More Proof That Obama Care Got It Wrong

A new report from the National Research Council had some very interesting findings, findings that continue to prove that Obama care got the whole approach to solving the nation's escalating health care costs wrong in its approach and strategy. The National Research Council is part of the National Academy Of Sciences, an independent organization of the Federal government, chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters. Thus, the government did not even listen to itself when it cobbled together the looming disaster know as Obama Care.


According to the report:

- The United States spends more on health care than any other nation in the world but has worse life expectancy than many other nations who spend less.

- The  U.S. average life expectancy at birth for women is 80.8 years and 75.6 years for men.

- In France, women's life expectancy is 84.4 years and for men it is 77.4 years.

- In Japan, women's life expectancy is almost 86 years and for men it is 79.2.

- The report concludes that smoking and obesity are the primary drivers of the U.S.'s poor performance since, according to the findings, over the years, the U.S. led those unhealthy trends of eating too much of the wrong kinds of food and smoking too much.

- The report found in countries where women's life expectancy was high, there was a strong correlation with low smoking levels and in those countries where women's smoking levels were comparable to U.S. smoking levels, life expectancy was about the same as in the U.S.

- The report estimated that between 25% and 33% of the shortfall in life expectancy in the U.S. was due to obesity.


Well, what a surprise. If you do not take care of your body and health, you will live a shorter life and probably live a less healthy life. This is not rocket science. I would also assume that even if these bad habits do not shorten your life, they certainly make you more unhealthy and more likely to need medical care, further burdening the health care industry and adding to the cost of providing health care service.


Consider some other recent scientific findings that we have discussed in this blog:


- In a Fortune magazine article last year, the head of the world renowned Cleveland Clinic was interviewed and he estimated that smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise account for the majority of illnesses in this country.

- The Cleveland Clinic significantly reduced the health risks of those that work in the Clinic and the entire county where the Clinic is located by offering smoking cessation classes, exercise options, and improved eating options in their cafeterias.

- An AARP Magazine article from their December, 2010 issue reported on how a small American town had implemented a town wide health drive that had resulted in many townspeople using the program to drop considerable amounts of excess weight.

- A December 24, 2010 article from The Week magazine reported on how Americans take in too much salt in their diet and that just a small reduction in that amount could save upwards of 100,000 lives a year that occur as a result of excess salt (a 13% decline), and the incidence of new heart disease and stroke cases would decrease by 11% and 8% respectively.

- In that same issue of The Week, another article reported on how American kids spend way too much time passively watching television and not getting up and exercising, behavior that results in poorer school performance, a higher chance of being bullied, and higher ratios of body fat.


As we have said many times before, the probable root causes of escalating health care costs in this country is a public health problem of too much smoking, too much eating, too much eating of the wrong types of food, and not enough exercising and movement. The need for higher taxes, the need to force everyone to purchase health care insurance coverage, and the need to implement an incredibly complex, inefficient and expensive government bureaucracy to administer Obama Care are probably not the root causes.


Unfortunately, this latter approach is what the political class decided to implement. It does not address these root causes, causes that are best addressed by a public health approach, not a taxation and government control/bureaucracy approach.


In fact, I would maintain that Michelle Obama has done more to improve the health care situation in the United States than the President and all of Congress has done. Ms. Obama has been active in promoting programs to get kids up and out and active. Just this past week, she held a joint news conference with Walmart officials where they jointly announced an effort to make the food products sold in Walmart supermarkets healthier. No additional taxes, no additional impositions on freedom, no additional government intervention in our lives, just sound, simple public health improvement actions.


What should we do to fix this wrong headed and doomed to failure approach of Obama Care? Consider two steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:

- Step 28 - implement a subject matter expert panel of smart Americans, a panel that would not include politicians and lobbyists, that would execute a ground up approach, problem solving exercise to fully understand the underlying root causes of our nation's poor health and resulting high health care costs. Once the underlying causes were identified, implement the probable public health care strategies to begin changing eating, exercising, and smoking behavior, not changing tax laws.

- Step 5 - last year, the Obama administration admitted that upwards of $100 billion a year is lost through government health care programs to fraud and criminal activity. A $100 billion is a lot of money, money that could be better spent helping provide health care coverage and services to Americans that need help. Thus, this step would aggressively staff up anti-fraud and anti-criminal behavior and tighten up the processes to reduce this obscene amount of taxpayer money wasted through fraud. Better to hire more government agents to go after real criminals in this fraud area than to hire more government agents to pursue and criminalize honest Americans that do not purchase health care coverage under Obama Care.


A third step, although not included in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" has some fascinating possibilities. If cigarettes were outlawed altogether, you can be sure that a criminal black market would develop in cigarettes, contributing to the rise of yet another government fostered criminal enterprise, just like Prohibition did and just like the War on Drugs does. However, what if you made it so unattractive to smoke that you achieved the same objective without criminalizing smoking?


The genesis of this approach was identified in a short blurb in the November 19, 2010 issue of The Week magazine which named www.Boston.com as the source. According to the blurb, beginning on January 1, 2011 the Massachusetts Hospital Association will no longer hire people who smoke tobacco. The obvious intent is to reduce, an intent that was verified by the CEO of the Association, the overall number of smokers. As we know from results and research listed above, dropping the smoking rate results in all kinds of good health care results.


In this approach, no one is forcing smokers to stop smoking. No one is making smoking illegal. No criminal enterprises arise. However, there is one less employment opportunity for people in the Massachusetts area. What if Obama had taken the following approach:


- Starting in 2013, the Federal government will no longer hire anyone who is a smoker.

- Starting in 2015, anyone on the Federal payroll who is still a smoker will be removed form the Federal payroll.

- Between now and the beginning of 2015, the Federal government will provide extensive smoking cessation support for current government employees who smoke.


This example might actually ripple through the economy as companies take their lead from the Federal government, resulting in a healthier and longer living America.


Would there be lawsuits implemented by smokers? Probably, Would they be successful? I do not know but the Massachusetts Hospital Association does not think they would be successful, given that they have already implemented this process under the legal assumption that "smokers" are not a protected class.


This is the type of original thinking and creativity that was totally absent from the formulation and writing of Obama Care. The political class just did what they always do, pass muddled legislation that adjusts taxes and creates more bureaucracy without ever addressing the root causes. This behavior is something we like to call "Amateur Hour" and is another case where they got it all wrong again.





Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Florida Senator Bill Nelson - Five Months And Counting, Waiting for Your Response

I live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida which makes Democratic Senator Bill Nelson one of my two U.S. Senators. In early August of 2010, I sent him a letter at the same time I sent the White House a letter, asking both parties very specific questions about Obama's health care reform legislation. Senator Nelson was one of the Senators who voted to approve the legislation.

