June, 2015, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Supreme Court Implications, The Economic Implications,and The Human Suffering Implications

Every month for the past three years or so we have had to take time out and review the latest insanity and disasters from the Obama Care legislation. Long ago it only took a day or so to cover it all. But then the law starting taking effect and the “unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” made it impossible to contain the bad news, the heartache, the rising costs, and the stress put on American families to just a day or two.

To review the past discussions on this horrid piece of legislation, enter the term "unfolding disaster" in the search box above or just page through previous month's posts on the right side of this page and click on the various references to Obama Care. Very quickly, as your read the past posts, you will see that this is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

Not only has it disrupted lives, stymied the economy, and increased healthcare costs in this country, it never addressed the various root causes of high healthcare costs. Thus, by never addressing some of the root causes listed below, the legislation has virtually no chance of actually reducing healthcare costs in this country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The healthcare industry in this country needs serious tort reform.
• Federal government crop subsidies lead to our food chain being infested with unhealthy sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
• Current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, lose upwards of $100 billion a year to waste and criminal fraud, billions of dollars that could be used to reduce other healthcare costs in this country.
• Cross state line insurance competition needs to be made easier to do.
• The Obama effort never “followed the money” to actually map out where the high costs paid by Americans for healthcare actually end up.

Since Obama Care never addressed these root causes, we are still going to have those root causes resulting in higher and higher healthcare costs regardless of how well Obama Care is implemented. And since the prime objective of Obama Care was to reduce costs, the legislation will end up being a failure.

So with that gloomy set up, let’s see what Obama Care disasters unfolded in the past month or so.

1) One of my favorite TV shows is “The Big Bang Theory.” Penny is a character on the show, she is a full time waitress and a part time actress. She is constantly verbally sparring with another character on the show, Sheldon, who is a condescending academic genius. There is a running gag where Penny tells Sheldon never to tick off the people who can spit on your food before it is served.

Which brings us to a quote from the President this past week, a taunt directed at the Supreme Court which is about to hand down a ruling that could collapse the entire Obama Care legislation: "This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn't even have been taken up." In other words, you dummies on the Supreme Court, why did you even waste your time on this situation?

Which tells me three things:

• The President is really scared that the Supreme Court will come down with a negative ruling for the law and help it self-destruct and is trying one last desperate attempt to sway the judges.
• Or, the ruling has already been made, it is not good, the President knows it is not good, and is trying to rally public support to make the Supreme Court out as the bad guys.
• Finally, he is really the Sheldon character, calling the Supreme Court (Penny) dumb for even considering the case, in which case the Supreme Court, being comprised of human beings who probably do not like being called dumb, just spit on his food (the Obama Care legislation) to get the final say.

In any case, calling someone dumb while they still control the fate of something you value makes that person the real dummy.

2) The Supreme Court case we are talking about is called King Vs. Burwell. It challenges the administration’s contention that it did not mean what it said in the legislation, namely that only people who get Obama Care policies through state exchanges are entitled to Federal subsidies to pay for those policies. Those people who got their Obama Care policies from the Federal exchange, are not entitled to Federal subsidies, as clearly spelled out in the legislation that Democrats in Congress approved and Obama signed off on.

The writing and intention of this condition is clear in the actual reading of the law. Obama is trying to convince the judges that this is a mere typo and that from a compassion perspective, the judges should ignore was enacted and let his administration does whatever it wants, regardless of what the law says. The reason for the panic is that if the Court cuts off subsidies to about two thirds of Obama Care policy holders, the costs go up, the policyholders cancel their now much more expensive policies and the whole house of cards collapses.

If somehow the judges rule for Obama, then democracy as we know it is over. Any President in the future could then interpret any law anyway he or she wanted, Congress be damned. Obama Care legislation clearly states that only policies obtained via the state exchanges can get subsidies. That was debated, that was what was written into the law, that was what was enacted but is not what the reality is. The administration said, we will ignore that part of the law and do what we want, rule of law be damned.

