July, 2020, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: How The Government Cannot Count When It Comes To the Coronavirus, Chapter 1

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Today we will be focusing on the coronavirus. Not because it has sickened and killed so many people around the world but because it illustrates the pure incompetence of government and the politicians that operate that government and their inability to simply be able to count effectively. You cannot solve a problem unless you understand the reality of the problem and almost always the reality of a problem is determined by the data and numbers that describe the problem. 

But if you cannot even collect that data and numbers correctly then your ability to solve a problem is almost nil. You are basing any solutions on faulty data and premises and only pure luck will ever get you to the right solution.

Consider the case of this poor guy in Tennessee:

• According to Amanda Prestifiacomo, writing for the Daily Caller website, Brock Ballou lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
• Unfortunately he received a call from the state of Tennessee that notified him that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
• The problem is he has never taken any kind of test for the virus but somehow got counted and classified as a positive test for it.
• Now, he had expected to be contacted by the state since he had come in contact with a coworker who had tested positive for the virus.
• The state worker who called insisted multiple times that he was a positive case despite his insistence he had never been tested so how could he be positive: “She specifically said – I’m looking at it right here – you tested positive – this is a follow up call to see how your symptoms are.”
• In addition: “I’m 100 percent sure that’s what she said, she was looking right at it, she told me I’m in the system – looking right at it that you’re showing positive.”
• But it did not end there since Mr. Ballou continued to receive calls from the state in subsequent days checking on his symptoms.
• The local news station investigating his claims verified that all of the phone numbers that called him are indeed connected to the state’s board of health entity.

So, what do we have here? A single isolated computer error or data entry error or systemic reporting problems that significantly over count the actual number of cases? Whatever the truth is, the many, many instances of idiocy like this bring into doubt the whole validity of the coronavirus numbers and the drastic steps the country was forced to take, steps that have not been necessary if the numbers are inflated.

2) Following up on this Tennessee problem, recall that we have previously reported on the bogus numbers that were surfacing down here in Florida:

• Many testing labs in Florida reported that 100% of everyone who walked in their doors and were tested for the virus tested positive, a highly unlikely outcome for even a single testing center never mind multiple testing centers.
• In addition, some labs reported positive rates that were less than 100% but which were still unrealistically high such as the Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center which reported a positive rate of 76%.
• Follow analysis showed that the actual positive rate there was only a fraction of that 76%, only 6%, an initial over count that was 13 times higher than reality.
• The positive rate at Orlando Health was thought to be a whopping 98% but follow analysis showed it to be on tenth that rate, just under 10%.

Again, you cannot solve a problem unless you know what and how big the problem is and in Tennessee and Florida, we may not know what we think we know, that the infection rate may be far lower than the political class and government is telling us.

3) But the east coast is not the only source of bad virus numbers:

• A Colorado man recently died, his death attributed to the coronavirus.
• However, follow up analysis shows that he died of alcohol poisoning, he had actually drunk himself to death, a reality that had nothing to do with the virus.
• David Aaro of Fox News reported that Sebastian Yellow, age 35, was found dead on May 4 and his death was initially attributed to the virus.
• However, the county coroner followed up and found out that he actually died because his blood alcohol test was at a whopping .55 which led to acute alcohol poisoning.
• The .55 level is about seven times higher than what the state of Colorado considers being intoxicated.
• While Yellow did have the virus in his blood, the coroner concluded that it had nothing to do with his death.
• Which was consistent with other cases in Colorado where three nursing home deaths were initially attributed to the virus but follow up medical analysis found that the virus had nothing to do with their deaths.
• But this should not surprise anyone since the Colorado Board of Health basically says that if anyone has a positive test for the virus and then dies, the cause of death is officially considered the virus: "We classify a death as confirmed when there was a case who had a positive SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) laboratory test and then died. We also classify some deaths as probable." 
• The Board Of Health also went on to say that: “We will also count a death as a COVID-19 death when there is no known positive laboratory test but the death certificate lists 'COVID-19' as a cause of death."
• If I read that last statement correctly, even if there is no proof that a deceased person in the state actually had the virus, they will count the death as a result of the virus simply because the death certificate, without any proof, says it was a virus death.

So, in Colorado if you die from alcohol poisoning, there is a good chance you might be cited as a virus death. If you die in a nursing home, where you were likely placed there in the first place because of another health condition, you might be classified as a virus death. If there is no proof you have the virus but die anyway, you might still be classified as a virus death. 

