August, 2014 The Unfolding Disasters That is Obama Care, Part 3: Higher Costs, More Narrow In-Network Coverage, and Higher Unemployment levels

Every month since last August we have had to do multiple posts each month in order to keep up with the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the Federal government under any previous Presidential administration. Runaway costs, dysfunctional or non functioning websites, high potential for identity theft, less coverage for more cost, cancelled insurance policies, etc., it was a failure in every way imaginable.

And those failures have continued to unfold every month, which is why we are going to take a few days now to cover what has happened just since last month’s updates. Before we do that, let’s do a quick reminder of where the program is from a numbers perspective:

• The Obama administration claimed that about 8 million Americans signed up for an Obama Care health care insurance plan during the initial sign up period.
• However, recent research from reputable sources found that it is likely that only between 80 and 90% of those who signed up actually followed through and paid for and bought a policy.
• If we take the midpoint of that range and assume only 85% followed through with payment, that 8 million sign up number is really only 6.8 million real policy holders.
• But other reputable research found that only about 57% of those who signed up for an Obama Care policy were previously uninsured, the other sign ups already had health insurance coverage and just churned out to an Obama Care policy.
• Thus, the actual number of INCREMENTAL Americans with health insurance via Obama Care is 57% of 6.8 million or around 3.9 million people.
• That means that 2.9 million Americans were not incremental insurance policy holders, they just churned from an existing policy into an Obama Care policy.
• Somewhere between 5 and 6 million people had their current health insurance policies cancelled as a result of Obama Care, policies that often were perfectly fine and acceptable to those carrying those policies.
• If we assume a best case view from the Obama Care perspective and assume all of the 2.9 million people who were not incremental to the Obama Care numbers came from this pool of 5-6 million people, than the net number of Americans who lost health insurance coverage as a result of Obama Care is between 2.1 and 3.1 million people (5 or 6 million less 2.9 million people).
• Thus, we have to take the 3.9 million people that were truly incremental because of Obama Care and subtract out either 2.1 or 3.1 million, ending up with a net gain in insured Americans of between 800 thousand and 1.8 million.
• Thus, after years of trying, billions and billions of dollars spent, we may have gotten incremental, expensive, and narrow insurance coverage to less than two million Americans.

Only in Washington can the nation spend billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth and end up with a problem that is hardly any better than when before the program started. Insane.

That is where we stand today. Let’s take a look at what disasters have come to the surface since we last talked about Obama Care:

1) One revenue component of the Obama care legislation was to impose a 2.3% tax on all medical devices. At that time, reputable economists pointed out that like any tax, economic growth and vitality would be suppressed, resulting in fewer jobs in the industry, less Federal total income taxes from those fewer workers that worked in the industry, and likely not as much tax revenue as the Obama Care supporters expected.

Well, low and behold, that reality is finally sinking in. According to an August 20, 2014 piece on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website:

• Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) recently stated: "Everything from this ill-conceived tax's structure to its implementation has been a disaster.”
• Why is it a disaster? For starters, while the IRS originally estimated it would receive between 9,000 and 15,600 forms to pay the tax in the second and third quarters of fiscal 2013, the IRS ended up receiving only 5,100 forms.
• Second, while the IRS expected to pull in $1.2 billion in the second and third quarters of 2013 from the device tax, according to the, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, took in just $913.4 million.
• And most insanely, the IRS Inspector General issued a report which says the IRS cannot figure out who should be paying the tax, four years after the legislation was passed. Pathetic.
• From a jobs perspective, a report from AdvaMed estimates that as many as 165,000 U.S. jobs have been lost because of the medical device tax. 
• Their report and research also found that research and development (R&D) has already been cut across the industry and more cuts are expected in the future, further depressing economic and job growth within the industry and nation.

Great, impose a tax, get less money than expected from the tax and kill thousands of jobs in the process. Could not do much worse unless you tried. And think about it. The $913.4 million is a gross number, you have to reduce that government revenue by the tax money lost because upwards of 165,000 mostly higher paying jobs were destroyed. 

If each one of those jobs resulted in about $5,500 in Federal income tax, Social Security tax, and Medicare tax being paid to the U.S. Treasury, not an unreasonable amount of money, than the Federal government broke even overall from a tax revenue perspective. The government broke even but I doubt that the 165,000 displaced workers would agree that it was the right thing to do. We end up with much ado about nothing except more heartbreak and hardship for average Americans with nothing in return.

2) An August 19, 2014 article from the Washington Free Beacon reviewed analysis work done by the Federal government which showed that American businesses were paying more to provide health insurance to their workers since Obama Care was passed. Remember, the President promised that health insurance costs would go down as a result of his legislation.

The analysis was done by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which found that:

• A majority of businesses polled expect Obama Care to increase the cost of their employee health insurance coverage.
• The median of estimates from the survey put the expected increase at 10% in 2015. 
• This year‘s survey, vs. last year’s survey, found an even larger majority of companies this year cited Obama Care as the driving force behind the cost increases.
• These expect increased costs will likely be passed on to employees in the large majority of the companies included in the survey by charging each employee a higher monthly premium for coverage. The survey also found that businesses are coping with higher costs by charging higher deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket maximums. 
• Only a third of companies said they were not making changes to their health plans as a result of Obama Care.

We have yet to find any facet of American life or the American medical system where costs are actually going down as a result of Obama Care despite the lofty and deceitful promises that its supporters made several years ago.

3) Timothy Carney, writing for the Washington Examiner in an August 13, 2014 article came up with a crazy and dangerous potential financial disaster for his family as a result of Obama Care.

It seems that his wife is pregnant and they are expecting a child later this year. 

