February, 2016, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Millionaires Get Tax Credits, Illegal Immigrants Get Tax Credits and Small Businesses Get The Shaft

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 it rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday and today we are reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) We often write about the disaster that Obama Care has been for American households and families. But it also has been a disaster for small businesses, the business segment that often produces the most new jobs in our economy and which sometimes create the biggest companies in the world, e.g., Facebook, Apple, etc. all started as small businesses. 

This reality was driven home by a recent article by Justin Haskins for Heartlander Magazine:

• Haskins: “Although numerous groups are facing difficulties related to ACA, few are struggling as significantly as U.S. small businesses.”
• 87% of that offer group health care insurance for their employees saw their insurance premiums go up 25% since 2014 despite Obama’s promises that healthcare costs would go down as a result of the legislation.
• 12% say their premiums went up over 50% in a survey by LevelFunded Health, an insurance agency.
• The legislation is particularly onerous for small businesses since larger businesses have a larger revenue and employee base to spread the legislative and regulatory costs and overhead of Obama Care over: “This has led numerous small businesses to cancel their health insurance benefits completely, dumping an unknown number of employees into Obamacare exchanges. This is not only bad for the employees, it’s horrible for the businesses, who are now losing quality job applicants to large corporations that offer better benefits.”
• The LevelFunded found that 56% of the 2,500 small businesses they surveyed said they are losing quality employee candidates because of the rising costs associated with employer-provided health care plans under Obama Care. 
• The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) under Obama Care was supposed to make it easy for small businesses to handle the Obama Care legislation requirements but like most aspects of Obama Care, it also failed: only 85,000 people from 11,000 small businesses had coverage through SHOP, according to Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News. 
• According to Haskins: “This is significantly less than the 1 million people the Congressional Budget Office expected to be enrolled in SHOP by the end of 2015.” 

The whole mess has caused many pains for small businesses including losing top employee talent, forcing companies to drop healthcare insurance for their employees, causing small businesses to downsize to avoid Obama Care small business penalties, causing employers to cut hours of permanent employees to turn them into part time employees, or raising prices to cope with the increased costs.

Thus, when small business owners have to focus on how to stay afloat and be financially viable in the face of Obama Care’s demanding and often stupid requirements, these owners cannot devote more time to growing their businesses which results in a growing economy and growing employment opportunities. 

2) Sean Hackbarth, writing for the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, continues the storyline from above on how Obama Care is making it so expensive and difficult for small businesses to grow their businesses and take care of their employees under Obama Care:

• Filling out complex Obama Care business tax forms is a major time destroyer for small business owners, time that could be better spent on growing their businesses. 
• Businesses have to provide great detail on how they are or are not providing health insurance coverage to their employees.
• The tax reporting requirements are so complex that many businesses now have to go to professionals to do their taxes, costing them time and money.
• The New York Times confirmed the complexity and time wasting processes of Obama Care tax filings in an article about the problem: “These are some of the most complex informational returns we’ve ever seen,” said Roger Prince, a tax lawyer with the consulting firm Berry Dunn in Portland, Me.
• Dunn claims that some of his small business clients “have spent months reconfiguring their human resources and financial systems to track the information that the new forms demand. The health care law defines a full-time-equivalent employee as someone who works an average of 30 or more hours a week — and the hours worked by some part-time employees count toward the calculation. For businesses that use many seasonal, variable-hour or temporary workers, like those in the hospitality industry, simply figuring out how many qualifying employees they have can be a challenge.” Again, more wasted time dealing with government bureaucracy than expanding and improving their businesses.

And all of this extra, useless work has been for no gain to themselves or their businesses since according to a 2015 National Small Business Association poll, 95% of the businesses polled have seen their health care insurance plan costs rise in the past five years, 90% saw their health care costs rise in 2015, and 84% expect those costs to increase in 2016, i.e. a lot of tax prep work for no gain.

3) A recent article from the Free Patriot Post website confirmed another Presidential lie about Obama Care. During a State of The Union address, Obama stood up in front of the whole country and boldly stated that only citizens of this country would get the benefit of Obama Care, its benefits would not be available to illegal immigrants. Congressman Joe Wilson blurted out that the President was a liar in the middle of the State Of The Union speech, for which he was vilified by Democrats and the liberal press.