As we stated up front, you cannot resolve any issue unless you have defined the parameters of that issue. And in the case of the coronavirus, many, many government entities and the politicians that oversee and operate those entities have shown again how incompetent they are at confronting and resolving any issue facing the country, When you cannot even accurately count, you cannot be expected to resolve any problems.

Unfortunately, the inability to count is not restricted to Tennessee, Florida, and Colorado as we will see in the followup posts in the next week or so.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: The Incredible Lack of Basic Math Skills Of Government, Politicians, and Ocasio-Cortez

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) As we have shown far too many times in this blog, American politicians have very little credibility on just about any topic. What they tell us very often is an outright lie, a shading of reality, or just plain ignorance on their part. Such is the case when it comes to informing the American public the true extent and reach of the coronavirus crisis as the following simple math and administrative foul ups point out:

• Fox 35 News in Orlando recently reported that a young man in his 20s, who was listed as a coronavirus victim, actually died from a motorcycle accident.
• This was part of a larger Fox 35 investigation that found massive errors in the Florida processes to county coronavirus cases.
• In more than one case, a testing site reported that all 83 of the people that were tested were found to have the virus, a very very unlikely outcome.
• One testing facility, Orlando Health, published statistics that showed that 98% of the people it tested for the virus actually had the virus but follow up investigations showed that the real rate was about 90% lower than the reported 98%.
• The Orlando Medical Center reported a positive rate of 76% but later admitted the actually positive rate was only 6%.
• Another research effort concluded that the Florida infection rate may be overstated by as much as 30%.
• In Virginia, it turns out that in that state the numbers being reported are the number of tests that are positive not the number of people that test positive. Thus, if someone went and had three tests done that were all positive, then the reported number would have been three, not one, distorting that state’s numbers.
• We have previously reported how it was shown in New York that it seemed when anyone died it was reported as a coronavirus death despite indications there were other causes of death.
• We have also previously reported on a California follow up autopsy study that found a high percentage of those reported as a virus deaths were not a virus death, that these unfortunate folks who passed away had the virus but the virus was not the cause of death.

As you can see, anything that the political class touches via government functions almost always gets screwed up. You cannot make wise and effective decisions if the data you are basing your decisions on are as screwed up as the virus counting processes. Insanity to begin shutting down the economy again when maybe the inability to count is the problem, not the virus.

2) We used to write a lot about the stupid and ignorant things that Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez would spout. For a while it was amusing to make fun of her ignorance and stupid rants. However, over time she just became a tedious drone, saying stuff that showed her lack of knowledge and real world experience and the fact that anyone who disagreed with her was almost always immediately classified as a racist or sexist by herself.

One of her major shortcomings is her inability to do simple math. She once proposed that the top income tax rate for those earning over $10 million a year be raised to 70% to pay for the idiotic New Green Deal climate idiocy. Using publicly available IRS records we were able to show in just a few simple calculations that doing so would pay for only a tiny, tiny fraction of her proposed climate pipe dream, not the entire cost as she claimed.

Her abysmal math skills were recently on display again:

• She has joined the chorus of some New York state politicians that want to slap a wealth tax on the state’s 118 billionaires.
• This wealth tax would be used, according to these folks, to help support those that are suffering as a result of the coronavirus issue.
• This wealth tax would generate about $5.5 billion which sounds like a lot of money especially to someone like Ocasio-Coertez who has shown to have some very weak math skills.
• That means that on average, each millionaire would pay about $46.6 million as a result of this wealth tax.
• There are currently about 1.3 million New Yorkers who are unemployed and would be likely candidates for part of this $5.5 billion according to the wishes of Ocasio-Cortexz.
• But if we divide that $5.5 billion by the 1.3 million candidates for financial relief the average payout would be….$35.42, hardly enough to pay the rent, pay the mortgage, or buy a lot of groceries.