My purpose for writing both letters was purely personal. My wife and myself are currently AT&T retirees, having spent almost fifty years in total working for AT&T. As a result of that long service, we are blessed to have AT&T provide health insurance coverage in our retirement years. One of President Obama's selling points of Obama Care was that those Americans that currently had private health care plans would continue to still have them, nothing would change.

However, as the months have gone by, AT&T  (Fortune magazine article from early August, 2010) and other major corporations (e.g. Verizon, John Deere, Caterpillar, McDonalds) have hinted that they may drop their employee and retiree health care coverage because under Obama Care it is less expensive to pay a fine for not providing health care then it is to continue providing health care coverage. Thus, my letters below to the the Democratic White House Administration (Letter # 3 below) and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson (Letter #2 below).

Unfortunately, after five months, neither party has responded to my request and answered my questions. Not only have they not answered to my questions, they have not responded at all, not even to admit that they received my correspondence, never mind answering my relatively simple and important questions. Talk about poor customer service, not even an acknowledgement of receipt. And this from a Presidential administration that bills itself as the most open and communicative administration ever. In fact, I have never received any confirmation from my numerous White House inquires, both by email and snail mail, even though I have requested an answer every time.

Given their callous lack of response, I made good on my threat and for the first time ever in my life (I am almost 60 years old), I voted for a Republican for national office this past November. For the first time ever, I was actually happy to see the Republican gains in Congress, given the cold shoulder the Democrats gave to me on something that is very important, and potentially very expensive, in my life.

Letter # 1 below is a new letter I sent out to Senator Nelson earlier this week. I will be very interested to see if this one gets a response, either next week, next month, five months down the road or never. I want to see if the first letter got "lost" or just got ignored.

In the meantime, let's review why Obama Care continues to fall apart:

• Probably millions Americans like myself that worked or continue to work for major U.S. corporations face the very real threat of losing their health insurance coverage and being forced to find new coverage, quite possibly at much higher prices. This situation potentially will cause more Americans to lose coverage and end up paying more for coverage, the exact opposite of what was intended.
• A Reuters news report from January 6, 2011 reported that 33 governors sent a letter to the administration pointing out that they were having severe budget difficulties funding existing Federal mandated insurance programs even before the onslaught of additional Obama Care funding requirements become a reality.
• The administration has already issued over a hundred waivers to the health care legislation for some companies' health insurance plans to account for unforeseen consequences of the bill's passage, just months after the passage occurred. How many more unforeseen conseqences are likely to appear as we go forward? Historically, unforeseen consequences from political class actions are almost always bad news for Americans.
• Today on the local Tampa news reports it was reported that three of the largest blood banks in Tampa are likely to merge into one super blood bank company. An Associated Press report in late 2010 reported on a "merger frenzy" in many components of the health care industry as a result of Obama Care. Thus, rather than increasing competition which would result in lowering the skyrocketing health care costs in this country, the legislation is having the unintended consequence of actually reducing competition through the merger frenzy.
• The legislation is highly unlikely to reduce the Federal budget. The legislation was sold in by quoting a Congressional Budget Office estimate that it would reduce Federal spending by $135 billion over the first ten years. However, shortly after that estimate helped pass the bill, the Associated Press reported that the CBO did not estimate costs for all of the components of the bill. Their $135 billion savings estimate left out over $100 billion of costs, virtually wiping out the purported gain. And, since the passage of the bill, reputable analytic efforts, such as an in-depth review by the Cato Institute, have shown that the bill could add at least a TRILLION to the national debt.
• Do not even get me started how the legislation will make criminal out of a sizable number of Americans who choose not to pay for government mandated insurance.
• The major flaw in the legislation is that it did not attack the root causes of our rising health care costs. These costs are high because Americans eat too much, they eat too much of the wrong food, they smoke too much, they do not exercise enough, and they are getting older. Rather than treat the problem as a public health issue, which it is, they treated it as a tax and government regulation issue, dooming it to an expensive failure.

We could go on and on but it would still not answer my letters to my President and Senator. Hello, anybody home? I need some answers and five months and counting is too long of a time for a constituent to wait for you to come to the door. Remember, 2012 will be here before you know it. I would hope to have answers by then or the Republicans may just nab me for a second time.



*****************
Letter # 1 - Mailed January 9, 2011

Senator Nelson:



Five months ago I sent your office the attached letters, one addressed to you and one addressed to President Obama. My wife and I are former AT&T employees and are now retired. AT&T provides our health care insurance and they do a fine job of it with their high deductible plan. Since we are responsible for the first thousand dollars or so of our coverage and expenses, the plan encourages us to take personal responsibility for our health care, resulting in lower costs for everyone involved. Let me be very clear: we are very happy with our current health care insurance.


However, the AT&T Chairman strongly implied in a Fortune magazine interview article last summer that it was highly likely that AT&T would drop this insurance plan for its current and retired employees. From a corporate perspective, under Obama Care it is financially better for AT&T to drop its coverage for millions of Americans and pay the Obama Care fine than it is to continue offering their current plan, or any plan.


In light of this very depressing news, I asked the President’s office and your office for help in answering our health care questions. My wife and I are both in our late 50s and she has a pre-existing condition. Looking for health care under these conditions is not something we expected to have to do. In fact, the President claimed during the debate on Obama Care that we could keep our existing insurance coverage. This turned out to be a hollow promise if AT&T and other companies drop their plans altogether as a result of Obama Care, as many have already suggested they will do.


What is just as depressing is the fact that neither your office or the President’s office had the common decency to even acknowledge receipt of these letters. This is horrific customer service - a constituent contacts you for help and you do not have the class or courage to answer and address our concerns. Is it no wonder that Democrats took a shellacking in November - not only have you potentially ruined health care insurance for millions of Americans you will not even defend it or help those that you put into distress.


So, I am trying again. The questions in the original letter remain unanswered. I would appreciate answers to those questions. If I get no response this time, I guarantee I will become actively involved in your defeat the next time you run for any office.


Walter Korschek


Address


Phone Number


Email Address


********************
Letter # 2 - Mailed early August, 2010
 Senator:


The letter below is being sent to the President at the same time that it is being mailed to you. As you can see, I am not a happy American since I am highly likely to lose my AT&T retiree health care coverage as a result of the recently passed health care reform legislation, a law that you voted to approve. I am asking the President to answer the three questions below and I am also asking that you or a member of your staff do the same. Myself and millions of other Americans are likely to lose their corporate health insurance coverage and I feel we are entitled to answers like those I have posed.


I would prefer to have those answers from your staff by November in order to fully understand who to vote for at that time. Beware, that those answers will also carry over to 2014 when I believe you are up for re-election. Please be forewarned that that is unlikely if your answers are unsatisfactory or millions of us have lost our insurance coverage by then. This is not a hope for answers to these three questions, this is a demand for answers to these three questions without political spin or generalities. I would like to know the answers to my particular situation. Have a nice day,

Walter “Bruno” Korschek


****************
Letter # 3 - Mailed early August, 2010August 13, 2010


Mr. President:



I know that you are a very busy man so I will try to keep my questions about health care reform and the recently passed legislation as short and simple as possible.


