Showing posts with label bankrupting america. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bankrupting america. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

February, 2015, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Higher Costs, Lower Enrollments, A Supreme Court Death Blow and More

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 or move on to other career 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 policy holders 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.

So, let’s take a few days and take a look at the latest Obama Care disasters and fiascoes:

1) The wonderful website, "Bankrupting America,” has done a great job tracking the failures of Obama Care over the years. They recently published their view of the latest five disasters:

- So far, according to the Obama administration, 9.9 million people have signed up for insurance through the Federal and state operated Obama Care exchanges. 7.5 million were on the Federal exchange and 2.4 were on the state exchanges. This is considerably short of the original second year estimate of over 13 million, the estimate that was used to sell in the program, with the shortage being about a somewhat embarrassing 24%. That original estimate was reduced to 9.1 million in late 2014.

And although 9.9 million have signed up, that does not mean those people will follow through, actually pay for a real policy and thus, activate a real policy. If history is any indication, about 20% of the 9.9 million will not pay and activate, reducing the 9.9 million to about 8.0 million, missing even the administration’s revised estimate for second year signups, 9.1 million, by over one million.

- According to The New York Times, “The Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees, high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the trend, experts say. The theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care spending. But some experts say the new policies have also left many Americans scrambling to track expenses from a multitude of sources — such as separate deductibles for network and non-network care, or payments for drugs on an insurer’s ever-changing list of drugs that require high co-pays or are not covered at all.”

In other words, higher premiums, higher deductibles, more narrow networks, and tremendously more hassle, the exact opposite of what was promised.

- According to The Shreveport Times, “It’s a deep and common concern across the United States, where employer plans cover 60 percent of working-age Americans, or about 150 million people. Coverage long considered the gold standard of health insurance now often requires workers to pay so much out-of-pocket that many feel they must skip doctor visits, put off medical procedures, avoid filling prescriptions and ration pills — much as the uninsured have done. In recent Commonwealth Fund survey found that four in 10 working-age adults skipped some kind of care because of the cost, and other surveys have found much the same. The portion of workers with annual deductibles — what consumers must pay before insurance kicks in — rose from 55 percent eight years ago to 80 percent today, according to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And a Mercer study showed that 2014 saw the largest one-year increase in enrollment in ‘high-deductible plans’ — from 18 percent to 23 percent of all covered employees.”

Higher deductibles and people forgoing care because of the higher costs, the exact opposite of what was promised from Obama relative to Obama Care.

- According to the San Jose Mercury News: “One year on the explosive, health law-induced growth of Medi-Cal, it appears one of the most alarming predictions of critics is coming true: The supply of doctors hasn’t kept up with demand. One recent study suggests the number of primary care doctors in California per Medi-Cal patient is woefully below federal guidelines. ‘If you’re pregnant, you get help,’ Moreno said. ‘But if you’re 49 and not pregnant, you have to wait for everything.’ In fact, seven months after Moreno’s surgery, her original surgeon’s office called just to say they still couldn’t fit her in. At least 1.2 million Californians have signed up for a private insurance plan since enrollment began in October 2013 under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. But it’s Medi-Cal that has witnessed the largest growth — 2.7 million since the controversial law opened the program up to many more recipients in January 2014. By mid-2016, more than 12.2 million people — nearly a third of all Californians — will be on Medi-Cal, state health officials say.”

This is what happens when you do not address the underlying causes of a problem, you get more problems. As we have said many times in these posts and the San Jose Mercury News is confirming, the good news is that you now have health insurance, the bad news is that you cannot get health care or a access to a doctor

- According to CNBC, “A number of Staples store managers are now threatening to discipline part-time workers—”up to and including termination”—if they clock in for more than 25 hours on the job per week, a new report reveals. Those draconian threats at the office-supply store giant coincide with the start in January of Obamacare regulations that require large employers to offer affordable health insurance coverage to employees who work 30 hours or more per week, or pay a fine of up to $3,000 per worker. Staples denies the new threats that could send workers dusting off their resumes have any connection with the Affordable Care Act, employees who spoke with BuzzFeed News suggested there was a clear link. ‘Before January, it was a smack on the wrist if anyone went over 25 hours—they got an email scolding them saying, ‘You went over 25, try not to do that,’ a Staples employee told BuzzFeed News, which first reported the threats of termination. ‘But now it’s become really serious…they’ve threatened to write up managers and every person that goes over 25 hours.’”

As predicted many times, the 30 hour work week minimum, arbitrarily imposed by Obama Care, a stupid definition from day one as far as defining full time work, is resulting in full time employees being turned into part time workers, both at Staples and thousands of other companies across the country. Thus, these people still do not have health care coverage and now have less hours and less income to pay for health care insurance on their own. Stupid.

None of these realities are new, they have been predicted for the past several years by people way smarter than me. And our President refuses to acknowledge that maybe mistakes were made and need to be corrected in order to preserve his vanity and ego despite the suffering of millions of Americans across the country.

