May, 2016, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: MInimum Wage Insanity, Buying Too Many Government Cars, and Congress Resolving A Non-Problem

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Today and for all of the insanity posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy."

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) Most of the world heard the story from last month on how aviation police in Chicago went onto a United Airlines flight and roughly and physically dragged a paying and sitting United Airlines customer from his seat to make room for a United Airlines flight crew. The poor customer ented up seriously injured, injured enough to be hospitalized.

Obviously, United Airlines put itself in the middle of a terrible public relations mess. The incident was all over the news and likely has had a significant impact on customer sales and financials. No one really wants to go on an airplane and then get physically dragged off despite paying for a ticket. 

In other words, the market is correcting terrible corporate behavior and customer service from a service provider. And, by the way, the airlines and the attacked customer have reached what is probably a lucrative settlement for the customer, costing the airlines plenty no doubt.

But of course, and unfortunately, the Washington political class thinks it needs to get involved, as outlined by an April 27, 2017 NewsMax article:

• The House Transportation Committee scheduled hearings to hear from the United Airlines CEO and other airlines about the incident.
• The official reason for the hearing is to see "what can be done to improve the flying experience for American travelers." 
• Congressman Bill Shuster, who chairs the House committee holding the hearing Tuesday, got his name in the papers when he said the committee was looking for "much-needed answers about airline customer service policies and what is being done to improve service for the flying public."

Wonderful, Congress, as always, gets into the act, after the problem arises. The market and the lawyers have already cleared up the situation, the airlines have already taken steps to avoid these types of problems in the future, and life goes on. Except in Congress where action after the fact is a fact of life. Of all the problems facing Americans today, why are we wasting Congressional resources on such a gnat of a problem that has already been addressed? Insanity.

2) One reason we have an almost $20 TRILLION national debt is that the Federal government constantly spends money on stupid and unnecessary expenses. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently uncovered a whopping waste of taxpayer money:

• Between 2011 and 2015, the Obama administration spent $1.6 billion to buy a whopping 64,500 cars at an average cost of $25,600 each.
• This comes out to an unheard 1,290 new cars per state if you prorate the purchase.
• Not only is the amount of cars mind boggling but according to the GAO, most of those cars are not used or are under used.
• The biggest offenders were the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior.
• But wasting money in the Obama administration was not restricted to buying tens of thousands of vehicles that were not needed but let’s not forget the half billion disaster called Solyndra, the bogus and failed solar panel company, the running of guns to Mexican drug cartels in the failed Fast and Furious campaign, and a myriad of other failed spending adventures.

Imagine how many hungry Americans could have been fed for that wasted $1.6 billion. Imagine how many drug addicted Americans could have been treated with that wasted $1.6 billion. Imagine how many additional teachers could have been hired with that wasted $1.6 billion. The misspending and bad priorities of the Washington political class and the Federal government continue to amaze and frazzle those that work hard to pay those taxes that get wasted with no redeeming social benefit.

3) We have often showed how at all levels of government, from local towns up through the Federal government, politicians have no economic education, common sense or strategy abilities. They institute economic policies that usually do the exact opposite of what they think will happen.

This is particularly true when it comes to drastically raising the minimum wage. The ignorant politicians think that they will be raising the living standards of the people working near the current minimum wage level. But they do not realize that wages are a major expense line of a business and when you raise the expense line of a business without raising the revenue potential of that business, bad economic things usually happen. 

And with the substantial raising of the minimum wage that bad something is usually that people get paid more but more people lose their jobs, i.e. the good news is that you got a raise, the bad news is that you lost your job. Consider how this simple economic process recently played out in Los Angeles:

• Alan Stein, writing for the US Herald website, reported that the city of LA had recently raised the local minimum wage level to $15 an hour.
• For a big company with a lot of employees, that means a big increase in its wages expense line.
• Such a big company, namely Walmart, decided that raising the minimum wage in one of its LA stores made that store so unprofitable that Walmart made the right business decision and closed the store rather than lose money operating a store at a loss.
• As a result, all of the residents who worked hard and pleaded with Walmart to put one of its stores in the residents’ Chinatown neighbor now no longer have that store, all because local politicians, wanting to look good for their minimum wage voters, have now turned those minimum wage voters into unemployed voters.
• The article also reported on how even government entities pinch pennies when their wage line raises dramatically because the University of California Berkeley recently announced that it was laying off 500 workers because it could not afford the ramping up of the state minimum wage level.

The good news is that your wage level went up, the bad news is that you lost your job because your wage level went up.

That will do it for today’s political class insanity: stupid political economic actions, still wasting billions in Washington, and Washington politicians getting involved in a minor problem they should stay out of AFTER the problem has already been resolved. 

More insanity to come in the coming days.

