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I guarantee this will be the FINAL Obama Care unfolding disaster review for this month. It seems that as we get closer and closer to the rollout of major Obama Care components, the bad news, dreadful implications, and idiocy are spewing forth ever more quickly. As soon as we get a few blog posts completed, more bad news shows up.
Our first entry into this month’s Obama Care review can be accessed at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
The final disasters can be read below:
1) According to a website for Federal employees called FedSmith.com, a survey that the website managers recently conducted found that less than 3% of U.S. Federal workers want to give up their current health plans and join Obamacare. 92.3% of Federal workers think that they should continue with their current health insurance program, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Just 2.8% think they should be required to join Obama Care exchanges and 4.9% are not sure.
“There is apparently little debate among the Federal workforce. Federal employees do not want to be part of the new system… Employees who are already retired have a much stronger negative reaction to being moved to a new system,” FedSmith.com noted.
Wow, I thought Obama Care was supposed to be this great health care insurance program that every American would want to be a part of. Apparently not, when a whopping 92.3 % of Federal workers say “no thanks.”
And given that a Congressman, Dave Camp, has proposed legislation that would force ALL Federal employees off of their current health care insurance program and onto Obama Care, serious petition writing is going on within the Federal bureaucracy with Federal employees to oppose such a move. You cannot say Obama Care is a good thing for American when over 90% of those working in the government itself say it is not a good thing for them.
2) The Personal Liberty Digest website did a nice job of summarizing what Obama Care really is in a posting to its website on August 14, 2013:
- Obama Care puts you into a system of medicine that treats symptoms rather than providing cures.
- Obama Care doses you down in pharmaceuticals that often do more harm than good and cause more symptoms that must be treated by more pharmaceuticals.
- Obama Care limits your treatment options and takes decisions that should be made between you and your trusted doctors and puts them in the hands of a massive new Federal bureaucracy.
- Obama Care was written by the medical-industrial complex to ensure a steady stream of new customers and guaranteed payment from government coffers— is fraught with little nuggets showing that the whole system as designed is a huge fiasco.
- And Obama Care is probably is the biggest fraud perpetrated on the American people since Social Security:
- The IRS, which was recently uncovered to be sharing private data of Tea Party group members and conservative political donors, is in charge of compiling and securing data on all Americans and ensuring compliance.
- Security testing for the Obamacare database, entrusted to the aforementioned and obviously criminal IRS, is months behind schedule and won’t be completed before Obamacare kicks in this fall.
- IRS employees, tasked with overseeing Obamacare, have asked to be exempted.
- That promise “If you like your current health plan, you can keep it,” was a lie.
- Congress and Congressional staff have been exempted, meaning what’s good enough for you isn’t good enough for them.
- Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is shaking down companies the HHS might regulate.
- Despite the delay in implementation of the employer mandate (an unConstitutional action by Obama fiat), employer fines will continue to grow at rates far greater than inflation.
- Employers are increasingly resorting to part-time workers to avoid Obamacare fines.
- Young people, considered the linchpin of the Obamacare Ponzi scheme because they will be paying into the system but using few of the benefits, are learning what it’s going to cost them and are saying they want no part of it.
- It is causing insurance premiums to rise exponentially.
- The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates employers will pay around $106 billion in penalties between 2014 and 2022 for not meeting the law’s insurance requirements. That’s $106 billion employers won’t have for growing their businesses and creating more job opportunities.
- The “Cadillac tax” provision included in the bill is going to send more cities, already struggling with high-cost pension plans and insurance coverage for its employees, into bankruptcy.
- A rule establishing a maximum limit in the out-of-pocket expenses people may have to spend on their own health care will be delayed until 2015. This means those with chronic illnesses like cancer and severe disabilities may incur thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket expenses.
- More Americans than ever—a significant majority–oppose it.
- And hundreds of favored businesses and unions have received exemptions that aren’t available to everyone.
We have covered most of these fiascos already but it is nice to have them so nicely summarized in one place. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong? Three years after this disaster was enacted, this is where we are less than 50 days before a major piece of it is supposed to go live. Pathetic.
3) This latest disgrace from Obama Care is just now getting some news attention so I do not know where it is going but it is a very troubling story. A South Carolina state legislative bill recently passed the house in the state government of South Carolina but failed to be passed in the state Senate.
The bill is supposedly in response to a piece of the Obama Care legislation that will violate the Fourth Amendment rights of every American family by allowing a government authorized representative to enter and inspect a family’s home based on a very shaky and non-specific set of circumstances, circumstances that do not have to be justified prior to the home inspection, i.e. no due process.
According to the Health and Human Services’ website, your family will be “targeted” if you fall under the “high-risk” categories below, even if there is no evidence, suspicion, or justified cause to do so:
- Families where mom is not yet 21.
- Families where someone is a tobacco user.
- Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities.
- Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.
If this was the only thing wrong with Obama Care it is enough to shut it down. Where in our heritage, history, or mindset is it alright for government agents to force an inspection on a family’s home without just cause and without due process?
You are no longer living in a free country when this kind of garbage is legal. Obama Care in this situation just shreds the Constitution. The potential for abuse and misuse is unbelievable when the sanctity of one’s home no longer exists.
4) The Society of Actuaries released a detailed report in March relative to Obama Care. The report itself can be accessed at:
http://cdn-files.soa.org/web/research-cost-aca-report.pdf
Bottom line of their professional analysis: the cost of health care for individual policies will rise about 32% on average across the country with some states seeing health care insurance costs going up over 60% in some states and over 80% in two states, Ohio and Wisconsin.
So much for health care costs going down 2,500% as a certain President once claimed.
