The Disgusting and Despicable Sexual Perversion Behavior Of Politicians And Others Of Influence, Part 3

Readers of this blog know that we have never had a high opinion of most people in the American political class. We currently have a Congressman serving in Congress who once thought that the entire island of Guam could tip over. We have a Congresswoman who publicly said her home district of Houston sat 50 feet under sea level (it does not) and who thought the Constitution was 400 years old. We once had a Speaker of the House who once proclaimed that the Obama Care legislation had to be passed BEFORE we found out what was in it. We once had a President who appears to have been a sexual predator. We currently have a President who has made many derogatory comments about women.

But it seems that in the past few weeks the bad news about our leaders in both the political class and the press that covers it has exploded from a sexual harassment, sexual predator, and general sleaziness perspective. These are the people that shape our laws, report our news and impact our lives everyday but have the integrity and morals of a dead rock. 

Unfortunately, we are going to review the current, sorry state of these people over the next few days, keeping the details short and not too graphic but discussing enough to likely repulse you and realize how important it is to get these people out of office, out of our lives, and implement term limits to reduce the arrogance and ignorance that pervades our political life today.

When reviewing the following instances of alleged transgressions, keep in mind that we still do live in America where you are innocent until proven guilty. Claims of sexual misconduct are not realities of sexual misconduct. However, the overall trend is not good when it comes to the integrity and morals of those in power in the government and in the press.

1) Earlier this week we discussed the reality that there was a very high potential that current Congressman John Conyers was a serial sexual harasser. Now, according to a November 28, 2017 article from the Patriot News Daily website, people in Washington knew about his alleged behavior for years and did nothing about it:

• ABC News person Cokie Roberts recently appeared on ABC’s weekly news program, “This Week,” and told the world that Conyers despicable harassment behavior was no secret.
• She explained that up until very recently, those in the know in Washington tried to protect their own when it came to sexual haraassment and seuxal predaotr men in high positions of power.
• Specifically, “The fact that people are willing to be public can change things. I mean, we all talked about this for years.”
• She went on to explain that Conyer’s behavior towards women was no secret: “Don’t get in the elevator with him, you know, and every female in the press corps knew that, right, don’t get in elevator with him.” 

Everybody knew what a scumbag he was towards women and nobody did anything about it, says one from the liberal end of the political spectrum. Many of Roberts peers in the press crucified Trump for his behavior and attitudes towards women over the years and yet they remained quiet about an alleged liberal deviant Congressman that they knew about for years. 

If there is one thing I absolutely cannot stand and that is hypocrisy and if what Roberts is right, then the Washington and New York press corps are the height of hypocrisy and cannot be trusted ever again to present news in a balanced and fair way on any topic or issue. Not when they protect sexual harassers they are in political alignment with.

2) Let’s stay with Congressional sexual harassment and discuss another Congressman who was recently a potential seuxal harasser:

• According to a piece on the the Twitchy website on December 1, 2017, current Congressman Blake Farenhold has been identified as a sitting member of Congress who recently settled a sexual harassment suit.
• According to the article, the American taxpayer helped in the settlement by supplying the $84,000 settlement payout.
• Farenhold’s former communications director, Lauren Greene, brought the suit against the Congressman.
• She sued in December, 2014 and alleged gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and creating a hostile work environment.
• Specifically, “Greene claimed in the lawsuit that another Farenthold aide told her the lawmaker had “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams” about Greene. She also claimed that Farenthold “regularly drank to excess” and told her in February 2014 that he was “estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years.””
• When she voiced a complaint, the Congressman allegedly fired her and she instituted her suit which was dropped when both sides reached a settlement, apparently using taxpayer money to do so.
• While the Congressman did issue a statement on this topic, he hid behind existing law and basically saying nothing, "The Congressional Accountability Act prohibits me from answering that question"

We are a nation that is $20 TRILLION in debt and we are using whatever scarce funds we do have to pay off the sexually deviant behavior of sitting politicians. Pathetic.

