April, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 9: The Latest Government Bureaucracy To Go Out of Control

This is our ninth post this month regarding political class insanity as we continue to trudge through the latest ineptness, idiocy, and wasteful spending of the political class. The first post in this month’s series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/april-2014-political-class-insanity.html

At this rate, we probably need today and tomorrow to wrap up the latest insanity, a record that is a tribute to the continuing incompetence of the American political class.

1) Before we get into the first instance of political class insanity and government incompetence, keep in mind that the Federal government currently maintains tens of thousands of buildings around the country that are currently not occupied, costing the American taxpayer billions of dollars a year to maintain, guard, and account for.

Also keep in mind that the Obama administration and this Congress recently reduced the retirement benefits of our retired armed services members, a reduction we have placed on our brave soldiers in light of the wasteful spending we are about to dive into. 

With these two points in mind, consider the disaster unfolding in downtown D.C. with a building renovation for a brand new Federal bureaucracy, as described in a 2013 Washington Examiner article:

• The renovation costs for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau bureaucracy’s new headquarters building have almost doubled, soaring from an initial estimate and budget of $55 million to $95 million.
• At this new, higher level, these renovation costs are at least twice the typical renovation expenses for the most luxurious commercial office space available in downtown Washington, D.C., according to architectural experts cited in the Examiner article.
• The $95 million estimate is also almost double the General Services Administration's $50 million ANNUAL budget for construction, acquisition and renovation for ALL Federal buildings throughout the ENTIRE country.
• The skyrocketing renovation costs compute out to a whopping $80,000 for each of the 1,200 CFPB employees working at the agency.
• To Congressman Patrick McHenry, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee's subcommittee on oversight and investigations, the high cost of the renovations is evidence that the CFPB is out of control: "This is absolutely a runaway agency." 
• The renovation rate for the 300,000 square foot CFPB offices is $316 per square foot, twice the $150 per square foot costs for renovating Washington's luxury commercial Class "A" office buildings with high-end restrooms, lobbies, elevators, hallways and office suites, according to the Examiner article.
• The renovation costs for a typical Class "B" Washington office building are about $100 per square foot, making the CFPB renovation costs up to three times the going rate for quality facilities.
• One reason for the possible high costs is that the CFPB contracted the prestigious Chicago-based architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, for $7.2 million, to design the renovations.
• Skidmore is famous for extravagant and lavish designs including the luxury Dubai-based Cayan Towers and Dubai's other famous skyscraper Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.
• Adding insult to injury, the CFPN tried to bury the cost increase in a little known published government report in April, 2013.
• It was at a June 18 Congressional subcommittee oversight hearing when Stephen Agostini, the CFPB’s chief financial officer first informed the lawmakers the costs had doubled when he was asked by Congressman Sean Duffy, even though the agency gave Duffy a document just prior to the hearing that still contained the outdated $55 million number.
• Unbelievably, Agostini hinted that the costs might go even higher at the June hearing: "Congressman, we are at the early stages of understanding what it would cost to renovate a building that is 30 years old."
• Agostini bemoaned the fact that "we have floors at 1700 G Street where we cannot run telephone lines, run electrical lines, run computer lines, because when the building was built, it was not anticipated they would use those things." 
• However, the building's previous occupants were the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Comptroller of the Currency, two government entities that require sophisticated information technology infrastructures to conduct complicated financial services activities.

So many questions, so much waste, so much deceit:

1. Why does an existing building need a high end, expensive designer for simple offices?
2. Was the initial estimate low balled intentionally to get approval?
3. The assertion that a lot of renovation was needed seems bogus for a relatively new building and even if there were needed technology renovations required, you do not need a high end design firm to run wires and cables.
4. With tens of thousands of empty Federal buildings already under Federal control, why do we need to renovate yet another building?
5. Who is responsible for such a shoddy or dishonest job of estimating costs, costs that have almost doubled and look to go even higher? Such incompetence or dishonesty needs to be rewarded with firing those responsible.
6. How many veterans could have had their retirement benefits restored, at least temporarily, if the CFPB was not wasting and spending money so willy-nilly?

Ridiculous waste of taxpayer money. But how does the political class insanity play into this idiocy? When the CFPB was created as a major part of the Dodd-Frank legislation, the political class decided to exempt the CFPB from Congressional control. Thus, this is basically a runaway Federal entity that Congress has abdicated its right to control and supervise. That is pure political class insanity.

The Defense Department, that wastes at least tens of billions of dollars a year, has been around for over two hundred years. Medicare and Medicaid, which waste almost $100 billion a year, have been around for over fifty years. At least these two Federal entities took a long time to build up their wasteful habits. Looks like the CFPB will get up to wasteful spending levels in just a few short years.

2) But the inability to forecast simple building renovation costs is not the only crisis coming out of the new CFPB. An April 5, 2014 article from the Washington Examiner reports that, from a personnel perspective, the CFPB is already a disaster:

• A CFPB attorney, testifying at a Congressional hearing, has come forward with shocking details about widespread personnel abuses in the CFPB.
• These accusations include blatant racism, gender discrimination and illegal retaliation against whistle blowers like herself.
• According to Congressman Sean Duffy: "Army Veteran and CFPB employee Angela Martin recounted an environment of racism and sexism at the CFPB: '...women were seen 'crying in their offices after suffering from abuse.' In fact, she claimed some employees have been clinically diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stemming from the hostile work environment. Ms. Martin also informed members [of the House Financial Services Committee] that one particular division of the agency was commonly referred to as 'The Plantation,' a derogatory reference, and that a non-white immigrant employee was referred to as ‘an F-ing foreigner.’”
• In the midst of these serous accusations, Ms Martin claims, in front of Congress, that the head of the CFPB asked her to back down from her accusations and take a bribe in the form of a new position.

Great, so much for the first African American President helping to bridge the racial divide in this country. His second largest legislative effort has resulted in a new government bureaucracy that is allegedly infested with racism and sexism even though it is only a few years old. Given that this creation happened only on the Obama watch, no way he can blame Bush for this alleged disaster.