2) Let’s follow up on two key points made above:
  • First, let’s assume that the 9.9 million estimate is a gross estimate and that eventually the real number of people that actually pay for Obama Care policies is around 8.0 million based on past purchasing behavior. If independent sources are correct in their estimates, that between 6 and 7 million people lost insurance coverage because of Obama Care, the net result of this massive and massively expensive piece of legislation relative to the incremental people that now have health care insurance is only between one million and two million. This is a pathetic result of such a hyped and expensive government effort. 
  • Second, if we are to believe the Obama administration and their estimates from above, about 76% of those who signed up for an Obama Care policy did so through the Federal exchange. If the Supreme Court rules this June that those policy holders are NOT entitled to a Federal subsidy, as clearly stated and legislated in the law’s wording, then millions and millions of people will lose access to subsidies. This loss will probably lead millions of them to drop their expensive Obama Care policies and we will be right back where we started five years ago relative to reining in the high cost of healthcare. The only difference will be is that we as a nation would have spent untold billions of dollars for nothing and health care costs will continue to grow unabated, all due to the incompetence of the Obama administration and the Washington political class.
3) As tax season gets serious, it is worthwhile to revisit a 2013 University of California, Berkeley study on what could happen the year after Obama Care hits from a tax perspective:
  • The study predicted that a family of four could be hit with an incremental tax bill because of Obama Care from a few hundred dollars up to a whopping $11,200.
  • This is due to the so-called “clawback”provision of the legislation that requires Americans to pay back via their tax returns any Obama Care subsidies they received beyond that they were due.
  • The study estimated that four in ten low income families will be faced with this clawback charge on April 15.
  • Authors of the Berkeley study, actually written by supporters of the health-care law, warned the repayment feature could kill future support for Obama Care: “Repayment requirements could lead to public dissatisfaction with the exchanges. And if there is much media attention to the need for repayments, some people could be dissuaded from participating in the exchanges,” they cautioned. [W]orkers who receive income that’s 100 percent to 400 percent of the federal poverty line could face difficult repayments ranging from $600 to $2,500. A repayment requirement of $2,500 could be a financial shock to a family of two earning $50,000 a year.” 
When your supporters are worried about the negative ramifications of the law, such as the Berkeley researchers were supposed were, then you know that the legislation is on shaky ground.

That will do it for today, new news but nothing we did not already know about this law:
  • It is not reducing healthcare costs.
  • It is making a doctor shortage worse.
  • It is causing people to not get the healthcare they may need, either because of high deductibles or a shortage of doctors.
  • Millions of people are about to get slammed on their taxes because of Obama Care.
  • The number of people signing up for Obama Care is below both the original projection and the more recent downward prediction.
More disasters tomorrow, with a detailed look at how low the INCREMENTAL impact of the law has really been.

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




Monday, January 26, 2015

The Obama Epic Fail Series, Part 2C - Economics


We are going to take a few days and discuss the track record of the Obama Presidency across several perspectives. The impetus for this discussion and review was the fact that when the world leaders and millions of French men and women rallied in France to protest and take a stand against global Islamic terrorism, this President embarrassed himself and the United States by NOT attending the gathering of world leaders in Paris. In our opinion, this was an epic fail and a missed historical opportunity.

Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.

This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris. 

If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.

The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.

But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, epic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.

Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:


  • Transparency and integrity
  • Economic policy
  • Foreign policy
  • Healthcare policy
  • Government management policy

Economic Policy Part C

1) President Obama presided over the first ever credit agency rating downgrade of the financial viability of the Federal government. None of the forty three Presidents who preceded him, despite some of which dealt with world wars and economic depressions, ever managed the U.S. economy so badly that the nation's credit worthiness was downgraded.

2) The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, recently took a look at some of the latest economic statistics to see if the rosy picture the Obama administration is trying to paint about the economy was true. Unfortunately but no unexpectedly, the fantasy of the Obama administration does not match the grim reality of the economic situation that pervades the country:

  • Obama Care will cost the country $1.84 TRILLION over the next ten years. So much for the promise that the legislation would reduce the cost of health care over time.
  • The Obama administration has added $95 billion in annual regulatory burden to the economy, or over $800 for every U.S. household.
  • 46 million Americans received food assistance in 2014, a number that is up 13 million since Obama took office.
  • over 400,000 construction jobs have disappeared since Obama took office.
  • 321,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared since Obama took office.
  • The labor force participation rate is 62.7%, down three percent during the Obama administration and at its lowest level since the dysfunctional Carter administration in 1978.
You cannot claim you are doing a good job at managing the economy when hundreds of thousands good paying jobs disappear, people have given up looking for work, and the cost of living has gone up as a result of self inflicted burdens of debt, Obama Care, and over regulation.

The Bankrupting America data sources and original article can be accessed at:


3) The Wall Street Journal recently reported that recently survey found that 62% of Americans say that they do not have enough savings to cover an unexpected $500 car repair or a $1,000 home repair. 28% of those surveyed they would have to borrow money from friends or family or over extend their credit card bills to handle the situation.  

You cannot say that the economy is in good shape if more than two thirds of Americans are living that close to the edge of fiscal insolvency.

