February, 2015, Part 2 By The Numbers: Wide Spread Obesity, Stiffed Inspector Generals, and More

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering that phrase in the search box above. Yesterday, today, and at least tomorrow, we will look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 

1) We have looked at the following set of numbers before but it is worthwhile to revisit the message. The Tax Foundation did a state by state analysis of how much $100 dollars was worth in each state on average. Obviously, if the state average was over $100, than you are getting more for your money in that state. If it is less than $100, than the cost of living, taxes, fees, etc. are making it less attractive financially to live in that state. 

They mapped out their results as follows:



The states that "offer the biggest bang for your buck” are:
Mississippi – $115.74
Arkansas – $114.16
Alabama – $113.51
Missouri – $113.51
South Dakota – $113.38

The states where $100 has the least value are:

Washington, D.C. – $84.60
Hawaii – $85.32
New York – $86.66
New Jersey – $87.64
California – $88.57

A few observations:

• The states where $100 has the least value tend to be states run by Democrats, just saying.
• The states where $100 has the least value also tends to be the states where they get the least bang for the educational dollar based on the map and numbers we looked at yesterday, especially in the northeast.
• Conversely, states that have the best value for $100 also tend to get the most bang out of their educational dollar.
• States that get the least bang also tend to have the highest state and local tax rates, e.g. D.C., N.J., N.Y., etc.

The numbers don’t lie, there are just some places in this country where the schools are good and the cost of living is low and those tend to be places where political interference in one’s lives is less.

2) Inspector generals in the Federal government are supposed to be the watchdogs of government operations. They are supposed to protect taxpayer interests, make sure government operations run as smoothly and efficiently as possible, and make sure laws are being followed within government entities. They are an important piece of government at all levels, acting as an independent watchdog.

Given their function and importance, it was discouraging to listen to recent Congressional testimony where what has to be a record number of inspector generals are complaining about the lack of cooperation and transparency they are receiving from high ranking administration and government executives. A whopping 47 inspector generals were present from a variety of government functions at the hearings.

You cannot claim that you are operating the “most transparent Presidential administration ever” like the President claims when almost four dozen trained and professional inspector generals accuse you of stonewalling their investigations. It is not like one or two are complaining, almost four dozen are complaining and frustrated.

3) The Gallup polling organization recently released some information and numbers that confirm what we have been talking about for months: despite what Obama says, the economy is not in great shape. Gallup had an interesting take and number analysis. They defined a “good job” as a job that has at least thirty hours of steady work a week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Seems reasonable as far as defining what a good job is.

Unfortunately, according to Gallup tracking, right now the U.S. economy is delivering a “good job” for Americans at a very low rate of 44% which is calculated as the number of full time, “good jobs” as a percentage of the adult population 18 years and older. In other words, more than half of the adult population today cannot find or do not want to find a good job. Gallup claims that the percentage has to be at least 50% if we are to ever create 10 million new, “good jobs” to restore and replenish the middle class in this country.

Very discouraging numbers relative to quality employment in this country. But we already knew that from previous discussions, this is just another way to prove our point. What is really discouraging and scary is that a few days after this analysis and these numbers were published, the head of the Gallup organization publicly came out and said that he was worried for his life since these numbers did not support the administration’s spin and position on the economy:

http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/unemployment-rate-big-lie-barack-obama-gallup/2015/02/08/id/623489/

When an American citizen is worried about dying relative to telling the truth in his mind on the performance of the government and the political class, then we are really in danger from a freedom and Constitution perspective.

4) Two more numbers before we finish today, we will finish up our “by the numbers” tomorrow. Numerous times in this blog we have proven that Obama Care will fail because it implemented a wacky health insurance program that did not address any of the underlying root causes of our country’s high health care costs. 

One of those unaddressed root causes of our high health care costs is the reality that Americans are overweight which leads to all kinds of related health care costs. How obese? According to a recent article in The Week magazine, fully one third of Americans are obese, not overweight, obese, and this obesity results in $147 billion in medical care costs every year.

Think about that number, $147 billion. If we could eliminate the obesity problem in this country, then we could take $147 billion out of the health care costs in this country or about $1,300 every year for every U.S. household. That would certainly be more savings for every household than what Obama Care failed to deliver. 

So what did the numbers tell us about reality today:

• Some states deliver far more value for $100 than other states.
• Four dozen inspector generals cannot do their job because of the stubbornness and cover ups of the Obama administration.
• A Gallup executive fears for his life for only revealing the truth about some economic numbers.
• And finally, root causes such as widespread obesity cause our health care cost problems, to the tune of almost $150 billion a year.

One more set of “by the numbers” tomorrow where we will conclude our review of reality, as defined by real numbers, as opposed to political fantasies as defined by politicians’ lies.

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

July, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Solar Panels Vs. Veterans Health, California's Failed Cash For Clunkers Programs, "We're Number 19" and More

This is our fifth, and probably not our last, post this month in our monthly series on political class insanity. Every month we try to keep up with the latest lunacy, idiocy, ineptness, wasteful spending, and outright corruption of the American political class. 

It is not an easy thing to do since we are apparently living through the worse set of politicians that this country has ever had to endure. As a result, we never seem to get a major issue resolved but are constantly bombarded with incompetence from every aspect of government and politics.

Today’s examples in no way dispute this assertion:

1) Two facts set up the first piece of insanity for today. First, many video clips of President Obama speaking about how he was going to make sure that our veterans got top notch care are available online. He made it a big campaign promise back in 2008 and afterwards, continuing to brag and promise about how well his administration would take care of veterans.

Second, the outgoing Bush administration warned the incoming Obama administration that there were serious problems within the Veterans Administration. Given our discussion yesterday and in previous posts on this topic, this is obviously a true depiction of what was going on when Obama came into office.

Bottom line: the Obama administration knew that there were problems taking care of our veterans’ medical issues and promised to give it the highest attention. But rather than devote all of the necessary resources to addressing the deficient medical care our veterans are receiving, what did Obama do? 