Theoretically, in the future a Republican President could come into office and say that Roe Vs, Wade is outdated, I will ignore it. He or she could say that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is not what it means,I will ignore it. He or she could say that the Clean Air Act does not apply to clean air,I will ignore it. When the law says “no” and a President wants it to say “yes,” and acts as if it does say “yes,” democracy is over and dictatorship has taken its place.

3) But what it be such a bad thing if the Supreme Court did deal a death blow to Obama Care? From an economic perspective, one recent analysis and research effort says the economy would enjoy a revitalization if Obama Care went away.

The American Action Forum (AAF), a conservative leaning think tank, thinks that would be the case, economically. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum recently told reporters his organization’s research sees many upsides for the downfall of Obama Care. For background, Holtz-Eakin does have some formidable credentials since he is a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

His reasoning goes as follows:

• The majority of Obama Care policyholders previously had insurance policies that were cheaper and better fitted to those policyholders needs so many of the current Obama Care policy hodlers could eventually find their way back to more favorable, less expensive policies.In other words, not every Obama Care polciy holder would then be without health insurance.
• As many policyholders went back to cheaper yet better insurance policies, they would be paying less for insurance, leaving more disposable income to spend in other parts of the economy.
• The downfall of Obama Care would also free up millions of Americans who prefer not to have health insurance and hundreds of thousands of businesses who do not have to pay Obama Care penalties, freeing up untold billions of dollars to expand the economy.
• This analysis estimates that this situation would add 1.2 million workers to the U.S. labor force and increase the hours for 3.3 million part time workers.
• These workers would see wages go up between $830 and $940 a year, putting $13.6 billion back into economic growth.
• “There will be fewer administrative burdens when employers offer full-time employment to qualified employees who will have the opportunity to become specialized and therefore more efficient in their work,” the study says. “We might also expect to see more job growth in these states as employers expand their businesses and offer more hours without the cost of complying with the ACA.”
• Brittany La Couture, the health policy counsel at the AAF, agrees with the studies findings: “Because they will not be subject to the mandate, small to medium size employers may expand employment to more people, or allow their employees to work more than 30 hours per week.” 
• Also, “AAF estimates that there are currently about 3.3 million part-time workers in the states affected by the ruling who are seeking but are unable to find full-time employment.”
• And while the AAF leans conservative, the New York Times recently credited the organization with “following the numbers” and not being swayed purely by ideology.

Economic forecasting like this is often not much more than a stab in the dark. However, it does provide a rational and logical approach to considering the upside of terminating Obama Care, a solution that has no chance of ever fulfilling its goals and promises. 

4) While the AAF study shows that Obama Care has killed job creation and restricted economic growth, which could be reversed if Obama Care was killed, another study, this one by the American Health Policy Institute also concluded that the legislation is shrinking the labor force since it reduces incentives to work. Why? The more a person earns from working at a job, the less they get in Obama Care subsidies to pay for health insurance.

Thus, some people have and will decide the effort of working is not worth it given the decrease in Federal Obama Care subsidies. These people then become net takers from the Federal government, and the American taxpayer, than net contributors to the country and the economy. Eventually, these people become long term, chronic unemployed and their chances of ever finding full time, fulfilling work will approach zero over time. Nice law, incenting people to become idle, lazy and wards of the state.

5) As we often do in this series,m let's finish up today with some heart wrenching stories of how ordinary Americans have gotten screwed by this legislation, courtesy of the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

We can argue economic theories and economic forecasts all day but these stories are the realities of Obama Care and they are not pretty:

ANGELLA - NEVADA: “Housekeeping is a tough job—many of us suffer serious injuries doing this work. And ObamaCare would cause my husband and I even more pain. The Obamacare website says we would have to pay $8,057.04 a year more to keep the great insurance we have now. That’s a $3.87 per hour pay cut. We work hard for our insurance. Why should we have to take a cut in pay for it?”

LIONEL - LOUISIANA: Baton Rouge public relations consultant Lionel Rainey said Wednesday the price of his health insurance will double even though he rarely makes a doctor’s appointment.

His policy is among the 92,793 individual insurance plans that Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon reported would be discontinued because the coverage does not meet the coverage standards set by the federal Affordable Care Act.

