May, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care Update, Part 2: State Insurance Exchanges Implode, Another Obama Care Tax To Kill The Economy and More

This is the second post in this month’s series on the continuing disaster that is Obama Care. Yesterday, we learned that the vast majority of Obama Care policy enrollees already had health insurance, that many of them will face sticker shock next April when they realize they have to pay back part or all of their Obama Care subsidies on their tax forms, and that Nancy Pelosi is still not of this reality. Today and the next few days will not be much better from a disaster perspective. 

1) We have covered many, many examples of Americans seeing their lives completely screwed up as a result of Obama Care. Recently, a local television station covered another example out in California. Apparently, a young Marine veteran in California cannot locate a doctor who will accept his Anthem Blue Cross insurance plan, an insurance plan he purchased through Covered California, the state's Obama Care exchange. 

Local TV station KPIX reported that the Marine, named Kyle, claims he was on the phone for two hours with Anthem, trying to find a doctor within a 20-mile radius of his home, with no luck. "Finally a supervisor said, 'Sir, we have to go. we have other people to help. And [they] advised me I need to cancel my plan."

Unbelievable treatment of an American in so many ways. First, Obama Care sold him a plan that was useless. Second, the customer service department of the company that sold him the plan was useless. And third, rather than handle the situation, they told him to cancel his plan and basically lose any money he had already put into the pockets of the insurance company for absolutely nothing.

But for Obama Care, often par for the course. Lousy, or in this case, no insurance coverage, lousy or no access to medical care under the Obama Care policy, and horrible customer support and lack of respect to the customer.

To access the TV report, go to:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/california-veteran-cant-get-care-under-obamacare_793457.html#!

2) Politico reported on May 20, 2014 that the state of Nevada would be joining a number of other states in scrapping its Obama Care state health exchange system since it has been such an unmitigated failure. Those in charge decided that the current systems used for the state exchange could not be fixed by November, the start of the next enrollment season and that Nevada residents would have to use the Federal Obama Care exchange until further notice.

Thus, Nevada joins Oregon, Maryland, and Massachusetts as states whose politicians and government bureaucracies could not build and manage a website process for Obama Care. Nevada had awarded the original contract to Xerox at a cost of $73 million. For that $73 million, Nevada was expected to enroll 118,000 people by March 31.

However, severe tech problems with the web based exchange forced state officials in January to slash the projection to 50,000 as the Nevada exchange spit out incorrect subsidy information for enrollees among other problems. As of May 10, just 35,000 state residents had officially enrolled in Nevada online for Obama Care, less than 30% of the original expectations.

Certainly a failure by any measurement or set of expectations.

3) But as we just said, Nevada is not the exception in the Oabma Care world, it is almost becoming the rule. Consider the widespread failures of Obama Care’s state exchanges, as compiled by a recent analysis done by the Heritage Foundation:

• In the case of three states that have called it quits relative to their own state exchange for Obama Care, Oregon received more than $300 million in Federal taxpayer money, Massachusetts received $179 million, and Maryland received a little more than $171 million. 
• That’s more than $655 million in Federal taxpayer-provided money for absolutely nothing in return. 
• Additionally, although it already has admitted failure relative to its exchange site, Massachusetts wants another $120 million to try again.
• But it gets worse. State managed Obama Care exchanges in Nevada, Hawaii, Vermont and Minnesota are all also failing to deliver what they were supposed to deliver, beginning last October. 
• In total, Federal taxpayers have spent $834 million in just six states that collectively enrolled 270,000 people. That’s more than whopping $3,000 dollars per enrollee.
• For those costs, we would have been better to just write a check to each of them for over $3,000 and have them apply it to any insurance coverage they could find on theri own.
• As we discussed in previous posts, Oregon takes the prize for the worst. Despite spending $305 million dollars, not one person during the 2014 enrollment period was registered successfully online via Oregon’s Obama Care exchange.
• Hawaii spent almost $25,000 for every enrollee who signed up during the Obama Care enrollment period ontheir state exchange website.
• And in Colorado, the Obama Care exchange website has not come close to hitting is sign up objective, it’s managers have consistently fought against an audit attempting to track how the exchange used its millions of dollars, and in the ultimate insult, are now proposing the $13 million in user fees be assessed on the health insurance policies of state residents who do NOT get their insurance via Obama Care in order to subsidize those that do get their policies via Obama Care’s processes.

As a result of these many state Obama Care exchanges collapsing into a pile of trash and the disaster of a rollout of the Federal exchange, do we really think that allowing the political class, and their ineffective and inefficient government bureaucracies they operate across the country, are the people you want to entrust your health care to? 

If they cannot build and maintain simple web based programs after spending over three years and probably over a billion dollars to try and do so, maybe they are not the ones to manage the nation’s health care issues. Since they have not been able to fix our failing public schools, win the war on drugs, develop and deploy a strategic energy policy, secure our borders, etc., the probability of them being successful in this area is next to nil.

4) This item is a new one to me so I am not really sure how it works except for the fact it will increase the cost of health insurance for every person and every company, small or large, in the United States. It is called the Health Insurance Tax and a consulting group, Oliver Wyman, has completed an analysis which examines and estimates the effect of the new “HIT” tax on insurance market segments and public programs: 

• Impact on individual market consumers: Increase premiums over a ten-year period for single coverage by an average $2,150, and for family coverage an average $5,080. 
• Impact on small employers: Increase premiums over a ten-year period for single coverage by an average $2,760, and for family coverage an average $6,830. 
• Impact on large employers: Increase premiums over a ten-year period for single coverage by an average $2,610, and for family coverage an average $7,130. 
• Impact on Medicare Advantage beneficiaries: Increase costs $16 to $20 per member per month in 2014 and will increase to between $32 and $42 by 2023. The average expected increase in the cost of Medicare Advantage coverage over ten years is $3,590. 
• Impact on Part D beneficiaries: Increase average premiums by $9 in 2014 and by $20 in 2023 for a total increase of $161 over ten years. 
• Impact on Medicaid managed care beneficiaries: Increase the average costs of Medicaid coverage by about $1,530 per enrollee between 2014 and 2023. 