But now it appears that Wilson was right. According to a new Senate report form the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: “The report, produced by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, examined Affordable Care Act tax credits meant to defray the cost of insurance premiums. It found that as of June 2015, ‘the Administration awarded approximately $750 million in tax credits on behalf of individuals who were later determined to be ineligible because they failed to verify their citizenship, status as a national, or legal presence.’”

The report and analysis found that a whopping 500,000 illegal immigrants received that $750 million in Obama Care tax credits. The Centers For Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) did confirm that 471,000 people failed to prove they were citizens but still got the credits. CMS claimed that some of those 471,000 may have actually been entitled to the credits but that still proves that those credits were given out by the Feds without due diligence being done before hand.

The report also concluded that the administration has no real plan on how to claw back the money that was given out as tax credits even though that money was given out illegally. This idiotic way of paying out to people before checking them out is derisively called “pay and chase,” i.e. we will give you taxpayer wealth today even though you have not given us the documentation you are supposed to give us and maybe we will chase you later to get it back.

What a mess and half ass way of doing business.

4) One last Obama Care fail for this month and it is a doozy. According to Melissa Quinn, writing for the Heritage Foundation on February 9, 2016, loopholes within the Obama Care wording allows certain types of millionaires to qualify for taxpayer subsidized health care under Obama Care rules. Specifically:

• Under Obama Care, people whose annual income falls under 138% of the poverty level, about $16,000 per person, can get subsidized medical care under Medicaid.
• This is because Obama Care changed the Medicaid criteria for being eligible to strictly annual income and took away any use of net worth to determine who gets subsidized insurance coverage under Medicaid.
• As a result, people with many assets but low annual incomes can get taxpayer support. 
• The article quotes an insurance broker in Iowa who has a lot of clients with net worth between $2 million and $5 million, wealth and assets they have in the form of farmland or assets they received from divorce settlements but have low annual income levels.
• Thus, according to Obama Care, you can be worth millions of dollars in assets but still get taxpayer subsidized Medicaid benefits: “It [Medicaid] was designed to help the lower-income population. But without the asset test, there are folks that have the financial means and assets there that are good at figuring out how to work the system and capture a benefit they’re entitled to.”
• The Iowa insurance agent tells the story of an Iowa woman who received $1.5 million in land and received another $500,000 from a divorce settlement, both assets of which went into a trust and thus, is not reportable as income. This enabled her to get taxpayer subsidized Medicaid insurance coverage.
• CNBC reported earlier this year on the subject, citing a Florida financial advisor who was helping millionaire clients to get Medicaid coverage including one client who had a net worth in assets totally millions of dollars but was still able to get a monthly subsidy of $423 a month, courtesy of the taxpayers of America.

Just when you think you have found out of the possible ways Obama Care could screw things up, a new, original one springs to life. Taxpayer subsidies for millionaires, who would have thought that the legislation could be written that badly? 

That will do it for this month as the disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written just keep oncoming.More disasters next month, for sure.

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

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, Part 10: Loose Odds and Ends of Failure

Over the past week or so we have been reviewing the many ways and perspectives on how the Obama Presidency has been an abject failure:

• We reviewed the many, many lies and deceptions of this administration and this President, from cutting the annual budget deficit in half to promising that you could keep your doctors under Obama Care to many others.
• We reviewed the many high ranking Obama administration officials that have illegally and immorally conducted government business, and likely government shenanigans, using personal, unofficial computers and email accounts, undermining the spirit and letter of the Freedom of Information Act, other laws, and Obama; own promise to operate the most transparent administration ever
• We reviewed the many instances where this administration has either allowed government functions and departments to continue to overspend but under deliver or allowed them to get even worse than when he took office.
• We also reviewed some past posts that we had done previously that laid out numerous reasons and actions that should have already led to the impeachment of this Presidency, based on violations of existing law, judicial rulings, and the Constitution.

Yesterday and today we are updating these transgressions, lies, failures, illegal actions, etc. that have occurred more recently. I will let you decide if they are moral, impeachable, criminal, etc. They are certainly numerous, when considered with the many failures we have already discussed, and are probably not over, given that this administration might actually be in power for another 21 months or so.

