What To Tell Our Chidlren About The 2016 Presidential Candidates

Before I start to today’s post, let’s review my voting history:

• I have been able to vote since 1972 and I have voted in every Presidential election since then.
• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my entire life.
• Therefore, I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016.
• Up until 2010, I had never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.

Thus, I am not a Republican, a neo-conservative or one of Trump’s "deplorables."

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s start today’s discussion. A lot of Democrats and liberals are besides themselves because their chosen one, Hillary Clinton, was honestly defeated in her bid to be the next President of the United States by Donald Trump. They view Trump as a racist, sexist, and an overbearing atrocity. That is their right. And they have made their feelings known in any number of ways before and after the election, which is also their right except when it leads to violence and rioting which has been going on for a number of days since the elections results have come in.

A lot of their frustrations were likely captured by a Huffington Post piece written by a Ms. Ali Michaels. That article, “What Should We Tell Our Children?” can be accessed at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-should-we-tell-the-children_us_5822aa90e4b0334571e0a30b

She expresses her fear about what this country has done by electing Donald Trump with such quotes as: “Tell them [your kids], second, that you will honor the outcome of the election, but that you will fight bigotry. Tell them bigotry is not a democratic value, and that it will not be tolerated at your school. Tell them you stand by your Muslim families. Your same-sex parent families. Your gay students. Your Black families. Your female students. Your Mexican families. Your disabled students. Your immigrant families. Your trans students.” It is her opinion, both implicitly and explicitly stated, that Trump is a bigot. This is her right to have that opinion.

But I invite Ms. Michaels to take a different perspective regarding Hillary Clinton, her campaign manager, and the top people in the Clinton campaign staff since much of what she accuses Trump of is the exact type of behavior that the Clinton people were guilty of:

• Hillary herself stated in emails that African Americans were “professional never do wells,” a racist comment condemning an entire race to the label of failure.
• Hillary herself stated in emails that Muslims were also “professional never do wells,” a bigoted comment condemning an entire religion to the label of failure.
• Hillary herself stated in emails that Bernie Sanders supporters were basement dwellers in their parents’ homes, insinuating that they were all lazy and good for nothing.
• Hillary herself called half of Trump’s supporters (tens of millions of ordinary Americans) deplorables, racists, and other derogatory names, never considering that they were also entitled to their own opinion without being slandered by a leading political figure who does not understand their lives and their perspectives.
• Hillary’s campaign managers clumped all Hispanic people together in a racist generalization when they talked about a “taco bowl” outreach campaign for reaching the diverse Hispanic voting population, not all of whom are Mexicans eating from a taco bowl.
• Her campaign designated all Catholics as "medieval."
• Her campaign continued the insulting attitude towards Hispanics when it referred to the Hispanic population as “needy Latinos.”
• One of Hillary’s marketing executives referred to young Americans as f***ing stupid and advising her to get together with a Hollywood star or pop singer star to woo the younger vote of those that are too f***ing stupid to think for themselves.
• From a sexist perspective, Hillary enabled, condoned, and protected her sexual predator husband for decades as he fondled, groped, sexually harassed and possibly raped dozens of women over time.

So yes, I agree with Ms. Michaels that bigotry should not be tolerated and it is not a democratic value. But I insist that if she sees Trump as a bigot that she also see Hillary as a bigot. You are nothing but a small minded, bigoted, self centered individual if you perceive whole segments of Americans as needy, professional never do wells, intolerables, racists, lazy, f***ing stupid, and symbolized by a taco bowl as her campaign believed.

America got screwed this election if you look at all of the facts, all of the bigotry and all of the insults. Our political processes have become so broken, so corrupt, so inane that the major two candidates this time around sank to the lowest levels of human behavior. No issues were debated and discussed, no solutions to the major problems of our times were proposed, no common decency was extended to Americans who dared to have a different opinion.

We just witnessed the classic advice from a very wise person who once said the following: “Never wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.” Depending on your political leaning, each reader may have a different view on who the pig is in this saying, but the bottom line is all we have to show for this political cycle is a porcine wrestling match in which we all got dirty.

I would also suggest that we take Ms. Michaels’ advice and tell our children that excessive greed is not good, that people like Hillary that trade government favors for greedy and outsized personal gain (e.g. using the Clinton Foundation as a front for a money laundering and shakedown scheme) is not a virtue. I would also suggest that we take Ms. Michaels’ advice and tell our children that breaking the law (e.g. illegally using a private computer server) and then lying about it under oath like Hillary did is not a virtue. I would also suggest that we take Ms. Michaels’ advice and tell our children that lying (e.g. Hillary did not land under sniper fire in Bosnia, her daughter does not have a Phd. in public health, her grandparents are not immigrants, etc.), is not a virtue.

One final suggestion, Ms. Michaels. I contend that it was President Obama, Congressional Democrats, and other liberal voices that actually created the Donald Trump phenomena. I challenge you to take the test in the following link and ask yourself were you also silent when millions of Americans were called Nazis, racists, bigots, whores, and other horrible names during the eight years of the Obama administration:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-american-liberals-and-washington.html

Yes, Ms. Michaels we have a lot to tell and teach our children. But let’s teach and tell them everything about the whole world, not just the closed, lopsided world that our political leaders want us to believe.