Rainey’s plan didn’t meet the minimum standards but he was happy with it. “I don’t go to the doctor much. This was the plan that fit me and fit my lifestyle,” the 35-year-old said.

Rainey declined to name his insurer, but he said the new policy will cost him nearly $600 a month. He said he also will get coverage he does not need, such as a maternity plan. Rainey put plans to expand his business on hold when he got the letter from his insurance company.

He wanted to hire an additional person but is unsure whether he can afford it. As a newlywed, he also must buy insurance coverage for his wife, a full-time graduate student. He does not qualify for subsidies for the exchange.

MARY - CONNECTICUT: My husband & I are self-employed. We own a small retail business and pay for our own health insurance. When ObamaCare was introduced with all the hype of saving money and better coverage, we checked it out. The least expensive premium would triple our cost and increase our deductible from $5000 to $12,500. We then received a letter from our insurance carrier saying we could keep our current policy for another year, but after that, our premium will triple. We may have to close our business if something isn't done about this outrageous plan.

That will do it for today but we still have more unfolding Obama Care stories for tomorrow. Today we learned that the Supreme Court might,and should, render all of the unfolding Obama Care disasters moot when they rule alter this month. Killing off Obama Care might actually improve the economy beyond its tepid and weak performance since Obama Care was enacted. And individual Americans and their families continue to live through the horror of the law’s restrictions, requirements, and higher costs.

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 1: By The Numbers: Military Overreach, Ecnomic Under Perfromance, and More

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. Today, and at least tomorrow, we will look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.

1) Politicians at all levels of American government, local, state, and Federal, have a lot to say about how our kids are educated. Unfortunately, despite spending trillions and trillions of dollars over the past few decades to educate our kids, the bottom line is that America does a horrible job at education. Our kids constantly fall below the academic performance of many other countries on standardized testing.

Which brings us to our first set of numbers today: what states do the most efficient job of educating our kids with the right combination of expense vs. performance, i.e. most bang for the taxpayer education bucks being spent? There are four combinations to this question, three of which are not optimal:

1. Spend a moderate amount and give kids a great education, the preferred route.
2. Spend a lot and give kids a great education. Not bad but not getting the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars spent.
3. Spend a moderate amount and not optimize the education experience. Taxpayers might be happy but the kids are underserved.
4. Spend a lot and not optimize the education experience. The worst combination, taxpayers pay a lot for little in return.

The National Center For Education Statistic recently put together a state by state index analysis of how well each state fell into each category above. Their findings range all of the map:

• The state of Utah spends its education dollars the most efficiently, scoring 86 points in the index analysis despite spending only $6,441 per pupil, on average, less than every other state in the country. Despite the lowest spending, the Utah’s kids reading and math scores beat 20 other states. Thus, Utah falls into the first category listed above, moderate expense and great education.
• Compare Utah to New York which got only 28 points vs. Utah’s 86 points in the index analysis despite spending a whopping $19,396 per pupil per year, about three times per student that Utah spends with far worse results, falling into the fourth category above: spending a lot and getting very little education bang in return.
• The District of Columbia is even worse than New York, with an analysis value of only 26 despite spending more than even New York per student per year, $19,847.
• Massachusetts is also interesting in that their kids are the most educated in the country but they spend a lot to get that level, generating only 39 points in the analysis, a little more than half as effective as Utah.

In general, as we see in the U.S. map below, states outside of the northeast get much better bang for their education dollars. Unfortunately, there are a lot of kids in the northeast so there are a lot of U.S. kids not getting a good education despite the large amount of money being spent on them on a relative basis.

The bottom line is that some states across the country are getting the best of both worlds: efficiently spending of taxpayer dollars but still getting good to great education results. If the Federal government was doing its job, it would be collecting the best practices from the blue states above and disseminating those best practices across the country. 


But as in most cases, the Federal government bureaucracy, specifically the Department of Education, is not doing its job relative to the rest of the world’s kids. We as a nation end up in the fourth category above, high cost of education with low results.

2) One budget number from Obama's recent Federal budget submittal to Congress stands out. That number is 2.3%, the assumed annual economic growth in our economy in the future. And that number might be optimistic, according to the Congressional Budget Office who foresees an annual economic growth for the country of between 2.1 and 2.2%.