Today is focused on tying up loose ends and looking at failure lists that others have already compiled. Thus, in no particular order, the latest failures of the Obama administration:

1) ISIS torturing, beheading, and rampaging through the Middle East. Iran about to get a sweetheart deal from the West, enabling them to get nuclear weapons in a relatively short time. Israeli and U.S. relations at an all time low. Unemployment and economic growth still a major problem. All government functions still broken and expensive. North Korea threatening to go nuclear on the U.S.

A lot of bad things going on in the world but the President again had to take time out of his schedule to do an extended video piece on ESPN. On that video he went through every single NCAA men’s basketball tournament game to give his opinion, as if anyone cared who he thought would advance out of the first round. Bad, bad priorities again.

2) The Obama administration recently decided that it would kill a Federal regulation that subjected the White House Administrative Office to the tenets and requirements of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). While legally this does not violate any laws and courts have ruled that the Office is not subjected to FOIA requests, it has been complying with requests for over thirty years.

But the timing of announcing the shutdown of information flows is either ironic or suspicious or both. Ironic that it occurred on National Freedom of Information Day and suspicious that it occurred more than six years into the administration’s tenure and during a time when the need to get information to investigate administration wrong doing (e.g. Benghazi, email scandals, etc.). Certainly not consistent with the spirit of the FOIA law or Obama’s now broken promise to operate the most transparent administration ever.

3) The President does not even think that Iran wants to get a nuclear weapon since in his world: “And if in fact what they claim is true, which is they have no aspiration to get a nuclear weapon, that in fact, according to their Supreme Leader, it would be contrary to their faith to obtain a nuclear weapon, if that is true, there should be the possibility of getting a deal.” Given that Iran’s leaders have publicly said at one time or another that they want to wipe out Israel and the U.S., seems like the President is quite out of touch with reality, a condition that could get a lot of human beings killed.

4) Rather than try to explain all of the deceptions, hypocrisies, and lies let’s go to some videotapes where we have the President lie and deceive in his own words. In the first video, let’s look at a compilation of hypocritical remarks the President has made over time. The video compares and contrasts the statements made by the President to show how he changes his views and opinions to suit the situation.

The actual President’s words can be viewed at:

http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2014/02/24/do-as-i-say-obamas-hypocritcal-moments/

5) Let’s move from hypocritical Presidential remarks to outright lies over the years from this President. The video with his lies can be accessed at:

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/politics/joe-wilson-was-right-obamas-lies-through-the-years

6) Let’s move from the President's own words and how they show that he lies, deceives, and changes his positions just to satisfy his needs and ego to the compilation of lists done by others who have documented why this is the worst, failed President in a long time. 

The first compilation of failures comes from the Blacksphere website. We have already covered many of these lies and failures but we include their list in its totality:

• “I, Barrack Hussein Obama, pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.”
• I will have the most transparent administration in history.
• The stimulus will fund shovel-ready jobs.
• I am focused like a laser on creating jobs.
• The IRS is not targeting anyone.
• It was a spontaneous riot about a movie.
• If I had a son.
• I will put an end to the type of politics that “breeds division, conflict and cynicism.
• You didn’t build that!
• I will restore trust in government.
• The Cambridge cops acted stupidly.
• The public will have 5 days to look at every bill that lands on my desk
• It’s not my red line – it is the world’s red line.
• Whistle blowers will be protected in my administration.
• We got back every dime we used to rescue the banks and auto companies, with interest.
• I am not spying on American citizens.
• Obama Care will be good for America . You can keep your family doctor. Premiums will be lowered by $2500. If you like it, you can keep your current healthcare plan. It’s just like shopping at Amazon.
• I knew nothing about “Fast and Furious” gunrunning to Mexican drug cartels.
• I knew nothing about IRS targeting conservative groups.
• I knew nothing about what happened in Benghazi .
• I have never known my uncle from Kenya who is in the country illegally and that was arrested and told toleave the country over 20 years ago. And, I have never lived with that uncle. He finally admitted
• (12-05-2013) that he DID know his uncle and that he DID live with him.

