The Devastation That Is Obama Care, Part 1: Pending Health Exchange Disasters, Senators Say "Just Kidding" And More

As we move through this new year, we are about to face the reality of Obama Care as its many taxes, regulations, and insanity cascade down on us and our struggling economy. We have not talked about Obama Care’s implications for a while, having been preoccupied with regular political class insanity, the fiscal cliff, the fallacy of gun conrol, and the eight part series on how stupid it is to raise taxes on any American, given how wasteful and inefficient our Federal government is today.

But before reviewing the latest approaching Obama Care fiascos, let's review the basic problems we have discussed way too many times in this blog:

1) Obama Care never identified or addressed the primary root causes of our nation's escalating health care costs:

Americans eat too much and Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food - These two interrelated causes have many underlying drivers, not the least of which is Federal government farm subsidies. These subsidies have incented American farmers to grow way too much corn, corn that ends up as cheap but unhealthy corn fructose which ends up in just about everything Americans eat.

Americans smoke too much - This problem is exacerbated by the Federal government, with the American taxpayer paying and incenting tobacco farmers over $190 million a year in Federal subsidies to grow more tobacco which ends up killing more Americans.

Americans do not get enough exercise - Americans exercise so little that a recent article in the August 17, 2012 issue of The Week magazine discussed a global study which found that Americans "ranked among the most physically lazy countries in the world," with 40% of American adults rarely engaging in any physical activity or exercise.

Americans are getting older - Rather than mobilizing resources to aggressively go after new cures and treatments for aging diseases, e.g. cancer, dementia, etc., Obama Care instead just introduces a massive new Federal bureaucracy and taxation system without a focus on disease eradication.

Tort Reform - The legislation contains none of the previously successful medical tort reform that some states have already shown to reduce health care costs, an omission due to the fabulous lobbying efforts of the ABA.

Health Insurance Competition - The legislation does nothing to break down the state line barriers that inhibit insurance company competition across state lines.

The legislation never "followed the money." - In other words, when we go into for a simple medical test that takes only a handful of minutes to perform, e.g. a blood test, but end up paying hundreds of dollars for the simple test, Obama Care never took the time to understand where these outrageous amounts of money flow, who benefits from the outrageous fees, understand how much of these fees are reasonable and unreasonable, and how to control the flow.

2) The legislation does little to curtail current wasteful spending of existing massive Federal government health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which easily lose well over $100 billion a year to waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud.

3) The legislation will not contain health care costs, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating that the gross cost of the legislation is almost double what was estimated just a few years ago, the head actuary of Medicare and Medicaid recently estimating that Obama Care will add more than $300 billion to the national debt in the first ten years, and the one sub-program that was supposed to be a positive contributor to the legislation's financials, the CLASS program, has already been shut down for being ineffective.

4) The legislation is written so poorly that companies have already set plans in motion to curtail hiring, change full time employees to part time employees, and cancel existing company health care plans in order to dodge the taxes, regulations, and burdens imposed on them by the legislation. This legislation and the ensuing actions by companies are likely a primary driver to our continuing high unemployment rate.

A whole series of previous Obama Care problems can be viewed beginning with the following post:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/08/obama-care-still-constitutional-and.html

But we will have to spent more than the next week catching up with the disaster that is Obama Care. It is coming at us quickly and it will likely increase medical costs, decrease medical care availability, and crush our struggling economy. Don’t believe this? Consider the following revelations that have come to light over the past few months from reputable, nonpartisan sources as the wave of Obama Care begins crashing upon us.

The following facts and reality, both today and the following posts, are in no particular order. All of the news is bad so we are just going to plow through all of it until we cannot take it anymore.

1) Reuters and CNBC reported on December 13, 2012 that only fifteen states have decided to set up their own, so-called health care exchanges as created under Obama Care. These exchanges are theoretically supposed to provide low cost, readily available health care insurance for those Americans who need it. Under the legislation, the states can establish and operate these exchanges or pass on the option, in which case the Federal government would step in and run a Federal health care exchange within the state.

Thus, by October 1, 2013, the Federal government will have to step up and put in place a functioning health care provisioning service in about two thirds of the country, far more than they thought it would have to do. That’s just ten months from now.

According to the article, administration officials say that is possible: "I am confident that states and the Federal government will be ready in 10 months, when consumers in all states can begin to apply," Gary Cohen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, testified to a House panel.

Remember, that:

• The data systems to do this are not in place or possibly not even being developed.
• The methods and procedures are not close to being in place.
• The customer service functionality and service representative training is not close to being in place.
• The payment process functionality is not close to being in place.
• Adjusting and customizing all of these factors to make sense and hang together at the individual state level will be a monster undertaking.

Given that this is the same government that after decades/centuries still cannot operate a fiscally sound postal system, cannot seal our leaky borders, loses over two hundred billion dollars a year to waste and criminal fraud in the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs, fails to collect over $380 billion a year from tax evaders, and cannot protect its foreign embassies, I find it highly doubtful that it will be able to handle this massive effort to provide any kind of decent service via health care exchanges within ten months.

