January, 2017, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Eight Reasons To Kill Obama Care Now

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.

This week we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

We have been talking of the many reasons why ObamaCare has been a disaster from the start which turned it into the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. Alyene Senger, writing for the Heritage Foundation recently did a nice job of summarizing the eight primary reasons why Obama Care needs to go away:

- Costs - Obama claimed multiple times that his namesake legislation could reduce a family’s annual health insurance costs by up to $2,500 a year. Instead, Obama Care insurance policy holders have seen double digit increases almost ever year in their premiums and higher and higher costs for their deductibles and co-pays. According to an eHealth analysis and report, between 2013 and 2017, the “average nationwide premium increase has been 99 percent for individuals and 140 percent for families.”

And do not forget deductibles. According to analysis done by HealthPocket, the average 2017 deducible for an Obama Care bronze plan is almost $6,100 for an individual policy and a whopping $12,383 for a family policy. This reality points out that less affluent people who can only afford a bronze plan may never get to utilize their policy, or a doctor, since they cannot afford these high deductible levels. The more expensive silver plans will average, in 2017, more reasonable deductibles of $3,572 for an individual and still high $7,474 for a family but the tradeoff is higher monthly premium payments which have been going up by double digits every year.

Not often mentioned in the context of Obama Care is the reality that insurance policy costs for those getting health insurance via their employers have also not been curtailed by Obama Care. According to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation, family policy premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance plans have gone up by 32% from 2010 through 2016, probably about twice the rate of inflation.

- Choice and Competition: We know that major insurance companies have already gotten out of the Obama Care market or curtailed their presence including UnitedHealthcare and Aetna. 2017 will be the worst year yet for Obama Care insurance company competition as many more companies have dropped than joined and those that remain tend to be bare bones companies that trade off cost for quality of care and access to the better medical options. Things are so bad that more than half the counties in the country now have access to only one or two Obama Care insurance companies, quite the opposite of the Obama boast that the legislation would boost competition and competitive options.

- Failed Exchange Enrollment: The Obama administration claims that 10.4 million people were covered by Obama Care insurance policies in 2016, more than 50% short of the promised enrollment goals, a disaster in itself. But according to the IRS in 2015, that year 12.7 million taxpayers claimed one or more exemptions from Obama Care’s mandate to purchase insurance coverage and another 6.5 million taxpayers paid the penalty rather than sign up for insurance coverage.

Thus, 19.2 taxpayers tried to get out of paying the Obama Care the required fine for not having insurance or just openly decided not to buy insurance, meaning that almost twice as many people tried to get out of buying mandatory insurance than actually bought the Obama care insurance policy.

- Obama Care Exchange Websites: The exchanges were supposed to the easy, efficient way for Americans to buy an Obama Care policy. They were unreliable and difficult to use in addition to not generating near enough customers that were promised. The American taxpayer sent almost $5 billion to the states to set up these state level exchanges but only 11 states and the District Of Columbia set up their own exchanges, the remaining states relied on the Federal government’s exchange. And that Federal exchange cost at least $800 million to build and on its first full day of operation signed up...six people.

- If You Like Your Plan, but the Government Doesn’t, You Can’t Keep It: This title is a play on words of one of Obama's biggest lies when he said over and over that if you like your current insurance policy, Obama Care would not force you to give it up. But that was far from the truth.

Early in the Obama Care era, there were estimates that 6-7 million people lost their existing health insurance policy because of Obama Care. Which means if we look at the true “net” gain in insured Americans, it is not 10 million as Obama claims but only between 3 and 4 million once you realize that the legislation caused 6 -7 million to lose insurance. That number was recently verified to some degree based on analysis by the Associated Press which found that 4.7 million insurance plans across 30 states were cancelled because of Obama Care. Extrapolating that 30 states results to 50 states easily gets back to the 6 - 7 million who lost insurance coverage.