Thus, a family who gets their insurance via a large employers’ health insurance program could end up paying over $700 a year more under the Obama Care HIT tax. Small businesses, which annually create the vast majority of new jobs in the economy, could see its cost of providing health care insurance to its employees increase up to almost $700 a year also. All these tax hits have to have a severe damping effect on business hiring and the growth of the economy.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over a ten year period, the HIT tax will take about $100 billion out of the economy and hand it over to the Federal government. This is $100 billion thast cannot be used efficiently by the economy to build economic growth and job opportunity. Given what we just discussed regarding the incompetence of the political class in buidling simple websites, it is doubtful that the Washington politicians will be able to use this $100 billion efficiently or effectively.

But again the bigger issue is the deception and lying of the President when he boldly stated that the average American family will see their annual health insurance costs go down around $2,500 a year. Tough to do when just this single Obama Care tax is likely to increase those same costs upwards of $700 a year. Pathetic leadership from a pathetic Washington.

That will do it for today but we probably need at least one more day to update everyone on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

The More Things Politicians Change The More They Stay The Same, Despite Spending Trillions Of Dollars, Part 1; Education, Housing, And Illegal Drugs

One of the problems I have always had with the American political class is that even though we give them a very large percentage of our wealth each year, our politicians never seem to resolve any of the major issues that we give them the money for. Failing public schools, escalating health care costs, rising energy costs, failed immigration policies, etc., nothing ever gets resolved.

President Obama is calling for nearly a $4 TRILLION Federal government budget for the next fiscal year without any concrete plans or strategies to fix any of our major problems with that $4 TRILLION. By the way, that $4 TRILLION comes out to almost $11 billion a DAY, or a half a billion an HOUR, over $7 million a MINUTE. For that level of spending, we should not have any problems in our lives at all.

But we do have major problems in our lives and those major issues have been with us for decades despite TRILLIONs and TRILLIONs of taxpayer dollars spent in the hope that they would get resolved. Furthermore, the political class has rigged the election processes so that incumbent politicians continue to get reelected even though they are always a failure while serving in office.

Today and tomorrow we will look at a series of graphs and pictures that vividly illustrate how inept and useless our politicians have been over the past few decades despite the oppressive tax burden they now subject us to.

1) Nowhere has the political class failed the nation more then in the education of our kids. Every year we pay more and more at both the local and Federal government level to educate our kids with dismal results, relative to kids around the world, and our own national standards. Consider the following graph of educational attainment and the amount of resources we have put towards educational attainment over the past few decades (click on the graph for a larger view):

While the amount of money spent on education over the years is up almost 200% and the number of employees in the education field is up almost 100% over the past 42 years, math, reading, and science scores have barely budged over the same time frame. This is not a good investment for our money despite a Federal government Department of Education that spends tens of billions of dollars every year in its budget for apparently no results.

2) Back in the 1970s, the Washington political class under Jimmy Carter decided that it would be a good idea if it was easy for every American to own their own home, even those in the lower income brackets. That resulted in the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, a piece of legislation that directly led to the Great Recession of 2008. For a detailed assessment of that conclusion, please go to the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/who-really-caused-great-recession-part.html

Since the Carter administration, we have spent trillions of dollars supporting the home purchases of lower income Americans and the subsequent bail outs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 

For all of this expense and the trillions of dollars of economic damage from the Great Recession, how successful was the Federal government in increasing home ownership? Consider the following graph:

Yes, back in the Carter administration, the percentage of Americans who owned their own home was about 65%. About 40 years and trillions of dollars later, the percentage of Americans who own their own home is…. about 65%. 40 years and trillions of dollars later we are right back where we started. Pathetic.

3) Over 40 years ago, the Nixon administration declared a “war on drugs.” If that war had been successful, than after trillions of dollars and 40 years, one would have hoped that the political class would have finally won that war resulting in two situations: 1) the amount of money spent in this country on illegal drugs would now be close to zero and 2) the number of citizens in jail for using illegal drugs would have been dropping significantly as the war was being run and won.

However, just the opposite happened, not unexpected since the exact opposite usually happens when politicians are involved. According to a recent study by the Rand corporation, every year, Americans spend about $109 billion on all types of illegal drugs. You cannot say you have won the war on drugs when the illegal market for illegal drugs is still over $2 billion a week.

And to our second point as far as drug abuser prison populations, over time the number of citizens being jailed for using illegal drugs has been growing substantially:



When the war on drugs began, there were less than 50,000 Americans in jail for illegal drug violations. Four decades later, there are about ten times as many Americans in jail for illegal drug violations. If the war on drugs had been successful, one would have expected the number of jailed Americans for drug violations would be less than when the war started. Not the case.

This is not a commentary on whether or not drugs should be decriminalized or legalized. It is a simple observation that we still have a drug addiction problem in this country that the war on drugs has turned into a criminal problem while wasting trillions of dollars in the process.

We will finish this discussion of political class failure tomorrow. Today we learned that despite spending trillions of dollars, our kids are still undereducated, the housing market is right where it was forty years ago, and the war on drugs has made the situation at least ten times worse than when it began under Nixon. 

You have to really try to be this incompetent for so long. But somehow the political class in Washington has managed to exceed all standards of ineptness and we still have more to cover 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 7, Freedom and LIberty Guest Speaker: Antonio West, Speaking For All Of America's Youth

This is the seventh and final post we will be doing that is dedicated to the decline of freedom and liberty in this country, all presented by guest writers and not myself. Many Americans are starting to wake up to the fact that the Federal government is growing and spending at out of control levels, levels that continually eat away and erode our freedom and the privacy rights.

Whether it is saddling current and future generations of Americans with mountains of debt, invading our privacy with drones and interceptions of all of our electronic communications, using instruments of government, such as the NSA, IRS, EPA, etc., to harass and abuse the rights of private citizens, or the outright designation for assassination of American citizens by the Federal government without due process of the law, the land of the free is quickly becoming the land of the oppressed and fearful. The speakers over the past week or so have eloquently pointed out how and why we have seen this erosion in our rights and liberty.

Today’s approach takes a little different approach. There is no greater loss of freedom than the loss of one’s life. Unfortunately, the unnecessary loss of life happens way too often in the country today. The Trayvon Martin situation is just one example where the failure of the political class has led to the unnecessary death of a young American. We will get into the bigger issue of unnecessary loss of life in this country and the failure of the political class to address the issue tomorrow.