5) And finally, consider this insightful observation by the Against Cronyism website. They nail the whole issue squarely on the head. Obama Care is not about helping a minority of Americans with their health care costs. As the website points out, there are ways to do that at a much lower cost than the disaster that is Obama care.
This effort by the Federal government is about power and control and that is why the simple, less expensive approach was not used. It does not give the political class and the their business cronies enough control and power over what should be our private health care decisions and fates (my bold faced emphasis added):
There isn’t really an argument to be made anymore (though many will continue to make it anyway) that the ACA is going to be beneficial for most people. Will it benefit many insurers? Yes. Will it benefit the pharmaceutical industry? Absolutely. And some people will have coverage who did not before. Unfortunately it’s the wrong kind of coverage.
We should be focusing on catastrophic coverage and on those who cannot find health insurance due to a pre-existing condition. These 2 issues can be dealt with within the market at likely a much lower cost than the looming train wreck (as Max Baucus the Democratic head of the Senate Finance Committee said he feared the implementation of Obamacare likely would be).
But this is simply not good enough for those who have long dreamed of nationalized healthcare. There must be wellness visits, and birth control, and who knows what else. It is about tying the individual more tightly to the state. If the government controls healthcare, it ultimately controls you. That is what this whole effort is fundamentally about, not insuring the uninsured. At least not primarily. (Though many well meaning people continue to think that this is what Obamacare is about.)
If it was about keeping people out of bankruptcy after a cancer diagnosis, or helping people get the insulin they need to survive, this could be done at a fraction of the cost of Obamacare. But that’s not the big orange. The real prize is government control of a huge piece of the American economy. And that is why this very flawed and huge law was rammed through.
Well said. Freedom is at stake in this issue, not just health care. “If the government controls healthcare, it ultimately controls you.” And thus, the death of liberty and the death of democracy.
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
This is a fifth in a eight part series that proves conclusively that there is no need for any politician in Washington to raise the taxes on any American, rich or poor, given how poorly the Federal government currently mismanages and wastes the taxes already being paid. Thus, President Obama’s insistence that the higher earners in this country pay more in taxes is ludicrous.
If the President, the executive branch of government over which he is in charge, and Congress were actually doing their jobs, the savings from making government more efficient, less redundant, and less subject to the massive criminal fraud we see today would overwhelm whatever funding shortfalls there are today to cover basic government expenses and costs.
Another major reason for not raising taxes on any American, because government will end up wasting it anyway, is that taking disposable income out of the economy via more taxation results in less economic growth. Given the high level of taxation in this country and the low economic growth in the country since Obama took office, maybe this correlation (high taxation = low economic growth) is actually a causation relationship.
Ask yourself: from an economic perspective, would you rather have higher earning Americans spending their hard earned wealth throughout the country on movies, restaurants, new cars, vacations, etc., contributing to real and meaningful economic growth or give it to Washington bureaucracies that will waste it on foreign consulate buildings that are never used, narrowly focused silly science projects that have no meaning in the real world, allow criminal elements to steal it from government agencies, etc.?
The answer is pretty clear, based on the first posts in this series. The amount of additional taxation the President wants to collect from higher earning Americans is minuscule relative to the massive government spending and deficits he has established for the bloated Federal government. It will make hardly a dent in the annual budget of the Federal government and an even smaller dent in our $16.3 TRILLION national debt.
The government has a chronic overspending problem, not an under taxation problem. Obama needs to reduce spending dramatically, not raise taxes that drain disposable income out of a struggling economy for no reason. He could surely learn a good economic lesson from a past President who understood this simple economic concept quite well.
The following post is a brief history of what Harry S. Truman did after World War II. President Truman realized that downsizing government from the massive Federal bureaucracy that was established to fight the war effort was best for the economy and the American people. He downsized government and reduced taxes, which resulted in balanced budgets, strong economic growth and low unemployment.
President Obama has taken just the opposite approach: massive increases in government spending, massive annual deficits, and now he wants higher taxes. His economic polices have resulted in persistently high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, very low economic growth, and massive government inefficiencies, criminal fraud, and wasteful spending.
We know how wasteful government is, we documented it over the past four posts. Making government smaller and more efficient is a proven way to go for a better life for Americans. Truman already proved it, Obama is ignoring logic, sanity, and history by his insistence that any American give more of their wealth to voracious and ineffective government bureaucracy
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Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Why Obama's Economic Policies Are Dead Wrong - A Real life Example In Pictures
We have talked about the many economic failures, in both strategy and execution, of the Obama administration over the past few years. These failures have resulted in heated and divisive class warfare rhetoric, skyrocketing national debt, high unemployment and underemployment, and abominable failures of economic programs:
•Failed economic programs and projects - these include, but are not limited to, Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Caulkers, Cash For Appliances, bank and auto company bailouts, the $800 billion stimulus program, Solyndra, and a number of other failed alternative energy programs.
•Regarding the massive and failed economic stimulus package, this administration claimed that unless it was passed immediately, the unemployment rate in this country could get as high as 8%. The package was passed and employment soared about 25% higher than 8%.
•Divisive class warfare - Obama constantly harps on the need to tax the wealthy in this country even more, blaming them for the skyrocketing annual trillion dollar deficits this administration has incurred. However, we have easily proven that even if you tax these Americans' earnings at 100% or confiscate all of their assets, it will have very little impact on the economic conditions in this country, quite possibly making them even worse while dividing the country along economic lines.
•Under the Obama administration, the recovery in unemployment and under employment after the last recession has been among the most anemic in the economic history of the United States.
•In the wake of of failed economic programs, divisive class warfare, and stubbornly high unemployment, the Obama administration has proceeded to run up the national debt much faster and much more dramatically, with little in return, than any President in the history of the United States.