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

Part 3, August, 2013 Obama care Update: Poll Results Are Unfavorable, Hospitals Getting Screwed, Illogical Pricing, and More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Part 2, August, 2013 Obama Care Update: Navigators That Cannot Navigate, More Polls Down On Obama Care, And Breaking The Law That Is Obama Care

Yesterday was the first update for this month regarding the ongoing disaster that is Obama Care. In that post we found that insurance premiums are gong up, not down, as promised by Obama. Insurance companies are either pulling out of state based Obama Care exchanges because they cannot make money by being in them or they are proposing premium increase that are gag-worthy. Opinion polls from the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream media news sources all show the substantial opposition to the law’s tenets, requirements, and absurdity.

But all of the bad news could not be contained in just one post, Today we continue with the disasters we did not cover yesterday.

1) The Washington Post recently did an investigative report on the implementation of Obama Care. One aspect of the report is a series of quotes that they found from SUPPORTERS of Obama Care, not the majority of Americans who think Obama Care is not a good thing. As you read these supporters’ quote, remember that we are less than 60 days from a rollout of a major component of the law:

• “Advocates on the ground are really struggling with that group. They want to have a positive message but don’t know what to say.”
• “We’re in an environment [now] where 40 percent are against it, 35 percent are for it and neither side knows what’s actually in it.”
• “How hard does the insurance department or Medicaid department in a red state [that opposes the law] make it to implement this?”
• “Everybody is having sleepless nights given the magnitude of the effort and the short amount of time.”
• “It’s like building a bridge from both ends and hoping, in the end, they connect.”
• “I read [the delay of the employer-mandate] as an admission that not all of the components of the [data] hub are working.”
• “Some of the guidance from the federal government is still coming. That means we can’t get to our wish list.”

I especially like the quote of building a bridge from two different shores and hoping that they actually connect in the middle of the river (this quote could probably apply to all Federal government programs). These are what supporters say about this unfolding fiasco.

2) Two other noteworthy facts were included in the Post’s negative report on Obama Care:

1. A recent  Huffington Post opinion survey found that 52.5% of Americans are against ObamaCare, compared to 40.5% who are for it. This 12-point gap is the largest gap that this poll has ever measured.
2. Another recent survey, according to the article, asked younger Americans whether a $210 premium under Obama Care was affordable. Only 29% of likely marketplace enrollees said yes.

This second point is critical. The Post concluded in its report that if a large number of young Americans do not sign up for Obama Care, which today is a highly likely occurrence according to poll results, the “law will fail.” 

3) Cato had a recent analysis of the potential risk Obama Care faces from a set of lawsuits that have been filed across the country. These lawsuits are particularly important in light of the critical need for the Obama administration to have a lot of young people sign up for Obama Care health care insurance:

• The attorney general of Oklahoma, a group of small businesses, and individual Americans across the country have filed lawsuits which challenge the Obama administration’s plans to issue Obama Care tax credits in the 34 states that have opted not to establish one of Obama Care’s health insurance exchanges themselves. 
• The law’s writing explicitly only  authorizes those credits and related subsidies “through an Exchange established by the State.” 
• Nowhere, and in no manner, does Obama Care allow the administration and Federal government to issue credits through the 34 state Federal-based exchanges established and operated by the Federal government. 
• Despite the wording of the legislation, the White House is trying to spend an estimated $700 billion over 10 years in those 34 states without state health care exchanges and without Congressional authorization.
• Both the non-partisan Congressional Research Service and Harvard Law Review have found that these lawsuits are credible. 
• Plaintiffs in one of the suits have asked the court to block that illegal spending before it begins in 2014. 
• Supporters of the law admit that if that happens, according to the Cato report,  Obama Care does not just fail, it collapses.

It is hard to believe that this monstrosity of a law still works if about 68% of the young Americans in 34 states do not get any support at all to pay for overpriced Federal health insurance exchanges. 

4) We have reported on how many entities, both private and governmental, have had to cut workers and/or cut workers’ hours since Obama Care will impose impossible costs on their operations, costs that require them to find other ways to stay solvent. A recent article from July 23, 2013 in Florida Today reported on how a Florida county has had to cut staff hours strictly as a result of Obama Care:

• Obama Care’s Mandates Would Cost Brevard County $10,000 A Year Per Employee: Brevard County Insurance Director Jerry Visco said every employee added to the county’s health insurance program could cost the county about $10,000 a year per person, and ‘that money is not there’ in the county budget.
• Annual Estimated Total Cost To Brevard County — $1.38 Million A Year: According to Director Visco’s analysis, providing health insurance to 138 part-time workers under Obama Care would cost the county $1.38 million a year.
• To Date, 37 Brevard County Library Employees Have Had Their Hours Cut: Brevard County Library Service Department Director Jeff Thompson said 37 of his department’s employees have had their hours cut as a result of the health care issue. 

More Americans losing salary dollars as a result of a Federal government law that has no chance of being successful. Pitiful.