He has health care insurance coverage and was not too worried about the delivery expense since he had already fulfilled his annual $5,000 deducible for this year which meant that going forward through the birth process in the hospital, his insurance company would pick up 90% of the costs. He initially thought he was in good financial shape for the delivery of his child.

But wait a second. He had fulfilled the annual $5,000 deductible for “in network” medical expenses. As a result of Obama Care, his wife reminded him that the breadth and options on doctors and specialists within their network might be more narrow than before Obama Care, i.e. some of the doctors and specialists at the hospital they plan to have the delivery might not be in their network. He has a totally separate (and higher) deductible for out-of-network care, meaning that he could take a serious financial hit if they had to deal with any medical personnel not in their network. 

It turned out that some specialists in the hospital were in their policy’s network, some were out. Even worse, they could not request that only in network people serve their needs during child birth since only those specialists on duty when the birthing process began would be used in the baby’s delivery. Thus, the anesthesiologist might be out of their network, meaning they would have to pay the full cost. All because their policy had a very narrow choice of medical options, courtesy of Obama Care. More insanity.

That will do it for today and this month’s updates on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. Narrow policy networks could mean higher costs for policy holders, higher business costs means higher costs for employees as businesses pass those higher, Obama Care-cost through to them, and lower employment as a result of the medical device tax which is generating lower tax revenue than expected. Failures across the board.

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

August, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care, Part 2: 2015, Costs Still Going Up, Doctors Shunning The Legislation, and Americans Hating The Legislation

Every month since last August we have had to do multiple posts each month in order to keep up with the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the Federal government under any previous Presidential administration. Runaway costs, dysfunctional or non functioning website, high potential for identity theft, less coverage for more cost, cancelled insurance policies, etc., it was a failure in every way imaginable.

And those failures have continued to unfold every month, which is why we are going to take a few days now to cover what has happened just since last month’s updates. Before we do that, let’s do a quick reminder of where the program is from a numbers perspective:

• The Obama administration claimed that about 8 million Americans signed up for an Obama Care health care insurance plan during the initial sign up period.
• However, recent research from reputable sources found that it is likely that only between 80 and 90% of those who signed up actually followed through and paid for and bought a policy.
• If we take the midpoint of that range and assume only 85% followed through with payment, that 8 million sign up number is really only 6.8 million real policy holders.
• But other reputable research found that only about 57% of those who signed up for an Obama Care policy were previously uninsured, the other sign ups already had health insurance coverage and just churned out to an Obama Care policy.
• Thus, the actual number of INCREMENTAL Americans with health insurance via Obama Care is 57% of 6.8 million or around 3.9 million people.
• That means that 2.9 million Americans were not incremental insurance policy holders, they just churned from an existing policy into an Obama Care policy.
• Somewhere between 5 and 6 million people had their current health insurance policies cancelled as a result of Obama Care, policies that often were perfectly fine and acceptable to those carrying those policies.
• If we assume a best case view from the Obama Care perspective and assume all of the 2.9 million people who were not incremetnal to the Obama Care numbers came from this pool of 5-6 million people, than the net number of Americans who lost health insurance coverage as a result of Obama Care is between 2.1 and 3.1 million people (5 or 6 million less 2.9 million people).
• Thus, we have to take the 3.9 million people that were truly incremental because of Obama Care and subtract out either 2.1 or 3.1 million, ending up with a net gain in insured Americans of between 800 thousand and 1.8 million.
• After years of trying, billions and billions of dollars spent, we may have gotten incremental, expensive, and narrow insurance coverage to less than two million Americans.

Only in Washington can the nation spend billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth and end up with a problem that is hardly any better than when before the program started. Insane.

That is where we stand today. Let’s follow up our conversation and discussion from yesterday and see what additional disasters have come to the surface since we last talked about Obama Care:

1) One of the main objectives of Obama Care was to reduce the cost of health insurance and thus, theoretically, make it more widely available. In fact, the President promised that the average American family would see a $2,500 annual savings in their health insurance costs every year. 

That may have been the legislation’s objective but that is not what is likely to happen. The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, on August 6, 2014 did a great summary of how much health insurance premiums and rates are likely to INCREASE in 2015, not decrease by $2,500:

• Florida state officials recently announced that Florida Blue, the state’s largest health insurer, would be raising its Obama Care policy premiums by an average of 18% for 2015. 
• Overall, Florida health insurance rates are likely to go up between 11 and 23%. According to state officials, “Fourteen companies, including three new insurers, are planning to sell to Floridians through healthcare.gov in 2015. Of the 11 returning plans, eight filed average rate increases ranging from 11 to 23 percent, and three filed rate decreases ranging from 5 to 12 percent. Florida Blue, the largest insurer, is raising its premiums by an average of 18 percent. Humana proposed an average 14 percent increase for its HMOs, while Molina proposed a 12 percent average rate decrease.”
• According to recent reporting in the New York Times: “in their requests for 2015, some of the exchange’s most popular companies are asking for double-digit rate increases. MetroPlus is asking for an average increase of 18.5 percent, including 28 percent for customers in its high-end Platinum plan. Empire HealthChoice H.M.O. is asking for an increase of 18 percent, and Health Republic, conceived by the Freelancers Union, is asking for a 15 percent average increase, including nearly 19 percent for some customers.”
• The Obama Care policy purchasers in North Carolina tended to be older and less healthy customers than what was expected. For example, North Carolina Blue Cross initially sought to have a marketplace customer pool of about 50% being 34 years old or younger. But only 32% of those that signed up for state Obama care policies matched this younger demographic. As a result, North Carolina Obama Care customers are likely to see increases in 2015 to make for this bad mix that befell insurance companies selling Obama Care policies in the state. 
• A recent analysis and report from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 27 states and D.C. have already released Obama Care premium rate increases for 2015, with Nevada having the highest average increase, 36%, and the average increase across all of the studied states being about 7.5%. 
• So far, Iowa is also among one of the states with the highest average premium rate increases for 2015 with Obama Care policies in that state expected to raise rates by an average of 11.5% with the range being between 8.7 and 14.3%.
• At these rates, the cost of an average Obama Care policy in Nevada will double in cost in less than three years, less than seven years in Iowa, and less than 10 years across the national average.