All very good reasons to conclude that this administration has no clue when it comes to economics. Which is a shame since if you look back in our history, you will find a classic example of how to manage and grow an economy out of a crisis mode with favorable results across all major economic indices.
The example comes from the 1940s, when Harry Truman was President, certainly a time of major crisis where the United States and the rest of the world were involved in World War II fighting. Economies and lives were turned upside down as the country went into a war footing for the first half of the decade and then needed to convert back to a peace time economy in the second half of the decade.
Consider the following graph (you can double click on this and the following graphs to get a larger, more detailed view):
This is a graph of the size of the Federal government's annual spending volumes in the 1940s and 1950s. As you see, spending had to ramp up in the early 1940s to accommodate the massive war spending the Federal government needed to do to defeat the Axis powers.
However, look what happens when the war ends in 1945 (after the vertical line). Very quickly, Federal government spending drops dramatically (about 60%) as the government terminates its war spending. I do not believe in the history of the country have we seen such a dramatic and speedy reduction in Federal government spending.
If Obama was President in 1945, I doubt this would happen. Today, he and his political supporters refuse to seriously consider reducing government spending, insinuating that it would push the economy back into a recession. They have this misconception that unnecessary and wasteful government spending is necessary to keep the economy going. [Note: recall that our extensive analysis in this blog's past posts has shown that at least $500 billion in Federal spending a year is lost to waste and criminal fraud in government operations such as Social Security, Medicare, etc.]
What happened to the economy in the late 1940s when the Federal government made such drastic reductions in government spending? According to Obama's economic strategy, that would have had catastrophic effects on the economy.
Let's first look at the unemployment rate (double click on the graph for a larger view):
Yes, at the same time that the Federal government dramatically reduced spending, the unemployment rate did kick up a bit. This would seem to add some credence to Obama's theory that government spending needs to stay high and wasteful to keep the economy strong and growing.
In fact, there were some leading economists of the time that urged Truman to keep the war factories humming via government spending, making munitions and weapons for no purpose, just to create busy but useless work for people. This activity would create no viable economic progress since the output of the munitions and weapons factories would never be used, the war was over, but these economists, like Obama today, had this misconception that spending and wasting government money for no reason was good economic policy.
But consider a few facts from the above chart:
•Although unemployment did rise at the end of the war, it did not get above 4% for the immediate years after World War II and probably averaged 4-5% over the ten years after the end of the war, despite an initial, massive slashing of Federal spending.
•In 1945, the U.S. population was only about 139 million and at least 10% of that population was coming back into the civilian workforce after serving in the armed forces. Thus, the economy was able to absorb a very large number of new workers in the face of slashed government spending with an unemployment rate of less 5%, an extraordinary accomplishment.
Was this wonder of employment gains immediately after the war a result of massive government spending? Obama says we cannot reduce spending and have to run up horrendous deficits in order to keep the economy out of a recession. See what happened to deficits in the 1940s:
After the massive deficit spending during the early part of the 1940s that was needed to finance the war effort, Truman's Presidency not only slashed government spending, and the taxes that went with it, Truman also managed to very quickly go from a deficit riddled Federal government to a Federal government that was generally in balance, revenue about equal to spending, actually running a budget surplus in some years.
So far, Truman was able to succeed doing the exact opposite of what Obama is doing: dramatically reducing government spending and taxes, running a balanced Federal budget, and absorbing millions and millions of workers into the civilian part of the economy with minimal increase in unemployment.
One final view: did all of these efforts and results negatively impact the economy health of the country? Consider this last graph:
This GDP graph is over time, during and after World War II. As you can see, there is a little flatness in economic growth in 1946 as the nation adjusts back to a peace time economy but very shortly begins a strong growth pattern into the 1950s. Thus, dramatically slashing and reducing government spending did not negatively impact the growth and size of the nation's economy. In other words, we do not need a giant Federal government bureaucracy to have a healthy and growing economy.
So let's review:
1.Truman slashed taxes and government spending after the war ended, Obama wants to continue to raise taxes and government spending.
2.Truman ran a balanced Federal government budget after the war ended, with some budget surplus years, Obama runs massive Federal government deficits.
3.Truman's economic policies absorbed well over ten million workers into the economy that was much smaller in a nation with far fewer people, Obama's economic policies have resulted in long term unemployment and under employment for well over twenty million workers.
4.Truman's economic policies resulted in strong overall national economic growth, Obama's economic polices have resulted in weak overall economic growth.
5.And most importantly, Truman's economic polices severely reduced the role of government in our lives and economic well being, Obama's policies have dramatically increased the Federal government's involvement in our lives and economic well being, resulting in lost freedom and liberty.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration and his supporters have not looked at this simple pictorial representation of a real life economic success story. It continues to cling to the false hope and faulty economic assumption that government has to be the center of economic activity and growth in this country, an assumption that is becoming increasingly viewed as wrong when you consider our anemic economic growth, failed economic polices of this administration, and long term chronic unemployment.
An old saying goes as follows: "When you are in a hole, stop digging." Obama needs to stop digging with his failed economic policies, programs, and strategies and borrow a ladder from Truman to get us out of our ever widening, ever deepening economic hole. Just look at the pictures.
On final note: as an FYI, all of the underlying data that went into the above graphs comes from official U.S. government sources. At no point were Republican Party, Tea Party, Fox News, or any other data sources used.
