April, 2017, I am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Book Burning Congressmen, California Flooding, 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) We have previously documented how major previous climate forecasts and predictions have gone spectacularly wrong despite “scientists “ swearing that they knew the future of climate. One such extensive review of past climate forecast failures can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/04/april-2015-part-2-i-am-global-arming.html

Walter E. Williams, writing for the Heritage Foundation on April 26, 2017, recently did his own review, “Here’s How Wrong Past Environment Predictions Have Been:”

• In 1970, high regarded biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted that "all important animal life in the sea will be extinct" in 10 years or so.
• Also in 1970, Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard, George Wald, forecasted that: “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” 47 years later we are still hanging around.
• Also in 1970, certainly a bad year for climate and weather predictions, Paul Ehrlich, also that the world’s population would soon outstrip food supplies.
• He followed up on this starvation prediction when he claimed that, “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.” 47 years later people are still starving but nowhere close to the rate he predicted.
• But he was even more wrong two years earlier when he said that, : “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
• Nigel Calder warned in a July, 1975 International Wildlife article that, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” So, as recently as about 40 years ago we were all going to die from an Ice Age, not global warming.
• C.C.Wallen claimed in 1975 in a Science News article that, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” But according to other scientists it reversed a few years later when the exact opposite climate trend became popular, global warming.
• In 2000, British climate researcher David Viner told The Independent, a British newspaper, that in just “a few years” snow would become a “very rare and exciting event” in Britain and that “children just aren’t going to know what snow is...Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” In the next few years, Britain experienced some of its lowest temperatures and snowfall accumulations since records started being kept in 1914.
• Let’s go back to the global cooling scare of the 1970s when ecologist Kenneth Watt told a college audience in 1970: “The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990 but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Again back to 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin wrote in Look magazine: “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian (Institution), believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Not even close.
• Scientist Harrison Brown predicted in 1970 that mankind would run out of copper shortly after the 2000 and that lead, zinc, gold and silver would be gone ten years earlier.
• The Federal government’s Department of the Interior predicted in 1939 that American oil supplies would run out by 1952 and in 1949 reminded everyone that the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight, never accounting for the fracking technology that blows these expert views and predictions away.
• But the government still insisted in making predictions when in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey said the country only had a 10 year supply of natural gas left even though according to the latest Federal government estimate, 43 years later, we had 2.47 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, which should last about a century.

Obviously, not all of the failed predictions have to do with the climate, But all show that even if the “science is settled,” it really isn’t since the scientists and experts of the time and their advocates were insanely wrong about reality and their predictions. We see the same thing now with every single major, and most if not all minor, global warming forecasts being so far off target with the ensuing reality that they are laughable.

These facts, the unfulfilled historical predictions about ice ages, global warming, oil supplies, natural gas supplies, plant and animal extinction, etc. is why we have always called for a comprehensive review of ALL climate research, not the selective and often bogus research and science that people like Al Gore and Barack Obama have hyped over the years.

But in reality maybe it is not about being right and it is all about getting a political agenda passed, a hint of which we see from Senator Timothy Wirth in 1988 when he candidly stated: “We’ve got to … try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong … we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” 

“Even if the theory of global warming is wrong…” So, according to the good Senator, even if the theory and science of global warming is wrong, we should PRETEND it is right and tax Americans and American businesses, restrict freedoms and put forth onerous regulations for a known false reality. Only in Washington can you know something is wrong and go forth pretending it is reality. Insanity.

2) It seems that when dealing with global warming advocates that if they cannot beat you with real science and facts they they revert to a more primitive way of arguing, destroying the people daring to challenge their beliefs. That is exactly what three Congressional Democrats are trying to do with legislation, legislation that is on a par with book burning:

• These global warming Congressional members are trying to block schools from using a book by climate scientists that challenge their beloved global warming theory.
• They are calling alternative views by real scientists “inappropriate and “propaganda.”
• Congressman Bobby Scott, the ranking Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee had this Orwellian view: “Public school classrooms are no place for anti-science propaganda, and I encourage every teacher to toss these materials in the recycling bin...Successful high school graduates are aware and engaged global citizens with an understanding of and appreciation for scientific fact.” 
• He continued with this diatribe: “If the Heartland Institute and other climate deniers want to push a false agenda on global warming, our nation’s schools are an inappropriate place to drive that agenda.”
• The three authors of the book that this idiot wants to ban are all Phds and have all taught science at the university level: Craig Idso, S. Fred Singer and Robert M. Carter, who died in 2016.