Why are these depressing numbers? Since the end of World War II, annual economic growth in the United States has averaged 3.3%. But since 2007, the annual average growth has been only 1.5%, less than half of the long term trend. 

According to Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum and former Congressional Budget Office Director, if the country does not attain at least an average annual 3% growth per year than the economy will underperform to the tune of NOT producing 1.2 million new jobs and long term will depress average household income by over $4,000.

But the Obama administration does not think we can do any better than a weak 2.3% annual growth. That is how unimaginative their thinking and abilities are. If we agree with their status quo approach, than the economic reach, freedom, and wealth of all Americans will be lower than any time since the end of the Great Depression.

But it does not have to be that way, as we pointed out with many suggestions in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government:”

• Simplify the tax code, with an emphasis on overall tax reduction, so that it promotes growth and injects capital into the private sector of the economy where it can be used more efficiently than wasted by the Federal bureaucracy.
• Reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years to get the deficit spending and national debt burden under control to reduce the amount of wealth that the country has to devote for debt payments and interest on the national debt.
• Reduce the ridiculous amount of over regulation of business in this country so that business owners can focus on growing their business and the economy and not on complying with inane Federal regulations.
• Finally come up with a strategic national energy plan that reduces the outflow American wealth to oil exporting countries and reducing the economic burden of energy costs for businesses and consumers, freeing up more money for economic growth.
• Fix the problem of escalating healthcare costs once and for all, something that Obama Care comes nowhere close to doing, in order to free up more wealth for economic growth.

It is possible to return the country to robust economic status. It is just the current set of Washington politicians are not capable of doing the job, otherwise they would have done it already.

3) One last set of distressing numbers for today. According to a recent Huffington Post article:

• During the fiscal year 2014, the Federal government had deployed U.S. Special Operations military personnel into 133 countries around the world.
• Thus, we have military personnel in 70% of the world’s nations.
• These numbers in the article supposedly come from Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt who is a public affairs officer with the U.S. Special operations Command (SPOCOM).
• At some time over the past three years, our Special Forces were in a staggering 150 different countries.
• Their missions ranged from training to kill or capture military raids.

I get it that we need to protect the country and our citizens from terrorists that might be anywhere in the world. But do we really need to be in 150 countries? Is that a cost effective way to spend our military budget dollars? Is that a good diplomacy approach to build good relations with other countries and their citizens, sticking U.S. special Forces in 150 different countries? I would love to see a cost benefit analysis of such a world wide interference and/or presence in so many countries but I doubt that it exists. 

Maybe, just maybe, these deployment numbers are why the Defense Department budget is so high, regard for America is so low, and our safety from terrorists attacks seems to get weaker and weaker every day.

That will do it for today’s numbers:

• Military personnel and the supporting budget deployed in well over a hundred different countries.
• A political class that has no clue how to grow the economy to at least historical standards and is planning for anemic growth in the future.
• We continue to spend education dollars in record numbers for minimal results despite some states that have found ways to spend a moderate amount of money for outstanding educational results.

More depressing numbers tomorrow as we continue to prove that we are living through an inept and unimaginative set of politicians whose inability to lead and create is depressing our wallets, our freedoms, and our futures. The numbers prove it.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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

Tax Day Travesties and Facts, Part 2

This is our second post regarding how much we paid in taxes last year and how little we received in return from the American political class for those taxes in both the quality and quantity of government services. The first post from yesterday can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/tax-day-travesties-and-facts-part-1.html

We will be showing in these tax day posts that we have truly moved from a state of heavy taxation into a state of tax oppression. Many Americans’ Tax Freedom Day, that day of the new year when we stop working for all forms of American government and start working for ourselves and our families has not even occurred yet. Almost four months into the new year.

And what we do get from the political class in the form of government programs and support is usually inefficient, ineffective, criminally targeted and often make the original problem worse or create new problems for Americans via unintended consequences. The tax insanity continues today with the following random facts about taxation in America and how it is often no more than highway robbery.