The Washington Free Beacon recently reported on some Veterans Administration expenses that had nothing to do with medical care and everything to do with political public relations:

• An analysis of more than $1 billion dollars in spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs on “professional services” over the past few years found several instances of questionable spending on items and efforts that had nothing to do with the medical care of our veterans.
• For example, millions of dollars were spent on a national ad campaign.
• Many millions more were spent on alternative energy programs to make VA facilities environmentally greener despite the fact that this expenses and investments would have nothing to do with fixing the inadequate care our veterans were and are receiving.
• This unnecessary behavior was driven by an executive order signed by Obama in October 2009, the VA was required to make its facilities more energy efficient and sustainable.
• A whopping total of 183 green energy projects were instituted for VA facilities across the country. 
• One single contract was for a Washington D.C.-based VA facility for nearly $1 million.
• And in the most inane use of taxpayer funds, in Buffalo, New York, one of the U.S. cities with the lowest number of sunny days annually, the Buffalo VA Medical Center installed a solar energy power unit. 
• Other sun starved cities, such as Albany, New York and Cleveland, Ohio also installed solar systems in their facilities. 

Talk about insanity. Veterans are dying by the hundreds, if not thousands, because of inadequate care from the VA while the VA is busy installing unneeded solar panels on VA facilities around the country. I am all for alternative energy but shouldn’t we fix what is broken within the VA before we go wild spending money on solar panels? 

How many veterans’ lives could have been saved if that million dollars in DC had been used for hiring more medical staff vs. solar panels? On a nationwide basis, how many lives could have been saved if solar panel money went into medical care first and solar panels some where in the future once the VA stopped letting veterans die? 

And the saddest part of all is that Obama knew about the VA problems before he issued the executive order and said he cared. Obviously, he doesn’t get it even when fully informed. Pathetic.

2) Insanity is not restricted to just Federal politicians, state level politicians are often just as inane and out of touch. Consider a state version of “Cash For Clunkers” that the political class in California has implemented. That state was paying drivers to get their air-polluting cars off the road. As an incentive, the state government was paying out cash to get state residents to buy a newer, more fuel-efficient model.

Sounds like a good idea but as almost always with political class ideas, it is failing miserably. During its first year, only 21 Californians in the entire state actually purchased a new vehicle under this program. The state mailed out more than 12,000 letters notifying people they were eligible for a portion of $3 million set aside for vehicle replacement. But with only 21 people taking advantage of the program, the mailing response rate was a very meager .2% of the mailing. 

Given these pathetic results, the program has been suspended but may reappear next year. Which raises the question: why bother? Given that the incentive was about $2,000 and the program was budgeted for $3 million, even if the entire budget was used up the net result would be about 1,500 new cars on the road in the entire state. Given that there are over 20 million cars on the road today in California, 1,500 cars was going to make hardly any kind of dent in air pollution at all under this program. 

Plus, as the Obama administration found out when it ran a Cash For Clunkers program, very few of the sales in this type of program are incremental. All it does is delay or pull up a purchase of a new car, a purchase that likely would have happened in the absence of free money anyway. This further reduces the incremental impact of the program.

Simple math that escapes our simple minded politicians. Handing out free money to the tune of $3 million to affect a minimal amount of cars in a state as huge as California a just plain dumb. Just do the math.

3) Consider some local political class insanity as a result of meddling Federal bureaucrats at Salem High School in Plymouth, Michigan. This was reported in the July, 2014 issue of Reason magazine, a great place to see how the political class systematically screws up our democracy and wealth every day.

In this case, the high school was forced to take down new bleachers and a scoreboard that was built by parents for the school’s baseball team. However, in the new world of political correctness, the Federal Department of Education found that the school was in violation of Federal laws because as a result of the parents' efforts, the boys’ baseball field was superior to the girls’ softball field.

The school had not budget to upgrade the girls field so in order to not violate the Federal law, they had to destroy what the parents had built at the baseball field. How insane has our country become when well meaning citizens, taking an active interest in their sons’ lives, can be viewed as criminals by the Federal government? 

When a country starts to destroy workable, positive assets in local communities in order to satisfy unnecessary Federal bureaucrats far away, we have definitely fallen down the rabbit hole. True insanity.

4) A recent cnn.com article that was summarized in the June 20, 2014 issue of The Week magazine found that according to an analysis by Credit Suisse, Americans’ median net worth is just $44,900 per adult despite us being many years away from the official ending of the last recession. Even more disappointing, this places us in 19th place relative to the rest of the world, with countries such as Japan, Canada, Australia and most of western Europe having higher median net worth. 

Many times in this blog we have asserted that the economic policy and planning skills of our politicians are worse than non-existent, they are dangerously bad. This latest statistic is just more proof that despite an energy revolution, record low interest rates for a record length of time, and the fact that we have had a number of years of non-recession economic times, these people in Washington still could not come up with an economic environment that would help us grow our personal wealth and improve our lives. 

We are no longer number in the world when it comes to wealth, we are a startling and disappointing 19th, courtesy of the Washington political class.

5) A www.newsday.com article that was summarized in the March 21, 2014 issue of The Week magazine discussed the reality that more than half a million Americans die each year as a result of Alzheimer’s disease. This makes the disease the third largest cause of American deaths, behind only heart disease and cancer.

Do you think that the Obama administration might have had a much bigger payoff if they had attacked this disease with all of the vim and vigor they used to get someone a half baked, expensive Bronze Plan via Obama Care? 

If they had focused on only reducing these three diseases and the astronomical costs associated with heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s, they would have dramatically reduced health care costs which would have dramatically reduced health insurance costs, which would have created an economic boon for the country. 

Instead, the Washington political class created a 2,500 page monster piece of legislation that is increasing health care costs without reducing these three major drivers of health care costs. Insane.

That will do it for today relative to political class insanity. We have a Veterans Administration that continues to fail our veterans in so many ways, we have California politicians who do not know how to do simple math, we have a Federal bureaucracy destroying a perfectly good baseball facility, we have a falling standard of living vs. the rest of the world, and we are dying from preventable diseases while the Federal government bungles its way through a failed health care law that all but ignores the preventable fatalities.

Sounds about right for one day’s worth of political class insanity. We will finish up this series for this month tomorrow but rest assured we will revisit it again early next month. Politicians and the every growing bureaucracies they manage never rest and never fail to under whelm us with their ineptness and idiocy.

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

November, 2013 I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science Update, Part 4: Where Are We Today?

We have spent the past few days discussing how it is perfectly logical and reasonable to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. We have shown numerous examples of scientific research, analysis, and findings that show the potential for a high likelihood that global warming, or the rebranded “climate change“ concept, effort is either a hoax, a mistake, or non-existent.

Now, we have made the statement throughout our exploration of those scientific efforts refuting global warming that maybe there actually is global warming or climate change occurring as a result of humanity’s actions. There is so much analysis and research supporting both sides of the equation that if you take a step back, it is difficult to truly believe what is going on. 