So who are going to believe, some Congressman from Virginia or three Phd scientists with university credentials?

So who are you going to believe, some Congressman from Virginia or the reality that all climate change and global warming models have been insanely inaccurate over the past two decades

So who are you going to believe, some Congressman from Virginia or the reality that Al Gore’s prediction in 2009 that the north pole ice cap could be gone by 2013 is insanely wrong?

So who are you going to believe, some Congressman from Virginia or the government whistleblower who claimed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, a Federal government agency intentionally mangled raw data to hide the twenty year “global warming pause,” especially since that whistleblower was John Bates, a principal scientist of the National Climatic Data Center who accused the NOAA of “flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards.”

We could go on and on about how global warming advocates have manipulated, ignored, and savagely attacked scientists, data, and research that was counter to their limited views. This action by elected officials is very scary though, it is reminiscent of Nazi book burning and other such attacks on truth and science. Kids in our schools should be taught how to think, not what to think. 

That is why presenting alternative views supported by good science is imperative in our educational processes. Failure to recognize that critical factor like these three Congressional buffoons is a disgrace to sound educational processes and the First Amendment.

3) Frank Vernuccio, writing for the Affluent Christian Investor website on April 7, 2017, gave a number of examples of how climate change and global warming advocates ignore facts and reality:

• Global warming advocates in California have been harping on a supposed reality that California is now in a state of permanent drought as a result of manmade global warming.
• However, the San Jose Mercury news recently reported that flooding is now a massive problem facing the state of California.
• Flooding and permanent drought seem to be contrary situations.
• According to the newspaper: “...164 percent of its historic average, a massive accumulation of new water… There is so much snow that the Squaw Valley ski resort, which has received 54 feet of snow so far this year, plans to stay open until July 4…So when is Gov. Jerry Brown going to rescind or amend the drought emergency order he signed in January 2014? He hasn’t said.”
• But the governor is not likely to rescind or amend anything since as recently as this past January he state: “We can’t fall back and give in to the climate deniers. We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight.”
• But Brown is not alone since in 2015, a U.S.News and World report article claimed that, “Climate change is linked to California’s drought…”
• In 2015, Newsweek stated that, “With each passing year, human-caused global warming bullies California for more water. Each year, the heat squeezes more moisture from soils and ecosystems.”
• Even Stanford got in on the permanent/global warming drought game: “[the drought conditions] ‘very likely’ linked to human-caused climate change, Stanford scientists write in a new research paper."
• Even world famous scientist Barack Obama got his two cents in on the permanent global warming-caused California drought: “Droughts have obviously been a part of life out here in the West … scientific evidence shows that a changing climate is going to make them more intense.”

And yet, despite all of these climate “experts” in politics and news media, Obama, Brown, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, etc., the reality as recently reported by the news media is that there are now serious flooding conditions throughout the state and likely more to come, given how much snow precipitation has yet to melt in the mountains. 

Politicians doing science and scientists ignoring data, science and research that does not match their preconceived ideas, and future grant proposals, is no way to operate. How about we all sit down and look at ALL of the science and research and THEN decide what to do, if anything, relative to the earth’s climate? That is real science, not Al Gore science.

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

Don't Worry, Be Happy: The Bursting Of The Government's $20 Trillion+ Debt Bubble Will Make Today's Worries So Trivial

If you are still freaking out that Donald Trump is President, relax, don’t worry, be happy.

If you are still fuming because of the damage the Obama Presidency did to this country, relax, don’t worry, be happy.

If you are still upset because Betsy DeVos is now the Secretary of Education, relax, don’t worry, be happy.