3) Several posts ago we discussed in detail the sexual harassment and sexual deviant behavior of current Senator Al Franken. We reviewed his tendency to grope women’s private parts, forcing them to kiss him, embarrassing them in photos, and other deviant behavior involving rape and the death of a gay man Philadelphia:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-disgusting-and-despicable-sexual.html

Well, it appears that the accusations against his behaviors from other women just keep on coming, as illustrated by a recent article by The Hill:

• An Army veteran has recently come forth to accuse the good Senator of touching her inappropriately during a USO tour back in 2013.
• At the time, Stephanie Kemplin was deployed and serving her country in Kuwait.
• While taking a photo with him, Ms. Kemplin accuse Franken of cupping her breast with his hand, as she related to CNN: "When he put his arm around me, he groped my right breast. He kept his hand all the way over on my breast. I've never had a man put their arm around me and then cup my breast. So he was holding my breast on the side. And I remember thinking — is he going to move his hand? Was it an accident? Was he going to move his hand? He never moved his hand. It was long enough that he should have known if it was an accident. I'm very confident saying that."
• A spokesman for Franken issued the following statement: "He has never intentionally engaged in this kind of conduct. He remains fully committed to cooperating with the ethics investigation."
• But despite this statement, Franken himself issued a contradictory statement when he said that, “I know I’m going to have to be much more conscious in these circumstances, much more careful, much more sensitive, and that this will not happen again going forward.” 

So what is the truth Senator, you have “never intentionally engaged in this kind of conduct” or “this will not happen again going forward?” Kind of hedging your bet around the truth here. Given that this Army person was not the only one to describe to this type of behavior, I think that trying to say you “never intentionally engaged in this kind of conduct” is quite the stretch.

More deviant behavior still to come in the following days.

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

The Perversion and Death Of An Unbiased Press In this Country. Part 1

Record numbers of Americans are pretty disgusted with both candidates for President this year. Between the out of control quality of Trump to the lying and greedy Clinton, we are not faced with anywhere close to good choices from the Democrats and Republicans for President this year.

But we have faced incompetence before in Jimmy Carter. We have faced criminality in Richard Nixon. And we survived as a nation. But what we have likely never faced in any Presidential campaign is high degree of corruption and biased reporting of the press in this country. Rather than providing the facts and realities of life, we are now faced with press and journalism outlets that have a point of view to push rather than the truth.

And that is what scares me more than the incompetence of Trump and Clinton. Without truth, that the press has previously been relied on in the past to provide, we are forced to question everything and adjust our views not based on the realities but on the historical reporting bias of each news outlet.

To show you how biased, crooked, and dangerous news reporting is today, consider the following recent instances where journalism has had the distinct color of yellow:

1)Before giving actual examples of bad journalism, let’s consider what a recent Gallup poll says about how much Americans trust what the press and media tells us today. According to their recent opinion poll, only 32% of respondents said they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media today:

While the trend in trust has been slowly declining over time, Gallup thinks that the dramatic one year drop from 40% in 2015 to only 32% in 2016 is because of the misreporting and bias going on for the 2016 Presidential election. 32% is the lowest level of trust since at least 1997 and the 8 point drop in one year from 2015 to 2016 is the second largest drop since 1997. It is the highest percentage drop since 1997.

Trust among Republicans has dropped especially fast, from 32% in 2015 to only 14% in 2016. Trust among younger Americans dropped 10 points in one year.

Our democracy can survive bad Presidents, it has done so in the past. Not sure it can survive a perverted and corrupt press and media industry where truth is secondary to ratings and the political leanings of high ranking media executives and owners.

2) Let’s take a look at some real life examples of faulty and biased reporting that supports the ever lower trust levels Americans have for news purveyors today. Victoria Taft, recently writing for the Independent Journal Review website, told the story of how CNN, cynically known as the Clinton News Network for constantly fawning over and making Hillary Clinton look better than she actually was, was got caught trying to make Trump look like a racist by inserting a word Trump never said into a Trump quote.

Specifically, Trump has always called for better screening and vetting processes before letting Middle East refugees into this country, This seems like a valid thing to do because it has become apparent that ISIS has already used the refugee stream into Europe to embed terrorists into that refugee stream, terrorists who have gone on to instigate terrorist attacks across Europe.

Given that the FBI Director has publicly said that our screening processes are not where they should be, Trump’s position seems reasonable and common sense.

Trump explained his position on Fox News: "You know in Israel, they profile. They've done an unbelievable job — as good as you can do. But Israel has done an unbelievable job. And they'll profile. They profile. They see somebody that's suspicious. They will profile. They will take that person in. They will check out."