You cannot claim the legislation was successful when the cost of insurance is doubling in cost in such relatively short times. Thus, it has to be concluded that Obama Care failed in both its promise of reducing health insurance costs and its ability to support Obama’s claim that health insurance rates would go down dramatically in cost, not double in cost.

2) A story on the NPR website from August 4, 2014 examined a problem that we have been discussing for months: Obama Care insurance policies are many times so narrowly focused on very few doctors and hospitals that even though Obama care policy holders now have health insurance, they may have trouble getting health care.

The article centered on doctors in the state of Connecticut but you can be sure that what is happening there is happening around the country. They discussed the situation of a doctor in Hartford. Dr. Doug Gerard usually gets reimbursed about $100 for a patient he might see that has private insurance. However, a similar patient needing similar care with an Obama Care policy might give the doctor only $80 for the same level of attention and treatment.

As a result, Dr. Gerard only accepts patients from one of the three insurance companies serving Obama Care policies in Connecticut and that one provided him the highest reimbursement of the three: 

"I cannot accept a plan [in which] potentially commercial-type reimbursement rates were now going to be reimbursed at Medicare rates. You have to maintain a certain mix in private practice between the low reimbursers and the high reimbursers to be able to keep the lights on."

Thus, customers of two of the state’s Obama Care insurers are out of luck when it comes to using the services of this doctor and apparently, many others in the state. And this type of behavior is not restricted to just doctors. Hospitals are also being more selective, especially high end, specialty hospitals, with some of them not accepting customers of low reimbursing Obama Care policies. Conversely, the insurance companies themselves are not allowing better, usually more expensive hospitals into their networks in order to keep costs down but allowing medical care to suffer.

Again, the good news is you now have health insurance. The bad news is that the insurance policy is so inadequate that you cannot get health care. 

Why is this happening? As we have said countless times, Obama Care never attacked and tamed the root causes of our ever escalating health care costs. It mistook public health and other issues for a deficiency in health insurance coverage. By focusing on health insurance coverage, ignoring the root causes of higher and higher costs, all it did was to move costs around within the country’s health care market without reducing them.

3) One last unfolding disaster for today, we continue the disasters review again tomorrow; According to the recent polling on the view of Obama Care by the Kaiser Family Foundation:

• 53% of Americans now have an unfavorable opinion of Obama Care.
• This is up a whopping 8% from the previous month's poll results.
• This is the largest unfavorable opinion of Obama Care in the survey's four year history.
• Only 37% of people actually have a favorable opinion of the law.
• Those polled also felt Washington should spend more time on issues like the economy, the federal budget deficit, education and immigration rather than health care.

Thus, not only did the Washington political class screw up again, passing legislation that does not do what it is supposed to do but costing billions of dollars to fail, but focusing on an issue that the rest of America finds secondary in their lives.

Costs are going up, not down as promised. People are getting health insurance but are having trouble getting health care. A strong majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of the legislation and think it should be a secondary priority of Washington. How many ways can you screw up? In the case of Obama Care, countless. And we will count some more tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

August, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care, Part 1: Attrition Sets In and Dental Work is Not Covered

Every month since last August we have had to do multiple posts every month in order to keep up with the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the Federal government under any previous Presidential administration. Runaway costs, dysfunctional or non functioning websites, high potential for identity theft, less coverage for more cost, cancelled insurance policies, etc., it was a failure in every way imaginable.

And those failures have continued to unfold every month, which is why we are going to take a few days now to cover what has happened just since last month’s disaster updates. Before we do that, let’s do a quick reminder of where the program is from a numbers perspective:

• The Obama administration claimed that about 8 million Americans signed up for an Obama Care health care insurance plan during the initial sign up period.
• However, recent research from reputable sources found that it is likely that only between 80 and 90% of those who signed up actually followed through and paid for and bought a policy.
• If we take the midpoint of that range and assume only 85% followed through with payment, that 8 million sign up number is really only 6.8 million real policy holders.
• But other reputable research found that only about 57% of those who signed up for an Obama Care policy were previously uninsured, the other sign ups already had health insurance coverage and just churned out to an Obama Care policy.
• Thus, the actual number of INCREMENTAL Americans with health insurance via Obama Care is 57% of 6.8 million or around 3.9 million people.
• That means that 2.9 million Americans were not incremental insurance policy holders, they just churned from an existing policy into an Obama Care policy.
• Somewhere between 5 and 6 million people had their current health insurance policies cancelled as a result of Obama Care, policies that often were perfectly fine and acceptable to those carrying those policies.
• If we assume a best case view from the Obama Care perspective and assume all of the 2.9 million people who were not incremental to the Obama Care numbers came from this pool of 5-6 million people, than the net number of Americans who lost health insurance coverage as a result of Obama Care is between 2.1 and 3.1 million people (5 or 6 million less 2.9 million people).
• Thus, we have to take the 3.9 million people that were truly incremental because of Obama Care and subtract out either 2.1 or 3.1 million, ending up with a net gain in insured Americans of between 800 thousand and 1.8 million.
• Thus, after years of trying, billions and billions of dollars spent, we may have gotten incremental, expensive, and narrow insurance coverage to less than two million Americans.

