February, 2016, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Millionaires Get Tax Credits, Illegal Immigrants Get Tax Credits and Small Businesses Get The Shaft

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements it rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Yesterday and today we are reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) We often write about the disaster that Obama Care has been for American households and families. But it also has been a disaster for small businesses, the business segment that often produces the most new jobs in our economy and which sometimes create the biggest companies in the world, e.g., Facebook, Apple, etc. all started as small businesses. 

This reality was driven home by a recent article by Justin Haskins for Heartlander Magazine:

• Haskins: “Although numerous groups are facing difficulties related to ACA, few are struggling as significantly as U.S. small businesses.”
• 87% of that offer group health care insurance for their employees saw their insurance premiums go up 25% since 2014 despite Obama’s promises that healthcare costs would go down as a result of the legislation.
• 12% say their premiums went up over 50% in a survey by LevelFunded Health, an insurance agency.
• The legislation is particularly onerous for small businesses since larger businesses have a larger revenue and employee base to spread the legislative and regulatory costs and overhead of Obama Care over: “This has led numerous small businesses to cancel their health insurance benefits completely, dumping an unknown number of employees into Obamacare exchanges. This is not only bad for the employees, it’s horrible for the businesses, who are now losing quality job applicants to large corporations that offer better benefits.”
• The LevelFunded found that 56% of the 2,500 small businesses they surveyed said they are losing quality employee candidates because of the rising costs associated with employer-provided health care plans under Obama Care. 
• The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) under Obama Care was supposed to make it easy for small businesses to handle the Obama Care legislation requirements but like most aspects of Obama Care, it also failed: only 85,000 people from 11,000 small businesses had coverage through SHOP, according to Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News. 
• According to Haskins: “This is significantly less than the 1 million people the Congressional Budget Office expected to be enrolled in SHOP by the end of 2015.” 

The whole mess has caused many pains for small businesses including losing top employee talent, forcing companies to drop healthcare insurance for their employees, causing small businesses to downsize to avoid Obama Care small business penalties, causing employers to cut hours of permanent employees to turn them into part time employees, or raising prices to cope with the increased costs.

Thus, when small business owners have to focus on how to stay afloat and be financially viable in the face of Obama Care’s demanding and often stupid requirements, these owners cannot devote more time to growing their businesses which results in a growing economy and growing employment opportunities. 

2) Sean Hackbarth, writing for the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, continues the storyline from above on how Obama Care is making it so expensive and difficult for small businesses to grow their businesses and take care of their employees under Obama Care:

• Filling out complex Obama Care business tax forms is a major time destroyer for small business owners, time that could be better spent on growing their businesses. 
• Businesses have to provide great detail on how they are or are not providing health insurance coverage to their employees.
• The tax reporting requirements are so complex that many businesses now have to go to professionals to do their taxes, costing them time and money.
• The New York Times confirmed the complexity and time wasting processes of Obama Care tax filings in an article about the problem: “These are some of the most complex informational returns we’ve ever seen,” said Roger Prince, a tax lawyer with the consulting firm Berry Dunn in Portland, Me.
• Dunn claims that some of his small business clients “have spent months reconfiguring their human resources and financial systems to track the information that the new forms demand. The health care law defines a full-time-equivalent employee as someone who works an average of 30 or more hours a week — and the hours worked by some part-time employees count toward the calculation. For businesses that use many seasonal, variable-hour or temporary workers, like those in the hospitality industry, simply figuring out how many qualifying employees they have can be a challenge.” Again, more wasted time dealing with government bureaucracy than expanding and improving their businesses.

And all of this extra, useless work has been for no gain to themselves or their businesses since according to a 2015 National Small Business Association poll, 95% of the businesses polled have seen their health care insurance plan costs rise in the past five years, 90% saw their health care costs rise in 2015, and 84% expect those costs to increase in 2016, i.e. a lot of tax prep work for no gain.

3) A recent article from the Free Patriot Post website confirmed another Presidential lie about Obama Care. During a State of The Union address, Obama stood up in front of the whole country and boldly stated that only citizens of this country would get the benefit of Obama Care, its benefits would not be available to illegal immigrants. Congressman Joe Wilson blurted out that the President was a liar in the middle of the State Of The Union speech, for which he was vilified by Democrats and the liberal press.

