July, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care:

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 but with a big exception: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

This week we have been taking a look at the latest disasters from Obama Care, including the gathering evidence that ObamaCare policy holders are in for a big and ugly financial surprise in their 2016 costs along with some personal stories on how Obama Care is causing havoc with American families.

1) Correction to previous version at the request of parties involved.

2) Some supporters of Obama Care actually think that the legislation did not go far enough in giving the Federal government bureaucrats and Washington political class more control over our lives and personal health care situation than what Obama Care does. these folks favor the complete takeover of health care by the government, similar to the so-called single payer systems in some European countries.

There are at least two serious problems with this mindset, both of which we have discussed already in past blog posts:

• The Federal government is incapable of doing anything efficient or effective. There is no reason to think that putting them in charge of every facet of our personal health care would somehow come out any differently.
• The actual, real life experiences of Europeans who get sick under a single payer plan have been absolute horror stories, with people waiting months and months just to get a simple medical test done, people dying before they could get treated, etc.

But there is another reason to fear a single payer plan as outlined in a Recent Washington Times article. A recent survey of health care executives in Britain found that many of them plan on rationing health care options in order to get their skyrocketing costs and financial obligations under control. 

About 40% of England's 211 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are considering putting limits on eligibility for services such as foot care, hip replacements, knee replacements, and other treatments. In addition, smokers and those who are considered obese will be among those denied surgery and other treatment, according to a survey conducted by the HealthService Journal, in an extension of the controversial policy of “lifestyle rationing”.

Chief executives, chairs and board members at 67 CCGs were asked: 

• “Is your CCG considering introducing new limits to access/eligibility for services during 2015/16, for financial/efficiency/value reasons?”
• Among the respondents, 39% said yes, 57% said no and 4% did not know.
• Jeremy Taylor, chief executive of National Voices, which represents 140 health charities, stated:  
• “It’s very worrying to hear this because access to services that people need is a key aspect of what makes the NHS the NHS. It’s comprehensive, it’s national, it’s free at the point of use and it’s not based on ability to pay, so if you want to ramp up rationing then you call into question the extent to which it’s still a comprehensive service based on clinical need. This is worrying but not surprising, given the overall financial state of the NHS.”

This is what happens when government bureaucrats start taking over your life, in this case, your health care aspect of your life.  By never attacking the root causes of high health care costs, see the list above which includes such maladies as smoking and obesity, you never the tame the causes of ever rising health care costs. As a result, with limited financial resources and rising health care costs, you have to at some time start cutting back on quality and quantity of services, the exact same thing that is happening in England's single payer system.

And Obama Care is taking us down the same road since it also did not attack the root causes of our rising health care costs. By allowing the root causes to fester and grow in this country, you can be sure that at some time down the road in the world Of Obama Care, rationing will also occur in this country, it is the simple rule of supply and demand.

3) One of the root causes of our ever rising health care costs is the ever rising incidents of cancer and dementia-related illnesses. Unless research and breakthroughs occur in these two illness areas, it will not matter who has an Obama Care health care insurance policy since at some point in time the entire health care industry collapses in this country.

Consider the current incidence and projection of Alzheimer's diseases, just ONE of the dementia related diseases. According to statistics in a recent article in the AARP Bulletin newspaper:

• Current national spending to treat Alzheimer's patients in 2014 was $214 billion.
• That annual number will grow to $486 billion by 2030 and $1.2 TRILLION by 2050 unless something is done to curtail the disease.
• The number of Alzheimer's patients in 2014 was about 5 million people.
• That will grow to 8.4 million by 2030 and 13.8 million by 2050.

Obama could have made an epic contribution to history, the country, and his legacy if he had proclaimed to the country back in the early stages of the Obama Care legislation development that the country would make a concerted research and financial effort to cure Alzheimer's disease within ten years. This would have been the equivalent of John F. Kennedy's proclamation that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s decade.

But, alas, as always with this President, he was not epic. he focused on trying to fit an insurance solution to a public health problem and failed miserably.  Without taming the Alzheimer's threat, without curbing the obesity epidemic, without getting the country to kick the smoking habit, without making our food supply healthy, etc., without putting a public health solution together for the problem, it does not matter how much an Obama care Bronze plan costs today. 

Because very shortly, no one will be able to afford any health care as the rising costs of our public health problems overwhelm the ability to provide care.

4) As we often do with these Obama Care posts, lt us close today with real life stories of real life Americans and how ObamaCare is ruining their lives. The source of these true stories is the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

STEVE - ALABAMA: Like many, my health premium has nearly doubled ,and my deductibles and co-pays have increased some four fold. Yesterday my wife, who has a serious illness that has attacked her eyes over the years, learned that she could no longer receive a prescription that her doctor wants to write for her. This drug would help maintain her condition as to avoid flair ups with her eye problems. Her doctor informed her he can no longer prescribe the medication due to the recent health care law changes. 