5) Even though the President has delayed the rollout of some facets of Obama Care for businesses until January, 2015, probably illegally, a recent U.S. Chamber Of Commerce shows how devastating Obama Care will be to small business growth and financial health:

• 24% of small businesses polled say they will reduce hiring as a result of Obama Care‘s tenets, requirements, and taxes.
• 23% of small businesses  plan to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering Obama Care’s insurance  mandate.
• Only 30% are ready for the law or even understand what is required.
• Dealing with Obama Care is the biggest worry of small businesses.
• The Chamber survey found that "nearly one-in-four employers say the health care bill is their biggest obstacle to hiring more employees."

Different survey of a different set of Americans but the same results: Obama Care is bad news, more costs for little or no problem resolution.

6) Last set of bad news from Obama Care today. The following distressing and scary facts come from a National Review article from July 22, 2013. Much of the following disasters-waiting-to happen come from testimony given to Congress’ House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the spring of 2013. Hold on for what will scare the daylights out of you:

• Obama Care "navigators" are supposed to be highly trained specialists that will help Americans understand and obtain the best health care insurance for themselves under Obama Care insurance exchanges. They will theoretically have access to every American’s personal information including name, address, medical history, social security numbers, etc., an identity thief’s data paradise.
• Given that 34 states will not be setting up exchanges, the Federal government will now have to find resources to become navigators and are turning to a wide variety of organizations that have no experience in health care and health care insurance including Planned Parenthood, churches, senior citizens groups, and other organizations that are ill prepared to get things right.
• The Government Accountability Office recently reported that the administration is considering allowing navigators to assist with outreach and enrollment tasks even before completing their formal training. The reason? The navigators program is behind schedule and drowning in its own complexity. So, given that they are untrained, let’s go forward anyway? Insanity.
• Despite the reality that navigators will have access to sensitive personal data such as Social Security numbers and tax returns, there will be no criminal background checks required for them. Indeed, they won’t even have to have high-school diplomas. Can you say massive identity theft? Hiring potential criminals to have such access to such data is beyond stupid.
• Navigators will take a 20–30 hour online course (i.e. no idea of how well they learned in the absence of a trained trainer) about how the 2,000-page law works. This works out to only about four days of training to learn everything they need to know about Obama Care and all of the related insurance plans they will be offering. Not going to happen.
• Even worse, many of the exchanges are also going to serve as voter registration outlets. Talk about incompatibility of objectives, you are either a health insurance expert or a voting registration expert. Trying to do both tasks with severely limited training is a disaster for both objectives.

Tell me this is not a disaster waiting to happen. We have already reported on how calling the IRS “navigators” on their 800# support line almost always gets you different answers for semi-complex tax issues, how can anyone expect a brand new Federal bureaucracy to get it right when the IRS has not gotten it right after decades of trying?

A similar comparison is made at the end of the article relative to the Federal government trying to get any complex task successfully implemented:

If there is a silver lining in all of this, it is that the potential failure of the navigators program could further convince voters that Obama Care is simply unworkable. “The Obama administration wants something the federal government has never done: a computer system that connects HHS, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, Homeland Security and perhaps other departments,” John Goodman, a health-care expert with the National Center for Policy Analysis, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in May. “For perspective, consider that the Veterans Administration converted to electronic medical records in 1998 and the VA and the Defense Department tried without success to share records until February [2013] when then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the plan would be abandoned.”

Fifteen years and probably billions of dollars wasted to get to highly interrelated Federal entities to have their computers talk to each other, an effort that ended in failure. There is no chance that the exchanges and their navigators cannot also end in failure.

More Obama Care failures 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 

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Chinese Hackers, Gay Meth Texting, More Losses In The War On Drugs And More

This is the third in a our monthly series on political class insanity. Every month we devote a few days to the insanity, lunacy, corruption, and wasteful spending of the American political class. Unfortunately for us and the country, every month seems to bring a heavier and heavier load of the misdeeds from Washington and elsewhere, requiring more and more days of coverage just to keep up.

The first two posts on this month’s insanity can be accessed at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_2.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_3.html

We continue with the idiocy today:

1) Earlier this year, a Federally-funded study began to send “gay lingo” text messages to methamphetamine addicts to try to get them to use fewer drugs and more condoms. The cost to taxpayers for this program? $509,840!

Leading the project is Dr. Cathy Reback of the Friends Research Institute, Inc., in Baltimore. She and her team hope that, by sending these “gay lingo” text messages out for the next four years, methamphetamine users will clean up their act. The details of the study include the following parameters:

• The 285 study participants will be divided into three groups of gay meth users.
• All participants will report on their progress using self-evaluation forms.
• The first group will be able to communicate back and forth with the researchers.
• The second group will get text messages, but no two-way communication.
• The last group will be the control group and won’t get any messages at all.
• Thus, the program breaks down as follows: five text messages a day, for four years, to 285 study participants who will then report back every week, all for a cost to taxpayers of $509,840, or $1,789 per gay, methamphetamine-addicted man who engages in high risk sexual behaviors.

In a different reality, this might be a worthwhile project. But we are running annual trillion dollar deficits, we have a national debt load of almost $17 TRILLION, and there are far more other medical research needs that could better use another $500,000 of research money. Plus, there appears to be some serious flaws in this study:

• The sample size is very small, less than one hundred subjects per group, making extrapolation to a general population very dicey. Given the higher death rate of drug abusers, the sample saize will probably get even smaller over time.
• The study relies on self-evaluation forms. Drug abusers are probably not the most reliable people when it comes to non-drug related activities like filling out forms. I doubt the study leaders will get cogent, timely, and reliable data from a self evaluation form process.
• And even the sample size is extrapolatable and the forms are filled out correctly and in a timely manner, who cares? The population of gay men meth users who MAY benefit from a text program is miniscule compared to the number of Americans who die every year from breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancers, dementia, and drunk driving.