- Co-Op Program: Obama gave 23 states an additional $2.4 billion in taxpayer wealth to create state level “insurance co-ops” to provide insurance policy competition in the 23 states. Within just a few years, 18 out of the 23 co-ops have gone belly up, with the remaining five in danger of following them, so far wasting $1.9 billion and causing hundreds of thousands of co-op customers to frantically seek out other insurance options when the co-ops usually went out of business very quickly.

-Medicaid - The other side of Obama Care disaster, Medicaid, has also been a disaster. Before Obama Care, Medicaid was a creaky, expensive, and low performing government health program. Rather than fix it first, Obama Care dumped about 12 million new customers on this wretched program, making it even more creaky, expensive, and low performing.

These Obama Care Medicaid customers are expected to add almost $1 TRILLION in incremental Medicaid spending in the next ten years for a whopping total Medicaid cost of about $4.8 trillion during the next decade. This comes out to an ANNUAL cost for EVERY American household of about $3,800 just to pay for Medicaid. This is not a good use of taxpayer wealth.

- Limited Access to Providers: Not only have costs gone up because of Obama Care, but access to quality doctor and hospital networks has become more limited over time. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation quantified network sizes for Obama Care plans in 2014, finding that: “Forty-one percent of networks are small or x-small: 11 percent of networks are x-small, meaning they include less than 10 percent of office-based practicing physicians in the area and another 30 percent are small, including between 10 percent and 25 percent of physicians. At the other end of the spectrum, 11 percent are x-large, which we define as networks including more than 60 percent of physicians.

What a mess. Costs up, quality down, Medicaid costs out of control, enrollment targets grossly missed, co-ops  collapsing, it is like you could not screw up more even if you tried. One more review of the unfolding disaster 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:


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

January, 2017, Part 2,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Finland Single Payer Distress, Billons In Obama Care Taxes,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.

This week we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) According to a Washington Free Beacon article by Ali Meyer back in September, 2016, 8.1 million American taxpayers paid $1.7 billion in Obama Care penalties to the IRS in 2014. This is $1.7 billion that did not go into the economy to create economic growth and create jobs. This is an update from previous IRS analyses which showed back in 2015 that IRS found that approximately 7.5 million taxpayers paid a total of $1.5 billion in penalties. This means about 560,000 more taxpayers paid about $200 million more in penalties than was previously reported.

And according to the Congressional Budget Office, things were likely worse in 2016 with about 4 million taxpayers paying $4 billion in Obama Care penalties. Again, these are billions and billions of dollars that are taken out of the economy, hindering economic growth.

The idiocy of this logic continues to astound me. Many of those 4 million people are likely people who are financially penalized because they could not afford the ever increasing price of an Obama Care insurance policy. So the government confiscates money that the taxpayer could ill afford to put out for health insurance. Insane. 

And remember how Obama promised that no one earning less than $250,000 would see an increase in taxes as a result of Obama Care? Well, this is a tax, it is a mandatory fee paid to the government, the very definition of a tax regardless of what the law calls it. Another broken Obama promise or deception. Or as Senator Tom Cotton describes it: “Obama Care penalizes taxpayers who can no longer afford insurance that Obama Care made unaffordable.”

Cotton and five other Senators proposed some common sense Obama Care changes back in the middle of 2016 where individuals would not have to pay the penalty if Obama Care health insurance premiums in their state rose by at least 10% or if they could not afford deductibles under Obamacare’s current definition of affordability. Since this is Washington and this is a common sense idea it has little chance of ever becoming reality. And less affluent Americans will pay this tax for being...less affluent.

2) A lot of Obama Care supporters, realizing that their dream legislation is a mess, push all of their chips to the center of the poker table and claim that Obama Care is failing because there is TOO LITTLE government intervention in the healthcare industry in this country. They boast that other countries around the world have a single payer system where all healthcare is free and life is wonderful. They especially like to point to the Scandinavian countries as their single payer utopia.