If you are fretting that Federal taxpayer funding of NPR and NEA might get cut, relax, don’t worry, be happy.

You might was well be happy now because as the Federal government debt load rapidly approaches $20 TRILLION, any worries you have today about the Federal government and how it affects your lives will become overwhelmingly trivial once the national debt bubble bursts.

NPR funding? That is a gnat on a gnat’s ass, that sucker gets wiped out in the first shock wave when the debt bubble bursts.

Department of Education and Betsy DeVos? That priority is so far down the list that the entire Department of Education will be swept away along with Ms. DeVos.

Obama’s destructive Presidency? Too late to worry now, that ship sailed eight years ago before his Presidency almost doubled the national debt amount incurred by EVERY previous President COMBINED.

Trump’s Presidency? Since the Constitution requires that all government debt be paid back before any government operating expenses, his hands are tied in what can be paid for and funded when the debt bubble bursts.

Yes, forget about your worries today, they will be washed away when the debt bubble bursts because many of you are going to have to worry about how you are going to survive when your Social Security check gets slashed by 20 - 30%.

Yes, forget about your worries today, they will be washed away when the debt bubble bursts and your Medicare payments double or triple every month.

Yes, forget about your worries today, they will be washed away when you realize that you and every one of your kids and grandkids are currently on the hook for over $61,000 of that $20 TRILLION national debt, a figure that rapidly grows every day.

How much is a TRILLION dollars? Consider this simple math reality: if you had spent a MILLION dollars a DAY since the day Jesus Christ was born, you still would not have spent a TRILLION dollars. And we are looking at more than twenty times that amount of debt. A million dollars a DAY.

Oh, and before my liberal friends and family give me their standard knee jerk reaction on matters like this, namely, “tax the rich more!”, I got a surprise for you: that is an extremely ignorant and invalid suggestion. Trust me, I have done the math, no matter how much you tax the rich, your inane remedy comes nowhere close to resolving this $20 TRILLION issue. And the Congressional Budget Office also did the math, agreeing with me, and concluding in their recent long term view of the economy that this is solely a Federal government overspending issue that cannot be resolved by over taxing any American.

But did we at least get anything for the $20 TRILLION debt hole we are now in? Apparently not since our roads, bridges, and dams are still falling apart, our public education processes still radically under educate our kids, much of our armed forces are still not combat ready, and the major social programs of the Federal government (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) are still hurtling towards fiscal insolvency.

The Obama administration spent about $26 TRILLION over its eight year reign, incurring well over $9 TRILLION in debt in the process and left us worse off than when it began. It took us from a historical and manageable debt to GDP ratio of about 60% to a ratio of over 100%, putting us in the elite company of distressed economies like Greece. These are the facts, nothing you can say changes these facts no matter how much you idolized Obama.

So when you sit down to the dinner table tonight and look at your kids eating, or as you watch TV tonight and look at your grandkids’ pictures on your mantle, remember that we have saddled them with a debt load that they and their kids will be paying back for generations to come. And for that load we have left them a country and government in a very sad state of affairs.

So relax, don’t worry, be happy because far worse is on the way than the trivial political stuff you are worried about today.

P.S. - That $20 TRILLION is the amount of Federal government debt incurred already. It does not include the tens of TRILLIONS of dollars in unfunded future Social Security, Medicare, and other Federal government liabilities (currently sitting at just over $85 TRILLION) on top of the $20 TRILLION.

P.S. That $20 TRILLION also does not include the $3.2 TRILLION government debt at the state and local government levels.

Check out the Debt Clock (if you dare) insanity at:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

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

April, 2017, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Using a Lousy Insurance Plan To Attack a Public Health Problem 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, sugar, 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.

1) A few days ago in this series we devoted an entire article to the reality that Obama Care never addressed a primary driver of ever rising health care costs in this country: the obesity epidemic sweeping the country. With so many overweight Americans running around, with so many addicted to bad eating and lifestyle habits, the costs to treat their overweight related diseases is a significant burden on the health care cost curve.