I could ask you why you think this is a good piece of legislation even though I truly believe that it will be a failure and will come very close to bankrupting the country. The basis for my conclusion has nothing to do with political partisanship (in fact, I have never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.) From my perspective, "Obama Care" never effectively addressed the root causes of our escalating health care costs: Americans eat too much of the wrong kinds of food, they exercise far too little, they are overweight, they smoke too much, and they are getting older. This legislation does not address these causes, it just raises taxes and moves money around within the bureaucracy. I could ask you about this but I will not.


I could ask you why you have not stepped forward and denounced those in your party that have likened Americans like myself, i.e. those that have legitimate and honest concerns about this health care reform bill, to the racists who fought against the civil rights movement from the 1960s. I thought that we lived in a free country where citizens could freely address their elected representatives without being slurred in the most debasing way possible, just for having a different opinion. Your lack of fortitude to oppose those Democrats who frequently use the term "racist" to malign myself and those Americans expressing their honest opposition, cheapens the bravery and contributions of those from long ago that fought actual racism. I could ask you about this but I will not.


I could ask you why you felt it necessary to pass this legislation by the back door called reconciliation. This is a major, major issue in the country that will affect every American for decades to come. Sneaking it in the back door, without using the traditional, time honored method of passing laws in his country, belittles the approach and makes it look like it was forced through without the full weight of the democratic process behind it. I could ask you about this but I will not.


Here is what I will ask you about. But first, some background facts:


- Let me reiterate that both my wife and myself have never voted for a Republican for national office in our lives.


- We both spent several decades of our lives working hard for AT&T, retiring several years ago, secure in our thinking that AT&T's promise of health care benefits and coverage for our long years of service was a good bet.


- We both try to eat well, we exercise at our local YMCA on an almost daily basis, neither of us smoke, and we rarely drink. In other words, we take personal responsibility for our health and our health care.


- One reason for our personal responsibility behavior is that we are on a high deductible insurance plan with AT&T. We are each - responsible for the first $1,200 of our annual health care costs before we get any insurance coverage at all. However, for this personal responsibility, we also pay nothing in annual premiums.


- During the debate leading up to the passage of health care reform, you reiterated more than once that those of us that currently had health care coverage would be able to keep it. However, in a recent article in Fortune magazine, the CEO of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, was interviewed (several pages of the article are attached). Towards the end of the interview, he was explicitly asked whether AT&T would consider dropping health care insurance coverage for its employees and retirees. His response made it clear that this was a very viable option for two reasons. First, from a business profitability perspective, under the new health care reform law, "you're better off paying the government a fine and dropping health care coverage for your employees", improving AT&Ts bottom line. Second, he talks about "economic gravity" which appears to be code words for "if others in his industry do it, AT&T will have no choice but to do it also."


Thus, a few quick questions for you:


1) Were you just naive when you made the comments that we could all keep our current health care insurance, not realizing the simple fact that companies are in business to make money and if this bill makes it easier for them to make more money by not insuring their workforce, that is what they will do? Or were you being disingenuous, knowing that this would happen and deliberately misinforming the country to help get your health care reform bill passed? Naive or disingenuous, in either case you will be making millions of American voters unhappy in November and in 2012 when we are forced out of our current health care coverage and will blame you for either ignorance or arrogance in this situation.


2) I am 57 years old and my wife is 56 years old and if Mr. Stephenson does decide to terminate AT&T's health care coverage for employees and retirees, where do you suggest that my wife and I get coverage? What insurance company is going to want to pick us up, and millions of other older Americans who lost their coverage, at our ages even though we are both healthy and taking personal responsibility for our continued good health?


3) If we are forced out onto the market for health care insurance coverage, our new coverage is likely going to be much more expensive. Our annual health care costs will go from a maximum of $1,200 each to a minimum of several thousand dollars each. Is this how you planned to reduce health care costs for middle class America? Is so, then you need to explain the math to me. Maximum of $1,200 to a minimum of several thousand dollars, does not make sense out here in the real world. How does this reduce the escalating health care costs for the 90% of Americans that already had health care insurance prior to the passage of this bill?


Thus, I am not going to ask you about why you and the rest of Congress did not address the root causes of high health care costs in your legislating process. I am not going to ask why you have sat back and been silent while those Americans with legitimate and honest dissent against this bill have been likened to racists by members of your party. I thought you represented all Americans, not just those that agreed with your policies. I will not ask you about why you did not have the courage and guts to pass this legislation the right way, through the front door like every other piece of legislation, but instead snuck it through the back door of reconciliation.


However, I will ask you or your staff to contact me and explain where and how I can get health care coverage at my age if AT&T and the rest of corporate America decides it is a better economic choice to pay a government fine than to cover their employees and retirees with health insurance. I will ask you to explain whether you were naive or disingenuous when explaining that we would be able to keep our current health insurance coverage. And finally, please explain how paying no more than $1,200 a year under my current coverage (with many years paying nothing for coverage during healthy years) is a better deal then finding new coverage at my age and paying several thousand dollars a year for the privilege.


Although I have written to the White House many times, I have never received any answer to my questions on a wide variety of topics even though you promised to have the most open and responsive administration of all time. That has not happened yet. However, in this case I do require, in fact I demand specific answers to my three questions above, and not generic political spin answers either. For your sake I hope to receive those answers before early November and certainly before 2012.


Thank you for your time,


Walter "Bruno" Korschek


Address


Phone Number


Email Address

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

2010: Politically, It Was Much Worse Than You Thought

As we come to the end of the year, it is usually a good time to look back and see what the year brought us and hopefully, be thankful for our health, wealth, and good times. However, from an American political class perspective, the events of 2010 were not healthy, wealthy and good for most of America. The exact opposite was true, events of the year were much worse than we think they were, based on some recent news reports:

- In the lead up to the passage of the legislation that would extend the Bush tax cuts for every American for two years, the Democrats were hollering that the legislation was not a good idea to extend the tax cuts for those Americans making over $250,000 a year. It would add about $70 billion a year to the national debt and this horrified them. Never mind that while in control of Congress the past four fiscal years, they managed to add over $4 TRILLION to the national debt.

The Republicans have spent most of the year decrying how out of control Federal government spending was, using that fact as a rallying cry to have a great midterm election. Wow, both parties seemed so interested in taming the budget deficit. However, according to an article in the December 17, 2010 isse of The Week magazine, once the two parties got together to work out a compromise on the tax cuts, the resulting compromise legislation ended up increasing the national debt by $900 billion in just two years. Thus, although all Americans will continue to be taxed at their same level, each U.S. household has now been burdened by an additional future national debt burden of almost $8,000.