Those are his actual words but look what CNN did to those words, according to reporting by The Hill: "CNN has been running headlines throughout the day that specifically quotes Trump as using the words 'racial profiling.' CNN.com also is using the term 'racial profiling' in its headlines."

Image Credit: Screenshot/Fox News

But Trump never called for racial profiling in this interview, as his words above show. CNN inserted the word “racial” based on nothing he said, their actions were unethical and pathetic and intended to show Trump in an unfavorable light. As Ms. Taft correctly points out: “There are many kinds of criminal profiling, including observing behavior, background and psychological characteristics, but someone at CNN assumed the 2016 Republican nominee meant racial profiling.”

If Trump said racial profiling, then CNN would be proper to report that he said racial profiling. But to say he said racial profiling when he did not is a prime example of why over two thirds of Americans think that the press media in this country is corrupted and not to be trusted.

3) Let’s stay with CNN for another trick they recently did to make their favored candidate, Hillary Clinton look better than she was, while at the same time making Trump look worse than he was. The Hill recently reported that not only was CNN busy inserting words into Trump quotes that he never said, at the same time they were busy deleting quotes from Hillary Clinton that were actually said.

The Hill: "The decision by CNN to add 'racial' to Trump's comments comes in the wake of intense criticism this weekend after the network edited out a key portion of Hillary Clinton's Saturday night statement following the terror attacks in New York and New Jersey."

In an ad hoc press conference on her plane after the Chelsea, NYC and Seaside Heights, N.J. terror bombings, Clinton referred to the incidents as bombings, much like Trump had done earlier in the day. However, CNN had criticized Trump for saying the explosions were bombs too soon in the investigation.

Even though Clinton had also used the word bombs, when CNN showed her interview on the plane, they edited out here reference to bombs, which enabled them to criticize Trump and ignore the reality that Clinton had reached the same conclusion as Trump had.

So we now see how a corrupted press can alter reality by adding or deleting words or phrases to suit their biased views, the truth be damned.

4) Let’s leave the pathetic journalism practices of CNN and report on another attempt to prejudice the news by famous news reporter, Katie Couric. Couric’s infraction of bad journalism is so grievous that she is facing a multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit because of her corruptible actions.

Here’s how this news bias unfolded:

• Couric recently put together an in-depth news piece on guns and gun control.
• Apparently, she is not a fan of the Second Amendment.
• While interviewing a set of gun rights activists, she and her producer asked the activists to sit very still for ten seconds or so under the pretense of testing equipment.
• During the real interview, she asked them a question about gun violence, to which they promptly answered. 
• However, during final production and editing, when that question was asked, Couric and her producer spliced in the the ten seconds of silence to make it look like the activists were unable to answer the violence question, that they were dumbfounded and had no suitable answer when in reality they had an answer and it was immediate.

The bottom line was that Couric tried to manipulate the reality to her biased views on gun control, and would have gotten away with it if a viewer only looked at the final, skewed edited version of the interview. Fortunately, truth won out in this case and she and her producer may be facing a very costly payday for their fake journalism.

That will do it for the first part of our review of dishonest and skewed news reporting in America today, we will finish up the discussion tomorrow. Remember, once the politicians and the press unite to protect and further each other’s interests, you are no longer living in democracy, you are living in a version of the Soviet Union where the government controls the news vs. the news controlling the government. 

And today’s news reporters and journalists are nothing more than modern day Pravda workers.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

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

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

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

The obvious problems with such a performance is threefold:

1. Forcing businesses to comply with ten new regulations everyday takes away from business owners’ ability to grow their business and thus, grow the economy and economic opportunities for Americans.
2. At some point, the ever growing mountain of regulations becomes self defeating since they are too numerous to know or too numerous to comply with.
3. And if these thousands of new regulations are so important, why were they not identified in previous Presidential administrations? Could it be that we have gotten to a point that government bureaucrats are making up regulations just to justify their government existence and large compensation packages?

And now Bankrupting America has identified a fourth reason why so many regulations are so stupid and dangerous. A new study conducted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) found that the average US household pays nearly $15,000 a year in regulatory costs as a result of the thousands and thousands of government regulations. 