Nice position to take if it was correct. Consider the single payer chaos going on in Finland, as documented by a Reuters article on December 21, 2016:

• Massive reforms were needed to save the country’s single payer health care system, reforms that were difficult and painful.
• The reforms aim to curtail runaway future health care costs as Finland’s population continues to age rapidly, a similar problem that we face in this country.
• The reforms open the way for private insurance players to move into the single payer system, i.e. the exact opposite of a single payer system.
• The needed reforms were met with demonstrations and labor strikes that included a cut in workers’ benefits and increased work hours.

Cuts in benefits, more expensive, does not sound like a utopian solution to me.

3) Sometimes politicians say the darndest things and it is tough to determine whether they are that much out of touch with reality or they think we are too stupid to understand reality when we see it. This was the case back in the fall in Virginia when two state politicians were doing a debate of the issues. 

LuAnn Bennett, a Democrat, thought Obama Care was a great thing: “For the last fifty years, both parties have agreed we have a health care crisis. By 2005 we had 47 million uninsured Americans, and health care costs had grown to 16 percent of our GDP. The Affordable Care Act has made healthcare more affordable.” 

At that point, many in the audience burst out in laughter at such an inane remark and Bennett looked down at the floor, seemingly thinking, “darn, busted, they know the truth.” The Grabien article that captured this insanity went on to explain that in Bennett’s state of Virginia, the Associated Press was reporting at that time that the nine Obama Care insurers in that state were seeking average insurance policy premium rate hikes that ranged from 9.4% to a whopping 37.1%, hardly rate increases that are making “healthcare more affordable.”

This scene can be seen at the following link:

https://news.grabien.com/story.php?id=655

4) We have previously reported on how two of the government’s biggest healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are filled with fraud and inefficiencies that various experts have pegged at a taxpayer cost of between $70 and $100 billion a year. In other words, these two program alone waste upwards of $100 billion that could be used to serve the health care needs of untold thousands of Americans without raising anyone’s taxes or fining those that cannot afford or choose not to buy insurance.

And apparently the government’s other big healthcare program, Obama Care, is not much better at protecting taxpayer wealth according to reporting by Ali Meyer of the Washington Free Beacon on December 20, 2016:

• Obama Care’s Federal and state online exchanges apparently not only recently approved healthcare coverage for nine fake applications but also approved taxpayer subsidies to these bogus applicants.
• These findings came from a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that conducted the secret test of Obama Care’s data processes.
• The GAO sting involved 12 fictitious people that were provided with fake copies of Social Security cards, driver’s licenses, and proof of income. 
• Only 3 of the 12 fake applications were caught, 9 got through to approval, creating a failure rate of a whopping 75%. 
• And most distressing to any taxpayer, the nine fake people approved were given tax credit subsidies which averaged an obscene $1,580 per month, $18,960 per year.
• These new distressing findings come a year after the GAO did a similar sting in 2015 with similar results, i.e. the Feds knew they had a problem and still did not or could not fix it.

Which raises an interesting question: if the failure rate for identifying fake applicants is 75%, how many of the claimed 10 million Obama health insurance customers are actually real customers and how many are fake customers just getting the tax credits? 

That will do it for today’s Obama Care disasters: fake people getting real insurance and real tax subsidies, an out of touch politician, single payer failure in Finland, and billions in Obama Care taxes that Obama said would never happen for most of America. More failures 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:


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

January, 2017, Part 1,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: It is NOT 20 MIllion With Obama Care Coverage, 10,000 Businesses Snuffed Out

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.

This week we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) Obama Care supporters like to point out that the Obama Care legislation has led to an additional 20 million Americans having health care. Given those numbers, why would anyone want to repeal and replace Obama Care since it is doing so well? 

Before we squash those numbers, let’s look at reality:

• Of those 20 million, about 10 to 11 million are from Medicaid signups and the other half from Obama Care insurance policies.
• But Obama promised that by 2016, there would be 20 million people covered by Obama Care insurance policies so the legislation has missed its promised target by a whopping 50%.
• The 10  to 11 million Medicaid signups are people that are stuck in a program that has narrow, lesser quality doctor and hospital networks in a program that is criminally and fraud infested, fiscally unsound, and which is crushing the state government budgets of several state governments.
• The cost of premiums, deductibles and co-pays having been increasing substantially for Obama Care policies even though Obama promised that families would see up to a $2,500 annual decrease in health insurance costs.
• Deductibles and co-pays have gone up so much that many Obama Care policy holders have insurance but cannot afford to use it because of the upfront costs.
• And while Obama promised that Obama Care would increase competition for insurance policies across the country, the reality today is that across the country about 70% of the counties only have one to two companies offering Obama Care policies, hardly the increase in competition that Obama promised.