How come every time the political class does anything, current and future Americans get hit with more onerous debt burdens? What makes this latest travesty so frustrating is the hypocrisy of both parties who claimed to worry about curbing government spending but ended up making a bad situation even worse.

- According to an article in the December 20, 2010 issue of Business Week magazine, the United States added 937,000 jobs in 2010. This was not nearly enough to begin bringing down the almost 10% unemployment rate. Conversely, a single company in Taiwan, Foxconn, by itself created 300,000 jobs in 2010. Let's see: one foreign company creates 300,000 all by itself, our political class creates only three times that much for the entire country. Proves once again that no matter how much government money is wasted in "economic stimulus programs," it cannot compare in either volume or cost effectiveness in the job creation capability of the private sector. Pathetic. When we will they ever learn?

- One reason that entities like Foxconn can create so many jobs and the United States political class cannot, despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars, was vividly illustrated in the December 27, 2010 issue of The Week magazine. According to the article, the last economic stimulus program spent money on a new heating system for an Indiana Methodist church, bought new windows for a Wyoming Catholic church, and food for a Pennsylvania Christian organization's homeless program. Combine them with other such wasteful stimulus programs as researching insect colonies on an island off the coast of Africa and you can see why much of the stimulus spending had absolutely no chance and no leverage of creating jobs.

A real company in the real world spends money efficiently. In the political realm, money is spend inefficiently to get incumbents re-elected by fixing their places of worship or counting bugs.

- Staying with the bad financial management theme of government, prepare to be horrified by the assertions from various sources in a December 17, 2010 article, also in The Week magazine. According to a a quote from the Financial Times, a recent document dump by the Federal Reserve Board, as required under the recently passed financial markets regulation bill, revealed that the Fed had not dumped about $800 billion into the market to rescue the banks and other financial institutions from the Great Recession, as originally and widely thought.

It was much worse. The Fed had actually dumped more than four times that amount or $3.3 TRILLION. These TRILLIONs were lent to domestic and foreign banks (I cannot understand why the U.S. taxpayer would bailout a foreign bank!), hedge funds, and even Harley Davidson. All of these TRILLIONs were disbursed without congressional oversight or approval.

According to the article, the Fed took massive risks with current and future Americans' wealth and financial health by taking on not good loans with solid collateral but "toxic assets." The article goes on to pint out that the Chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, pushed to bailout AIG, the most toxic of all the bailed out companies even though his staff concluded that any AIG bailout was unnecessary.

The article quotes the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, when he told his shareholders "that the bank hadn't actually needed the Fed's help - but the program (loans from the Fed) did save us money." This verifies the assertion made many times in this blog that many of the financial institutions did not really need the Fed's help to survive. They could have made the hard business choices needed to get themselves out of the problems they created (issued more stock, sold off assets, cut salaries and expenses, etc.) but were more than happy to have an out of control and foolish Fed give them a lending hand, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Thus, the American taxpayer was actually not on the hook for the original $800 billion dollars of bailout (almost $7,000 per U.S. household.) It was much worse with each household responsible for closer to $30,000 per household ($3.3 TRILLION) due to the Fed and Bernanke being out of control and accountable to no government oversight or institution.

- Another article in the December 17. 2010 issue of The Week magazine reported that American students finished 17th in reading test scores, 23rd in science test scores, and 31st math test scores in an international survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These scores were ranked relative to the 60 countries included in the survey. A recent Associated Press article revealed that almost 25% of those wishing to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces cannot complete basic reading and math tests.

Thus, as we are closing the second year of the Obama Presidency, we see that we are seemingly further and further away from properly educating our kids to compete in the world. Combine these results and findings with a recent quote by Robert Reich in Salon.com (as reported in the December 27, 2010 issue of The Week magazine) where he stated unemployment rate of those Americans without a college education is more than 20 percent (double the national average) and you can see what an education hole the political class has dug for the country.

This continuing public education failure by our political class, regardless of who controls Congress and who controls the White House, is drastically undermining the future economic strength of the country along with the ability of our armed forces to defend us. Shameful.

- Not only has the failure of public education in this country not been addressed in 2010:

• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rational energy policy.
• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rationale immigration policy.
• We still do not have a rational, comprehensive, and rationale health care reform policy with Obama Care coming apart at its financial underpinnings and in courts throughout the country.
• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rationale drug addiction policy. The current policy, the lost "War On Drugs" has not worked for the past forty years, has wasted untold billions of dollars, has not materially reduced drug usage, and has allowed a near lawless, violent narco state to evolve just south of our borders.

- Although we do not have many policies listed above, as we look back to 2010, we still have the following in this country, courtesy of the political class:

• We still have the prison at Guantanamo despite Obama campaign promises to close it.
• We still have the Patriot Act, one of the most freedom inhibiting laws of all time.
• We still have an ineffective SEC who has not prosecuted anyone of consequence despite the largest financial meltdown of our generation. Was everyone involved in the financial markets during the meltdown completely honest and law abiding?
• We still have an ineffective Congress and political class which continues to work on useless legislation such as the recently passed law to regulate the sound of television commercials.
• We still have a perverted election process that allows incumbent politicians to almost ensure their perpetual re-election via controlling earmark allocations, gerrymandering Congressional districts, accepting money from money well endowed organizations (PAcs, corporations, unions, etc.), and moving money around the country to benefit of the political parties but to the detriment of local voters.

I would say have a happy 2011, that it cannot be any worse than 2010. However, every time I say something like that, the political class proves me wrong and makes things worse. Instead, let's hope and work towards replacing those in office with a better and smarter class of people with higher standards of integrity and performance, both in 2011 and beyond. We cannot afford a lot more years like 2010.


Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Out Of Control Government, Out Of Touch Politicians And Other Madness

I recently received my monthly edition of Reason magazine. Reason is a great source of articles from writers and journalists dedicated to preserving and expanding freedom in America. Their articles are detailed but easy to understand and serve no political party, just the pursuit of freedom. Each issue has its share of instances where our government, at all levels, is out of control and the politicians that run it are out of touch with reality, often making for some humorous but tragic wastes of taxpayer money and resources.

