September, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: A High Flying, Taxpayer Billing Rockefeller and More Non-Transparency Within the Obama Administration

The start of a new month means it is time to check in on the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Every month since this blog began in 2009, we have conducted monthly reviews of stupid government programs, inane political comments, wasteful government spending, and other burdens and insanity that the politicians in this country constantly rain down on us and our families.

Unfortunately, what used to take a day to cover has now morphed into multiple posts every month just to keep up with the ineptness and craziness of today’s politicians. This month will be no different. If anything, the insanity seems to be increasing and intensifying as we continue to sense that we are being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of this country.

Our first insanity post was yesterday and can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/09/september-2014-political-class-insanity.html

Today’s post continues to prove our theory that we are being served by the worst set of politicians…ever:

1) Luke Rosiak of Washington Examiner recently did an article on the travel exploits of West Virginia Senator, Jay Rockefeller. As most of you probably know, the Rockefeller dynasty is a very, very, very rich dynasty and is based on the oil industry. No Rockefeller ever had to pinch pennies or go hungry.

This Rockefeller owns an $18 million mansion in Washington D.C., which sits on 16 acres of land. When he purchased it in 1986 the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that it had 11 bathrooms just on one floor of the mansion. It is estimated that Rockefeller is worth about $100 million.

But all this has not stopped this Washington politician from squeezing all he can out of American taxpayers on his trips to and from D.C. and the nearby state he represents, West Virginia:

• Apparently the Senator rarely visits his home state of West Virginia (and why should he, given his mansion in D.C.).
• However, when he does visit the state, he almost always takes a private plane and bills it to the American taxpayer, despite the fact that the state border is a mere 60 miles form D.C., a very drivable distance.
• Each trip usually costs the American taxpayer about $4,400 even though a commercial flight to the state can be had for as little as $206, less than 5% the cost of a private plan ride.
• Over the past three years, only eleven Senators have billed more travel costs than Rockefeller but they represent such far flung states as Alaska, Montana, and others.
• From another perspective, although Rockefeller only went back to West Virginia eleven times last year, less often than just about every other member of Congress, his travel costs were among the highest.
• His 32 trips back to the state in the past three years cost taxpayers $141,408 for the chartered aircraft. 
• Conversely, 40 members of his staff traveled back and forth regularly for less than half that price, combined. 
• For a single two day trip from February 28 to March 1 of this year, "airfare for Sen. Rockefeller Washington DC to Charleston and return" cost taxpayers $9,657.

We could go on and on with other instances of disgraceful spending from this Washington politician but you get the idea. These people are almost wealthy beyond most Americans' dreams but still rig the system so that their lives are easier and more profitable than they should be. This is just another example where two steps from “Love my Country, Loathe My Govenrment” are needed to clean up Washington:

1. Step 39 would impose term limits on all politicians. Given that these people get reelected over and over, there is no urgency to get anything done except to take care of themselves. That is why long term Senators like Rockefeller rarely go back to their home states, they are safely ensconced in their plush Washington lives. Give them a limited amount of time in office and maybe they would actually start caring about those they have the honor or representing.
2. Step 41 would prohibit any member of Congress from drawing a Congressional salary if their net worth was over $3 million. At a net worth of $100 million. Rockefeller would certainly be affected by this step. He is so very rich that a Congressional annual salary of under $200,000 is mere incidental change in his portfolio. Let him forego a salary and symbolically help the country’s crushing debt problem. Lord knows he is already sticking the taxpayer for his travel expense.

2) In a damning and unprecedented letter that was recently made public, the majority of sitting Federal Inspector Generals (IGs) made the very serious claim that the Obama administration was deliberately obstructing their investigations into government mismanagement and corruption. 

This accusation is being made even though the President campaigned on the promise of having the most transparent administration in the history of the country. Tough to say he accomplished that goal when the Federal government watchdogs are saying they cannot do their jobs in rooting out waste and corruption.

A recent piece by the Heritage Foundation was astute enough to point out that one of the signees of the letters was the Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz. This is critical since it is the duty of senior administration officials like Attorney General Eric Holder to advise subordinate officials that they are obligated to cooperate with the Inspector Generals of their agencies.

The August 5, 2014 letter contained the signatures of 47 of the Federal government’s 73 Inspectors General, many of whom were appointed by Obama. The letter was sent to senior Congressional members in Congress and basically asked for, pleaded for, help so that they could do their jobs to clean up government inefficiencies, criminal fraud, and corruption.