So the only partial victory that can be claimed by Obama Care supporters is 20 million signups for expensive or low quality insurance. Or can they not even make that claim? According to an article by Genevieve Wood, writing for the Heritage Foundation, that 20 million claim is probably invalid:

• While there are about 10 million covered by Obama Care policies now, remember that about 6-7 million people lost their existing coverage and insurance policies because of Obama Care so the actually net gain of insured as a result of Obama Care is not about 10 million, it is between 3 and 4 million INCREMENTALLY insured, even further short of the 20 million that was the original target and promise.
• Similarly, while the article asserts that 11.8 million have gotten Medicaid since Obama Care was passed, analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the infamous “architect” of Obama Care, Jonathan Gruber, estimate between 2 and 7 million people would have been eligible for Medicaid even if Obama Care had never been passed. 
• Thus, so Obama Care did not get an incremental 11.8 million people Medicaid coverage, that number has to be reduced to between 4.8 and 9.8 million because 2 to 7 million people could have gotten Medicaid coverage WITHOUT the Obama Care legislation.

So rather than incrementally getting insurance for 20 million Americans, the true incremental gain is somewhere between 7.8 million and 13.8 million, far below what was supposed to happen. 

And having Medicaid coverage is often not that great idea anyway:

• A University Of Virginia study found that for eight different surgical procedures, Medicaid patients were actually more likely to die than privately insured or even uninsured patients, getting back to the low quality of Medicaid coverage mentioned above.
• And even if Obama Care did provide Medicaid access for a person, that does not mean that person is actually getting healthcare coverage since the program is so bad, often a Medicaid customer cannot find a doctor that takes Medicaid patients, as a Louisiana woman told the New York Times: “My Medicaid card is useless for me right now. It’s a useless piece of plastic. I can’t find an orthopedic surgeon or a pain management doctor who will accept Medicaid.”

Furthermore, the article identifies a reality of Medicaid that I was not aware of. The program was originally designed to help disabled Americans, including those suffering developmental disabilities due to traumatic brain injuries. But these original beneficiaries of Medicaid are now stuck on long waiting lists because of Obama Care because Obama Care “gives states more money to enroll able-bodied adults than it does to take care of disabled children and adults who qualified for Medicaid prior to Obama Care.”

Consider this real life Medicaid example in Arkansa. Since Obama Care was enacted, the Medicaid rolls in Arkansas have grown by 25%. However, at the same time, 79 people on Medicaid waiting lists in the state, state residents with developmental disabilities, have died. Shameful.

2) We have often showed how Obama Care just decimated the expansion and hiring plans of small businesses across the country with its onerous taxes and requirements, taxes and requirements that small businesses could often not afford. A recent article in the Washington Free Beacon by Elizabeth Harrington on January 18, 2017 quantified how damaging the legislation has turned out to be for small businesses:

• According to research from the American Action Forum, about 300,000 small business (businesses with 20 to 99 employees) jobs were lost due to Obama Care and the higher healthcare costs that came with it.
• The research estimated that the legislation cost the economy $19 billion in lost wages and forced 10,000 small businesses to go out of business.
• “Research from the American Action Forum (AAF) finds regulations from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are driving up health care premiums and are costing small business employees at least $19 billion in lost wages annually,” the report said. “These figures varied by state, but in 2015 the ACA cost year-round workers $2,095, $2,134, and $2,260 in Ohio, New York, and North Dakota, respectively.”
• “Premium increases, a prospect regulators predicted when issuing the first ACA regulations, also significantly diminished the number of business establishments and jobs nationwide,” the report said. “Across the country, small businesses (20-99 workers) lost 295,030 jobs, 10,130 business establishments, and $4.7 billion in total wage earnings. Florida lost 17,950 jobs; Ohio lost 19,000; Pennsylvania lost 15,680; and Texas lost 28,010 jobs due to higher sensitivity to rising health care premiums and the ACA.”
• The analysis was based on data taken from the Census Bureau, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It appears the study only looked at the damage so far. What is not in the above numbers and which is probably impossible to calculate are the opportunities that were squashed as a result of Obama Care. Which of those 10,000 lost companies could have hit it big and become the next Google or Apple, expanding the economy and hiring thousands of workers?  Remember, Apple started with two guys in a garage and grew from there. What future Apple-like opportunity was only a small business when Obama Care hit and went belly up before it could take off? So sad to think of what might have been.

That’s a good start for this month’s review of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More failures to come in the following days.

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

Final Review: End Of An Error, Part 5 - The Many Failures of The Obama Administration: Tabulating The Damage

As the Obama Presidency starts to wind down we thought it would be a good idea to do a final review of the Obama era. We took an initial swing at that topic back in October, 2016 with a series of seven posts starting on October 9, 2016 with the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Not unexpectedly, the review across those seven posts captured the myriad of failures of this Presidency. Diplomatically, economically, fiscally, militarily, legally, Constitutionally, integrity-wise,and in many other ways, in my opinion, this has been the worst Presidency of my lifetime. If you are a liberal, please read the posts, all of which are extensively sourced, before going off the deep end without thinking. This Presidency has stunk.

We started out this week by using some fine reporting and research by Reason magazine to point out how hypocritical Obama has been relative to abusing military power and how his actions have helped create a so-called “Imperial Presidency” which 1) abuses the rule of law and Constitution and 2) is now being run for better or worse by Donald Trump.

Over the next few days we will looking at other folks opinion on how well Obama did as President It will not likely to be pretty, as the previous seven posts referenced above have already proven.

1) One of the funniest and yet saddest pr efforts to recently come out of the Obama White House is the ludicrous claim that there were no major scandals during the Obama administration. Valerie Jarrett and Obama himself have been caught on camera making this outrageous claim which can be seen at the video embedded in the following link:

https://news.grabien.com/story-exclusive-complete-guide-scandals-obama-administration

- Fast and Furious campaign which illegally supplied military grade weapons to Mexican drug cartels which were eventually used to kill dozens if not hundreds of Mexican civilians and at least two U.S. Border Patrol agents.

- The illegal and un-Constitutional military intervention in Libya which destroyed an entire society, resulting in death, destruction, a massive refugee problem, and the establishment of another terrorist haven in the Middle East.

- The cover up to the Benghazi attack where Obama and Hillary Clinton lied to the world when they claimed an obscure YouTube caused the attack when they knew it was an outright, pre-planned terrorist attack.

- Obama allowing Hillary Clinton to have an unsecured, very hackable computer server be stationed in her house and used for top secret State Department email correspondence, correspondence that was likely hacked by multiple foreign parties and whose usage was against State Department rules and existing Federal government laws.

- Obama unilaterally and illegally changing well over a dozen edicts within the Obama Care legislation without Congressional approval.

- Obama politicized the IRS to harass American citizens that wanted to more formally participate in the election process in this country, denying those Americans their First Amendment rights.

- Food assistance rolls are still well over 40 million Americans a month, six years into the so-called Obama Recovery.

I could go on but you get the idea, to say there were NO scandals is either the ultimate delusion or these people think we are that stupid not to know what reality is.

And while we stopped our Obama scandal list at seven scandals, the Grabien article cited above did some remarkable research, identifying a whopping 730 Obama scandals, detailing out what the scandal was, what Federal government organization incurred the scandal, and when the scandal was. Now, admittedly, some of these 730 are pretty petty but a vast number of them are not, representing either illegal, un-Constitutional, or unethical behavior by this scandalous Presidency.