Below I have picked out some of these examples for you to laugh at and cry about:

• Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote about the bagel situation in the state of New York. Apparently, in New York state if you go to a bagel shop and buy a bagel, it will cost you $.08 more if the bagel shop slices the bagel in half for you. The $.08, of course, goes to the state government in a form of a tax for your convenience of having a sliced bagel. More confusing, if you eat an unsliced bagel at home it is untaxed but if you eat that same unsliced bagel while still in the bagel shop you are subject to tax. Thus, to avoid bagel taxation in New York state you should never ask the bagel shop to slice it for you or dare to eat a whole bagel while still in the shop.
• The same article goes on to point out that in several states, if you purchase a Hershey chocolate bar you have to pay tax on the purchase. However, if you purchase a Kit Kat bar, another type of candy which is covered in chocolate you do not have to pay tax because the Kit Kat bar has flour in it. Both of these situations are examples of out of control government. These stupid rules take up valuable time and energy from business owners who have to understand and implement these requirements, time and energy that could be better spent serving their customers, expanding their businesses and maybe actually hiring more workers, reducing the high unemployment rate in this country. And who is responsible for these out of control government regulations? It is the out of touch politicians who concoct these stupid rules and laws with no sensitivity or experience on how the waste ripples through the economic system, hurting everyone in the process. Madness.
• The Milwaukee school system had to lay off hundreds of its teachers due to a budget shortfall. At about the same time, the teachers union had taken the school board to court. The reason for the suit? To force the school system's health insurance plan to cover Viagra and other ED drugs for teachers. The school board estimates that the benefit would cost about $786,000 a year. How many more teachers would have to be laid off, and how many kids would suffer as a result, if the school board actually loses this case? More madness.
• We have done this type of economic stimulus math before but a short article by Peter Suderman updates the numbers and confirms our previous math exercise. According to the Department of Energy's reports, it spent $1.9 billion of the stimulus money it received to create 10,018 jobs, resulting in a cost per job created of $194,213 per job. Since the wages of most of these jobs were probably far less than $194,213, we see yet another example of what a dismal and insane failure Obama's economic stimulus plan was. However, this is probably a best case scenario. Mr. Suderman goes on to explain that "jobs created" is probably a misnomer. As the economic stimulus money was spent and jobs were not "created," the administration solved the problem by just changing the definition of jobs created. That category was expanded to include new full time jobs created, new temporary jobs created, jobs saved, and the most ludicrous of all, "lives touched." Thus, many of the 10,018 jobs created in the Energy Department could have included people who worked on an Energy project for two hours. That situation was given the same weight as if an unemployed American was given a 40 hour a week job. Seems the politicians were spending more time on concocting job definitions than actually creating jobs. Even our usually out of control government recognized the insanity with the Federal General Accounting Office  calling the Energy Department's job estimates unclear, problematic, confusing, and potentially misleading. No kidding. When government calls the bluff on itself you know it is madness you are dealing with.
• The United States government has maintained a ridiculous trade embargo with the island nation of Cuba for about 50 years in an attempt to force Fidel Castro from power. However, 50 years later, Castro is still in power, many of the Presidents who continued the embargo are themselves dead, the United States deprives itself of a good sized economic market right off its shores, and the Cuban people have lived in poverty for 50 years, especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain when the support from Russia dropped dramatically. Typical U.S. government program: never ending, never accomplishing its goals, and the people of both countries worse off for the experience. Stopping the embargo is one of the 50 steps to freedom outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Why is this an important step? First, the United States should never condemn a group of people to a live of poverty because of who is ruling them. Second, as pointed out in this edition of Reason magazine by Ms. Mangu-Ward, opening the Cuban market to American goods and services could lead to American farmers annually exporting over $360 million a year of American food crops to the island, in the process feeding a hungry nation. It is madness that this has not happened.
• Talk about true madness, consider another article by Peter Suderman. This one concerns the health care reform package that Obama forced through the back door of reconciliation in the spring and the fact that a new Congressional Research Services (CRS) report stated that it is impossible to count or estimate the number of new government entities, boards, commissions, and organizations that will be created as a result of the legislation. Talk about out of control. Even the government cannot now estimate how big it will become as a result of politicians being out of touch with the root causes of rising health care costs. Specifically, the CRS reported that "the precise number of new entities that will ultimately be created pursuant to PPACA (i.e. Obama care) is currently unknowable." The report went on to say that it is unclear how the General Accounting Office will be able to audit the new creations, it is impossible to determine how much power many of the new entities will have, and it is currently impossible to know how much influence the new organizations will have. Again, this is Congress talking about itself. We have created an out of control government  monster with this legislation that is self reproducing, eating up taxpayer resources without solving any problems. The worst part of this monster is that many in the government bureaucracy and the political class will be part of the problem but no one will be accountable for the tragic results.
• If the latest CSR report shows an out of control government, then Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is the perfect example of an out of touch politician. If experts in the Congressional Research Service cannot explain what is going on in the health care reform legislation after an extensive study, what chance does a single bureaucrat like Sebelius have of explaining everything going on as a result of the legislation?  If Nancy Pelosi, who helped ram the bill's approval through, has publicly stated that we will not know everything in the bill until it was passed, a truly ignorant statement for a politician to say for a piece of legislation he or she is advocating for, how will anyone else know? Apparently, however, Ms. Sebelius has got it all figured out since she was recently quoted as stating: "We have a lot of re-education to do" as it pertains to the legislation. If she has an education plan ready to go, maybe she should start over at the CSR since they have not figured it out yet, despite their best efforts. Madness.
• One last example of out of touch politicians, people who never understand the ramifications of their actions. The health care reform legislation is one example, an attempt to fix a problem spawns out of control government control and bureaucracy, among other catastrophes. A Reason magazine report by Brian Doherty discussed  the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Mr. Doherty, the out of pocket costs for these two conflicts has so far reached about $800 billion. Thus, each American family, on average, has paid about $7,000 each to support both war efforts, $7,000 that could have been spent within the economy, contributing to economic growth and employment growth. However, the $800 billion is just the current operating cost. According to the article, two economic and financial experts from Harvard and Columbia universities have estimated the true cost over time to the American public of both wars closer to three TRILLION dollars. Their analysis shows that the country was still paying for the effects of the first world up until about 1965 and for the second world war up until about 1980 as veterans and disabled soldiers needed to be cared for and interest payments on borrowed money spent to execute the wars was paid off. Just another example of out of touch politicians rushing off to do something without understanding the root cause and the true cost to the Treasury and the country's taxpayers.

Silly and sad at the same time. Just these few examples illustrate how, in a wide set of fields, we have allowed our political class, which has no grounding in reality, to create madness and an out of control government that results in lost freedom, wasted money, and non-solved problems. Besides stopping the Cuban embargo, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" also proposes steps such as term limits that remove out of touch politicians before they can do real damage and a step that would implement procedure to punish existing politicians for the out of control and non-effective government programs they create.

However, it is up to us to stop this madness by electing leaders, not politicians, regardless of what party they are from, that can understand all of the implications of complex problems and their proposed solutions, that can look at stupidity (e.g. Kit Kat is not taxable, a Hershey bar is taxable, a sliced bagel is treated one way, and unsliced another way) and say enough with the madness, and who have the fortitude an courage to focus on real issues affecting real American families. Until then, Reason magazine will continue to have endless material to talk about, material that unfortunately reduces our freedom every day.



Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:



http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/

Politicians Say The Darndest Things. Unfortunately.

I recently came across a reference to an old television show from the fifties which was called "Art Linkletter's House Party." A favorite segment on every episode of the show was called "Kids Say The Darndest Things." Mr. Linkletter would ask questions of some children, usually aged between three and eight, and some of their responses were hilarious. This segment was spun off later into a show unto itself and was hosted by Bill Cosby.

This recollection reminds me of our present day politicians and how they also say the darndest things. Unfortunately, they are not as cute, cuddly, or funny as the kids that Linkletter and Cosby elicited answers from. In fact, they are down right depressing to think that these people are actually in control of the country and our lives and there is nothing funny about what they sometimes say:

Darndest Thing Said: A New York Times article from July 21, 2010 was about President Obama's signing of a sweeping expansion of Federal oversight and regulation of the financial services industry. Regarding the signing of the bill, the President said: "If you've ever applied for a credit card, a student loan, or a mortgage, you know the feeling of signing your name to pages of barely understandable fine print."
Commentary: Let's see, you are signing a document that will affect just about every American business and household and to you it's "barely understandable fine print." If the President does not understand what is in the bill, how does he know it is good bill, as he has touted it?  If the government that wrote bill does not understand what is in it, how does it expect regular Americans, most of whom are non-lawyers, to understand it and abide by it? Not only that, I would bet that the fine print the President complains about regarding loans, credit cards and mortgages are that way because some government or political class entity passed a law or rule mandating the barely understandable details.

Darndest Thing Said: Regarding the need to pass Obama's health care reform law, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find find what is in it, away from the fog of controversy."
Commentary: Let's see, much like the financial reform bill with its "barely understandable fine print," we have to pass Obama Care to find out what is in it? This is like saying lets drive along a foggy and icy mountain road at night to see where the road is. At some point, we are going to drive off the mountain. How bad of a bill is it when the Speaker of the House has no clue what is in it and what the likely ramifications are and will not know until the bill is live?

Darndest Thing Said: Not to be outdone by Pelosi, this is how Congressman Henry Waxman, a sponsor of the bill in question, reacted when asked what was in his proposed Cap And Trade Energy Bill: "I certainly don't claim to know everything that is in this bill... I don't know the details."
Commentary: Congressman, if you helped write the bill and are a sponsor of the bill but you do not know what is in the bill, how do you know it is a good bill? How do you know whether it will work and what the ramifications are going to be if you do not know all that is in the bill? Seems like you are on the same foggy and icy mountain road that Pelosi is on.

Darndest Thing Said: Pelosi, Part 2. When asked what good it would be to extend unemployment benefits, the Speaker responded: "It [unemployment benefits] creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name."
Commentary: In Ms Pelosi's world, the more people that are unemployed, the more jobs there are. Thus, if we fired everyone, there would be jobs for everyone. If we had more people unemployed, there would be more unemployment benefits and more jobs created. How did she not get the Noble Prize for economics that was given out today!!! Brilliant!

Darndest Thing Said: Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson speaking on the record at a Congressional hearing on our armed forces deployment on the island of Guam: "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.
Commentary: as with the above quotes, this one can be seen on YouTube. It is pretty apparent that he is serious when he offers this assessment, despite a press release later that he was kidding, there is no indication at the time he said this darndest thing that he was not serious. The bigger problem is not Guam, the Congressman should be more worried about Manhattan and Staten Island tipping over since they have many more people and cars and other things that could make those islands even more likely to tip over.

Darndest Thing Said: I could not find the exact quote that New Jersey Frank Lautenberg said regarding the decision of New Jersey Chris Christie to stop the construction of a new tunnel from New Jersey into New York City. Christie's logic for stopping the construction is runaway costs, costs that he did not want to stick to the New Jersey and U.S. taxpayer at this time of such a weak economy. The cost of the tunnel was originally estimated at $5 billion in 2005, the Federal government recently upped the estimate to $9-10 billion and Christie's analysts said the cost could already by between $11 and $14 billion. The project is starting to sound like the Boston Big Dig fiasco and Christie is putting a stop to it. To which Lautenberg said that cost overruns are inevitable on a project this big, according to the Associated Press.
Commentary: My question to Mr. Lautenberg then is why even estimate what the cost will be to begin with if cost overruns are inevitable? I guess we should just write out a blank check as taxpayers and let the politicians spend as much money as they want. Christie, at least, is one politicians with a enough guts to stand up against this type of government waste and stop the expenditure until there are proper cost and audit controls in place with the appropriate penalties for non-performance. Lautenberg would just write another taxpayer check.

Yes, politicians do say the darndest things but they are not as funny as a five year old. Our current crop of politicians would pass bills that they do not understand, they do not know what is actually in the bill, and do not know what the ramifications will be when the bill is implemented. Our politicians would rather just do things and not worry about the costs since they can always hit up the taxpayer later. And our politicians also worry about the darndest things including capsizing islands. [Note: I excluded Joe Biden quotes in the interest of space and time.]

Now, I am sure my Democratic friends will chastise me for only citing idiotic things said by Democrats. I am sure they will point out similar quotes that Sarah Palin, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and other Republicans have said in the past. But that is the exact reason I did not include them. Both parties are full of incompetence and politicians like the ones cited above. It does not make any difference which ones are elected and in power, the current political processes in this country get us bad, wasteful and dangerous legislation regardless of who is in charge.

What we do as citizens is argue amongst ourselves over who has the dumbest politicians, the Democrats or Republicans while the same tired and dangerous politicians, from both parties, are continually re-elected.  We are satisfied that our party's politicians got elected because we think they are less dumb than the other party's politicians. Dumb is dumb, it does not matter how we label them from a political party perspective. Regardless of who is elected as a result of our political processes, none of them have solved the pressing issues of our time including failing public schools, war on drugs, lack of a national energy policy, the illegal immigration problem and out of control spending and waste.

The obvious, but difficult solution is to change our political processes so that we to not have to choose between dumb and dumber but between candidates that are smart enough to read a bill, understand its ramifications, and vote it up or down accordingly.  Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would be a good start:

• Step 14 - stop gerrymandering congressional districts to almost guarantee the re-election of incumbents.
• Step 39  - is a longer term follow up to Step 14 in that it would impose term limits on all Federal government politicians in order to continually get a focused and fresh look at the problems facing America.
• Step 36 - would require all politicians to take and pass a course on economic principles and theory in order for them to at least know when a bill will have dire economic consequences, even if they ignore the consequences.
• Step 38 - would require all members of the Federal political class to sign a shared values statement where they pledge to do what is right for the country and not themselves or their party. Components of such a statement would include the principles of respect, integrity, trust and commitment.