Only in Washington can the nation spend billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth and end up with a problem that is hardly any better than when before the program started. Insane.

That is where we stand today. Let’s take a look at what disasters have come to the surface since we last talked about Obama Care:

1) In early August, 2014, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Federal entity responsible for administrating Obama Care, announced that letters had been sent 310,000 Obama Care customers notifying them that they have to fix errors within their Obama Care applications by September 30, 2014 or their Obama Care health insurance coverage will be cancelled. 

These 310,000 customers are part of almost 1 million Obama Care customers who submitted applications but whose applications had citizenship and immigration information that did not match up with Federal records. CMS has admitted that 450,000 cases out of the 1 million have already been resolved, but it’s not clear how many of those “closed” cases resulted in more canceled policies.

Thus, of those 3.8 million incremental Obama Care policies we calculated above, that number will likely go down even further as CMS likely cancels out hundreds of thousands of more policies for not having proper information on the applications. Which raises an interesting question: it is not how high Obama Care enrollments can go but how low will they sink.

2) But it is not only faulty applications data and information that are reducing the number of incremental Obama Care sign ups. Aetna, the country's third-largest health insurer and an Obama Care participant, reportedly had 720,000 people signed up for Obama Care coverage as of May 20. However, by the end of June, Aetna had fewer than 600,000 paying Obama Care customers, a decrease of about 16% in a month and a half.

Even worse for Obama Care supporters, Aetna says it expects even more people to cancel out of Obama Care policies by the end of the year, expecting to be left with "just over 500,000." If their prediction comes true, than they would have seen more than a 30% drop off in Obama Care policy enrollments in less than eight months after hitting their high water mark of 720,000: "I think we will see some attrition ... We're already seeing it. And we expect that to continue through the end of the year," CEO Mark Bertolini said in a July 29 conference call.

Cigna, another major Obama Care insurer it is also seeing some attrition but not as much as what Aetna is owning up to. Cigna has publicly stated that it expects is Obama Care policy enrollment to shrink from 300,000 down to 280,000, about a 7% decrease.

Now some of those cancelled polices may have occurred because people got a job that provided health care insurance, causing them to cancel their now unnecessary Obama Care coverage. However, given that the economy is still pretty sluggish and the unemployment rate has been basically unchanged for a long time, the possibility that a large majority of those cancelled policies were caused by job finders is small.

Far more likely scenarios, scenarios that we have already extensively discussed, is that Obama Care policy holders found out that:

• They were paying more and getting less than what they expected relative to premiums.
• They were shocked when they found out how high Obama Care policy deductibles were.
• They were disappointed that Obama care policies had very restrictive lists of approved doctors, hospitals, and drugs, opting to not pay for coverage that restricted their choices.

Those are likely the real reasons why people are dropping out of Obama Care policies and the reasons why even that calculated 3.9 million number we estimated above is far more likely to continue to shrink in the coming months.

3) One of the major selling points of Obama Care was that insurance companies could no longer deny insurance coverage to anyone who had a pre-existing condition. However, the law was possibly deficient in laying out what type of coverage would be provided. 

It seems that one way insurance companies are minimizing their financial exposure to this new law that requires them to take on all customers, regardless of the likely cost to the insurer, is that the insurance companies simply jack up the cost that customers have to pay for expensive treatment and drugs for their pre-existing conditions. In other words, “we are happy to insure you but the premiums and deductibles for your condition are going to be really expensive to you.” 

The situation has gotten so bad that the Associated Press recently reported that more than 300 patient advocacy groups have signed a letter addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to complain about some insurer tactics that "are highly discriminatory against patients with chronic health conditions and may ... violate the (law's) nondiscrimination provisions."

The good news is that you now have an Obama Care policy that covers your pre-existing condition. The bad news is that you cannot afford the costs within the parameters of that policy. Insurance companies are not stupid. Forcing them to take on expensive customers with chronic pre-existing conditions is not good for the company’s financial bottom line so that they will take whatever steps necessary to stay within the letter of the law and still remain financially viable. The writers of the Obama Care legislation were too stupid to recognize this reality.

4) What would an update be without some personal news on how Obama Care is messing with the lives and health of Americans. An Indiana man, who purchased health insurance through Obama Care’s Federal exchange, says he was assured he had dental coverage without any waiting period. 

To be sure, he actually recorded several conversations he had with Federal call center employees, all of whom guaranteed him that he had immediate Obama Care insurance coverage to take care of any dental problems. However, when it became apparent that he needed some serious dental work, the Obama Care insurer who provided the policy and who was collecting a monthly premium denied the claim, stating that there was a one year waiting period on his Obama care policy. This denial was made despite him being assured by the Obama Care call center employees that he was covered.

As a public service, he is now others about getting misleading information form the Obama Care processes and to be sure what they are actually buying from the Obama Care health insurance exchanges: “You might be very surprised you’re not covered when you were told that you were.” 

The news report covering his problem can be viewed at:

http://dailysignal.com/2014/08/16/indiana-man-thought-covered-obamacare-needed-visit-dentist/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Another day, another screw up of an American’s life, brought to you by Obama Care, the continuing unfolding disaster. More disasters tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Part 2, American Politicians Are "Just Not Into You"

Today is the second in a three part series of posts where we prove what most of America already senses: American politicians do not care what our needs, sufferings, and requirements are, they are too busy catering to the needs of wealthy political contributors and their own selfish gains. Or as we summarized it yesterday, using an old movie cliché, they are “just not into you.”