Better to take limited resources and apply those resources to the bigger health issues of our time and actually solve some major issue challenges for the country than to spend money on every possible health issue and resolve nothing.

Side note: According to a blurb in the April 19, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, according to a study by the Rand group, in 2010 the nation spent a whopping $109 billion to treat dementia in the U.S. We also spent $102 billion to treat heart disease and $72 billion to fight cancer. It is my opinion that limited health care and research resources should be spent fighting these major national health issues and not on a questionable study on a very small segment of the population.

2) Interesting statistic from the June, 2013 issue of Reason magazine. When Nixon started the so-called war on drugs in 1971, nonviolent drug offenders constituted less than 10% of all prisoners in all U.S. jails. Today, nonviolent drug offenders constitute more than 25% of all prisoners in all jails. And this 25% is of a much larger prison population.

Thus, we are locking up more people on both an absolute and percentage basis for nonviolent drug usage and the drug problem in this country is nowhere close to being curtailed, the original hope of Nixon back over forty years ago. Isn’t it about time we stop the insanity and exit the war on drugs, let people do to their bodies what they want to do as long as they are no endangering others, break the monetary back of the drug cartels, and save the money of trials, imprisonment, and enforcement related to a program that has failed for forty years?

3) Speaking of wasting money on idiotic wars, consider a New York Times article that was summarized in the May 10, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. According to the reporting, on a monthly basis for years, the United States has been sending suitcases, backpacks, and even plastic shopping bags filled with U.S. cash directly to the President of Afghanistan, President Karzai, in a vain attmept to influence events in the country.

Unfortunately, much of that cash, according to the Times, has ended up fueling corruption and in the hands of drug warlords and the Taliban, our sworn enemy in this ill-fated conflict. The article quotes one involved U.S. official with the following insight: “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan is the United States.” Well said, sad but true.

Members of Congress belatedly became outraged when they learned of this mess, with Congressman Jason Chaffetz stating: “I thought we were trying to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan.” Two things Congressman: First, while I applaud your outrage, why weren’t you and your Congressional peers doing your job and identifying this waste, fraud, and abuse years ago before we probably wasted billions of dollars?

Second, you and your peers have not been able to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington’s programs and government entities, what makes you think you are capable of doing the same thing half way around the world?

4) Politicians and others have been making a big deal of the fact that many recent college graduates are leaving school with a diploma, a good thing, and massive student loan debt, a bad thing. This is especially trying for the many recent graduates who cannot find a good starting job because the mismanagement of the economy by the political class. They end up with low paying jobs but still have to pay off student loans.

No one seems to have come up with a good solution other than improving the ability of the economy to generate new job growth that allow recent graduates to find a good pay job to more easily pay off their debt. However, that does not appear to be an ability of the Federal government to execute to any degree.

Plus, according to a recent story by the Huffington Post that was summarized in the May 31, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, the government may not be in a hurry to fix any aspect of the student loan program. Why? According to Huffington, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Federal Department of Education will make about $51 billion in profit from the student loan program in 2013.

Disgraceful, that the Federal government would use the student loan industry and processes to generate profits for itself. Where in any part of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or our history does it say that the Federal government should be a profit generating entity, especially on the back of our kids?

To put this into perspective, the article points out that the Federal government’s profits in this endeavor is greater than the profits of Apple and Exxon and is larger than the COMBINED annual profits of the country’s four largest banks. Profits all on the backs of our kids graduating from college.

5) Edward Snowden is being condemned by many in the political class and Federal government as a traitor for telling the country that Washington, the Obama administration specifically, was abusing and shredding the Fourth Amendment with its massive electronics spying. I prefer to see him as a heroic figure who gave up the good life, his freedom as an American, and his high salary to protect the Constitution.

Nevertheless, if many view him as a traitor for giving up government secretes, what would you call those in the Federal government who were responsible for the top, top secret defense plans that the Chinese government recently hacked? According to an article in the June 7, 2013 issue of The Week, Chinese hackers stole the designs of some of America’s most sensitive and advanced weapons systems:

• The advanced Patriot missile system.
• Two ballistic missile systems that are the backbone of all our defense systems.
• The design for the F-35 fighter jet that the American taxpayer has already paid $14 TRILLION for without much success.
• Two dozen other defense weapons systems designs.

If Snowden is a traitor for divulging non-military, non-top secret, non-defense information and material, what should happen to those in Washington whose incompetence allowed the Chinese to steal our major defense plans that the American taxpayer paid TRILLIONS of dollars to develop? Insanity and incompetence combined together is never pretty.