But addiction to obesity is not the only addiction driver relative to increasing healthcare costs. Let’s follow up on that theme based on an article from the National Review from March 24, 2017, written by David French, “Health-Care Reform Won't Fix What Really Hurts American Health:”

• Consider that in 2010, almost 50 million Americans did not have health insurance but by 2016, the number had dropped to 27.3 million, hitting a record low of 8.6% of Americans without health insurance coverage, indicating that maybe Obama Care was a tremendous success. 
• However, also consider the reality that despite Americans have more access to insured health care, the nation’s death rate actually increased in 2015.
• Recent research by Princeton economists, Annie Case and Angus deaton, verified that this is indeed the case, more people insured but more people dying, and that this trend is true across many segments of Americans.
• Two factors are driving these higher deaths rates including the reality that, “The obesity epidemic is carrying with it increases in chronic health conditions, including diabetes and heart disease, and make no mistake — obesity is exploding in the United States.”
• Thus, as we said in the earlier post referred to above, Obama Care did nothing to address this root cause of higher and higher healthcare costs. 
• In addition, there are more and more “deaths of despair,” deaths caused by the abuse of drugs, alcohol, and suicide, and that these deaths of despair are increasing across all age groups, another root cause not addressed by Obama Care. 
• It does not matter if you have health insurance if your mindset is self destructive.
• The article quotes a doctor that said, “If it weren’t for addicts, I wouldn’t have a job,” that intensive-care units are overrun across the country with people addicted to drugs, to alcohol, to tobacco, and yes, to food.

More and more Americans are killing themselves and it does not matter that they have insurance. And their attempts to kill themselves, either by drug abuse, food abuse, or too much smoking, was not addressed by Obama Care. If a doctor goes out of business without addicts, shouldn’t that be the objective to reduce healthcare costs rather than trying to figure out who wants a bronze, silver or gold Obama Care insurance policy?

Mr. French so elegantly sums up the problem: “Unless our citizens can find a way to soothe the despair, the great health-insurance debate from 2009 to 2016 may end up a mere footnote in public-health history. At the end of the day, neither the best nor the worst insurance can cause a man to put down his pills, throw out his whiskey bottles, or walk more and eat less. When the human heart aches, an insurance card won’t ease the pain.” 

The problem of ever increasing healthcare costs is a public health care problem requiring a public healthcare remedy, not a half baked Obama Care insurance remedy.

2) There can be no doubt that Obama Care has been a total failure along so many dimensions. It needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Whether the Republicans can come up with something better is still open to debate. 

But leave it to the opposing political party, the Democrats, who were the architects of the Obama Care failure, and who were quick to get hysterical and into liar mode when the Republicans dared to try to fix what the Democrats broke. Consider the following lies and fact checking that proved them lies from leading Democrats, as reported by Andrew Kugle and the Washington Free Beacon on March 17, 2017:

• The lies were debunked by the Washington Post, usually a reliable defender of Democrats and their lies.
• Their debunking was related to the false claims by Democrats relative to the first Republican proposal to replace Obama Care.
• Batty Nancy Pelosi kicked off the lie parade: "Is it an act of mercy to throw 24 million people off of health insurance, so Republicans can hand billionaires a massive new tax giveaway?"
• Just as batty Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz followed up: "But what this bill does is it takes away healthcare from 14 million people in the next year, 24 million over ten years." 
• But the Washington Post called these statements misleading since while the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did say that 14 million fewer people would have insurance under the Republican plan in 2018 it does not mean 14 million people would lose their insurance, just that 14 million might not buy it since it would no longer be against the law not to have health insurance.
• In fact, the CBO actually stated this reality in their report but as always, Democrats ran with a number they did not understand: “"Most of the reductions in coverage in 2018 and 2019 would stem from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate.” Seems that fact and reality got left behind by Wasserman Schultz and Pelosi.
• In addition, the CBO just scored the part of the Republican plan that would eliminate Obama Care, it did not take into consideration any replacement insurance options that would occur and absorb any Obama Care insurance customers that might opt for less oppressive and less expensive new insurance options.
• But the insanity continued with Senator Bernie Sanders stating: "If this legislation is passed and millions of people are thrown off of health insurance, not able to get to a doctor when they must, thousands of Americans will die." 
• The usually liberal friendly Washington Post could not even swallow this statement, giving Sanders’ statement the highest degree of lying possible, four Pinocchios, saying that Sanders was basing his statement off of a faulty Think Progress report that assumed, again, that there would be no replacement installed when Obama Care was killed.
• Senator Tammy Baldwin jumped into the lie fest when she said: “#ReadtheBill & you’ll see #TrumpCare would allow insurance execs to personally make millions off your health care.”
• The proposed Republican plan repeals the Obama Care $500,000 cap on how much insurance companies can deduct on their taxes, it has NOTHING to do with insurance companies’ executives personal tax impacts as Politifact Wisconsin accurately pointed out.
• Tough to tell whether she is lying or is that stupid to understand what applies to an insurance company’s tax bill vs. insurance company’s executive individual tax liability.