But now it appears that Wilson was right. According to a new Senate report form the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: “The report, produced by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, examined Affordable Care Act tax credits meant to defray the cost of insurance premiums. It found that as of June 2015, ‘the Administration awarded approximately $750 million in tax credits on behalf of individuals who were later determined to be ineligible because they failed to verify their citizenship, status as a national, or legal presence.’”

The report and analysis found that a whopping 500,000 illegal immigrants received that $750 million in Obama Care tax credits. The Centers For Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) did confirm that 471,000 people failed to prove they were citizens but still got the credits. CMS claimed that some of those 471,000 may have actually been entitled to the credits but that still proves that those credits were given out by the Feds without due diligence being done before hand.

The report also concluded that the administration has no real plan on how to claw back the money that was given out as tax credits even though that money was given out illegally. This idiotic way of paying out to people before checking them out is derisively called “pay and chase,” i.e. we will give you taxpayer wealth today even though you have not given us the documentation you are supposed to give us and maybe we will chase you later to get it back.

What a mess and half ass way of doing business.

4) One last Obama Care fail for this month and it is a doozy. According to Melissa Quinn, writing for the Heritage Foundation on February 9, 2016, loopholes within the Obama Care wording allows certain types of millionaires to qualify for taxpayer subsidized health care under Obama Care rules. Specifically:

• Under Obama Care, people whose annual income falls under 138% of the poverty level, about $16,000 per person, can get subsidized medical care under Medicaid.
• This is because Obama Care changed the Medicaid criteria for being eligible to strictly annual income and took away any use of net worth to determine who gets subsidized insurance coverage under Medicaid.
• As a result, people with many assets but low annual incomes can get taxpayer support. 
• The article quotes an insurance broker in Iowa who has a lot of clients with net worth between $2 million and $5 million, wealth and assets they have in the form of farmland or assets they received from divorce settlements but have low annual income levels.
• Thus, according to Obama Care, you can be worth millions of dollars in assets but still get taxpayer subsidized Medicaid benefits: “It [Medicaid] was designed to help the lower-income population. But without the asset test, there are folks that have the financial means and assets there that are good at figuring out how to work the system and capture a benefit they’re entitled to.”
• The Iowa insurance agent tells the story of an Iowa woman who received $1.5 million in land and received another $500,000 from a divorce settlement, both assets of which went into a trust and thus, is not reportable as income. This enabled her to get taxpayer subsidized Medicaid insurance coverage.
• CNBC reported earlier this year on the subject, citing a Florida financial advisor who was helping millionaire clients to get Medicaid coverage including one client who had a net worth in assets totally millions of dollars but was still able to get a monthly subsidy of $423 a month, courtesy of the taxpayers of America.

Just when you think you have found out of the possible ways Obama Care could screw things up, a new, original one springs to life. Taxpayer subsidies for millionaires, who would have thought that the legislation could be written that badly? 

That will do it for this month as the disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written just keep oncoming.More disasters next month, for sure.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

December, 2014, Part 3, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Greatest Scientific Fraud In History, Exporting U.S. Coal and India's Appetite for More Coal

Several years ago we decided to look into the popular craze at that time that the world was warming and global warming was going to wipe out humanity. Rather than just assume that global warming advocates like Al Gore were correct, we wanted to look at ALL of the science, ALL of the climate data, and All of the realities of global warming.

And to be perfectly honest, we were tired of Al Gore, Barack Obama and other global warming advocates yelling at global warming doubters like myself, calling us racists, homophobes, flat earth believers, etc. In order to have a mature, adult conversation about global warming, we felt it was necessary to treat those with a different opinion with respect not derision and that to get to an adult solution, all of the science should be included in the debate.

Over the years, however, we have put together a very strong case that man made global warming and its rebranded marketing theme, climate change, were indeed mostly a false position, a travesty of science. Those who believed in global warming ignored or failed to consider scientific findings and research that was contrary to their views. 