4) Let's wrap this third part of our analysis on how the Obama administration has been an epic failure when it comes to economic management, policies, and strategies. The following charts come from a recent analysis of the President's State Of The Union by the Heritage Foundation:  

- The Obama recovery from the recession took 77 months. Previous economic recoveries over the past fifty years were far shorter despite involving stagflation and other severe recessions, as illustrated by the following graph from Heritage:

(These figures are through August of 2014)















- Not only has unemployment taken so long to recover during the Obama recovery, but overall economic growth has still not returned to the levels that woulds have been expected based on previous recessions and Presidential administrations' reaction to it:


1salim

















- Despite Obama's claim that he is for the poor and middle class in this country, his economic policies have hit the poorer citizens in this country far more than the more affluent citizens:


1sherk


That will do it for this three part series on the Obama administration's epic fail when it comes to managing the economy vitality and growth of the country. Despite annual trillion dollar deficit spending, an energy revolution, a failed $800 billion economic stimulus plan, and trillions of printed dollars from the Federal Reserve, this administration failed to take advantage of these historic conditions. We ended up with weak employment growth, tepid economic growth, non-existent wage growth, expensive regulatory burdens, etc., definitely an epic fail of this administration.

Tomorrow we will move on to look at how well or how poorly the administration has done int he foreign affairs arena. Want to bet we are looking a different area but another epic fail?


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










Wednesday, November 12, 2014

November, 2014 Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Data Processing Issues, Less Enrollees Than Announced and Personal Heartache Stories

Although we just finished up almost two weeks of political class insanity, a regular monthly feature of this blog, we did not talk about any Obama Care insanity. We purposely avoided the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care since it deserves its own, dedicated set of posts. That is the only way to do justice to the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the worst set of Washington politicians to ever hold office. 

For a number of years we have been writing about Obama Care and the disasters, pain, and anguish it has generally caused. It has restricted health care access, raised health care costs, substantially added to the national debt, suppressed economic growth, contributed to high unemployment, and has no real shot of ever reducing health care costs in this country since it never addressed the root causes of high health care costs in this country. 

To access past posts in the subject, just enter “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. You will then be presented with dozens of posts containing hundreds of reasons why Obama Care was such an idiotic approach from day one. Starting today and likely going on for many days afterwards will be the latest disasters from this heinous piece of legislation that have popped up in just the past month or so. 

1) Last year when Obama Care officially launched, or flopped, the Obama administration decided to delay the equivalent process for small businesses. However, as the new Obama Care enrollment window approaches later in November, the administration is trying to get the Federal government’s small business online health care exchange process underway. 

According to a recent Cato article, the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) is supposed to provide an online portal for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees to purchase insurance. The SHOP process theoretically allows small business employers to provide a monetary contribution towards an employee’s health insurance purchase and also receive Federal government financial support in return. 

However, relying on a recent New York Times article, Cato shows that this Obama Care process is also likely going to be a house of horrors: 

  • Some of Obama Care’s small business health insurance plans approved for use on the exchange do not show up when accessed. 
  • The SHOP website exchange worked well during testing with some web browsers, like Chrome, but performed poorly with other browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox.
  • Health care premiums and other policy charges for some plans were erroneously displayed as percentages rather than dollar amounts, e.g. 350 percent rather than $350. 
  • For some households, the principal health insurance subscriber ended being listed as a dependent, or vice versa. 
  • The Obama administration is claiming that the SHOP website will be functional when open enrollment starts on November 15 but given their track record from last year, I would not bet that is the case. 
How well SHOP works even if its data systems work is cloudy, given the lack of success state level SHOP programs have had over the past year. While California signed up 1.4 million people through its state health insurance exchange, its small-business optioin enrolled only 1,700 companies statewide, with 11,500 employees and dependents. In Minnesota, the small-business exchange signed up 190 employers covering only 1,500 people. 

The complexity of filing and using Obama Care procedures for small business is likely to be too much effort for small business owners to go through for any Federal subsidies they may receive. Hold on for another bumpy and likely disastrous Obama Care data systems nightmare. 

2) The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, recently took a look at where we stand relative to Obama Care one year or so after it launched. Their “Top 5 Things To Know” about the status of Obama Care include: 

- Some Age Groups Experienced Healthcare Premium Increases Of 78 Percent In 2014. Bankrupting America cites a recent Washington Times article that reported on a new study which showed some age groups were experiencing Obama Care healthcare premium costs going up by as much as 78%: “Average insurance premiums in the sought-after 23-year-old demographic rose most dramatically, with men in that age group seeing an average 78.2% price increase before factoring in government subsidies, and women having their premiums rise 44.9%, according to a report by HealthPocket scheduled for release Wednesday.”

- Thirty Year-Olds Experienced The Second Highest Premium Rate Increases In 2014. The same study looked at data from the two largest metropolitan cities in each state and focused on three age groups: 23, 30 and 63. According to the analysis: “The premium increases for 30-year-olds were almost as high as for 23-year-olds — 73.4% for men and 35.1% for women.”