1) Consider what some of your tax payments bought for you and the country last year, as documented by the Watchdog.org organization:

• An $876,752 study on snail sex - A University of Iowa study is trying to figure out if it’s better for snails to reproduce sexually or asexually. Finally, an answer to the question everyone has been asking, a question that has absolutely no bearing on the lives of 99.99999999% of Americans.
• A $16 million tropical vacation - That was the final price tag on President Obama’s most recent holiday vacations to Hawaii and Africa.
• A $750,000 study on how kid cartoons contribute to obesity - The National Science Foundation awarded two grants totaling $750,000 to find out if cartoon characters are making children overweight. No, eating too much junk food is making kids fat, not getting enough exercise is making kids fat. I could have answered the question for far less than $750,000.
• A $2.4 million program to develop “origami condoms” - It includes male and female versions and the “first of its kind anal condom.” There is a joke about screwing the taxpayer somewhere in here.
• A $30,410 “beauty salon” in a Federal prison -At least it’s a women’s federal prison.
• Millions in drugs for prisoners -Medicare sent millions in improper payments to incarcerated criminals. In other words, bilking Medicare is so easy even prisoners behind bars can do it and not get caught.
• A $98,670 outhouse -The Federal Bureau of Land Management may have just built the most expensive outhouse ever at the Swede Park Trail Head in Alaska.
• $700 million of Obama Care promotion -Despite President Obama’s claim that the government did not “make a hard sell” for Obama Care, his administration spent nearly $700 million to promote the law. Another Presidential lie.

When you wrote your income tax check to the IRS last week, some of that money you earned went to pay for idiotic programs like these.

2) The best way to grow the economy is for private business owners to expand their operations and grow their businesses. However, any distraction that keeps them from doing that, e.g. filling out tax forms and returns, hinders their ability to do that very important task. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the average small business owner spends 80 hours each year complying with U.S. tax regulations. 80 hours a year, the equivalent of two 40 hour work weeks. 4% of the entire year is spent just on filing small business tax forms on average.

This is time that the average business owner cannot use to look for new markets, develop new products, train his staff, take better care of customers, all activities that would eventually help us all by expanding the economy. Instead, he is sitting down and laboriously trying to stay legal in the face of a Federal tax code that is over 70,000 pages long. 

In light of this oppressive task, the Chamber calculated what one could do if they were given an extra 80 hours a year. Turns out, you could do quite a bit.

• You could complete 17 marathons (if you run the U.S. average pace of 10:34 mile/hour). 
• You could go around the world 1.7 times (on a commercial jet) or twice if you were on a military jet. 
• You could go to the moon 4.8 times (if you traveled on NASA’s New Horizons Pluto mission). 
• You could cook 14.5 perfect 20-pound turkeys (unstuffed, and back-to-back for 5.5 hours each, not simultaneously) 
• You could watch all eight Harry Potter movies four times.
• Or, if you are a small business owner, you could complete your 2013 taxes.

A new survey of small business owners by the National Small Business Association (NSBA) reveals that more than half of small employers say the administrative burdens and paperwork associated with tax season pose the greatest harm to their businesses. One in four business owners surveyed said they spend at least three full weeks on the annual chore. How sad is it when the American political class is the greatest source of harm for American small businesses?

If it is any consolation, a tax analysis by the American Action Forum found that even the Treasury Department and IRS are also buckling under the administrative burdens of tax season:

[T]he Department of Treasury’s paperwork burden is at its highest level in history. At more than 7.8 billion hours, Treasury’s paperwork budget has increased 1.5 billion hours since FY 2010, or 19 percent. Since 1995, the earliest year AAF could compile data, Treasury’s burden has increased 47 percent.

A 19% increase since just four years ago is a great measure of how out of control the tax system is in this country. It is a system that is robbing the economy of vibrancy and wealth and overburdening an already overburdened bureaucracy. In other words everyone, consumers, businesses, IRS are choking on the tax code with no substantial benefits.