We did vehemently and often object to the Al Gores of the world who rant at and insult those of us who are global warming doubters but believers in science. Calling people ignorant, environmental Nazis, homophobes, racists, and a whole slew of other insults does nothing to get folks to come together for an adult conversation on the potential issue. 

These people have slung around the insults without considering facts and realities. First, the vast, vast majority of global warming forecast models over the years have grossly overestimated the likely impact of global warming. Thus, if your models are wrong, then the underlining assumptions supporting those models must be wrong. And if those assumptions are based on the thesis that global warming truly exists, then your thesis is wrong.

Second, the earth’s overall temperature has stopped warming and has been remarkably stable and unchanged over the past 15 years or so. Global warming advocates and models would have not believed this reality 15 years ago. In fact, as we have reported, ice expanses at both poles have started expanding again, hardly compatible with a warming earth.

Third, respected scientists, including many at the top research center in the world, the CERN Institute, have proven via their methods that global warming, if it is occurring, is part of natural cycle and mankind’s activities have nothing to do with. 

But rather than considering ALL aspects of global warming science, all that the name calling from the advocates of global warming has accomplished is to harden each side’s positions and opinions of the other side, leaving no room for discussion and compromise to mutual understanding. And without mutual understanding, no action is taken and the potential for problems gets larger and larger. 

But let the name calling stop today, Today and tomorrow we will set up a process to address both sides and come out for the better regardless of whether global warming is a reality or not. Today, we will look at the energy landscape and the reality of energy and carbon footprints going forward in time. Unless we understand the reality of where we are, we cannot develop a plan of where we want to go.

Tomorrow, we will lay out specific steps, processes, and challenges that need to be overcome on the scientific, research, and political fronts, starting with the reality of where we end up today. If those steps are successfully implemented, we will clean up our air and environment, reduce energy costs, and reduce our carbon footprint independent of whether global warming is fact or fiction. 

We would want to these things even if global warming was never dreamed up. If global warming is indeed a reality, than our plan would be the proper way to attack it.

So, let’s start with the reality of today when it comes to fossil fuels and carbon footprints, things that a global warming advocate hates:

1) The fastest growing economy in the world over the past decade has probably been China’s. It’s economy has grown at some of the highest year over year rates in the history of the world. It has helped create a growing Chinese middle class and upper class who want the latest in technology whether it be in electricity using home products, automobiles, and other energy hungry endeavors.

As a result, China has needed to greatly increase its ability to produce energy for its growing consumer and business demand. And the quickest and easiest way to do that was to start burning a lot more coal and a lot more petroleum products. 

It has started to develop massive coal fields in its western regions to feed the growing demand for electricity in its large eastern cities. It is cutting deals with countries all over the world to get access to local fossil fuel natural resources. It now burns about the 60% of all coal in the world (source: Business Week).

Thus, any global warming plan has to include China’s cooperation. Without it, anything any other nation does, including the United States, will be overwhelmed by the growing carbon footprint of the Chinese economy.

2) I am sure Al Gore and his ilk would love to have every human getting their energy needs fulfilled by clean, renewable energy sources, particularly those new technologies that he has invested in. But according to an article in the November, 2013 issue of Reason magazine, that is not going to happen anytime soon:

• The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released its analysis and forecast on what the global energy footprint is likely to look like in the future. 
• Their forecast predicts that by 2041, mankind will be using 56% more energy annually than it does today. 
• A whopping 80% of it will come from burning fossil fuels. Yes, almost three decades from now, oil, coal, etc. will still be the dominate fuel sources for humanity, a global warming advocate’s worst nightmare. 
• The use of petroleum and liquid fuels will increase 32%. 
• The use of natural gas will increase 64%. 
• The use of coal will increase 44%. 
• Total energy use from renewables will increase from 11% to 15%. 
• Energy created carbon dioxide emissions will rise 46%. 

Thus, there is probably no end in sight for the use of high carbon laden fuels. This is the likely reality based on expert opinions.

3) This future reality does not mean we should give up trying to reduce our carbon footprint and cleaning up the air. We have reported in the past few posts how the U.S. has greatly reduced its carbon footprint over the past few years, attaining double digit reductions in carbon emission. A more recent update of this success comes from a September 6, 2013 Business Week article that reported the U.S. has reduced its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 12% in just the past five years.

4) The Week magazine’s November 14, 2013 issue ran an article that showed the horrible levels of urban air pollution in large Chinese cities and the fact that seven out of the top ten most polluted cities in the world are in China. These pollution conditions are obviously harmful and often fatal for the citizens of those cities. How bad is it, according to the article:

• China depends on high carbon footprint coal for 70% of its power needs. 
• Chinese government decrees to reduce pollution call for only a 2% reduction in coal usage. 
• While very few Chinese citizens owned a motorized vehicle twenty years ago, today there are 120 million cars and 120 million other motor vehicles on the road. 
• Air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature Chinese citizen deaths in 2010. 
• Chinese lung cancer rates are up 465% in the past thirty years. 
• In some cities, Chinese scientists estimate that the average citizen will see their life span reduced by 5.5 years on average. 

Regardless of whether or not global warming exists, people should not have to live like this. Taking action to reduce carbon pollution makes for a healthier humanity and if global warming is a true issue, these actions will also be address global warming by cleaning up the air.

5) But consider the potential positive economic upside for the U.S. from a carbon perspective, from an analysis in the September 6, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, keeping in mind that our domestic economy has stunk for at least the past six years and shows no sign of getting better:

• New technology has allowed the United States to greatly increase the amount of crude oil that can be obtained within our own borders. 
• This technology usage has resulted in high paying new jobs, substantially reducing the unemployment rate in several now oil rich states, e.g. 3% in North Dakota and 5% in Oklahoma. 
• While the U.S. imported upwards of 60% of its oil in 2005, it now only imports 40% of its needs. 
• It is estimated that at the current rate, by 2035, the U.S. might be energy independent of the rest of the world. 
• This would greatly reduce the need for us to butt into the affairs of other countries, militarily and diplomatically, particularly those in the Middle East. 
• The energy technology boom as it relates to natural gas and oil could result in one million new manufacturing jobs in the next ten years. 