- As Of May 2014, More Than 214,000 Doctors Chose Not To Participate In Any Obama Care Plans. On Monday, an article in on The Daily Caller website discussed a new study showing doctors are choosing not accept Obama Care plans due to costs: “As of May 2014, over 214,000 doctors wouldn’t participate in Obamacare plans, and that number may be growing, according to AAF, a free-market think tank in Washington. Obamacare puts physicians — especially the dwindling number of those in private practice — in an especially difficult financial situation, expecting doctors to eat the costs of patients who discontinue coverage and to simply take on more patients to make up for bottom-level reimbursements. Exchange plans nationwide pay on average significantly less than plans in the private market and even Medicare, according to AAF. 

While private plans generally pay doctors $1.00 for performing a given service, Medicare averages just $0.80; exchange plans are allowing doctors just $0.60 for the same thing. That puts Obamacare plans more in line with Medicaid reimbursements, AAF reports, and Medicaid’s low reimbursement rates have been driving doctors away for years.” 

This 214,000 estimate means that about 20% of the nation’s doctors are not partaking of Obama Care. Now, one could make the claim that the reverse is good news: 80% of the nation’s doctors are participating. However, given the low reimbursement levels, which number do we think will grow in the future and how good will be the quality of those doctors that continue to take Obama Care patients look term? My estimate: the 80% number drops as does the quality of care of the remaining doctors. 

- Obama Care Puts Doctors Who Accept Plans Purchased Through The Obama Care Exchanges At Risk Of Never Getting Paid. The same Daily Caller article goes on to explain: “The structure of the Affordable Care Act itself puts doctors who accept plans purchased on Obamacare exchanges at risk of never being paid at all. Obamacare requires insurers who sell plans on the exchanges to keep coverage active even after a customer has stopped paying their premiums, for an extra 90 days. For the first 60 days after a customer has stopped paying but is still insured, the insurance company has to pay for any care the patient uses. But for any services used in the final 30 days before a customer’s insurance can be terminated, doctors that see those patients won’t be paid at all.” 

- New State Data Shows Obama Care Might Not Have 7.3 Million “Paid” Enrollees. Investors Business Daily recently reported that there are likely far fewer Obama Care policy holders than the originally 8.1 million that the administration reported or the more recent estimate of 7.3 million after you take into account those Obama Care enrollees that that never materialized since they never paid for the policy they signed up for. According to their analysis: “The most telling data point since the Department of Health and Human Services announced exchange membership last month comes from California, where the 1.4 million sign-ups as of mid-April have dwindled to just over 1.1 million paying customers — a drop of 20.3%. That decline is on the same scale as in Florida, where insurer rate filings in June showed 763,000 exchange plan members, down 22.5% from the 984,000 sign-ups reported by HHS. California and Florida have seen their combined reported membership drop by 506,000. If enrollment were still holding at 7.3 million, the combined 5.6 million sign-ups in every other state and D.C. through mid-April could have only dropped by about 200,000, or 3.8%.” 

We have already shown how the true incremental number of Americans with health insurance policies via Obama Care is closer to only one or two million. Since Obama Care caused upwards of six million Americans to lose access to their preferred and current health insurance policies, that original 7.3 million, or whatever the real number was, has to be reduce by upwards of six million in order to estimate the true incremental number of Americans with health insurance coverage.

3) Sometimes we get lost in the numbers trying to prove that Obama Care is good or bad. In the quest to understand the reality of the Obama Care numbers, we forget to acknowledge that Obama Care has caused serious hardships for people at the individual and family levels. However, a new website, 

www.ourhealthcarestories.com 

has been set up to capture the hardships and heartaches that Obama Care has created at the personal level. We will conclude each post in this Obama Care series with some examples from this website where Americans, in their own words, explain how Obama Care has disturbed and disrupted their lives, their health care, and their wealth. 

STEVE from 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. 

DAVID from Alabama: I was really looking forward to my $2,500 savings I was promised. My total yearly cost instead went up by $2,620 with a higher deductible. President Obama could not have been this far off in his prediction which means he knew he was lying and said it anyway. 

JOHN from Pennsylvania: I pay for my family's insurance and had a plan that fit the family well. $2,500 deductible and $533 a month. Last year, I tried really hard to get on the Obamacare site and after probably 10 hours of trying finally got a quote. The results weren't good. $1433 a MONTH for bronze coverage with a $5000 deductible. I continued with my $533 a month plan this year because I renewed it last December, but just got a letter saying my plan could not be renewed. I'm now facing coverage that will likely cost almost 3X as much with a deductible twice as big. How is this affordable coverage? 

The President's promise of being able to "keep your plan" is just not true for me and never has been. I continue to be happy with my pre-Obama plan but bureaucrats claim to know what's best for me and my family. I strongly disagree. 

That will do it for today. Another Obama Care data processing system about to implode, Bankrupting America updating the legislation’s disasters based on real numbers and real realities, and three Americans tell their horror stories about Obama Care, adding a human touch to the hard, cold numbers of disasters. More tomorrow and beyond.


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






Sunday, September 28, 2014

September, 2014 Bonus Post The Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care: A Surprise Reason For Policy Cancellations, Losing Obama Crae Subsidies, and More

Note: we were hoping that yesterday’s post would be the last one needed for this month’s update on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. However, from the time we posted the first update last week until yesterday, so many more disasters have arisen that we need this bonus post today to capture all that has happened in just the past month relative to Obama Care.