No matter what you think of Obama Care, administratively it is going to be a disaster come October 1, 2013. It will be a failure from a procedure perspective and probably a financial perspective at the Federal level since I am pretty sure the original business case and plans for the exchanges did not have the majority of states saying “thanks but no thanks.

An expert in the field, Dennis Smith, who heads health services in Wisconsin, a state that has decided not to pursue its own exchange, summed up the challenge quite politely: "I don't envy them for the job that they have. At the end of the day, you're trying to connect a buyer to a seller. And the fundamental things required to do that are not yet in place."

And that is why most states opted out, it will be a disaster since nothing exists at the Federal level to do this.

2) One of the greatest ironies of the entire Obama Care fiasco is the recent news that eighteen Senate Democrats, the very people that voted to pass the legislation, recently sent a letter to Obama asking that a key revenue provision of the law be stripped out. This revenue/tax provision assessed a 2.3% tax on the gross revenue of medical device manufacturers.

It seems that many of these medical device manufacturers are in the home states of these eighteen Senators. They have been exerting pressure on their elected representatives since this tax will likely do one of four things:

• Put them out of business.
• Curtail their hiring and employing of American citizens in order to pay the additional tax.
• Curtail their research and development efforts.
• Force them to move manufacturing jobs overseas in order to stay financially viable, further hurting a bad unemployment picture.

None of these options will make for happy constituents and voters back home and thus, these politicians are scrambling to protect their jobs in the next election by asking that Obama cave on this tax, a tax they voted for in 2009.

Their position means one of two things, neither of which is very flattering:

1. These eighteen Senators never actually read the legislation they voted to approve, (ala Nancy Pelosi’s infamous quote, “we have to pass the legislation to see what is in it), making them derelict in their duties. What else does a politician do except read, understand, and vote on pending legislation?
2. Or, even more scary, they actually did read the legislation and were too ignorant to understand how badly this will impact their citizens back home, i.e. they never understood the basic reality, businesses have to make a profit and will adjust their business operations (hire fewer people, curtail expansion, go offshore) when an expense like taxes gets higher. Basic economic ignorance.

Whatever the cause, they are now scurrying like rats leaving a sinking ship, trying to get their ill thought out votes reversed. Given that Obama Care’s CLASS provision and 1099 provision have already been overturned, two provisions that were supposed to be cash flow positive to the entire legislation, if this medical device tax is actually delayed or terminated, the net cost of Obama Care would go even larger since its three main revenue producing provisions would have been ended.

Thus, our national debt would skyrocket even more and we still would not have solved the root causes of our escalating health care costs. All because eighteen politicians were derelict in their duties or just plain ignorant of what their vote would do.

3) In light of the message that has finally gotten through to these eighteen Senators, consider what is actually happening on the front lines of the medical device industry, according to recent news reports:

• In northern New Jersey, Andre DiMino operates his family’s medical device company ADM Tronics, which his father founded decades ago. The company has never had to lay anyone off but will do so by lying off three employees (out of twenty) in 2013 as a result of the Obama Care medical device tax.
• The Uresil, LLC company in Skokie, Ill. has already laid off six employees, “primarily related” of the tax. It had previously never laid off any employee: "We had never laid off anybody. We bought the company in 2004, never had a layoff. In fact, even during the recession, we added jobs. ... It wasn't until this tax hit us that we had to do it," stated President Lev Melinyshyn. He also stated that he has had to deeply cut back on research and development in order to protect the jobs of his remaining employees.
• But it is not just the small device companies that are cutting back. Michigan-based Stryker Corporation, a company with 20,000 employees, laid off 1,000 workers in anticipation of the tax in 2012 since it will see a $100 tax million bill dumped on them in the first year of Obama Care: "We would rather put this money towards jobs, innovation, clinical research and priorities that will create value-added medical technology for patients while helping us partner with hospitals to deliver cost effective solutions," CEO Kevin A. Lobo said in a statement.
• The industry’s trade association, The Advanced Medical Technology Association, estimates that the tax ultimately could cost the U.S. economy up to 43,000 jobs.

All for a piece of legislation that has virtually no chance of ever succeeding on any level for any problem for any reason.

That’s enough bad news for today. A massive Federal bureaucracy that does not exist today but needs to be up and running within ten months, eighteen gutless Senators looking to cover their ill thought out votes and protect their political careers, and small and large companies getting hammered and possibly destroyed by an Obama Care tax, resulting in less domestic manufacturing and higher unemployment.

Unfortunately, as we go through this week and next, this is not the only bad news that is about to crash down on all of us as a result of this disastrous piece of legislation.

