Cleaning Up The Fraud In Tampa Today, Cleaning Up The Country Tomorrow

Today's post requires some background information first. Recently, we reviewed a program being run by the IRS that provides bounty payments to whistle blowers who identify tax evasion culprits. In the example cited, a former employee of the Swiss bank UBS was instrumental in identifying a $20 billion criminal enterprise in the banking industry. The whistle blower eventually ended up receiving a bounty payment of over $100 million. The hope was that future potential whistle blowers would step forward in order to also collect rewards.

In May, we discussed our proposal to roll out a similar program for the entire country and the entire spectrum of Federal government programs that waste hundreds of billions of taxpayer wealth every year. Our National Bounty System would leverage every citizen in the fight against waste and criminal fraud in programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. The details of this program can be viewed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/national-bounty-system-fixing.html

One of the biggest types of fraud that rob taxpayer wealth is for criminal elements to file fake income tax returns using stolen personal id information. The IRS processes those returns and mails a refund check to the fake address of the fraudulent tax return. Our review of this criminal process found that billions of dollars are lost every year to this type of fraud:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-irs-gets-its-turn-at-wasting.html

Today, we will review a prime example of ongoing tax fraud in the Tampa Bay area, that was reported in the August 19, 2012 issue of the Tampa Bay Times, and how the National Bounty System could correct the stealing of taxpayer wealth. Details of the article and the fraud it investigated include the following info:

• In the summer of 2011, the state of Florida sent a form to the apartment of one Jerry Myea Lee, reminding him that if he did not renew his status his food stamp benefits would expire.
• The letter also asked if he was in need of other social safety net program support such as a telephone discount, child support, and an earned income credit.
• The reason the letter was sent to his apartment was because Mr. Lee was no longer in prison for a myriad of crimes, incurring an estimated $300,000 in taxpayer support to keep him fed, clothed, and behind bars.
• On July 6, 2011, he was pulled over by a police officer while driving around in his rented Dodge Charger.
• When a drug sniffing dog indicated the presence of marijuana, precipitating a search of the vehicle, the police found $30,980 in cash in a bag behind the driver's seat along with the letter from the state of Florida offering him more and more aid to help him get through life, as if he needed it, given the $30,980 in cash he was carrying around with him.
• Not being very careful or bright, eleven days later he was caught in Orlando with a $7,989 U.S. Treasury check made out to someone else along with four other IRS checks, trying to have an accomplice cash the fraudulently obtained check from the IRS.
• The article moves from this specific incident of ripping off the taxpayer to report that 80 to 90% of the tax refund fraud they come across is committed by people already on public assistance like Mr. Lee.
• Tampa led the country in tax refund fraud in 2011 with Tampa area criminals estimated to duping the IRS out of about $468 million, one year, one state, one town. This is almost 10% of the estimated national tax refund fraud activity, generated by an unbelievable 88,724 fraudulent tax refunds filed from the Tampa area.

These were the headline facts from the article. Consider some of the detailed accounts also in the article:

- Shawntrece Sims used ill-gotten taxpayer money for a fertility treatment, she filed fake tax returns as far back as 2009 to bilk the IRS for a total illegal haul of $672,887, during 2009 she was also receiving a monthly $600 housing subsidy check along with a monthly $1,348 Social Security disability check, and is now serving a nine year prison sentence that will cost the taxpayers almost $74 a day over nine years to keep her inside prison.

- Lasandra Gamble was receiving $2,363  a month in the summer of 2011 from housing, utilities, and food stamp programs funded by taxpayers. However, despite her "poverty," in August of 2011 she put down a $9,000 deposit on a luxury Lexus GS430 and followed that down payment up three days later with another down payment of $9,000 on a 2007 Lexus ES 350. The two cars financing cost had a monthly cost of $2,000.