Given that Democrats were solely responsible for Obama Care I can see how they might be a little sensitive about its many failures. But lying about the reality and proposed changes does nothing to enhance their credibility and perception that they actually care about what is right for Americans vs. what is right for their bruised egos. Lying and omitting critical information displays a complete lack of integrity.

3) Rather than try to summarize the following analysis of Obama Care, I will just give you a link to the original article. It is an in-depth economic analysis by an economist from Hillsdale College, Casey Mulligan, published back in 2014. Mr. Mulligan does an excellent, easy to understand economic analysis of the damage that Obama Care has done to the country and its economic growth potential by covering such things as companies not hiring and expanding due to the onerous Obama Care regulations and taxes, companies turning full time employees into part time employees since the companies could not endure the Obama Care fees, fines, and taxes, etc. 

His analysis fuels the argument that one of the reasons that economic growth was historically anemic under Obama was because of the simple economic principles and tenets that Obama and Obama Care ignored or spit on.

The link for the entire analysis can be accessed at:

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/effects-of-the-affordable-care-act-on-economic-productivity/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=stripes&utm_medium=social&utm_content=03122017

That will do it for today’s unfolding Obama Care disasters: economic principles abused, lies, lies and more lies from Democrats, and using a shoddy insurance solution to resolve a massive public health problem.

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

April, 2017, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Illegal Actions By The Obama Administration and More Useless and Stupid Regulations

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.

1) We have often pointed out that not only was Obama Care a total failure in lowering the ever rising healthcare costs in this country, but its overbearing regulations put a major damper on economic growth since its passage. In fact, the Obama administration is the only Presidential administration that did not enjoy an annual GDP growth number above 3% and reigned over an economy that featured mostly stagnant wage and household income growth.

Now, not only do we already know that Obama Care’s regulations hurt the entire economy but an article by Drew Gonshorowski on the Heritage Foundation website on March 23, 2017 discusses the probable reality that its overbearing regulations also helped raise health insurance premiums, the exact opposite of what the law was supposed to do:

• A new research study from Milliman shows that a chief reason that Obama Care insurance premiums continued to rise is because of the many regulations and taxes the legislation imposed on that segment of the insurance market.
• For example, the law imposed a Health Insurer tax of 2.0%.
• It currently imposes a Health Exchange Fee/[tax]that is currently 1.4 - 2.3% but which will increase to 2.8 - 3.7% by the year 2023.
• A so-called Guarantee Fee is 15 - 30%.
• Reinsurance is a 1.0 - 2.0% fee.
• A Morbidity fee is 4.0%.
• A Community Rating fee can increase insurance premiums for younger Obama Care insurance customers anywhere from 19 - 35%.
• Essential Benefits requirements increases premiums by 8%.
• An actuarial adjustment increases premiums by 8.5%.

Thus, the total increase national average impact on an insurance policy relative to Obama Care policies comes out to anywhere from 44.5 to 68% according to the Milliman research.

How can anyone expect the cost of health insurance to come down or gotten under control when just the logistics of the Obama Care legislation imposes a 44% burden before the actual health insurance costs are figured in? That is why it is a disaster and such a stupid and convoluted piece of legislation.