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
 

How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 4 - Protecing Our Kids, Protecting The Second Amendment, No Tax Increases, it Can Be Done

This is the final post in our series on how to protect ourselves and our families from violence and gun play without shredding the Second Amendment in the process. We have discussed how the political class is again not looking for the root causes of the violence that happened in Newtown, Connecticut last month, instead focusing on the “what” of the incident, guns were used to kill innocents, rather than the “why” of the incident, why and how could someone become so irrespective of life and humanity. As a result, we will end up with less freedom via more government control without solving the root causes.

We have discussed several real life examples of how Americans and their legally owned weapons defended themselves, their families, and their assets from violent criminals, an option that some politicians would like to see eliminated via more draconian gun control laws.

We discussed the fact that more stringent gun control laws do not reduce violence. We reviewed examples of where higher legal gun ownership resulted in less crime but lower gun ownership, more restrictive gun control laws resulted in higher rates of violent crime (e.g. Chicago). We reviewed scientific studies that proved this point and other studies that pointed to the legal overmedication of Americans as a high potential cause for mass slayings like Newtown, not the availability of guns.

We concluded from all of this discussion that outlawing or severely restricting the ownership of guns by responsible Americans will result in more violence, will not cause violent criminals to turn in or register their guns, or solve the problems like what happened in Newtown.

But there is a simple, better way to protect our kids without endangering the rest of the population, without shredding the Second Amendment, and without viciously dividing the country again along political lines. On December 24, 2013, we proposed a way to protect our kids in while in school from violence and gun play without raising the taxes on any American:

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Thus, the Independent Journal Review’s vote for the worst Federal spending in 2012:

• Tax loopholes for the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) – professional sports leagues that generate billions of dollars annually in profits pay nothing in Federal income taxes($91 million worth of taxes)
• Moroccan pottery classes (part of a $27 million grant from U.S. Agency for International Development)
• Efforts to promote caviar consumption and production ($300,000)
• The building of a robotic squirrel named “RoboSquirrel”- part of a $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation
• Promotion of specialty shampoo and other beauty products for cats and dogs ($505,000)
• Corporate welfare for the world’s largest snack food producer, PepsiCo Inc. ($1.3 million)
• Government-funded study on how golfers might benefit from using their imagination, envisioning the hole is bigger than it actually is ($350,000)
• “Prom Week,” a video game that allows taxpayers to relive prom night ($516,000)
• Oklahoma’s layover boondoggle, a scarcely used airport in Oklahoma receiving nearly half-a-million in taxpayer dollars only to transfer funds elsewhere in the state ($450,000)
• The 2012 Alabama Watermelon Queen tour, paid for in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “to promote the consumption of Alabama’s watermelon through appearances of the Alabama Watermelon Queen at various events and locations” ($25,000)
• Out-of-this-world Martian – $947,000 – NASA is studying what food astronauts could eat on Mars by simulating a Mars outpost at a barren location in Hawaii
• ObamaPhones’ – $1.5 billion. Enrollment in the Lifeline program has skyrocketed as people sign up to get free cell phone for which they qualify if they are on federal tested programs
• Speed reading faces – $30,000. NSF funds used to study whether people can determine a person’s sexual orientation with just a glance.
• Fighting obesity with giant graffiti carrots – $13,000. Anti-obesity funds pay for a giant graffiti mural focused on sustainability.
• Another bridge to nowhere – $520,000. A covered bridge in Ohio that is not used by cars or tied to any walking or bike trail will be rehabilitated with federal funds
• Free bus rides for Super Bowl attendees – $142,419. A Department of Transportation grant paid for free bus rides during the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis. Average prices for Super Bowl tickets are around $3,000
• Movie theater field trip to see “Red Tails” – $57,000. Federal education funds were misused in Texas to send fifth-grade boys to a movie theater to see “Red Tails” (girls were left behind).
• Self-reflection video game using Henry David Thoreau’s 1845 writings – $40,000. National Endowment for the Humanities funding pays for video game simulating Thoreau’s experience at Walden Pond.
• U.S. Iraqi police State Department training program burns through hundreds of millions, crashes in flames – $400.2 million. State Dept’s Iraq police training program has failed miserably, according the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. No objectives were created, and classes did not help Iraqis at all. The State Department will hand over to the Iraqis several building projects that ended up being unnecessary
• The streetcar named No Desire – $35.6 million. Federal transportation money will help build a trolley in St. Louis that has been called the “Streetcar Named No Desire” by one local. It duplicates existing light rail and public transportation, some say.
• Sidewalks to nowhere anger local citizens – $1.1 million. Department of Transportation funds are used for “sidewalks to nowhere” in Florida and Michigan that have local citizens angered. In Florida, the sidewalk was a “safe route to school” that was still unsafe. In Michigan, Federal requirements forced a county to make sidewalk ramps at an intersection without sidewalks.
• Congressional salaries total almost $100 million. Seems like they should be able to get something done for that much money? Especially since these people will work only 13 Fridays in 2012 and worked less than three weeks in the three months leading up to the November elections.

