Februrary, 2017, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: The Wall Is (Relatively) Cheap, Bait and Switch In Illinois, and The Economic Plight of Millennials

It has been several weeks since Donald Trump has been sworn in which means at some point in the future we may run out of material to talk about. With the demise of the Obama administration, eight years worth of wasteful and excessive spending for nothing in return, foreign affairs blunders, Obama Care disasters, and assorted other administration and government blunders and screwups might end with the onset of a new administration. Trump may usher in a new paradigm of government actions that are limited, effective, cost efficient, and protective of the Constitution. If so, then this blog would run out of material to discuss and would have to be shut down.

But I doubt it. Even if Trump is truly a different type of President, he is still fighting over 500 embedded and entrenched politicians in Congress and thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats who will not go peacefully into the night for the good of the country. I wish him well and hopefully he can fix at least some of the myriad of problems the American political class creates everyday but until then, enjoy the latest political class insanity from Washington and beyond:

1) There has been a lot of discussion recently on Trump’s plan to build a wall along the Mexican border to staunch the flow illegal immigrants, illegal drugs, human trafficking, and possible terrorist infiltration. Many people, mostly liberals, are going nuts over this concept, often using the excuse that it is a waste of money. And “the wall” will not be cheap, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell estimating a cost of between $12-15 billion House Speaker Paul Ryan putting the price tag at between $8-14 billion.

They certainly have a right to their opinions but if they find the cost of the wall excessive without having at least the same outrage with the following Federal government projects, then please do not bother to argue your cost viewpoint with me without any outrage to the following insanity, as outlined by Jeff Poor on January 27, 2017 for the Breitbart website:

- The American taxpayer has paid $22 TRILLION, according to an analysis done by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, since the War On Poverty began in the 1960s under the Johnson administration. Fifty years ago the U.S. poverty rate was about 14%. Twenty two trillion dollars later, the U.S.Census Bureau puts the most recent poverty rate calculation at….14.3%.

That $22 trillion could have built over 1,400 border walls and at least we would have something to show for it. Right now, we have nothing to show for the $22 trillion, 50 year effort called the War On Poverty.

- The F-35 Stealth Fighter Jet Project has been going on for decades. Total research, development, and construction costs, as we have reported before, are likely over a trillion dollars already. Reuters reports that the cost now to build out the fighter jet program will possibly another $379 billion. The plane has been a colossal failure since day one, plagued with massive cost overruns, schedule delays, and malfunctioning operations. Just that $379 billion could have build about 125 border walls.

- The Federal government has a mind numbing budget annual budget of about $3.8 trillion. At that rate, it is spending about $7.2 million a MINUTE, another mind boggling, obscene number. This comes out to about $10.4 billion a DAY. Thus, building a wall at say $15 billion consists of about one and a half days of Federal government spending, less than .3% of the annual Federal budget.

- A 2015 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that in 2014 the Federal government made $59.9 billion in improper/criminal Medicare payments and $17.5 billion in improper/criminal Medicaid payments, a grand total of $76.4 billion in one year in just these two government programs. This is equivalent to about five border walls. And the assumption is that the border wall would be basically a one time cost with smaller annual maintenance requirements while the Medicare and Medicaid almost $80 billion is an annual, recurring waste of money.

And by the way, if you include all 122 Federal programs like the GAO analysis did, you will find that in 2014 the Federal government made $124.7 billion in improper and criminal payouts, up from $105.8 billion the year before. In other words, under Obama, the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of the Federal government and the money it wastes was growing steadily year over year.

- The Federal government now spends about $1.7 billion a year to maintain vacant and unused Federal buildings around the country. Not only is there an annual recurring cost just to keep these unused buildings from falling apart from neglect and decay, tens of billions of dollars have probably been already spent on them to obtain the land and buildings that now lay unused, more than enough money to build multiple walls.

- The Littoral Combat Ship program was costly to research and incurred higher than expected costs to build, with total costs estimates now around $29 billion, about twice the cost of the wall. And there is serious concern in the military and in Congress if these ships are even worth building and having with one Senator, John McCain saying that we may need to stop building and paying for thee ships that are not combat worthy or needed...after $29 billion has been spent.

- And last but not least is the Earned Income Tax Credit Program, an IRS program that paid out $69 billion to 28 million taxpayers in 2015. But according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, “The IRS estimates that 23.8 percent ($15.6 billion) of EITC payments were issued improperly in Fiscal Year 2015.” In other words, cleaning up just one year’s screw ups in the Earned Income Tax Credit program could pay for the one time costs of the wall.