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

The CEI study was entitled, titled “Ten Thousand Commandments 2014,” and it found that:

• In 2013, Federal regulation costs reached $1.863 trillion. 
• This is more than the GDPs of Canada or Australia. 
• In 2013, Congress passed only 51 laws but that resulted in 3,659 new rules and regulations, a ratio of 72 new regulations for each law that was enacted.
• Federal regulations burden each household with almost $15,000 in costs each year which is more than what an average household spends on every other household budget item except housing - more than health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings. 
• Even worse, according to the CEI, 63 Federal departments, agencies and commissions have more regulations in development.
• The study also showed that small businesses pay more in per-employee regulatory costs than larger firms. According to CEI, “Firms with fewer than 20 employees pay an average of $10,585 per employee, compared to $7,755 for those with 500 or more employees.” These costs are costs that cannot be used to expand business opportunities, which in turn expand the economy and economic opportunities for Americans.

Look, some regulations are necessary to protect the safety and welfare of citizens, that is one of the few legitimate fucntions of government, But adding 10 new Federal regulations every day proves that the political class and the government it oversees has no clue as to what are critical safety needs and what is bureaucratic idiocy and redundancy. And it is quite possible that this idiocy and redundancy are what has stifled economy growth for the entire length of the Obama Presidency.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

March, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 6: Costs Going Up, More Lies, Rating The Disasters, and More

This is our sixth post this month on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. Unfortunately, it will not be our last. As quickly as we post the latest insanity from this horrid law, more heartache, ineptness, and wasteful spending comes to the surface to prove again that this is the worst piece of Washington legislation ever enacted by the most inept set of Washington politicians ever.

1) The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, recently did a nice compilation of the many disasters that have come out of Obama Care, asking readers to vote on which ones they think were worse in head to head competition:

• What is worse: the fact that Obama Care has already caused almost 5 million Americans to lose access to their current insurance policies or that government Medicare officials now estimate that 11 million Americans will see higher insurance premiums as a result of Obama Care?
• What is worse: the fact that hundreds, if not thousands of companies, have to cut workers hours to below 30 hours a week in order to financially survive the requirements of Obama Care or the fact that the Director of the Congressional Budget office recently stated that providing “heavily subsidized health insurance to people with very low income, and withdrawing those subsidies as income rises, creates a disincentive for people to work.”?
• Which is worse: the continual lie from the President that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” or the continual lie from the President that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?” 
• What is worse: the fact that the Obama Care health exchange website was launched without sufficient testing, resulting in a whopping 60% down time in the first month or the fact that even after the administration claimed the website was fixed, cyber security experts were still adamant that Americans’ private information was still at risk to identity thieves since fundamental safeguards were still lacking in the Obama Care information systems’ processes?
• What is worse: the fact that an average family of four will see its annual health insurance bills go up over $7,000 a year or that the fact that the President recently blamed Americans for not doing a good job prioritizing their household expenses relative to health insurance, suggesting they give up their cell phone or cable TV service just to afford the high cost of Obama Care policies?

There are other interesting, and depressing comparisons and head to head competitions, at their website.

2) The Washington Free Beacon recently ran an article about a Florida family that found it next to impossible to cancel their Obama Care insurance policy. When reading the following frustrations about that family, keep in mind that the President promised that interacting with Obama Care would be as simple as going online to buy airline tickets or a product from a company like Amazon. This family found that promise to be the furthest thing from the truth:

• Melissa Battles was a single, unemployed mother who needed health care insurance for herself and her sons. 
• She went online to find a policy via the Obama Care Federal health exchange marketplace but found that process of enrollment to be a mess: “When I tried to enroll my entire family- I enrolled online- it is very convoluted and it takes a very long time to enroll…” she told WOFL-FL.
• She was told she qualified for a subsidy for her Obama Care policy, but was bounced around regarding the extent of care available for her Autistic son.
• When she tried to enroll her son in HealthyKids, she was met with more red tape.
• The good news is that soon after enrolling in an Obama Care policy, she got a full time job that offered health care insurance, eliminating her need for the Obama Care policy .
• She contacted her Obama Care insurer, Florida Health Care Plans, to terminate her policy. But they told her she could not disenroll from her policy with them, instructing her to do it via the toll free government number for Obama Care.
• The first time she called the toll free number, she was placed on hold for 49 minutes. When a call rep finally came on the line, Battles was told that they could not resolve her problem, transferring her to a so-called specialist. 
• The specialist was also not able to disenroll her and referred her to an Event Resolution Center. 
• Unfortunately, according to Battles and the article, the Center did not have an email address, direct number, or address to file a complaint- only a 1-800 number.
• She was eventually able to reach healthcare.gov and was told that the only way she could terminate her policy would be after her other coverage began, which forced her to pay twice for insurance.
• Her advice for other Americans, after the extra burden of payment and long list of hassles and frustrations: “I hate to say it, but if you don’t have to go through the [Obama Care] marketplace, don’t,” Battles warned Americans in the article.