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

December, 2015, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Broken Pormises,Broken Economics, and More

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 health care 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 health care 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 health care 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 but with a big exception: 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 health care 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 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. Below we start with this month’s update of Obama Care, the worst piece of Washington legislation ever passed.

1) We have often pointed out that Obama Care is a disaster when it comes to employment and economic growth. A recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that reality: “Some people would choose to work fewer hours; others would leave the labor force entirely or remain unemployed for longer than they otherwise would.” In total, the CBO estimates that the legislation will now shrink the total U.S. workforce by just under 1% because of the law or about 2 million full time jobs. 

Thus, the taxes, fines, and aspects of the legislation will cause Americans to make difficult financial decisions that will affect not only their own personal careers and identity but will also reduce the economic vitality and tax base of the country. Compare this dismal reality vs. what Obama Care supporters once promised:

• Nancy Pelosi stated confidently, and incorrectly in 2011, that: “Four million jobs will be created by the legislation when it is fully in effect.” Thus, she was only off by six million, the four million jobs that did not materialize and the two million jobs that will be destroyed by the law.
• In 2010, Pelosi said that Obama Care would create 400,000 jobs “almost immediately.”
• When those two idiotic forecasts turned out to be idiocy, Obama Care supporters tried to get out of forecasting business and weakly argued that Obama Care would give Americans more time to spend with their family since they would not be working as much. Pathetic.

Not only did the Obama Care cheerleaders get the whole unemployment/employment picture wrong, they also screwed up the following predictions:

• This law did not create jobs as Democrats promised.
• This law did not reduce emergency room visits as Democrats promised.
• This law did not “bend the cost curve” as Democrats promised.
• This law did not allow millions of Americans to keep their preferred doctors, hospitals,and health care plans as Democrats promised.
• This law did not deliver low cost health insurance plans to over 20 million uninsured Americans by 2016 as Democrats promised.
• This law did not result in enough younger and healthier Americans signing up for Obama Care policies as Democrats promised.
• This law did not set up two dozen vibrant health insurance co-ops across the country offering low cost/high quality health insurance coverage as Democrats promised. In fact, over half of the two dozen have already folded.

Despite these obvious and real failures, Hillary Clinton, the front runner to become the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee next year proclaimed that the law is "working." Not in this reality is it working, makes you wonder what color the sky is in Hillary’s world if she thinks that the myriad of Obama Care failures somehow constitutes “working.”

2) Over the past couple of months we have extensively reviewed how over half of the insurance co-ops that were set up across the country under Obama Care have already gone out of business because they were financial failures. These failures have probably resulted in over a $1 billion of taxpayer wealth that will never be recovered.

Recent news reports provide a quick review on how the New York co-op, the Health Republic Insurance of New York, was such a disaster:

• The Greater New York Hospital Association claims that the now defunct co-op still owes it at least $165 million.
• The Medical Society of New York says that 64% of its doctors in a 900 doctor survey say they are still owed money from the co-op.
• These problems are in addition to various criminal investigations of corruption and fraud that are ongoing in the state regarding this co-op’s operations.

Disaster is too mild an adjective to describe what went on with taxpayer money in New York.

3) Not to be mistaken with the co-ops, over a dozen states set up online state exchange websites where customers could go online and choose an insurance policy for themselves and their families from insurance companies that sold insurance through the Obama Care exchanges. Many of these state exchanges have already collapsed, with at least one collapsing before it signed up a single Obama Care customers.

Recently, Congressional hearings were convened which looked into the how the American taxpayer, via the Obama administration, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on state level exchanges that have already collapsed and have been abandoned. The hearings discussed a recent Government Accountability Office audit that found that none of the remaining state exchanges are “fully operational” despite five years of effort and $1.45 billion in information technology spending of taxpayer wealth.

Five years, $1.45 billion and NOT fully operational yet. Complete incompetence at every possible level.

More disasters every month including the findings today that the law is hurting economic growth, killing careers and job choices, has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, and is still a mess after five years of pathetically trying to get it right. More disasters in the coming days.

July, 2014 Update, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 2: An Incompetent Enrollment Process, Likely Cost Increases In Florida, and More

Yes, the world has been a mess lately. Fighting in the Gaza Strip, downed airliners, Russians fighting Ukrainians, the economy still stagnant, Iraq begin torn apart, Syrian civil war still killing thousands, veterans still not getting the proper medical treatment, a border that is a humanitarian crisis, etc. In the background though, has been the continuing and unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

We have had to devote many posts every month to this fiasco since last August. The fallout from the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by Washington just keeps on giving and messing up Americans’ lives. This month is no exception. We will probably need most of this week to cover it all, that is how bad the law is many, many months after it was rolled out in such a disastrous manner last fall. 

As with previous months, we will likely stop talking about it this month not because we ran out of material but because it can get so depressing going over the damage the legislation is doing to lives, health, freedom and the economy.