PATRICK - VERMONT: My wife and I are both over 65 and on medicare. Our supplement in the past was free and all we paid was co-pays for medical care and prescription, with no yearly deductible. Our supplemental insurance, United Healthcare, said they were not allowed to offer that plan any longer. So, this year we have to $30.00 each, plus a $2,500.00 each for deductible. It is pretty tough living on a fixed income. So it pretty evident that the elderly can no longer go to a movie, restaurant or any form of enjoyment. The little extra we had after regular bills is being sucked up by the insurance and medical needs.

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

ROBIN - CALIFORNIA: My premium went up $350 my deductible went from $500 to over $5000 and my benefits were not at all any better.

That will do it for today and this month on our continuing update on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More individual Americans suffering as a result of the law, the continuing failure to address the root causes of the rising health care costs, more jobs lost as a result Of Obama Care, and how rationing might be coming to this country sooner than later. I am sure that more disasters will bring us back to this topic next month. 

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

February, 2015, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Single Payer Disaster, Abortion LIes and The Failure To Be Epic

Every month for the past two years or so we have had to dedicate numerous posts each month to cover the many, many unfolding disasters that have been spawned by the Obama Care legislation. This is easily the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Washington political class for so many reasons:

• First of all it will never work in reining in the high cost of health care in this country since it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high costs, mistakenly implementing a Rube Goldberg like health insurance solution for what is mostly a public health problem.
• It will add over a trillion dollars to the national debt even though Obama promised it would not add “a single dime” to the debt.
• It has stifled economic growth and job creation.
• It has increased taxes on every American, either directly or indirectly, despite Obama’s promise that it would not.
• It has forced upwards of seven million Americans to lose access to their preferred health insurance policies.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred Doctors, hospitals, and current medical treatments.
• Nationally, it has increased the cost of health care premiums and deductibles as compared to before the legislation was passed.
• It has opened up millions of Americans to the real threat of identity theft since Obama Care’s data systems security protocols are woefully inadequate.
• Even those that have obtained health care insurance under Obama Care policies are finding that their choice of doctors and hospitals are extremely narrow and more narrow than before the legislation was passed, resulting in many policy holders not getting access to the premier doctors and hospitals in this country.’The legislation has made a shortage of primary care physicians even worse since it is forcing primary care physicians to either retire earlier of move on to over options.
• Ten years from now the Congressional Budget Office predicts that tens of millions of Americans will still be without health care insurance coverage, the primary reason for the legislation in the first place.
• It has burdened the failing Medicaid system with millions of more applicants without fixing the massive problems with the system, causing more and more doctors to discontinue taking Medicaid and in some cases, Obama Care patients, resulting in the cruel irony that “you finally have health insurance but you do not have health care.”
• It failed to deliver on the Obama promise that the average American family would see a $2,500 annual reduction in their health insurance costs.
• While the legislation was supposed to reduce the number of emergency room visits, it has actually increased the number of emergency room visits.
• While it was supposed to make people healthier, the legislation’s resultant high co-pay levels and high deductible levels has forced many Obama Care patients to defer medical treatment because of the higher costs.

We could go on but you get the idea. This is a disastrous piece of legislation across multiple parameters. To get more details on each of the above disasters and explore other disasters of the legislation, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

This is our fourth post for this month that looks at the latest Obama Care disasters and fiascoes:

1) Recall our past discussions in this blog of the Canadian health care system, a so-called single payer system. In a single-payer system, the government is in charge of all aspects of health care in the country. They handle the paperwork, oversee prices and costs, dictate treatment protocols, etc. Everywhere it has been implemented in the world has usually resulted in a failure: higher costs and lower quality.

At the beginning of the Obama Care process, some of the President's supporters wanted Obama to implement a single payer system in this country. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was one of the biggest supporters of such a plan.

Fortunately, Obama Care did not go all the way to a single payer system but many of its "features" have the characteristics of a single payer system:

• The Federal government dictates what features and coverage must be in Obama Care insurance policies even if some of those features and coverage are not needed and not wanted by a citizen.
• The Federal government is herding millions of people into a single payer-like system called Medicaid via Obama Care, dictating what doctors will charge for services, dictating what is covered, and basically controlling all healthcare aspects of those enrolled.
• Obama Care has increased fees, taxes, and costs as it relates to healthcare in order to pay for its dictates in both the Medicaid arena and the private insurance arena.