Note: the article points out that these are national averages and that the increases on health insurance premiums because of the above Obama Care requirements and regulations vary greatly by state meaning that some residents of some states (for example a state with a younger than average population) saw worse increases than the national average.

2) We have pointed out many times on how Obama himself violated the Obama Care legislation by unilaterally changing dates and other tenets of the Obama Care. Now there appears there might be another unlawful action that the Obama administration undertook. The legislation only allowed the IRS to use private citizen data to calculate what, if any, Federal subsidy a taxpayer should get if they obtained an Obama Care insurance policy.

But according to research and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the IRS may have illegally shared private citizen data with the Health and Human Services organization for the sole use of sending a formal Federal government communications to taxpayers who opted out of buying an Obama Care policy and paid the Obama Care tax. 

Specifically, the Judicial Watch organization filed a lawsuit looking for government documents related to this illegal action after numerous legitimate Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were ignored by the Obama administration. [On a side note, this sandbagging of FOIA requests should not be unexpected as the Obama administration was likely the worst Presidential administration ever when it came to complying with FOIA requests.)

Judicial Watch issued the following press release on April 16, 2017 which describes what is going on Apri: “Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for records about the sharing of private taxpayer information under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The lawsuit was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:17-cv-00615)).

Judicial Watch filed the suit after the agencies refused to comply with its November 15, 2016, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the IRS and Health and Human Services seeking all records concerning their efforts to reach out to individuals claiming an exemption or paying a penalty for failing to purchase the mandatory Obamacare health insurance, as well as records where protected taxpayer information was shared between the IRS and HHS or any other state or federal government entity.”

This lawsuit follows a formal Congressional letter that was sent to the IRS back in September, 2016 so there is at least two organizations that think that Obama and his administration have again violated Federal law. Specifically, it appears that Federal law 26 § U.S.C. 6103 regarding the confidentiality of private citizens private information was possibly violated. Another day, another potential illegal action from the worst piece of Washington legislation ever enacted.

3) One last piece of Obama Care insanity for today and it is related to your local pizzeria. One of the most inane tenets of Obama Care is that restaurants with more than 20 locations have to list nutritional information on EVERY item on their menu and even worse, EVERY possible variation of an item on their menu. Consider the stupidity of this Obama Care regulation:

• Consider Domino’s pizza locations: when you consider every possible variation on Domino’s menu, from toppings to size to different types of crusts, you end up with 34 MILLION variations that Obama Care’s regulations require Domino’s to put on their menu or post in their stores, clearly an impossibility.
• Since Domino's locations are operated and owned by individual businesspeople and franchisors, any attempt to post such a sign could add thousands of dollars to a business owners’ expenses, hindering their ability to grow their stores, create employment opportunities, and help grow the economy.
• And since the vast majority of Domino’s customers place their orders on the Internet or call them in, the vast majority of customers are unlikely to ever notice or see any Obama Care sign or menu with the nutritional information even if a way was found to strictly comply with the need for 34 million combinations.

Another useless and expensive Federal government and political class effort. Expensive because it will cost restuarants to spend their thin profit dollars on a useless effort, useless because we have already discussed the reality that customers do not read nutritional signs in restaurants:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/08/whats-week-without-another-weekly-obama.html

Useless and stupid Obama Care regulations, relating to food signs and unnecessary fees and taxes, and illegal actions by the slightly dysfunctional Obama administration when it came to the rule of law. More unfolding disasters to follow.

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

April, 2017, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: How Did Obama Care Missed The Obesity Elephant In The Room?

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 focus on two of the root causes above and show, dramatically, how Obama Care totally failed to 1) recognize the extent to which these two root causes cause high medical costs and 2) how much these root causes cost the nation every year. Given how large these root causes are, it is quite unbelievable that Obama and his cohorts could miss this elephant in the room, trying to put forth a badly planned insurance plan to attack a public health problem.

The two root causes we will focus on today are: 

1. Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
2. Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.