1) Besides the big problem Obama Care is facing that we discussed yesterday, namely that a court ruling may have gutted the main thrust of the legislation which was to give out subsidies to low income Americans to purchase overpriced and under featured Obama Care insurance policies, the logistics and operations of the entire effort continues to be a disaster.

The General Accountability Office of the Federal government recently announced that it had completed a sting operation on the sign up process of the Obama Care process. What they found was very discouraging, but not surprising, given how poorly every other aspect of failed to meet even minimal standards of quality:

• Despite using totally fake ids, undercover GAO investigators were able to obtain taxpayer-subsidized health care coverage in 11 of 12 attempts, according to Associated Press reporting.
• This latest disgrace and dysfunction appears focused on Obama Care call centers that handle applications from those people who were unable able to enroll in the system via online the online exchanges.
• Members of Congress had some correct if cynical, remarks about non-existent people being able to get enrolled in Obama Care policies. Congressman Dave Camp said the GAO finding is just more proof that Obama Care is rife with “incompetence, waste and the potential for fraud.” Senator Orrin Hatch said: “Obama Care is working really well — for those who don’t exist.”

It seems ironic and pitiful that many of our real, living, breathing veterans cannot get basic medical care from the Federal government but fictitious people have no trouble getting health insurance coverage from the same Federal government. Talk about incompetence.

2) Not surprisingly, more states are finding out that the premiums likely to be paid next year on Obama Care policies will be much higher than today’s premiums. Kaiser Health News recently did a story on what is going on in Florida relative to the latest cost increase news. Highlights of their report include the following:

• The top executive of Florida Blue, the state’s largest health insurance carrier, recently went public with the announcement that his Obama Care customers will see an increase in their policy costs in 2015.
• Apparently, the company, which picked up the most Obama Care enrollees in the state, were stuck with a larger percentage of older and sicker patients than they expected.
• In addition to not getting enough younger and healthy enrollees, the company ended up paying more than expected for people seeking more expensive health services: “We will be under tremendous financial pressure initially given the age, risk profile and high utilization of the new membership. It is far from clear that large enrollment in the marketplace is a financially beneficial place to be.” 
• In other words, expect your Obama Care policy premiums to go up next year because we are getting killed financially by those same policies.
• Florida Blue has not yet gone public with its 2015 rate increases, that information will be made available in a few weeks but the news does not sound good for none or minimal rate hikes.
• About 23% of those who bought Obama Care policies from Florida Blue this year were in the 18-to-34 age category, far below the national rate of 28% and farther below the 40% threshold that the Federal government said was needed for the entire Obama Care process to be viable.

Another state whose residents will probably not see their annual health care costs go down $2,500 as promised by the President. But that should not come as a surprise since we have not seen ANY state whose health care costs went down enough to justify that claim.

3) Given how poorly every aspect of Obama Care has unfolded so far, is there any hope that it will work itself out for the greater good over the next decade or so? If you believe the latest forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office, the answer to that question is not good. 

Remember, one of the utmost, primary goals of Obama Care was to get affordable health insurance coverage for every American. That is why it is officially called the “Affordable Healthcare Act.” But that primary goal will not be attained, even ten years from now, according to the Congressional Budget Office‘s April forecast of what will happen to enrollment in health care plans from 2015 to 2024:

• By 2024, about 31 million Americans will still remain uninsured.
• Starting with an estimate that 56 million Americans did not have health insurance coverage prior to Obama Care, that number will be reduced by 25 million people who will purchase Obama care coverage in the exchanges in the next ten years.
• 13 million more Americans will gain health insurance coverage coverage through the dysfunctional Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance Program as a result of Obama Care.
• 7 million Americans will lose health insurance coverage from their employees as a result of Obama Care.
• 5 million fewer Americans will carry individual coverage directly from an insurer.
• Add all of these additions and subtractions up, account for rounding, and we find that the official CBO estimate forecasts 31 million Americans will still be uninsured in 2024.

Even more discouraging, the CBO estimates that the reduction in uninsured will come at a cost to the country, its taxpayers, and its economy of $1.8 TRILLION over those ten years. If we divide the net gain in insured Americans, about 25 million, into the cost of insuring them, $1.8 TRILLION, simple math shows that it will cost an amazing and mind numbing $75,000 per person to insure those under an Obama Care policy.

It is an amazing and stupefying cost and yet, despite the high cost, more than half of today’s uninsured Americans are still uninsured ten years from now. Failure is the only way to describe such a high cost to meet less than half of the overall and primary goal of the entire Obama Care operation. There has to be a simpler, more effective way.