Thus, while we did not go whole hog into a total single payer system in this country, Obama Care and Obama took us pretty far down the single payer road. Thus, it is worthwhile to see what a single payer system does to a country's health care health even if we did not finish the journey down the single payer path.

One way to do this is to examine the state of the Canadian single payer system since it has been around for a while and its citizens' wealth levels and health care levels are comparable to ours:

• According to a recent article on the Newsmax website, a Canadian citizen has to wait about 18.2 weeks to see a specialist doctor in Canada if they need specific medical care, i.e. more than four months.
• This is the overall finding from the latest annual report from the Fraser Institute, "Waiting Your Turn." 
• It found that the median length of time Canadians wait for necessary medical treatment after being referred by a general practitioner is 18.2 weeks, up from 9.3 weeks in 1993.
• And this is the median amount of wait time, which means half of those Canadians needing specific medical help wait more than four months to see a health care specialist
• Canada "rations" healthcare through long waiting times and limited access, according to Dr. Roger Stark, a healthcare policy expert at the Washington Policy Center; he recently told The Heartland Institute: "These long waits would not be acceptable to Americans, who are rightly accustomed to timely healthcare."
• And the wait times vary significantly across the country with the new Brunswick median wait time being 37.3 weeks, (an astonishing nine months plus) to Ontario where the median wait time is 14.1 weeks, still over three months.
• Wait times also vary greatly according to what type of specialist you need to see with the median wait time for orthopedic surgery being 42.2 weeks, neurology patients median wait time is an average of 31.2 weeks, and the wait for radiation oncology is 4.2 weeks.
• Think about this last statement: if you are fighting cancer, on average you have to wait over a month to get radiation treatment, four weeks where your cancer continues to spread.
• Canadians are waiting 3.8 weeks for a CT scan, 8.7 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.3 weeks for an ultrasound.
• Extensive wait times can have serious consequences, report co-author Bacchus Barua points out: "For example, they may force some patients to endure months of physical pain and mental anguish, they may result in lower worker productivity and [forgone] wages, they can sometimes result in a potentially treatable illness being transformed into a debilitating permanent condition, and in the worst cases, they may result in death."
• Barua goes on to claim that the extensive wait times are not due to lack of funding and resources since Canadian healthcare expenditures per person have gone up by 50%, adjusting for inflation, since 1993.
• Thus, he claims the likely underlying causes of these gross waiting times are the government monopoly on the financing and delivery of medical services and the lack of appropriate incentives for providers.
• "This is indirect rationing," said Dr. Dale Dunn, a policy adviser to The Heartland Institute. "Almost 30 years ago I started seeing doctors leaving Canada because they were disgusted with the system because it prevented them from treating patients."

Steadily increasing costs for steadily decreasing quality. Even though Obama Care is not a single payer system, the negativity of a single payer systems sounds an awful like the unfolding disasters of Obama Care.

The Newsmax article concludes with this interesting news tidbit from New York: The New York State Assembly's Health Committee held a hearing in January on Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried's bill to adopt single-payer healthcare in the state of New York. Reminds me of an old saying: you cannot fix stupid.

2) There have been a lot of lies and deceptions that have come out of the President's mouth and other supporters of Obama Care over the past few years:

• The President promised that if you liked your current insurance policy you could keep it: false/lie
• The President promised if you liked your current doctors and hospitals, you could keep them: false/lie
• The President promised that not one single dime would be added to the national debt as a result of Obama Care: false/lie
• The President promised that the average American family would see about a $2,500 annual decrease in their health insurance costs: false/lie
• The President promised that signing up for Obama Care online in the Obama Care health exchanges would be simple, quick, and easy - false/lie

I am sure I am missing other lies and deceptions but you get the idea. It is very difficult to believe anything this President says relative to Obama Care given his trail of deceptions. 

And let's add another lie to this list, as documented recently by the Heritage Foundation. Obama had promised, both the country and anti-abortion Congressional Democrats, that not a single dollar of Obama Care would be used to cover the cost of abortions. This promise was critical to getting the necessary House votes he needed from pro-choice Democrats for the approval of the Obama Care legislation. Specifically, the President promised that "no Federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

But as expected, this has turned into just another lie. According to pro choice groups, the non-green states below are states where Federal dollars and Obama Care insurance policies may be being used to fund abortions, a direct contradiction of what Obama promised.

How important was this issue to the passage of the legislation. According to Charles Donovan of the Charlotte Lozier Institute: “Federal funding for elective abortion was the most salient issue as the fate of the Affordable Care Act was hanging in early 2010, right up to the day of its passage.”  But a late 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed what many pro-life people had worried about - more than 1,000 Obama Care plans covered abortion while remaining eligible for Federal tax subsidies.