The NSBA report also found that a the clear majority of small businesses (67%) polled by NSBA support broad tax reform that will reduce corporate and individual tax rates coupled with reduced deductions. This thought and feeling was recently captured by the Chamber’s Chief economist Marty Regalia: 

Comprehensive pro-growth tax reform is the major key to jump-starting the economy, promoting job creation, and ensuring long-run improvement in productivity, wage growth, and our standard of living. It can help us maintain our competitive edge in the global economy and address some of the problems in income and wealth distribution. Moreover, it is an absolutely necessary component to getting our fiscal house in order.

Now, all we need to do is educate the American people, elect a Congress that can work together for the common good, adopt a common goal, and convince the president that leadership sometimes requires the courage to get out and stay out in front.

Work together, common good, common goal, leadership, courage. Good luck with getting those attributes from the current set of politicians in Washington. These are the same people who gave us a tax code with over 70,000 pages in the first place.

3) We have been discussing how we get very little back in quality services from the Washington political class despite being placed under oppressive taxation. But sometimes we get absolutely nothing back for the tax check we wrote last week as shown by the fact that the State Department has allocated $1.5 million of our tax money for job development programs in distressed neighborhoods….in Belize. 

We are not going to spend money to help the over 20 million Americans who are either underemployed or unemployed. We are not going to help the hundreds and hundreds of distressed neighborhoods in the U.S. We are going to help distressed neighborhoods and unemployed people in Belize. I challenge anyone to find Belize on the map, never mind sending them $1.5 million an amount that probably will not make any difference anyway, given it is so small.

Specifically, the State Department Belize program has the following objectives:

1. “The proposal will confront the root causes of violence and crime in a creative and effective way and seek to create positive cultural and social conditions, which are the foundations of a peaceful and orderly society.” Sounds like BS and even if this was achievable, wouldn’t starting in U.S. cities like Detroit or Camden be a far better return on American taxpayer dollars? They certainly need the foundations of a peaceful and orderly society to be created in these decaying American cities.
2. “Root causes in Belize include, but are not limited to, the lack of economic development, the lack of skills and/or tradecraft, the lack of conflict resolution skills, and/or the lack of opportunity for youth.” Again, substitute Detroit, Camden or a hundred other American towns and cities for the word Belize and the statement would hold true except that it would intend to help Americans who are suffering.
3. “Marginalized youth are empowered when given a voice and opportunities. Equipping marginalized youth and their communities with economic opportunities and/or business training can help them reach their true potential as entrepreneurs and improve citizen security.” The current unemployment rate for American youth is almost 21%. Shouldn’t they get first crack at reaching their true potential?

Thus, you can rest assured that your tax money and belated Tax Freedom Day are helping out needy people in Belize, where ever that is.

So let’s review. Your hard earned money and ever growing Tax Freedom Day pays for such vital services as origami condoms and the intimate sex knowledge and lives of snails, it hinders small businesses from growing their businesses and economy as result of an onerous task of just completing the marathon tax forms and understanding a voluminous tax code, and it sends the money collected during tax seasons to far away places like Belize, not even trying to deliver quality government services and support to the very people who paid for it in the first place.

You cannot make this idiocy up and the sad part, we still need another day to complete the tax season shuffle of insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Part 6, August, 2013 Obama Care Update: Main Stream Media Finally Recognizes the Disaster, Major Unfinished Operational Tasks, and More

Okay, apologies up front. Over the past six days we have been examining and reviewing the many disasters and fiascoes that were spawned as a result of Obama Care. One would have thought six days would have been enough.

We reviewed the long list of root causes underlying our high health care costs and how Obama Care addresses almost none of them.

We reviewed how Obama Care is causing American workers to lose salary hours, reducing their take home pay.

We reviewed how Obama Care is causing business owners to pull back on hiring and business expansion, stunting overall economic growth in the country.

We  reviewed how the  underlying systems to support the rollout of some major components of Obama Care are far behind schedule and are likely to not be ready when scheduled.

We reviewed how the inadequate training of Obama Care “navigators” and the inadequate data systems security protocols will turn Obama Care’s processes into an identity thief’s paradise.

We reviewed how seven million Americans, per the Congressional Budget Office,  are likely to lose access to their current health care insurance programs, the exact opposite of what Obama Care was supposed to do.

We reviewed how Americans are likely to experience severe sticker price shock when they see how substantially higher their health care premiums are going to be under Obama Care.