These 22 wasteful spending expenses total $2,160,420,419. Let’s
do some simple math, in light of the Connecticut school shootings:

• According to the Federal government, there 132,183 private and public schools in this country up through high school. (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84)
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average police officer in this country earns about $55,000 a year.
• If we decided to place an armed, trained police officer in every school in America, the annual cost would be about $7.3 billion a year.
• If we could somehow magically redirect the above wasteful spending away from these trivial expenses to funding protection for our kids in school, we would be able to put a trained, armed police officer in 30% of the nation’s schools. ($7.3 billion in police officer costs divided into the $2.16 billion in spending on the 22 projects/program listed above.)
• Thus, if we could find another 50 or so other, similarly wasteful Federal government spending instances (something that would be extremely easy to do), we could annually put a trained, armed police officer in EVERY U.S. school, without raising taxes on any American.
• Another approach would be to magically redirect the $2.16 billion to protecting 30% of our schools and charge every American household just $.85 a month in taxes to cover the other 70% of schools.
• Still another approach is to consider the fact that the U.S. has needlessly deployed over 130,000 troops in Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Rather than using taxpayer money to defend Seoul, Tokyo, and Paris, maybe it is time to maybe it is time to use that taxpayer money to defend our kids within the confines of this country.

The bottom line is that, as nation, we have the wealth and ability today to more fully protect our kids in their schools without killing any vital Federal program or project, without going through the fruitless and divisive political debate of gun control, and without raising taxes on any American.

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Since this blog post and the solution it proposed, we found out that:

1. President Obama signed legislation that will guarantee that he and his family, along with former Presidents, will have armed, Secret Service protection for life.
2. The school that President Obama’s kids attend is protected by 11 armed guards everyday in addition to the Secret Service detail assigned to protect his kids.

If the President can provide trained, professional armed guards for his kids in their schools, why can’t we do the same for every American kid while in school? The above math indicates it is possible if we just cleaned up wasteful government spending a little bit.

But there is another way to finance such a program, without raising taxes on any American, if we only could force the political class in Washington to stop spending and wasting taxpayer wealth on themselves and start spending it on our KIDS.

In our January 6, 2013 post, we revealed excessive and useless wasting examples of politicians spending our money on themselves. A few examples include the following disgraces:

1. Georgia Senator Isakson - Arranged a $4 million earmark for Northrop Gruman in exchange for a $7,000 donation and arranged a $1.6 million earmark for Scientific Research Corp. in exchange for a $2,900 donation. (Source: Seattle Times)
2. Hawaiian Senator Inouye - Secured a $135 million taxpayer financed bailout after intervening on behalf of a poorly managed, non-qualifying bank. Why? Inouye had most of his net worth invested in that bank. (Source: Hawaii Free Press)
3. Illinois Senator Durbin - Arranged a $1.6 million earmark for Gentex in exchange for a $2,000 donation and arranged another $1.6 million earmark for Epir Technologies in exchange for a $2,700 donation. (Source: Seattle Times)
4. Rep. Corrine Brown (D - Fla.) - Between 2005 and 2010, Brown helped secure $21.9 million for six clients of a lobbying firm where her daughter works.
5. Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D - NC) - Butterfield has helped obtain $817,500 over the past few years toward revitalizing buildings in Wilson, N.C. The lawmaker owns 19 properties within three-quarters of a mile of the project.
6. Rep. Norm Dicks (D - Wash.) - In 2008, Dicks, as an appropriations chairman, secured a $1.82 million earmark for a Washington state environmental agency where his son worked as executive director.

These are just six random examples of politicians wasting our money on their families and their careers, money that could be spent protecting OUR kids. You can visit the dozens and dozens of other examples of similar waste at that January 6th post.

If you did read that post and added up the amount of waste that the political class in Washington dispenses for its own goals every year you would find it sums to $711.6 million. Since, on average, it costs about $55,000 a year to staff a police officer throughout the country, if the political class had used $711.6 million in taxpayer wealth to put an armed police officer in schools rather, than divert the taxpayer money to their financial backers or their friends and family, as outlined in detail in our January 6, 2013 post, we could have armed protection in another 13,000 schools protecting our kids.

Since we have already calculated above that terminating just 22 wasteful government projects would allow us to staff armed officers in about 39,300 schools, this additional savings would put armed police officers in 52,300 schools or about 40% of our schools. No taxes raised, no Second Amendment shredding, just good solid trained protection in over 50,000 schools FOR OUR KIDS! It is that simple.

All it requires is for the Federal government to stop spending over $2 billion a year on stupid, inane, useless projects and programs and stop the political class from using taxpayer money to grease their reelection campaigns and the personal wealth of themselves and their family members. You decide what are the better spending priorities, I know what my answer is.

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

How About More Hate Control And Less Gun Control, Part 2 - Real Examples Of Americans Defending Themselves With Legal Guns

Yesterday we proposed that before we start messing around with the Constitution and shredding the Second Amendment that we consider doing some “hate control” rather than gun control to solve a perceived problem on some people’s part that gun play is out of control. And that we start this hate control effort with our so-called leaders in the political class that are prime examples and sources of the hate and venom that are pervasive in this country.