That wraps up our third day of review relative to political class and government insanity. Every day, every month, those in Washington, the government, Congress, and the White House find new ways to astound us, to disappoint us, and to outrage us. And that astonishment, disappointment, and outrage will continue at least through tomorrow’s post

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  

The Devastation That Is Obama Care, February Update, Part 2: Killing Marriages, Killing Work Hours, and More

Just when you thought we could stay away from the devastating effects of Obama Care, another set of bad surprises pop up. We thought we had contained the damage in a series of posts from earlier this year that began with the following post:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-devastation-that-is-obama-care-part.html

Yesterday's post was Part 1 of a February update to that original series of Obama Care posts. Today is the second half of that update.

Unfortunately, more bad news has arisen:

1) One of the biggest reasons why Obama Care is falling apart is that the creators never understood the root causes of our high and escalating health care costs. Until you understand the root causes, you cannot develop the right solutions to address those root causes and anything you try to do without that basis is probably doomed to failure:

• Americans eat too much.
• Americans eat too much of the wrong kinds of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• The Washington political class subsidizes these bad habits by paying American farmers to grow unhealthy food and making tobacco farming more lucrative via Federal subsidies.
• Government regulations inhibit health care insurance competition across state lines.
• Obama Care never included any major tort reform to remove unnecessary legal expenses out of the system.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to quantify who and what entities were making obscene profits off of obscene health care costs.

Without understanding the root causes of high health care costs, Obama Care turned into nothing more than a poorly structured, poorly run and poorly financed health care insurance program, not a comprehensive health care industry reform program. That is why some components of Obama Care, e.g. the CLASS program, which was supposed to provide long term care for Americans, have already been shut down because of their failure to address the true causes of our problems.

Which brings us to the next component of Obama Care which is about to be shut down even before the whole piece of legislation is implemented. According to a February article from the Washington Post:

• Tens of thousands of Americans who cannot get health insurance because of a preexisting medical condition will be no longer be able to get coverage from an Obama Care program because funding for that program is running out.
• These so-called “high-risk pools” will be closed to new applicants no later than March 2, depending on the state.
• According to an HHS spokesperson, the closing of the program to new applicants is being taken in order to protect the interests of those who had already signed up for the program, about 135,000 people.
• The program launched in 2010 and was supposed to last until 2014 but now will be shut down in the coming weeks because of a lack of funds.
• In another back handed slap at bad government forecasting, the original business case assumed that about 375,000 people would sign up for the program. However, only 135,000 enrolled, about a third of the expected enrollment, but the cost of servicing this one third is far higher than what was expected, causing the shutdown of the system to new enrollees
• In a moment of rare candid honestly from a Washington bureaucrat, that same HHS spokesperson is quoted in the article: “What we’ve learned through the course of this program is that this is really not a sensible way for the health-care system to be run.” Could not agree more.

Another Obama Care program blows its forecasts, exceeds its budget, and does not deliver what it promised to deliver. Par for the course.

And let’s do some simple math to see why this is another epic failure. The article states that between nine million and 25 million Americans are uninsured and have a preexisting health problem. If the current program has 135,000 enrollees and they have blown through $5 billion in three years or so, then the cost of insurance coverage for these enrollees comes out to about $37,000 per person or about $12,000 a year per person. If we take the mid point of the uninsured estimates, we end up with 17 million Americans (9 plus 25 divided by 2) who are uninsured because of preexisting health conditions.

Thus, using the results of this program, the average cost ($12,000) times the number needing insurance (17 million) comes out to an annual cost of over $200 billion a year. There is no way the country and the Federal government could afford this cost. This one program alone would eat up about 8% of the entire 2012 revenue stream of the Federal government:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

Which gets us back to our original point, you have to reduce the root causes of the high health care costs in this country, the root causes that cause these preexisting conditions. You cannot paper over them with complicated and expensive Obama Care insurance programs that just do not work since “what we’ve learned through the course of this program is that this is really not a sensible way for the health-care system to be run.”

2) Another perverse incentive of Obama Care is to make marriage less palatable for Americans and American families in the lower income ranges. Consider the opinions of two experts on the matter:

• Former Obama Treasury Department executive David Gamage was quoted The Wall Street Journal last year: “Consider a couple with children in which one of the parents earns most of the family’s income. If the couple marries, the family would lose thousands of dollars of subsidies that could otherwise be used to pay for health insurance for the children and the lower-income spouse. If the couple is already married, divorce may be their only option for obtaining affordable insurance for their children and the lower-income parent.”
• Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute testified in front of a Congressional hearing:“Health insurance premium credits in the new law are linked not directly to income, but to the poverty line, resulting in a particularly steep marriage penalty for low-income Americans. With $10,890 as the poverty line for one person and an additional $3,820 for a spouse, marriage means less government help with health insurance.

Thus, despite the President’s claim in his recent state of the union message that he wanted to strengthen families (“We’ll work to strengthen families by removing the financial deterrents to marriage for low-income couples,”) because that is best for Americans and American families, his health care reform disaster does just the opposite, financially incenting people not to get married or to get divorced.

3) We have reported on the many instances where private businesses and companies are cutting the hours of their employees to less than 30 hours a week due to the asinine Obama administration ruling that anyone working 30 hours or more a week is considered a full time employee relative to Obama Care, forcing them to provide full health insurance coverage to these employees. Since many of these businesses’ business model, particularly those in the restaurant industry, cannot support these extra, onerous costs, they have cut their employees hours. Now these Americans still do not have health care insurance AND they have fewer hours to work and lower take home pay.