Okay, before getting to a solution tomorrow, what do we know about today in the world:

• China’s economy is growing rapidly and will require larger and larger amounts of energy sources, amounts that will require the use of carbon intensive energy sources, including coal, for years to come. 
• China is choking on the pollution that its economic growth and energy usage growth has caused. 
• The U.S. has already substantially reduced its carbon footprint over the past five years without government mandates or bureaucracies. 
• Energy industry experts predict that carbon based energy sources will still constitute the majority of raw material used to generate energy in the next several decades, renewables not withstanding. 
• New energy technology usage in the U.S. is one of the very few industries segments that have shown positive economic and employment growth over the past few years. 

From these five realities, we will propose a simple yet elegant solution to the energy, pollution, and…global warming issue regardless of whether or not global warming is fact or fiction.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

The Week The Obama Administration Entered Lame Duck Status, Part 2: Spying On Friends, Spying On Americans, Lying About The IRS and More

It's all about humanity, humility, and integrity. Debra Wilson

Yesterday, we postulated that we have already entered the lame duck era of the Obama administration despite the fact that he still has three years left in his term. We used the three words, humility, humanity, and integrity in conjunction with two major administration scandals, Benghazi and Obama Care, to support our lame duck theory.

From a Benghazi perspective, we pointed out the details from a recent CBS News “60 Minutes” broadcast that proved the administration was aware that the consulate attack in Benghazi was a true Al Qaeda terrorist attack while it was going on. How do we know that? The ambassador, Chris Stephens, actually completed an outgoing call in the midst of the attack stating they were under attack and that Al Qaeda flags were clearly visible, a call he completed before he was murdered.

Despite having this information and other intelligence information readily at hand, the Obama administration via the President, Hillary Clinton, U.N. ambassador, and other administration shills tried to cover up the facts and blame an obscure YouTube video for the attack. They tried to falsely paint the incident as just a street demonstration that got out of hand. The “60 Minutes” investigation shows clearly this was an intentional deception and cover up to keep intact the President’s campaign slogan that Al Qaeda was on the run and on the decline.

Obviously, this President and his administration were out of integrity when they lied about the cause of the Benghazi tragedy, they were void of humanity when the abandoned over 20 Americans in the midst of a terrorist attack, and probably never had any humility since their election year politics were more important than American lives or the truth.

The Obama Care lies are even more obvious. We showed yesterday via numerous video clips that the President often, clearly, and emphatically pledged that no American would ever lose access to their preferred health care insurance plans or their doctors under Obama Care if they liked their insurance policy and their doctors. There is no doubt that is what he meant, no American would ever lose access to their preferred policy or doctor.

However, events over the past week have showed that nothing could be further from the truth. Millions of Americans have either already or will shortly lose access to the insurance policies they desire and the doctors the desire. The President’s promise does not hold water. 

But the real integrity hit comes from the fact that NBC News’ investigative journalists uncovered administration documentation from 2010 that correctly predicted the carnage Obama Care would befall Americans’ health care situations. Three years ago those official documents estimated between 45% and 67% of Americans would lose access to their current policies and doctors.

Despite that reality and understanding, the President continued to lie and deceive Americans about what Obama Care had in store for them. We asserted that the President was certainly out if integrity by hoisting that sham promise on the American people while all the time knowing it was not true. 

We also noted his lack of humanity by never telling us the truth when it was known three years ago. It would have been a lot more humane if he had given Americans three years notice to adjust their family health care situation rather than waiting until weeks before that situation will change as a result of Obama Care. 

We also judged him void of humility since as we have seen this past week he refuses to apologize and make the situation right, e.g. possibly delaying or fixing the mess that the legislation has created. Instead of humility and leadership, we get political spin and smoke and mirrors to try and bury his deception.

When your constituents can longer trust you because you lied about Benghazi and Obama Care, when you show no humanity by leaving Americans to die in Benghazi or by not giving them the true impacts of Obama Care, and you never show any regrets or humility, your ability to convince, to cajole to energize, and to lead a nation is null and void. And null and void is just another name for being a lame duck.

These two scandals are bad enough and sufficient to cause a lame duck status but the lame duck train does not stop there. It turns out that the President has allowed the National Security Agency and other Federal agencies to spy on the leaders of our allies and innocent Americans, as recent news reports have uncovered:

• The Week reported in its September 27, 2013 edition that the President of Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff was besides herself when she learned that the Obama administration was spying on Brazilian government AND private communications. This spying included intercepting her own phone calls and emails. She was so upset that she cancelled a planned state visit to the U.S., a major, major slap in the face to the President.
• On October 28, 2013, the Associated Press ran a long, detailed article on the outrage in Europe over the fact that the Obama and Bush administrations, via the National Security Agency, has been doing massive spying and intercepting electronic messages of European leaders, governments and European citizens. Unbelievably, the agency had tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel's own cell phone! The spying situation is so bad that European leaders and countries are seriously considering sanctions against the Obama administration and the U.S. for such a gross invasion of privacy of our allies. German has joined forces with Brazil, who recently denounced NSA espionage as a “breach of international law,” to promote the adoption of a U.N. resolution that would promote the right to privacy on the Internet.
  21 counries have lined up in the United Nations to draft a right of Internet privacy while the furor over the U.S. spying on at least 35 world leaders. Some of the details of this mess can be accessed:

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/oct/29/europe-mulls-sanctions-against-us-over-spying/

• The September 20, 2013 issue of The Week magazine contained an article detailing the fact that the National Security Agency had violated its own privacy rules and regulations on domestic, private citizen surveillance for at least three years. While the agency is expected to show a “reasonable, articulate suspicion” that a phone number and citizen are involved with terrorist activity or groups, official government documents show that over a recent three year period, only 1,935 out of 17, 385 numbers on its “alert list” met that criteria. 
• Combine this finding with the knowledge we have already reported on that the Obama administration is collecting just about every single bit of electronic communications of every American and storing this information in a massive center in Utah, you realize the Europeans and the Brazilians are not the only people getting electronically violated by the Obama administration.
• According to a Washington Post article from October 13, 2013, The National Security Agency is constantly collecting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. The article asserts the intelligence officials estimate that the buddy contacts lists of millions or possibly tens of millions of Americans have been collected without due cause or their knowledge.

Scary, scary abuse of power and control. And again, a complete lack of integrity, humanity, and humility. From a lack of integrity perspective, first consider the President’s own words from a Washington Post article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/politics/obama-nsa-not-collecting-americans-emails/2013/10/15/523988f2-cf95-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_video.html

In his own words, he claims no American is being spied on. But we know from the Washington Post and other news outlets that this is a lie and deception, we are being spied on by this administration. 