They were found to have suppressed or changed raw data and findings that did not support their global warming positions. In short, they were the ones that had shortchanged the scientific method, not the doubters.

To review our past reviews of the global warming fallacy, type in the phrase, “I am a global warming doubter” in the search box above. Over the next few days we will continue to look at the latest climate data and realities and again prove that being a global warming doubter is a position that is strongly supported by science and not Al Gore hysterics.

This is our third and final update to the global warming doubter series this month. The first post this month can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/12/december-2014-part-1-i-am-global.html

Let’ see what science, data, and reality we can find today to reinforce our position that it is scientifically possible to be a global warming doubter.

1) In a recent interview for NewsMax TV, John Casey, a former White House space program advisor and current president of the Space and Science Research Corporation, asserted that about $30 billion dollars spent the past 30 years to make a “weak scientific theory,” the theory of man-made global warming or climate change, into something valid is “the greatest scientific fraud in history.”

He also pointed out, as we have many times, that the United Nations’ climate forecasting models have been a “miserable failure’ at accurately predicting future temperature levels. Casey, who is the author of “Dark Winter: How the Sun is Causing a 30 Year Cold Spell,” believes that significant changes in temperature was caused by changes in the activity of the sun, not by mankind‘s use of carbon based energy sources. He claims that the forecasting models he uses, which are based on solar cycles, are over 90% accurate.

The interview can be accessed at: 

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/12/19/former-wh-space-program-advisor-climate-change-greatest-scientific-fraud-in-history/#!

Seems like Mr. Casey might be able to provide some valuable insight to an adult, mature, and science-based conversation about whether or not man made global warming and climate change is a reality or a myth.

2) President Obama seems hell bent on killing off the American coal industry in a vain and futile attempt to make a dent in mankind’s use of carbon based fuels. We say futile because many, many different sources, both inside and outside of government, have shown that any carbon reduction in this country will be overwhelmed by increased use of carbon energy sources in China, India, and elsewhere.

If he is successful, then American consumers will see a spike in energy costs and the economy will suffer some serious job losses, all for no purpose. But what is especially infuriating, as reported by Associated Press reporter Dina Cappiello on December 8, 2014, is that as Obama tries to shut down the domestic coal industry, he is allowing the U.S. to export massive amount of carbon based energy resources to be used in other countries.

According to the article, the U.S. is exporting record levels of dirty fuels, even as it reduces the pollution supposedly responsible for global warming domestically. An Associated Press analysis of government data found that U.S. exports of gasoline and diesel resulted in the release of about roughly 1 billion tons of carbon pollution into the atmosphere elsewhere in the world from 2008 through 2013. During the same period, the U.S. reduced its carbon pollution by less than half a billion tons. 

The U.S. reduction in carbon pollution is “a false image," said Onel Masardule of the Indigenous People's Biocultural Climate Change Assessment Initiative, a Peru-based environmental group that recently studied the Guna and climate change. "In reality, the U.S. is still contaminating."

As we have always proven, any reduction in carbon footprint in this country will be overwhelmed by carbon increases around the world. And even worse, according to Associated Press reporting and analysis, we are prime culprits in the increasing use of carbon based fuels around the world.

3) We have often talked about the reality that no matter how many coal plants Obama shuts down in the U.S., coal usage in other countries, often using U.S. exported coal, will easily wipe out any carbon reduction that closing a few U.S. coal plants attain. This point was driven home by a November 25, 2014 article written by Sean Hackbarth for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website.

The article focused on the reality that coal usage in India is likely to continue its upward surge in the near future, adding more and more carbon to the air as the U.S. reduces its carbon footprint even less. Specifically, the article repeats a quote from Piyush Goyal, India’s power minister, that ran in the new York Times: “India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate changes many years in the future. The West will have to recognize we have the needs of the poor.”

In other words, India has no plans to give up coal as a major provider of energy in the country anytime soon. 

In fact, Mr. Goyal has promised to double India’s use of coal, going from 565 million tons last year to more than a billion tons by 2019. To feed this increase, and he is issuing coal mining licenses as quickly as possible. This increase, if it happens, would come on the heels of India increasing its coal plant energy generation by 73% in just the past five years.