Look, I am not saying the wall is a good idea or not. But if you are trying to condemn the wall because it costs too much, please consider focusing your anger at far worst wastes of Federal government money vs. an effort that does not show up in the rounding error of the Federal government over the years.

2) While the Federal government seems to have no problem spending and wasting incredible amounts of taxpayer money, the state of Illinois has the opposite problem: they are so financially strapped that while they continue to sell state lottery tickets to Illinois residents, they no longer pay off on winning lottery tickets that involve more than trivial amounts. 

Phil Velasquez, recently writing for the Chicago Tribune, reported that two Illinois lottery winners have had to file a Federal lawsuit against the state in order to collect their winnings. Rhonda Rasche, who's awaiting a $50,000 payout, and Danny Chasteen, who won $250,000, are the litigants who are seeking class-action status and the halt of lottery ticket sales. Since the state government never passed a budget, the state comptroller claims there is no legal authority to pay off winnings of over $25,000 until maybe some time in the future.

Ms. Rasche raises a very good point on the idiocy and unfairness of this bait and switch effort: "How the heck can they do this, and they're still selling tickets? If I was the one selling raffle tickets and I didn't pay, I would be sued or in jail or both." Her lawyer, Thomas Zimmerman, Jr. also makes some common sense points: "The lottery represents that you can win instantly. They fail to tell you as of July 1 they're not going to pay. But yet they continue to sell the tickets under those false pretenses."

According to the article, “The lawsuit names lottery Director B.R. Lane, the Illinois Lottery Control Board and Northstar Lottery Group as defendants. It seeks to force the lottery to pay winners of more than $25,000 with 5 percent interest and asks that the lottery be barred from paying its administrative or operational costs until the winners receive their prizes. The lawsuit alleges that dozens await more than $288 million in prizes.”

Reminds of the old saying: Government is just like the Mafia except the Mafia is profitable. Here we have the government shaking down lottery players with no ability to pay off the winners, classic bait and switch, classic political class insanity.

3) We have often reported on how Obama and the Washington political class have done a horrible job at supporting and creating robust economic growth. Despite spending over $800 billion on a (failed) economic stimulus program, enjoying record low energy costs, and enjoying trillions of fake dollars the Federal Reserve pumped into the economy, Obama could not leverage these tailwinds into anything better than these anemic economic results:

• Annual economic growth never got close to the long term trend of about 3% a year.
• Wages were more or less stagnant until the past six months or so during the entire length of the “Obama recovery.”
• Job creation could not even keep up with adult population growth.
• As a result, the labor participation rate is at 40 year lows, it has not been this low since the horrible stagflation days of the Carter administration.
• Over 94 million adult Americans are out of the workforce.
• More Americans over 65 years old are still in the workforce and the highest proportion of young American adults are still living at home since the Great Depression.
• Jobs that were created during the Obama recovery tended to be part time, contract work, and in low paying economic sectors such as food services.

And now we can add the death of the American dream for today’s millennials to the above list of failures:

• According to a Federal Reserve analysis, the median income of today’s millennials, $40,581, a full 20% lower than what Baby Boomers were earning at the same time in their lives, taking inflation into account.
• Millennials have half the net worth, a lower home ownership rate, and drastically higher student debt vs. Baby Boomers at the same age.
• College educated millennials have it a little better than the overall millennials average but they are barely doing better than high school educated Baby Boomers, indicating that a college education is less valuable than it was for Baby Boomers.
• A recent study out of Stanford University found that Baby Boomers born in 1950 had a 79% chance of making more money than their parents while those born in 1980 had only a 50% chance of making more money than their parents.

Thus, Obama and the rest of the Washington political class have been able to create economic conditions where younger Americans, despite being much more educated, have higher student debt, have less of a chance of making more than their parents, and are earning far less than the Baby Boomer generation. Nice job Washington.

That will do it for today’s insanity: economic mismanagement, government bait and switch in Illinois, and wasteful government spending that dwarf the cost of a border wall. More 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:


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

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Bonus Post: The Obama Express Gets Indicted, More Medicare Screwups, and More

Okay, I know I promised that yesterday would be the last political class insanity for this month but not unexpectedly, new insanity popped up before I finished reviewing what insanity we already had. Thus, one more day, I promise, of the latest political class insanity from the most inept set of politicians this country has ever had to endure.