In the letter, they cited examples of being stonewalled across the administration:

• They complained about the “serious limitations on access to records that have recently impeded the work” of Inspector Generals at the Peace Corps, the EPA, and the Department of Justice. 
• Obama Administration lawyers have manipulated laws related to privilege in “a manner that would override the express authorization contained in the IG Act.” 
• These actions hade in turn seriously impeded the “ability [of the IGs] to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner.”
• According to the letter, the Justice Department withheld “essential records” in three different reviews. 
• As the IGs point out, Section 6 of the IG Act gives IGs access to “to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other material available” to the agency involved. Since this is not happening, not only is the Obama administration less than transparent, it is also breaking the law.

This is disgraceful, illegal, nontransparent, and certainly disrespectful to American taxpayers and citizens who have every right to know what is going on within their government. The Heritage piece summarizes this disgrace better than I could:

“The only thing more dangerous than an administration that abuses its power is an administration that tries to hide what it is doing from taxpayers, voters, and our elected representatives in Congress.”

That will do it for today. Only two examples of political class isnanity but powerful instances of two different types of corruption. We have shown a vivid example of personal, selfish corruption, the needless overbilling of American taxpayers for the convenience of one of the richest members of Congress. And we showed illegal, law breaking corruption, covering up misdoings within a Presidential administration that promised transparency but delivered nothing but secretive operations and dealings.

More insanity, corruption, and non-transparency 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

June, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care Update, Part 3: Refusing To Treat Sick Kids, Creating More Uninsured Americans, and More

This is our third post this week as a we continue our monthly series on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. The first post in this month’s review can be seen at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/05/may-2014-unfolding-disaster-that-is_9001.html

We will need at least today’s discussion to cover the idiocy and futility of the Obama Care fiascos from the past month or so. Previous month’s fiascos can be seen by typing “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

1) In what may be one of Obama Care’s scummiest tenets is recent news that has been uncovered relative to non-profit hospitals. Recall that under the Obama Care law, every American is required to purchase health insurance or face fines via IRS procedures for not purchasing.

However, many of America’s hospitals have treated sick kids for a long time whose families do not have health insurance policies in effect. If that behavior was to continue into the future, the Federal government, under Obama Care, could fine those hospitals thousands of dollars for each instance of serving a sick uninsured kid or eventually revoke that hospital’s non-profit status, if it was non-profit, causing the hospital to now pay taxes to the Federal government. 

Under Obama Care’s newly created IRS Section 501, financial penalties will be incurred by hospitals that provide care for uninsured, poor Americans. The underlying, and underhanded reason, for this approach is that by providing needed medical care to sick kids the kids families might not be anxious to sign up for Obama Care insurance policies. By threatening hospitals for serving the needy, it can force the needy to buy insurance as required by Obama Care.

The situation is better described by John Kartch of Americans For Tax Reform: 

“Failure to comply, or to prove this continuing need, could result in the loss of the hospital’s tax-exempt status. The hospital would then become a for-profit venture, paying income tax— hence the positive revenue score. Obama Care advocates turned over every rock to find as much tax money as possible.”

Pretty sad when a Washington law goes after more tax revenue at the expense of sick kids.

2) Almost as despicable as using sick kids to attain your political goals is to accuse anyone who disagrees with your view of being a racists. Critics of Obama Care have been called racists for years under the assumption that if you disagree with what an African-American President says, it must be because you are a racist. 

Has nothing to do with expressing an opinion or holding an honest and legitimate contrary view, a view that has been proven right over the years. Disagree with Obama, you must be a racist. Senator Jay Rockefeller repeated this tired cliché recently relative to critics of Obama Care:

“I’ll be able to dig up some emails that make part of the Affordable Care Act that doesn’t look good — especially from people who made up their mind that they don’t want it to work because they don’t like the president. Maybe he’s of the wrong color, something of that sort. I’ve seen a lot of that and I know a lot of that to be true. It’s not something you’re meant to talk about in public but it’s something I’m talking about in public because that is very true.”