But this situation is not restricted just to private businesses and restaurant businesses:

• The Virgina Pilot newspaper reported on February 8, 2013 that thousands of part-time state workers will see their weekly working schedules reduced to no more than 29 hours a week going forward. The reason given for the drop in hours is that under Obama Care employees working 30 hours a week or more receive health care benefits, which would cost Virginia tens of millions of dollars a year. The new policy will mean a pay cut for many part-timers, including adjunct college professors.
• The Huffington Post reported back in November, 2012 that Youngstown State University will reduce the hours of part-time employees to ensure that the university is not required to provide them with health insurance coverage under Obama Care. Adjunct professors and lecturers would see their payable hours reduced to that magic number, 29 hours a week or less. Reason given for the decrease: onerous costs of Obama Care.
• We have already reported on how the Community College Of Allegheny County will cut the hours for some instructors to avoid paying for their health insurance coverage under Obama Care’s 30 hour rule, cuts that are affecting about 400 employees.

Again, insanity. These people will still not be able to afford health care insurance and will see a cut in take home pay nonetheless.

4) The Portland Press ran an article on February 18, 2013 that questioned the assertion made when Obama Care was passed that health care costs would go down. Many organizations, states, and politicians who supported the passage of the bill are now backpedaling on the potential devastating affects it may have on their constituents:

• State insurance regulators in California, recently sent a letter to the Obama administration in a recent letter to express their fears and concerns about "rate and market disruption."
• Oregon's insurance commissioner predicts that the new Obama Care regulations could push up premiums for younger Americans by as much as 30% and urged administration officials to slow the rollout of the new regulations.
• Insurance regulators in California, Oregon, Rhode Island and several other states have asked the administration to phase in the new requirement over several years in order to not jolt the insurance market or America.
• An advocate for consumers in their 20s, Young Invincibles, is also worried, sending a letter to administration officials suggesting that additional steps may be needed to protect young people from rising premiums. Remember, one of the insane aspects of Obama Care is that insurance costs for older Americans is reduced at the expense of raising insurance costs for younger Americans, those that are far more likely to have lower personal wealth than older Americans.
• Following up on that point, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that insurance costs for those who buy insurance coverage on their own probably will be 10-13% higher in 2016.

The article lays out a scenario that is very likely to occur in 2014 for many Americans, especially younger Americans:

• As health insurance rates come down for older people, the insurance rates will likely increase for consumers in their 20s.
• If that happens, young, healthy people could elect not to get health insurance and pay the small penalty if AND when they actually get caught by the IRS.
• This is the logical personal financial path for them to take since the cost of their insurance will be going much higher than the relatively minor fine they MIGHT eventually face.
• That, in turn, would leave an older, sicker population in the insurance pool on average, which typically inflates premiums and will leave millions of Americans without health care insurance.

In other words, the entire Rube Goldberg structure of this idiotic legislation will come tumbling down in bad financials, sick Americans, and much higher national debt.

Unfortunately, the bad news keeps oncoming from this massive, ill-conceived, complex, doomed to failure piece of legislation. But we should not be surprised, experts and news outlets have been correctly predicting this coming doom for years. For a nice synopsis of this history, consider going to the following link for a detailed, but easy to read, trek through the past few years to see what was predicted to fail is now actually failing:

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/22/obama-concedes-obamacare-didnt-do-anything-for-rising-health-care-costs/

I am sure this is not the last set of disasters we will cover relative to Obama Care. Unfortunately.

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

It's Now Official, Part 2: Political Donors More Important Than Constituents

Yesterday we discussed the travesty and disgrace inherent in our political process where Congressional members are spending far more time trying to raise election campaign funds then they are spending on supporting their constituents and doing valid legislative work. The basis of our discussion, a recent Huffington Post article, revealed the formal process that all Congressional members are held to, down to the details of how many hours every day each member is to spend on fund raising (a lot) and non-fund raising activities (not so much).

One would have hoped that members of Congress were dedicating the vast amount of their time and energy to resolving the major issues of our times. That hope, obviously, would be incorrect. Which explains why our lost war on drugs, our failing public schools, our skyrocketing deficit, and other major issues never get resolved.

The article went beyond this exposure of showing that Congressional members are more focused on their political donors than their constituents. When it comes down to Congressional committee and subcommittee posts, one would have hoped that the politicians staffing those positions would be the most qualified and have the most expertise for each committee’s duties.

For example, one would hope that politicians serving on veterans’ affairs committees had some understanding or experience with veterans and the problems they face. Those that sit on banking committees have some kind of finance or banking experience in their background. Same with highway committees, housing committees, etc.

But again, that hope would be dashed. According to the article, the best members matched to the appropriate committees is farthest from the reality of what goes on in Washington. Consider the following insightful quote from the article

“The quality of a committee assignment is directly related to the amount of dues owed, as black-and-white an admission of the connection between fundraising and policy outcomes as can be found.”

This quote and Huffington Post article introduce a process that I was not aware of. They called it a "dues process" and apparently all members of Congress, from both parties, are given monetary targets that they have to hit and raise money that is funneled to the national Republican and Democratic political organizations.