A second angle on lack of integrity is to not tell Americans or foreign allies we are spying on you, it is all done in secrecy. And secrecy makes it a lot tougher to trust you and believe you and follow your lead, making you a lame duck and the objective you desire that much further out of reach.

From a humility perspective, even after this administration got caught spying on our allies, they were not repentant. In the President’s own words, via the White House, relative to the Brazil spying scandal and outrage, that President Obama “understands the and regrets the concerns that disclosures of alleged U.S. intelligence activities have generated in Brazil.” 

Note that the President and the White House do not regret the act of spying and privacy invasion, they regret the “disclosures” of alleged spying. No humility or apologies at all, they are more ticked off that they got caught than from the heinous spying activity itself.

From a humanity perspective, how bad is it when this administration distrusts every American and most of our allies that they have to secretly spy on everything we do and what our allies do? Trust is one of humanity’s most cherished emotions and feelings, but trust is lost on this soulless administration.

We could  on and on about the lack of integrity, humanity, and humility in this administration. Remember the lies about the IRS and the White House harassing Americans’ freedom of speech who happened to disagree with this administration? 

We were initially lied to and told that only a few “rogue” IRS agents in Cincinnati were harassing Obama’s political opponents. That lie and deception have long been disproven as we know from IRS testimony in front of Congress, by people like Lois Lerner, that the harassment originated and was controlled from the highest government circles in Washington.

Remember the lies and deceit about Fast and Furious, the botched illegal gun running operation with the Mexican drug cartels? That operation is so bad and illegal that Obama has issued executive orders in an attempt to cover that lie and deception.

You cannot not lead when no one believes anything you say based on your past history of lies and deceptions. 

You cannot lead when no one believes your humanity, no one believes that you actually care what happens to them when you leave people to die in a far away land, when you force them to change their entire health care safety net for no reason, or when you track their every communication because you have no trust that most Americans are not terrorists.

You cannot lead when you have no humility. When nothing is your fault, when you refuse to admit mistakes, where you show no ability to learn from your mistakes or to be flexible about the needs of others, the lack of humility is not a true mark of a leader.

As we have tried to show over the past two days, this administration is extremely devoid of integrity, humanity, and humility. You cannot lead when that is you history, the lack of those three characteristics makes you a lame duck, going through the motions because no on believes your motions and even worst, no one cares about or trusts your motions. 

Bottom line: when your behavior causes your allies and friends to fear you and your enemies not to fear you, your have entered the realm  of failure and lameness.

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

November, 2012 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: More TSA Theft, Lost Money In DC Schools, Congress Getting Richer, And More

This is the final set of political class activities that the political class has imposed on us as we have identified over the past month or so. It is such a shame that we are cursed with a set of politicians that continually waste our wealth on inane programs and projects, waste valuable national resources through incompetent management of these same programs and projects, and erode our democracy with oppressive regulations. They incur all of this damage as they continue to focus more on their political careers and self enrichment. Pitiful.

The final set of insults we have identified from our politicians this month:

1) According to a Washington Post article that was summarized in the October 19, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, during years from 2007 to 2010 Americans’ median household net worth slipped down by 39%. However, the median net worth of all members of Congress increased almost 5% during the same time period.

Even more insulting, the median household income of the wealthiest one third of Congress saw their median net worth rise 14%. Well, at least some Americans are surviving and actually thriving quite well in these hard economic times. As always, our politicians take care of themselves first and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

2) Despite a crushing national debt of over $16 TRILLION and growing, according to a blurb in the October 12, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, the Congressional Research Service found that 2,362 Americans legally collected unemployment benefits in 2009 despite residing in households with incomes of at least $1 million.

Unemployment benefit programs should be designed and implemented to provide short term to help those Americans who have lost their jobs and need financial assistance to get over their rough spot. If your household income is over $1 million, you have no chance of hitting a “rough spot” and should not be entitled to taxpayer wealth, period.

3) What’s is a political class insanity update without extensive TSA participation? According to an ABC news report, as highlighted in the October 12, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, a culture of theft exists throughout the TSA employee base. Pythias Brown, a convicted thief of airline passenger luggage items, said that he had stolen more than $800,000 worth of passenger valuables over just a four year period when he was a TSA employee.

He stated he was part of a culture that:

• Was really a massive “crime wave” which “preyed upon passenger luggage and personal belongings.”
• There was a culture of “indifference” within the TSA organization.
• There was lax oversight and extensive sharing of potential targets among crooked colleagues.
• His observation was that extensive theft was commonplace, not the exception, at TSA checkpoints.

Disgraceful behavior and culture that never seems to get any better even though this type of nonsense has been going on for years with no sustainable outrage or corrections form our political class.

4) According to a Reason magazine article form earlier this year, the American taxpayer via the Washington political class had given the Washington D.C. school district an extra $190 million for its school district. Unfortunately, a government audit found that no one n the D.C. school system was able to provide a credible accounting or paper trial of what actually happened to this extra money.

A General Accountability Office (GAO) audit found:

• The records of the expenditures of this money were incomplete or non-existent.
• The school district received $37.4 million for literacy improvement but the school district could not provide even basic information to describe the program’s objectives and goals or provide any outcomes as a result of the money.
• A grant of $85 million to expand charter schools was also unmonitored.
• The administration office of the school system could not even locate three of the seventeen files that the audit team wanted to review.

The head of the GAO was quoted in the article as saying: “They have longstanding problems,” when referring to the school district. You think? More waste, no accountability either within the school district, the Federal government entity that granted the money, or the Congressional committee responsible for overseeing the expenditures.

5) Prior to being elected, President Obama repeatedly condemned excessively long prison sentences, particularly in the cases of non-violent offenders, according to an article in the November, 2012 issue of reason magazine. Unfortunately, along with reducing the deficit, closing Guantanamo, not hiring lobbyists for his administration, etc., this seems to be another political campaign promise going unfulfilled since he was sworn into office the President has approve one sentence commutation out of 5,500 case that have been presented to him. So much for his campaign condemnation.

6) If it is any consolation, politicians and governments around the world have very similar problems to us, wasteful political class spending and high taxation. According to an article in the September 7, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, Sapo, the Swedish government’s spy agency, is trying to explain how it spent about $800,000 on a James Bond themed party for its staff.