*****************************
We keep coming back to the same conclusion: we need to execute Step 1 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” a step that would reduce government spending across the board by 10% a year for five years. This would get us to a balanced budget, force out redundant and stupid spending expenses, reduce criminal ripoffs of government programs, increase economic freedom and personal freedom by allowing Americans to retain more of their wealth, and get government focused on a much smaller set of priorities.
Government today is unfocused on a lot of things, doing none of them well, efficiently or to completion. Step 1 would force them to do far fewer things which may allow the political class to finally accomplish something worthwhile. Truman understood economics and his polices of smaller government, reduced taxes, and more freedom allowed the post World War II America to thrive. It is a simple economic lesson that Obama should consider before he raises taxes and expands a failing government bureaucracy even more.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Okay, you may have thought that the past six posts were the end of the bad news coming out of the Federal government and the American political class. After all, after four days of reviewing the idiocy and insanity from our politicians and following that up with two posts reviewing the dire economic condition the political class has led us into would seem to cover all of the insanity.
However, that is an erroneous assumption. Today, we will be covering the distressing trend of government getting totally out of control, so large and cumbersome that it is endangering our democracy and freedoms. Rather than a supportive government that protects and serves citizens, we have a government structure that is evolving, rather quickly, into an oppressive, unaccountable, overbearing bureaucracy that makes Jabba the Hutt look efficient and benevolent.
But before we examine this loss of liberty let’s review how a democracy is supposed to work:
- Citizens elect politicians that are supposed to go to Washington to look after our interests and wealth that we pass to them as taxes.
- They develop laws and legislation to implement procedures and programs for the good of the people.
- Staff and organizations in the executive wing of the Federal government then implement the wishes and output of Congress and the President.
- Those staffs, organizations, and their actions should be accountable to sitting politicians who are accountable to the citizens.
This simple concept was illustrated pictorially in the following blog post:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-freedom-pyramid-where-it-is-and.html
But this concept of liberty, elections, and most importantly, accountability, has been perverted and undermined in so many ways:
1) A recent Congressional meeting was held by the Subcommittee on Aviation, which is a part of the House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (TIC). Obviously, they have some responsibility for aviation in this country, a responsibility that would logically put them in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
The subcommittee extended an open invitation to the head of the TSA to attend the meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how best to improve the nation’s airport passenger security system through common sense solutions:
The purpose of this hearing is to examine the impact that the regulations and policies of the Transportation Security Administration have on aviation passenger experience and the free flow of aviation commerce. The subcommittee will hear from government, industry, and labor witnesses on their observations and suggestions on TSA’s policies.
Sounds like a good idea, Congress trying to make informed decisions on how to better protect and serve the American traveling public. And it is certainly needed since the history of the TSA serving American citizens has been one of incompetence and violations of Americans’ personal space and bodies.
This does not appear to be a confrontational Congressional hearing. There does not appear like it was a political witch hunt. It was for information gathering purposes. But the head of the TSA that received the invitation told the Congressional subcommittee to take a hike. This is a Congressional transportation committee asking for the help of a major government transportation entity to help Americans and the head of that entity said no way:
By U.S. House of Representatives rules which state that the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has no jurisdiction over the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), no representative from TSA will be present at the Subcommittee on Aviation hearing scheduled for Nov. 29.
When a government bureaucrat can tell an elected representative, who is only looking for that bureaucrat’s help and insights to serve America, then we see our first example of government out of control and running wild.
2) One of the most frightening aspects of Obama Care is the implementation of a new Federal government panel of unelected fifteen people that will decide the who, what, and when of medical care in this country. The Independent Payment Advisory Board of Obama Care, or IPAB, has the task of achieving specified savings in Medicare without, theoretically, affecting coverage or quality.
Under current laws, changes to Medicare payment rates and program rules are recommended by MedPac, a current advisory board, but require an act of Congress to take effect. The new system grants IPAB the authority to make changes to the Medicare program with Congress being given the power to overrule the agency's decisions through supermajority vote.
If at any time the head actuary of Medicare estimates that a preset Medicare budget target will be missed, this IPAB board of fifteen then puts together a plan so that the financial targets are actually met by lower Medicare spending processes. If the actuary decides that this plan does not meet the financial targets, the Health and Human Services department of the Federal government then steps in and makes the necessary Medicare expense, and service cuts. Congress, our elected representatives get involved only if they can put together a supermajority of votes to override the IPAB or Health and Human Services.
Given that the U.S. Senate is so incompetent that it has not even figured out how to pass a simple budget over the past three years, it is highly, highly unlikely that Congress would ever get its act together to accurately manage Medicare costs. Which leaves the decisions on who, when, and where Americans do or do not get Medicare funding for their aliments to 15 faceless bureaucrats or the faceless hulking bureaucracy known as Health and Human Services.
When the precursor to Obama Care was implemented in Massachusetts, very quickly it became apparent that financial budgets and targets were not going to be hit. At that point, the people responsible for the program’s financials in Massachusetts starting cutting services and coverages, e.g. taking dental care out of the program.
You can safely bet the same thing will happen with Obama Care since this inadequate piece of legislation never addressed the underlying root causes of high health care costs. Congress will never get its act together and at some point, fifteen people you will never likely meet or possibly never know their names will decide whether you will get funding for your health problems, hardly a way to run a democracy.
3) Many times in this blog we have already covered the fact that Obama’s financial industry reform legislation, the Dodd-Frank Act, has already proven to be a failure and will continue to be a failure going forward. The legislation failed to identify the collapse of the financial firm, MF Global, like it was supposed to do, and does nothing relative to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two main culprits in the Great Recession.