Not included in the above list is the most important step of all and that is the need for all voters to stop accepting the performance and laughable quotes highlighted above and start demanding real change and real action on the major issues facing the country. We need to elect the best people for the job, regardless of political party and stop accepting mediocrity because they have the right party affiliation. We need to get to a place where the statement, "Politicians say the darndest things," is a good thing and that it means that they have come up with an efficient and innovative idea to solving a problem. Currently, whenever a politician speaks we could not be further away from that solution-based reality.


Our new 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.

Visit these other sites for freedom:

www.cato.org
www.reason.com
www.robertringer.com
www.realpolichick.blogspot.com
www.flipcongress2010

Another Month, Another Doomed Political Class Stimulus Program

According to an Associated Press article today, the political class is about to pass a $30 billion piece of legislation that is supposed to jump start the small business market and get the economy moving again. Components of the legislation include the following:

• Establish a $30 billion fund to help community banks lend to small businesses.
• Cut some taxes on both small and large businesses.
• Boost Small Business Administration loan programs by cutting loan program fees, raising loan guarantee limits and spending limits.

According to the article and common sense, this stimulus package will fail just as dramatically as the other ones that the political class has implemented:

• According to the article, demand for credit and loans is down and many businesses are sitting on cash reserves, precluding them for needing to go out and get a loan. Thus, this money set aside could go unused and have no impact on the economy or unemployment.
• According to Jade West, a lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors: "It won't do any good. Business doesn't need credit - business needs customers. If they don't have a customer base because demand is down, they're not going to borrow because there is nothing for them to borrow for."
• The Republicans' concern, and it may be a valid one, is that the banks may start to lend some of this taxpayer money to businesses with less than desirable credit worthiness, eventually sticking the taxpayer for the bill if these shaky small business loans go sour since the banks will not be at risk, the government in the name of taxpayers is taking the risk.
• Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart said: " What we have today before us is junior TARP." And we all know that the original TARP was useless.
• According to tax counsel Bill Rys of the National Federation of Independent Business: 'There's some OK stuff in it, but the impact's going to be minimal."
• The small business tax cuts include tax breaks for restaurant owners and retailers who remodel their stores or build new ones. However, if unemployment stays so high, what good will better looking stores and restaurants be if no one has any money to spend in them? How do new paint jobs and new carpeting help grow the economy?
• And, what good is a tax break for certain small businesses is if Obama has his way and does not renew the Bush tax cuts for those small business people making over $250,000 a year? Any savings they get from this mini-TARP are likely to be offset by higher income taxes.
• Let's do some math. According to the trade association that supports community banks, there are about 20,000 community bank locations in the country. If you divide the $30 billion by the number of bank locations, each bank location will get about $1.5 million to loan out. If the average small business loan is $100,000, each bank location will only be involved in about fifteen loans, hardly enough to move the economy forward. And this assumes, that the small businesses around each community bank actually needs a loan (see the points above).
• More math. There are about 14 million unemployed Americans workers today. If you divide the size of this stimulus program by the number of unemployed, we see that this program is the equivalent of spending about $2100 per unemployed American. Now, if spending $800 billion in the original stimulus program did not prevent unemployment from soaring to about 10% and 14 million (about $57,000 per unemployed person), this program is highly unlikely to do anything but waste another $30 billion.
• And finally, if this idea of a program is so good, why was not not introduced sooner? It seems that this is the "hail mary pass" or the scraping the bottom of the economic idea barrel. Nothing else has worked, even programs that were considerably larger, so what makes anyone think that this johnny come lately program will do anything but waste $30 billion more of taxpayer wealth?

Obama and the political class do not get it. They keep trying to "push" the recovery through the economic system. They push out rebates for Cash For Clunkers and Cash For Appliances, they push out money for infrastructure jobs, they push out money for teachers' pay, etc. The problem with this push strategy is that everything is finite. Once the Cash For Clunkers rebate money is distributed, the incremental economic stimulus affect, if any, is gone. Once the infrastructure work is done and paid for, the incremental economic stimulus effect, if any, is over. These push tactics provide no lasting, positive changes to the economy or the players involved, as witnesses by our first hand negative experience over the past two years.

More of a pull strategy is needed, especially since all of Obama's push tactics have been failures. In this context, a pull strategy would provide, positive, long lasting, stable incentives for the economy. This means that tax rates for individuals and businesses and families would be as low as possible for as long as possible. Families and businesses could then plan around this stable tax environment and think longer term with certainty.

With certainty comes confidence and growth. The money that is in family and business pockets can now be confidently and efficiently spent to pull economic activity through the economic system based on the personal needs of each family and business, not the dictates of a central government. That is why the one year exemption for small business self employment taxes is so inane. Next year those expenses are back so why would anyone do any long term planning and spending for such a short term exemption?

In addition to a pull strategy, the political class needs to remove the tremendous amount of uncertainty they have introduced into the market and the economy, with uncertainty comes a hunkering down mentality that no amount of Clunker money, home mortgage relief money, or short term tax exemption money can overcome:  

• By stretching out the debate on what Bush tax cuts will be extended, the political class has introduced uncertainty into the market and economy, resulting in depressed economic activity, since no one knows what the tax bite will be.
• By passing a mammoth and probably ineffective health care reform bill, the political class has introduced uncertainty into the market and economy, resulting in depressed economic activity, since no one know what the increased business and family tax and health costs will be, and there will increases.
• By proposing a mammoth and probably ineffective cap and trade energy program and legislation, the political class has introduced uncertainty into the market and economy, resulting in depressed economic activity, since no one knows what the increased energy costs will be for their business and family.
• By passing a health care law that requires any extraordinary amount of incremental business paperwork and bureaucracy, the political class has introduced uncertainty into the market and economy, resulting in depressed economic activity, since no business knows how much financial and human resources they will have to divert to fulfill the increased paperwork requirements of the law.

 We have seen what push economic stimulus planning has done and what uncertainty has done to the economy: it has done nothing of any positive significance. Sky high deficit spending and sky high unemployment. It is time for a change and a move away from silly programs like this $30 billion waste. All it does is satisfy the egos of those in charge in Washington, it gives them a sense of accomplishment.

But, to use an old cliche, they have spent a lot of time and effort to line up the deck chairs on the Titanic while the ship continues on a disaster course. These programs are way too small to leverage the economy, it is like pushing on a string. Nothing usually happens. You need to get  to where you are pulling on that string to leverage things and enable growth.