4) We have often made the case in past Obama Care posts that the legislation, as it is written, hinders economic and employment growth in so many ways. That reality was reinforced recently n a Heritage Foundation interview with Billie Baggett of IHT Staffing, a temp agency located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Under financial and work hour pressure to comply with the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Baggett claims many South Carolina businesses are cutting back by hiring more part-time rather than full time employees. He points out that while unemployment levels have dropped, to pre-recession levels at 6.1% nationally, his staffing agency work in South Carolina shows that this number may be skewed. Many employees have returned to work, but in new part time positions.

He blames Obama Care for the shrinking work week and the growth in part time vs. full time hiring: “I would say 90% of our employers, businesses today, are hiring part-time as opposed to full-time, because of the Affordable Healthcare Act.” 

A primary provision of the 2009 law, the employer mandate, requires all business with more than 50 workers to provide healthcare benefits to full-time employees. The law defines a full time employee as any employee who works more than 30 hours a week. While the Obama administration has put off this employer mandate until 2015, Baggett believes that it still discourages business from filling full time posts: “It’s not something a corporation wants to do.” 

James Sherk, a senior economic analyst at The Heritage Foundation, agrees and believes that the Obama Care employer mandate has already affected the job market, the economy, and predicts additional downsides in the future: “Obama Care will further reduce hours by increasing the costs of hiring full-time employees while discouraging workers from working full-time. Fewer work hours will impede income mobility for low-wage workers.”

That will do it for today. More of the same for those affected already by Obama Care: faulty and criminal fraud-ready sign up processes, likely insurance premium cost increases in Florida, failure to reach fully insurance status in ten years despite an astronomical cost of failing to do so, and the continuing proof that Obama Care is stifling earnings, work hours, and the economy.

And we still have a lot more disasters to cover in this month’s Obama Care disaster updates.

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

April,, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 8: Comcast Goes Monopoly, Drug Smugglers Go Underground, Kids Go Hungry, and More

This is our record setting eighth post this month that covers the continuing ineptness and wastefulness of the American political class. Never before at any point in this blog’s history have we had to dedicate eight days to reviewing the monthly insanity and idiocy of the American class. It is a disturbing trend that shows no sign of slowing down, resulting in continued wasted taxpayer wealth and lost liberties for Americans.

1) It is not easy to get a nation $17 TRILLION in debt but the Washington political class has managed to do just that. It took a combination of efforts including ineffective and inefficient programs and projects, criminal fraud, crony capitalism, lax oversight, etc. 

But according to a recent General Accountability Office (GAO) report, massive redundancy and duplication of effort within the sprawling Federal bureaucracy is also a major and annually recurring problem. In their latest report, the GAO found that (in their own words):

• In their 2014 report, GAO presents 64 actions that the executive branch or Congress could take to improve efficiency and effectiveness across 26 areas that span a broad range of government missions and functions. 
• GAO suggests 19 actions to address evidence of fragmentation, overlap, or duplication in 11 NEW [my emphasis, I.e. things are getting worse] areas across the government missions of defense, health, income security, information technology, and international affairs. 
• GAO also presents 45 opportunities for executive branch agencies or Congress to take actions to reduce the cost of government operations or enhance revenue collections for the Treasury across 15 areas of government.

An unbelievable portrait of how out of control the Federal government bureaucracy has become and how much it is likely costing the American taxpayer.

But this wasteful redundancy and duplication has been going on for years and the Washington political class has done little or nothing to stop it. Consider previous findings from past GAO analyses:

• The Federal government spent $18 billion on 47 different employment and training programs in 2009. 
• The Federal government spent $13.3 billion on 45 different early learning and child care programs in 2010. 
• The Federal government spent $4.5 billion in 2012 on 76 different drug abuse prevention and treatment programs.

that, my children, is one way to get to a $17 TRILLION national debt with very little to show for it.

2) There is little doubt that the country is in the middle of an obesity problem. The majority of American adults are either overweight or obese. Our kids are not much better, so any intelligent effort to make our kids and adults healthier and less overweight is a good idea.

The key words are “intelligent effort.” Intelligent is not usually an adjective that applies to Federal policies and programs and in this area that is also true. First Lady Michelle Obama and other politicians in Washington pushed through the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010. This legislation was supposed to make kids happily eat healthier food by establishing one nationwide standard of menus and eating requirements in every school across the nation.

A number of problems quickly arose with this one size fits all dictatorial approach:

- First, different kids have different needs. For example, athletes immediately found out that they were not getting enough calories under the new Federal guidelines to be effective on the athletic fields after school. 

- Second, since underlying eating habits were not addressed and changed, forcing kids to eat healthy without changing those habits and perceptions was surely going to fail.

- Third, by not changing the underlying approach to eating, kids ended up not eating much of anything under what the Federal government prescribed. As just one example, the Federal regulations from the legislation that forced specific, standardized diet requirements on all school districts have resulted in at least $100,000 dollars worth of food usually landing in school dumpsters every day in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Why? Simply because the kids simply do not eat it. This daily waste comes out to a whopping $18 million dollars of food thrown away each year, just in LA.