And according to a recent article by George Will in the Washington Post, that was summarized in the November 30, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, the third component of failure and overreaching government power is about to crash down on us. According to Mr. Will, the Dodd-Frank law created a monster bureaucracy called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): “ (the CFPB) is a dangerous new bureaucracy answerable to no one” and “makes a mockery of Congress’s Constitutional powers by being unfettered from all three branches of government, unlike anything created since 1789.”
This bureau will be embedded inside the Federal Reserve Board’s organization, which will provide the funding for its existence. Thus, much like its larger home organization, the budget and workings of this new bureaucracy will be clouded in secrecy and darkness, two aspects that should never be allowed to happen in a democracy. Will makes the following cogent, and chilling, points in his article:
- The 2012 official budget for the organization contained a request for $130 million for unspecified “other services,” a huge chunk of money that could easily be abused and wasted or used as a slush fund.
- The new bureau can arbitrarily impose new rules and regulations on the banking and financial industry without public hearings, debate, and Congressional action or legal recourse by the firms and citizens affected.
- The original law creating the bureau enables unspecified, unnamed, and “unaccountable experts” to develop these new protection laws and regulations but the law provides minimal guidance and restrictions on what these experts can arbitrarily pronounce and implement.
- According to Will: “By creating a CFPB that floats above the Constitution’s tripartite design of government, Congress did not merely degrade itself, it injured all Americans.”
More secrecy, more bureaucracy, and more unaccountability as faceless government workers decree what they want done without discussion, debate, and representation of Americans’ interests at the negotiation table. That is not democracy, that is dictatorship.
4) In these first three examples of government gone wild we can relatively easy see that our elected representatives, namely Congress, are directly being cut out of government actions and decisions, which means we are being cut out of government actions and decisions.
In this next example, we see a massive government bureaucracy at work but in extreme secrecy, even more secret than the previous examples above. In a recent interview by William Binney, a whistleblower of the National Security Agency (NSA), EVERY citizen in the country probably is having their digital life being tracked in detail by the Federal government:
- Mr. Binney asserts in the interview, (http://www.westernjournalism.com/nsa-whistleblower-everyone-in-u-s-under-virtual-surveillance/), that the FBI and NSA are already recording and storing the emails of nearly all U.S. citizens, without warrants or permission.
- This information is being stored in massive, multibillion dollar data centers and can be retrieved at any time regarding any specified citizen.
- While much of this NSA and government data collection and privacy invasion was started during the Bush administration, it is Mr. Binney’s opinion that it has gotten worst and more secretive under the Obama administration.
- From a credibility perspective, the video mentions that Mr. Binney has received the Callaway Award for Civic Courage for his whistleblowing of this privacy invasion by the NSA.
Mr. Binney is not alone at pointing out how mysterious government secrecy organizations are trampling on our privacy, often without us even knowing that the Feds are watching us, and reading our digital communications. Reason magazine reported on some of the same encroachments of freedom in January, 2013 issue:
- U.S law enforcement agencies made 1.5 million requests of citizens’ cell phones records in 2011, or about 4100 requests every day of the year.
- For the most part, under current law, the citizens who had their cell phone records turned over to the government will never know their records were passed along.
- Without warrants, law enforcement and government agencies can now pinpoint your location within several feet using your own cell phone, any time, any day, for any reason.
- Law enforcement is very secretive about these invasions of privacy; the Irvine, California police department guide on these activities state: “never disclose to the media these techniques (tracking people) - especially cell tower tracking.”
- The Iowa fusion center, one of 72 nationwide government intelligence gathering centers, states in its manual: “Do not mention to the public or media the use of cellphone technology or equipment to locate targeted subject.”
- The ACLU interprets these warnings as the following: “We would hate for the public to know how easy it is for us to obtain their personal information. It would be inconvenient if they asked for privacy protections.”
The article goes on with other chilling statistics and trends relative to unfettered government operatives having unfettered access to our digital, and real lives. The article is completely compatible with the accusations made by Mr. Binney.
Very scary stuff. Faceless government employees who can violate our privacy virtually any time they want. Government employees determining what they can do rather than citizens determining what we want to allow government employees to do and to access.
So what did we learn today:
- At least one government agency, the TSA, can tell our elected representatives in Congress to pound sand and not help them do their jobs.
- 15 bureaucrats will have final say in your retirement whether or not they will pay for a specific ailment you have, depending on whether the government is hitting a budget number.
- A new government bureau can decide in secret what fees, rules, and regulations it wants to implement, without oversight from citizens or Congress, on your bank, your credit card provider, etc.
- And probably worst of all, the government can, and does, snoop and intrude on your privacy, essentially assuming you are guilty until proven innocent, usually without your knowledge and permission.
Yes, we are truly living through a reality where government is out of control, financially, Constitutionally, medically, and secretly, and democracy is in free fall.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Given that we are going to the polls on Tuesday in a major election, I thought it would be worthwhile to review one of our most popular posts of all time. The concept of the Freedom Pyramid seems to have touched a nerve relative to the fear that our democracy, and the liberties associated with our country, are endanger of fading away forever.
Please consider this post and the concept of freedom, however you personally define it, when voting next week. Our democracy may depend on it.
*******************************
An important part of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," is the understanding of what I call the Freedom Pyramid. The Freedom Pyramid tries to imagine what our founders had in mind when the put the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and a government based on individual freedom together. The ideal American Freedom Pyramid fits together as follows:
1.The base and foundation of the pyramid is the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.
2.Sitting on top of this base level is the government structure that the founders defined to implement the liberty principles and concepts of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in a limited government manner.
3.This government structure serves all of the country's citizens equally in guaranteeing each person's rights and freedoms as defined by the base level documents.
4.And finally, the pinnacle of the Freedom Pyramid is our own individual rights, freedom, and liberties.