Over the past few years, but especially over the past thirteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:
  • It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
  • It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
  • It has restricted overall economic growth.
  • It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
  • It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
  • It has turned many full time workers into part time workers.
  • It has generally increase the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
  • The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
  • The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the ramifications of the law.
  • It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
  • It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
  • It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
  • It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
  • It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate a successful program.
  • It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
  • It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.
I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.
Let’s see what the latest fiascoes are and hopefully these will finish the update until next month:

1) According to reporting from The Hill, the Obama administration has recently announced that about 360,000 Americans may lost their Obama Care subsidies if those people cannot provide proof of their income level within the next two weeks.

Government offices will send final notices this week to these individuals who signed up for Obama Care with income levels that didn’t match government records. Failure to verify cuts off their subsidies, which in many cases is likely to cause these Obama Care insured people to also drop their insurance since it would have suddenly gotten much more expensive to carry it without the subsidies. Combine this information with the fact that Aetna has announced that 17% or so of its Obama Care customers have already dropped their insurance and other factors depressing Obama Care sign up totals and we see that this legislation’s successes are growing smaller and smaller.

2) A recent Forbes article written by a restaurant executive continues to verify what many experts have been saying about Obama Care from its inception: Obama Care is shifting restaurant workers, and workers in other industries, into part time jobs whether they want to or not.

Andrew Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, owner of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurant brands. The highlights of his Forbes article include the following points:
  • A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll found support for the Obama care legislation languishing at 34% despite the millions and millions of dollars spent to hype its positive aspects, which turned out to be very few.
  • Mr. Puzder, a seasoned restaurant operator stated in an October, 2013 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “[t]he evidence that Obamacare is having a negative impact on hiring is unequivocal, abundant and consistent with common sense.”
  • He claims that government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 54% of the jobs the economy created from February to August of 2014 were part time
  • For some perspective, for the comparable February through August period in 2012 (prior to the contemplated effective date for Obama Care’s one year look back), 100% of the net jobs the economy added were full time. The number of part time jobs actually declined during that time frame
  • The government reporting acknowledged in their job analysis that there has been “a statistically significant increase” in involuntary part time work in 2014 and that involuntary part time work is what “should be affected if employers are reducing workers hours to avoid employer mandate [Obama Care] penalties.”
Nothing different than what we have been saying for the past few years, this time said by someone actually in the industry and trying to cope with Obama Care. He does a nice summary job of how Obama Care is killing the financial opportunities of millions of Americans by forcing them to become part time workers, both within the restaurant industry and elsewhere:

“Obama Care mandates that employers offer employees working 30 or more hours per week health insurance coverage thereby increasing the cost of employees who work 30 or more hours per week relative to those working under 30 hours per week. Businesses are rationally responding to this clear economic incentive by creating more part time jobs. Make something less expensive and businesses will use more of it. Make something more expensive and businesses will use less of it. That was true with respect to the 40 hour work week and it’s true with respect to Obamacare’s 30 hour employer mandate cut off.

This is a problem Congress and the President can solve, reinvigorating full time job creation and economic growth. Passing the bipartisan Forty Hours is Full Time Act would do the job. However, Obama Care’s supporters must stop defending the law long enough to recognize there’s a problem.”

The fix is really that simple, go back to the traditional 40 hour work week definition, which means the Washington political class has no chance of implementing it.

3) The website, Bankrupting America, does a wonderful job tracking and describing the wasteful spending and incompetency of the Washington political class. According to the September 24, 2014 posting on their website, as reported by The Hill, “The government tracks its health care spending in an outdated records system that cannot easily respond to data requests such as salaries or public relations contracts in certain departments. Instead, officials rely on manually prepared spreadsheets that can take months to produce.”

“Manually prepared spreadsheets.” In these times of personal computers, networking, data base management, etc., the Federal government, which just spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Obama Care systems, prepares data via manual spreadsheets. Unbelievable. What were the hundreds of millions of data systems dollars spent on if those same systems cannot produce simple reports electronically?

4) We have previously discussed a big problem next year around tax time when many Obama Care policy holders may be faced with penalties and fees due to the fact that their income may have been too high when their Obama Care subsides were computed. Now, according to a recent USA Today article, we are getting an idea of how high those tax time surprise costs might be relative to Obama Care policies.

On September 23, 2014, USA Today estimated that hundreds of thousands of Obama Care policy holders could be faced with surprise penalties of anywhere from $600 to over $2,500 for married couples. How many Obama Care policy holders will drop their polices when they realize that keeping them could cost them an additional $2,500 a year, or over $200 a month? 

Additionally, if they keep the newly expensive policy, how many fewer movies will they see, how many fewer restaurant meals will they eat, etc., in order to pay for higher insurance rates, further depressing economy activity and growth? 

5) As we have reported many times, reliable industry sources estimate that at least between five and six million Americans lost access to their current insurance policies directly as a result of Obama Care tenets. We had thought that the only reason that had happened was because some of those policies did not provide the required dozen or so health care services that Obama Care mandates.

For example, some policy holders may have had policies that did not cover maternity expenses since they were well past their child bearing age. Thus, they had a nice arrangement with their insurance company that got them out from under paying for insurance needs that they did not need. Those beneficial arrangements and policies were killed off by Obama Care.