This is how quickly India’s use of coal has grown over the years:

The article also points out that on a per person basis, the average Indian citizen uses about 7% of what an average American uses. As the Indian economy grows and matures, that usage level is sure to increase, making it near impossible to economically replace energy generation from coal with any kind of other renewable sources. 

So as we have always said, even if there is man made global warming and climate change going on, shutting down a few American coal plants, causing a spike in both domestic electricity rates and unemployment, will be like spitting into a hurricane when countries like India and China have no intentions of curtailing their coal usage anytime soon. Given the low regard that our current President is held in capitals around the world, it is unlikely that he will be able to force, cajole, or negotiate climate pacts that actually reduce the overall world consumption of fossil fuels, especially coal. 

That will do it for this month’s update on global warming doubting and how that position is more and more being supported by science, realities, and data. To continue to call us doubters by the names and slurs that Al Gore and other political types insist on using vs. the real science we have cited in the many posts in this blog is not being productive in any sense. And not being productive is what today’s politicians do best.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

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

Tax Day Travesties and Facts, Part 2

This is our second post regarding how much we paid in taxes last year and how little we received in return from the American political class for those taxes in both the quality and quantity of government services. The first post from yesterday can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/tax-day-travesties-and-facts-part-1.html

We will be showing in these tax day posts that we have truly moved from a state of heavy taxation into a state of tax oppression. Many Americans’ Tax Freedom Day, that day of the new year when we stop working for all forms of American government and start working for ourselves and our families has not even occurred yet. Almost four months into the new year.

And what we do get from the political class in the form of government programs and support is usually inefficient, ineffective, criminally targeted and often make the original problem worse or create new problems for Americans via unintended consequences. The tax insanity continues today with the following random facts about taxation in America and how it is often no more than highway robbery.

1) Consider what some of your tax payments bought for you and the country last year, as documented by the Watchdog.org organization:

• An $876,752 study on snail sex - A University of Iowa study is trying to figure out if it’s better for snails to reproduce sexually or asexually. Finally, an answer to the question everyone has been asking, a question that has absolutely no bearing on the lives of 99.99999999% of Americans.
• A $16 million tropical vacation - That was the final price tag on President Obama’s most recent holiday vacations to Hawaii and Africa.
• A $750,000 study on how kid cartoons contribute to obesity - The National Science Foundation awarded two grants totaling $750,000 to find out if cartoon characters are making children overweight. No, eating too much junk food is making kids fat, not getting enough exercise is making kids fat. I could have answered the question for far less than $750,000.
• A $2.4 million program to develop “origami condoms” - It includes male and female versions and the “first of its kind anal condom.” There is a joke about screwing the taxpayer somewhere in here.
• A $30,410 “beauty salon” in a Federal prison -At least it’s a women’s federal prison.
• Millions in drugs for prisoners -Medicare sent millions in improper payments to incarcerated criminals. In other words, bilking Medicare is so easy even prisoners behind bars can do it and not get caught.
• A $98,670 outhouse -The Federal Bureau of Land Management may have just built the most expensive outhouse ever at the Swede Park Trail Head in Alaska.
• $700 million of Obama Care promotion -Despite President Obama’s claim that the government did not “make a hard sell” for Obama Care, his administration spent nearly $700 million to promote the law. Another Presidential lie.

When you wrote your income tax check to the IRS last week, some of that money you earned went to pay for idiotic programs like these.

2) The best way to grow the economy is for private business owners to expand their operations and grow their businesses. However, any distraction that keeps them from doing that, e.g. filling out tax forms and returns, hinders their ability to do that very important task. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the average small business owner spends 80 hours each year complying with U.S. tax regulations. 80 hours a year, the equivalent of two 40 hour work weeks. 4% of the entire year is spent just on filing small business tax forms on average.

This is time that the average business owner cannot use to look for new markets, develop new products, train his staff, take better care of customers, all activities that would eventually help us all by expanding the economy. Instead, he is sitting down and laboriously trying to stay legal in the face of a Federal tax code that is over 70,000 pages long. 