On October 8, 2011, the police pulled over the ES 350, which was being driven by her husband, Angelo Juan Pedrosa. Mr. Pedrosa is a convicted cocaine dealer and in addition to the marijuana residue the police found in the Lexus, they also found $6,000 in cash and a dozen debit cards in other people's names, the types of cards tax fraud criminals use to fleece the IRS and the American taxpayer.

- Tampa exotic dancer Danielle Denson allegedly bilked the IRS out of $1.6 million via tax refund fraud and used the taxpayer wealth on a Mercedes car, plastic surgery, and $300 Gucci thong. She is awaiting trial.

- On August 8, 2012, Tampa police pulled over an Infiniti Q45 for an expired tag and found debit cards in other people's names. When they searched the driver's apartment they ended up seizing lists of stolen Social Security numbers and photocopies of ids.

- In a final insult to taxpayers, another story in the article details how people were receiving monthly housing, utilities, and food stamps assistance in the thousands of dollars and also hosting tax fraud parties where their friends would gather to party and to fill out bogus tax returns, with the objective of defrauding the IRS and American taxpayer.

Disgusting abuse of hard working honest taxpayers. These stories are the reason why no American, rich or poor, regardless of Obama's rhetoric, should pay a penny more in taxes. How many more truly needy people could be taken care of in Tampa if almost half a billion dollars a year was not sucked away from the programs by criminal fraud?

How much lower would our national debt be if the IRS actually could collect the $385 billion a year that tax evaders and tax frauds get away with? $385 billion over ten years is almost $4 TRILLION, enough to pay off a sizable chunk of our national debt. This is the kind of incompetence the Washington political class has rained down on the American taxpayer due to their own incompetence, self centered political behavior, and the inability or non-desire to do the nitty-gritty details of government.

That is where the National Bounty System comes in. If the IRS and the political class do not have the will, desire, or ability to flush out these criminal activities, let their neighbors and friends do it for the American taxpayer. Let them share in the rewards of identifying the tax fraud cheats and other types of cheats and reward them with a percentage of the loot that is recovered, just like the UBS employee got rewarded for helping destroy a multi-billion tax fraud scheme.

As described in the original bounty system process, overwhelm the Tampa area with IRS, judicial, and law enforcement resources to clean up the biggest problem area first. Set up judicial processes that fast track these types of cases through to prosecution so that potential tax fraud cheats know that they will be under the thumb of an aggressive campaign to clean up Tampa and will be prosecuted quickly and in jail promptly for their misdeeds.

Until then, I would appreciate it if every Democrat who wants to raise out taxes would just shut up until they do their job of not wasting my taxes because they are too incompetent to operate a government program that is fraud free. the National Bounty System is the blueprint, use it.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of our times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

Mega Bus Vs.High Speed Rail - The Choice Is So Obvious To All But Our Politicians

This is a transportation story that the political class in general, and President Obama in particular, probably does not want you to hear. They would prefer that you not know that there is a viable, market driven, taxpayer subsidy-free approach to moving people around the country efficiently.

They would prefer to be the managers and glory hounds of grandiose high speed rail spending sprees that take years to build out, likely go over budget, and likely under perform relative to the objectives they used to sell in their plans to begin with. BePfore proposing an excellent alternative to their high speed rail pipe dream, let's review some political class transportation facts and history that we have already covered in this blog:

- California has been trying to build a high speed rail line from the northern part of the state to the southern part of the state for over ten years. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars already, mostly for engineering and environmental studies, and have yet to lay down a single piece of rail, millions of dollars and many years after they started.