Even worse, the GAO analysis found that insurance companies were failing to collect from policyholders a required separate payment for abortion coverage, what critics call a “hidden” or “secret” fee. Requiring Obama Care policy holders to make two separate payments each month, one of them exclusively for abortion coverage, was the government’s attempt to prevent tax dollars, as Obama promised, from directly funding abortion.

According to the Heritage article, despite the GAO's findings and recommendations to fix what Obama promised would never happen, those fixes were not put in place for the second round of Obama Care policy signups that began in late 2014. In the absence of information or proof to the contrary, it must be assumed that Federal dollars are continuing being used to help fund Obama Care policies that support and fund abortion procedures. Thus, a critical deception was used to enact the law despite Presidential promises to the contrary.

3) One last point today, an example that shows what should have been done to reduce the high healthcare costs in this country. The following chart shows the dramtic and positive decline in breast cancer death rates over the past several decades:




Thus, the breast cancer death rate has dropped by about a third in the past two decades as a the result of better treatment, greater awareness and more women getting mammograms. The American Cancer Society says this translates into more than 200,000 deaths averted.

Imagine if Obama had focused on these types of success stories six years ago rather than a Rube Goldberg government insurance bureaucracy called Obama Care. Imagine if he had diverted those billions of dollars spent on a failed data systems process, enlargement of several existing government bureaucracies, etc. and had put that wealth into finding cures for colon cancer, prostate cancer, dementia, Parkinsons, heart disease. 

If we could reduce the death rates and incidences of these afflictions by one third or more, imagine how costs for health care in this country would plummet, making insurance that much cheaper without the idiocy of subsidies. If Obama had led the country to a healthy living and medical research vision, he could have been epic, much like Kennedy was epic when he led the country with a grand vision to use our resources to put a man on the moon  by the end of the decade.

But alas, the Obama administration has been anything but epic. We have wasted six years chasing an insurance answer for a public health and medical research issue. A one third decrease in the big diseases of our times would have been historic. Instead, Obama Care has become hysterical.

But it is not hysterical for the Americans we will focus on tomorrow, the last Obama Care update for this month. The people you will meet tomorrow have had their lives, their families, and their healthcare turned upside down in a truly negative way via Obama Care. And that is the sad human side of Obama Care.

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 Latest Inductees Into The Political Class Hall Of Shame - A Congressman, A Senator, A General

As we get towards the end of the year I thought it the right time, especially given the latest flurry of political people acting badly, to run our first annual induction ceremony of new folks into the “Political Class Hall of Shame.” This Hall Of Shame is already chock full of politicians and other “public servants” acting badly, shamefully, and in many cases, criminally. These so-called “leaders” of our nation certainly do know how to shame themselves, their families, and their constituents.

Now, I am not one to pass moral judgment on many of these people. Not my right, not my responsibility. However, many of them acted in such a way that it resulted in wasted taxpayer wealth, endangered the lives of American citizens, called into question the integrity of our national institutions such as Congress, and in many cases, had the potential to endanger our national security by opening themselves up to potential blackmail efforts. In these cases of waste and endangerment, it is my right and the right of every American to call them out.

Before we get to this year’s new inductees, let’s take a trip down memory lane and review who is already in the Hall and what their accomplishments were that got them inducted:

• President Bill Clinton - serial adulterer and liar with a special citation for having adulteress sex right in the Oval Office.
• Senator John Edwards - serial liar and adulterer and liar with a special citation for committing adultery while his wife was fighting a fruitless battle for her life against cancer.
• New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey - adulterer and liar, with a special citation for putting his non-American citizen lover in charge of New Jersey’ homeland security government organization. This situation denied his lover and his organization access to sensitive Federal homeland security intelligence data since he was a non-citizen. This obviously put New Jersey residents more in harm’s way than other states’ citizens.
• New York Governor Eliot Spitzer - adulterer and liar, with a special citation for criminally violating the Mann Act which makes the interstate soliciting and transporting of prostitutes illegal.
• New York Congressman Anthony Weiner - adulterer and liar, with a special citation for using the latest technology (Twitter) to display body parts as part of his adultery activities.
• Nevada John Ensign - adulterer and liar with a special citation of chutzpah, actually committing adultery with his good friend’s wife who was also one of his staff’s chief advisers.
• South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford - adulterer and liar, with a special citation for originality, claiming he was out camping alone somewhere in the woods in the U.S. while he was actually down in South America with his lover.
• New York Congressman Charles Rangel whose many ethics and alleged criminal acts are too long to list here.
• Just about any former Illinois governor, many of which have spent time in prison illegal activities of on sort or another.
• In 1994, Illinois Congressman Mel Reynolds supposedly engaged in a sexual relationship with a 16 year-old. He claimed that charges were racially motivated and won the seat in re-election. The following year Reynolds resigned after being convicted of criminal sexual abuse, child pornography, and other charges.
• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Vallaraigosa was widely seen as a “family man” until he separated from his wife due to an affair with Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas. The tryst terminated both careers, and their romance didn’t even last.
• At the start of his second presidential campaign, former U.S. Senator Gary Hart was rumored to be out womanizing and engaging in extramarital affairs. Hart dared the press to prove the rumors: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.” A few weeks later, the Miami Herald caught a young woman leaving Hart’s apartment. Hart still pleaded innocent until a photo surfaced – one in which a 29 year-old model sat on Hart’s lap aboard a yacht adequately named “Monkey Business.” Two reasons for this Senator to get into the stupidity wing of the Hall: daring the press to follow him and thinking he actually could avoid them finding out about his adultery and getting caught on a boat called “monkey Business.”
• Nevada governor Jim Gibbons filed for divorce from his wife during his first term in office. She alleged in the divorce proceedings that he was infatuated with one Reno woman and also had an affair with Playboy model Leslie Durant, who he was seen with at the Reno Rodeo. Gibbons later deposed that he hadn’t had sex in 15 years, let alone with a playmate, although he was caught sending over 800 text messages in just one month to the other Reno woman, all on a state-issued phone, getting him into the stupid wing.
• Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson - was sentenced to thirteen years in jail for accepting bribes, the longest term ever imposed on a Congressman on bribery and racketeering charges, with a special citation for hiding his bribery rewards in his freezer, lending credibility to the old saying, "cold cash." The FBI found the frozen money when they raided his home after a businesswoman felt she had been cheated by Jefferson in a business deal and turned to the FBI.
• Congressman Randy Cunningham of California received a sentence of eight years for taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors.
• Ohio Congressman Bob Ney received two and a half years in jail for taking bribes from a lobbyist.
• Congressman James Traficant of Ohio received a seven year sentence for bribery and racketeering. Mr. Traficant gets a special citation for humor. When he reputedly likened to Washinngton politicians to prostitutes, the same politicians were outraged and demanded an apology. He did apology...to all prostitutes for the comparison.
• Back in 2008, many of President Obama's nominees for high level government positions were found to have not paid their fair share of taxes including Tom Daschle, ex-long time Senator, and Tim Geithner, currently the Secretary of the Treasury. For most Americans, this type of tax evasion is at least a misdemeanor. For the political class, it sometimes feels like it is a way of life that has merited them a small place in the Hall of Shame.
• Kennedy family - definitely not enough time to explore this major wing of the Hall.

That’s just a highlight of what is in the Hall Of Shame. It does not include many other smaller acts of shame, how Congressional members use their insider information to trade stocks to their own personal financial advantage, how Congressional members postpone or terminate legislation that would be detrimental to companies’ IPOs, including Nancy Pelosi who has participated in ten or so IPOs in the past few years, reaping much financial reward in the process, how Congressional members use taxpayer money, via earmarks, to fortify their reelection campaign funds, etc.

But let’s talk about the latest entrants to the Political Class Hall Of Shame:

1) According to a recent CBS Chicago report, Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who is currently being treated for bipolar and other health issues, is working on a criminal plea deal on charges he misused campaign funds. Such a plea deal for misuse of campaign funds would include resigning his seat in Congress, pleading guilty to the misuse of campaign funds, repaying the money that he allegedly used for personal items, and spending time in jail. Based on similar cases in the past, he likely will serve some jail time, according to the CBS report.

While I feel sorry for the Congressman’s physical and health issues, they are not excuses for breaking the law. But given his Illinois background, really no surprise here. I will likely go into the Hall wing that already houses the criminal escapades of former Congressional members Ney, Cunningham, Traficant and Jefferson.

2) Two women from the Dominican Republic have publicly accused New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez of having paid them for sex earlier this year. Two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.

It appears, based on numerous news reports, that Menendez has been to the Dominican Republic a number of times over the years, often using the home and plane of campaign donor Salomon Melgen. Melgen is an ophthalmologist and owner of an eye clinic in Florida who has donated $14,700 to Menendez’s campaigns since 1993, with the bulk of it coming since he became a U.S. Senator, according to Federal Election Commission.

Three problems here, two of which include the integrity and potential risk of blackmail. Who is to say these prostitutes could have been working with non-friendly parties who could have used the trysts as blackmail material against the Senator. Who is to say that Melgen could not have used the prostitute instances of leverage for his own personal gain or the gain of people he was in partnership with? Blackmail is not a pretty affair and this U.S. Senator left him and the country open to the financial, integrity, and security components of potential blackmail.