In light of this oppressive task, the Chamber calculated what one could do if they were given an extra 80 hours a year. Turns out, you could do quite a bit.

• You could complete 17 marathons (if you run the U.S. average pace of 10:34 mile/hour). 
• You could go around the world 1.7 times (on a commercial jet) or twice if you were on a military jet. 
• You could go to the moon 4.8 times (if you traveled on NASA’s New Horizons Pluto mission). 
• You could cook 14.5 perfect 20-pound turkeys (unstuffed, and back-to-back for 5.5 hours each, not simultaneously) 
• You could watch all eight Harry Potter movies four times.
• Or, if you are a small business owner, you could complete your 2013 taxes.

A new survey of small business owners by the National Small Business Association (NSBA) reveals that more than half of small employers say the administrative burdens and paperwork associated with tax season pose the greatest harm to their businesses. One in four business owners surveyed said they spend at least three full weeks on the annual chore. How sad is it when the American political class is the greatest source of harm for American small businesses?

If it is any consolation, a tax analysis by the American Action Forum found that even the Treasury Department and IRS are also buckling under the administrative burdens of tax season:

[T]he Department of Treasury’s paperwork burden is at its highest level in history. At more than 7.8 billion hours, Treasury’s paperwork budget has increased 1.5 billion hours since FY 2010, or 19 percent. Since 1995, the earliest year AAF could compile data, Treasury’s burden has increased 47 percent.

A 19% increase since just four years ago is a great measure of how out of control the tax system is in this country. It is a system that is robbing the economy of vibrancy and wealth and overburdening an already overburdened bureaucracy. In other words everyone, consumers, businesses, IRS are choking on the tax code with no substantial benefits.

The NSBA report also found that a the clear majority of small businesses (67%) polled by NSBA support broad tax reform that will reduce corporate and individual tax rates coupled with reduced deductions. This thought and feeling was recently captured by the Chamber’s Chief economist Marty Regalia: 

Comprehensive pro-growth tax reform is the major key to jump-starting the economy, promoting job creation, and ensuring long-run improvement in productivity, wage growth, and our standard of living. It can help us maintain our competitive edge in the global economy and address some of the problems in income and wealth distribution. Moreover, it is an absolutely necessary component to getting our fiscal house in order.

Now, all we need to do is educate the American people, elect a Congress that can work together for the common good, adopt a common goal, and convince the president that leadership sometimes requires the courage to get out and stay out in front.

Work together, common good, common goal, leadership, courage. Good luck with getting those attributes from the current set of politicians in Washington. These are the same people who gave us a tax code with over 70,000 pages in the first place.

3) We have been discussing how we get very little back in quality services from the Washington political class despite being placed under oppressive taxation. But sometimes we get absolutely nothing back for the tax check we wrote last week as shown by the fact that the State Department has allocated $1.5 million of our tax money for job development programs in distressed neighborhoods….in Belize. 

We are not going to spend money to help the over 20 million Americans who are either underemployed or unemployed. We are not going to help the hundreds and hundreds of distressed neighborhoods in the U.S. We are going to help distressed neighborhoods and unemployed people in Belize. I challenge anyone to find Belize on the map, never mind sending them $1.5 million an amount that probably will not make any difference anyway, given it is so small.

Specifically, the State Department Belize program has the following objectives:

1. “The proposal will confront the root causes of violence and crime in a creative and effective way and seek to create positive cultural and social conditions, which are the foundations of a peaceful and orderly society.” Sounds like BS and even if this was achievable, wouldn’t starting in U.S. cities like Detroit or Camden be a far better return on American taxpayer dollars? They certainly need the foundations of a peaceful and orderly society to be created in these decaying American cities.
2. “Root causes in Belize include, but are not limited to, the lack of economic development, the lack of skills and/or tradecraft, the lack of conflict resolution skills, and/or the lack of opportunity for youth.” Again, substitute Detroit, Camden or a hundred other American towns and cities for the word Belize and the statement would hold true except that it would intend to help Americans who are suffering.
3. “Marginalized youth are empowered when given a voice and opportunities. Equipping marginalized youth and their communities with economic opportunities and/or business training can help them reach their true potential as entrepreneurs and improve citizen security.” The current unemployment rate for American youth is almost 21%. Shouldn’t they get first crack at reaching their true potential?