Hey Senator, maybe we do not want Obama Care to work because, as we have reviewed many times in this blog:

• The legislation makes the cost of insurance premiums and deductible go up in cost.
• Millions of Americans have lost their health care coverage as a result of Obama Care.
• The legislation never understood or attacked the underlying root causes of our high health care costs so it has little chance of being successful.
• It only signed up a net two million people to health insurance policies despite spending untold billions of dollars.
• It is causing millions of Americans to lose work hours, lose their jobs, or not get access to jobs that would have been created without Obama Care.
• The cost of the program is now well north of two trillion dollars.
• Americans are losing access to their preferred doctors and hospitals and the top hospitals in the country.

Had enough, Senator? These are not racist reasons for opposing Obama Care, these are legitimate realities for resisting Obama Care that have nothing to do with “color.” Stop the nonsense and fix this disaster before you retire in the fall.

3) A recent poll of potential voters in so-called competitive Congressional districts by Politico showed how unpopular Obama Care is with a majority of Americans:

• 89% of respondents said it will affect their votes.
• 60% of respondents said the debate and finality of Obama Care is not over while only 39% said it should be.
• 48% said Obama Care should be repealed, 35% said they would “keep the law, but with modifications,” and only 16% would keep it as is.
• Thus, more than five times as many voters want some changes or the total repeal of the law vs. those that want to do nothing and keep the law as is.

A question to Senator Rockefeller: does that make 83% of those opposed in some way to Obama Care racists? Or are they concerned Americans that realize what a loser this legislation is? Speaking of losers, I would not want to be a Democratic Congress person going against five to one odds in November.

4) We have often talked about and provided examples of government actions and laws that do the exact opposite of what they were intended to. And according to a new study out of the University of Minnesota, Obama Care might actually INCREASE the number of uninsured Americans, the exact opposite of what is was supposed to do.

According to a recent Washington Post article, Professor Stephen Parente and Adjunct Professor Michael Ramlet did an economic analysis of Obama Care and its projected effect on the number of uninsured Americans over the next ten years. They concluded that the number of uninsured will go up starting in 2017, due to the declining purchasing power of the government subsidies. 

In other words, the legislation will not curtail the growth of health care enough to continue to make the Federal subsidies for low income Obama Care policy holders attractive. When the costs go up too fast and the subsidy levels do not keep up, policy holders will drop the Obama Care policies because of the higher out of pocket expense.

They also found that health insurance costs will increase by nearly $1400 for those individuals with “silver” Obama Care plans and $4200 for families with “silver” Obama Care, as they explained in the article from the Post:

Nationally, we estimate an initial decrease in the uninsured with greater use of the private health insurance subsidies, but over time health plan prices are likely to increase faster than the value of the insurance subsidy. As a result of the declining purchasing power of the insurance subsidy, the implementation of the qualified health plan requirements and the end of the reinsurance and risk corridor programs we estimate a significant reduction in the private insurance market in 2017 with steady declines continuing for the rest of the decade.

Great do something and get the exact opposite of what you planned for, only in Washington and only with our politicians.

5) We have often talked about how the web based Obama Care health insurance exchanges that were developed by some of the states have often been a disaster. The state of Oregon wasted tens of millions of dollars on a site that signed up one customer online. Nevada had to opt out of its site as has a number of other states (e.g. Maryland, Massachusetts, etc.).

The reason that these states are getting out of operating their own websites for Obama Care signups is that they could not manage to put together a website system that worked. But other states are having other problems even though their websites for Obama Care signups worked adequately.

It turns out that even if your website works okay, the cost of operating it is getting way out of line of expectations. Apparently, Rhode Island is considering getting out of their website process and letting their citizens default to the Federal website since the estimated annual cost of maintaining and operating their own site is about $23 million, much more than they expected or budgeted for. Illinois is even in worse shape with the annual operating expenses of their Obama Care exchange website likely to be about $100 million. Since the entire state of Illinois is a financial basket case, a large unexpected expense like this can be devastating.

Thus, either because of operational ineptness or overwhelming operating expense, the majority of states that built their own website, at a total costs of probably billions of dollars, will likely dump them anyway and default to the Federal Obama Care website. And given how poorly that website process has worked, adding millions of additional users from these states is sure to make the entire operation collapse under its own weight and incompetence.

Another bad day for Obama Care. Forcing hospitals to not serve uninsured sick kids, opponents are still racists despite the ungodly bad realities of this law, the vast majority of Americans still do not like the law, the law might be doing just the opposite of what it is intended to do, and the political class still cannot build an efficient and cost effective website process. Insane and pathetic and more 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