These concepts are graphically illustrated below (double click on the picture for a larger view):
There are a few important characteristics of this pyramid. The power in the pyramid flows up from the Bill of Rights and U.S. Constitution to our individual freedoms which is the pinnacle of our country. Government exists to serve the citizens and the country and is just the mechanics for implementing the tenets in the Bill of Rights and Constitution. Finally, the political class appears nowhere in the Freedom Pyramid structure.
This structure has served the country and its citizens quite well over the past two centuries. Americans were usually the freest people in world, which allowed the country to grow into the most prosperous ever. The Freedom Pyramid concept placed individual freedom above all else, including the government and the political class, whose sole purpose should be implementing the concepts and principles of the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.
However, over time, we have allowed the American political class to pervert this original Freedom Pyramid concept:
1.Today, individual citizens and their freedom and liberties are no longer at the pinnacle of the pyramid, having been replaced by a self serving political class.
2.This political class uses government functions and institutions to enlarge, entrench, and enrich itself. Examples at this level abound and include earmark abuse, favorable campaign finance laws, Congressional voting district gerrymandering, excessive Congressional benefits and perks, confiscating large amounts of citizens wealth and income via taxes, and a general low priority for the needs and desires of the country's citizens.
3.The political class uses their increased power to divide the country into various and competing tribes and voting blocks of citizens, "energizing their bases" as needed and demonizing those not in their bases or tribes.
4.This increased power of the political class and their abuses of power results in diminished individual rights and freedoms.
These concepts are illustrated in the current day, perverted Freedom Pyramid below, where the only Americans with the freedom and power tend to be our politicians:
As you can see in this pyramid, the Bill of Rights and Constitution are no longer vital to this pyramid's structure since the often act as an obstruction to the needs and desires of the political class rather than their original intent, the foundation of the country. Also, the power is driven down from the political class and is imposed on American citizens and their freedom.
We need to recognize how far we have deviated from the concept of the first Freedom Pyramid. The reality of America today is that we no longer live in a free country. We do not get true freedom in our election processes since the political class has rigged the voting process to favor existing officeholders and existing political parties. We do not get true freedom while under our excessive tax burden.
When an individual is forced to pay more than 30% of their annual income to all levels of government, that individual's freedom to send his or her kids to a better school or to start a business or to save for retirement or to go on a vacation is severely limited: you cannot have political freedom without financial freedom. We do not get true freedom when politicians call individual citizens racists, Neanderthals, un-American, smelly, and other derogatory names just because they dare to disagree with a politician's programs.
If we ever want to get back to the right Freedom Pyramid, where individual citizens are in charge and the political class and the government the run are subservient, we need to implement most, if not all, of the steps laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Some of the most important steps include:
•Step 1 - reduce the size and budget of the Federal government by 10% a year for five years.
•Step 6 - allow only individual American citizens to contribute to election campaigns, forbidding unions, corporations, PACs and other organizations from flooding the election process with money. The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech to individual Americans, not organizations.
•Step 7 - allow only citizens that are affected by an election to contribute to election campaigns within that election. For example, political parties would not be allowed to accept campaign contributions from someone in Kansas and send/funnel that money to be used in an election campaign in New Jersey.
•Step 14 - stop gerrymandering Congressional voting districts to almost guarantee the re-election of incumbents.
•Step 17 - eliminate the Democratic Party's "Super Delegate" process which has the potential of voiding the votes of all voters who voted in Democratic Party Presidential primaries.
•Step 34 - hold politicians sitting on Congressional committees accountable for their respective government areas of oversight and remove them from their committee positions if that committee falls short of serving the country, e.g. all members of Congressional Intelligence committees should have been removed from those committee posts on September 12, 2001 for their inability to foresee the 9-11 terror attacks.
•Step 39 - institute term limits for all Federal political seats.
Many of the other 50 steps are also important but implementing these listed above would go a long way to getting us back to the true and rightful Freedom Pyramid concept for this 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:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
Before we get to the raising taxes vs. rising sewage analogy, let's review what we discussed in detail yesterday. Yesterday's post was about government waste and how the Washington political class is incapable of showing any kind of courage when it comes to reducing wasteful, fraudulent, and unnecessary Federal government spending, resulting in a national debt of over $15 TRILLION. The latest example of their lack of courage was the total failure of the "Super Committee."
Other details included in yesterday's post include the following:
- Many fine American organizations and government efforts had already identified TRILLIONS of dollars worth of unnecessary government spending that could be implemented with minimal pain to needy and ordinary Americans.
- The inability of the political class to control fraud in many/all government programs (e.g. Medicare, Social Security, etc.) costs the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars a year, adding significantly to the national debt.
- In previous entries in this blog we have compiled many of these expense and cost savings that have been investigated, calculated, and published by other smart Americans to find that over $6 TRILLION could easily be taken out of out our current and future national debt levels without undue financial pain or burden on American families or endangerment of our national security.
- Two short articles in different issues of Business Week over the past few months identified over $1 TRILLION in expense savings that would not endanger our national security or place any burden on most ordinary Americans.
- Yesterday we examined an Associated Press report of a family in the Seattle area who were under investigation by the local Attorney General because they allegedly had collected over $100,000 in Federal government welfare payments despite living in a 2,300 square foot home worth $1.2 million, owning a high priced luxury auto, enjoying multiple international vacations over the past eight years, and whose husband operated a successful chiropractic practice. A textbook example of government waste and incompetence.
Given all these sources of waste, most of which are easy to eliminate if the politicians in this country had even an ounce of courage, it is baffling how stupid certain politicians can be when they insist that taxes on any American be raised to cover the national debt, annual deficit spending, and extensive wasteful spending that they refuse to address and reduce.