However, in the heat and emotion of the Trayvon Martin incident, I wanted to address the unnecessary loss of freedom of another American. While these words were not actually spoken by today’s guest writer, they could have been. They accurately point out how his loss of freedom has been lost and buried by the political class in America today and the mainstream media, who are also as culpable as the political class in the portrayal of only the side of reality that makes them political points or TV rating points.

Today’s guest speaker/writer is a very young gentleman named Antonio West. Here is a picture of him:

The following is his story and how we as a nation caused him to suffer the greatest loss of freedom possible, his life:

**************************

Who is Antonio West

Hello. Don’t recognize me? That’s OK; I understand.

My name was Antonio West. I was the 13-month old child who was shot in the face at point blank range by two black teens, who were attempting to rob my mother, who was also shot.

I think my murder and my mommy’s wounding made the news for maybe a day, and then disappeared.

A Grand Jury of my mommy's peers from Brunswick , Georgia ruled the black teens who murdered me will not face the death penalty... too bad it was me who got the death sentence from my killers instead, because Mommy didn’t have the money they demanded.

See, my family made the mistake of being white in a 73% non-white neighborhood, but my murder wasn’t ruled a ‘hate crime’.

Oh, and President Obama didn’t take a single moment to acknowledge my murder. He couldn’t have any children who could possibly look like me - so why should he care?

I’m one of the youngest murder victims in our great Nation's history, but the media didn’t care to cover the story of my being killed in cold blood.

There isn’t a white equivalent of Al Sharpton, because if there was he would be branded a ‘racist’. So no one’s rushing to Brunswick , Georgia to demonstrate and demand ‘justice’ for me. There’s no ‘White Panther’ party, either, to put a bounty on the lives of the two black teens who murdered me.

I have no voice, I have no representation, and unlike those who shot me in the face while I sat innocently in my stroller - I no longer have my life.

Isn’t this a great country?

So while you’re out seeking ‘justice for Trayvon’, please remember to seek ‘justice’ for me. Tell your friends about me, tell you families, get tee-shirts with my face on them, and make the world pay attention, just like you did for Trayvon.

I won’t hold my breath.

I don’t have to anymore.

**********************************

A truly tragic story on so many levels. How did our political, moral, educational, and human compass get so screwed up that teenagers find it no problem to do such a heinous act? Why have certain politicians and a certain attorney general focused only on the Trayvon Martin tragedy and pay virtually no attention to this tragedy? Trayvon Martin, Antonio West, the annual 400 or so kids killed in the streets in Chicago, the thousands of kids abused physically and sexually every year, why, why, why?

Why have our politicians not provided the necessary leadership, direction, and morality so that these thousands of kids do not suffer the greatest loss of freedom every year, their lives and their chance at a decent childhood? I think we know the answer to these questions. It is the same answer to why the political class has not resolved a major issue in the past fifty years, whether it is a lost war on drugs, our failing pubic schools, a leaky border, etc. They do not want to resolve these issues since they are more concerned with their next reelection fund raiser, their next reelection campaign, and their own self enrichment.

This is why the need for term limits has become so important, because really, how much worse could it get for all Americans, but particularly for people like Antonio West and Trayvon Martin and thousands of others like them. Join our drive for term limits at:

www.howmuchworsecoudlitget.com

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/  

Government: If You Think The Problems We Create Are Bad, Wait Until You See Our Solutions, Part 1

The past several days we have been exploring a concept related to the book and movie entitled the “Hunger Games.” In the “Hunger Games” there is a very, very small, elitist set of people in the seat of power, far away from the common folks, both in geography and life style and options. The elitists have manipulated their government so that vast amounts of taxpayer wealth flows to this seat of power to the detriment of the rest of the country.

Those in the seat of power enjoy self enrichment, status, pomposity, and gluttony, in its many forms, all on the backs and hard efforts of the rest of the citizens out in the country and hinterlands. These elitist types are so wrapped up in taking care of themselves and those that keep them in power and wealth, the rest of the country and the issues that are present in the rest of the country fall into disrepair.

Major problems ranging from a failed war on drugs to failing public schools to escalating health care costs and national debt never get resolved. These issues always take a backseat to those entities within the Washington Beltway, both in the Federal government itself (e.g. politicians) and outside of it that depend on those within the government, e.g. big business and big labor cronies, campaign contributors, etc.

Today, we will take a closer look, not at the “Hunger Games” mentality and processes of Washington, but at those real life issues that never get resolved because of the pursuit of wealth, fame, and ego of those sitting at the seat of power in Washington. The basis of this discussion comes from a recent article Independent Journal Review from January 30, 2013, “Unintended Consequences: 14 Big Government Programs That Failed to Achieve Their Goals.”

We will cover the first five of these epic disasters today and finish up with the rest over the next two days. When reviewing these 14 programs, keep in mind that almost all Federal government programs have at least some of the following characteristics in common:

• They never attain the lofty goals and expectations that were originally used to sell in the idea of the program.
• In many cases, not only do they not resolve the original issue, they make the original issue or some other issue worst than before trying to fix the original issue.
• In almost all cases, massive amounts of taxpayer wealth is destroyed with no redeeming societal benefit in return.

1) Alcohol prohibition was implemented via the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on January 16, 1919. This amendment prohibited the “…manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States…”

To operationalize the Amendment, Congress passed the “Volstead Act” on October 28, 1919. But as history tells us, most large cities simply ignored the law and bootlegged alcohol to meet demand. This resulted in a huge underground, illegal market, infested with crime and corruption. This breeding ground led to the rise of organized crime in major cities across the country who filled the alcohol void created by the Amendment. Fourteen short years later, Prohibition was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment, proving the exercise had been pointless and criminal inducing.

Unintended consequences: make something illegal and the illegal act gets profitable for criminal elements without reducing the supposed bad habit, drinking alcohol. Think about this same mentality we have today relative to “illegal” drugs. The war on drugs has been going on for over forty years and the results have not seriously impacted usage, just like Prohibition, but it has led to the exponential growth of organized crime syndicates.