This story and the Bankrupting America story above are just two more examples of the Federal government and Obama administration incompetence in this area. They had three years, tens of billions of dollars, national attention, and the support of the President and half of Congress for this ill fated and ill thought out effort. The results of their efforts at the end of the whole process was a disaster, an embarrassment, a hassle for millions of Americans, and an economic nightmare.

3) A March 19, 2014 article from The Hill did not have good news for those with Obama Care policies from a financial perspective. The article quotes health insurance industry executives who say Obama Care-related premiums will possibly double in some parts of the country by 2015, countering claims recently made by the administration.

The expected Obama Care insurance rate hikes will be announced in the coming months. The industry predictions come less than a week after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried to dampen concerns about rising health insurance premiums for Obama Care policies. She told lawmakers rates would increase in 2015 but grow more slowly than in the past (more on this hypocritical comment below). 

The article points to four main drivers of the anticipated increases:

• Delays and changes in Obama Care’s rollout are a primary driver of anticipated rate hikes. 
• The Obama administration, after a massive public outcry, changed and eased the Obama Care requirements to allow people to keep their old health plans, which kept some healthy people in place, instead of making them jump into the new exchanges where they would be subsidizing other Obama Care customers and helping the bottom line of the insurance companies.
• Federal health officials have limited the amount of money the government can spend to help insurers cover the cost of new, sick patients, reducing health insurance company profits. 
• Most important, insurers’ younger, healthier people only make up about one-quarter of the enrollees in plans through the Obama Care insurance exchanges, which now have a higher percentage of older sicker people that cost insurance companies more to service. Many insurers to not expect that ratio to change by the end of the month when the current enrollment period for Obama Care ends.

Regarding the Sebelius comment before Congress that health insurance premium costs will go up in the future but not as much as historically: didn’t the President promise that insurance rates would go DOWN as a result of Obama Care? Didn’t the President promise that insurance rates would go DOWN about $2,500 a year for the average American family? When did lower growth rates mean insurance rates are going DOWN? 

A number of high ranking insiders from the administration are quoted the article, trying to deflect the reality that insurance rates for Obama Care policy holders are likely to go up in the face of the Presidential promise that health care insurance would be less expensive.

However, health insurance company spokespersons disagree with the administration’s assertion:

• “We’re exasperated,” said one unnamed senior insurance official. “All of these major delays on very significant portions of the law are going to change what it’s going to cost.” 
• “My gut tells me that, for some people, these increases will be significant,” said Bill Hoagland, a former executive at Cigna and current senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center. 
• “It’s pretty shortsighted because I think everybody knows that the way the exchange has rolled out … is going to lead to higher costs,” said one senior insurance executive who requested anonymity. The official said expects to triple its rates next year on the Obama Care exchange.

Sop who you going to believe? Insurance officals who have been int eh industry for a long time and understand how the industry works or anyone from this Presidential administration which has lied on just about every facet of Obama Care, from you can keep your doctor to you can keep your insirance policy to the website is easy to use to…..

4) One last piece of insanity for today relative to Obama Care. It builds on the previous discussion from The Hill on how Obama Care insurance rates are likely to go up substantially relatively soon. The following chart is based on an in-depth analysis that the Society of Actuaries did last year. 

Actuaries are very smart, analytical people that understand the reality of the numbers within any facet of the insurance industry. As you can see, the vast majority of states will see the cost of health insurance for the citizens of those states increase significantly as a result of Obama Care, a bottom line finding that is certainly in line with what the insurance executives are telling The Hill. 

45 states should expect to see higher insurance premiums with two states, Illinois and Wisconsin, experiencing increases that are a whopping 80% and higher. So much for being the “Affordable” Health Care Act.

The disasters will 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:

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

September, 2013 Obama Care Update Part 2: Higher Costs, Less Choice, Loss Of Current Insurance, Identity Theft and More

Yesterday, we did an update of quick hits on how the rollout of Obama Care continues to be a disaster for just about everyone in America. As more and more of the legislation’s components get rolled out, delayed, or more thoroughly understood, it becomes abundantly clear that this is the worst piece of legislation ever written by the Washington political class. 