2) John Wayward, writing for Breitbart on January 4, 2017, listed out what he considered the 18 major scandals of Obama’s “scandal free” administration:

- Economic stimulus program - Even though he spent over $800 billion on his economic stimulus package, it failed to produce those robust “shovel ready” infrastructure jobs and other meaningful work for society. Money was squandered on absolutely stupid programs, money disappeared because of bad accounting processes and criminal activity and according to the Associated Press, half of the U.S. bridges that were “fixed” with stimulus money did not have anything wrong with them.

And the funny thing is that the entire wasteful effort was probably not needed. The stimulus legislation was signed in mid-February, 2009 but by the middle of the summer, if not sooner, in 2009 the recession had officially ended, long before the first stimulus dollar was spent.

- Fast and Furious - this idiotic program ended up placing military grade hardware in the hands of violent drug cartels in Mexico, weapons that were used to kill dozens, if not hundreds of Mexican civilians, and at least two U.S.Border Patrol agents. Although this program likely broke multiple domestic and international laws, Obama stonewalled the Congressional investigation by claiming executive privilege over White House and Justice Department documents.

- Eric Holder, Obama's Attorney General - Holder became the first sitting member of any President’s cabinet to be held in contempt of Congress by refusing to testify regarding the botched and illegal Fast and Furious program.

- Obama Care - from the President’s false claims and lies that if you like your doctor, insurance policy, and hospital you could keep them under the Obama Care legislation to Nancy Pelosi’s ridiculous statement that “we need to pass it [Obama Care] to find out what’s in it” and her dereliction of Congressional duty. And then once it was passed, Obama broke the law numerous times by unilaterally changing the provisions of the legislation without Congressional approval.

- Spying on journalists: This administration spied and harassed numerous journalists, stonewalled Freedom of Information Act requests, and suppressed information so many times that the Investigative Reporters Editors the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Poytner Institute called on Obama to end “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies.”

You get the idea, there were a lot scandals but this is getting long winded so let' s tone the summaries to just a checklist:

- The IRS scandal: Politicized the IRS to suppress conservative political groups.

- Benghazi: Lied about the cause of the terror attack even though Obama and his staff, e.g. Hillary Clinton, knew the truth. 

- Hillary Clinton’s secret computer/email server.

- NSA spying scandal: Shredded the Fourth Amendment by spying on most if not all of Americans electronic communications without warrants or cause. 

- Bowe Bergdahl: The trading of an Army deserter for five dangerous terrorist leaders is a self contained scandal.

- Iran nuclear deal and ransom payment

- Polluting the Colorado river

- The GSA scandal: The General Services Administration was caught wasting large amounts of taxpayer money on expensive and unnecessary travel and parties and silly projects. 

- The VA death-list scandal

- Solyndra

- Secret Service gone wild

No scandal? I do not think so. One last Obama Presidency review 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:

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

Final Review: End Of An Error, Part 7:- The Many Failures of The Obama Administration: Tabulating The Damage

As the Obama Presidency starts to wind down we thought it would be a good idea to do a final review of the Obama era. We took an initial swing at that topic back in October, 2016 with a series of seven posts starting on October 9, 2016 with the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Not unexpectedly, the review across those seven posts captured the myriad of failures of this Presidency. Diplomatically, economically, fiscally, militarily, legally, Constitutionally, integrity-wise,and in many other ways, in my opinion, this has been the worst Presidency of my lifetime. If you are a liberal, please read the posts, all of which are extensively sourced, before going off the deep end without thinking. This Presidency has stunk.

We started out this week by using some fine reporting and research by Reason magazine to point out how hypocritical Obama has been relative to abusing military power and how his actions have helped create a so-called “Imperial Presidency” which 1) abuses the rule of law and Constitution and 2) is now being run for better or worse.

During this week we have been looking at other folks opinion on how well Obama did as President It will not likely to be pretty, as the previous seven posts referenced above have already proven. 