While it was the likes of Al Capone and his peers that got rich off of Prohibition, it is the Mexican drug cartels that are following this model today relative to the criminalization of drugs and the associated lost war on drugs. Massive amounts of money wasted, desirable effects never attained, and the unintended consequences of creating rich cartels and violent criminal activity.

2) Make our schools better, our kids smarter, and the country would be much better off. Great idea, sounds simple, let’s do it! Unfortunately, tried that, failed miserably, spent a lot of money.

Back in the early 1980s. President Reagan commissioned a blue ribbon panel to investigate the problems with public education and develop a set of remedies for our failing public schools. The commission did its job well, identified the fact that we were under educating our kids thirty years ago, and presented a set of solutions to remedy the situation.

The Washington political class, as it often does, created a new bureaucracy, the Department of Education to address the issues. This Cabinet level Department then proceeded to spend trillions of dollars over the next thirty years for … virtually nothing. Our kids today are still undereducated and almost always do miserably on standardized tests vs. kids from dozens of other countries.

But this is ancient history. Consider some more recent stats and depressing news in this area, as reported in the article:

• Under George W. Bush’s education plans and strategies, Federal government spending on education doubled within eight years.
• Despite this massive increase in government spending and having a spending per student among the highest in the world, the U.S. lags far behind most economically developed nations in terms of math, science and other core competencies.
• The National Assessment of Educational Progress results showed that less than one-third of eighth-grade students were proficient in math, science, or reading.
• At the high school level, the U.S. graduation rate continues to stagnate at just around 70%.
• And of those kids in the 70% who actually get a high school diploma, many of them are not prepared enough for college work.

Massive amounts of money spent, no discernible improvements. Sounds about right for Washington.

3) The article sets up the Medicare failures using analyses from the Cato Institute:

• When Medicare’s Part A was implemented in 1965, it was supposed to cost $9 billion by 1990.
• However, by 1990 it was costing the country $67 billion a year, more than seven times higher than the original estimate.
• Medicare’s home-care benefit, added in 1988, was expected to cost $4 billion in 1993.
• It ended up costing, costing $10 billion, two and half times the original estimate that was made just five years earlier.

Thus, cost containment has never been a strong attribute of the Medicare operators. This is why out-of-control Medicare costs are one of the driving forces that will bankrupt the country unless it is quickly gotten under control. Rather than provide high quality health care to retirees in a cost effective manner, we have a highly expensive program that is getting more and more expensive every day that does not deliver the highest level of health care despite higher and higher taxes that are implemented to support the program.

Shoddy benefits for a higher and higher price that may destroy the country’s economy. No success here either.

4) If the above Medicare numbers spooked you, consider the Medicaid numbers from the article:

Cato Institute: “When the Medicaid program’s special hospitals subsidy was added in 1987, it was supposed to cost $100 million annually, but wound up costing $11 billion annually within five years.”

CNN Money: “Medicaid spending is set to double over the next 10 years — from $253 billion today to $593 billion in 2022 — and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare spending will do the same.”

Two massive government programs that were supposed to provide maximum health care benefits at a reasonable cost but are ending up providing minimal (and shrinking) benefits for a maximum cost, a maximum cost that will bankrupt the country unless something is done. It makes you wonder if the political class was so busy taking care of themselves that they had no concept of cost forecasting, paid no attention to cost forecasting, or intentionally lied about the cost forecasting since they were so far off in their estimates. In any of these cases, their performance has been putrid.

Shrinking benefits, rising costs, a typical Washington story.

5) No one truly knows how many illegal immigrants are in the country today. However, the most quoted figure is about 11 million, not an insignificant number. This number is bigger than the population of all but seven states so it is not an insignificant problem.

The U.S. has never had a sane, secure, and compassionate immigration policy. Our borders leak, our safety net social services processes are overwhelmed, people living in the country spend every day in fear that they will be deported, and those that are illegal are often abused by employers or others who know their status and leverage it for their own good.

Nobody wins but nobody ever comes up with a plan to address the issue. Over 25 years ago, Congress passed a resolution that ordered the U.S. military to seal our border with Mexico within 45 days. Over 25 years later, that Congressional mandate is still unfulfilled, another massive failure of those sitting in the seat of power in Washington.

Given how poorly we have secured our border with Mexico, a new issue and threat has evolved over the past several years. There have been reports and rumors that terrorists have used our weak border security so smuggle potential terrorists into the country. Thus, the nonresolution of the long standing illegal immigration problem may have morphed into a homeland security issue over time, an issue that Washington also has no plan to resolve.

That’s enough for today, more “Hunger Games” discussions and political class failures tomorrow and the next day.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

30 More Stupid, Wastful Spending Examples And Why No American Should Pay Another Penny In Taxes

In the past week we have had to live the idiocy of Nancy Pelosi, President Obama, and other politicians who seem to think it would be a good thing for Americans to send more of their hard earned wealth to the political class in Washington. They have this sick, perverted view of reality that somehow Americans do not pay enough in taxes.

They seem to think that Americans, who work about 30% of the year just to pay off their overall tax burden, every year, do not pay enough in taxes.

They seem to think that even though they operate one of the most incompetent, wasteful, and inefficient human organizations in the world, the Federal government, Americans do not pay enough in taxes.

They seem to think even though their inept IRS organization fails to collect over $385 billion a year from tax evaders, Americans do not pay enough in taxes.

They seem to think that sending more and more personal wealth to be wasted by Washington bureaucrats does not have a detrimental impact on the economy.

We have covered the insane and disgraceful spending and wasteful behavior by the Washington class many times before. The following post was the first in a series of wasteful government spending:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/wasteful-government-spending-week-pimp.html

We did a related series of posts on why no American should have to pay another penny in taxes, given the wasteful spending that exists already in Washington:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/12/day-1-seven-days-of-logic-and-sanity.html


We have also showed how painless it would be to take $9 TRILLION out of our obscene national debt, currently $16.4 TRILLION, if only Washington did their jobs and had any touch with reality:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/united-states-of-purple-presidency-plan.html

However, just when you thought you have ferreted out all of the wasteful spending, you trip over more. I have found another source of idiotic spending that these very same politicians have presided over. Think about these when you hear any politician when they try to convince you that they need more taxes and wealth from you to make life better.

I am sure that the following stupid government expenditures had minimal, if any, positive impact on any American’s life:

#1 The U.S. government is spending $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay

#2 The Obama administration plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars helping students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.