However, we recently found out there is another reason why perfectly good insurance policies were needlessly terminated for 5-6 million Americans. The reason defies logical thinking and reasoning, it is that stupid. However, rather than have me try to explain this little factor in the cancellation of millions of policies, please access the following link from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:

http://dailysignal.com/2014/09/22/lost-plan-obamacare-explained-3-minutes/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydigest&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRons6TPZKXonjHpfsX56uUlXqK0lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4DSsNmI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D

There is not logical reason or thought process why this incredibly idiotic requirement was put into the legislation. But again, not having logical reason or a logical thought process is pretty much on par with the Washington political class. It would all be so funny if it had not so negatively affected the millons of lives of Americans.

That will do it for today and this month. I am sure that we will address new disasters from Obama Care next month….especially since as this is being written we are seeing that another Federal government agency report has just been published which shows that the overall cost of Obama Care so far is actually orders of magnitude greater than any else this administration has admitted to. 

Let that be the teaser to being you back next month for this developing scandal and more.

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




Monday, May 19, 2014

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 7: the President Lies Again, Rolls Royces All Around, Counting Space Junk, and More

Its day seven of our latest monthly political class insanity review with possibly an end in sight. Sometimes I think that is better when Washington politicians take long vacations because when on vacation they are far less likely to screw anything else up. A sad, sad commentary on the lack of leadership and ability of the current set of American politicians.

1) Let’s start today with some outer space political class insanity. Circling around the earth are thousands and thousands of pieces of space junk. Often, space junk collides with other space junk which creates thousands and thousands of new pieces of space junk.

Most of this space junk is traveling really fast so that even a little piece of space junk can cause big trouble when it hits another piece at speeds up to 17,000 miles an hour. This action even has a name, the Kessler effect. It is named after NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler, who wrote about it in 1978. It is a scenario in which the density of objects in low earth orbit gets larger over time, so that that a collision between objects causes a cascade. Each collision produces more space debris, which in turn increases the likelihood of further collisions. 

As the number of pieces of space junk gets larger, the probability of a piece hitting and disabling a working satellite gets larger and larger. Such an event, if it knocked out a satellite, could have severe commercial, telecommunications, and national defense issues. So this is serious stuff. To quote George Clooney from his character in the movie, “Gravity”: "Half of North America just lost their Facebook." 

There really is no way to solve the problem with today’s technology, there are just too many pieces of junk floating around and racing around in space. However, that will not stop the Federal government from wasting at least $6 billion to try and fix it. The Feds want to build something called the "Space Fence." It really isn't a fence. It's a $6 billion radar system that will monitor just a tiny fraction of the space junk. 

Let’s be clear. Spending $6 billion will monitor and track only a small portion of the junk load. It will not be able to prevent any collisions. It will not be able to predict when these collisions will occur. It will only be able to say: “There was a collision.” 

There is no known solution to this problem. There is no program to solve it. The "Space Fence" merely lets some Air Force person, who is staring at a screen, watch the chain reaction blow holes in the world's space-based telecommunications system, impact by impact. 

But you know that some aerospace company gave some money to some politicians somewhere along the line to get $6 billion for a project that basically looks out into space. Pathetic waste of money.

2) The Washington Examiner reported on May 7, 2014 how a former Congressman was able to turn his life around inside of ten weeks despite resigning from Congress under suspicious circumstances. Former New Jersey Congressman Rob Andrews was facing an ethics probe for allegedly using his political campaign funds for personal travel and other personal expenses. When Andrews announced a sudden resignation from Congress in February, some observers concluded that it was because of the ethics investigations, a conclusion the former Congressman denied, citing quality of life issues.

Within ten weeks after his last day in Congress, Andrews registered himself as a Federal lobbyist. And guess what? As a former member of the House Armed Services Committee, he will lobby for a New Jersey defense company, to help them "gain business opportunities with the Department of Defense and other federal agencies," as he puts it on his disclosure form.

Again, nice work if you can get it. Yesterday, we discussed the fact that an EPA employee was paid despite spending many hours everyday downloading and viewing porn on the job. And now this former, possibly ethics-challenged Congressman escapes out of Congress to land a sweet deal in the lobbying industry. Sweet for the former Congressman, disgraceful for those of us that paid his salary for a very long time and ended up allegedly being abused by his actions.

3) I love pointing out hypocrisy and the following data from the Federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics points out a big hypocrisy of the Obama administration. Recall that over the past six years or so, the Democrats via Obama have controlled the White House and have controlled the Senate so they are not idle sideline observers in the following labor situation.

The Obama administration is always crying out about the “war on women,” blaming Republicans for being insensitive to the needs of American women. This President tries to position himself as the champion of women and their well being. 