Yesterday, we discussed an extensive statistical research effort from two political science professors who proved this point quantitatively. We also showed how the Obama administration is infected with high powered and wealthy lobbyist-types and how Nancy Pelosi has probably spent more time enriching her family with taxpayer wealth than enriching taxpayers with government programs that encourage economic growth.

This discussion continues below to show that politicians are more concerned about money and wealth, and how to keep it by sucking up to wealthy entities, than they are in resolving the problems facing the vast majority of Americans.

1) A recent article by the Independent Journal review had a fascinating graph, from the Business Insider website, that showed how much more money residents of the greater Washington D.C. area make over citizens in the rest of the country:



If you look at the vertical axis on the left side you see a scale that runs from 1.2 to 1.8. If a plot point is at 1.2, then the residents in D.C. earned, on average, 20% more than the rest of the country. A plot point of 1.5 means that for that year, D.C. residents on average earned about 50% more than the rest of the country. Other conclusions from the historical data in the graph include:

• From the 1950s through the late 1990s, the ratio stayed pretty constant between 1.25 and just under 1.40.
• However, as a new century dawned, the ratio broke through the 1.4 ceiling and started to accelerate quickly, with the rate of accelerating getting worse under the Obama administration. 
• In fact, all time highs were attained by the ratio during the entire Obama administration with the latest data still way above historical norms.
• The shaded areas in the graph indicate recessions and it appears that the ratio actually grew during recessionary periods, indicating that Washington took much better care of itself in tough economic times than it took of the rest of the country.
• The points of closest parity between D.C. and the rest of the country came under Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan while the largest disparities came under Democratic Presidents Harry S. Truman and Barack Obama. So much for the President’s false focus on “income equality.” 

So much for caring about the middle class. Washington takes care of itself first and foremost, they are “just not into you.”

2) Mary Barker, recently writing for the Deseret News on August 14, 2014, did a comprehensive review of how corporate cronyism uses its influence and dollars to get favorable deals for themselves at the expense of the American taxpayer. Disgraces from her research writing include the following:

• The bailout of General Motors cost American taxpayer over $11 billion that will never be paid back even though GM profits since the bailout have totaled $22.6 billion.
• The author quotes a research study which that between the years 2008 and 2010, 30 of the largest American companies paid more to lobby Congress (about $400,000 per day) than they did in Federal taxes. 
• During that time, only one of the 30 largest companies actually paid Federal taxes, despite these companies’ total profits of $164 billion. 
• Not surprisingly, most of them contributed to the financing of incumbents' reelection campaigns.
• Even though hundreds of bankers went to jail after the 1980s for their illegal actions and shenanigans during the savings and loan crisis, after the Great Recession, no bankers were prosecuted even though the major banks and investment companies were at the root cause of many of the factors which triggered the Great Recession.
• In this banking fiasco, they got bailouts and hefty bonuses rather than jail time, all courtesy of a needy American political class.
• The Government Accountability Office has estimated that the Great Recession cost the U.S. economy $22 trillion and much more in lost careers, foreclosed homes, stress, lost pensions, etc.
• However, a major perpetrator and player in the cause of the Great Recession, JPMorgan Chase, received a $25 billion taxpayer bailout while its CEO, Jamie Dimon, received a 74% pay raise, getting his annual compensation to around $20 million, according to the article.
• Another major bank, HBSC, freely admitted to laundering billions of dollars for the biggest, dirtiest Mexican drug cartels but once again no one was prosecuted. The bank paid a fine and its chief executive, however, said that the bank was “profoundly sorry.”

By the way, if you follow the money that is used to influence politicians via the Open Secrets website, you would find that:

• In the latest election cycle, JP Morgan's political contributions put them in the top .5% of all contributors to election campaigns and their $5.5 million spent on lobbying put them in the top 2% of all companies who had lobbying expense.
• In the latest election cycle, HSBC's political contributions put them in the top 10% of all contributors to election campaigns and their $3.4 million spent on lobbying put them in the top 4% of all companies who had lobbying expense.
• In the latest election cycle, General Motors' political contributions put them in the top 1.5% of all contributors to election campaigns and their whopping $8.8 million spent on lobbying put them in the top 1% of all companies who had lobbyin expense.

Still think that American polticians care about you in the face of these millions and millions spent by the banks and large companies to buy influence in Washington?

You break a law, you go to jail. Wealthy corporate types and bankers break a law, they get taxpayer bailouts and get to say they’re sorry rather than go to jail. Obviously, the political class is “just not into you” when it comes to bailouts and law breaking excuses.

3) But it is just not bankers that get to stay out of jail for illegal behavior. Recent news reports show that Regina Dugan, the former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has been implicated in a U.S. Inspector General’s report for improperly directing agency contracts that were awarded to a company she had previously founded and in which she still had a financial stake in.

She founded and still holds a financial interest in RedXDefense, a company which designs detection devices for drugs and explosives. She was the company’s CEO until 2009, when she left to take the head job at DARPA. According to the Inspector General, while at DARPA, Dugan refrained from involving herself directly in any contract-awarding process for which RedXDefense was a bidder. But the company nevertheless received major contracts which drew the scrutiny of the Inspector General’s office in 2011.

While Dugan has since left that post and government work to go work at Google, the Inspector General found that: “We determined that Dr. Dugan violated the prohibition against using her government position for the stated or implied endorsement of a product, service, or enterprise.” 

Certainly at least the appearance of conflict of interest, if not outright conflict of interest. Better to take care of her own personal financial gain than do the best thing to protect the taxpayers’ dollars.

4)According to a most recent Reuters poll, 70% of Americans believe illegal immigrants "threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs," and 63% believe "immigrants place a burden on the economy." However, both Democrats and Republican politicians in Washington are pushing for favorable treatment of illegal immigrants. 