Today we will just look at a series of real life examples where private citizens were able to protect themselves, their friends and family, and their assets because of the freedom allowed by the Second Amendment. The mainstream media is only looking at the victims from the Newtown school shooting as if that was the whole equation. That is wrong, it is only part of the total equation and reality. What needs to be done is to look at the other side of the equation, the side that tallies how many deaths were PREVENTED because of private gun ownership:

1) On January 10, 2013, ABC news affiliate KFSN reported on a shooting that occurred at a pharmacy in Madera, California. The shooting happened inside the pharmacy shortly after the last customer left for the day. Two men in ski-masks barged in through the back door and started shooting up the store.

The owner of the pharmacy and his mother, the only two people left inside, ducked for cover as bullets whizzed around them, with one hitting her in the leg. The mother and son said they ducked behind the counter as bullets kept flying. The pharmacist described the situation: "It was not a robbery so much as an execution. It was an attempted assassination, they didn't make any demands, they simply came in, reached over, and it was basically shooting us almost in the back of the head. They shot my mother and almost shot me, I was just surrounded by holes."

Fortunately, the pharmacist had a gun which he grabbed and started returning fire. He wounded one of the shooters, who eventually died, and police apprehended the other shortly afterwards. This wasn't the first time the pharmacy has been hit. The owner was able to stop two other attempted robberies in the 15 years he's owned the business, but this was the first time he felt he and his mother might die: "I thought yesterday was the last day for both us, and luckily it didn't turn out that way."

Fortunately, he and his mom did not die because he had the means and the right to defend his family, himself and his business. It is doubtful that these two hoodlums would have registered their guns in any crackdown on Second Amendment rights.

More details on this incident can be found at:

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=8948286

2) According to a LA Times article from August 2, 2012, the following details describe an attempted heist of a LA jewelry store:

• Surveillance footage from the jewelry store showed a white SUV backing up to the front of the store and five men getting out carrying pillowcases.
• The men ran into the store and pointed handguns at the clerks and a customer.
• Immediately afterwards, shots are fired and the men run back to the door, fighting each other to get out and get to their vehicle as a woman, a store employee, runs after them with her gun.
• The SUV left before three of the suspects got back inside the vehicle.
• Fortunately, nothing was taken from the store and no one was hurt.

The article goes on to report that this was the second local robbery incident in a week that an Orange County store owner had used a gun to thwart a robbery.

In the other robbery attempt, two men tried to rob a mall watch store only to be stopped by a store owner who shot one of the suspects in the head. Both men were later apprehended by police.

More lives possibly saved by the Second Amendment. I doubt the seven robbers would have registered their weapons under any crackdown on Second Amendment rights.

The details of these two robbery attempts can be found at the following link which also includes the store video of the employee chasing out the five robbers (by the way, the employee who chases the FIVE robbers out is the owner of the store, she is a woman, and she is 65 years old!)

Http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/08/65-year-old-shoots-at-would-be-jewelry-store-robbers-in-garden-grove.html

I find it interesting that both of these incidents occurred in California which I understand to have some of the more stringent gun laws, laws that did not prevent these criminals from obtaining firearms.

3) As reported by a Montana television station on January 4, 2013, police were doing an extensive manhunt for a criminal in Kalispell, Montana. A local citizen, Michael Stephens, came face-to-face with the fleeing criminal and tried to physically detain the criminal, but the suspect grabbed a flashlight from Stephens and began to hit him with it.

The attack ended when Amy Stephens came to her husband's aid and held Elliot at gunpoint until authorities arrived on the scene. It is unknown what would have happened to the Mr. Stephens if his wife did not have a weapon available to her but it probably would not have been pretty.

The video and text of the story is available at:

http://www.kpax.com/news/citizens-help-nab-man-wanted-after-flathead-pursuit/

4) The Canton Reporter ran an article on January 3, 2013 describing how in Canton, Ohio, two armed men went into a local butcher store and opened fire on those inside. Unfortunately, for them, an employee shot back, hitting both of them multiple times. After the exchange of fire, both teenage gunmen left the store but were eventually arrested by police at different hospitals.

Police investigators believe the two men entered Hever’s Family Meats with their weapons drawn. They attempted to take money from the cash register and, during the robbery, one of the robbers fired several rounds: “Fire was immediately returned by an employee. A gun battle ensued inside the store,” according to a police spokesperson.