The party included casino tables, a swing band, and extensive gourmet food spread. The only reason the secret and expensive party came to light was because of an accounting error. The head of the spy agency said that his staff had been under tremendous pressure and deserved a party. However, there is a difference between an office party and an $800,000 taxpayer-funded gala bash.

Enough insanity, waste, and lunacy for this month, it was a bad thirty days or so if you are a taxpayer or a citizen supposedly living in a democracy. This month’s political class antics continue to prove that at least the following three steps from “Love My Country,Loathe my Government” are needed to stop the pain and waste:

1. Step 34 would remove politicians from their political committees when they continue to allow the insanity and wasteful spending that we continually cover every month. The members of the committee or subcommittee that lost track of the $190 million that went down the drain at the D.C. school district should be removed form their post. EVERY politician that has any oversight for the disgraceful and corrupt TSA entity should have been removed from their committee posts long ago. Until the politicians overseeing these malfunctioning government actions are held accountable, nothing will improve.
2. Step 39 would impose term limit on all Federal politicians. These types of shenanigans and insanity have been going on for a very long time. Those politicians that have been along for this wasteful ride are now part of the problem since they have not been able or willing to fix these problems. They need to have their political careers terminated.
3. Step 44 would not allow any Federal taxpayer money to be spent on any project or program that did not substantially impact a substantial number of residences in at least five states. Federal money is for national programs and projects, not state and local ones. This would eliminate the earmarks and pontifical payback schemes that sacrifice taxpayer money for campaign election favors and funding.

I would like to say that this is the last post regarding political class insanity. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure we will be back in December with more of the same.

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

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blgspot.com/
http://www.flipcongres2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

Obama Care - Still Constitutional And Still A Major Disaster: Part 2 - IRS Misadventures, Unemployment Impacts and More

Yesterday we reviewed some major and distressing new news about Obama Care. The latest unbiased and nonpartisan experts, including the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare's head actuary, etc., continue to prove our theory that Obama Care is an unfolding disaster for the nation. It will not solve the underlying causes of our high health care costs, it will gut Medicare funding and support over the next ten years, it will leave tens of millions of Americans without health care insurance coverage, and it will add to our skyrocketing national debt.

Unfortunately, we could not fit the latest bad news into one post and needed today's space to continue:

- A New York Times article that was summarized in the August 10, 2012 issue of The Week magazine stated that, partly as a result of Obama Care, the U.S. will be over 60,000 doctors short of what it will need by 2015 as a result of  millions of more Americans receiving health care insurance under the legislation. The shortfall will be more than twice as big by 2025, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Now, to be clear, I would never want to deny health care to another human being. However, this is obviously another big shortcoming of Obama Care. Somehow, the writers of the legislation never understood that if more and more people can get easier access to health care, they will exercise that option.

Thus, the Obama Care writers never made any contingency plans on how to handle increased demand with no increase in suppliers. Simple supply and demand economic theory that is lost on on our politicians, a theory that will lead to increase costs and lower care (more demand, no increase in supply, has to lead to higher prices and costs: Economics 101).

- A CNNMoney.com article that was summarized in the July 27, 2012 issue of The Week magazine confirmed our assumption yesterday that companies will hire fewer workers and change full time workers to part time workers. They cannot afford the increased Obama Care costs and taxes that will be imposed on companies with more than 50 full time employees who do not provide full health care insurance.

It cites small business owner David Barr who successfully owns and operates two dozen fast food franchises: "[Barr] says he'd rather do that [change his full time workers to part time workers] than pay the $546,000 he says it will cost him to cover all 425 of his current employees."

Why would he downgrade over 400 employees to part time?  According to the article, "His business model isn't meant to support these costs." 

Consider the decisions of business owner Randall Tabor, who owns two Quiznos sandwich restaurants with 36 workers in Virginia Beach, Va., in a Wall Street Journal interview that was cited in the August 2, 2012 issue of Moneynews. He has rolled back earlier plans he had to triple the number of his outlets since Obamacare was passed in 2010.


Horrid legislation, make hundreds of Americans just in these two examples take a downgrade in employment or not get hired at all. As this is repeated thousands and thousands of times across the country, disposable income will also drop as will economic growth, all for a government program that will never work.

- One of the biggest issues of Obama Care is that it forces Americans to buy a service, in this case, health insurance. That was the main reason behind the Supreme Court challenge that the Court somehow viewed as legal. Obviously, many Americans found this government imposition of forcing a purchase in a supposedly free country as counter liberty.

However, according to an article in the July 20, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, despite Obama Care, the government cannot actually force a citizen to buy health insurance, contrary to what most people think. The article lays out the situation:

• The Obama Care health care purchase mandate/tax cannot truly compel an American to buy health insurance. While it levies a tax on those who do not buy insurance, unbelievably, there is no legal mechanism to enforce the mandate.
• The article supposes that millions of people may decide to forego paying for health insurance and save paying the health care premiums since the Federal government cannot not affect them except under one specific condition.
• That condition is that, if in the future, the IRS owes a non-purchaser a tax refund, it can withhold the tax refund to pay the penalty for not buying health care insurance.
• The CBO estimates that 4 million Americans will bypass the mandate to purchase insurance and save the monthly premiums because of this lack of enforcement.
• One reason for bypassing is that even with an Obama Care subsidy, as an example, a family of four earning about $45,000 a year will find it cheaper to pay the Obama Care penalty, IF and WHEN it should ever happen, than purchasing the cheapest insurance option offered in the Obama Care insurance exchanges.
• This will put more people back into emergency rooms for sickness and illness treatment, the exact opposite of what Obama Care is supposed to do.
• The article illustrates this likelihood by quoting the opinions of a Texas mother who stated in the article that she would rather risk a low, potential $250 government fine sometime in the future than pay $1,800 a year for insurance today: "I could much more easily afford a dadgum penalty than be saddled month after month after month than be saddled with this kind of premium." She stated she will continue to take her family illnesses and sicknesses to an emergency room. And there is virtually nothing Obama Care can do about her attitude and actions.
• Despite not being able to collect mandated penalties, the Obama administration recently allocated about half a billion dollars to the IRS for enforcement of this mandate that it cannot enforce. Insanity.
• As we have observed previously, wouldn't these government resources be better spent on reducing the over $100 billion that the Federal government loses every year to criminal fraud, waste, and inefficiencies in existing Medicare and Medicaid programs? Wouldn't  that be a better option than wasting time hassling honest American citizens who are just trying to optimize their lives vs. organized crime and other criminal elements who are only trying to rob the American taxpayer?