A link containing kids’ reactions to the new food guidelines can be accessed at:

http://www.teaparty.org/students-fed-michelle-obamas-school-lunch-overhaul-38763/

If the kids do not eat anything because of the new one size fits all Federal guidelines, we end up with undernourished kids and wasted food and taxpayer dollars. And frankly, given what the kids are saying and the pictures they are sharing, I am not sure that I would eat the Federal diet either.

Another government program that maybe had good intentions but as usual, was botched in the implementation, wasting taxpayer wealth and making the original problem worse.

3) In an earlier post in this month’s insanity series we pointed out the results of a recent Rand Corp. study that estimated Americans spend about $109 billion a year on illegal drugs of all kinds. This booming, $2 billion a week business still thrives even though the Washington political class and the Federal government have been waging a losing “war on drugs” for over four decades.

Rather than step back and take a look at this losing effort and developing a better, more effective, more compassionate, and less expensive approach to drug addiction, as outlined by Step 26 in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” the politicians in Washington continue down the same expensive and destructive war on drugs path.

As if the $109 billion market size for illegal drugs was not enough to convince them to do something different, consider what was recently found out west relative to the war on drugs. According to an April 5, 2014 Associated Press report:

• Two drug-smuggling tunnels with actual rail systems stretching hundreds of yards across the U.S.-Mexico border were recently discovered by U.S. law enforcement officials.
• A 73-year-old woman, Glennys Rodriguez from the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista, was charged with helping run one of the tunnel operations, according Federal authorities.
• No illegal drugs were found in connection with the tunnels, which linked warehouses in Tijuana, Mexico, and the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, according to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations.
• One tunnel stretched about 600 yards and was equipped with lighting, a crude rail system and wooden trusses.
• The tunnel entrance on the U.S. side ended inside a warehouse where a cement cap covered a 70-foot shaft. 
• The shaft had a pulley system to hoist goods into the building.
• The second tunnel stretches more than 700 yards and was built with more sophisticated features including a multi-tiered electric rail system and ventilation equipment.
• Federal authorities also recently shut down a third, incomplete drug-smuggling tunnel in the same area.
• That tunnel is approximately 449 feet long with about 60 feet in Mexico and 389 feet in the U.S.

When 73 year old grannies are going underground to outsmart you in the war on drugs, maybe it is time to change your views and strategies relative to addiction. The presence of at least three drug smuggling tunnels and a $109 billion market should be overwhelming proof to Washington politicians to do something different.

However, given how out of touch they are with the real world and their inability to do anything effective, four more decades from now we will likely still be living an old Einstein quote that applies to the war on drugs: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 

We have been doing the same thing for forty plus years in the lost war on drugs and expecting different results, which makes us all insane, especially those politicians leading the lost cause.

4) Comcast is the largest U.S. cable company in the country. It is currently asking the Federal government’s permission to buy the second largest cable company in the country, Time Warner. This will create an incredibly large and dominate player in the cable television and Internet markets, a player who could reduce competition and raise prices for customers, given its large size.

In an article in Business Week from its March 10, 2014 issue, Michael Copps, a former Democratic member of the FCC and the only member to oppose the merger stated the obvious risks of such a marriage: “There’s a strong case to be made why this merger shouldn’t be approved. it’s just so much power for one company to amass, and its not just cable. They’re a broadband company, they’re a broadcast company, they’re new media, they’re old media, they’re telecom, they’re everything.”

He makes a strong case. When AT&T recently tried to merge with a major competitor, T-Mobile, the Federal government correctly shut it down for anti-trust reasons. This Comcast and Time Warner merger should also be shut down and permission denied for the same market monopoly reasons.

But, not so fast, logic and the good of Americans is likely to take a back seat in this situation. According to a recent article on the Against Crony Capitalism website, quoting a piece from the National Review:

Comcast, which employs more than 100 lobbyists, spent almost $19 million last year on lobbying activities. Its president and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a golf buddy of President Obama’s, and a Democratic donor who has contributed thousands of dollars not only to the president’s campaigns, but also to the Democratic party of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the DNC Services Corporation, and to Steny Hoyer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bob Casey. Roberts’s executive vice president, David Cohen, is a former aide to Democratic bigwig Ed Rendell. Cohen skirts lobbying regulations through loopholes, has raised more than $2 million for Obama since 2007, and in 2011 hosted a DNC fundraiser at which the president called him “friend.” Cohen has visited the White House 14 times since 2010, including two visits to the Oval Office. He attended the recent dinner for President Hollande of France.

Ever wonder why NBC and MSNBC are so pro-Obama and biased in their reporting? Do not think for a minute that this type of crony capitalism does not creep into their news reporting.