But is that true? Not if you consider the latest statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS):
  • The number of women 16 and older not in the labor force climbed to a record high of 55,116,000 in April, according to a recent from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 
  • In other words, officially there were 55,116,000 women 16 and older who were in the civilian population who not only did not have a job, they did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. 
  • That is up 428,000 from the 54,688,000 women who were not in the labor force in March.
  • According to BLS, the labor force participation rate for women was 56.9%, down from 57.2% in March. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of this population that either has a job or actively sought one in the last four weeks.
  • In April, according to BLS, the female civilian labor force was 72,835,000 which was down 340,000 from the 73,175,000 in March.
In other words, the economic policies of this administration and this Congress have not been good to the women of America. It is not the Republicans that are waging a war on women, as Obama likes to claim, it is the whole political class, including Obama and the Democrats and the Republicans, and their idiotic economic policies that are hurting the labor chances and opportunities of women. For him to claim that it is only the Republicans, more than five years into his administration, is ludicrous.

4) Speaking of hypocrisy and lying, the President was recently giving a speech where again he whined about the Republicans and how they had filibustered 500 pending pieces of legislation to thwart his plans for the country. Nice try, but the usually Obama-friendly Washington Post called him on yet another lie, giving this claim its top liar rating of four Pinocchio’s. 

Apparently, this claim is nowhere close to being reality with true filibusters occurring just a fraction of the time that the President claimed. But I guess we should not be too surprised that he lied or deceived again since he lied about how Obama Care would not cancel your existing policy or cut you off from your preferred doctors and hospitals, how he would close the prison at Guantanamo right after being elected but still has not, how he would cut the annual Federal deficit in half but has recorded record deficits since coming into office, how he would have the most transparent administration but really has the most secretive and opaque administration, etc. Remember that he was awarded three of the top ten political lies by the Post in 2013 and it appears that he is driving hard for a similar dubious record in 2014.

The really underlying problem is not just this lie. Independent polling organizations are now finding that a strong majority of Americans do not believe what the President says or they believe that he lies on a regular basis. When the country does not believe what the President says, his ability to lead is seriously impaired since no one will believe what he says, support what he says, or have any faith in his ideas, being scared of getting burned with yet another lie. That is no way to lead a country but that is what a multitude of Pinocchio’s will do for you, destroy your reputation for integrity and dignity.

5) One last piece of insanity for today. The nation’s Federal government debt load is now around a mind numbing $17.5 TRILLION as the Obama administration and the Washington political class continues to spend and waste not only the wealth of this generation but the wealth and well being of future American generations. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the new chairwoman of the Federal Reserve have warned that current government spending levels are not sustainable and will have dire consequences for the country in the future.

But how much is $17.5 TRILLION? It is so large it is almost incomprehensible, much like most of the political class. Given that this past week we celebrated Mother’s Day, the wonderful website Bankrupting America tried to quantify how much $17.5 TRILLION actually is:
  • With $17.5 TRILLION, you Could Buy Your Mom 71 Billion Flower Arrangements From An Expensive NYC Florist. Matles Florist currently offers an orchid arrangement with a premium price of $245.
  • With $17.5 TRILLION, you Could Buy Your Mom An Extravagant Private Island …Or 190,375 Of Them. Rangyai Island is a developed private island for sale off the coast of Thailand. It is currently listed for $160 million dollars.
  • With $17.5 TRILLION, you could Buy Your Mom 11.7 Billion Jars Of Diamond Face Cream. If your mother has expensive taste for beauty products, Forever Flawless offers a face cream that is infused with diamonds for $1,500.
To this list we would two more ways to measure our national debt:
  • With $17.5 TRILLION, you could give every adult resident of New York state a check for over $1.2 million, every adult, no exceptions.
  • With $17.5 TRILLION, you could buy every resident of Massachusetts a Rolls Royce Ghost, starting price of $253,200. Thus, a family of four living in Massachusetts would have four Rolls Royces sitting in their driveway.
We are allowing the Washington politicians to spend and waste our country into a financial death spiral without any flowers, islands, face cream, or Rolls Royces to show for it. Pathetic.

That will do it for this month’s insanity, enough is enough. Today we learned that the President got caught in another obvious lie, the country is going broke for nothing in return, we are wasting time and money looking at space junk explode, and life is bad for the working women in this country but great for allegedly ethics challenged politicians. Sounds about right.

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




Thursday, May 15, 2014

May, 2014 Poltiical Class Insanity, Part 4: Spending More But Getting Less, The Obscene Cost Of Regulation, And Destroying Good Ammunition

This is our fourth and probably not last post this month in our monthly series on political class insanity. At the beginning of every month, we review the insanity, lunacy, idiocy, and wasteful spending and programs of the American political class. Having done this for the past five years, we are continually amazed at how inept and incompetent our politicians are today with our wealth, our freedom, and quality of life.

1) The first several instances of insanity today comes to us from the wonderful website, Bankrupting America. In a previous insanity post several months ago, we discussed how in 2013 the Obama administration had issued over 3,000 new Federal regulations, almost 10 a day for every day of the year.

The obvious problems with such a performance is threefold:
  1. Forcing businesses to comply with ten new regulations everyday takes away from business owners’ ability to grow their business and thus, grow the economy and economic opportunities for Americans.
  2. At some point, the ever growing mountain of regulations becomes self defeating since they are too numerous to know or too numerous to comply with.
  3. And if these thousands of new regulations are so important, why were they not identified in previous Presidential administrations? Could it be that we have gotten to a point that government bureaucrats are making up regulations just to justify their government existence and large compensation packages?
And now Bankrupting America has identified a fourth reason why so many regulations are so stupid and dangerous. A new study conducted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) found that the average US household pays nearly $15,000 a year in regulatory costs as a result of the thousands and thousands of government regulations. 