Detailed analyses of the legislation was included in a series of posts put out in August, starting with the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html

Please refer to them for an in-depth view of this disaster. Yesterday and today contain a series of quick updates of the continuing damage Obama Care is doing to the country.

1) The Obama Care health exchanges, places where uninsured American theoretically can go and purchase health car insurance, are supposed to be up and running by October 1. However, problems apparently abound due to the complexity of training, data systems, etc. Oregon has already determined that its website won’t be functional until at least mid-October.  State officials in other states have said that they wish they had more time to implement the exchanges. There is also concern that the lax security on the state exchange websites could lead to instances of identity theft.

The Washington Post recently reported: “Some officials in charge of setting up the systems say that the tight deadlines have forced them to take shortcuts when it comes to testing and that some of the bells and whistles will not be ready.”

Given that three major components of the law have already been delayed, the employer mandate, subsidy verification requirements, and consumer-cost caps, it should not come as a surprise that another component is in such bad shape. Does not give one a lot of confidence that this is going to work anytime soon without major problems, the most dangerous of which is massive identify theft.

2) A recent Dallas Federal Reserve report and analysis that was focused on the Texas area showed that, probably as a result of Obama Care, the average employee work week collapsed at its fastest pace in 2 years (and the last 2 months have dropped the most in 3 years), smashing the work week back to its lowest level since October 2009. And if this is happening in Texas, the top job producing state in the whole country, imagine how work hours are being reduced for Americans in other areas with an even less robust economic situation.

3) Remember when the President declared, "if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan"? Certainly reassuring words at the time but certainly a lie today. Consider what is happening to over 100,000 New Jersey residents and their current health care plan, as explained in a recent article from the National Review:

The latest casualty of Obama Care may be a low-cost New Jersey health-care policy. Though President Obama promised “if you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period,” that will not be the case for approximately 106,000 New Jersey residents whose plans will disappear under the law.

Known as the “basic and essential,” or B&E, health-care plans, the policy costs as little as a few hundred dollars per month and is the choice of 71% of New Jersey residents on the individual insurance market. It provides minimum coverage for things such as doctor’s visits and procedures that do not involve a hospital stay. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, B&E policy holders will, under Obama Care, “be left with what may be a choice among pricey, pricier and priciest” plans.

Currently, the monthly plans go for $150 for a 25-year-old male or $1,100 for a family with parents in their 40s and, as Rutgers University’s Center for State Health Policy director Joel Cantor told the Star-Ledger, it would cost three or four times more for a standard policy under Obama Care on the individual market.

So what happened to the B&E plans? They don’t meet the regulations imposed by Obama Care because they do not cover services that the law will force every individual health-insurance plan to provide. The Star-Ledger reports that B&E customers who don’t qualify for a federal tax credit to purchase insurance “will see price increases” in the cost of their next plan.

Another Obama Care promise bites the dust and another 100,000 American lives are needlessly and dangerously upended.

4) The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, pointed out the five most devastating impacts of Obama Care in an article from August 21, 2013, the highlights of which include the following points:

1. Americans Will Lose Their Health Insurance; Pay More. According to the Congressional Budget Office, about seven million Americans will lose their current health insurance as a result of the Obama Care. Healthy Americans will also likely see their premiums rise by two to three times as much on the individual insurance market.
2. Businesses Won’t Expand; Employee Hours Will Be Cut. The mandate that requires employers to provider health insurance to their employees kicks in when a company has 50 or more full-time workers. The cut-off was put in the law so it would not be a burden on small businesses (a significant and worthy concern), but the mandate will also keep small businesses on the cusp of adding more than 50 employees from expanding. Businesses are dealing with the mandate by cutting current full-time employees’ hours back to the part-time level (30 hours). Schools in Florida have taken this action as have small businesses all over the country.
3. Spouses, Children Dropped From Employer Insurance Plans. The Atlanta Business Chornicle reported recently that UPS planned to drop spouses from 15,000 employee health care plans as a result of Obama Care. These individuals are assumed to be eligible for health insurance elsewhere, but carrying several different providers will make health care decisions more complex – and potentially costly – for the average family.
4. Fewer Choices. According to The Wall Street Journal, the insurance plans offered under Obama Care may severely restrict Americans’ choices of doctors and medical care. The newspaper reports a number of current health insurance plans in the Obama Care exchanges will likely have limited choices of doctors and hospitals in their networks.”
5. Higher Prices For Younger Workers. Young, healthy Americans are going to pay higher insurance prices than if they had bought health insurance before Obama Care took effect.