The list and their discussion of the list can be accessed at:

http://theblacksphere.net/2015/03/ongoing-list-obama-lies/

7) The Americans Freedom Fighters website did their compilation of Obama failures, false promises and deceptions under the theme. “First President to…”:

• First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
• First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
• First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.
• First President to violate the War Powers Act. 
• First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
• First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
• First President to spend a trillion dollars on “shovel-ready” jobs when there was no such thing as “shovel-ready” jobs.
• First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
• First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
• First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
• First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
• First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign.
• First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.
• First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation.
• First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
• First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
• First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.
• First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.
• First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
• First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
• First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).
• First President to fire an inspector general of AmeriCorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
• First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.
• First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.
• First President to golf more than 150 separate times in his five years in office.
• First President to hide his birth, medical, educational and travel records.
• First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
• First President to go on multiple “global apology tours” and concurrent “insult our friends” tours.
• First President to go on over 17 lavish vacations, in addition to date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayers.
• First President to have personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
• First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
• First President to fly in a personal trainer from Chicago at least once a week at taxpayer expense.
• First President to repeat the Holy Quran and tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth
• First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs Arizona).
• First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they “volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences.”
• Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion. (Thank God he didn’t get away with THIS one.)

Their list and article that contained this list can be accessed at:

www.americasfreedomfighters.com

8) Let's finish today with three of the latest foreign affairs failures of the administration:

Obama called ISIS the junior varsity of terrorist groups. Now they are the worse, most cutthroat terrorist group the world has ever seen.

Obama said that Iraq was safe and secure when he withdrew U.S. troops from that country. Now, Iraq is one of the most lawless, most terrorist intensive place in the world.

Obama said Yemen was a tremendous success and the model to follow from a counter terrorism strategy. Now, Yemen is essentially a lawless country, the U.S. embassy has been shut down, and the country is now being divided and fought over by Iranian backed terrorists, ISIS terrorists, and Al Qaeda terrorists.

Three different foreign affairs situations, three failures of catastrophic proportions.

This will complete our extensive, and depressing, review of the failures of the Obama administration. Many of his actions and failures are certainly impeachable, especially the numerous times he violated the tenets of the Constitution, the times he denied the Constitutional rights of citizens, and the many times he ignored, violated, or suspended existing laws. Other failures, while not impeachable, are certainly detrimental to the country’s well being, from skyrocketing debt to the unfolding disasters of Obama Care to effective government functions to all time lows in trusting government officials and politicians.

Six years into the administration and he can no longer blame Bush for the failures. His record now stands by itself and his record stands for failure. The question is whether the country, its citizens, and our democracy can withstand two more years of the same behavior and lack of competency. I believe in Americans but this administration has certainly put that hope to the test.

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

What's A Week Without Another Weekly Obama Care Calamity? Or Three?

Another week, another Obama Care calamity. Last Friday, we  reviewed the totality of the calamities from this horrid piece of legislation. But, another week, another calamity. In fact, this week we have a three calamities for the price of one:

- Calamity #1 - Let's start with the easiest one. Several months ago we reported and discussed the fact that within a year of passing the Obama Care legislation, the Health and Human Services Department within the Federal government had already allowed over 1,000 waivers to the early requirements of Obama Care. We made the case then, and still do, that this could not have been a well written and well researched piece of legislation if the government was issuing about three exemptions or waivers everyday to its requirements.

Well, its a few months later and recent news reports indicate that the number of exemptions being issued has not slowed down as some supporters of the legislation predicted it would. The news reports indicate that the number of company waivers and exemptions is fast approaching 1,500, keeping it on track for the same daily rate as of a few months ago. Again, how good is this piece of legislation if nearly 1,500 companies and other entities have already been exempted from its requirements, at least temporarily? If 1,500 exemptions have been granted, I cannot imagine the number that have been applied for in order to get out from under Obama Care's requirements.

- Calamity #2: About two years ago, Obama spoke to a joint meeting of Congress to press for the passage of Obama Care. During a particular part the President's speech, Congressman Joe Wilson  shouted out "You lie," an outburst that he quickly apologized for and an apology that was quickly and graciously accepted by the President. However, then Speaker of The House, Nancy Pelosi, was to have none of this apology business and prompted House Of Representative action against Wilson for his behavior.