A short snippet of Ms. Martin’s testimony can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3otcax0NSwc&list=UUhq-eV2HnV7Kr2zmj0yua7g

Given the organization’s blatant disregard for the American taxpayer when it comes to spending lavishly on itself and its offices and the credibility that Ms. Martin shows in this video clip, it is probably a pretty good bet that this new Federal monstrosity is also disrespectful of its own employees, a disrespect and disregard that is likely resulting in sub-optimal performance and a further wasting of taxpayer wealth.

Sorry we went so deep into this dysfunctional government organization but it is a microcosm of typical Washington and political class insanity:

• Wasting taxpayer wealth with lowball estimates in order to get approval for further spending.
• Enriching themselves and their working conditions in Hunger Games fashion regardless of the cost to taxpayers.
• A bureaucracy running amuck and out of control, despite Congressional and Constitutional attempts to get it under control.
• Sexism and racist behavior that would get non-government entities in deep legal problems if they behaved the same way but somehow government employees and entities are not covered by the same laws and regulations they impose on the rest of us.

We talked about the insanity of the CFPB in the context of the above problems but as a reader of this blog knows, we could probably substitute “TSA,”, “IRS,” “EPA,” and a multitude of other government agencies into this blog post and it would still be accurate. That is how screwed up the political class has screwed up our government and our freedoms.

Tomorrow will definitely be the last installment in this month’s political class insanity series. Not because we covered all of the insanity but because it is too depressing to continually review the ineptness, the idiocy, and the wasteful spending of the worst set of Washington politicians that ever held office.

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

The Corurption and Hunger Games Mentality of the Political Class, Part 2: First Class Travel For Second Class Politicians

This is our second in a series this month that examines the many examples and various forms of corruption and Hunger Games mentality that infect the political class in Washington. Yesterday, we examined the corruption of the constantly moving of Obama Care dates and deadlines and how that corrupted one of the definitions Webster puts forth on corruption: Corruption: d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct. Given the many, many unilateral and un-Constitutional changes Obama has made to the health care legislation, it is certainly not pure, correct, or in its original form, making his actions a form of corruption.

For reference today and in the forthcoming corruption posts, we will review political corruption along the following lines of the corruption definition from Webster:

a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : depravity 

b : decay, decomposition 

c: inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) 

d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct 

Today we will focus on the world wide travels of the First family and other Washington politicians in the context of impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle, depravity. 

Before we get into the details of the political depravity and abuse of tax payer wealth, how the Washington elite treat themselves like royalty while the rest of the country suffers, similar to the “Hunger Games” mentality, consider the state of the country and what it means to regular, non-Washington Americans:

• Over twenty million Americans are unemployed or under employed.
• The number of long term unemployed Americans sets a new record every month for its high levels for consecutive months at such a high level.
• About fifty million Americans receive food assistance every month from the Federal government.
• Over three hundred thousand new Americans apply for unemployment benefits every month.
• Rather than treat and help drug addicts, we lock them up for possessing minimal amounts of drugs and self abuse of drugs.
• Many of our largest cities are havens for homeless Americans.
• The Washington political class recently reduced the pension benefits of our brave servicemen and women as a budget cutting scheme.
• Our national debt has soared well past $17 TRILLION, burdening current and future American generations with a very heavy debt burden to carry.

In light of these burdens that regular Americans face everyday, consider some of the acts of impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle and depravity that Obama, Biden, and other Washington politicians treat themselves to despite the eight existing American maladies listed above [Note: the first five bullet points below come courtesy of a recent Independent Journal Review analysis]:

• With 31 international trips for a total of 119 days abroad, President Obama has now traveled more than any other President before him.
• Air Force One Costs over $228,000 per hour to fly.
• The President often travels with a 900-person, 45-car, 2 Air-Force Ones, 3-cargo plane entourage.
• The 13-hour visit in South Africa for Mandela’s funeral cost an estimated $11 million (including 127 hotel rooms and not including the flight costs).
• Annual costs for supporting the White House expenses exceed $1.4 billion.
• To give an example of how out of control this spending has been within the Obama Presidency, travel expenses for the royal family of Great Britain was less than $9 million in 2012 and the cost to maintain them annually is about $55 million. Plus, the properties owned by the royals generate more than $200 million in rent, so when you include that revenue stream, England actually makes money on the expenses of the British royal family, something America does not enjoy from the Obama royal family.
• The First Lady’s current “non-political” trip to China, a trip where she took her daughters and her mother along on taxpayer expense, likely also costs millions of dollars, a lot of which is caused by her stay at the Westin hotel in Beijing, a hotel suite that is costing the American taxpayer $8,400 per night. 
• In a bit of irony, Vice President Joe Biden, a person who was actually elected by the American people, who actually has a real government job, and possibly actually works at that job, (compared to Michelle Obama who was not elected to any office, does not have a government job, and does not work at a government job), was not allowed to stay at this same hotel when he was in Beijing because… wait for it… it was deemed too expensive.
• Since President Obama has become President, the First Family has taken vacations to Hawaii every holiday season for at least several weeks, has vacationed in Ireland, has vacationed in Kenya, and in many expensive places within in the United States.
• In addition, the First Lady has taken vacations to at least Spain, Mexico, and Aspen, Colorado without the President. 
• In the first three months of 2014, the First Lady has been on vacation for parts of EVERY month of 2014 including Hawaii, Aspen, and now China, on taxpayer expense.
• The President has flown off to Florida and California in the past two months for golf vacations, on taxpayer expense.
• Last year, the Vice President’s trip to Europe for only two days cost the American taxpayer over $1 million just in hotel rooms.

You get the idea, while America suffers, the political royalty in Washington party on and vacation on in the most extravagant and frequent ways possible, illustrated the impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : depravity definition of corruption.

The China trip by Michelle Obama is particularly galling in its corruption. It is no doubt a personal vacation since:

• She took her kids and mother along.
• She is not allowing any press coverage of her trip despite it being paid for by the American taxpayer.
• The only photo that has been made public is her and her kids at the Great Wall of China, certainly a vacation and tourist spot.
• Doing a few short presentations about kids’ health does not justify the millions of dollars being wasted and burned through on this trip, that is purely a bad charade at importance.