Apparently, making or missing your dues target determines the quality and quantity of Congressional committee assignments a member of Congress can land. It has little to do with someone’s skills, experiences, or education, it all has to do with raising money to meet your dues target.

And these dues target are not trivial. In fact, they are obscenely high, which probably requires sitting politicians to do much more fund raising and hitting up political donors than actually doing their jobs and serving their hometown citizens. A March 11, 2012 Politico article highlighted how obscene these dues targets were for Democrats in 2011 (as you read them, ask yourself how much energy is diverted to these activities vs. problem solving activities):

• Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer - $800,000 each.
• Pelosi was given the additional assignment of raising another $25 million for the party and Hoyer had to find another $2.5 million.
• Assistant Leader Jim Clyburn was to raise $1.5 million.
• John Larson and Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Xavier Becerra and George Miller (Calif.), and Steve Israel (N.Y.) were expected to give $450,000 apiece OF THEIR OWN MONEY. Which raises the issue of why anyone would want to be a Congressman for an annual salary of $170,00 when in the case of these sitting politicians, according to Politico, they have to put up $450,000 of their own money for dues. Something like corruption smells here in this math.
• DeLauro and Miller were told to raise another $500,000 for the national Democratic Party while Israel has to raise an additional $10 million.
• Vice chairs Joe Crowley (N.Y.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), Keith Ellison (Minn.), Pedro Pierluisi (P.R.) and Allyson Schwartz (Pa.) were to transfer $300,000 apiece (which I am assuming is also their own money), and their goals for raising money ranged from $300,000 for the latter three to $4 million for Wasserman Schultz and $6 million for Crowley.The lists goes on but you get the idea.

These people are expected to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money and then go out and raise tens of millions of other dollars for their mother ship’s political activities. If successful, they apparently get the plum committee assignments, regardless of their abilities and expertise.

This obviously suboptimal process results in suboptimal legislating. The Huffington Post article discusses this disgrace in detail:

One member of Congress said that the fundraising takes up so much time that members don't even have time to become experts on bills they sponsor. "One thing that's always been striking to me is even the members playing a leading role on specific issues actually could not talk about the issues," said the member, who didn't want to be quoted by name. "They didn't have enough knowledge on their own issues to talk about them at length. I'm probably guilty of that." He recalled one meeting early in his career, where he brought several members together to try to hash out a compromise, just as he had done earlier as a state legislator.

"Staff members were all twitching at the discussion, because their principals were saying things that were just flat-wrong or uninformed or wondering aloud about what the industry practices really were," he recalled. "The staff members of course had a pretty good idea. ... The members were sitting around the table having a remarkably uninformed and unproductive discussion."

Pretty scary stuff that a member of the process thinks that the process results in a remarkably uninformed and unproductive discussion. Which probably led to a remarkably uninformed and unproductive piece of legislation that never resolved the war on drugs failure, the high national debt problem, the lack of a national energy program and strategy, etc.

Members of Congress are so distracted into raising ungodly sums of money that pervert our democracy that they themselves end up being unremarkable, uninformed, and unproductive. When a Democratic Congressman confronted Pelosi in a meeting, stating that the dues process and levels were unreasonable, she simply replied that they were not doing enough to raise money. Never mind that not only are the dues levels unreasonable, the whole process and focus on raising money to the detriment of everything else is an abomination.

As a closing to the today’s and yesterday’s exposure of what really goes on in Washington, think about the image the following describes, in the words of a current Washington politician:

 U.S. Senators do not bother going to their party’s headquarters or the rowhouses near the Capital building to make fund raising calls since it is against the law to make fundraising calls from their offices: “But they [U.S. Senators] go outside and sit in their cars and make calls.

Yes, your U.S. Senators, some of the most powerful people in the country and the world, go sit in their cars and grovel for money from political donors over their cell phones. What an obscene and disgraceful image. Paying dues, raising money. Making calls, raising money. Attending fundraisers, making money. With a little bit of uninformed legislating thrown in. No wonder we are in such sad shape as a 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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

It's Now Official: Political Campaign Donors More Important Than Constituents, Part 1

Many Americans had long suspected that Congress and other Washington politicians were not working very hard for the good of the country and the good of their constituents. The war on drugs was declared over forty years and is still a lost cause. In the early 1980s, a Reagan commission on pubic education showed how poorly our schools were educating our kids. Three decades later that situation has gotten even worse. In the 1970s, the nation’s economy was shocked any number of times by oil shortages, exposing the fact that the country did not have a long term strategic plan for energy independence and stability. Almost four decades later we still have no such plan.

What the heck has Congress and the politicians in it been doing for the past four or five decades? We know that they do not work 40 hour weeks, 50 weeks a year. In fact, Congress will only be in session about 115 days this year. What do they do during these less than robust working hours.? They obviously are not coming up with solutions to the major issues facing the nation.