- Lets go to an article from the July 9, 2012 issue of Business Week. The article reviews many of the same facts that were covered in The Week article cited above, including the fact that Congress prohibited the IRS from placing liens on property and assets or garnishing wages for those that do not purchase health care insurance.

However, it adds two additional pieces of information. First, the IRS will somehow have to enforce 47 additional tax provisions as a result of Obama Care. As the article points out, and we have pointed out numerous times, the IRS cannot currently collect about $385 billion that is owed to the Federal government from tax evaders every year. If it cannot enforce the current tax laws, it is difficult to believe it will
be able to efficiently and effectively enforce 47 more tax requirements.   

Second, while the IRS commissioner needs an 11% increase in the IRS budget to handle Obama Care, it has seen Congress reduce its budget in each of the past two years, shrinking its enforcement staff by 3,000. It is highly unlikely Congress will restore those cuts AND increase the IRS budget in the future, meaning that the IRS component of Obama Care is also going to be a failure and disaster.

Failure and disaster, hassling of honest Ameircans while dishonest theives steal from Medicare and Mediciad, more and more Americans lsing their current health insurance plans, doctor shortages, less employment, reduction in disposable income. Yes, Obama Care is Constitutional. However, that still does not make it a good idea.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom

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

Solving Our Nation's Economic Malaise - Fixing What Our Politicians Broke: Short Term Solutions

Okay, hopefully we got the bad economic news out of the way over the past four days. Skyrocketing national debt, persistently high unemployment and under employment, an impending double recession, low consumer confidence, the threat of a Euro collapse and the negative ramifications on our banking system, etc.

There should be no doubt that our country's economic condition and future are looking very bad right now. We need the political class in this country to act now and act boldly to get the vitality back in our economy before it is too late.

And we cannot allow them to do what they have been doing: their programs, inaction, and lack of economic intelligence have gotten us into this problem in the first place. We need an integrated plan, with both short term and long term components, to fix what they have broken. We need a plan that provides certainty and a clear cut path so that businesses and consumers have a sense of confidence of what is going to happen so that they can plan their spending and expansion with some degree of confidence.

And probably the most important component we need in this plan is the promise that the government and American political class will begin to withdrawal itself from the detailed workings of the economy and get out of the way. Their messing around in the economy has resulted in failed mortgage revitalization programs (e.g. HAMP), failed bank bailout programs (e.g. TARP), $16 TRILLION in national debt, failed monetary policies (e.g. quantitative easing), failed alternative energy subsidy programs (e.g.; Solyndra, Beacon, Spectra, A123, Ener1, Ecotality, Fisker, Tesla, the Chevy Volt, etc.), failed stimulus programs, and whole host of other intrusions into the market. These intrusions proved that 1) the politicians are not qualified to intrude, 2) usually resulted in abysmal failure, 3) usually were misuses of taxpayer wealth that reward their political cronies, and 4) wasted hundreds of billions of dollars in the process.

Thus, please consider the following steps as a path to fixing the economy, removing the political class, and the government it runs, from our daily lives, reducing government's wasteful spending, and restoring some degree of lost freedom to our lives.

Short Term Economic Recovery Components

- The absolute first thing that has to be done is to decide what to do with the expiring tax rules and regulations at the end of 2012. These include the expiring Bush tax cuts, the expiring marriage tax penalty, the temporary cut in payroll taxes, etc. Doing nothing is the worst thing that the political class can do, it just prolongs the agony of uncertainty into the decision making processes of businesses and consumers. And where uncertainty is present, the behavior is usually conservative and not conducive to growing the economy.

Probably the second worst thing that should be done is to act in any way that raises the current tax burden for EVERY American. This means we need to get beyond the foolish "tax the rich" mantra of Obama and the Democrats. Any actions that take disposable income out of the weak economy at this point in time is just plain stupid.

The minimal amount of money that the government would receive from "taxing the rich" would:

• Not have a significant impact on reducing our national debt.
• Not make up only a very small part of Obama's almost $4 TRILLION budget.
• Not likely be put to good use by our politicians, if you read our recent set of posts on how wasteful the political class spends our taxes (e.g. lavish Las Vegas parties, useless building of Navy ships, useless construction of foreign consulates, massive and failed subsidies to alternative energy companies, earmarks, etc.) See the following post for the details of waste: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/wasteful-government-spending-week_30.html

I would prefer to live by Obama's words that he uttered back in 2009 when he said: "You don't raise taxes in a recession." You also do not raise taxes when we are in the dire financial straits we have described over the past four posts. I think that we have shown we are either already in another recession or are about to go into one, given all of the recent bad economic news. His words should be our guide for fixing the short term tax problems.

Let everyone keep as much of their income as possible, rich and poor, in order to give the economy every chance at turning around. Taking any disposable money out of the economy now and giving it to Washington to waste is just plain dumb at this point in time.

And get these actions done now, not after the elections when we are five months down the rat hole of economic decline. The world's and the nation's economy are in stress now, not after the November 6 elections. Start providing certainty and disposable income to the economy now, not in December when it may be too late to make a difference.

- Although making sure that people and businesses knew that their taxes would not be going up on January 1, 2013 is a good start, it is not enough. There has to be some sort of agreement that this situation will not change in six months, a year, or a year and a half. People need to be confident that their tax burden, business and consumer, rich and poor, is stable for a significant length of time.

Stability and certainty are paramount. When the expiring Bush tax cuts were temporarily renewed in 2011, it had a minimal positive effect on the economy because of the uncertainty it created just a year or so down the road. This time, fix the tax impacts for a long time to eliminate the uncertainty and not make the same mistake that was made in 2011.

The Fed has stated it will not raise interest rates until at least 2014, which provides some degree of economic planning certainty to the market. The same should be done for taxes, both business and consumer. Fix the tax issues so that taxes do not go up in these economically stressful times and boldly state they will not go up for at least five years. We need as much certainty and disposable income in the market and economy as possible.

Don't believe me about the need for certainty to get the economy moving again? Consider some recent words from an CNBC interview of Alan Greenspan: "If you want to learn what the degree of uncertainty is — and the level I've been using for quite a long period of time is to watch what corporate executives do, what proportion of their cash flow they choose to invest in long-term assets. That number in the early part of 2010 was at the lowest ratio since 1935. There were equivalent things in the noncorporate area, there's a significant type of contraction, very much for the same reasons in residential buildings. In short, there is a fear of the future."