Which brings us to the raising taxes vs. rising sewage analogy. Most online definitions of sewage define it as some sort of waste so the analogy is appropriate when discussing wasteful government spending. Consider the following analogy that recently came across my email.
Here's another way to look at the nation $15 TRILLION national debt.
- Let's say, you come home from work one day.
- You find there as been a sewer backup in your neighborhood.
- Your home has sewage backed up all the way up to your ceilings.
Who do you think you should call, a plumber or a carpenter?
If you are President Obama or the Democrats on the Super Committee and in Congress, you call a carpenter to physically raise the roof and ceiling to make more room above the backed up sewage. If you are a rationale human being, you call a plumber to drain the sewage (waste) from the home to make more room and, as a bonus, you get rid of the stench from the sewage waste. If you call a carpenter to raise the roof and ceiling, you will still have the continuing stench of sewage (waste) in your home.
In addition, calling the plumber is likely to be much less expensive since once the plumber clears the backed up sewage line, most of your problems, and plumber expense, are done and there is not ongoing expense. A simple, easy to understand and execute solution.
Raising the roof is likely to be much more expensive, given the construction costs, the permitting process, and the ongoing need and expense to maintain the larger infrastructure. And you still have the actual sewage and the related stench in the house.
So the next time you hear Obama and Democrats talk about "fairness," which is his new code word for tax the rich, think about how he is calling a carpenter to raise the roof and ceiling in your sewage filled house. In other words, he is content on allowing the standing sewage to remain (symbolically representing the TRILLIONS of government waste to go on while taking more wealth away from Americans) while he goes about the insane and much more expensive approach of raising the roof and ceiling.
He and the Democrats should be calling for a less expensive plumber to drain the sewage, i.e. ending the sinful waste of taxpayer wealth lost to fraud, criminal activity, and wasteful government spending. Until Obama does so, the sewage level (representing our rising national debt levels) in our home, will keep rising, the stench of waste will keep rising, and the likelihood that the nation will never solve this dire financial crisis will also keep rising. Better to call that plumber and call him soon.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
An interesting email was sent to me recently by a friend that purported to list out all of the taxes Americans are subject to. Of course, I was familiar with many of them including:
- Federal income taxes
- State income taxes
- Sales taxes
- Property taxes
- Social Security payroll taxes
- Medicare taxes
- Telephone excise taxes
- Gasoline taxes
- Estate/Death taxes
- Hotel/motel taxes
- Rental car taxes
- Other excise taxes
However, his email showed that I was quite restrictive compared to the government taxes and fees (another form of taxation but with a different name given to it by the political class to make it seem more palatable) I did not know about or forgot about:
- Ad valorem taxes
- Cigarette taxes
- Corporate income taxes
- Federal unemployment taxes
- Gross receipts taxes
- Alcohol taxes
- State unemployment taxes
- Telephone Universal Service fees
- Inventory taxes
- Business equipment taxes
- Telephone surcharge taxes
- Utility taxes
- Sewer taxes
- Water taxes
- Hunting licenses
- Dog/pet licenses
- Fishing licenses
- School taxes
- Toll road tolls
- Marriage taxes
- Food license taxes
- Building permit taxes
- Commercial driver's license taxes
- Airline gate taxes
- Tire recycling fees
- Gift tax
- Homes sales tax (Obama Care)
- Medical devices tax (Obama Care)
- Home sales tax (Obama Care)
- Other Obama Care taxes
- Professional license fees (hair stylists, doctors, dentists, etc.)
In fact, these two lists are still not all inclusive. Do a few Internet searches and you end up with dozens, if not hundreds, of other taxes and fees including the infamous Septic Tank Field tax.
Wow. In previous posts we have reported on how different tax policy and consumer organizations have come to the same conclusions:
- Most Americans work for more than half the year to pay for government functions, taxes, fees, and regulations.
- Most American households now pay more in taxes each year than they pay for food, shelter, and gasoline COMBINED.
And some politicians still think that Americans are not taxed enough, that if there was just some more taxes paid to our governments and political class, all of our problems would be resolved. Given the lists above and the analyses that shows how much we pay in taxes already, it is obvious to anyone, except our politicians, that America has an excessive government spending and waste problem, not an under taxation problem.
And it is not as if the politicians are efficient with the wealth they confiscate from us today:
- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs waste/lose over a hundred billion dollars a year, possibly up towards two hundred billion a year, through fraud, waste, and criminal enterprises.
- Recent news reports indicate that the Federal unemployment insurance program has lost at least $19 billion over the past year or so through fraud, more than 10% of its entire budget.
- The Federal government recently wasted over half a billion dollars by not doing its due diligence on a California solar energy company when the company went bankrupt and took the taxpayer Federal loan guarantee money with it.
- The Federal government continues to operate numerous military weapons initiatives that are either no longer needed, can be done by cheaper technologies, or are behind schedule or are way over budget, easily wasting tens of billions of dollars a year.
- The Federal government continues to unnecessarily deploy almost 200,000 U.S. troops around the world (Europe, South Korea, Japan, Iraq) to serve historic needs that no longer exist, wasting upwards of $40 billion a year.
- Federal government civilian employment levels are almost 250,000 people higher than it has ever been, an increase in government size that has not resulted in better government service. This unnecessary increase in Federal employment, if reversed, could save about $20 billion a year.
You get the idea, this list of waste is also certainly not all inclusive. The political class, at all government levels, wastes hundreds of billions of dollars a year, trillions of dollars over a decade, and they want more money from us via taxes and fees. Give me a break.