Thus, you can rest assured that your tax money and belated Tax Freedom Day are helping out needy people in Belize, where ever that is.

So let’s review. Your hard earned money and ever growing Tax Freedom Day pays for such vital services as origami condoms and the intimate sex knowledge and lives of snails, it hinders small businesses from growing their businesses and economy as result of an onerous task of just completing the marathon tax forms and understanding a voluminous tax code, and it sends the money collected during tax seasons to far away places like Belize, not even trying to deliver quality government services and support to the very people who paid for it in the first place.

You cannot make this idiocy up and the sad part, we still need another day to complete the tax season shuffle of insanity 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 3, August, 2013 Obama care Update: Poll Results Are Unfavorable, Hospitals Getting Screwed, Illogical Pricing, and More

This is the third post of what is hopefully only a four post series for this month that reviews the disaster that is Obama Care. In the past two days we have learned how the majority of Americans and small businesses correctly assessed that Obama care will raise health insurance costs, curtail economic and business growth, and will not solve the problem of escalating health care costs in this country. We have learned of American workers getting their work hours and salaries cut as businesses and government entities try to cope with the onerous taxes, fines, and requirements of Obama Care. Not a pretty picture.

And the next pieces of that not pretty picture continue below:

1)  Fox News recently conducted its own public opinion poll relative to how people feel about Obama care and found the following results, all consistent with the previous polls we reviewed from NBC, CBS, Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

• The poll found that 57% of registered voters believe that implementation of  Obama Care is a joke while 31% say it’s “going fine.”
• Poll participants overwhelming say that Obama Care will have a negative effect on their wallet.
• 71% of those polled  believe Obama Care will  raise their taxes.
• 62% agree with the premise that Obama Care  increase their health insurance premiums.
• 65% believe Obama Care will raise the Federal budget deficit.
• Pluralities of participants of the survey agree with the notion that ObamaCare will reduce the quality of healthcare for themselves and all Americans.
• 63% of Americans say that the law needs to be amended and that Congress should continue working on legislative fixes for the law. 
• That’s up from 58% in July. 
• Only 31% say think that Congress should move onto other issues and leave Obama Care as it is.

Again, for my liberal friends that automatically knee jerk and convulse whenever Fox News is mentioned, feel free to ignore these poll results, but they are consistent with poll results from mainstream news sources other than Fox.

2) The Associated Press recently did an investigative report on what Obama Care is doing to smaller sized hospitals across the country. Remember that Obama Care cuts the funding for hospitals that accept Medicare and Medicaid patients in order to fund Obama Care’s programs. 

If the cut in  Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals goes through, many of these hospitals will either close because of financials or stop accepting Medicare and Medicaid patients, endangering the health and welfare of those patients:

• Since 2000, 19 hospitals in New York have closed due to financial pressures and two more are about to close. 
• Among other causes, the article notes that, “Revenue from government health programs like Medicaid has gotten smaller,” and that situation is expected to get more dire as a result of Obama Care.
• According to the article, actuaries at the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services have been warning about this growing crisis since the passage of Obama Care in 2010.
• Paul Spitalnic, the acting chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is quoted in the article that assuming the Obama Care cuts go into effect, “the prices paid by Medicare for health services are very likely to fall increasingly short of the costs of providing these services. Medicare prices would be considerably below the current relative level of Medicaid prices, which have already led to access problems for Medicaid enrollees, and far below the levels paid by private health insurance. Well before that point, Congress would have to intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result.”

What a mess. We actually have a health care law that will make health care less accessible to Americans in the form of fewer financially viable hospitals or fewer hospitals that take Medicare and Medicaid patients in order to stay financially viable. And if the Washington political class gets scared enough to restore the funding to Medicare and Medicaid hospital payments, then the financial model for Obama Care blows up even more.