It is highly unlikely that these two teenage hoodlums would have gone through the trouble of registering their weapons in any Second Amendment crackdown. Details of this incident can be found at:

http://www.cantonrep.com/news/x1896978485/Meat-market-robbery-ends-in-gun-battle

5) The CBS TV affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia reported on a violent home invasion incident on January 4, 2013 in the Atlanta area:

• Local police say that Paul Lee Slater used a crowbar to bust open the front door of a residential house in the middle of the day.
• However, a mother was home with her two children and when he heard her yell for them, he gave chase inside the house.
• The chase resulted with the family getting into a crawl space near the home’s attic, essentially trapping the mom and kids in their own home.
• However, when Slater opened the door, the mother starting firing her gun, hitting the intruder five times.
• Slater stumbled out of the house, got into his car but crashed into a tree trying to get away.
• The woman and her children were able to get to a neighbor's home for help.
• Police believe the family was not specifically targeted, that it was a random choice for a home invasion.
• The CBS article also reported that Slater has an extensive criminal history.

In this situation, the bad guy did not have an illegal gun. But the possession of a legal gun by a private citizen probably prevented the death, or at least the terrible beating, of a mom and her kids from a very bad person who went to the trouble of tracking them down and cornering them in their home.

Details of the story can be found at:

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/20506821/homeowner-shoots-intruder-in

6) A January 4, 2013 by ABC News in Oklahoma City reported on a woman who shot at two men breaking into her home, killing one of them:

• The woman was at home alone with her three month old baby because her husband had recently died of cancer.
• A week after his death, two men came to her home, armed with a hunting knife and tried to break into the house.
• When she heard the attempted break in, she barricaded herself and her child in a room with a 12 gauge shotgun and called 911.
• As one of the men was going from door to door outside her home trying to gain entry, McKinley called 911 and grabbed her 12-gauge shotgun: "I've got two guns in my hand -- is it okay to shoot him if he comes in this door?" the young mother asked the 911 dispatcher. "I'm here by myself with my infant baby, can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately?"
• The 911 dispatcher confirmed with McKinley that the doors to her home were locked as she asked again if it was okay to shoot the intruder if he were to come through her door.
• "I can't tell you that you can do that but you do what you have to do to protect your baby," the dispatcher told her.
• The mother was on the phone with 911 for a total of 21 minutes.
• When one of the intruders finally broke through the door and came after her with the knife, the mother shot and killed the 24-year-old.
• According to ABC, police are calling the shooting justified: "You're allowed to shoot an unauthorized person that is in your home. The law provides you the remedy, and sanctions the use of deadly force," Detective. Dan Huff of the Blanchard police said

Again, imagine the horror that could have happened if this brave mother was not allowed to arm herself in her house. I would assume that the intruder’s knife is not registered with the authorities.

7) Final example, in light of the previous incident and my own experience. We used to live in rural New Jersey, a township that was served by the New Jersey State Police. The nearest, serving State Police barracks was about twenty minutes away, IF you knew how to get from there to our home. As a result of this distance and time, we installed a monitored home security system in our home.

One day at work, a 45 minute ride from home, my security system monitoring company called me to say they had a reported break in at my home and the police have been dispatched. I decided to stay at work and wait for the police report since 1) they would be to my home before me and 2) I did not want to confront any intruders.

After about an hour, the security system people call me back with an incredible request: the State policeman was lost in the rural woods and could not find my home, could I give them directions. Fortunately, it was a system malfunction that tripped the alarm and the police were not needed.

But what if there had been an intruder and we had been home at the time? The State Police would have never gotten to us in time and who knows what the intentions and mental disposition of the intruder might have been, fight or flight, when confronted? I would have liked to have had the option of a legal firearm to protect my family and home.

The Oklahoma mom was in contact with the authorities for over 20 minutes and help had still not arrived. Fortunately, she had the ability and the permission to have firearms on site to also protect her family in the absence of a quick response from the police.

That’s enough for today, hopefully you see my overall point. It was a terrible tragedy that some nut case got hold of some legally acquired guns and murdered over a two dozen innocent people in Newtown. A horrible, horrible tragedy.

However, in any discussion of gun control, both sides of the equation have to be considered. In just the six examples listed above, at least fourteen lives were saved because legally armed citizens were able to protect themselves from violent criminals.

All of these six incidents happened in just the past few months. Do a couple of searches on the Internet and you will find that hundreds, if not thousands of lives, are saved every year by citizens legally defending themselves as a result of the Second Amendment.

Banning guns and shredding the Second Amendment is the not the answer. We have to do the really hard work of understanding why a person gets so screwed up mentally that their view of humanity and the sanctity of life is destroyed, enabling them to randomly kill for new apparent reason. Reasonable gun controls are right to be considered but the facts are:

• Americans successfully defend themselves everyday from very bad people using legally owned firearms.
• Criminals will always be able to get their hands on firearms.
• Criminals will kill using other methods also (e.g. knives, crowbars, etc.), methods that can be overcome by a citizen using a legal firearm (see examples above).
• If criminals obeyed laws against rape, rape would not longer occur.
• If criminals obeyed laws against burglary, burglary would no longer occur.
• If criminals obeyed laws against arson, arson would no longer occur.

Therefore, outlawing guns will not outlaw violence or crime.

More facts, statistics, and realities tomorrow in next installment of “hate control” vs. “gun control.”

