by Democrats and liberals. Now, while he chose the wrong venue to point out the lie, he was likley correct. 

The California state government recently passed legislation that would likley extend Obama Care health coverage to that state’s 2.6 illegal immigrants via the state’s Obama Care Obama Care health insurance exchange. According to Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute: “The law does not allow illegals to enroll in the state exchanges or the federal exchange Healthcare.gov.” But as always with Obama Care, what is legal and in the law is just a suggestion for Obama despite it being illegal.

The pending state legislation requires the state government to formally request that the Obama administration violate the illegal immigrant component of the law. The proposal does require the illegal immigrants to pay for the health insurance themselves without taxpayer subsidies. At least that is what the pending legislation asks for today. 

That will do it for today’s unfolding disasters from Obama Care, the worst legislation ever passed by Washington. More disasters 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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2016, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Death Spiral In The Market and Defeat In The Court

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

For the next few days we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) We have often talked about the Obama Care “death spiral” scenario. As fewer than expected younger and healthier people sign up for Obama Care policies and the insurance companies pay out more than expected for their older and less healthy Obama Care customers, their financial results start to sink and they are forced to raise the premium rates on Obama Care policies. The higher rates further discourage younger and healthier people from signing up which increases insurance company costs which means they have to raise their rates more, etc.

And that is exactly what appears to be happening, at least in New York state. According to a Washington Free Beacon report on May 20, 2016 by Ali Meyer, New York insurance companies are expected to ask for average rate increases of 17.3% for individual Obama Care policies beginning in 2017. 

According to the New York Daily News: “The proposed increases, which must still be approved by the state’s Department of Financial Services, range from 6.1% sought by MVP Health Plan Inc. and HealthNow New York Inc., to a whopping 89% requested by Crystal Run Health Plan LLC.” 

The article also cites Bloomberg reporting which states that: “Oscar Insurance Corp., is planning to increase individual rates by 18.4 percent, CareConnect Insurance is asking for an increase of 29.2 percent and UnitedHealth Group Inc. is looking to boost premiums in New York by 45.6 percent.”

Oscar Insurance explained what is going on, which looks like suspiciously like the death spiral we have been talking about: “Medical costs have gone up, government programs that helped cover our costs are ending, and our members needed more care than we expected.” So much for the Obama promise that his approach would “bend the cost curve” downward and that Americans families would save up to $2,500 a year on the health insurance costs. Tough to save $2,500 a year when the premiums are going up as high as 89% in a single year.

2) An alternative to insurance companies raising their rates is for them to get out of the Obama Care insurance policy business altogether. Unitedhealthcare is already going down the road since they have already decided not to offer Obama Care policies in at least 26 of the 34 states that they were active in in 2016. And that withdrawal strategy could be repeated by other companies going forward, as identified in a paper and analysis by Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Ed Haislmaier, Mercatus Center senior research fellow Brian Blase, and Galen Institute senior fellow Doug Badger.

They analyzed enrollment and financial data and results of 289 Obama Care insurance companies’ Obama Care plans and found that:

• In total, they found that insurance companies have suffered substantial losses on their Obama Care policies so far.
• These large losses were incurred even though they were receiving subsidies (reinsurance) for the first couple of years as laid out in the Obama Care legislation. Otherwise, their losses would have been much worse.
• The companies lost an aggregate $2.2 billion, which would have really been $8.9 billion since their losses were offset by payments of $6.7 billion from the reinsurance process.
• The Obama Care policies of the insurance companies would have had to be 26% higher from the start just to break even financially. But that would have started the death spiral, according to the authors: “If premiums had been 26 percent higher, on average, enrollment would have been lower and adverse selection would have increased. Relatively healthy people and higher income enrollees, who qualify for smaller subsidies if they qualify for any subsidies, would have been deterred to a greater degree than people who expected to use more health care services. As a result of this dynamic effect, the premium increase would likely have needed to be substantially greater than 26 percent for insurers to break even on their Qualified Health Plans in 2014.”
• But the reinsurance programs go away in 2017, likely meaning that the companies will have to jack up their rates to cover the lack of subsidies, much like we just saw what is going on in the New York state.

Looks like New York may be a foreshadowing of the Obama Care death spiral to come starting in 2017.

3) Staying with this death spiral theme, Ali Meyer, again writing for the Washington Free Beacon, on May 4, 2016 discussed the news that Humana, one of the largest health insurers in the nation, is considering existing some of the Obama Care markets in 2017.

Besides exiting some states, the company recently announced that it is in the process at looking at what other changes it needs to make to make a profit in the Obama Care world: “Humana is in the process of finalizing plans for its ACA-compliant individual commercial medical market offerings in 2017.Humana anticipates proposing a number of changes to retain a viable product for individual consumers, where feasible, and address persistent risk selection challenges. Such changes may include certain statewide market and product exits both on and off exchange, service area reductions and pricing commensurate with anticipated levels of risk by state.” 

This is particularly important for Humana since they also reported that their commercial insurance enrollment figures dropped by 233,200 putting additional financial pressure on the company. The company anticipates this business will finish in negative financial results in 2016. The same Meyer article reminds readers that the Unitedhealthcare’s CEO recently reported that his company may lose more than $1 billion in 2016 serving Obama Care customers.

Death spiral anyone?

4) As if the market setbacks were not enough, Obama Care recently lost a vital decision in the courtroom. According to a Heritage Foundation article by Hans von Spakovsky and Elizabeth Slattery on May 12, 2016:

• A Federal district court in Washington, D.C. recently ruled in favor of a U.S. House of Representatives’ challenge to the Obama administration’s implementation of part of Obama Care.
• Specifically, the suit brought by the House wanted the court to force the Obama administration to stop using general Treasury funds to subsidize insurance companies that were offering Obama Care insurance policies since the Congress, in passing the original legislation, forbid that kind of subsidies to exist.
• The court found the Obama administration in violation of the Constitution’s Article I, Section 9,Clause 7, which states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”
• Since Congress passed no law approving the use of taxpayer funds in this manner, the court and judge had no choice but to stop the process.
• The judge was quite sarcastic in her ruling finding this misuse of funds was “a most curious and convoluted argument whose mother was undoubtedly necessity.” In other words, the insurance companies are getting killed financially by Obama Care policies and Obama, out of necessity to save his landmark legislation, had to get very convoluted to get around the law and Constitution.
• She also got funny in her comment that the Obama administration was trying to “squeeze the elephant of Section 1402 reimbursements into the mousehole of Section 1401(d)(1).”

The article goes on to show the many other ways the administration was trying to call black white and up down to find a way, any way, to save the insurance companies money and help them decide to stay in the Obama Care market, even if it meant massive, illegal taxpayer bailouts. The decision is sure to be appealed but at least one judge got it right from a common sense, straightforward reading of the law. 

That’s a good start for this month’s discussion of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It showed again how Obama missed the root causes of the high healthcare costs in this country, how he put forth a (bad) insurance remedy for an ailment that needed a public health remedy. The underlying causes of our high health care costs are still the same, or possibly worse, than when this legislation was passed in 2010: bad American eating habits, bad American smoking habits, bad American exercising habits, an aging population, etc. Coming up with a Rube Goldberg insurance process that is falling apart at the seams (e.g. higher than expected medical costs to insurance companies, rising premiums, rising deductibles, etc.) was totally expected and are now coming true in a classic death spiral way. 

More disasters this week.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w