If Obama and the rest of the Washington political class were leaders and truly non-corrupt, if they truly had empathy and compassion for the rest of America, they would not be wasting money like this. The Obamas and a record high number of Congressional members are millionaires, they should be making the sacrifices that lead the country, not sopping up every last taxpayer dollar they can justify spending for their own benefit, enrichment, and comfort.

It is not just the Obamas that have this corruption affliction. Consider the highlights of a recent news reports which talk about a Congressman who does not have the corruption affliction and who wants to rid others in Washington of the affliction. Congressman Paul A. Gosar is trying to prohibit Members of Congress from flying first class using taxpayer funds. 

Specifically, the Congressman has submitted a proposal to the Committee on Appropriations for specific language to be included in the Fiscal Year 2015 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act that would prohibit this practice, forcing every member of Congress to pay for first class treatment if they want it, relieving the citizens from doing so. 

The proposal reads as follows:

Members of Congress are servants of the people and should not be considered a privileged class. Luxury airfare accommodations utilizing taxpayer monies would seem inappropriate in any fiscal climate but at a time of soaring deficits and with a federal debt in excess of $17 trillion such expenditures are especially wasteful. If federal restrictions prohibit members of our military from traveling first-class, this same standard should also apply to Members of Congress.

Kudos to this Congressman who gets it, who recognizes the Hunger Games mentality of Washington and is trying to do something about it, unlike the Obama family and the other 500 or so members of Congress. This is how you get the $17 TRILLION national debt under control: one first class flight at a time (along with hundreds of thousands of other wasteful government spending items).

Ask yourself these questions:

1. How many more unemployed Americans could undergo job training if Washington did not waste so much money on themselves and their vacation travels?
2. how many homeless could be sheltered if Washington did not waste so much money on themselves and their vacation travels?
3. How many hungry could be fed if Washington did not waste so much money on themselves and their vacation travels?
4. How many drug addicts could be helped if Washington did not waste so much money on themselves ands their vacations travels?

Webster must have had the current political class in mind when he put forth his first definition of corruption: a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : depravity. More and varied corruption 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

January, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part2: Maternity Coverage For Men, More Uninsured Americans Than Before, More Law Breaking, And Americans hare Obama Care

This is the second of about a half dozen expected posts this month that will review the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. The first post from yesterday was an overall view of the top ten promises broken by the President relative to this legislation. Over the course of this week or so will get underneath those broken promises to examine what those shattered promises are doing to American families, workers, and the economy as a whole.

The disaster have been so numerous that we have had to devote multiple posts each month since August in an attempt to keep up with all of them. Thus, this week we are going into a "quick hit” mode where we will try to cover as many disasters as possible. Deeper analysis and reviews of similar disasters occurred in previous posts including what should be the philosophy and strategies for replacing Obama Care with a program that actually has a chance of succeeding in the face of this current fiasco.

1) The results from a recent Gallup poll that was conducted by phone over the month of December found that that the Obama Care website experiences have been very disappointing in general:

• The new poll of only uninsured Americans searching for health insurance options via the Obama Care health insurance exchange websites shows that 59% had a "negative” experience in doing so.
• 30% of the respondents rated the experience as "negative" and 29% rated the experience as "very negative," for a "total negative" of 59%. 
• Only 39% of the poll respondents ranked their experience on the exchanges as positive.
• 32% called the experience "positive" and only 7% called it very positive "very positive." Very disappointing results given how much the President bragged how easy it would be to go online to purchase Obama Care policies.
• Currently, 26% of uninsured Americans say they have visited a health insurance exchange website, up from 20% in the October and November polling. Also a disappointment since the whole purpose of this negative endeavor was to get all uninsured American onto a health insurance plan, not only about one in four.

Bad results into what was supposed to be a wonderful and easy shopping experience, a bad experience that has now probably cost the American taxpayer close to a billion dollars.

2) Gallup is not the only polling organization finding negative perceptions and feelings about Obama Care if you consider the latest findings from Rasmussen:

• Rasmussen found an all time high of 58% of those polled saying they are against the requirement that every American be covered by a health insurance policy or face fines and imprisonment.
• For the second month in a row, a majority 51% of insured respondents and 45% of respondents said they think overall quality of healthcare will decline because of Obama Care, certainly a disappointing finding especially for the uninsured since the whole purpose of Obama Care was to take care of America’s uninsured.
• The majority of those polled voters also dislike Obama Care and expect it to increase, not decrease, healthcare costs as promised by Obama.
• Only 19% of respondents think their healthcare will be better by the end of 2014 than it is now, as opposed to 30% who felt that way a year ago, not a good trend for the President.
• On the only positive note, those respondents who are optimistic about the effects of Obama Care and think healthcare will improve as a result total 31%, also the highest to date.

In general, not good news for a system that has now had over three years of planning and over three months of operations. But as we have shown time and time again in this blog, these negative ratings, whether measured by Gallup or Rasmussen, are well deserved by this worst piece of Washington legislation ever written.

3) We have often compared the current relationship between Washington DC and the rest of the country to the “Hunger Games" books and resultant movies. Those stories talk about glorious and opulent living by those residing in the capital city but the suffering and torment of regular citizens outside of the capital that support that capital lifestyle with their taxes and hard work.

Obama Care is shaping up as just another example of the “Hunger Games” mentality that infects Washington DC. The Obama Care legislation clearly includes a provision that requires Washington politicians and their staff aides to purchase insurance plans that are created by the law or through the Obama Care exchanges. 

The requirements of the legislation also specify that Americans who make less than $45,000 annually qualify for Federal subsidies. Keep in mind that members of Congress are paid $175,000 per year, far above the act's subsidy cutoff, and probably the vast majority of each politician‘s staff also greatly exceeds the $45,000 subsidy cutoff.

However, in true “Hunger Games” style, late last year the Federal government Office of Personnel Management said the government will help Congressional members and their staff members offset the plans costs with subsidies that could exceed $10,000 a year, courtesy of the American taxpayer. This is a blatant disregard for the law and the tenets of the laid out in the Obama Care legislation.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson and other Republicans have correctly pointed out that this assistance gives the lawmakers and their aides special treatment. As a result of this obviously illegal move and the inability of Johnson to convince the administration and the Office of Personnel Management to abide by the law, Johnson has filed a Federal lawsuit to force the Federal government to obey Federal laws as it pertains to this disregard for Federal law.