- Obama had wanted to spend billions of Federal taxpayer dollars to build a high speed rail line from my home area of Tampa Bay to Orlando and Disney World in central Florida. Fortunately, Florida state politicians turned down the offer and the taxpayer money that came with it for any number of valid reasons:

• While called a high speed rail line, it was not really going to be that fast for two reasons. First, is not that long of a journey from my house, and the greater Tampa Bay area, to Disney World in particular and Orlando in general. My home is only about an 87 miles drive to Disney World, a place we visit often. By the time a high speed train reached its top speed, it would have to start slowing down to stop at Disney World. Second, although the distance is not that great, the high speed line was going to stop half way there in Lakeland, Florida, making the journey that much slower even though it was a "high speed" rail line.
• There is very little local mass transportation in either Orlando or Tampa Bay. By the time a traveler got to the high speed rail train terminals in either location, they would have wasted a great deal of time and car gas they could have used to go directly to the other location.
• Not only would time be wasted getting to and from the rail terminals, there would be additional costs of getting transported to the terminals, given  the lack of mass transportation, and additional costs might be involved if a person had to park their car before getting on the high speed line. Thus, a sane person would never use this line since it would be more inconvenient, take a longer time to travel, and cost more to travel.
• The money would have been better spent in both cities on building up its local mass transportation capability since many, many more people would use that option every single day. That would have served more people more often in a less expensive way including reducing environmental costs incurred by local commuting by cars. However, rather than using the Federal money in this effective way, the political class insisted it could only be used for the high speed rail line.
• The most logical reason for not incurring the costs is that there is just not enough traveler demand for it to get between the two cities. The distance is too short, there are not a lot of business relationships between the two metro areas that would require substantial business people travel between the two towns, and the cost would be higher than just driving the relatively short distance.

- Tampa's county government actually came close to almost voting for and funding a local mass transportation initiative last year. This commuter train plan was originally supposed to cost a certain amount of taxpayer money but by the time it came up for a vote, the estimated cost had already increased significantly, before any construction work had been done.

Thus, Tampa Bay area voters turned down the plan, likely because they did not trust the local political class had a good handle on the likely cost to local taxpayers. This failure to plan and meet a budget in Tampa and California are ominous signs for any high speed rail projects from a taxpayer perspective.

- The Obama high speed rail line projects that are scheduled for some of the Midwest cities also make little sense. They will trim only minutes off of the travel time, making travel only slightly more convenient for those that travel between major metro areas but at a very high cost.

- The Week magazine reported several months ago that the less personal income you have, the higher your personal transportation costs are, on a percentage basis. Given this fact, wouldn't it be more efficient and benefit more people if that high speed rail money was used to improve local mass transportation options that the less economically robust are more likely to use vs. the business people that travel between metro areas?

- For decades, the country and its politicians have invested trillions of dollars in our nation's road systems and airport/airline transportation systems. Does it make sense to start abandoning this embedded transportation investment and infrastructure after all of this previous investment of taxpayer money?

- And finally, the Federal government and the political class has operated the Amtrak system for decades and it still loses money, requiring billions in taxpayer subsidies every year. Given that this is a very heavily used rail corridor in the northeast and it still loses money, what makes anyone think that the Federal government can profitably build and operate more high speed rail lines and tracks when it cannot operate the one it has had control over for what seems forever?

All very good reasons for killing Obama's fantasy of building a high speed rail line for the country: inefficient political class and government planning and processes, high speed rail is not needed and is unlikely to be utilized as promised, money could be better spent and serve more Americans if used for local mass transit, high cost overrun likelihood, high expense for potential benefits that are very far down the road, inability to operate the current Federal rail assets at a profit, existing infrastructure of other transportation options, etc.

Which brings us to buses, or more specially, the "Megabus" option. This option was discussed in detail in the April 11, 2011 issue of Business Week magazine. Megabus, along with Boltbus, are bus companies that are revolutionizing long haul transportation in this country. Characteristics of this option include the following:

- Megabus and its competitors are curbside bus pick up companies, they do not pick up their customers at typically old, dangerous bus terminals in seedy parts of large cities. They make arrangements with the local government to arrange pick ups at designated street locations throughout a city. This fact alone, avoiding dingy bus terminals, is a major asset for these operations.

- The article cited two customers who recently were waiting curbside to go on a 200 mile trip from Chicago to Iowa City. One of the riders, a college student bragged he only paid $26 for the 200 mile trip while another beat his ticket price, claiming he only paid $5 for his ticket on the double decker bus ride to Iowa. Every bus trip has at least one $1 seat per bus.