We reviewed how smaller hospitals are likely to see severe economic days as Obama Care raped the Medicaid and Medicare budgets to fund its own processes.

We reviewed how every reputable opinion poll over the past few weeks has shown that the majority or at least plurality of Americans see Obama Care as a bad thing, respondents think that they will end paying more for health insurance, and are scared about losing their current health insurance options.

We reviewed how Obama and other politicians are illegally changing aspects of the legislation without going back through the proper legislative Congressional approval of those changes.

And after all of this review, we still have not covered all of the problems, given the new problems that have arisen just in the past week or so. Rather than wait until next month when we do another set of reviews, we thought it was important to get the following insanity out there for your review and depression:

1) The family of NBC news outlets have always been the most biased in their reporting when it comes to Barack Obama. They often come off as just another arm of the President’s public relations department. Thus, when someone like NBC News airs a news segment that is critical of Obama Care you know that it must be a bad piece of legislation. Consider the following quotes taken directly from the broadcast of such a piece on August 13, 2013:

• The NBC Nightly News segment concluded that there would be adverse impacts of Obama Care on the people it intends to help, leaving some “with no insurance and a pay cut.”
• Lisa Myers, a reporter involved in the segment, stated that NBC News “spoke to almost 20 small businesses and other entities around the country. Almost all said because of the new law, they’d be cutting back hours for some employees.” 
• Additionally, a top union head told NBC News:”Wait a year, and you’ll see a tremendous impact as workers have their hours reduced and their incomes reduced.”

So, NBC News has found that Americans, small businesses, and unions do not like and fear Obama Care. These are the entities that are most likely to be impacted by the legislation so someone in Washington should be heeding their opinions before this disaster hit’s the proverbial fan.

2) Unfortunately, it appears that many people in the Obama administration are NOT heeding these opinions. In the same NBC News segment, Jason Furman, who is a  top economic adviser to President Obama, said that he “sees no systematic evidence” that the health-care law is “having an adverse impact on the number of hours people are working.

No disrespect to Mr. Fruman, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this administration made him deny the reality that has been in the news, and reported in this blog, for at least the past two years. We have discussed the many businesses and government entities that have issued press releases or held news conferences announcing how they were cutting workers hours and cutting the number of jobs they could be filling all because of Obama Care.

To not be aware of these realities is very scary. It shows an administration that is either very out of touch with reality, does not want to know about reality, thinks that they can lie about reality, or really does not care what is happening to American workers. In any case, their actions are irresponsible and despicable.

3) Previously, we had discussed the fact that legal cases against Obama Care were moving forward and that many of them, according to experts, had merit and a real chance of succeeding. One of the suits, filed by the Oklahoma attorney general, made it through a major milestone this week when that attorney general, Scott Pruitt announced: “The court rejected the federal government’s argument that Oklahoma lacked standing to challenge the law, allowing us to proceed with this pivotal case. We’re optimistic the court will recognize what states have known for months that the IRS disregarded the law by making the large employer mandate effective in Oklahoma or in any of the 33 other states without a state health care exchange.”

Apparently, the legislation, as written and enacted, does not allow the Federal government to force itself, its tenets, and the IRS onto the 34 states that have rejected setting up their own Obama Care health insurance exchanges. The Supreme Court decision that said Obama care was legal also gave the states the right to opt out of the exchange process. Obama knows that if 34 states are not included in the overall Obama Care effort, the financials and momentum of the legislation collapses, which would be good news for America, bad news for Obama. The first step towards the potentially good outcome is in the books.

4) The American Action Forum website recently published a pictorial representation of what has to be done in the next 50 days to make Obama Care operational. Remember, these people have had three years to get ready for this major October 1, 2013 rollout. 