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

How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 1 - Maybe Hatred Is The Real Root Cause Of Mass Shootings

Be forewarned: there is some bad language and implied bad language in the following so please pass if this might offend you. These are not my words but actually the words of our politiciains and their supporters.

Today is the first of a four part series regarding the Newtown, Connecticut shooting where innocent kids and teachers were needlessly slaughtered be a deranged young man. Let me state a few facts up front:

• I was tremendously saddened by this senseless act of violence.
• I do not know how a young man can become so separated from compassion and reality and have so little respect for life that he would kill innocent children and teachers.
• I am not a psychologist and have no understanding from a psychology/scientific perspective of the root causes which trigger a young man to execute this type of terror, and neither do 99.9% of the people with an opinion on this matter and 100% of those in the Washington political class.
• I am not a member of the NRA and have never fired a gun, never mind owning one.
• I am a fervent defender of the U.S. Constitution including the Second Amendment.

Today I want to consider a concept that I have not seen discussed in the media and certainly not by those in politics that want to strip law abiding, common sense citizens of their right to bear arms. The concept involves the idea that maybe we should do a little hate control BEFORE we recklessly and senselessly go off on a gun control tangent, a tangent that will likely increase crime and gun play, not reduce it (more on this latter concept tomorrow).

Let’s be honest, there is a lot of hate and venom circulating in the country today. Much of it is fomented by the political class as they foolishly try to incite their supporters and degrade their opponents in the most dehumanizing and disrespective ways possible.

The more you dehumanize others, the easier it is to see them as less worthy of their opinion and their life. Maybe if we started respecting each other a little more, taking some of the hate and venom out of our politics, thought processes, and speech, incidents like the shootings in Newtown, in south Chicago, in the ghettos of Detroit, etc. might be become a little less frequent if we respected each other a little more.

This increase in respect and humanizing of other human beings should start with our so-called leaders, However, as we have pointed out many times in this blog, these so-called leaders are a big cause of the problem, not the solution. They have had a busy, and disgraceful past couple of years degrading and abusing the opinions, lives, rights, and very existence of the citizens they are supposed to be serving:

• Democrat Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi called citizen opponents to Obama Care unpatriotic for simply having a difference of opinion with many politicians in Washington.
• Democrat Charles Rangel slandered millions of Americans who opposed Obama Care by calling them racists for simply having an honest difference of opinion with many politicians in Washington.
• Democrat Shelia Jordan Lee slandered millions of Americans who opposed Obama Care by associating them with the Ku Klux Klan.
• Union boss and Democratic supporter Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. stated that his union was at war with the Republicans and Tea Party citizens and that these people "need to be taken out."
• Democratic Congressmen Mike Doyle and Henry Waxman and Vice President Joe Biden slandered American citizens opposed to unfettered and destructive government spending and debt by calling them terrorists (those people that bomb and kill innocent civilians).
• When ordinary Americans objected to the building of a Islamic mosque near the World Trade Center property because of the sad memories of 9-11, Democrat Nancy Pelosi said THEY should be investigated for simply having a passionate opinion on the mosque.
• Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Walters said all Tea Party American citizens can go to hell simply for having a difference of opinion with her.

When you viciously and unfoundedly associate ordinary citizens with racism, call them terrorists, question their patriotism, when you wish they would go to hell, and then threaten to take them out/exterminate them, you have dehumanized them in the eyes of your political supporters, making it easy to imagine them actually going away permanently.

Maybe, this type of hate and venom and dehumanizing goes through the head of a young man when he decides to go off and actually follows the advice that those people “need to be taken out.” When your so-called leaders call for this type of behavior and language, it can’t be wrong, can it?

But our political class, and their direct supporters, also direct their hate and venomous words towards other politicians:

• The campaign manager of Democrat’s Gerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign called his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, a whore.
• White House czar Van Jones publicly called all Republicans a**h****s.
• Democrat Alan Grayson called all Republicans knuckle dragging Neanderthals.
• TV host Montel Williams publicly hoped that Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachman shcommit suicide by decapitating herself.
• Ed Schultz, an on air commentator for the Democratic leaning MSNBC news channel, called Laura Ingraham of Fox News a slut.
• HBO TV host Bill Maher, a major donor to Obama’s 2012 Presidential Super PAC (a $1 million donor), said on air that Republican Sarah Palin “would f*** Rick Perry if he was black.”
• Bill Maher called Republican Sarah Palin a disgusting and derogatory name that I will not repeat here.
• Playboy magazine’s online website offered a detailed analysis on why and how each of ten Republican women in politics should be hate raped.
• Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen likened Republican critics of Obamacare to the Nazis and their propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
• A rap artist gave a Minnesota concert that was billed as the “F*** Michelle Bachman” concert (spelling out the entire f-word), a Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota.
• A Democratic operative insulted Ann Romney, and millions of other American women, by slandering and demeaning her as a stay at home mother.
• Martin Bashier of MSNBC News showed a video of Mitt Romney’s campaign bus that was interspersed with video clips of buses blowing up in balls of fire, explicitly wishing that the Romney bus also blow up and those inside die a fiery death.