The third problem gets the Senator into the stupid wing of the Hall Of Shame. If he had just paid the prostitutes the fees that he had agreed to, this story is likely to have not come to the forefront. Unfortunately, this wing is very crowded with past acts of stupidity of many, many other politicians.

3) The final entrant into the Hall Of Shame this year is a whopper. The Director of the CIA, the head of our nation’s largest spy organizations, David Patreaus, was forced to resign this week after a months long investigation by the FBI proved that he had been having a long term adulterous love affair with a woman who helped write his autobiography.

Two problems here, one very obvious. As Director of The CIA, Patreaus probably had access and in-depth knowledge of most, if not all, major CIA activities around the world. The potential for national security blackmail is off the charts. The Director has been married for 38 years, he had a long distinguished military career, and had a most critical job, who knows what he would have divulged under a blackmail situation. He had a lot to lose but still allowed the affair to go on for a long time, making him very susceptible to pressures and blackmail opportunities to protect all he stood for.

The second problem is that as the top spy in the country, leaving an electronic paper trail of provocative emails that detailed out the entire adultery escapade. How stupid, I would hope that we would have placed a smarter person as head of our top spy agency.

This is not the end of our discussion about the Director’s love affair. Congressional hearings about the affair and the Benghazi terrorist incident, of which the Director must have had an inmate awareness of the details, will be held this week. The potential for scandal, deceit, and cover ups is high. But today, we will settle for inducting the Director into the Hall Of Shame and putting him next to Menendez in the stupid wing for his use of emails to chat with his adultery partner.

Pretty disgraceful place this Hall Of Shame, for both the latest inductees and the current members. We will discuss the need to clean up our political processes in the next week or so in an effort to ensure the Hall Of Shame never gets any larger.

Our taxpayer wealth, Congressional integrity, and national security depend on us eventually shutting down this Hall so that adulterers, prostitutes, and Congressional criminals become a relic of our past, replaced with new politicians that actually care about America more than their financial and bodily needs.

Delusions, Narcissism, and Lack Of Leadership From Washington - The "Animal House" Of Politics

I am 59 years old and have been aware of a long line of Presidents in my lifetime, starting with JFK through President Obama. I lived through the incompetence of Jimmy Carter and the deviousness of Nixon. I was witness to the mental acuity deterioration of Reagan throughout his second term and the ineffectiveness of both Bush Presidencies. This ineffectiveness was also a strong characteristic of the Clinton years with the added perverted spice of Monica Lewinsky, Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and others.

However, none of them can compare to the delusions, narcissism, and lack of leadership from the current political class, starting with President Obama and going down through freshmen members of Congress. I could probably do a whole week of posts on these delusions, narcissism, and lack of leadership skills of the whole Washington political class. However, in the interest of time, I will focus on these adjectives in light of the current President.

- Let's start with delusions. Was the President really serious when he told the nation that most rich Americans pay a lower percentage of their earnings in income taxes than poorer Americans, using Warren Buffet as a prop? A two minute examination of official IRS tax returns would prove that this position is a delusion or a lie, one or the other (double click on the graph to get a bigger image):

- Was the President really serious and/or delusional when he publicly told an audience that the Chevy Volt was a great car and that when he got out of office he would purchase one for his personal use? This is a car that has had a potential fire hazard problem, has vastly undersold relative to its forecast, and whose production was completely stopped just a few days after Obama stated these words?  

- Was the President really serious and/or delusional when he publicly stated that the Head Start program returns $15 for every dollar spent on it even though his own HHS Department had recently concluded, from their analysis, that kids who attend Head Start programs are basically at the same point in their development and brain power by the end of the first grade as those kids who did not attend a Head Start program? If we are to believe the HHS analysis, Head Start is nothing more than a Federally funded day care program with no inherent benefit over any other, non-government program. Why did the President think other wise?

- Was the President serious and/or delusional when he claimed that his big economic stimulus program was a success? The Congressional Budget Office estimated the final cost of the stimulus program to be $830 billion. The White House claims that this expenditure saved or created about 2.7 million jobs. Thus, by dividing the total cost by the generous estimate of 2.7 million jobs, you end up with a cost per job of over $300,000 per job.

How can this be called anything else but delusional when it costs so much to create or save a job? How can this be called successful relative to the average annual income of an average American household which is around $60,000, 20% of the $300,000 cost per job created?