However, it turns out that Wilson may have actually been right and Pelosi may have moved for sanctions against him under false pretenses. Wilson yelled out "you lie" when the President stated: "The reforms I am proposing would not apply to those what are here illegally." In other words, no part of Obama Care would use American taxpayer money to support the health care needs of illegal aliens in the country.

Turns out, this is not the case. Recent news reports and statements from Wilson's office assert that over $8 million of Obama Care funding, which is within a larger budget of a $28.8 million budget given to community health care centers, has been specially set aside to help seasonal and migrant farm workers. These heath care centers/clinics have been explicitly told not to ask for immigration status when serving these workers.

Thus, was it a lie when the President stated two years ago that no part of Obama Care funding would be used for "those that are here illegally" or did the situation change and no one in the White House got around to updating the country on this change? In either case it looks like Wilson was right, although his venue and approach for pointing out this potential lie was not appropriate.

The Congressman makes a good point when discussing this calamity. The country is going broke, the country has a mountain of national debt, our limited funds need to be used to support Americans' health care needs, not the health care needs of illegal aliens. At the very least, Pelosi owes the Congressman an apology since the basis for forcing sanctions on Congressman Wilson was baseless.

- Calamity #3: Yesterday, over 409,000 Americans filed for first time unemployment claims, continuing a 400,000 weekly trend that seems to have been going on forever. Unemployment is still stuck around 9% or so. Recent testimony in front of Congress by Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE restaurants (CKE operates or franchises almost 3,200 Carl's Jr. and Hardee restaurants around the world), described how some of the requirements of Obama Care is putting the brakes on his company's abilities to hire more unemployed Americans:

• Obama Care requires restaurants such as CKE's to post the caloric content of their food on menu boards in all of their restaurants. Puzder testified that this new requirement will cost $1.5 million to implement. He did not discuss how much it would cost to change the signage everytime the menu changed. This $1.5 million is about 17% of what CKE invested in new restaurants last year.
• Thus, as a result of this sign requirement, fewer restaurants will be opened and fewer new people will be hired since the mandatory expense of $1.5 million has to come from somewhere. The saddest part of this whole story is that this component of Obama Care is unlikely to have any positive impact on America. Market research that was carried out on people who ate at similar restaurants New York City after the city implemented the same menu board requirement found that very few people noticed the caloric signs, even fewer people read the signs, and even fewer people, a very, very small percentage, changed their eating habits as a result of the signs.

Conclusion: needless expense for no benefit, expense that could have been used to grow the business and the economy while reducing unemployment. According to Mr. Puzder's testimony: "The money to comply with the AVA (Obama Care) must come from somewhere. We use our revenue to pay our bills and expenses, to pay down our debt, and we reinvest what's left in our business. That's how we create jobs." The obvious conclusion: less to reinvest means fewer jobs created.

His views are consistent with others in the food industry. Scott Womack, who operates a company that owns 12 IHOP restaurants in Indiana and Ohio, testified that the legislation will have dramatically negative effects on his business. By the beginning of 2014, he believes that he will have to provide health insurance coverage for all of his full time employees.

Given the relatively thin business margins in the food industry, he does not know how he will be able to comply. He estimates the cost of complying will be 50 percent greater than his company's earnings. Even if he finds a way to comply with these additional costs, it will certainly hinder his ability to expand, adding new restaurants, hiring more people, paying contractors and builders to construct his new restaurants, pay advertising people to promote his new locations, and purchasing products to serve at his new locations. Many of these latter functions provide employment beyond his direct hiring of people for his company.

Adding insult to injury, Puzder and Womack have not been able to obtain waivers to Obama Care requirements while their competitors, McDonalds and Jack-In-The-Box have received waivers. Not only is Obama Care adding a heavy cost burden to their operations, it is unfairly tilting the competitive playing field by providing a large cost advantage to their competitors. Thus, Obama Care supporters can not even make the claim that all parts of America and the businesses within America will be playing under the same rules under Obama Care. Pathetic.