#3 The U.S. government has spent $175,587 “to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior”.

#4 The U.S. government spent $200,000 on “a tattoo removal program” in Mission Hills, California.

#5 The federal government has shelled out $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft.

#6 The Department of Health and Human Services plans to spend $500 million on a program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom.

#7 Fannie Mae is about to ask the federal government for another $4.6 billion bailout, and it will almost certainly get it.

#8 The federal government once spent 30 million dollars on a program that was designed to help Pakistani farmers produce more mango.

#9 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once gave researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.

#10 According to USA Today, 13 different government agencies “fund 209 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs — and 173 of those programs overlap with at least one other program.”

#11 A total of $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.

#12 China lends us more money than any other foreign nation, but that didn’t stop our government from spending 17.8 million dollars on social and environmental programs for China.

#13 The U.S. government once spent 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.

#14 One professor at Stanford University was given $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love.

#15 The U.S. Postal Service spent $13,500 on a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

#16 The National Science Foundation once spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians “gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions.

#17 A total of $1.8 million was spent on a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada.

#18 The federal government spends 25 billion dollars a year maintaining federal buildings that are either unused or totally vacant.

#19 U.S. farmers are given a total of $2 billion each year for not farming their land.

#20 The U.S. government handed one Tennessee library $5,000 for the purpose of hosting a series of video game parties.

#21 A few years ago the government spent $123,050 on a Mother’s Day Shrine in Grafton, West Virginia. It turns out that Grafton only has a population of a little more than 5,000 people.

#22 One professor at Dartmouth University was given $137,530 to create a “recession-themed” video game entitled “Layoff”.

#23 According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. military spent “$998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida”.

#24 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once shelled out $30,000 to a group of farmers to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight “haycations”.

#25 The National Institutes of Health paid researchers $400,000 to find out why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.

#26 The National Institutes of Health also once spent $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.

#27 The National Institutes of Health loves to spend our tax money on really bizarre things. The NIH once spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.

#28 According to the Washington Post, 1,271 different government organizations work on government programs related to counterterrorism and homeland security.

#29 The U.S. government spent $100,000 on a “Celebrity Chef Fruit Promotion Road Show in Indonesia”.

#30 The feds once gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 “to paint a Chinook salmon” on the side of a Boeing 737.

As always, if the political class ever resolved any major issue such as our lost war on drugs, failing public schools, high national debt, escalating health care costs, a lack of a national energy strategy, etc., we might be able to live with stupid uses of our money.

However, we get nothing in return for high levels of taxation and have to sit back and watch as the political class hands out our money to stupid projects like these.

As Forest Gump once said: “Stupid is as stupid does.” When it comes to politicians that have the nerve and chutzpah to ask us for more money via taxes after squandering previous tax receipts on these worthless efforts, when they talk like this it reinforces our view that “Stupid is as stupid talks.” These are just another 30 reasons why term limits for all Federal politicians cannot come soon enough.

The original source for these 30 stupid expenditures can be read at:

http://www.mrconservative.com/2012/03/2471-30-government-waste-projects/30/

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Washington's "Hunger Games" Approach To Government, Part 1: Rich In Washington, Poor Everywhere Else

One of our most popular posts of all times is at the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/04/marie-antoinette-and-arrogance-of-our.html

It discussed a number of examples where members of the Washington political class were condescending, arrogant, and downright rude to their constituents. It was as if we were reliving the Marie Antoinette era where the ruling class could not care less about the challenges, welfare, and issues facing the ordinary citizens. They were more interested in their own comfort and self enrichment, making them so out of touch that when they were told their citizens had no bread to eat their haughty response was to let them eat cake.
Our political class in D.C. is not much different:

• Their annual salaries of over $170,000 a year put them in the top 3-4% of all earners in this country but they work less than half a year in session or with their constituents.
• Their lavish benefits add about another $100,000 to their annual compensation package.
• House of Representative members get the American taxpayer to lease a car for them while in office (and what they lease for themselves are not small compact cars).
• They have large staffs that look after their every need while they reside in extremely nice offices.
• Their retirement benefits are embarrassingly lavish for embarrassingly little work.
• Congressional rules allow them to participate in private company IPOs as insiders, which usually result in very profitable investments in very short timeframes.
• Up until recently, they were allowed to privately trade stocks in their personal investment portfolios which leveraged insider government information they knew but most of the world did not know.
• They have rigged their pay processes to automatically guarantee them an annual pay raise regardless of how poorly they performed their jobs during the year.

Yes, the political class has made life very good for themselves. However, in the process, they have made life very good for others that they interact with in their duties as a politician. Recent news reports depressingly illustrate how America is turning into the “Hunger Games” scenario.

In the “Hunger Games” books there is a very, very small, elitist set of people in the seat of power, far away from the common folks, both in geography and life style and options. The elitists have manipulated their government so that vast amounts of taxpayer wealth flows to this seat of power to the detriment of the rest of the country. Those in the seat of power enjoy self enrichment, status, pomposity, and gluttony, in its many forms, all on the backs and hard efforts of the rest of the citizens out in the country and hinterlands.

Let’s start with the first research report from Reuters that was summarized on their website on December 18, 2012. The details of their analysis include the following facts and trends, listing in no particular order of insult:

• The top 5% of households in Washington, D.C., had average incomes over $500,000 in 2011, while the bottom 20% earned less than $9,500 - a ratio of 54 to 1.
• This ratio is up from 39 to 1 just twenty years ago and is higher than the ratio in all 50 states and all but two major cities.
• The article observes that not only does the Federal government redistribute wealth to lower income people but it also redistributes wealth up to wealthy people, that mostly involves themselves and those that come to the political class for favors.
• In 2010, the Federal government directed $83.5 billion to contractors, lobbyists and lawyers just in the District of Columbia area, mostly as a result of our bloated defense budget.
• Even when taking inflation into account, this $83.5 billion is an increase of more than 300% since 1989.
• With the exception of the state government budgets in California and Texas, this locally distributed $83.5 billion is larger than each of the other 48 state government budgets.
• Private industry and their lobbyists spent more than $3 billion on lobbying Washington politicians to get their piece of the $83.5 billion.
• This lobbying is nearly double what it was just ten years ago.
• According to the 2010 Census, 10 of the capital's surrounding counties place in the top 20 counties across the country when measuring median household income, this is up from six counties in 1990. We can safely assume that most of this wealth has been generated in some shape or form from the Federal budget process and growth.
• But not everyone in the greater D.C. has been getting wealthier since 1990, just the wealthy are getting wealthier, as we see from the following Reuters graph (double click on the graph for a larger view):