Johnson correctly pointed out the obvious ill effects of politicians putting themselves above a law that they wrote and enacted but now disregard selectively: "The American people have an expectation — Wisconsinites have an expectation — that members of Congress should be subjected to the letter of the law just like they’re held to the letter of the law. In this case, members of Congress now are not being held to the letter of the law, and that creates an alienation. It creates a wedge between a member of Congress and their constituents."

Not only does it create an alienation, it sucks to be told what to do and how to do it but those doing the telling who do not even follow their own advice and legal obligations.

4) Given the list of ten broken promises of Obama Care we discussed yesterday, the fact that three Obama promises made the Washington Post’s “Top Ten Lies of 2013 list,” that one of those three lies was the actual top lie of 2013, and that Politifact also name an Obama promise as the top lie of 2013, one has to wonder if everything coming out of this administration is a grand lie.

Senator Johnson also addressed this grand lie concept in conjunction with his lawsuit: "Those assurances [promises about how great Obama Care would be] weren't slight exaggerations or innocent shadings of the truth. It was a political fraud echoed relentlessly by House and Senate Democrats who should be held accountable for the disastrous consequences of their grand deception."

“Political fraud” and “grand deception,” sounds about right.

5) For those of you like playing with numbers, the Associated Press reported on December 27, 2013 that as of that date, over 4.7 American families had had their health care insurance plans cancelled as a result of Obama Care. Only about 2 million families/Americans had signed up for an Obama Care policy, meaning at least 2.7 American families lost their insurance policy as a result of Obama Care, the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen.

I say at least 2.7 million because the 2 million policies the administration is claiming are those Americans who have made a choice of an Obama Care policy. It does not mean they have actually bought that policy, that information has not been made public, if it is even known. Te best analogy is comparing the numbers to shopping at the Amazon website: about 2 million people have put an Obama Care policy in their “shopping cart” but we have no idea how many have actually clicked through to the checkout page.

Now, in another illegal move, the Obama administration has tried to convince the states and health insurance companies to reinstiute some, not all of the cancelled 4.7 million policies under the guise of calling the cancellations “hardships.” but many states and companies have already said they have gone to far down the road to reinstate policies and will not do so, leaving the President with a highly likely net LOSS of Americans with health insurance. Pathetic.

Why are many Americans losing their policies? Obama Care tries to burden a “one size fits all” policy on every American regardless of their personal needs, needs that they a were getting well served prior to Obama Care. Examples of such nonsense include:

• The health-care law requires that all insurance plans cover 10 “essential benefits,” eliminating millions of current, perfectly fine insurance plans that don’t fill this overarching requirement, severely increasing costs for consumers that have to purchase coverage for health care and products they may not want or need.
• For example, going forward, all insurance plans must include maternity coverage….including plans for men and post-menopausal women. 
• Customers without children must purchase Obama Care insurance plans that cover pediatric services. 
• Other newly established essential benefits include hospitalization, mental-health services and preventive and wellness services.

You cannot make up this kind of stupidity, maternity coverage for men, etc. And these people actually run the country, heaven help us.

More Obama Care insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

December, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: A Million Dollar Bus Stop, Another Gem From Nancy Pelosi, Too Much Obama Golf, and More

This is the second post this month in our monthly series that examines the latest wackiness, wastefulness, and pure insanity from the American political class. This series does not include the dire consequences and lunacy of Obama Care, we do a monthly series now on that fiasco in the middle of each month. Today and for the next few days we will be looking at plain old idiocy and wasteful spending, incidents that would be funny if they were not so damaging to our freedoms and wealth.

1) When any human bureaucracy gets too large, the output and work of that organizations starts becoming petty, trivial, and plain stupid. That is because as the bureaucracy grows, people realize that the work they are doing is trivial and meaningless because there are too many people trying to look productive with too little real work to do.

As the biggest bureaucracy in the history of mankind, the Federal government certainly fits that bill. A prime example is from a recent article put out by the Heritage Foundation.

The Federal government is requiring General Motors (GM) to recalling 18,941 newer Chevy Camaros for violating Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208—Occupant Crash Protection. Wow, this is important. Who wants to be in a car that is a safety hazard, kudos to the Feds.

Is the safety defect because of defective seat belts? Ah, no.

Is the safety defect because of a air bag malfunction? Ah, no.

Is the safety defect because of brake failure? Ah, no.

The government is forcing GM to recall 18,941 Chevy Camaros because the air bag warning label on the sun visor may peel. Not always peel, almost always peel, just might peel. Seriously.

Here’s a solution: why not have GM send out new stickers with really strong clue to all of its customers and also its dealers, instructing the dealers to put the stickier sticker on the car when the customer brings their Camaro in for servicing? That way GM could save some money by avoiding a recall and either use the saved money to make even safer cars or start using this type of money to repay the American taxpayer the $10 billion it still owes us (see yesterday’s post). 

No, some nitwit, useless bureaucrat, in order to justify his existence, makes GM incur probably millions of dollars worth of unneeded costs to replace stickers, stickers that probably the vast number of customers never read or care about anyway. Government insanely out of control.

2) When Bush left office in 2008, the Federal government was responsible for just over $100 billion worth of student loans. That figure had grown about 78% during his eight years in office, saddling every U.S. household with a potential loan and debt liability of just under $100 per household if those loans were defaulted on.

Under Obama, that overall debt burden has increase almost seven fold in just five years of this administration, saddling the American taxpayer with almost $700 billion worth of student loans and debt. This equates out to a potential debt burden of almost $700 for every U.S. household. Given how poorly the economy under Obama has generated good job opportunities for recent college graduates, it is very likely that a large portion of this debt burden will eventually need yet another U.S. taxpayer bailout down the road. 

First, taxpayer bailouts for the car makers, then the banks, then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and eventually the student loan bubble burst. When politicians deal with our money and wealth, the end result is almost always a catastrophe.

3) The Independent Journal Review reported in mid November that President Obama was to play his 150th round of golf as President. Now, I am not saying the President shouldn’t get to relax and have a good time. It is just that he seems to take his rest at the most dangerous times for Americans. 

His playing golf in November was during the crisis period when Obama Care and its associated procedures and websites were totally embarrassing his administration and the country.