Still not seeing how the positive aspects, assuming there are anything, within Obama Care are outweighing the devastating negatives that are being reported everywhere.

5) The Bankrupting America website used two examples to illustrate the points made above. According to a recent Associated Press report, about a year ago Teresa Hartnett was on the verge of expanding her small business. The company had hit $1 million in sales, and requests from clients were flowing in. 

Ms. Hartnett had planned to transition from nearly 30 part time, freelancers to a full-time staff of 60 by 2014. Then, the reality of Obama Care began to become real. She realized she might not be able to afford to carry out her plan, based on the added financial burdens that Obama Care would place on her business expansion plans. The law undid all of Hartnett’s hard work, plans, and dreams: “At the end of that marathon of effort and sweat and stress, I’d face the impact of the ACA [Obama Care]. I decided against it.” 

Given that there are over 20 million Americans that are either unemployed, too discouraged to look for work, or who are underemployed, isn’t a shame that Obama Care is preventing the evolution of this business from thirty part time freelancers into sixty full time, taxpaying, productive Americans?

6) Another illustrative example from Bankrupting America. According to The Hill: “Young people in Colorado will pay more to buy a bare-bones insurance plan under Obama Care … The average premium for a middle-of-the-road policy will roughly hold steady across the state, but premiums for the cheapest policies appear likely to rise. A 27-year-old non-smoker would pay $135 per month next year for the state’s cheapest catastrophic plan — the skimpiest level of coverage available through the healthcare law’s new insurance exchanges. That’s about 140 percent more than the cheapest policy on the market today.” Higher costs with less benefits and quality, a recipe for disaster.

That will do it for today, more bad news through at least tomorrow as Obama Care’s disease spreads across the land. If you are as disgusted with Washington politicians as most of America is, may we suggest you visit our term limits website and sign the petition to enforce term limits on all Washington politicians:

www.howmuchworseoculditget.com

Because, really, given what Obama Care is turning out to be and that it was written by most of the people still in office in Washington, how much worse could it be if we started over with a fresh set of elected representatives?

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

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Federal Employee Scams, More IRS Incompetence, And Americans Living Week To Week

This is our fifth in this month’s series about the political class insanity that we are subjected to every month by the American political class. Wasteful spending, stupid legislation, unbridled arrogance, and the destruction of liberty, there is no facet of our life that the political class cannot screw up.

The first blog post on this month’s insanity can be read at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_2.html

Thus, let’s get started with the fifth, but not last, set of lunacy and insanity from our politicians:

1) A favorite tactic of gun control advocates to get guns out of the hands of both law abiding citizens and criminals is to conduct so-called “gun buybacks.” At gun buybacks, people can drop off any kind of gun to the police, no questions asked, and receive some sort of compensation in return. That compensation could be cash, tickets to sporting events, and other enticements.

There are a lot of problems with these types of activities. First, any criminal who needs a gun to conduct their criminal activities is not going to turn over that gun for a basketball game ticket.

Second, criminals can use these types of events to dump weapons that have previously been used in crimes since there are no questions asked and the weapons are destroyed in a mass manner, making the potential for solving previous gun-related crimes less likely.

Third, is a basketball ticket really worth giving up the use of your Second Amendment rights?

To this list, we add another problem with gun buybacks. UPI news recently reported that a police department outside Chicago, the St. Charles Police, operated one of these gun buy-back things to “get guns off the streets.” But what did the police do? They turned around and sold many of the guns to ordinary citizens to make a profit and put those guns right back “on the streets.”

Apparently, this police department saw a way to increase its departmental budget by reselling the guns. Another government program that does the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do.

2) Four years after the recession supposedly ended, economic conditions are really not different for most Americans. According to a recent survey by Bankrate:

• The survey found that a whopping 71% of Americans don’t have enough money in savings to weather a six-month emergency’s worth of living expenses.
• 50% of Americans have no more than three months’ worth of savings.
• 27% have no savings at all.
• One in five Americans feels their overall financial situation is worse now than one year ago.