　

　　
　

• Direct spending by the Federal government accounts for 40% of the D.C. metro area’s $425 billion-a-year economy.
• About 15% every dollar from the entire Federal procurement budget stays in or around the D.C. area even though the area accounts for only 2% of the national population: "We're seeing an enormous transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the Washington economy," said Steve Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.
• Since 1990, five of the top 10 major defense contractors have moved their headquarters to the Washington area, where the money is to be lobbied and procured.
• The greater Washington area has produced 385 of the nation's fastest-growing small- and medium-sized companies since 2000, more than any other metropolitan area in the country: "It's the rich getting richer phenomenon," said Dane Stangler, the Kauffman's Foundation director of research. "Because Washington has a concentration of high-growth companies, that attracts higher-skilled people to work there, which will attract more companies."
• While the average household income in the U.S. has fallen below $50,000, in Washington, area workers with incomes above $100,000 rose to 22% of the workforce, up from 14% in 1990.
• In addition, there are 320,000 Federal jobs in the Washington area and within the actual District of Columbia, 55% of those jobs pay $100,000 or more a year.
• How much taxpayer wealth is at stake in the D.C. area can be measured, to a degree, by lobbyist activity: 13,000 lobbyists registered with the Federal government last year and reported $3.3 billion in fees, about $260,000 per lobbyist; that’s 22% more lobbyists and 37% more inflation-adjusted revenue per lobbyist than in 1998.
• The number of lawyers in the greater D.C. metro has jumped 44% since, twice the national rate, to 41,000 since 1999.
• The D.C. area lawyer annual average income, adjusted for inflation, has risen 35% in that timeframe to $156,000.
• The number of organizations with a political presence in D.C, has more than doubled between 1981 and 2006 to nearly 14,000, according to a study by political scientists Kay L. Schlozman, Sidney Verba and Henry E. Brady.

The entire Reuters article, with the associated data sources for the stats listed above can be found at:


http://www.reuters.com/subjects/income-inequality/washington

Lots of depressing statistics, but really one main message: the growth of the Federal government has spawned obscene growth in Washington D.C. economy that is orders of magnitudes more than the growth of the economy in the rest of the country. The political class has set themselves up as auctioneers of our taxpayer wealth to the highest bidders and those that benefit from these oversized, bloated government budgets have migrated to this seat of power in D.C.

Now, this elitist class of people, the Marie Antoinette’s of our time, might be tolerable if they produced resolutions to the major problems facing America. But, alas, they have been too busy eating their own cake.

We have gone decades without resolving any of our major issues: our lost war on drugs, our leaky borders, our lack of an illegal immigration strategy, our escalating health care costs, our failing public schools, our skyrocketing national debt, our lack of a national energy plan and strategy, etc. We have paid a lot of money for little results.

We will continue this “Hunger Games” discussion tomorrow and beyond, much to the chagrin of us outside of the D.C. Beltway of power.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Update: You Are Not Living In A Free Country... - The Desruction of Freedom and Liberty In the United States And How To Repair The Damage

As we start the new year, one would hope that we could look forward to better times and better lives. However, in the U.S. democracy, that might be a tall order, given the obscene growth and reach of the Federal government in this country and the politicians that operate it. We have previously discussed this erosion of freedom and the perverting of liberty principles in the following popular post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-freedom-pyramid-where-it-is-and.html

Given this review of how a democracy should work, read the following and then you decide if you think you are still living in a free country:

- You are not living in a free country if your retirement medical care, via Medicare, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if a large percentage of your retirement cash flow, via Social Security, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your pre-retirement medical care, via the ramifications of Obama Care, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your ability to go to college, via student loans, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your ability to get a home mortgage, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if almost a third of your annual earnings go to taxes to support all levels of wasteful inefficient, and criminally infested government programs and entities.

- You are not living in a free country if the Federal government’s executive branch can commit U.S. military resources and taxpayer wealth to foreign military actions (e.g. Libya, Yemen, Syria) without Congressional or Constitutional approval.

- You are not living in a free country if the Federal government’s executive branch can independently and arbitrarily designate any American for assassination and then actually commit that assassination without due process of law (e.g. Anwar al-Awlaki).

- You are not living in free country when the Federal government can hold a U.S. citizen in prison for an indefinite period of time without due process of law if that government arbitrarily defines that citizen as a potential threat to national security (National Defense Authorization Act - NDAA)

- You are not living in a free country when a President can seize control of all forms of communications when he alone decides it is in the national interest (Executive Order - Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions)

- You are not living in a free country when the Federal government can collect and store every electronic communication any citizen makes (e.g. email, text messages) in massive data storage centers (e.g. Bluffdale, Utah) without due process, a warrant, or privacy protection.

- You are not living in a free country when the Federal government executive branch thinks it can affix a GPS tracking device to any citizen’s car without a warrant (see U.S. Vs. Jones decision).

- You are not living in a free country when the executive branch thinks it has the power to arbitrarily ignore judicial rulings and existing laws (e.g. Gulf Of Mexico drilling moratorium and DOMA).

- You are not living in a free country when government agents, via TSA, are allowed to grope and grab U.S. citizen’s body parts in the name of national security.

- You are not living in a free country if government and political class spending has rung up trillions of dollars of national debt that will eventually have to be paid by you, your children, and your grandchildren.

- You are not living in a free country if you privacy rights can be almost arbitrarily be violated by the Patriot Act.

- You are not living in a free country when crony capitalism wastes billions of taxpayer dollars every year without any redeeming societal benefits (e.g. Solyndra, Fisker, Telsa).