After warning the country about the dire happenings in Syria one Saturday a couple of months ago, how he was prepared to engage the Syrians in actual hot warfare, he and the Vice President than went off after that war address to play some golf.

When the BP oil derrick was spewing crude oil into the Gulf, causing widespread economic and environmental damage, he played golf a number of times while Gulf coast residents coped with the disaster.

Yes, he is entitled to some down time but I wish he would choose some better opportunities to do so. And, to my liberal friends and family, if you can criticize Bush for his many vacations, I and the rest of American can criticize Obama for his golf obsession and ignoring of immediate crises that affect all Americans.

4) Continuing our Hunger Games theme, that is becoming more and more real every day, where taxpayers outside of D.C. pay a higher and higher cost to make the residents within the D.C. metro area richer and more comfortable, consider a March, 2013 Washington Post article. The city of Arlington Virginia, a city tucked deeply inside the D.C. Hunger Games Metro bubble, had recently installed a bus stop.

No big deal. Every city needs lots of bus stops. However, this bus stop cost about a million dollars to build, using a lot of both Federal and state taxpayer money. Yes, $1 million for one bus stop. 

It is a nice bus stop. The bus stop’s glass-and-steel roof looks like a bird taking flight. One wall made of etched glass opens up to view newly planted landscaping. Embedded in the bus stop’s floor are heating elements intended to ward off the cold weather and keep winter-weary feet cozy. 

But. worse yet, the county has budgeted $20.8 million for the remaining 23 stops, or about $904,000 for each one. Wow, economies of scale get the cost of one bus stop down to “only” $900,000 each.

Definitely a Hunger Games situation. How many homeless people could be sheltered in Kansas City for $20.8 million? How many drug addicts in Oakland could be saved with $20.8 million worth of medicine and counseling? How many hungry Americans in Houston could be fed with $20.8 million?

In all cases, a lot. But in America today, some citizens get foot warming, million dollar bus stops and other Americans go hungry, shelterless, and drug addicted. Disgusting.

5) A lot of our material for our insanity posts could not exist without Nancy Pelosi. She is a constant source of amusing quotes (“we have to pass the health care bill to see what is in it.”) She recently had a precious quote regarding natural gas: “I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.” Uh, Nancy, natural gas is a fossil fuel. And these people vote on legislation that affects us all. Pitifully ignorant.

6) The Federal government bureaucracy has gotten so large that it often cannot control its operations or its spending. This was certainly the case as identified by a recent Inspector General’s report on improper and illegal government Medicare payments to illegal aliens, as recapped in their executive summary:

Of the PDE records submitted by sponsors for CYs 2009 through 2011, CMS inappropriately accepted 279,056 PDE records with unallowable gross drug costs totaling $28,990,718 on behalf Medicare Part D Payments for Unlawfully Present Beneficiaries.

CMS did not have a policy addressing payments for unlawfully present beneficiaries under Medicare Part D that was equivalent to the existing policy that covers payments for these beneficiaries under Parts A and B. Because CMS did not have such a policy, it did not have internal controls to identify and disenroll unlawfully present beneficiaries and to automatically reject PDE records associated with them. Without such a policy, CMS incorrectly treated unlawfully present beneficiaries as eligible for Part D benefits and did not prevent Part D payments on behalf of them. 

In a nutshell, the Federal government illegally and improperly paid out almost $29 million in Medicare drug benefits to illegal immigrants who were not supposed to receive those taxpayer funded benefits and even worse, the government, despite being in the Medicare business for decades, n did not even have methods and procedures in place to make sure this type fraud and waste did not occur. 

As with the Arlington million dollar bus shelter, how many homeless American citizens could be sheltered in Kansas City for $29 million that instead went to illegal immigrants? How many drug addicts American citizens in Oakland could be saved with $29 million worth of medicine and counseling? How many hungry American citizens in Houston could be fed with $29 million?

Taxpayer wealth being wasted on bus stops and illegal immigrants and the needs of real American citizens go unattended to. A President who golfs at the wrong times, pumps up another financial bubble via dangerously high student loan liabilities, and who does nothing to deter the Hunger Games disgrace in Washington. A Federal government which worries about a sticker on a car visor rather than real issues. A leading politician that does not know basic energy facts. 

This is the disgrace that are American politicians today. And that disgrace will continue to unfold tomorrow as we plod through this month’s political class insanity.

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

December, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: General Motors Owes Us Billions Of Dollars, The Pentagon Owes Us Trillions of Dollars and More

It’s the start of another month which means its time again for as review of the latest insanity, wasteful spending and corruption that has recently occurred from the American political class. We have done these monthly reviews since 2009 and two clear conclusions have emerged:

• The ineptness and lunacy of how the political class behave has grown exponentially since 2009. What used to take a day or so to review now usually takes at least a week.
• We are suffering through the worst set of politicians this country has ever had to endure. Major and minor problems never get resolved and any efforts that do get put together by the political class just seem to make a bad situation worse.

With those two happy thoughts, let’s see what the politicians have done to us this past month.

1) The Associated Press reported on November 21, 2013 that the Federal government would sell its stake in General Motors by the end of the year. The government became a major owner in the company when it unnecessarily bailed out GM during the Great Recession.

The article reported that the American taxpayer will lose about $10 billion on the deal. This means that about every U.S. household spent about $90 each to keep the company alive in its present form rather than let the bankruptcy courts do their thing and have the General Motors bankruptcy cost the American taxpayer nothing. 

But the article goes on to explain that:

• The company currently has $26.8 billion in cash. This raises the obvious question: if the company is so flush with cash, why is it not paying back its entire debt to the American taxpayer, wiping out the $10 billion shortfall?
• General Motors has added 3,000 workers since the Great Recession. Dividing the 3,000 new workers into the $10 billion unpaid debt results in a cost per U.S. job created of $3,333,333 per job created. In other words, the promise that the bailout was good economic policy since it would create jobs is nonsense if it costs over $3 million to create one new job.
• Despite having $26.8 billion in cash reserves, the company has not paid any income taxes for years because it was able to shed its debt but carry its accumulated losses forward and avoid Federal income taxes, another hit to the U.S. taxpayer.