1) After President Obama was elected in 2008 as the first African American President, a string of Baltimore area convenient stores renamed themselves to Obama Express in his honor. Nice gesture but the following alleged criminal activities may result in the President ruing the day when he was thusly honored:

• According to a local television report, a Federal grand jury has indicted nine retail store owners in Baltimore City and Baltimore County for ‘food stamp trafficking’ at Obama Express stores.
• The indictments claim that the retailers redeemed the food stamps for cash and split the money with food stamp recipients. 
• The amounts totaled a whopping $7 million. 
• During these illegal transactions, the retailers provided no food, this was strictly a redemption of food stamps for cash criminal activity.
• To avoid detection, the defendants/retailers often debited the funds from the card in multiple transactions over a period of hours or days, resulting in the defendants obtaining more than $6,898,000 in EBT deposits for transactions in which the stores did not provide food.
• The suspects are all facing up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Pretty ironic that the President who has spent and wasted more on food stamps and food aid than any other President in the history of this country would have a set of retailer stores named after him that allegedly abused the food aid system to the tune of $7 million worth of taxpayer wealth.

2) Most Washington politicians leave office much wealthier than when they enter office. Not only do they make more than three times what the median U.S. household income level is, reputable news sources such as “Sixty Minutes” have shown that they take unfair advantage of their positions of power and insider information to further enrich themselves in ways that would be illegal for other Americans to do so.

Given how they rigged the system, it is surprising when you find a long term Washington politician who actually has a negative net worth despite the money making opportunities available to politicians in Washington. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz somehow has a personal net worth of NEGATIVE $1.04 million. That makes Ms Wassermen-Schlutz the 3rd poorest member of Congress, according to the website Rollcall.com.

Ms. Wassermann-Schultz has two home mortgages that are taking up the bulk of her debt, totaling $750,000 for both of them. Additionally, she has more than $350,000 in personal and home equity loans, plus an enormous credit card debt of more than $50,000. 

I personally could not care less what her financial status is except for the fact that she sits on the House Appropriations Committee, a committee which has the power of appropriating money to Congress. This scares me since if she cannot manage her own personal financial life, I cannot imagine what havoc she is causing to the country’s financial status. Given the high rate of unemployment and our $17.5 TRILLON national debt, is there a direct cause and effect relationship here? 

3) The following political class insanity crosses over the line from disgraceful to disgusting. According to an April 28, 2014 article in the Chicago Tribune, a former Illinois state representative politician, Keith Farnham, was recently arrested and charged with using both personal and state-owned computers to trade hundreds of images and videos depicting child pornography and engaging in graphic online chats in which he allegedly bragged about sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl. 

The Federal criminal indictment alleges that Farnham, possessed two videos depicting child pornography on a computer that was taken from his state office in a week before his sudden resignation in March. Investigators also linked an email account used by Farnham to a online website in which he chatted with other users about his sexual preferences. Those preferences alleged included sexual encounters with young girls, preferably younger than 12 years old. Disgusting if true.

Now, I am pretty sure that this type of behavior is not rampant across every member of the political class. However, according to the one bad apple spoils them all theory, it is pretty hard to respect and follow these types of people when this behavior comes from a politician. Why child pornography has a special place in hell for those that practice it, let’s not forget the adultery, lying, thievery, and other bad behaviors that constantly emanate from our politicians and how that behavior destroys whatever respect and dignity we ever had for the profession and its members.

4) In previous posts we have reviewed the government estimates that put the criminal fraud infecting Medicare and Medicaid at between $90 and $110 billion a year. A recent Business Week article quoted a 2012 article in the Journal Of the American Medical Association that put that estimate anywhere between $30 and $98 billion a year. In either case, there are tens of billions of dollars wasted via these two Federal government programs every year, waste and fraud that has been going on for decades without the Washington political class having the will or the smarts to fix the problem.

Examples of how bad the fraud and insanity is and how deep it goes was provided elsewhere in that Business Week article:

• Medicare paid a California doctor over half a million dollars in 2012, one of many doctors the Federal government paid even though many of them had had their medical licenses revoked, had been disciplined for gross malpractice, battery, and violating drug laws.
• One cardiologist, Robert Graor, continued to bill and be paid by Medicare despite the fact he had previously been convicted, not accused, of stealing over $1 million from the Cleveland Clinic in 1995 and was barred from practicing medicine in Ohio.
• Graor simply got a new medical license in New Mexico and in 2012 billed Medicare for over $660,000.
• The California doctor mentioned above billed Medicare for $538,742 worth of services in 2012, performing 6,000 services for only 42 patients, performing on average a whopping 143 services for each patient.
• His billing records indicate that on average he spent two and a half hours with each of patient on each visit, a highly unlikely ratio.