The basis of our discussion is an article from Politico.com that was reprinted in the April 14, 2017 issue of The Week magazine. It’s extensive research into the obesity epidemic in this country uncovered the following expensive and tragic realities:

• Severe obesity, a person with a BMI greater than 40, is rising rapidly and may affect 11% of the population by 2030.
• A single obese American will rack up about $200,000 in incremental healthcare costs during their lifetimes.
• This obesity epidemic results in unnecessary medical cases of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, arthritis, certain cancers, hip and knee replacements, etc. and thus, it is quite easy to get to $200,000.
• Annual obesity expenses in just one city Memphis, Tennessee, is estimated at $538 million, more than half of the budget of the city’s entire public school system.
• For the entire state of Tennessee, the cost of obesity is estimated at $2.29 billion, more than 6% of the state government budget. 
• According to Jay Cohen, an endocrinologist who treats diabetes/obesity patients, the average diabetic patient costs the health care system three times what a healthy person costs: “It is politically imperative to reduce the obesity rate. It costs literally trillions of dollars to treat these conditions.”
• Rahul Gupta, the West Virginia public health commissioner, says that obesity in his state directly costs $1.4 billion to $1.8 billion a year in medical costs with another $5 billion worth of indirect costs.
• In West Virginia, obese citizens submit seven times more medical claims than non-obese people.
• Gupta: “At the state and Federal levels chronic disease burden is among the highest drivers of health care costs and among chronic diseases it comes down to to the consequences of obesity and tobacco.”
• Zhou Yang, a professor at Emory University who studies the effects of obesity on the healthcare industry, estimates that obese older men spent $190,57 more on medical costs than non-obese older men and that older obese women spend $223,629 more on lifetime medical costs than non-obese older women.
• A 2016 research study at the University of Washington estimated that obesity costs the country about $150 billion a year in medical spending, enough to double the size of the Veterans Administration.
• Other research shows that obese people have less success with vaccines such as vaccines for flu and HIV, allowing them to stay sick longer and increasing the chance that they will pass their illness onto other members of society, further increasing the medical costs in our society.
• This obesity situation also affects our military forces since it is becoming harder and harder to find recruits that are in good enough shape to serve and obesity costs the military about $105 million a year in lost productivity and a whopping $1 billion in treatments of obesity-related illnesses, more than what the military spends for tobacco and alcohol related illnesses combined.
• Research from the University of Illinois estimates that the country burns about an extra one billion gallons of gasoline a year in driving obese people around the country.
• Another study estimates that airlines burn an extra 350 million gallons of jet fuel a year because of the extra strain to transport obese people in their airplanes.
• Employers and businesses also suffer from obesity because obese employees are likely to have a higher level of absenteeism and less productivity when they are at work, a lost productivity cost that could range from $390 and $520 billion a year by 2030.
• The lower end of that estimated range by 2030 comes out to roughly $1,200 per person per year, wealth that cannot be spent to expand the economy.
• Obese American workers may actually lose money on the job since a 2010 study found that obese women on average make 9% less than non-obese women workers.
• Dying as an obese person also has additional costs since it requires larger, and more expensive caskets, or more crematorium costs.
• But Gupta points out other, non-financial costs: “The costs are not just related to health care. There’s a cost for people who can’t reach their full potential in terms of education, employment, mobility, physical activity, and productivity.”

Pretty depressing situation and statistics. This is a massive public health disaster and Obama Care somehow missed this root cause. Obama and his healthcare legislation tried to apply a half ass insurance solution to a truly massive public health issue. Thus, no wonder that it is has failed miserably to curb the ever rising healthcare costs in this country, the legislation never addressed and attacked this root cause.

The closing paragraphs spell out what the problem means to every American: “It's clear obesity has stopped being a problem that's only one for those affected and is now a national crisis. The country literally cannot afford the impending costs. Shifting investments toward encouraging healthy environments and behaviors rather than paying for expensive life threatening chronic disease is the only affordable - and humane - response.”

“Obesity costs everybody. Nobody can escape. Someone has to pay the bill.” 

And thanks to the failure of Obama Care, we have lost about six years in actually addressing a true root cause of this massive American problem.

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