Just another bad bailout deal that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars with nothing in return.

2) Consider a recent news report from Reuters which disclosed how ridiculously poorly the Defense Department manages its financial affairs:

• The Pentagon cannot account for $8.5 trillion dollars of taxpayer money Congress has appropriated the Department of Defense since 1996.
• For the fiscal year 2012, it is “impossible to determine” how much of the $565 billion for the Pentagon budget was used for what it was supposed to be used for.
• According to the article, there exist numerous examples of unnecessary military spending in the Pentagon; there is about a half trillion dollars in unaudited contracts with private companies, and often there is no way to tell whether goods and services were ever actually delivered to the Defense Department.
• This is not a new problem since Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in September, 2001 that there were possibly $2.3 TRILLION in Pentagon spending that couldn’t be tracked. In other words, twelve years have gone by and nothing has been done to track TRILLIONS of dollars in wasted taxpayer wealth.
• The article lays out just one of the problems by describing how every month Defense Department employees were told by their superiors to make up false numbers in the monthly accounting ledger entries to make them jive with other government agencies' reports even though they were wrong.

Such incompetence and falsifying accounting reports would get normal citizens arrested and thrown in jail for fraud. But nothing happens, no one is fired, no one goes to jail when the government does it and wastes TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars over the years. No wonder we have a $17 TRILLION national debt.

3) We have often made the comparison on how Washington D.C. is actually a true life replica of the capital city in the “Hunger Games” books and movies. In the “Hunger Games,” ordinary citizens from around the country are heavily taxed in order to subsidize and support an outrageously lavish life style for the elite ruling class in the capital city.

A November 18, 2013 article from the St. Louis News Dispatch newspaper reinforces that image and reality, “D.C. Awash In Lobbyist, Contracts, Wealth:”

• During the past decade, the D.C. metro area has added 21,000 households whose earnings place them in the top 1% of all U.S. households with no other metro area even coming close to matching this growth rate.
• In 2010, a single Virginia Congressional district received $43 billion worth of Federal contracts, almost as much as the whole state of Texas received.
• Much of the wasteful spending is a result of 9-11 and the gigantic and unbridled increases in national defense-related spending, spending that was mostly unable to be tracked (see above).

The article goes on to describe the lobbyists feeding frenzy and government spending frenzy in the D.C. metro area. The very sad part of what is going on is that it's economy is not based on producing valued goods and services, it is based on lobbying for better tax breaks, favorable legislation, a bigger cut of unnecessary spending, etc. Very little societal benefits are resulting from this Hunger Games scenario.

I will not go into the gruesome details of how the American taxpayer is being fleeced by this environment, as laid out by this excellent, well researched article. You can read the extensive details at:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/d-c-awash-in-contracts-lobbying-wealth/article_53336d9b-a75f-5a1a-bb19-d46d3186a960.html

4) What would a month be without a major failure from the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), those wonderful folks at airports that grope you on a random basis? In 2007, the TSA started the SPOT program, “Screening Of Passengers by Observation Techniques.” The program was supposed to train some TSA employees to stand around and just watch people, identifying those travelers that were acting suspicious, stressed or afraid, and could be terrorists.

A billion dollars and five years later, the General Accounting Office has issued a report that finds that SPOT is no more effective than random suspect targeting:

The meta-analyses we reviewed — which collectively included research from over 400 separate studies related to detecting deception conducted over the past 60 years — found that the ability of human observers to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral cues or indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance (54%).

Which raises an interesting question: why didn’t the Federal government do this comprehensive study BEFORE spending a billion dollars? Since they studied research from the past 60 years, the analysis could have been done five years ago before the taxpayer wealth was wasted. Insanely poor planning. But given the TSA history of poor planning, this is not surprising.

This will do it for today but there is plenty more insanity to cover in the next several posts. Keep in mind that probably the only way to minimize the insanity, given the incompetence of our current politicians, is to reduce the amount of taxpayer money they can waste. 

We need to get them focused on a much smaller set of functions and issues since they have proven that they currently cannot control any spending, cannot control a wasteful government bureaucracy, they cannot control the insanity. Maybe if we shrunk government and focused only on a few major issues, they might eventually resolve an issue. Today that focus does not exist and no issues, small or large, are ever resolved.

This was the main purpose of Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” This step would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years, resulting in a much leaner government focused on a much smaller but overall more important set of priorities. Keep this proposal in mind as we go through the stupid wasteful spending and activities of the American political class over the next few days.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

October, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: An Underpaid/Delusional Congressman, Banks Still Rule, and More

Please note: Nancy Pelosi recently made the outrageous comment that there was no waste to be cut in the Federal govnerment, i.e. EVERY dollar the Washington political class spends is essential to our country. Keep this insanity in mind as we go through this month's polticial class insanity, you will quickly see that she is very much out of touch with the reality of today's wasteful federal government.

This is the third in a series to review the latest insanity, lunacy and antics from the American political class. The first two posts were quite depressing. We saw politicians getting richer, fraudsters getting richer, bridges ready to collapse around the country, and more. As a warning, the insanity today and in subsequent days will be as bad, as wasteful, and as depressing as the insanity we have covered this month and in the years leading up to this month. The number of politicians stays the same but the idiocy they come up with, the ineptness they exhibit, continues to grow exponentially.

1) Over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed. The average/median household annual income in this country has dropped substantially since AFTER the recession ended and is now about $50,000. The price of gas is up about 80% since Obama took office. Food stamp recipients now total over 47 million Americans, an all time record by far.

And what does a current member of Congress think about his salary, currently about $172,000 a year with outstanding benefits to boot? According to  recent Politico article, one lawmaker, Congressman Phil Gingrey,  said he’s “stuck” making $172,000 a year, while Congressional aides will go on to make in big bucks lobbying on K Street, according to a National Review report. Staffers “may be 33 years old now and not making a lot of money. But in a few years they can just go to K Street…and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said, according to the National Review.

He is “stuck making $172,000” while tens of millions of Americans cannot even find a job or need help putting food on the table. He is “stuck” making three times more in salary than what the typical American family makes. And it is not like the Congressman is poor. According to Politico, quoting the National Review reports, his net worth is about $3 million. 