When you label others as sluts and whores and suggest they should be raped or be killed, either by themselves or a fiery bus explosion, you set another stage for dehumanization. If you political opponents are just sluts and whores, no big deal if they go away, right?

I maintain that this type of disgusting, hateful behavior is an influence in our society and not an influence for good. It infects the undertone of how we view others. It reduces the amount of respect we have for others, making it easier to abuse others, possibly violently.

It usually does not cause someone to go off and actually start killing others but it certainly cannot help. It also cuts short the ability to listen to each other and appreciate the diversity of opinion each brings to a potential solution of a problem.

If I have allowed the political class and their ardent supporters to frame you as a racist or a slut or a terrorist, I am unlikely to consider any good you can bring to my life or to a solution of a problem. If I think it is a good thing that you self decapitate or die in a bus explosion, you will probably not get my attention when it comes to working towards a better society.

As a result of this hateful divisiveness the political class has driven into our society, we despise others that have a different opinion from ours. Major issues, such a failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, skyrocketing national debt, high health care costs, illegal immigration, etc., never get resolved. The hate prevents us from listening to each other, from calibrating our view of the world with others’ views of the world.

And possibly in the case of Newtown, we go beyond not listening and we start shooting. Not because guns are legal but because we have allowed the political class to desensitize us to each other as human beings.

But it is not only politicians that spew the hate and venom, hate and venom that others take to heart, hate and venom that their children take and internalize. Consider just some recent examples that have appeared in the news:

- Consider the hateful speech and intentions of Professor Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz regarding other human beings that are global warming deniers, those daring to have a different opinion than his: “In this article I am going to suggest that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential GW [global warming] deniers... They [global warming deniers] are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate… With high probability it will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers.”

Different opinion, therefore you should die. I wonder what he would do to people like me, given our opinions on global warming; should we die also or just suffer some horrible disease since we are not influential enough:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/wishing-al-gore-would-shut-up-why-i-am.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/wishing-al-gore-would-shut-up-why-i-am_10.html

As an aside, in 2009, the CIA opened up a new division, The Center on Climate Change and National Security. The purpose of this group was to examine the impact of global warming from a national security perspective. A few months ago, with little fanfare, they disbanded the organization. Is the CIA also worthy of Professor Parncutt’s death penalty or was it just common sense that this global warming organization was not longer viable or needed?

- Pulitzer nominated newspaper columnist Donald Kaul recently wrote an article for the Des Moines Register where he called for the killing of gun owners and “dragging legislators who disagree with gun control behind pickup trucks until they get the message.” Don’t agree with my opinion? Thus, we should have more killing and more torture for those that dare to have a difference of opinion. How does this stop the cycle of hate that starts with the political class?

- Erik Loomis, PhD, assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island decided he needed to get into the hate and venom game also when he recently stated on Twitter that he wanted the death of National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre, branding the gun rights group he heads as a terrorist organization:"[I] want Wayne LaPierre's head on a stick." A little hateful, a little violent?

- Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers’ Union recently had some violent rhetoric of her own to share: “Do not think for a minute that the wealthy are ever going to allow you to legislate their riches away from them. Please understand that. However, we are in a moment where the wealth disparity in this country is very reminiscent of the robber baron ages. The labor leaders of that time, though, were ready to kill. They were. They were just – off with their heads. They were seriously talking about that.”

And this person is associated with educating young minds and kids. Don’t like someone or are jealous of their wealth, that in all probability was garnered via honest hard work and sweat, than just off with their heads.

I maintain that you cannot have such hate and disrespect and venomous speech floating around and it not have a negative impact on how we treat each other, how it dehumanizes others. I am not saying the Newtown shooting was directly caused because of this poisonous environment but it certainly did not help. Was the shooter seated around his dinner table through the years when slurs and demeaning things were said about others, how others that were different from him were worthy of being “taken out.“

And it certainly does not allow us to sit down and go face-to-face with others to leverage everyone’s knowledge and skills to confront all of our problems from school shootings to high debt, high illiteracy levels, failing public education, a failing health care system etc.

But if we solved all of our problems, on what issues would our politicians run on? And that, my friends, is the root cause of most of our problems, from school shootings to the lack of a national energy problem, our shameless politicians need the hate and venom to frame and finance their continual reelection effort.

So tonight, when you are sitting around the table with your family, how about a little more hate control and a lot more respect for others in front of our kids. Again, it couldn’t hurt.

And tomorrow if you should come across someone who thinks other human beings need to be taken out, killed, dragged behind a truck or hate raped simply for having a difference of opinion, may I suggest you walk away? Engaging in such a discussion with these types of people just spreads and intensifies the hate and gets yourself muddy, as the old saying goes: “Never mud wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.” Walk away, stay clean, and let the hate spewer stew in his own mud. Help break the cycle of hate.

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