Given Comcast’s massive lobbying efforts, their schmoozing with Obama and his political allies, their fund raising for certain types of politicians within our corrupted campaign financing processes, and the skewing of the news to favor this administration, there is no doubt that Comcast will get what it wants. And the rest of America will end up paying higher prices for all forms of electronic communications while the political class goes about their merry and enriching ways, courtesy of Comcast dollars and influence.

Eight posts and we are still not done with the latest insanity. Hopefully, we can end the insanity tomorrow before we all go 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

February, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 3: State Health Exchanges Imploding, Revolution Abrewing, and Nancy Pelosi's False Hopes

This is our third post this month in what has turned out to be a monthly review of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This is shaping up as the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Washington political class. It has failed in so many ways that it is almost impossible to keep up with the ongoing failures as they crop up. The first review this month can be viewed at the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/02/february-2014-unfolding-disaster-of.html

For a good thorough review of all the other failures, please access the following site:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/01/janaury-2014-unfolding-disaster-that-is.html

Detailed findings and research that support the conclusion of failures in this site can be viewed by going through the past month’s Obama Care posts, which have been running mid-month every month since last August.

Today starts another day of failures:

1) We have extensively reviewed the many failures of the Federal health exchange website that the Federal Heath and Human Services organization has been running, or trying to run, since late last year. Slow turnaround times, identity theft, criminals hired as navigators, incorrect information, etc. have been just a few of the many problems and disasters of the Federal website for Obama Care.

But some of the state operated Obama Care health exchange websites apparently are having some serious problems also. The health exchange websites in Oregon, Maryland, and Massachusetts have been such dismal failures in different ways that they are all coming under scrutiny and review for both for functional failures and for escalating and obscene costs, costs that American taxpayers are funding. This story and the details below come from recent reporting done by The Hill reporters.

In Oregon:

• Federal government Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee formally requested that the Government Accountability Office do a detailed review of the $304 million in Federal funds the state government in Oregon received to fund its exchange.
• So far, this has not been a good investment or a well managed project since the Oregon exchange has yet to enroll one person online, despite the infusion of over $300 million Federal taxpayer dollars.
• Not a single enrollee online. Almost seems like you have to try to be this bad in order to be this incompetent.
• In the face of this unmitigated disaster, the state’s governor, John Kitzhaber remains upbeat: "Already more than 225,000 Oregonians have enrolled in quality, affordable coverage, including more than 35,000 in private insurance plans."
• I guess he can afford to be upbeat since most of the $300 million spent for nothing by his state employees did not come from Oregon residents, it came from the rest of the country so no problem that it fell flat on its face.
• Also, while he may be excited by the paper enrollment numbers, what he really meant to say is that 190,000 Oregonians enrolled in Medicaid while ONLY 35,000 enrolled in private insurance programs. 
• This is a mix of customers that will destroy the Obama Care business case and financials since those hundreds of thousands Medicaid enrollees will be a net loss to the business case while the only tens of thousands of private insurance enrollees will not pay in enough via premiums to offset the free riders who signed up for Medicaid

In Maryland:

• Maryland's Obama Care health exchange is so bad state officials have been trying to decide whether to dump the state-run website and direct Maryland residents to the Federal health care exchange, HealthCare.gov. 
• This is like telling people to get off of the Hindenburg and get aboard the Titanic, given how bad the Federal website has been for Obama Care’s performance.
• House Republican lawmakers also want an investigation into this state exchange disaster, given that Maryland also got a large chunk of taxpayer money to build a website that the state may now junk for nothing in return on the taxpayer investment: "By the end of the year, over $100 million federal dollars will have been spent on a project that should have cost much less, and doesn't work," Congressmen Andy Harris of Maryland and Jack Kingston of Georgia, an accusation included in a letter they to Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson. "As a result of the fact that Maryland appears willing to continue to waste tens of millions of more federal dollars, we ask that the investigation start immediately."
• As with what happened with the Federal Obama Care website, there are accusations flying relative to the Maryland exchange website that state lawmakers and state government administration officials ignored warnings from auditors that the Maryland site was critically flawed and not ready for primetime at the time it was to be launched, a decision that resulted in more Federal taxpayer money being wasted for no reason at all.
• Besides an investigation, the Congressmen also took the additional and much needed step to see if Health and Human Services could actually recoup some of the Federal funds from the state of Maryland since the funds never accomplished what they were supposed to do.