- You are not living in a free country if your political leaders hold you and your opinions in contempt:

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - those Americans that opposed Obama's health care reform effort are un-American.
• Congressman Charles Rangel - those Americans that opposed Obama's health care reform effort are like the racists that opposed the civil rights movements in the 1960s.
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - American tourists that come to D.C. in the summer physically smell.
• Congressman Dick Grayson - those Americans with a different opinions from him are knuckle dragging Neanderthals.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - those Americans against the building of a mosque close to Ground Zero in New York City needed to be investigated.
• Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee - Tea Party members used to wear Ku Klux Klan white sheets.
• Congresswoman Maxine Walters - Tea Party advocates “can go to hell."
• Czar Van Jones - those opposed to the President's policies are a_ _ h_ _ _ s.

- You are not living in a free country if the executive branch can circumvent Constitutionally mandated government appointment reviews via a "czar" politburo.

- You are not living in a free country when politicians can use billions of taxpayer dollars, via earmarks, to finance their perpetual re-election campaigns.

- You are not living in a free country where politicians decide what private companies live (e.g. Citigroup) and what private companies die (e.g. Lehman Brothers.)

- You are not living in a free country when those in office can maximize their re-election chances with favorable gerrymandering of Congressional districts.

- You are not living in a free country if your selection of a Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party via the primary and caucus system can be overturned by a small cadre of insiders in the upper echelon of the party called "super delegates."

- You are not living in a free country when sitting politicians can automatically grant themselves annual pay increases regardless of how poorly they led the nation during the past year.

- You are not living in a free country when sitting politicians cannot be removed from Congressional committee posts regardless of how poorly they performed their jobs on those committees (e.g. Intelligence committee members who did not foresee the 9-11 attacks, Finance committee members who did not foresee the coming of the "Great Recession", Interior Department committee members that did not properly oversee the BP oil rig inspection process, etc.)

- You are not living in a free country when any level of government can seize your property for a supposedly fair price and turn it over to developers for a private sector development project.

- You are not living in a free country when perceived and actual voter fraud casts significant doubt on whether or not your vote was counted fairly and if the true winner prevailed.

So let's review. Politicians control our pocketbooks, our health care, our retirement funding, who we vote for, invade our privacy, read our electronic communications, pontentially manipulate our voting results, violate our property rights, and control our ability to get a mortgage or student loan while calling us names if we dare to disagree with them. Hardly sounds like the traditional definition of a democracy to me.

The beauty of this system, that the political class has worked out for themselves, is that they are able to keep us fighting among ourselves. This diverts our attention to the fact that our freedom and liberty have slowly been stripped away. We have reached a point in this country that a great portion of our lives is no longer controlled by our brains, our energy, our freedom, and our initiative but by about 600 people sitting in Congress and the executive branch of the Federal government.

We vehemently, and fruitlessly, fight among ourselves over relatively trivial issues while the political class strips us of our wealth and our liberty without ever solving a major issue:

• We are no closer to a rational drug policy in this country since Nixon declared War On Drugs in the 1960s, with this void allowing a narco state to develop just south of our border with Mexico.
• We are no closer to a rational and coherent national energy policy despite the oil crises from the 1970s.
• We are no closer to having world class public schools despite the warning of failing public schools from early in the Reagan administration and the expenditure of trillions of dollars since then.
• We are no closer to having a coherent and effective immigration plan and strategy.
• We are no closer to having an effective strategy for containing escalating health care costs.
• We are no closer to having a sane, balanced budget process for the Federal government with the political class spending trillions of dollars more than they bring in in revenue.

We no longer live in a free country and we have allowed the politicians to do it to us. That is why it is so important to begin the cleansing process and the restoration of freedom with the implementation of the following steps, some of which were laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:"

1. Step 1 - reduce Federal spending by 10% a year for five years in order to tame our out of control political class spending.
2. Step 14 - implement specific and fair processes to eliminate the current gerrymandering process for Congressional districts.
3. Step 17 - eliminate the "Super Delegate" process
4. Step 19 - strengthen eminent domain laws to prevent the arbitrary confiscation of private property.
5. Steps 20, 21, 22 - Make the following changes to the Patriot Act to protect the privacy of citizens: review every section of the Act to see if each part is still really needed for national security, make it illegal to intercept any form of communications of a citizen without a judge-approved warrant, notify any citizen if they have been investigated and cleared by any government agency investigation, and finally appoint the members to the oversight committee of the Act, a committee that has never been staffed.
6. Step 28 - repeal Obama Care, an atrocity that imposes thousands of rules and dozens of taxes on the nation without solving the root causes of our escalating health care costs and replace it with a the process described in Step 28.
7. Step 34 - implement a citizen approval process that would remove politicians from Congressional committees for gross dereliction of duty.
8. Step 37 - eliminate the Congressional process that automatically grants an annual pay increase to Congressional members, replacing it with a citizen satisfaction based pay system.
9. Step 39 - implement term limits for all Federal politicians in order to get some fresh thinking and problem solvers involved with the myriad issues facing America, "one and done."
10. Disband the czar process and restore the Constitutionally mandated checks and balances of our government processes.

Time is running out to fix what the political class has destroyed in this country from a liberty, privacy, freedom, budget, economic, and Constitution perspective. We have allowed this situation to arise and we are the ones that need to fix it. Otherwise, some morning we will wake up and realize that fifty years ago, Nikita Khrushchev got it right when he said:

"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright; but we'll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have communism. We won't have to fight you; we will so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands." Nikita Khrushchev, 1962
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Voter Bill Of Rights - Taking Back Our Demcoracy

Last week was spent reviewing the incompetence, negligence, and disastrous behavior and lack of accountability that our politicians have displayed over recent history. Their disgraceful behavior has resulted in the dire economic mess the country and every American finds themselves in today. Skyrocketing national debt, high unemployment, broken budget processes in the Senate, etc. are the consequences of their inaction, dereliction of their Constitutional and legal responsibilities, and focus on their own self enrichment.

We also reviewed two methods that could be used, via our judicial system, to fix Washington. The first method is already underway with a massive Federal law suit having been filed in Brooklyn to expose and bring down the cronyism relationship between Washington politicians and Wall Street bankers (”banksters”).

The second method is a proposal to sue the Federal government from a citizen’s perspective for running annual TRILLION dollar deficits as a result of not executing their required budget making processes. That method, proposed in last Wednesday’s post, asked for legal aid and advice from any reader who might be able to support this effort.