Why? Democrats see them as future voters. Republicans and their business cronies see illegal immigrants as sources of cheap labor, current citizens’ employment needs be damned. On the one issue where both Washington Democrats and Republicans agree, it is because of their own selfish interests, votes and financial election contributions, not because of the will of the people that they are supposed to represent the vast majority of Americans who do not want more and more illegal immigrants coming into this country.

Why would our politicians have more interest in foreigners illegally coming here than existing U.S. citizens? Obviously, they are “just not into you.”

Our politicians make sure that they get paid first and more handsomely vs. the rest of the country, they make sure that their corporate and banking financial bankers serve no jail time and are rewarded for bad and illegal behavior via bailouts, they take no action when government employees enrich themselves and foreign illegal immigrants take precedence over existing citizens. 

So if we learned anything over the past two days is that when the November elections start to get closer and a politicians promises you that they are looking out for your well being and welfare, keep in mind that they are “just not into you,” you are nothing more than a vote and a subsequent ATM machine once they are in office.

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

Part 1: American Politicians Are "Just Not Into You"

Note: Today's post should have been posted yesterday since it is the first post in our theme, "American Politicians Are Just Not Into You." It was early yesterday morning when I mistakenly posted the third post and not the first one in the series. I apologize for not being awake enough for getting the series correct! However, regardless of the sequence, the message is the same: America politicians are just not into you and I, they prefer to take care of their monied backers and financiers and their own personal wealth and greed.

We are fast approaching the November midterm elections so the promises and vows from the American political class are starting to pile up. They are going to make life easier, reduce taxes, save the middle class, fix all of our problems, end poverty, and wondrously cater to all of our needs and fears for every single American. 

The problem with these promises is that probably about half of those politicians making the promises are already in office and for the most part, their failures have made the country as screwed up as it is today. Wasteful government spending, corruption, cronyism, ineffective and inefficient government programs, etc. all occurred while they were in office. Why would we believe them now that all of a sudden, if reelected, they would somehow now, miraculously fix all of the stuff they have either broken themselves or ignored during their tenure in office?

The reality of the American political system today is that our politicians do not really care about what you and I think, need, want, and require. We only serve one purpose for them: our votes at election time. Once in office, they have other masters and other entities that they focus on, not us. Those entities include their perpetual reelection campaigns, their personal financial gains, their business and union cronies, campaign donors, their five week vacations, etc. 

To prove our point, we will spend the next two days proving that you are rather insignificant to our political class. They have other interests, priorities, and focus points while in office. To borrow a movie quote, they are “just not into you.”

1) The main driver of our theme over these next few days is an article written by Mr. Wynton Hall. The title of his article is, “Study: You Have ‘Near Zero’ Impact on U.S. Policy.” Important points in the article include the following:

• The premise of the article is based on a new political science study, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens." 
• The study is will likley appear in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Politics.
• It was authored by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page. 
• The bottom line conclusion of their research is that corporate interests and ultra wealthy Americans are really the controllers of U.S. government policy and direction.
• They have so much control that "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." 
• American University Historian Allan J. Lichtman, recently reviewed the work and concluded that the research is "shattering" and "should be a loud wake-up call to the vast majority of Americans who are bypassed by their government." 
• The research is based on the analysis of 1,800 policy issues which led the authors to realize that government policies and laws almost always ignore the viewpoints and wishes of average citizens.
• Instead, sitting politicians usually adopt views and preferences of wealthy business and other interests when enacting laws and regulations.

Gilens and Page make the following depressing, but probably accurate, observation: "If policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened." 

In other words, politicians are “just not into you” making their election a charade of false promises in order to facilitate their own greedy and selfish interests, interests that are facilitated by the wealthy and few.

2) One of President Obama’s biggest election promises, or lies depending on your perspective, is that no big time lobbyists would hold any high ranking or important positions within his administration. This would appear to be a good thing since it would counter the trend we just discussed of wealthy business and other interests having too much say in American Federal politics.

But alas, like most, if not all, of Obama’s election promises and vows, this one is also a false promise or outright deception, depending on your perspective. Politico’s Byron Tau recently reported that the Federal Office of Management and Budget recently released a new government rule which will allow registered lobbyists to participate in policy making discussions. This is the result of a judge’s ruling from earlier this year.

As a result lobbyists for corporations and industry groups can now serve on more than 1,000 government industry boards, panels and commissions. providing the private sector a role in decision-making across the executive branch, according to a copy of the rule published on the Federal Register site.

While the judge forced this issue on the administration, two distressing observations arise. First, it does not appear the administration is going to appeal or fight this ruling, either in the courts or legislatively. It will just go along with it and allow business interests to have a much more substantial say and influence in government policy making. 

Given how passionate and convincing the President was on the campaign trail relative to blocking lobbyists’ influence on and how he has disregarded many other legal requirements at his whim, one has to think that this is not a big issue for him, it was just a campaign ploy.

Second, it is not clear how closely he was adhering to his campaign promise anyway before this lobbyist victory in the courts. According to a recent Politico count, despite campaign promises, around 70 corporate, for-hire or association lobbyists have all joined the Obama administration in significant position of influence.

Another campaign promise broken, possibly because the President is “just not into you.”

3) Unemployment is still high, average wage levels are falling, economic growth is anemic, household incomes are falling, and the overall economy is still weak, many years after the end of the recession. Americans are hurting. Well, most Americans are hurting. If you last name is Pelosi, and you still have a lot of influence in the Federal government, than life is pretty good, even if it is at the expense of the American taxpayer.