It might justify all of these calamities if Obama Care had a chance at working. However, more times then I care to remember, we have gone through the myriad of reasons in this blog why this legislation is doomed to failure. The writers and supporters never understood the root causes of our escalating health care costs and without understanding those root causes, our political class has virtually no chance of solving the problem.

Obama tried to solve a public health crisis (i.e. Americans eat too much, Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, Americans smoke too much, Americans on average are getting older), a legal crisis (our health care industry needs signficant tort reform and a lack of competition crisis (our health care industry needs to allow cross state lines competition between health care insurers), by developing a huge, expensive, cumbersome and unfair monstrosity that deals with virtually none of these root causes/crises. As a result, we see restaurants cutting back on expansion and hiring, large companies (e.g. AT&T, John Deere, and others looking to eliminate their health insurance programs because Obama Care makes it less expensive to NOT offer health care than to offer it), and the national debt exploding under Obama Care because of its poor planning and understanding of the problem.

Groucho Marx said it best many decades ago when explaining how Obama Care came into being: "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." I could not have said it better when it comes to this legislative disaster. I can hardly wait to see what falls apart next week.






Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

Other People I Would Like To "Wilsonize"

Up front disclosure: I have never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.

As most of you already know, during the President's health care reform speech last week, Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted out that President Obama was a liar. It was an unheard of type of outburst from a member of Congress while any President was addressing both houses of Congress. Congressman Wilson apologized for his accusation and Obama accepted the apology. That should have been the end of the story: bad act, apology, apology accepted.

But no. Democrats decided to take up time and resources and issue a formal rebuke to Wilson since he refused to apologize on the floor of the House. Never mind that the target of his inappropriate outburst, the President, had already accepted the apology. Thus, if the current political class wants to waste more of our time, may I suggest that they rebuke some other people since they are at least as bad as Wilson's gaffe; in fact, let's invent a new verb, to Wilsonize which means "to take up valuable time to kill a dead horse because we do not know how to fix real national problems":

• Let's start with all of the Democrats that called Bush a Nazi, a fascist, or a liar, sometimes during his addresses to Congress, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
• Then let's Wilsonize Congressman Charles Rangel who every year seems to come under investigation for some sort of new tax evasion scheme including, but not limited to, not reporting rental income, not disclosing credit union accounts with hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in them, etc.
• Let's not forget Senator Harry Reid who publicly commented that American tourists visiting DC in the summer time physically smelled, despite knowing that those smelly Americans pay his salary, benefits and office expenses.
• Moving on, let's Wilsonize Nancy Pelosi who believes that anyone speaking up against the Obama health care reform bills, i.e. exercising their First Amendment rights, is un-American.
• How could we forget Barney Frank who, as chairman of the House committee overseeing the banking industry for the past three years, failed miserably in that capacity to foresee the biggest banking crisis since the Great Depression until it hit him up the side of the head.
• If we are going to Wilsonize Frank, then we have to go over to his counterpart in the Senate, Chris Dodd, who as chairman of the Senate committee responsible for overseeing the banking industry for the past three years, failed miserably in that capacity to foresee the biggest banking crisis since the Great Depression until it hit him up the side of the head.
• In fact, let's Wilsonzie the entire Federal Reserve Board, Treasury Department, and SEC who also failed to foresee the biggest banking crisis since the Great Depression.
• Special Wilsonization should go to the seven Senators who voted NOT to defund the ACORN organization which has been caught on videotape in several cities helping a fake pimp and prostitute set up housing for a brothel using taxpayer funds and underage foreign girls.
• Let's not omit Jimmy Carter for his ridiculous opinions on racism relative to the Congressman Wilson situation since Carter was mostly irrelevant while he was in office and is certainly irrelevant today, more than thirty years later.
• More Wilsonization for the SEC who for almost twenty years did not see a huge pyramid scheme from Mr. Madoff despite many outsiders proving what was going on.

I think that is enough for today, this Wilsonization process could tie up Congress and the political class until the holidays. Other matters such as the failure of the war on drugs, failing public schools, Iraq, Afghanistan, skyrocketing national debt, unemployment, and other trivial matters can wait until we are done Wilsonizing everyone.