According to the website, fifty major tasks have to miraculously come together in just 50 days for this monstrosity to have any chance of working. Take a look for yourself of what still has to be done and ask honestly yourself if this is not truly a “train wreck” (Senator Max Baucus’s words) ready to implode (double click picture for a larger view):


5) Consider the following articles that major news outlets have written over the past year or so and then decide if this fiasco has any chance of reducing costs, expanding coverage, or actually working, three years after they started working on its rollout:

• U.S. schools face tough decisions on Obamacare benefits - Reuters, August 14 
• A Limit on Consumer Costs Is Delayed in Health Care Law - New York Times, August 12
• Congress wins relief on Obamacare health plan subsidies - Reuters, August 7 
• In the Affordable Care Act, Some Children Left Behind - New York Times, August 7 
• Obamacare months behind in testing IT data security: government - Reuters, August 6 
• Obamacare's Challenge: a Skeptical Public - Wall Street Journal, August 5 
• Concord: Half of Affordable Care Act call center jobs will be part-time - Contra Costa Times, July 25 
• Marketing ‘Obamacare’ Shaping Up As Big Challenge - Associated Press, July 24 
• Shutdown looms over ObamaCare - The Hill, July 23 
• Obama asks Hollywood celebrities to help pitch ObamaCare enrollment - The Hill, July 23 
• Doctors are skeptical and confused about ObamaCare, survey Finds - CNBC, July 22 
• Obama extols health care law amid public doubts - July 18, Associated Press 
• More Restaurants Replace Full-Timers, Concerned About Insurance - The Wall Street Journal, July 14 
• Union Letter: Obamacare Will ‘Destroy The Very Health and Wellbeing’ of Workers - The Wall Street Journal, July 12 
• White House Has Known For Months ObamaCare Implementation Wouldn't Work - National Journal, July 9 
• Health insurance marketplaces will not be required to verify consumer claims - Washington Post, July 5 
• Delay Stirs Broader Worries About Obama Health Law  Associated Press, July 3 
• U.S. to delay key health-reform provision to 2015 - Reuters, July 2 
• A big Medicaid gap looms in Obama health care law - Associated Press, July 1 
• NFL says no to promoting ObamaCare - Washington Post, June 28 
• White House recruiting Hollywood stars for ObamaCare rollout - The Hill, June 25 
• Newly insured to deepen primary care doctor gap - Associated Press, June 22 
• Coverage may be unaffordable for low-wage workers - Associated Press, June 13 
• Like your health care? You May Be Losing It - Associated Press, May 29 
• Some unions now angry about health care overhaul - Associated Press, May 24 
• UnitedHealth, Aetna and Cigna opt out of California insurance exchange - Los Angeles Times, May 22 
• Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law - The Wall Street Journal, May 19 
• Half of U.S. Small Businesses Think Health Law Bad for Them - Gallup, May 10 
• Part-timers to lose pay amid health act's new math - Los Angeles Times, May 2 
• Obama's Legacy: A Health Care Law That Hurts His Party - National Journal, May 2 
• Reid: More funding needed to prevent ObamaCare from becoming 'train wreck' - The Hill, May 1
• Botched ObamaCare rollout tops Democratic fears for 2014 election - The Hill, May 1
• Democrats fret over ObamaCare as 2014 looms - Politico, April 30 
• Lawmakers, aides may get ObamaCare exemption - Politico, April 24 
• Baucus warns of 'huge train wreck' enacting ObamaCare provisions - The Hill, April 17 
• ObamaCare Incompetence - Time Magazine, April 2 

• Small Firms’ Offer of Plan Choices Under Health Law Delayed - The New York Times, April 1 
• Kathleen Sebelius: ObamaCare Implementation May Cause Some Health Care Costs To Rise -Reuters, March 26 
• Study: Health overhaul to raise claims cost 32 pct - Associated Press, March 26 
• Senate backs symbolic repeal of medical device tax - Reuters, March 22 
• Beige Book Says ObamaCare Is Costing Jobs and Sales - CNBC, March 6 

Consider some of the words that the mainstream press are using to describe what is happening: train wreck, costing jobs, delays, costs to rise, fret, fears, angry, unaffordable, destroy, skeptical, confused, etc. Even if you do not believe me, check out some of these articles to find others’ pessimistic outlooks on how bad this legislation is going to be. Apparently everyone sees the train wreck coming but those that work in the White House and this administration.

That’s enough for today. But tomorrow is another day where I promise it will be the end of the bad news from Obama Care… for this month.

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