- 90% of the bus riders book and pay for their ticket reservations online, many using the image of the ticket that was emailed to their smartphone, tablet, or laptop computer to get assess to their seats on the bus. By cutting out expensive backroom operations and relying mostly on Internet options for ticket sales, the inter-city buses can cut costs dramatically, resulting in ultra low ticket prices.

- Given the automation of the ticketing process, the bus companies are able to handle almost unlimited demand by just adding buses to areas where tickets are in high demand, there are no limitations relative to train lines who can not easily add train cars when much of their ridership are walk up to ticket windows. The bus companies, via their electronic Internet ticketing process, know ahead of time how many people are likely to show up for a bus route.

- All of the buses are modern, comfortable double deckers, they all have Wi-Fi access, the seats all have access to power outlets, and are roomy enough to spread out material for studying or work.

- Megabus now operates around 135 buses each day to and from 50 U.S. cities using existing U.S. infrastructure, i.e. our existing road system. Business is so good that this year the company hired an additional 270 workers, invested $36 million in its operations, and each month this year will end up purchasing five to six new double decker buses each month. All of this success came without any taxpayer bailout or Federal government loan guarantees.

- Compare this ease of growth and expansion to the pain and slowness of Obama's proposed high speed rail program. Money from his failed stimulus program was allocated for high speed rail line development. But the process included waiting for states to submit proposals to get their hands on the money, Federal officials had to take time to review and approve the state proposals, state and Federal officials then had to sit down and negotiate plans with freight companies that already owned a lot of the property where these high speed rail lines would go, and after all of this, many of the approved plans never moved forward.

While all of this bureaucracy was going on, the Megabus-like companies were already moving satisfied customers around the country on existing infrastructure without using taxpayer money.

- Within two years of its launch, Megabus was handling 2 million passengers a year and now handles about 4 million passengers a year. Obama's high speed rail plans handle zero passengers a year. These passengers have tended to be in the 18 to 34 year age bracket, are well educated, digitally connected, and either in college or are college graduates.

However, these profiles seem to be evolving as the clean, modern and convenient buses are starting to attract senior citizens who are touring the country, business customers, and single women who really enjoy the ability to pick up a bus at a designated curbside location and not at an old, dingy, dangerous bus depot.

- Obama's high speed rail plans now operate no new train lines, have not resulted in any job creation, and the administration originally asked for $53 billion of taxpayer money to get started for a rail line infrastructure that will take years, if no decades, to match what Megabus and others are already doing today.

- The company maintains a top safety rating form the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Both Megabus and BoltBus are subsidiaries of major corporations and not fly-by-night operations so the need and desire to maintain a first rate safety record is an integral part of their operations.

- All of their buses come with GPS tracking systems to track driver behavior and all seats come with seat belts, something that is not a Federal requirement.

- Megabus ridership is up 48% this year while airline passenger volumes are up only 5% and Amtrak ridership is up only 6%.

- Megabus and its competitors are best suited for the 200 to 300 mile trips that an American might want to take. Anything less than 200  miles is best suited for a private car trip, anything longer than 300 miles is best suited for an airline trip when you consider the cost benefit tradeoffs of time, money, and convenience. However, many of the most popular intercity distances fall into this category including New York/Boston. Los Angeles/Las Vegas, New York/D.C., Dallas/Houston, Orlando/Miami, Atlanta/Nashville, etc.

Thus, there are many routes that are a perfect fit for Megabus and its competitors, the exact routes that high speed rail is best fit for.
As an example, the Business Week article charts out a comparison about all of the different ways to get from Washington D.C. to New York. Megabus-like options are, by far, the less expensive, about one fourth the cost of a regular Amtrak ticket, about on sixth the cost of an Amtrak Acela ticket and airline ticket and about one third the cost of a car trip.

The bus trip would take the most time relative to the other options. It would take about four hours by Megabus to make the trip vs. about three hours by Amtrak to make the trip. However, you would be paying much less to take an extra hour, many people find that trade off acceptable.