We are truly living in a “Hunger Games” country when the country is suffering dire economic stress and a Washington politician complains about only making $172,000.

2) The U.S. healthcare industry can make you shudder. According to Aetna, in the United States, we spend over $2.3 TRILLION a year on health care. No other country in the world spends more but 32 other countries in the world have higher average life expectancies. 

This comes out to over $10,000 a year for every single American citizen but we still rank 33rd in the world. And Obama Care is likely to make us spend more and fall further down the rankings since the legislation never looked at the root causes of the $2.3 TRILLON expense.

3) According to a recent article from the New York Post, that was reviewed in the September 30, 3012 issue of The Week magazine, in just 2001 alone former Congressman Robert Kennedy, Jr. had sexual trysts with 37 different women. He tracked and categorized these trysts, along with annotations, in a diary that the Post had obtained.

Kennedy, whose wife committed suicide last year, is just another politician whose respect for his spouse, his word of honor, his constituents, and his public office is no better than the politicians who came before him, e.g. Weiner, Spitzer, Edwards, MacGreevey, Sanford, Ensign, his uncle JFK, etc. If you are having affairs with 37 different women, it is a lot tougher focusing on the government work of the people.

4) An article in the December, 2012 issue of Reason magazine gave a stunning example of how government spending and mismanagement of taxpayer wealth is so out of control, using the Chicago city government as an example:

• While trying to get its out-of-control budget tamed, between 2003 and 2012 the city of Chicago eliminated more than 8,000 city jobs, about 20% of its workforce.
• However, according to a recent analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute, the cost of health care for the remaining employees’ jumped 29% in 2012.
• Additionally, from 2003 to 2012 the annual cost of a city employee on the city payroll jumped from $58,299 per employee to $96,082.
• Thus, with 20% fewer employees compared to 2003, the city is paying out $700 million more a year for 20% fewer employees vs. 2003. 
• Far fewer employees and far more costs, you cannot make this stuff up.
• But it gets worse since on the current budget trend, the city must find a way to increase its annual contributions to the employee pensions fund by almost three fold, from $476 million a year to $1.2 billion a year by 2015.

Needless to say, unless some drastic cuts are taking soon, the city is going pull a “Detroit” in the next few years despite cutting a fifth of its workforce. This is the poster child for out-of-control government spending when you slash staff but increase your staffing budget.

5) I get a little sense of relief when I find out that at least our politicians are no different when it comes to politicians around the world in wasting taxpayer money. The latest issue of Business Week has some information on how the Chinese government has gone overboard building infrastructure in China and has allowed loose credit policies (are you listening, Federal Reserve board) to result in the building of new towns and special zones that have gone unused and unoccupied because while the government said to build and encouraged building. The immutable forces of the market said there was no need or demand for the build outs.

 One of the most glaring examples of taxpayer wealth wasted  is the building of a new airport in a far flung city in the western Chinese hinterlands in the Xinjiang province. The new airport has four check-in counters and handles a grand total of two flights a DAY. Thus, wasting taxpayer money does not appear to be a uniquely American political talent.

6) On January 21, 2010, President Obama stated: “I’m proposing a simple and common sense [financial] reform, which we’re calling the Volcker Rule, after this tall guy behind me.” The Volcker rule that he proposed was to ensure that banks could not make investment bets and investments that would stick American taxpayers with the bill if the banks ended up failing, much like what happened in the Great Recession. 

Simple enough. When the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation was passed, the Volcker rule encompassed 12 pages of the final bill. Three years later, the rule has still not been written into formal, enforceable regulations. The unfinal, unapproved regulations now run 530 pages long and we still do not have an answer of how to do this simple thing.

Deadlines for enforcement continue to be missed and you can be sure that many lawsuits will ensue since translating 12 pages of law into well over 500 pages of regulations is going to tick off some people regarding the intent of the original 12 pages and the effect of over 500 pages.

Whenever something can be done simply, you can be sure that our political class will make longer, more difficult and less effective.

7) Speaking of financial matters and the Great Recession, a graphic from a recent issue of Business Week showed how much taxpayer money that the Federal government gave to bail out the firm AIG actually passed through AIG and directly into the hands of foreign banks:

• Canadian banks got $1.4 billion of American taxpayer wealth
• French banks got $20.8 billion
• British banks got $2.6 billion
• German banks got $10.8 billion
• Swiss banks got $3.8 billion
• Netherlands banks got $.6 billion
• Total = $40 billion of American taxpayer wealth ended in the vaults of foreign banks.

Which obviously raises the question of why were foreign banks relieved of the responsibility for their stupid decisions in the marketplace? And why were American taxpayers forced to pay for their stupid decisions?

That $40 billion could have been used to:

• Give every American household a $350 tax rebate.
• Could have kept the White House tours operating for 40,000 years.
• Could have put a trained, armed police professional in every U.S. school for about five years to prevent future Newtown like shootings.

Never underestimate the ability of the American political class to take care of bankers and itself from a financial backer and donor perspective. And now they have expanded to take care of overseas bankers also.

Enough insanity for today but tomorrow brings another day and another batch of lunacy from our politicians.

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 4, August, 2013 Obama Care Update: Identity Theft Paradise, Younger Americans Getting Screwed, and Costs Go Up Despite Promises Not To

This is the fourth and final post in this series that is looking at the current facts, figures, impacts, and disasters that are occurring as a result of Obama Care. The results so far have not been pretty. Untrained implementers, processes open to severe abuse by identity thieves, Americans losing their jobs or work hours, more and more people finally learning that this is indeed the worst piece of legislation ever written, and a whole slew of other problems.

It is really sad that every month we find enough data, experiences, and realities to write about this unfolding disaster for days at a time.  And as we get closer and closer to more major rollout dates of Obama Care processes and regulation, I am sure that the information will continue to get worse and worse. 

Wouldn’t it have been much better if the Washington political class had taken the time up front to understand what the root causes are of our escalating health care costs are and THEN developed plans to address those root causes? Instead, the failed to do that preliminary analysis work and in its place constructed a complex Rube Goldberg-like insurance monstrosity that will do nothing to address these root causes and will likely make a bad situation worse.