Today’s post is centered on other steps that could and should be initiated in order to enforce accountability on Washington politicians. We will call them a “Voter Bill Of Rights.” These steps involve forcing accountability on these politicians who seem to think that getting elected is the end game, not the beginning of their work.

Additionally, there are other proposed steps on how to retake control of our election processes from the political class and their big money supporters (e.g. unions, corporations, PACs, etc.). It is the money of these supporters which now drown out the desires of average Americans.

Many of these action items/voter rights come from an Internet effort previously discussed in this blog to reform Congress (the so-called “Congressional Reform Act Of 2011”) and also includes some of the steps originally laid out in “Love my Country , Loathe My Government:”

1. Washington politicians will receive no tenure and no traditional pension for serving in Congress or being the President or Vice President, i.e. all Washington politicians collect a salary while in office but receive no pay, pension, benefits, etc. once they're out of office.
2. All former Washington politicians would immediately forfeit their current pension benefits and payouts if their personal wealth exceeds one million dollars. Since the vast majority of  American citizens no longer can obtain a traditional pension, there is no reason why these same Americans should be funding a traditional pension benefit revenue stream for current and former politicians.
3. Washington politicians are to be limited to one Congressional term only and one Presidential term only, no exceptions, “one and done.” As a result of this term limit rule, a Presidential term would now be six years long, a Senate term would be five years long, and a House Of Representatives term would be four years long. (Step 39 from “Love my Country, Loathe My Government.”)
4. As a result of this new term limits rule, current politicians would serve out their current term and no longer be eligible for a Washington politically elected office, i.e. no “grandfathering” of current politicians currently in office.
5. Congress will no longer be able to vote themselves a pay raise. Future pay raises would be based on well they execute their jobs, either via economic benchmarks (I.e. unemployment rate, deficit reduction goals, etc.) and/or via an annual citizen satisfaction survey to be conducted by an independent source. (Step 37)
6. In no cases would Congressional pay rise by more than the lower of the CPI or 3%.
7. The President, Vice President, and all members of Congress would lose their current, taxpayer supported, gold plated health care plan and benefits and would have their health care covered by the health care exchanges that were established by Obama Care. If Obama Care is such a great program, than those who voted for it and those who wrote the legislation should have to abide by the same rules it established for a typical American family.
8. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. These laws include, but are not limited to, all insider stock trading laws, equal opportunity and affirmative action rules and quotas (Step 45), etc. Failure to do so would result in the same penalties that typical Americans are subjected to including fines, imprisonment or both.
9. Failure of the executive branch or either branch of Congress to meet their Constitutional and lawful budget development dates will immediately result in a suspension of all compensation for those people who were responsible for missing those dates and associated deadlines. Pay and benefits would not be restored until the proper budget processes were completed and no back pay or benefits would be paid out, what is lost is lost forever.
10. Corporations, unions, and PACs of any flavor would no longer be allowed to contribute money or resources to any Presidential or Congressional campaign. It is assumed that when the nation’s Founders established freedom of speech as an essential part of liberty they were referring to an individual citizen’s freedom of speech, not the freedom of speech of a PAC for example. Thus, in the future, the only campaign contributions that will be allowed is a contribution and donation from individual citizens directly into an official candidate’s campaign. (Step 6)
11. Future political campaigns would only be allowed to accept and use contributions from citizens who are voting in that particular political campaign/race. For example, a Kansas citizen could not funnel a campaign donation into a New Jersey Congressional race. In fact, a New Jersey citizen could not contribute to a House of Representatives political campaign that was outside of that citizen’s Congressional district. (Step 7)
12. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) would be totally revamped so that it was no longer a toothless election watchdog, staffed by political cronies of existing politicians. The head of a revamped FEC would be a nationally elected position, preferably being staffed by an experienced criminal prosecutor than the current political lapdogs. (Step 8)
13. The personal financial assets of each elected Washington politician would be put into an ironclad, personal blind trust while they are serving in office so that they are not tempted to take advantage of insider government and insider trading information while in office. This rule would extend down into the top members of Presidential and Congressional staffs.
14. Given the widespread voter fraud that likely occurred in this past Presidential election, future voter fraud should be considered a treasonable illegal act, given that it robs honest Americans of their right to vote in a democracy, punishable in court as a top felony.
15. Given the widespread voter fraud that likely occurred in this past Presidential election, in future Presidential and Congressional elections, four selected states will have their votes counted by two independent vote counting organizations to ensure that critical states and critical elections are indeed honest. The Republican Party would get to select two of the four states and the Democratic Party would get to select the other two states.
16. In the short term, divvy Electoral College votes in each state on a proportion of vote basis rather than a winner take all basis to reestablish the principle that everyone's vote counts the same. Longer term, scrap the Electoral College process all together and elect President's on popular vote only (Step 16).
17. Stop gerrymandering Congressional districts, a process which usually ensures the reelection of incumbent candidates and their political parties (Step 14).
18. Stop funding Republican and Demcoratic Party conventions with taxpayer money, all convention expenses including security should be borne by the parties themselves (Step 13).

Why are these “Voters Bill Of Rights” required? Consider what the current state of our political processes and political class:

• Persistently high unemployment and under employment.
• Skyrocketing national debt.
• Skyrocketing health care costs.
• Burdensome tax levels and burdens while the Federal government and the politicians that operate it waste hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
• Crony capitalism that grows more disgraceful, wasteful, and inefficient every day.
• Major issues of our times that never get resolved, issues that include a lost war on drugs, failing public schools, no national energy policy, no coherent or compassionate illegal immigration plan, etc.
• The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women, Congress made all these contracts for themselves.
• Serving in Congress should be an honor, not a career or a path to self enrichment.
• The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term in office and then go home and back to work.

This is what is needed to take back and restore our democracy from our politicians, the “banksters,” the moneyed interests, and the failed political processes. Anything short of this Voter Bill Of Rights is an eventual abdication of our democracy.

We will operationalize this effort in the coming months and will let you know how you get involved before it is too late. Until then, please consider reviewing one of the most popular blog posts we have ever done, a post that clearly defines how fall we have fallen away from our concept of freedom and liberty:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/11/american-freedom-pyramid-where-it.html

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, andrespect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w