- Environmentally speaking, the bus is at much more efficient than if every rider had used their own car to make the same trip. The article cites a consulting firm's estimate that the buses are already reducing fuel consumption by 11 million gallons of gas a year.

Wow:

1. There are existing bus transportation service that offer convenient, clean, modern, and very inexpensive transportation options between major U.S. cities.
2. These bus services use existing U.S. infrastructure and require no significant additional investments by the U.S. taxpayer.
3. These bus companies operate profitably and need no taxpayer bailouts or subsidies.
4. These bus companies are already in operation and serving millions of Americans every year.
5. These bus companies avoid the security hassles of going to an airport and possibly getting manhandled, groped, and humiliated by a Federal TSA employee.
6. These bus companies reduce our reliance on oil products and produce less carbon outputs to harm the environment than some other transportation options.
7. These bus routes are already serving the same destinations that Obama's high speed rail lines would redundantly serve.

Now compare these benefits to what the Obama administration is proposing for its grandiose high speed rail line option:

1. Most of this plan does not exist today while the bus option is in full operation.
2. High speed rail line would eventually require hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build out the infrastructure.
3. If Amtrak is any indication, the taxpayer would eventually end up subsidizing the operations of high speed rail lines.
4. Obama's high speed rail plan currently serve no American travelers.
5. I am assuming there would be security checks on any new high speed rail lines since they would be an attrative terrorist target.
6. High speed rail would likely reduce the nation's carbon footprint, assuming anyone decided to actually ride on the lines which would likely be much more expensive than the bus fares.
7. The high speed rail lines would be in direct competition to an efficient, successful and already operational competitor.

Let's review: there is a simple city to city, existing, successful, convenient, pleasant, and inexpensive transportation process that is already serving millions of Americans using existing national transportation infrastructure which uses no taxpayer subsidies. There is a  proposed transportation process that does not already exist, will take years, if not, decades to make operational, and will require hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build new infrastructure and to subsidize operations.

Which one do you think our political class will choose, the simple, elegant, cheap option or the complex, cumbersome, expensive option?

Given our $15 TRILLION national debt that our out of touch political class has rung up, the answer is pretty clear.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

One Reality Of The Obama Adminstraiton, Two Different Views

I once read there is only one reality but everyone has a different view or perception of that reality. That is what causes two people to look at the same reality and come up with two completely different interpretations of that single reality.

That philosophical view of life seemed appropriate when I read a recent op-ed piece in a major Tampa Bay newspaper. I will not identify the writer of the piece. In the past when I disagreed with the writer's analyses, I tried to contact them through the email address always included in the writer's column. However, the writer never even had the common decency to acknowledge the writer received my communications, never mind engaging in an adult conversation of the writer's article contents. Thus, I will not give the writer the benefit of identification here.

The writer had some definite views on how well the Obama administration was going, views that myself and the majority of Americans do not currently agree with. Same reality, different interpretations. Consider:

- "The President saved the Detroit car industry." - The President did not save the Detroit car industry, his administration meddled in what should have been a straightforward bankruptcy proceeding. American companies, big and small, have successfully gone through bankruptcy proceedings in the past and emerged a healthier entity.

General Motors and Chrysler would have done the same since they each had assets worth value. They may have survived in a different form, they may have survived with different owners but they would have survived as a result of a regular bankruptcy proceeding. And they would have survived without costing the American taxpayer tens of billions of dollars.

- "The President secured health reforms that will bring health insurance to nearly everyone." - We have thoroughly reviewed how pathetically bad Obama Care is in this blog. The reasons are too numerous to review here so let's only address the writer's assertion that nearly everyone will get health insurance as a result of President Obama's efforts.