Consider the root causes of our high health care costs and how no one has been able to convince America that there are serious components of Obama care that will address these underlying drivers of high health care costs:

• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans eat too much.
• American eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• The Federal government spends taxpayer wealth to support tobacco farmers who grow smoking products and farmers who grow unneeded corn that ends up as obesity inducing corn fructose in our food chain.
• Americans do not get enough exercise.
• The health care industry needs substantial tort reform, reform that has worked well at the state level in reducing health care costs.
• The health care insurance industry needs to be able to more readily compete across state lines, increasing competition for health care insurance and reducing prices.
• Americans are getting older but there is no national effort to remedy the effects of aging diseases such as dementia and certain cancers.
• The Federal government loses tens of billions of dollars every year via its Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs to criminal activity, tens of billions of dollars that could have been used to provide low cost insurance to the uninsured in America without Obama Care’s costly bureaucracy.

Instead of this coherent, problem solving-oriented approach, we get stuck with inane and expensive processes via Obama Care like the following examples illustrate:

1) Investor's Business Daily examined a recent Government Accountability Office report and its detailed information on insurance plans today in all 50 states, from the least expensive health insurance plans offered to a 30-year-old nonsmoker to the most expensive plans 55-year-old couples can buy. It then looked at the Obama Care insurance plans that were compiled by the state of Maryland for eight states that are putting together their state based health insurance exchanges and compared the cost of insurance today and the likely cost of insurance under Obama Care.

The results were not pretty relative to the claim that Obama care will reduce health insurance costs for Americans:

• In Ohio, the least expensive Obama Care "bronze" plan for a 25-year-old will cost $1,956 a year, a price that's almost three times higher than the cheapest plan in Ohio today.
• In Virginia, the lowest priced Obama Care "bronze" premium is $1,608, 252% higher than the cheapest policy available today.
• Maryland's least expensive Obama Care plan will be 83% higher than the lowest-cost plan sold in that state this year.
• Critics of these types of analysis, and thus, supporters of Obama Care, correctly point out that some of these plans will actually cost less because some people will get Federal subsidies to purchase Obama Care plans.
• However, not everyone will be entitled to Obama Care subsidies, based on their income level,  and will be stuck with these higher costs.
• Other people who live in the 34 states that are not implementing Obama Care health insurance exchanges and by the law’s explicit language, they will not be eligible for any Federal subsidies.
• Other counter points to the supporters’ point is that even with the subsidies, the cost could also be higher. For example, Investor's Business Daily found that a young worker making $20,000 in Maryland, for example, would pay about $1,000 for the cheapest Obama Care plan, after the subsidy. That's still $278 more than the least expensive plan offered in the state today.
• It is difficult to believe that any subsidy will be enough to offset cost increases of  like the 252% increase in Virginia or the 825 increase in Maryland.

So much for Obama Care resulting in significant cost savings for Americans when the buy health care insurance. Best, best case is that costs do not go up too much. Seems like a lot of energy and effort to get us no better and likely much worse than where we were prior to Obama Care’s attack on logic and sanity.

2) The biggest losers in the Obama Care legislation is likely to be younger Americans. Obama Care needs them to buy insurance plans so that the Federal government can take the wealth from these younger, healthier Americans and use it to subsidize health care insurance for generally older and less healthy Americans. It will be the biggest inter-generational transfer of wealth from younger Americans to older Americans in the history of the country.

As an example of what is actually underway as a result of this lousy legislation, consider an analysis and resulting graphic from the same Investor’s Business Daily article we discussed above (double click on the graph for a larger view):











The red bars in this graph are the least expensive Obama Care “bronze” insurance plans across eight states. The blue bars are the least expensive plan available to a young person on the market today. Not a pretty picture, with today’s plans substantially less expensive than anything Obama Care is spitting out. There is no way that cost health insurance goes down under Obama Care in at least these eight states even with subsidies. 

The conclusion is obvious. If you are a young American, Obama Care is after your wealth in order to leverage your probable good health to fund health care for other, general older Americans.

3) Yesterday, we talked a little about how the infrastructure of Obama Care is really under the gun and behind schedule. The discussion focus of that problem was that the so-called Obama Care “navigators” are likely to be put in place without criminal background checks being completed (enhancing the hence of identity theft) and without adequate training.

Today’s infrastructure horror story comes from a recent article from Reuters:

• The government is months behind in testing data security for the main component of Obama Care: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1
• The missed data systems deadlines have pushed the government’s decision on whether information technology security is ready and secure to exactly ONE DAY BEFORE that crucial October 1st date, according to the the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general.
• Thus, data systems experts say the Obama Care exchanges might open with serious security holes or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.
• “They’ve removed their margin for error,” said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. “There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.”
• The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance because the government’s Obama Care systems have serious security holes.
• The Inspector General‘s report found that “Several critical tasks remain to be completed in a short period of time.” 
• Any additional delays beyond one day would mean the government entity operating the Obama Care exchanges would not have the security testing information it needs to authorize  know if they were entitled to subsidy support.
• One day leeway to have this thing working by October 1. No way the Federal government gets this right within the next 60 days. Take that to the bank.
• Since a 2002 law requires that government systems obtain a “security authorization package,” essentially the roadmap for keeping out hackers and preventing security breaches, implementing Obama Care without this common sense authorization would mean the government is in violation of its own law.

If the systems are not online and deemed secure by October 1, people could still apply for Obama Care exchanges but they would not know if the qualified for subsidies and how much they might get, probably delaying them for choosing and signing up for an exchange health care program, leaving them in health insurance limbo.

But enough bad news. We will do another update next month, a time that will be a mere weeks from the onset of a major component of Obama Care. How scary do we think that update will be?

That will do it for our own analysis and roundup of the unfolding disaster from Obama Care. Tomorrow we will step aside and present an analysis of Obama Care presented by the Cato Institute.

Cato's analysis and commentary is about how Congress and the President are breaking the law and allowing Congressional members and their staffs to side step the law’s financial burdens. It is a despicable act that 1) is clearly illegal under the law’s tenets, 2) is a slap in the face of the rest of America who will not get the same financial relief from Obama Care, and 3) reinforces the feeling that we are truly living in a “Hunger Games” world where the rulers in Washington get the best of everything and the rest of us are stuck with the remnants and the dregs of their decisions.

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