- The latest delusion comes from the past week when the President offered these words relative to the Supreme Court's review of Obama Care:

"I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress"

Two really obvious delusions with this single statement:

1) If Obama Care is struck down by the Supreme Court, it will not be unprecedented. I am sure that the Supreme Court has struck down or overturned dozens, if not hundreds, of unconstitutional laws throughout our history. All of these laws were passed by democratically elected sets of politicians. The  Supreme Court has an established and historical job to do, regardless of who is in office.

The President is a lawyer, he used to teach Constitutional law, is he so deluded to think that his actions and his laws are somehow special, relative to the history of our country? The Supreme Court has struck down segregation laws and anti-women laws and a whole host of other, unconstitutional laws that were passed by democratically elected people. The pending ruling on Obama Care is nowhere close to being unprecedented or extraordinary unless you are someone in a delusional state.

2) If you look at the voting math on Obama Care, you have to be delusional to think that "a strong majority" voted to pass Obama care. The vote in the House Of Representatives was 224 to pass and 206 to not pass. Thus, if just ten House members changed their vote, the legislation would not have passed. 10 members in a House of 430 members comes out to 2.3%, certainly not a strong majority to non-delusional people.

If you look at the Senate voting on the legislation, it passed with no votes to spare. And to get even that close, the President had to cut all kinds of obnoxious and biased deals with certain Senators who were blackmailing the administration for their vote in return for additional perks in the law. If there actually was a strong majority in favor, special, backroom deals would not have to be cut.

In addition, the legislation passed by the barely legal, but certainly unethical, process of reconciliation because the Senate did not have enough votes to pass the legislation straight up. When you have to go through the fine print of the Constitution to find a way to railroad through legislation, you are delusional if you think you had a strong majority.

Is he being delusional or deceitful or both? Tough to tell but easy to conclude that either situation is not a Presidential trait the country needs or should endure.

Let's move along to narcissism. Consider some definitions of what narcissism is defined to be:

1.self-admiration: excessive self-admiration and self-centeredness

2.personality disorder: in psychiatry, a personality disorder characterized by the patient's overestimation of his or her own appearance and abilities and an excessive need for admiration.

- Remember that this President set the all time record for international travel in his first year in office. He visited Europe, the Middle East, and other parts of the world many times. He gave speeches, met with heads of state, and generally enjoyed his time in the global spotlight while the country was suffering horrible economic pains back home. When your need for recognition and admiration around the world comes in ahead of the needs of your constituents back home, narcissism immediately comes to mind.


- This President has probably set the record for most photo ops with athletic teams of any other President in history. He does not just meet with the traditional pro sports teams of the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. He meets with soccer teams, Olympic teams, college teams (including the Texas Christian University's championship rifle team!), etc. When you need to constantly remind yourself and the world of your athletic prowess and athletic "coolness," narcissism immediately comes to mind.

- Staying with athletics, the President annually seems to think that many in America care about who he thinks is going to win the NCAA Men's and Women's NCAA basketball championships. He spends time on his picks and then insults the whole country by spending more time being interviewed in detail on ESPN about his picks. With all of the major problems facing this country, why does he think his silly basketball picks are important to America? Narcissism comes to mind.

- I have always loved the old saying: "True leaders give credit and accept blame." Consider three somewhat related quotes from three different Presidents and then determine which ones demonstrate leadership.

President Bush speaking about the capture of Saddam Hussein (I have added the boldness, italics, and larger font on personal pronouns): "The success of yesterday's mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq. The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people. Their work continues, and so do the risks. Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them."

Now consider the words of Jimmy Carter after a military mission to rescue the Iranian hostages back during his term ended up as a failure: "It was my decision to attempt the rescue operation. It was my decision to cancel it when problems developed in the placement of our rescue team for a future rescue operation. The responsibility is fully my own."

Now consider President Obama's words after Bin Laden was killed: "And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of my war against al Qaeda, even as I continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network. Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan . And finally, last week, I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action, and I authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan."

It is pretty obvious who is the narcissist in this group. When the important news comes out that Hussein has been captured, Bush "gives the credit" to all of the brave armed forces members who made it happen. He takes none of the credit.

When the Iranian hostage mission goes wrong, Carter steps up and "takes the blame." He does not blame anybody, anything, of any condition, he takes the blame and responsibility for the botched rescue. (Personally, I am not a big fan of Carter but I thought from an integrity and leadership perspective, this was his finest moment.)

But when we get to President Obama, it is pretty obvious he does not have the Presidential timber of Bush and Carter, giving credit and taking blame. He takes all of the credit. Reading his words, it almost seems like he personally went in with all guns blazing to personally kill Bin Laden. It was his war on al Qaeda, his intelligence community, his direction, his decision, etc.