The writer seems to ignore the reports, analyses, and experts that have shown American companies are already terminating their own health care insurance programs for their employees as a result of Obama Care. The writer seems to ignore the Forbes article from last year that interviewed the chairman of AT&T. The chairman declared there was an excellent chance AT&T could stop offering health care insurance to its employees and retirees since Obama Care made it a better financial business deal NOT to offer health care insurance programs. Verizon, John Deere and Caterpillar executives have come to the same conclusions as have other American companies.

Thus, rather than getting health care insurance for nearly everyone, Obama Care is likely to lead to millions of Americans losing their current health care insurance coverage.

- "The President used a stimulus package to stop the hemorrhaging of American jobs and avoid a Depression." The writer seems to have several problems with reality here. First, it is asserted later in the article that the economic stimulus program cost $787 billion. This illustrates how loose and fast the writer plays with facts. The Congressional Budget Office has recently concluded that the American taxpayer actually paid out $830 billion on the stimulus program. Thus, the writer's  credibility takes a hit here, the writer did not even take the time to research the official government numbers before publication.

The second issue with reality is the writer conveniently passes over the fact that the President said that the unemployment rate could go as high as 8% if the economic stimulus package was not passed. It was passed and unemployment still soared well past 8%, hovering around 9% for lord knows how long.

The third issue I have with the writer is simple math. If you take the amount of money wasted by economic stimulus program, $830 billion, and divide it by the number of jobs the administration claims it created or saved, you find that the cost per job created or saved is well over $200,000 per job. You cannot claim you had a successful economic stimulus program if it costs you this outrageous amount of dollars per job.

- "The President put constraints on a reckless Wall Street." The bill the writer refers to is basically an empty shell of legislation, as pointed out by countless experts and pundits in the field. This bill punted/dodged the real work of reforming Wall Street, defaulting to nameless government  bureaucrats who have yet to write the reforms, guidelines, and regulation. Giving the President credit for reforms is a false conclusion. The reforms have yet to come into reality and existence.

- "The President got Congress to repeal the discriminatory "don't ask, don't tell" law." The writer ignores the reality that Obama showed absolutely no interest in this area for over a year and was moved to action only after a REPUBLICAN organization, the Log Cabin Republicans, successfully took "don't ask, don't tell" to court. Their actions and initiatives were the prime drivers to repeal, Obama was a late interloper into the legal action by the REPUBLICAN organization. The courts and the successful Log Cabin legal case would have led to the repeal in time with no help from Obama.

- "Obama has also kept Americans safe from another terrorist attack." This is just a blatantly wrong statement. I doubt that the Americans killed by the Ft. Hood shooter and their families would agree that the President has kept America safe from another terrorist attack. The Ft Hood shootings were a terror attack, plain and simple.

Also, being lucky does not constitute keeping Americans safe. America was only two defective fuses away from two other deadly terror attacks. If the Underwear Bomber's underwear fuse does not malfunction, we have dead Americans and debris reigning down on Detroit on a Christmas day. If a defective fuse actually ignites, we have an unknown number of dead Americans in Times Square. You should not get credit for being lucky.

"Then there was the other present that George W. Bush left behind for the new President: a whopping budget deficit." No disagreement here, the CBO is quoted by the writer as the source, something the writer did not take the time to research when discussing the cost of the failed economic stimulus program.

However, what the op-ed piece neglects to mention is two other facts. First, the Congressional architects of that budget deficit came about when both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats. Nancy Pelosi in the House of Representatives and Harry Reid in the Senate were in control of those two chambers of Congress in the last two years of the Bush administration. They need to share equally in the blame with Bush for the high 2009 budget deficit that Obama inherited.

This blame has to fall hard especially on Pelosi since it is in the House where the Federal government's budgets are originated, according to the Constitution. Since the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, if they had serious objections to these budget deficit numbers, they should have taken action to reduce them. They did not and Bush accepted the final budget. Thus, all three are to blame, Bush, Pelosi, and Reid.

In fact, if the writer had delved a little more into the historical budget deficit numbers, the writer would have seen that Bush administration budget deficit numbers were declining up to the point that the Democrats took over control of Congress in 2007. At that point, deficits started to rise again. Thus, the accusation of Bush being the sole bad guy in the government's budget deficit disgrace is a little thin, given the Democrats' behavior in Congress from 2007 until today.