How badly does it blow up? According to a General Accountability Office  analysis, such a scenario would add about $6.2 TRILLION to the national debt. So much for Obama Care “not adding a single dime to the national debt,” as was promised when the legislation was enacted. Just another unintended consequence/disaster of Obama Care, fewer hospital resources to treat the sick.

3) We have made the case many times that those who actually wrote Obama Care were pretty much out of touch with reality. For instance, the law says you will be fined if you do not purchase health care insurance for yourself and your family:

• But the financial penalty for not purchasing insurance is a small fraction of the cost of purchasing insurance so why would anyone feel the overriding need to pay more, especially younger, healthier Americans, for insurance that they probably do not need. 
• Additionally, that fine can only be imposed if your IRS tax return says you are entitled to a tax refund and the government/IRS withholds the Obama Care small penalty from that refund. Assuming they can even find out that you do not have insurance AND you are getting a refund.
• Additionally, the law says anyone with a pre-existing condition cannot be turned down for health insurance, so why not delay purchasing health care insurance until you need it since you cannot be turned down? Insanity and a complete loss of touch with reality. 

We go through this review to show an example of how inane this law is when you get down to the details. Consider the following scenario, as calculated via the Kaiser Foundation’s Obama Care benefits calculator:

• If an individual or family makes “too much” money, they will lose their eligibility for a Federal Obama Care health insurance subsidy, and be stuck paying the entire insurance premium themselves and their families. 
• Theoretically, a pay raise or other household income enhancement would force them to fork over thousands of dollars more to the insurance companies, all because they made over the federally mandated income threshold.
• The income thresholds are based on the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), which varies by family size, age and other factors. 
• For example, if a family made between 300% and 400% of the FPL, that family would be responsible for paying no more than 9.5% of their income toward insurance premiums. As long as the family’s income remains at or below 400% of their respective FPLs, they would get federal Obama Care subsidies to pay the remainder of the insurance premium.
• As soon as a family makes even $1 over 400% of the FPL, they’re no longer eligible for a federal subsidy, and they must pay the entire premium themselves.
• Consider an American family of five as an example. Both parents are 56 years old, and they have three kids. Their income is exactly 400% of the FPL at $110,280. 
• Because their income is at the highest threshold, they are responsible for paying no more than 9.5% of their income toward insurance premiums, and they qualify for an Obama Care  subsidy that picks up the difference.
• Using this data and the Kaiser Family Foundation “subsidy calculator,” the calculator determines that the Obama Care “Silver” plan’s annual premium is $19,832. 
• The subsidy would cover $9,355, and the family would be responsible for the remaining $10,477 (9.5% of their $110,280 income).
• Now assume that mom and dad each get a 50-cent raise in their ANNUAL salaries. 
• Their household income climbs an entire dollar to $110,281, putting their household income exactly $1 over 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. 
• This $1 annual increase to household income means that the family no longer qualifies for Obama Care’s 9.5-percent-of-household income cap on their health-insurance premiums. 
• According to the legislation’s inane calculations, the family’s total annual premium for their Silver health-insurance plan remains $19,832 but now because they earn too much money to qualify for the Federal Obama Care subsidy, they must pay all of that $19,832 premium. 
• As a result, the cash they must pay out of pocket for their health insurance plan goes from $10,477 per year to $19,832 per year, an increase of $9,355.
• Thus, a $1 dollar annual increase in annual household income is negatively offset by the additional $9,355 they must pay for health insurance.

This is obviously an extreme example. No one gets an annual raise $1. But the concept is still valid. The drop off in benefits and help in paying sky high health insurance costs, given changes in household income, is drastic and plain stupid relative to whoever wrote the law. If we were going to have a law like this, the dropoffs should have been smoothed over so that American workers could still enthusiastically look forward to raises without having to worry about losing money as a result of those raises. Government logic run amok.

Americans who think the legislation is a joke. Hospitals going bankrupt or cutting services as result of the legislation, the exact opposite of what you want in a health care crisis. And dumb government logic that makes workers' raises a potentially very large negative on household income. What else could go wrong? Come back tomorrow to find out.

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