According to a recent Associated Press report:

• Nancy Pelosi helped to direct more than a billion dollars in Federal transit subsidies to a company operated by a wealthy Democratic party campaign contributor.
• By the way, Ms. Pelosi’s husband is a major investor in that transit company.
• According to the Associated Press report, Ms. Pelosi had worked for many years to steer Federal taxpayer funding to a light rail project in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, significantly increasing the value of Mission Bay real estate.
• The transit company’s CEO, Marc Benioff, is a high-dollar Democratic donor with Pelosi and her leadership PAC among the recipients of his large campaign contributions. 
• A main contributor to the increase in property values in the Mission Bay area is the expansion of the city’s Third Street Light Rail line. Pelosi has been the expansion’s champion at the Federal government table. 
• Since 2003, she has secured well over a billion dollars for the project in the form of earmarks, Federal funding agreements, and economic stimulus program funding.
• Two transit stops on the extended light rail line are about three blocks from a four-story office building owned by her husband, Paul Pelosi, a reality that will further increase the values of property owned by the Pelosi family.
• Benioff made two $2,500 contributions to Pelosi’s reelection campaign, he gave $5,000 of Pelosi’s PAC, and he gave $15,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 
• Those contributions happened just four months after Pelosi secured $967 million in Federal funding for the Third Street light rail project.

Since you and I are likely not able to contribute tens of thousands of dollars to politicians reelection campaigns, that may be why they are “just not into you.”

That will do it for today but we are just getting warmed up. Today we proved what we all have sensed all along: 1) statistical analysis and research conclusively proves that Washington politicians couldn't care less what you think and need, 2) despite the promises, high powered lobbyists representing wealthy interests continue to infect the Washington government bureaucracies, and 3) long term politicians like Nancy Pelosi are more than willing to trade off political favors and taxpayer wealth for personal gain.

Proving once and for all: today’s American politicians are “just not into you.” Except when you are voting.

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

Part 3, American Politicians Are "Just Not Into You:" Warnings From Our Past

We have spent the past two days discussing the reality and examples of how the American political class is “just not into you.” Once you have cast your votes in elections, the elected politicians typically forget that you exist. They base their subsequent actions, votes, and initiatives based on personal and selfish greed, campaign fund raising for their perpetual reelection campaign, and business and union cronies.

We have proven our point over the past few days with many examples, including:

• Lobbyists being placed in high ranking White House and Federal positions.
• Billions and billions of dollars spent on bailing out America’s biggest companies such as General Motors, Chrysler, Citibank, Bank of America, AIG, etc.
• Taxpayer wealth being directed to build light transit infrastructure for Nancy Pelosi campaign donors which also benefit Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s real estate holdings.
• Hundreds of earmarks embedded in the Federal budget every year as favors to campaign donors or family and friends’ interests.

But apparently politicians have not been into citizens’ interests for a long time. Consider the following list of warnings from past U.S. Presidents that warned us of this exact same thing: politicians are just not into you. The list comes courtesy of an article on the Mr. Conservative website, written by Jodi Swan and posted on August 20, 2014. The original post and more details can be accessed at:

http://mrconservative.com/2014/08/48045-former-u-s-presidents-warn-invisible-govt-is-running-the-country/

1) Thomas Jefferson, in a letter he penned to John Taylor on May 28, 1816:

“I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”

2) Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote in a letter written by FDR in 1933:

“A financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

3) John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson’s Vice President, came to the same FDR conclusion but about hundred years earlier in 1836:

“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.”

4) Theodore Roosevelt, writing in his autobiography, said:

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”

5) Not included in Ms. Swan’s article but include in our book, 'Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” we have similar words from Woodrow Wilson:

“The government, that was designed fro the people, has gotten into the hands of the bosses and their employees, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”

The fact that companies, unions and other entities pour hundreds of millions of dollars into politicians’ campaigns every voting season should not come as a surprise that those same entities control what goes on after the elections are over. That is why President Obama has attended at least 400 political fund raisers since becoming President, far more than any other President that came before him. Some of these fundraisers charged tens of thousands of dollars just to attend. You can be sure that ordinary American citizens were not paying those prices to be present.

This why Step 39 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” is so important. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, they would all be “one and done.” Since most of the corruption occurs when politicians constantly run a perpetual reelection campaign, a perpetual campaign that requires constantly funding from rich entities that are buying future favors, the ability to make that future very short, one term, one hopefully cut down on reliance on cronies and financial benefactors. 

Once politicians realize that they only have one term to make a difference, the need to campaign for financial support goes away and maybe, just maybe, politicians might get into you and your needs and not the needs of those that financially back them. 

The fact that political quotes form our distance past warned us about these outside monied interests and their power over elected officials have warned us of this for the past two centuries shows that changing the status quo will not be easy. Term limits is a good place to start to get the political class into our needs vs. the needs of the wealthy and influential.

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

August, 2014 I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science, Part 2: More Science That Makes Being a Skeptic Worthwile

A number of years ago we wrote a series of posts under the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” We wanted to find out for ourselves, by examining every available piece of science, research, data, expert opinions, etc. to see if global warming was real or a myth. 

As a believer in science and the scientific method, we wanted to see if the rantings and ravings of people like Al Gore had any validity. And if not, finally be able to show them that you can believe in science AND figure out that global warming was a self perpetuating myth by those that had a lot to gain, either financially, personally, or from a recognition perspective.

Well, years later, and dozens of posts later that examined dozens and dozens of science and realities, I am proud to say that I am still a global warming doubter skeptic (or its marketing rebranded name of “climate change”) more than ever and have the scientific evidence to support my view, people like Al Gore be damned. You can review our exhaustive research and discussions on the matter by entering “global warming doubter” in the search box above.