If this estimate is accurate, this means that in 2013, the average consumer spent 23% of their household income to pay for just the Federal government’s regulatory burden. Obviously, state government and local government regulations place an additional burden on U.S. household incomes and wealth. 

The CEI study was entitled, titled “Ten Thousand Commandments 2014,” and it found that:
  • In 2013, Federal regulation costs reached $1.863 trillion. 
  • This is more than the GDPs of Canada or Australia. 
  • In 2013, Congress passed only 51 laws but that resulted in 3,659 new rules and regulations, a ratio of 72 new regulations for each law that was enacted.
  • Federal regulations burden each household with almost $15,000 in costs each year which is more than what an average household spends on every other household budget item except housing - more than health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings. 
  • Even worse, according to the CEI, 63 Federal departments, agencies and commissions have more regulations in development.
  • The study also showed that small businesses pay more in per-employee regulatory costs than larger firms. According to CEI, “Firms with fewer than 20 employees pay an average of $10,585 per employee, compared to $7,755 for those with 500 or more employees.” These costs are costs that cannot be used to expand business opportunities, which in turn expand the economy and economic opportunities for Americans.
Look, some regulations are necessary to protect the safety and welfare of citizens, that is one of the few legitimate fucntions of government, But adding 10 new Federal regulations every day proves that the political class and the government it oversees has no clue as to what are critical safety needs and what is bureaucratic idiocy and redundancy. And it is quite possible that this idiocy and redundancy are what has stifled economy growth for the entire length of the Obama Presidency.

2) Also from Bankrupting America, in late April, 2014, USAToday reported that the Pentagon plans on destroying more than $1 billion worth of ammunition that otherwise could still be used. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the GAO found that the different armed services for the Defense Department have ammunition inventory systems that cannot share data directly. 

Only the Army uses the standard Pentagon format to report their ammunition stockpile, while the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps operate under different and obsolete formats. The GAO suggests this leads to waste from buying new ammunition, while usable stockpiles exist.

Sen. Tom Carper, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee stated, “We simply cannot afford this type of waste and ineffectiveness. The (Pentagon) has a responsibility to efficiently manage its ammunition stocks, not only because it is important to be fiscally responsible, but also because our antiquated ammunition inventory systems can shortchange our war fighters and compromise their ability to complete their mission.” Could not agree with you more, Senator, what are you going to do about it? 

Our armed forces have been around for over two centuries. Computers have been around for over sixty years. We pay the Pentagon hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Given these factors, is it asking too much of the Federal government and the Washington political class to have a few databases that can count and not waste billions of dollars in perfectly good ammunition?

3) Another Bankrupting America update comes from an editorial piece that recently ran in The Hill publication. The editorial discussed a recent study from the Mercatus Center that examined the true root causes of poverty in America and how to attack this chronic problem. 

The study found that there are two simple truths about poverty: poverty arises from joblessness, and government spending doesn’t reduce poverty, two pretty simple ideas that seem lost on the Washington political class. The study identified laws such as the Affordable Care Act and minimum wage legislation that are government programs with good intentions in an ideal world (everyone gets health care, low-wage earners receive higher wages), but in reality lead to greater rates of joblessness and poverty. 

Additionally, consider a quote directly form the study itself, a quote that examines the insanity of how politicians waste our wealth on failing programs:

Throwing more government dollars at this problem won’t solve it. Despite record spending on programs to help the needy, there were a record 46 million Americans in poverty in 2012. Federal spending alone on these programs was $750 billion in the 2011 fiscal year, up more than 30% from 2008.

Let’s do some simple math to put these numbers in perspective: at $750 billion a year, with 46 million Americans in poverty, if we could somehow divide up the $750 billion and just send a check to every American living in poverty, each one of those people would get a check for over $16,000. A family of four would get a check for over $64,000, more than the median household income of every U.S. household. That is how insanely inefficient and ineffective our politicians are when it comes to helping Americans in poverty. 

The money to help them is there, the delivery of that support is pathetically poor. And that $16,000 per person does not include poverty support from state and local governments.

The study concludes that the root of problem lies in the labor market. The majority of Americans living in poverty between the ages of 18 to 64 were unemployed, and only 11% had full-time employment in 2012. According to the editorial, as long as the government continues to pursue policies that discourage people from working or businesses from hiring (see the regulations insanity discussed above), we’ll continue to see high rates of unemployment and consequently, high rates of poverty.

The real problem is that there does not appear to be anyone in Washington who is bold enough and bright enough to break this cycle of wasting taxpayer wealth on poverty programs that do not reduce poverty. As a result, more Americans fall into poverty while anti-poverty programs spend more and more money. Only in Washington could this idiotic combination continue to exist for decades, spending more to get less.

That will do it for today but more insanity will come forth tomorrow. If interested in actually ending the insanity, please consider joining our effort to impose term limits on all politicians at:


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