In light of the list of taxes and the list of waste, Step 1 from "Love my Country, Loathe My Government" becomes so important. Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years, forcing the political class to clean up waste, eliminate fraud, terminate redundancy, and focus on a smaller set of of only the most important issues facing Americans.
You should not put a new heating system into a house that leaks air everywhere. You should not raise taxes and give it to a government that leaks fraud, waste, and political patronage everywhere. You patch the house leaks before putting the new heating system in. You patch government dysfunctionality before giving it more wealth to waste, if then.
Politicians need to remember two basic facts of life. When they tax us, it is our wealth and our hard work that created it, it is not theirs or their rights to it. They are entrusted with our tax dollars, not entitled to our tax dollars. Second, there cannot be political and personal freedom without economic freedom. If you are overwhelmed by an onerous tax burden, you cannot be free or live a life of liberty.
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 http://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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/
Due to massive family obligations in the short term, time will be at a premium for the next week or so. Thus, rather than rush through new posts, I am taking the opportunity to do a "best of" series of past posts. These "retro posts" have been the most popular posts in this blog from the past year or so. All of them have been viewed hundreds of times and seem to have made a connection to our readers vs. other posts and topics. Please enjoy them again or for the first time.
An important part of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," is the understanding of what I call the Freedom Pyramid. The Freedom Pyramid tries to imagine what our founders had in mind when the put the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and a government based on individual freedom together. The ideal American Freedom Pyramid fits together as follows:
- The base and foundation of the pyramid is the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.
- Sitting on top of this base level is the government structure that the founders defined to implement the liberty principles and concepts of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in a limited government manner.
- This government structure serves all of the country's citizens equally in guaranteeing each person's rights and freedoms as defined by the base level documents.
- And finally, the pinnacle of the Freedom Pyramid is our own individual rights, freedom, and liberties. These concepts are graphically illustrated below:
There are a few important characteristics of this pyramid. The power in the pyramid flows up from the Bill of Rights and U.S. Constitution to our individual freedoms which is the pinnacle of our country. Government exists to serve the citizens and the country and is just the mechanics for implementing the tenets in the Bill of Rights and Constitution. Finally, the political class appears nowhere in the Freedom Pyramid structure.
This structure has served the country and its citizens quite well over the past two centuries. Americans were usually the freest people in world, which allowed the country to grow into the most prosperous ever. The Freedom Pyramid concept placed individual freedom above all else, including the government and the political class, whose sole purpose should be implementing the concepts and principles of the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.
However, over time, we have allowed the American political class to pervert this original Freedom Pyramid concept:
- Today, individual citizens and their freedom and liberties are no longer at the pinnacle of the pyramid, having been replaced by a self serving political class.
- This political class uses government functions and institutions to enlarge, entrench, and enrich itself. Examples at this level abound and include earmark abuse, favorable campaign finance laws, Congressional voting district gerrymandering, excessive Congressional benefits and perks, confiscating large amounts of citizens wealth and income via taxes, and a general low priority for the needs and desires of the country's citizens.
- The political class uses their increased power to divide the country into various and competing tribes and voting blocks of citizens, "energizing their bases" as needed and demonizing those not in their bases or tribes.
- This increased power of the political class and their abuses of power results in diminished individual rights and freedoms.
These concepts are illustrated in the current day, perverted Freedom Pyramid below, where the only Americans with the freedom and power tend to be our politicians:
As you can see in this pyramid, the Bill of Rights and Constitution are no longer vital to this pyramid's structure since the often act as an obstruction to the needs and desires of the political class rather than their original intent, the foundation of the country. Also, the power is driven down from the political class and is imposed on American citizens and their freedom.
We need to recognize how far we have deviated from the concept of the first Freedom Pyramid. The reality of America today is that we no longer live in a free country. We do not get true freedom in our election processes since the political class has rigged the voting process to favor existing officeholders and existing political parties.
We do not get true freedom while under our excessive tax burden. When an individual is forced to pay more than 30% of their annual income to all levels of government, that individual's freedom to send his or her kids to a better school or to start a business or to save for retirement or to go on a vacation is severely limited: you cannot have political freedom without financial freedom.
We do not get true freedom when politicians call individual citizens racists, Neanderthals, un-American, smelly, and other derogatory names just because they dare to disagree with a politician's programs.
If we ever want to get back to the right Freedom Pyramid, where individual citizens are in charge and the political class and the government the run are subservient, we need to implement most, if not all, of the steps laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Some of the most important steps include:
Step 1 - reduce the size and budget of the Federal government by 10% a year for five years.
Step 6 - allow only individual American citizens to contribute to election campaigns, forbidding unions, corporations, PACs and other organizations from flooding the election process with money. The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech to individual Americans, not organizations.
Step 7 - allow only citizens that are affected by an election to contribute to election campaigns within that election. For example, political parties would not be allowed to accept campaign contributions from someone in Kansas and send/funnel that money to be used in an election campaign in New Jersey.
Step 14 - stop gerrymandering Congressional voting districts to almost guarantee the re-election of incumbents.
Step 17 - eliminate the Democratic Party's "Super Delegate" process which has the potential of voiding the votes of all voters who voted in Democratic Party Presidential primaries.
Step 34 - hold politicians sitting on Congressional committees accountable for their respective government areas of oversight and remove them from their committee positions if that committee falls short of serving the country, e.g. all members of Congressional Intelligence committees should have been removed from those committee posts on September 12, 2001 for their inability to foresee the 9-11 terror attacks.
Step 39 - institute term limits for all Federal political seats.
Many of the other 50 steps are also important but implementing these listed above would go a long way to getting us back to the true and rightful Freedom Pyramid concept for this country.
Our recent 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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