The article points out that Medicare investigators recovered over $4 billion in misspent funds in 2013. But if the criminal fraud is actually about $98 billion, then recovering over $4 billion is less than a 5% recovery rate, making this a very lucrative and low risk criminal activity. And even if you do get caught, as the California doctor and Cleveland Clinic doctor were, you still get to go back to the Medicare trough, since according to the article, both doctors are still listed as valid options on the Medicare website.

Okay, that will definitely do it for this month’s political class insanity. A Medicare program that is riddled with stupidity and fraud, at least one sexual deviant politician arises, a Congresswoman who has substantial input to the nation’s financial dealings but cannot manage her own finances, and the Obama Express stores are indicted for food aid fraud under the food aid President of the same name. Insane.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

November, 2013 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 7: Chicago Tribune and Doctors Abandoning Obama Care, Sergeant Shultz In The Administration and More

This is our seventh post this month on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. These seven posts follow more than twenty other posts we did over the past three months trying to document, review, and quantify all of the fiascos being spawned by this legislation. 

We will finish up this month’s review over the next 2-3 days. Not because there is nothing else to talk about. On the contrary, the bad news grows every day as more glitches, failures, and lies are uncovered. We are just getting tired and depressed of the whole topic. 

It is a failure. The administration lied. It is causing millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred insurance policies and doctors. The administration lied some more. The website for signups was designed as if a bunch of chimps did the programming. The administration continued to lie. The estimated cost of the whole effort has doubled in just three years. They lied again. The logic of the whole effort will not rein in skyrocketing health care costs; if anything, it will cause them to rise quicker. They continue to lie. The legislation is depressing and suppressing economic growth. More lies. Americans are losing their jobs and having their hours cut back substantially as a result of the legislation. And yes, they continue to lie.

1) The President’s home town newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, correctly crucified the legislation and the operations of the government in mid-October:

If you’ve tried to sign up online for health coverage under the problem-plagued Obamacare exchange, our sympathies. Many people have tried to create accounts and shop for insurance under the new law. Few have succeeded. Those that have enrolled have found that the system is prone to mistakes. Some applications have been sent to the wrong insurance company.

Wait. It gets worse. Those who have managed to browse the marketplace have often been hit by sticker shock. Take Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner and single father from Carpentersville. He sought the same level of coverage on the exchange as he and his 7-year-old daughter have now, with the same insurer and the same network of doctors and hospitals. At best, Weldzius found, his monthly premium of $233 would more than double. If he chose a plan priced at the same level, the annual deductible would be $12,700, more than three times his current $3,500 deductible.

2) Journalist Ezra Klein, a longtime Obama supporter also recently got in on the shredding of the Obama Care effort:

So far, the Affordable Care Act’s launch has been a failure. Not “troubled.” Not “glitchy.” A failure. The Obama administration’s top job isn’t beating the Republicans. It’s running the government well. On this — the most important initiative they’ve launched — they’ve run the government badly. They deserve all the criticism they’re getting and more.

When your close friends and supporters are publicly calling your effort a failure, things must be really bad.

3) Three years and over $600 million dollars were not enough to create a relatively simple website to have people sign up for health insurance policies via Obama Care exchanges. When the system went live on October 1, 2013, it was a nightmare. The Obama administration promised that it would all be fixed and ready to go correctly by the end of November. 

This was a highly doubtful and probably stupid promise to make, given that those involved could not make it work in the three years head start they had. It is doubtful they can fix it in eight weeks. 

This is the view of a recent Washington Post story from November 12, 2013:

Software problems with the federal online health insurance marketplace, especially in handling high volumes, are proving so stubborn that the system is unlikely to work fully by the end of the month as the White House has promised, according to an official with knowledge of the project.

The insurance exchange is balking when more than 20,000 to 30,000 people attempt to use it at the same time — about half its intended capacity, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal information. And CGI Federal, the main contractor that built the site, has succeeded in repairing only about six of every 10 of the defects it has addressed so far.

Looks like another promise broken, another potential lie uncovered, at least in the view of the Post.

4) In late October, 2013, a poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society was made public. The survey invited 409 doctors to anonymously share opinions about the new health care law, and many took time out of their busy days to rip into Obama Care. The findings of the survey of the Society are quite distressing in that they point out another dangerous facet of Obama Care. Many doctors do not like the legislation, will not participate with the people who get health insurance through the exchanges, and many may retire out of disgust or economic necessity because of Obama Care.