Do the math Congresswoman, or if you cannot do the math, have someone on your staff do the math before coming up with these ridiculous ideas. And the $35.42 is probably on the high side:

• The $35.42 assumes that the wealth tax could magically go to the 1.3 million without any government bureaucracy costs reducing that amount actually available.
• And no one, no matter how rich they are, is going to willingly write a check for $46 million and give it to the government.
• These billionaires have the ability to pick up and move to other states without any wealth tax, and probably move to states that do not have any income tax either such as Florida, before the state government could pass the wealth tax. 
• Think about it, even if they lived in a $10 million mansion, they would be better off selling that New York mansion at a steep discount in order to avoid paying $46.6 million in a wealth tax.
• In such a case, they would end up at least $36 million ahead of the game and Ocasio-Cortez nitwit wealth tax idea and would quite quickly get their money back by moving to a state with a smaller tax burden

Again, like most politicians. Ocasio-Cortez does not have the ability to come up with real solutions to the country’ problems so she comes up with stupid non-solutions like this. In fact, not only does she not have any problem solving abilities, she has very weak math skills.

3) In the past few posts we have discussed the reality that crime in NYC is up tremendously over the past weeks/months:

• The year to date NYC murder rate is up 27.1% compared to the same time period last year.
• The number of shooting incidents is up 53.5%.
• During the Fourth Of July weekend, 10 city residents were killed, up 130% from last year.
• On a single recent Monday in the city there were 18 shooting victims involved in 14 different shooting incidents.
• However, instances of petty larceny, the stealing of property with a value less than $1,000, is down 7.5% compared to last year.

Okay, so a simple analysis of these numbers would indicate that violent crime is way up this year in NYC while petty theft crimes are down. But somehow, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives in a different world when she views these statistics, assuming she even looked at the stats and the reality they portray:

• She contends that NYC crime is way up because people have to steal a loaf of bread to feed their families.
• Specifically: "Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent and so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don't have money. They feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry."
• So all of the shootings and increased violence, all of the attacks on police officers in the city and the looting of stores that have nothing to do with bread are happening because people are hungry for a loaf of bread?

Shootings are up, violence crimes in the streets are up, petty theft is down, a category that probably involves stealing a loaf of bread, and this is the conclusion she comes to? Her lack of world experience and ignorance in the face of facts and reality is mind boggling.

That will do it for today: the incredible lack of math skills of politicians in general and Ocasio- Cortez in particular.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Devastation That Is Obama Care, Part 3: Health Exchange Chaos, More Companies Cut Hours, Hospitals Going Under And More

This is a third in a series of posts we are doing that updates the growing disaster that is Obama Care as many of its components begin to roll out. In the previous two posts we saw how many Americans are seeing their working hours cut as a result of Obama Care defining full time workers to be those working more than 30 hours a week, how the cost of food, will likely be going up as a result of the legislation, how businesses will be forced to post nutritional information that no one will ever read, etc.

The insanity of this fiasco continues today with the following:

1) A December 1, 2012 article from the Huffington Post, Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, will begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, most likely a result of the Federal government’s definition of what a full time worker is.

The policy is to take effect in January, under which Walmart also reserves the right to eliminate health care coverage for certain workers if their average workweek dips below 30 hours, something that happens often and at the discretion of company managers.

Here we see another company looking to avoid paying excessive taxes and fines associated with Obama Care, hurting some of its employees in the process by cutting them off from company health care insurance. Even worse, most of the part time employees would be eligible to receive subsidized health care insurance via the Federal government, increasing the cost burden on the Federal government and the American taxpayer.

Thus, Walmart has been able to use this ill-written piece legislation to reduce its corporate expense at the expense of the American taxpayer. Insanity.

2) Orlando Health, a not-for-profit network of community and specialty hospitals, is just one example of the massive layoffs expected in the coming year. Officials with the Central Florida-based healthcare services provider announced recently that the largest staff reduction in its nearly 100-year history will result in cutting up to 400 jobs, starting immediately.

Louisiana State University announced in October it would cut 1,495 positions and various health care programs within its seven hospitals to reduce more than $150 million from its budget in anticipation of Obama Care requirements.

Gary Bauer, president of Washington DC-based American Values, warns that this is only the beginning of an economic disaster that will haunt America for years: "The ripple effects, the negatives on our economy, are going to be playing out for not just months, but for years. And I doubt we will ever be able to totally measure the complete cost in manpower and in money, in addition to taxes, that ObamaCare will end up costing the American people, proving once again there is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as free healthcare.”