Furthermore, the writer again omits data in order to support her version of reality. Not only was Bush administration deficits declining until the Democrats took control of Congress, a CBO report last week estimates that the Obama administration will add the same amount to the Federal government's national debt in four years that took eight years for the Bush administration to attain.

Yes, the budget deficit was over $1 TRILLION in the first year of the Obama administration. That was hand Obama was dealt, for better or worse. However, a great leader does not constantly gripe about how bad things are and blame someone else like President Obama has done for the first three years of his term. A great leader deals with the hand and reality he was dealt and uses that position as a starting point to move forward to resolving problems. That looking forward has not happened under Obama.

The writer ignores the other failures or at least the other non-resolutions of this Presidency:

• Americans, such as myself, who have had legitimate, nonviolent, well thought out contrary opinions against some of the President's policies have been unmercifully denigrated by members of his party. We have been called un-American by Democrat Nancy Pelosi, racists by Democrat Charles Rangel, members of the Klan by Democrat Shelia Jordan, knuckle dragging Neanderthals by Democrat Alan Grayson, and terrorists by Democrat Mike Dolye (and possibly also by Joe Biden). In each case, with the exception of the Doyle comment, the President has stood mum as ordinary Americans were attacked for having an opinion. Hardly a way to unite a divided country.
• The President himself is guilty of verbally attacking ordinary Americans. While campaigning last fall and speaking to a largely Latino audience, he explained how their "enemies,"  i.e. Americans who disagreed with the President's policies, needed to be defeated. Calling American citizens "enemies" is also no way to unite a country. The President is supposed to represent ALL citizens of the country.
• The President promised during his campaign to close the prison Guantanamo Bay. He has failed to do that.
• The President promised a during his campaign to quickly get our troops out of Iraq. It was assumed that it would not be on the Bush timetable, three years into his Presidency. And now he is considering extending the amount of time and troops we have stationed in the country, very Bush-like.
• The President involved us in an illegal war against Libyan assets. I am sure that if Bush did the same action, without Congressional approval, this writer would have been beside themselves. Given that Democrat Obama got us into this illegal military action, the writer is silent.
• Three years into this Presidency, Iran and North Korea are three years closer to being nuclear armed powers.
• Three years into this Presidency and we are no closer to resolving the Israel/Palestinian issue.
• A recent (mid-August, 2011)  Zogby opinion poll of citizens in six Arab countries show that the United States and President Obama have never been held in such low regard. In fact, the poll found that President Obama is less popular in the Middle east than Iran's tyrant, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, truly an insult.
• Three years into this Presidency and our schools are still failing, our war on drugs is still being lost, we still have do not have a national energy strategy and policy, we still do not have a comprehensive and compassionate immigration policy, our borders still leak, our social net programs (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) still are rife with fraud and mismanagement, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and our health care costs are still rising dramatically.

Could McCain have done a better job? Probably not. But in my reality, or my perception of reality, President Obama has performed no better than Jimmy Carter who I consider one of the worst Presidencies of all time. We are so divided as a nation with politicians calling American citizens such derogatory names. Our economy is in ruins, in much worse shape than when the President came into office, from a jobs, growth, debt, and hope perspective, despite having a Democratic party friendly Congress in charge. The President has done no better or worse than any other President when it comes to the Middle East and his other foreign policies have been lack luster at best. No major issue that is facing the majority of Americans is on a path for improvement.

What is the reality? The op-ed writer who picks only certain issues to paint a rosy picture of this Presidency, using only selected data to make the point? Or my view of reality that looks at all aspects and issues of this Presidency, using as many facts and as much data that is available? You decide and contact me via the comment section below of what your reality is.

I promise I will at least have the common decency to engage you an adult conversation about what is the true reality of America today unlike the writer discussed above.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available, at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/