- The President needs to reconvene his Debt Reduction Commission as soon as possible, expanding its membership with the following organizations:

• Bipartisan Policy Center
• Concord Coalition
• The Cato Institute
• U.S. Public Interest Group
• The National Taxpayer Union
• General Accountability Office (GAO)
• Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

We have reviewed the fine work by all of these organizations in this blog at one point or another. All of these organizations have given much thought and deep analyses to how to reduce out of control government spending, almost always in a way that has minimal effect on social safety programs and most Americans and their families.

All of their efforts, if taken together, would reduce government debt and unnecessary government spending by TRILLIONs of dollars over the next decade. The purpose of immediately reconvening them would be to assign them a Manhattan Project type task of developing the ultimate plan to reduce unnecessary and wasteful government spending, reduce the national debt, and instill confidence that the country and its government actually has a short term and long term plan to fix our ailing economy.

Just the announcement of such an effort would provide some degree of comfort and certainty that things will get better. The one caveat is that short sighted people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid cannot dictate whether or not the output of this effort even gets reviewed, like the way they sabotaged the original Debt Reduction Commission effort. The final plan must see the light of day and be voted on by the entire Congress, sans any amendments or changes.

The political class has proven they cannot be trusted to the the right thing. This enlarged Debt Reduction Commission does the hard work and develops the plan in total, the political class in the White House and the Congress votes yes or no, with no chance to change any component.

Since all of these organizations have already done most of the necessary leg work, the enlarged Commission would be given four months to blend all of these efforts together and the vote in Congress would occur before the election in November, we cannot afford to wait a day longer than necessary.

- Given that we already know from our own research, published numerous times in this blog, that the Federal government easily loses over $600 billion a year to waste and criminal fraud in its major programs (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps), there is great upside to be had if that waste and fraud can be eliminated.

Since above we are proposing that taxes not be raised for anyone starting in January, 2013, another way must found to fund necessary government functions and start paying down our outrageous national debt. The best way to to that is to recover $600 billion a year in waste.

And the best way to collect that $600 billion was laid out in our May 7, 2012 post where we introduced the National Bounty System (http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/national-bounty-system-fixing.html). The inspiration for the National Bounty System came from a chance viewing of a county police TV commercial I happened to see.

The commercial hyped its crime stopper tip line process that the local police had instituted. This tip line facilitated citizens who wanted to report potential illegal activity, either via a phone number or email. If the tips resulted in stopping criminal activity, the tipster could be rewarded financially.

This is what the National Bounty System would do. It would deputize every American, under a strict process to protect privacy and limit harassment, to be on the look out for illegal activity that is being used to siphon off $600 billion a year in taxpayer wealth. As a reward for their vigilance, they could eligible for a cut of any taxpayer wealth that is recovered from criminal activity.

 Please visit the link above for the details. This process would immediately begin to fill the void left by NOT raising anyone's taxes in 2013 and beyond.

- Obama Care needs to be repealed as soon as possible for several reasons, all of which have been extensively covered and detailed in previous posts:

• It has no chance of being successful since its authors never understood the underlying root causes of our escalating health care costs. If you do not understand the root causes of a problem, you have virtually no chance of coming up with an effective solution to those root causes.
• Obama Care will significantly increase the growth in our national debt, the exact opposite of what the economy needs.
• The massive set of regulations and rules that businesses will have to deal with as a result of Obama Care is causing businesses all over the country to curtail hiring or turning their permanent employees into temporary employees to avoid the additional cost burdens  of Obama Care, the exact opposite of what the economy needs.
• The many additional fees and taxes coming out of Obama Care will remove even more disposable income out of the economy, the exact opposite of what the economy needs.

Given that Obama Care will not work and it is causing the exact opposite type of business behavior that is needed to grow the economy, it needs to be repealed, or found unconstitutional, as soon as possible. Doing anything less is just plain egotistical, stupid and selfish behavior from the political class.

- An article from The Week magazine several months ago summarized many articles as it related to an estimated TRILLION dollars that American companies are holding in overseas accounts. The reason for keeping those profits overseas is the taxes that would have to be paid if those profits were brought back home from the foreign operations of American companies.

Nobody wins under this situation. American companies get little use of these funds since they obviously do not have anywhere else in the world to invest them if the funds and profits are just sitting idly in foreign banks. The government gets none of the benefits since the political class wrote the tax laws that make it too expensive to bring those funds home. The domestic economy, that is in desperate need of a jolt, gets no positive impact of an idle TRILLION dollars left overseas.

How about we do a one time tax holiday to bring that TRILLION dollars back into the domestic economy? I am not a tax expert like some of those that discussed the upside in The Week article but the tax holiday might have the following rules and conditions:

• The money would have to be brought back into the country within a year.
• The funds could be used for dividends or stock buybacks since both actions would inject cash into the economy.
• The offshore funds could not be used to fund an increases in executive pay, with nonpartisan experts constructing the parameters and rules to ensure this does not happen.
• The offshore funds cannot be routed from foreign accounts to domestic accounts and not be put to work in the economy. Again, nonpartisan experts can establish the tracking and accountability parameters to ensure this does not occur.
• Penalties and additional taxes would be paid if executive pay and idle funds resulted from the tax holiday.
• If those conditions are not attractive to any company, they can leave their funds overseas and continue getting very little return.
• The Federal government would place a 5% tax on the returned money.

The Week article points out that some people are opposed to this effort, feeling that companies should pay the full tax load on this stranded TRILLION dollars. Nice in theory but pretty silly in reality. We are in dire economic straits. Any funds that do not further burden the American taxpayer should be put in play to get cash into the economy.

To sit back and say American businesses already get too many tax breaks is cutting your nose off to spite your face. That money is doing nobody in America any good sitting in foreign bank accounts. Better to try and get it flowing back to us under some type of structured tax holiday program that funnels the returned wealth into the economy, ensures that it will actually make it into the economy, conditions the return on not increasing executive salaries, and getting at least some tax money to the Federal government to reduce our debt.

To leave those funds overseas serves no purpose. The tax code needs to be overhauled to make sure this does not happen in the future. However, from a short term, urgent need, a tax holiday is the best bet to quickly inject a TRILLION dollars into the economy. Doing nothing gets you nothing.

Okay, this post took longer than I thought it would. Today we will be content with the urgent short term steps needed to get the economy out of the ditch. Tomorrow, we will focus on the complimentary long term steps that also need to be taken for the health and survival of our economy and our democracy.


We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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