1) Today we will start this update to Obama's failed Presidency by skimming through many of the failures pointed out by various writers in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard:

- Fast and Furious - This effort under Eric Holder and Barack Obama broke both domestic laws and international laws and treaties. It provided, at American taxpayer expense, military grade weapons to violent Mexican drug cartels. These weapons were used to kill dozens, if not hundreds, of Mexicans and at least two U.S.Border Patrol guards. 

When Congress tried to investigate why this happened, Obama and holder refused to hand over 92% of the documents requested and Obama protected his pal Holder by claiming executive privilege. Holder became the first Cabinet member to ever be held in contempt of Congress but in the end, no one was held accountable for the carnage and stupidity of this effort.

- When four Americans were killed at Benghazi, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, it was a tragedy but not a scandal. The scandal was the cover up where for weeks Obama and his people claimed an obscure YouTube video caused the attack when they knew it was a terror attack from the start. In fact, in a CBS “60 MInutes” interview of Obama immediately after the attack, the President refused to rule out a terrorist attack, an interview that CBS subsequently decided never to air.

Why was it never aired? Could it be that it did not fit into the Obama reelection campaign claim that terrorism had been tamed? And was it just a coincidence that Obama’s deputy security advisor, Ben Rhodes, is the brother of CBS News President, David Rhodes?

- Despite promising the most transparent Presidency ever, Obama went after more whistleblowers than all previous Presidencies combined, using the 1917 Espionage Act to harass journalists. As reference, the 1917 Espionage Act was so old that it made it illegal to distribute flyers protesting entry into World War I.

Lawyer James Gooden,who represented the New York Times in the famous Pentagon Papers journalism case says that: “President Obama will certainly pass President Richard Nixon as the worst President ever on issues of national security and press freedom.”

- Rather than following the Constitution and submitting international pacts to the Senate for approval, he played word games, saying that the nuclear weapons treaty and Paris climate treaty were “merely “agreements” that did not require Senate approval.

- According to Jonathan V. Last, “After being rebuked by voters and losing control of the House, he enlarged executive power to an almost cartoonish degree. And all along the way he encouraged lawlessness by picking and choosing the laws to be enforced, rather than going to trouble of repealing or changing laws with which he disagreed.” In other words, he was the most lawless President that ever lived, a situation he now hands off to Donald Trump.

2) Given how the mainstream press coddled and protected Obama over his eight years, it is a refreshing piece of integrity when a Washington Post writer identified ten of Obama’s biggest lies. Over at the Washington Post, fact checker Glenn Kessler just summarized the 10 biggest Obama lies:

• “More young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America”
• “We signed into law the biggest middle-class tax cut in history”
• “90 percent of the budget deficit is due to George W. Bush’s policies”
• “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it”
• “The Capitol Hill janitors just got a pay cut”
• “The day after Benghazi happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism”
• “I didn’t call the Islamic State a ‘JV’ team”
• “Republicans have filibustered 500 pieces of legislation”
• “The Keystone pipeline is for oil that bypasses the United States”
• “We have fired a whole bunch of people who are in charge of these [VA] facilities”

The following link will take you to the original article where these lies are documented and sourced:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aVrBan99Um5c5L-lEuqHeWwFUE8ebYHVeSX0bv0UGSI/edit

That will do it for the final review of the Obama Presidency. We spent seven days going over his failures, lawlessness, un-Constitutional acts, economic failures, and fiscal follies. And we did not even touch on his other failures, failures that most other Presidents also incurred:

• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are still hurtling towards fiscal insolvency.
• Our pubic schools still do a generally horrid job of educating our kids.
• We still have no cogent, rational and compassionate immigration policy.
• We still have no workable national energy strategy.
• Government operations are still out of control, ineffective, and inefficient.
• There is still no plan for getting ever escalating healthcare costs under control.

Thus, I see no substantial, sustainable, and cost efficient output from any aspect of this administration.

And by creating an imperial Presidency, by ignoring laws when it suited his needs or by ruling by executive orders when he did not get his way, he has set up Donald Trump to continue the dangerous precedent that Obama created.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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