Which raises a gruesome scenario: what happens if millions of Americans get insurance via Obama Care but there are no doctors to serve them? The scary results of the survey include the following statistics and quotes:

• 44% of doctors survey said they will not participate in the nation’s new health-care plan.
• Another 33% said they’re still not sure whether to become Obama Care providers.
• Only 23% of the 409 physicians in the survey said they’re taking patients who signed up through Obama Care’s health exchanges.
• “This is so poorly designed that a lot of doctors are afraid to participate,” said Dr. Sam Unterricht, president of the 29,000-member organization. “There’s a lot of resistance. Doctors don’t know what they’re going to get paid.”
• About 75% of doctors who are participated in the Obama Care effort said they “had to participate” because of existing contractual obligations with an insurer or medical provider, not because they wanted to.
• Only one in four doctors “affirmatively” chose to sign up for the exchanges.
• 77% said they had not even been given an Obama Care fee schedule to show much they’ll get paid if they sign up.
• “Obama Care wants to start right away, but who see all these new patients???? Not me,” e-mailed one doctor.
• Another said, “I plan to retire if this disaster is implemented. This is a train wreck.”
• “I refuse to participate in the exchange plans! I am completely opposed to this new law,” said a third respondent.
• One doctor was quite blunt relative to participating in Obama Care: “The solution is simple: Just say no.”
• One physician was so disgusted, he threatened to taken only cash patients going forward.
• “I am seriously considering opting out of all insurance plans including Medicare because of [ObamaCare].”
• “OBAMACARE is a disaster. I have already seen denial of medication, denial of referrals,” one doc said.
• “Any doctor who accepts the exchange is just a bad businessman/woman. Pays terrible,” argued one doctor.
• Said another MD, “Can’t imagine any doctors would be willing to work for so little money? All doctors should boycott.
• “I get screwed from insurance companies already. I refuse to get screwed any longer,” one doctor said.
• Others said they don’t have enough information to make an informed choice: “This is a joke. We are flying blind,” said one doctor.

Old medical saying: the operation was a success but the patient died. Even if Obama Care supporters and the President are able to work out all of the numerous and difficult problems with the operations of the legislation and people do indeed get health care insurance via the exchanges, what if there are only a few doctors around that will service the newly insured? The legislation was a success but the insured still died. Pitiful legislation and inability to anticipate unintended consequences.

5) Another lie and/or deception from the White House was recently reported by CNN, which up until recently was blind to anything that went wrong in the Obama administration. CNN is reporting that a month before the Obama Care website was to go live, many people in the know were warning the White House that the website was not ready to launch despite testimony from administration officials that that was not the case:

• The Obama administration was given stark warnings just one month before launch that the federal healthcare site was not ready to go live, according to a confidential report obtained by CNN.
• The caution, from the main contractor CGI, warned of a number of open risks and issues for the HealthCare.gov web site even as company executives were testifying publicly that the project had achieved key milestones.
• On Capitol Hill on Monday, Medicaid Chief Marilyn Tavenner, whose job it was to oversee the October 1 rollout of the website, said she did not foresee its problems.
• “No, we had tested the website and we were comfortable with its performance,” she said. “Now, like I said, we knew all along there would be as with any new website, some individual glitches we would have to work out. But, the volume issue and the creation of account issues was not anticipated and obviously took us by surprise. And did not show up in testing.”
• But the CGI document, which describes “top risks currently open” and “outstanding issues currently being mitigated” says the testing timeframes are “not adequate to complete full functional, system, and integration testing activities” and lists the impact of the problems as “significant.”
• Another element is listed as ” not enough time in schedule to conduct adequate performance testing” and given the highest priority.
• CGI had no comment other than to confirm authenticity of the report that also gave “the highest priority” and warns “we don’t have access to monitoring tools” and “hub services are intermittently unavailable” — short for the “site’s not working sometimes.”

The week before this CNN reporting, CNN also reported that: 

President Barack Obama didn’t know of problems with the Affordable Care Act’s website — despite insurance companies’ complaints and the site’s crashing during a test run — until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation’s health chief told CNN on Tuesday.

So all of this garbage was going on but no one told the lady in charge of the roll out and no one told the President that his signature legislation victory was about to implode? Are we to believe that Obama and Tavenner were so out of touch with reality that they thought everything was going to be fine? Or did they suppress that information to avoid political and public embarrassment for as long as possible, not telling Americans to take cover to avoid the fallout of this fiasco? 

They are either liars or ignorant, two characteristics no one wants in their leaders.

That will do it for today. Doctors saying no way to Obama Care, highly ranking administration officials either out of the loop or deceptive, a liberal press turning on the administration for its outright failures, and a likely other failure/lie when the system is still not glitch free by the promised November 30 date.

Is there any doubt that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington by the most inept set of politicians in the history of our country?

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