Additionally, you can read our last updates to the series by starting with:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/july-2014-why-i-am-global-warming.html

We started this latest review and update yesterday and continue it today, starting below:

1) Consider a new research study that found that climate forecasting models used by global warming advocates, scientists, and government officials have been significant overestimators of global warming impacts that has occurred since the late 1950s when compared to what actually happened to the Earth’s climate. The research findings were published in the journal Environmetrics.

According to the published results, a simple comparison between observed temperatures and the forecasted temperatures from the global warming forecast models differed greatly in the tropical lower troposphere and mid-troposphere: “Over the 55-years from 1958 to 2012, climate models not only significantly over-predict observed warming in the tropical troposphere, but they represent it in a fundamentally different way than is observed.” These are the words and conclusions of Ross McKitrick, an economist with the University of Guelph in Canada and co-author of the study.

Other findings and conclusions from the research include the following:

• While all climate models forecasted that rising carbon dioxide levels in the air would cause rapid warming in the troposphere over the tropics, over time that never happened.
• Both satellites and weather balloons have not detected much warming in the tropical troposphere, which destroys the predictive integrity of the climate models. 
• According to McKitrick, not only do the climate forecast models overestimate the amount of warming in the troposphere, the models misrepresent the warming by making it look like a “smooth upward trend” over time. 
• But this research paper portends to show that in reality, temperature show that all observations the warming occurred in a “single step-change in the late 1970s coinciding with a known event (the Pacific Climate Shift), and identify no significant trend before or after.” 
• In other words, tropical tropospheric temperatures were relatively flat/not trending warmer before the late 1970s, they abruptly jumped up slightly in 1977 due to the so-called Pacific Climate Shift, and after the climate shift, temperatures flattened out once again, showing little to no warming trend.

These findings are consistent findings from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program which found in 2006 that there was a “potentially serious inconsistency” in the modeling of tropospheric warming. When reality differs from opinions, in this case forecast models, than reality always wins despite what Al Gore and Barack Obama have to say.

2) For a little comedic diversion, consider the poor chap in this video. I do not believe he agrees that global warming is a big factor, at least on this winter day:

http://theblacksphere.net/2014/2/global-warming-farce

3) A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a U.S. government agency, found that the first six-month period of 2014 marked the coldest first half of any year since 1993. Others realities from the NOAA included the following facts:

• Average maximum daytime temperatures for the first six months of 2014 was slightly higher than the 20th century average.
• However, the average minimum nighttime temperature was three-tenths of a degree below the century average.
• Below-average temperatures were widespread east of the Rocky Mountains, and "two regions, the western Great Lakes and the southern Mississippi River Valley, had much-below-average temperatures during the six-month period." 
• Seven states, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, and Wisconsin, each had a six-month period that ranked in the state's top 10 for coldest temperatures.
• The NOAA also found that the national precipitation total for the six-month period was a tiny 0.02 inches below average, while above-average precipitation was recorded across the Northern tier and parts of the Southeast.

In other words, things are pretty steady and consistent with long term trends and climate behavior. Nothing to see here, move along.

4) Consider some scientific findings from a recent CATO Institute paper regarding climate change, global warming, and what is really going on:

• Global warming and climate change advocates claim that the Earth’s weather will get more violent and destructive as mankind continues to dump carbon into the atmosphere. 
• However, every day we set a new record for the longest time between major (Category 3 or greater) hurricane landfalls anywhere in the U.S. (almost 3,200 days, approaching nine years). 
• According to CATO, a new scientific paper developed by a team led by Leon Hermanson recently appeared in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters.
• The paper talks about their a decadal (decade related) forecasting model developed by the U.K. Met Office and called the Decadal Prediction System (DePreSys).
• The researchers identified the “North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre” (SPG) as a key influencer in a variety of weather patterns from North America to Europe. 
• Changes in the SPG have been correlated with weather, precipitation, and temperature patterns across the in the U.S., Europe, and North Africa, as well as hurricane frequency in the Atlantic Ocean.
• These findings are consistent with the conclusions from research back in 2001 that was published in Science magazine.
• This team, consisting of leading hurricane experts of the time, went against the global warming hysteria that global warming, not long established weather patterns like the SPG, were the reason for increased hurricane activity during that timeframe.
• They found that patterns of hurricane frequency were driven by naturally occurring variability in the patterns of sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic that correlated to the SPG. 
• They also established that these patterns and cycles usually last a decade or so and have been occurring naturally forever.
• Thus, by just looking at a short time period of increased hurricane activity and claiming global warming was the cause, global warming advocates were not looking at long enough timeframes to see that short term behavior was not driven by global warming but by a different point in the long term cycle.

The following graph shows how this theory has accurately played out over a long period of time, indicating that these forecasters and scientists are much more accurate in their forecasting ability than global warming forecasts. This indicates that their theories and positions on weather and climate are also much more accurate than those of the global warming faction. Their forecast models of global warming and climate change have been extensively shown to be just plain wrong and inaccurate: 

This Cato graph  shows the 5-year running average of tropical cyclone numbers in the Atlantic Ocean since 1960 along with the DePreSys model hindcasts and forecasts. The model projects that the elevated hurricane numbers characteristic of the past two decades will fall back towards normal over the next few years.

More science that proves it is perfectly logical and sound to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. It is time that the nation and the world have an adult conversation about global warming and climate change, based on ALL of the science. However, given who is in charge of the global warming side of the argument, politicians, not scientists, like Al Gore and Barack Obama, the chance of an adult conversation about his subject is not likely to happen anytime soon.

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