In Massachusetts:

• Their state level Obama Care health exchange is also having serious problems with the entire Obama Care operation in Massachusetts having the lowest Obama Care enrollment results in the nation.
• Apparently the stress of failure is getting to the executives running this dismal state operation since The Boston Globe reported last week that the Massachusetts exchange director, Jean Yang, was reduced to tears during a board meeting that focused on the problems the agency was facing. 
• The Massachusetts operation is currently trying to work through 50,000 paper applications. 
• "These people came here to lead and innovate, and instead they're doing manual workarounds, and they are embarrassed to tell friends and family that they work for the Health Connector," Yang said, according to The Globe

Three different states, three different embarrassing disasters, one single overarching problem, namely Obama Care. Again, how incompetent can these operations and executives be? On the surface it appears like they are trying to screw up the works despite having had three years and hundreds of millions of dollars to get ready for the roll out. Nothing works, nobody is held accountable and Americans suffer.

And the most serious problem has probably not yet hit. If these three states are all like Massachusetts and are each working through tens of thousands of paper applications because of their website disasters, many people out there somewhere in America think they have health insurance today. 

But in reality, their application for health insurance has not been processed yet. It is 45,000 from the top of the list. And that person, that 45,000th person is going to get deathly ill, find out the hard way they do not have Obama Care insurance, and the results could be fatal. That is the real disaster…in addition to squandering billions of dollars and years of prep time for nothing.

2) The Capitalism Institute recently provided an update of how many states around the country are fighting the implementation of Obama Care within their state borders:

• South Carolina is on track to become the first state that bans Obama Care altogether. 
• Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma have introduced and/or passed similar legislation with more states to come. 
• Multiple legal scholars and Constitution experts agree that states do, in fact, have the right to ignore Obama Care‘s tenets and provisions. 
• Many of the country’s top doctors and hospitals are opting out of the legislation. 
• This includes well over 70% of doctors in California.

Which raises a very interesting scenario: if enough states ignore Obama Care, if enough top doctors ignore Obama Care, if enough top hospitals ignore Obama Care and given the lack luster enrollee results among Americans, especially younger ones, does Obama Care even continue to exist? Never have a I seen such a horrid piece of legislation that citizens and states are willing to buck the dictates from the Federal government and basically go on with life like Washington does not exist. 

And that is a true measure of how bad this law is. 

3) We will close today’s review of Obama Care disasters with a little nostalgia. Back in 2010, my favorite politician of all time, Nancy Pelosi (and I say that with the deepest sarcasm possible) enlightened us by telling us how wonderful Obama Care was going to be: “It’s about jobs…It will create 4 million jobs, 400,000 almost immediately. And this legislation is about innovation, it’s about prevention, it’s about wellness."

Fact check:

• It has not created a net gain in jobs, it has been a job killer. We have previously chronicled how over 300 entities have already cut jobs, cut hours, and cut hiring as a result of the legislation.
• Employers are scared to death of what Obama Care will do their profitability and survivability so they are keeping a lid on their fixed costs such as salary and not investing in their businesses or themselves or hiring more people. 
• The Obama administration rarely sees monthly job creation at levels above 150,000, never mind 400,000 immediately and 4 million in total.
• We have seen zero innovation from this law. In fact, its bungling of the website development, despite over $600 million and three years lead time, would be the furthest thing imaginable away from innovation.
• There is very little in the legislation with regards to prevention and wellness, it is primarily about wealth redistribution from the younger generation to the older generation in order to pay for the whole process. If there are positive aspect of prevention and wellness within the bill, how come Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are not upfront touting those benefits?
• And even if those aspects exist, there are no good to anyone if Obama Care policies continue to be so expensive since no one can afford them and thus, cannot avail themselves of what little wellness and prevention there is.

Her words from her mouth back in 2010 can be seen at the following link:

http://www.therightnews.net/flashback-nancy-pelosi-claims-obamacare-will-create-4-million-jobs-400000-almost-immediately/

Lies, deception or ignorance? You decide. But we all now know that the color of the sky in her world when she uttered these words is certainly different then the storm clouds in our skies today, all because of Obama Care.

More bad news 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:

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http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
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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 

July, 2013 Obama Care Update, Part 3: Procedures Not Ready, Health Care Costs Going Up, and Health Exchanges Only Imagneary

This is our third in a series of updates we are doing to cover the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. The first update this month covered the “dirty dozen” major failures of Obama Care to date, as identified by the Heritage Foundation. The second update covered a set of stories on how Obama Care is negatively affecting the working hours, take home pay, and insurance coverage of Americans among other disasters. Those two posts can be accessed starting at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-obama-care-update-number-1.html

Let us continue to today with some more horror stores, courtesy of the Federal government and Obama Care:

1) The Washington Free Beacon news organization ran an article on June 18, 2013 that covered a Senate hearing on the impact on health care costs of Obama Care. The bottom line conclusion from those present at the hearing, both those testifying and the Senators on the panel, is that Obama Care will NOT bring down health care costs as promised:

• According to the article, the committee scheduled the hearing to discuss Steven Brill’s 26,000-word article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” which investigated why health care costs continue to skyrocket.
• Brill, who is a writer for Time, testified at the hearing that while Obama Care may end up extending coverage to some uninsured Americans, it does not include steps and processes  to actually curb rising health insurance costs or the cost of providing medical services:
• “Obama Care does not address the fundamental problem, which is the high prices.” 
• Brill testified that health care providers, drug companies, and other health care entities charge widely varying and outrageously high amounts for the same procedure or product, such as one hospital billing a patient $77 for a box of gauze pads. This trend that will not be arrested or corrected by Obama Care.
• Senator Bill Nelson of the Senate panel identified another unintended consequence of Obama Care. It is the consolidation of health care firms, a trend that results in fewer and fewer competitors in the marketplace, hindering the intent to drive down costs: “It’s a way of consolidating power by he who owns all the providers of services. This is contrary to the kind of competition we were trying to create in Obama care.”
• Senate panel Committee Chairman Max Baucus supported Nelson’s conclusion by noting that the unintended consolidation of health care entities appears to result in nicer facilities with higher prices, higher salaries and more buildings but not lower health care costs. 

So, more experts and DEMOCRATIC politicians agree, that one of the major selling points of Obama Care, the reduction of health care costs, is not happening and is unlikely to happen. Surprise, surprise. 

Why will it no reduce costs? Because as we pointed out in the second post listed above, Obama Care never understood the root causes of our rising health care costs and thus, never adequately addressed them.

2) On June 19, 2013, the General Accountability Office of the Federal government published two reports confirming the Obama Administration is ill-equipped and ill-prepared for the implementation of the federally operated health insurance and the Small Business Health Option Program (SHOP) health care exchanges created under Obama Care. The reports state the programs’ implementation delays and missed deadlines show potential for “implementation challenges going forward.”

How bad are the challenges? Consider the words and findings of the GAO reports themselves, as documented by the Minority Report blog on June 19, 2013:

§ States have yet to complete 85 percent of the required program activities. GAO found that, "…states had between 16 and 52 key activities remaining to be completed, or on average, about 85 percent of their total key activities [actions that must be completed before October 1, 2013]. "

• Core functions of both federal and state-based exchanges have yet to be completed. According to GAO, “[The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services] (CMS) has many key activities remaining to be completed across the core exchange functions – eligibility and enrollment, including development and implementation of the data hub; program management; and consumer assistance.”
• With less than four months before open enrollment, any other missed deadlines threaten the timely establishment of exchanges. The GAO reported that “…much remains to be accomplished by CMS and states within a relatively short amount of time.” The reports also noted that missed deadlines closer to the start of enrollment could impact the establishment of exchanges.
• HHS has yet to complete critical steps needed to determine eligibility for credits and cost-sharing subsidies. GAO found that, “CMS … still needed to complete steps to enable FFEs to be ready to test development of key eligibility and enrollment functions, including calculation of advance payments of the premium tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies, verification of consumer income, and verification of citizenship or lawful presence.”
• Key data sharing agreements between the federal exchange and its federal and state partners have yet to be complete. GAO reported that “…several critical tasks remain to be completed before the October 1, 2013, implementation milestone.” These tasks include Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between CMS and state and federal agencies, which are necessary to make eligibility determinations.
• Consumer assistance and outreach activities to individuals and employers has been delayed. GAO found that, “CMS has yet to complete many activities related to consumer assistance and outreach and some initial steps were behind schedule.” Such activities not yet complete include “…the federal call center, healthcare.gov website, media outreach, and consumer complaint tracking systems for the [Federally Facilitated] FF-SHOP and [Federally Facilitated Exchanges] FFEs.”
• The scope of CMS involvement in exchange activities remains unclear.If a state does not “make adequate progress,” CMS is expected to step in. According to the GAO, CMS has yet to grant final approval for any state seeking to operate an exchange. The GAO also notes that “some of these exchanges may be under conditional approval when enrollment begins.”

§ A key SHOP program to provide outreach and assistance to small employers and employees has been delayed. GAO found that “[f]unding awards and development of a training curriculum for a key SHOP program that will provide outreach and enrollment assistance to small employers and employees has been delayed by about 2 months.”

Again, listen to the adjectives used to describe the status of Obama Care’s implementation: delayed, yet to be completed, missed deadlines, unclear. Even if they somehow get this contraption in the air in October, does anyone really think it will fly for very long before it crashes under is own weight and absurdity? Unclear, delayed, yet to be completed gives one no faith that this is going to work. 

The full article can be accessed at:

http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2013/06/19/gao-confirms-obamacare-implemantation-behind-schedule-facing-challenges/

Although I have not included any of the Congressional member comments here, they can be accessed at the site listed. However, their comments point out the obvious: this is indeed a train wreck about to happen on so many levels.

Another day and another set of documented Obama Care failures. And the bad news is that we are not yet done, more bad news 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