3) One of the easiest to read yet most insightful analyses of Obama Care, and what a disaster it is and will become, was written by Greg Scandlen on November 28, 2912 for the National For Policy Analysis (http://healthblog.ncpa.org/troubles-ahead-troubles-behind/). One part of his writing was a succinct summary of what has already gone horribly wrong as a result of Obama Care:

• The CLASS Act. This feeble attempt to create long-term care insurance was thrown overboard by the administration itself after it became apparent it would be impossible to do.
• The 1099 provision. This requirement that businesses issue a 1099 to any vendor from whom they purchased $600 of goods and services in a year was repealed after business owners explained what an impossible burden it would impose.
• Federal high risk pools. These pools were created and well-funded, but hardly anyone enrolled due to the complexity and cost.
• Retiree health subsidies. This had the opposite problem. Large corporations and unions were more than happy to accept free money to do what they were doing anyway (provide health benefits to retirees), but all the money ran out in about a third of the time expected.
• CO-OPs. Once again, Congress put so many restrictions on what was supposed to be a non-profit health plan in each state that none have come into being even though billions were spent.
• Small employer tax credits. The complexity and confusion of these credits deterred all but a handful of companies from applying.
• Medical Loss Ratios. The MLR requirements have had the very predictable effect of discouraging innovation and higher-deductible or “mini-med” health plans.
• Medicaid expansions. The Supreme Court made these expansions voluntary for the states and it currently looks as though fewer than half will do it.
• Health IT. The HITECH bill was enacted separately from ObamaCare, and many billions have been spent on it, but reports from the field indicate the top-down efforts result in lower quality and less efficiency.
• Limits on FSA funding. It is cruelly ironic, but the families most disadvantaged by the new $2,500 limit on FSA funding are those with special needs children.
• Limits on the Medical Expense Deduction. Beginning in 2013, a taxpayer will be able to deduct only those medical expenses that exceed 10% of income, up from the current 7.5%. Once again it is the sickest families that will be hurt.

This is just what has gone wrong already. He also points out what is likely to fail going forward:

• As we have already reported, Mr. Scandlen points out that The Health Insurance Exchanges are supposed to be operational by October, 2013, only ten months from now, but virtually nothing has been done to create them.
• Even if the exchanges eventually get established, the exchange subsidies will vary by income and family size. But there is no government agency in existence that has the slightest idea what a family’s current income is so it is unclear, and pretty impossible, to determine what families and what individuals are entitled to what subsidies, levels that will very by state.
• The closest source of income determination is the IRS systems but that information is a year or more out of date since you have to wait until April of the following year to know what the previous year’s income was.
• Even then, you will have to have fifty state data systems operations interfacing with the Federal data systems operations. I do not have to tell you how infinitesimally small the odds of that happening accurately, quickly, and efficiently are.

Consider some common sense reasoning, a trait lost on those that wrote and approved Obama Care, relative to determining income levels and the level of subsidies: people will have to pay premiums based on what they earned over a year ago. Someone might have been unemployed last year, entitling them to hefty subsidies, but making good money and who do not need or deserve a subsidy today, or the inverse: someone with a great job last year, indicating they do not deserve a subsidy, might be unemployed this year and be in need of a subsidy. How the exchange reconcile these situations is still unknown and certainly not anywhere close to being in place.

The one optimistic note sounded by Mr. Scandlen, and other experts he cites in his writing, is that Obama Care is soooooo bad that it might collapse under its own bureaucratic weight and complexity. Unfortunately, even if that good event comes to pass, the havoc it would have already wreaked on the economy, the nation’s health care processes and operations, and taxpayer wallets will be catastrophic.

4) An LA Times article from November 30, 2012 also discussed the major problems that are arising due to the fact that many more states than expected will not be implementing Obama Care state level health insurance exchanges. On top of this chaos, the article points out that many, many other legal challenges to various aspects of the legislation will be going forward, with ramifications one way or the other on top of the already mass confusion the law is creating:

• Oklahoma's attorney general has sued the IRS to block them from coming into that state to impose penalties under Obama Care and additional state level lawsuits probably will follow.
• The Pacific Legal Foundation is challenging the individual mandate, I.e. the provision that forces Americans to buy health care insurance. This provision originated in the Senate, even though the Constitution requires that tax measures originate in the House.
• The mandate requiring a person purchase health care insurance is also vulnerable because it is not uniform across all states.
• And, finally, more than 40 lawsuits allege the law violates the 1st Amendment's protection of religious freedom.

I believe Betty Davis once said in a movie, “it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” Combine bad legislation with government and political class incompetence, overlaid with dozen of pending lawsuits, and bumpy is probably an understatement.

The ride and associated bumps continue 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:

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