Combine this information with the fact that the latest government economic statistics show that the economy grew only 1.8% in the first quarter of 2013, not the original estimated 2.4% growth, and we see just more evidence that the Washington political class has no ability, knowledge, or plan to grow the economy, resulting in stagnant economic growth and tenuous economic situations for the majority of American households. Despicable.

3) Every issue of political class insanity would not be complete without with an IRS misadventure. Today's IRS insult and insanity follws up on a recent report that a high ranking IRS official had steered a $500 million contract to a friend of his. According to an article published in The Hill on June 25, 2103, the IRS official helped funnel work to a friend whose technology company received some $500 million in agency contracts, according to a new congressional investigation.

The House Oversight Committee determined that Greg Roseman, the IRS’s deputy director for IT acquisition, helped direct contracts to Braulio Castillo, the chief executive of Strong Castle, “through back channels.” Back channels, just another way of saying illegally and unethically.

The website, Bankrupting America, did some simple math to determine the good that $500 million could have done for ordinary American taxpayers:

• $500 million would wipe out tax bills For 169,434 Middle-Income Americans. The average tax bill for an American household earning $43,400 was $2,951 in 2009 (the latest information available). $500 million would wipe out the bills of 169,434 of these households.
• $500 million would cover a half day of Federal interest payments. The Federal government spent $359.8 billion on interest payments on its debt in fiscal year 2012, about $985 million per day. $500 million would cover about 12 hours of interest payments.
• $500 million would cover the funding for The National Endowment For The Arts for more than three years. The budget for the NEA for fiscal year 2012 was $146 million. $500 million would fund the NEA for about three-and-a-half years.
• $500 million would pay for three weeks of IRS operations. The IRS’s budget for operations for fiscal year 2012 was $11.8 billion, or about $32.3 million per day. $500 million could fund IRS operations for about 15 days.
• $500 million would cover the more than 500 years of White House tours.

But alas, this will never happen since that $500 million was used by a rogue IRS executive to enrich a friend, and probably himself, at the expense of the American taxpayer.

4) The Washington Examiner reported on more government fraud in a June 17, 2013 article. However, rather than reporting on civilians and criminal elements that defraud Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid out of over $200 billion a year, this article reported on how Federal employees defraud the American taxpayer via the Federal employee disability programs:

• A former postal worker was running marathons even though she was drawing Federal disability checks for a bogus back injury.
• A disabled Federal employee was found out to have gone scuba diving, skied in Switzerland and did flips on a trapeze. Additionally, she spent part of her $193,000 in her taxpayer funded disability payments on a boat named "Free Ride" before she was eventually caught.
• A Justice Department lawyer got $90,000 in ANNUAL disability checks after claiming the stress of his job kept him off the job. Apparently the cable TV show he began hosting while drawing disability pay wasn't so stressful.
• Then there was the civilian Navy employee who owned and operated a "gentleman's club" while on disability.

And the worst part of these insults to taxpayer wealth is that the government really has no clue how bad the problem is:

• According to the article, Federal employee disability compensation is highly vulnerable to fraud by Federal employees who exaggerate their bogus injuries they claim keep them from returning to work.
• The Federal employee disability programs cost the American taxpayer $3 billion per year, including about $2.1 billion in direct payments for lost wages and the rest for things like medical treatment and death benefits.
• No one in the Federal government knows how much fraud is occurring because the Department of Labor, which tracks disabilities programs for 70 Federal entities, doesn't even track fraud referrals and convictions.
• Employees claiming workplace injuries can pick the diagnosing doctor to prove their disability then change their stories as needed to be awarded claims. The Federal agency employing the employee claiming the disability cannot order a second medical examination to verify the disability.
• Injured workers are mostly trusted to provide accurate information on things like dependents and outside income.
• Federal authorities cannot get access to payroll databases from the Social Security Administration or the National Directory of New Hires, sources which could show whether a Federal employee on disability is working an unreported side job while collecting disability benefits.

Billions at risk and no way to rein in the fraud. Sound about par for the course when it comes to the political class and Federal government managing our tax dollars.

That will do it for today. Depressed yet? We still have more insanity in store for at least the next few days since if we have learned anything from reviewing politicians antics and actions, the insanity rarely ever slows down and certainly never stops.

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