If this delicate operation had gone horribly wrong, I doubt he would have had the integrity and guts that Carter showed. Like any narcissist, he would have blamed someone or something else for the failure.

- But this is not the only time we have seen this trait in Obama. Consider his speech at the signing of the Dodd-Frank Financial Industry Reform legislation: "Now, even before the crisis hit, I went to Wall Street and I called for common-sense reforms to protect consumers and our economy as a whole.  And soon after taking office, I proposed a set of reforms to empower consumers and investors, to bring the shadowy deals that caused this crisis into the light of day, and to put a stop to taxpayer bailouts once and for all."

It is only after making sure everyone knew how much he had done does he actually credit Dodd and Frank for their efforts. A narcissist always has to be front and center and the focus of attention.

- Speaking of front and center. Consider the following picture from the so-called "beer summit" early in Obama's term:

This picture is taken after the beer summit and the three parties are heading out to face the press corps. Rather than help his elderly friend down the steps, the President is hustling to be first at the press conference while the law enforcement officer he had accused of harassing his friend is actually staying behind to help the elderly gentleman.

Being delusional and narcissistic is certainly not two traits of leadership you want in your President and President Obama seems to have plenty of both of these negative traits. He takes credit, not blame whenever there is a problem.

The economy stinks because of Bush, ATMs, the Japanese tsunami, Republicans, Tea Party members, the weather, it is never his problem or fault. The World Tribune reported earlier this week that Obama administration representatives had reportedly and formally told the Israeli government that Israel is responsible for high U.S. gas prices, not Obama or his energy policies.

In the spring of 2011, the Obama administration submitted a long term budget plan for the country that was so bad that it was unanimously defeated in the Senate. Rather than lead and tell the country the truth about the need to drastically reduce government spending to keep the country fiscally solvent, he took the coward's way out and submitted a business as usual budget that even his own Senate party members rejected. Certainly not displaying any kind of leadership at all.

A few weeks ago he submitted a 2013 Federal government budget that was rejected unanimously by the House of Representatives. It was so bad that EVERY Democrat voted against it. This was another leadership opportunity to level with Americans and lead them out of this fiscal death spiral we are in. As with the spring budget from last year, he refused to lead since it might cost him some votes. Pathetic lack of leadership, time and time again.

A famous line from the movie "Animal House" is uttered by Dean Wormer to one of the frat boys: "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." The translation of that line to describe this administration would look like the following: "Delusional, narcissistic, and unable to lead is no way to go through life." Unfortunately, that is the plight of this country under this administration, nothing more than a Animal House analogy.

"We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:


http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/


The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.


The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

Remember When?

Let's get nostalgic today. Were you alive when the following events occurred:

• 1955 - Elvis Presley appears on television for the first time.
• 1959 - Ford discontinues the Edsel.
• 1962 - The Beatles record their first song.
• 1963 - President Kennedy is assassinated.
• 1965 - The second season of the New York World's Fair opens.
• 1968 - McDonalds introduces the Big Mac

These events occurred a long time ago. Prior to the Internet, iPods, cable television, fax machines, email, hybrid cars, personal computers, Google, microwave ovens, cell phones, disco, death of disco (thank heavens), prior to any terrorist attacks, prior to when we knew there were Kurds/Shiite/Sunnis, and prior to Jon and Kate.

Now consider the following, recent office holding politicians:

• John Dingell - first elected to the House in 1955 (54 years ago)
• Robert Byrd - first elected to the Senate in 1959 (50 years ago)
• Ted Kennedy - first elected to the Senate in 1962 (47 years ago)
• Daniel Inouye - first elected to the Senate in 1963 (46 years ago)
• John Conyers - first elected to the House in 1965 (44 years ago)
• Ted Stevens - first elected to the Senate in 1968 (41 years ago)

I am a great believer that if you are not part of the solution then you must be part of the problem. Given how poorly the country has been run over the past 40 years or so, (we still have a drug problem, we still having failing public education, we still have rising health care costs, we still have no national energy program, we still have Social Security and Medicare heading for bankruptcy, etc.) could it be that these folks and others like them that have long tenures in office are part of the problem? They were elected in totally different eras of world history, eras that are long gone.

Thus, one of the most important steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is to limit the length of politicians' tenures in both the Senate and House. This step will ensure that 1) fresh ideas, minds, and viewpoints are constantly passing through both chambers since keeping the same minds in office decade after decade does not seem to be working and 2) it would hopefully remove much of the corrupting money that goes into election campaigns since politicians would only get one term, possibly freeing them up to make the tough decisions that benefit America rather than the short term, selfish reelection campaign financing decisions they make today.