Well, thanks to a January 8, 2013 Huffington Post article, it is pretty obvious why they have not resolved any major issue: they really are not working on them, being far more concerned with raising money for their next election and their political party. Details from the article include the following details and disgraces:

• The two writers of the Huffington Post article got their hands on a PowerPoint presentation that was given to freshmen Congressmen and women by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
• The presentation outlined how a typical member of Congress should spend their days when actually in Washington.
• This prototype daily schedule laid out by the Democratic leadership expects a nine or 10-hour day while in Washington, of which four hours are to be spent in “call time,“ i.e. calling people in order to get them make a political campaign donation.
• Another hour is supposed to be dedicated to "strategic outreach," which includes fundraisers and press work, i.e. more fundraising time and effort.
• Another hour is to be blocked off for "recharge."
• And finally, three to four hours a day are to be used for the actual work of being a member of Congress -- hearings, votes, and meetings with constituents.
• It is especially good if these constituents are also high potential donors, kind of like killing two birds with one shot.
• In addition to these daily fund raising activities, the presentation also made sure that Congressional members knew that they had to take time to compile quarterly fundraising reports for the Federal Election Commission, more time and energy taken away from actually doing real work and solving real problems.

So, not only do members of Congress not do a lot of real work, i.e. solving problems, there is an actual formal process that discourages that type of problem solving behavior in favor of raising money to keep incumbents in office. No wonder nothing ever gets resolved or real budgets developed and lived up to or fraud and waste wrung out of government operations, the political class is off taking care of themselves and their political careers.

Let’s do some simple math:

1. The average American works about 250 days a year, 50 weeks by five days a week.
2. Congress will be in session about 115 days this year. Let’s assume that they will work another 25 days a year back in their home state or Congressional district, giving them a work year of 140 days.
3. Thus, relative to the average American, Congressional members work only 64% as long (140/250).
4. During the average workday, the average American works about 8 hours a day.
5. During an average workday, we now know from Hufffington Post that the average Congressional members only works about four hours a day on real work.
6. Thus, the average politician works half as hard on real work than the average American (4 hours a day/8 hours a day).
7. Since a member of Congress earns about $170,000 a year, given their work load and what we now know they spend their time on, their annual pay should be reduced to $54,400:

$54,400 = $170,000 X .64 (ratio of working days) X .5 (ratio of working hours per day)

This would be a truer measure of their value, not $170,000. And at $54,400, given their poor productivity, they still might be overpaid.

Consider some quotes from the article that prove how ludicrous and shameful this behavior is:

• "What’s my experience with it? You might as well be putting bamboo shoots under my fingernails. It’s the most painful thing, and they’re no sooner elected and they’re down there making phone calls for the election in 2014." said Congressman. John Larson , a high-ranking Democrat.
• According to former Congressman Tom Perriello, who now works at the Center for American Progress, the four hours allocated to fundraising may even be "low-balling the figure so as not to scare the new Members too much."
• "It bites into your private life. It bites into your leisure time. You shouldn't only do what you have to do, you should be able to read. ... It cuts into time members spend with each other," said former Congressman Barney Frank.
• "It really does affect how members of Congress behave if the most important thing they think about is fundraising. You end up being nice to people that probably somebody needs to be questioning skeptically. It's a fairly disturbing suggested schedule. You won't ask tough questions in hearings that might displease potential contributors, won't support amendments that might anger them, will tend to vote the way contributors want you to vote,” said former Congressman Brad Miller.
• "One thing that's always been striking to me is even the members playing a leading role on specific issues actually could not talk about the issues. They didn't have enough knowledge on their own issues to talk about them at length. I'm probably guilty of that," said a current member of Congress who wished to remained anonymous.

So we end up with distracted members of Congress, members of Congress that do not ask the tough questions or make the tough calls because it could affect fundraising, and we have members of Congress that do not know the details and ramifications of what they are voting on and sponsoring. Great, no wonder nothing ever gets resolved.

This article alone justifies Step 39 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federally elected officials. Maybe if all of these members of Congress knew that they could not run for office for a second term, they would focus more and doing the right thing and not hitting up the right political donor. How much worse could it get with term limits compared to the current process laid out in the Huffington Post article?

If we implement Step 39, which would remove the word “incumbent” from our political vocabulary, and combine it with Step 6, which would allow only individual American citizens to contribute to political campaigns, we might finally get back to representative government that is for the people and by the people as opposed to the current government which is by the political donor and for the political donor.

Two final thoughts:

1. The article also exposes the seedy underside of committee assignments. We will cover this other disgrace and insult to democracy tomorrow.
2. Second, consider a paragraph from the article and visualize the writers’ description of “call time.” It reminds me of a prison work detail, I picture these Congressional people marching off in a straight line to the hard labor work of making fundraising calls, chained together in striped prison garb, based on the writers’ vivid description of the process:

Congress members make the dreaded calls from a room in the office of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or a similar one at the headquarters of the National Republican Congressional Committee. After votes in the House, a stream of congressmen and women can be seen filing out of the Capitol and, rather than returning to their offices, heading to rowhouses nearby on First Street for call time, or directly to the parties' headquarters. The rowhouses, where Larson said he prefers to make calls, are typically owned by lobbyists, fundraisers or members themselves, and are used for call time because it's illegal to solicit campaign cash from the official congressional office. Former Rep. Walt Minnick's (D-Idaho) career in finance enabled him to buy a Capitol Hill rowhouse that he allows Democrats to use for call time. "There's less turmoil and background noise" in the rowhouses compared with the DCCC call center, said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), who retired from office this year.

Again, disgraceful and certainly not worth $170,000 per year per Congressional member.
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