A number of steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would help move to any effective pull approach to fixing the economy, would remove uncertainty from the market, and reduce overall government spending to help pay down the national debt and offset lower family and business taxes:

• Step 1 would reduce the size of all government functions by 10% a year for five years to get Federal government spending under control.
• Step 3 would keep ALL of the Bush tax cuts in place in order to help pull demand through the economic system.
• Step 5 would increase government fraud and waste investigation resources in order to greatly reduce the self-admitted waste of $100 billion a year in government programs.
• Steps 10, 11, 12 would finally put Social Security on a solid financial footing in order to get this major government expenditure under control.
• Step 23 would implement an expert driven, not lobbyist and politician driven, strategic planning process for the development of a coherent and doable national energy program that would provide clear long term goals and tactics for national energy usage, removing the uncertainty and confusion of Obama's doomed cap and trade program.
• Step 28 would implement a comprehensive and expert driven, not lobbyist and politician driven, analysis and planning process to determine the root cause of rising health care costs and implement a coherent, understandable plan to address these causes, providing certainty in tactics and costs going forward. This, of course, would require the repeal of Obama Care.
• Step 30 would implement a process to return virtually all foreign deployed U.S. military personnel to significantly reduce our defense budget without sacrificing  homeland security.
• Step 44 would prohibit the use of Federal taxpayer money on any program or project that did not materially affect a large number of citizens in at least five states.

This should not be this hard. We know what does not work, why do we have to have the same repackaged bad "push", non-leveraged, ineffective ideas come around every month? The political class needs to learn from its mistakes and start doing something different, something innovative for a change. Its called leadership and unfortunately, it is in short supply in Washington these days.

Our new 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.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/

http://www.flipcongress2010.com/

The Twilight Zone World Of Joe Biden

The Vice President has always been good for a quote, or in many cases, a misquote, when it comes to explaining the reality of our world. However, many times you wonder if he and the rest of us are living in the same world and reality or we are stuck in some sort of twilight zone world where reality takes on a distorted sense of truth. This twilight zone image came to mind earlier this week when the Vice president acknowledged that while the recovery from the recession was proceeding slower than expected, there is "no doubt we are moving in the right direction."

If he thinks we are moving in the right economic direction, than he and I are stuck in some sort of distorted reality, given what is happening in my economic world:

• The Commerce Department reduced its estimate of the nation's second quarter GDP growth from 2.4% to 1.6%, a 33% decrease.
• Unemployment continues to linger between 9.5% and 10.0% even though Joe's administration predicted that unemployment would go to 8% unless the President's economic stimulus package was passed. It was passed and we did not go to 8% unemployment, we went 15-20% higher.
• The stock market is down about 10% from its recent 2010 peak in April and does not appear to be ready to rise any time soon.
• This week we heard that the sale of existing houses dropped 27% in July vs. June, the biggest monthly drop in the four decades that the statistic had been kept. Guess the administration's housing incentive program for first time buyers did not have much staying power.
• Also this week in the housing market, we found out that the sale of new homes was down over 12% in July vs. June and was down over 32% vs. the same time period in 2009. The annual sales rate of 276,000 new housing units is one of the lowest levels ever measured.
• This week we also found out that almost half of the people enrolled in the administration's mortgage recovery program had dropped out of the program for various reasons, not the least of which was inefficient and and ineffective paperwork processing procedures. The number of home foreclosures in 2010 could be as high as one million with several credible sources estimating that the foreclosure number could increase 50% in 2011.
• On Thursday we heard that new weekly unemployment claims continue to linger between the 450,000 to 500,000, i.e. about half a million people a week are now filing for unemployment benefits for the first time. Hardly sounds like the economic turnaround we are told is coming even though the Vice President told the Washington Post on April 23, 2010, over four months ago, that the economy would soon be creating 500,000 jobs a month. Not quite there yet.
• The Vice President did not mention that the Federal government has incurred unbelievably high, record setting government spending deficits over the almost four years that the Democrats have had control of both houses of Congress and the almost two years they also controlled the White House.

So, in Joe's world or twilight zone, shrinking economic growth rates, housing industry woes not seen in a long time, high unemployment, feeble private sector job creation, sky high national debt and mortgage foreclosures, and a falling stock market leave "no doubt we are moving in the right direction."

Seriously, this administration has no clue on how to turn around the economy, resulting in one of the longest and weakest recoveries of all time. Their reaction? Spend more money on dismal, failed incentive programs (Cash For Clunkers, first time home buyer incentive, Cash For Caulkers, Cash For New Energy Efficient Appliances, mortgage rescue, etc.), spend hundreds of billions of dollars on bailouts of financial institutions that either did not need to be bailed out (since most have already returned their TARP payments) or who deserved to fail due to their bad management (Citigroup, Bank Of America), spend hundreds of billions of dollars via an economic stimulus program which stimulated nothing (it has gotten so bad with this program that the administration has evolved from estimating how many jobs the stimulus created to how many jobs the stimulus created AND saved to how jobs created, jobs saved AND lives touched by the stimulus program), and the old favorite, blame Bush.

Bush has been gone for almost two years, the Republicans have been in the minority for almost four years in Congress and during part of that time, the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate while also controlling the House Of Representatives. The result of this recent history? We are stuck in an economic ditch and to those of us in the real world, we have no doubt we are NOT moving in the right direction.

What is the root cause of our economic distress? Could it be that consumers and business are uncertain of the future and as a result, have hunkered down in the face of that uncertainty? What are we are uncertain about:

• Could it be we are uncertain how much more in health care taxes and health care costs we are actually going to have to spend on employees and ourselves since the majority of America feels that the recently passed health care reform legislation will not solve our health care cost problem but will certainly increase what we pay for our health care?
• Could it be we are uncertain what this administration will do tax wise, with the expiration of the so-called Bush tax cuts being just one area where the tax bite on American businesses and consumers could rise significantly?
• Could it be we are uncertain how much more we will have to pay in energy costs with the proposed onerous and ineffective cap and trade carbon program that could be passed?
• Could it be that we are uncertain if Social Security and Medicare will be saved from insolvency and how much that might cost?
• Could it be that we are uncertain when Washington politicians will actually get down to tackling the major issues of the country as opposed to just calling each other names and worrying only about their own re-election?
• Could it be we are uncertain that Washington politicians are actually able to solve a real problem (especially since they have never really solved a major problem) when one of the leading members of the Federal political class thinks everything is fine and moving in the right direction despite every indication it is not?

This administrating has introduced so much uncertainly into the market and economy that people and businesses have decided to hunker down and protect their assets rather than go out and invest or spend their assets. And given this mind set, interest rates cannot go low enough stupid sales incentive programs cannot be rolled out to failure fast enough, and no amount of stimulus spending, especially the ridiculous programs from the first stimulus program, will solve the credibility, faith, and uncertainty problems we all currently have with Washington. That is why these incumbents need to be sent home in November and hopefully we can replace them with people that have the skills to remove the uncertainty in the country today.

Until November, consider the words of Rod Sterling, the creator of the TV show, "The Twilight Zone" in light of Joe Biden's view of his world:

You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination, next stop, the twilight zone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEBN30I5Voc&feature=related

Joe, indeed, must live in a wondrous land of imagination in another dimension where good is bad, dark is light, and we are all moving in the right direction despite all economic indicators.




Our new 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.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/