February, 2016, Bonus Post, Political Class Insanity: Restricting Viagra Sales, Taxpayer Money for Casinos and Prostitutes, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

I thought we were done with this month’s insanity yesterday but a late flurry of insanity showed up over the past couple of days that deserves to be reviewed this month: 

1) According to the I Have The Truth website, if you are a man and living in Kentucky, if a Kentucky legislator has her way you will have to get your wife’s permission before you can buy Viagra. Yes, according to David McIntosh writing for the website on February 14, 2016, state representative Mary Lou Marzian is putting forth legislation to such effect in the name of “family values” and “to protect men from themselves.”

Her bill, HB 396, specifies only married men can get Viagra and requires a “man to make a sworn statement with his hand on a Bible that he will only use a prescription for a drug for erectile dysfunction when having sexual relations with his current spouse.” What is interesting is that this legislator is a Democrat, you know, the political party that is always talking about sexual freedom and keeping the government out of our bedrooms.

In reality, Marzian is ticked off that there are currently several anti-abortion bills pending in her legislature and this is a frivolous, nonsensical reaction to those bills. Rather than have an adult conversation about the issues, she files this time wasting, taxpayer dollar wasting, embarrassing piece of legislation to get attention. These antics resolve none of the issues facing her state or the country.

2) The insanity and corruption of politicians does not exist only in Washington, if often extends down to local politicians also. The DC Gazette recently reported that almost the entire city council of a Texas town was recently arrested by the FBI. Vianna Vaughan wrote on February 8, 2016 that all but one member of the Crystal City, Texas city council was arrested under a Federal indictment that accuses them of operating an illegal gambling operation and taking thousands and thousands of dollars in bribes.

According to the indictment, the five arrested “used their official positions to enrich themselves by soliciting and accepting payments and other things of value” and “voting to award contracts in exchange for bribes, extorting payments from contractors, turning a blind eye to Nguyen’s illegal gaming business while taking action to shut down would-be competitors, and agreeing to reduce Nguyen’s taxes in exchange for him waiving debts, among other dealings.” If found guilty, they each face up to 10 years in Federal prison and a quarter million dollars in fines.

American political corruption, from town hall to the halls of Congress to the White House.

3) The national debt recently cross into the $19 TRILLION range territory and remains on a course to eventually crash our economy, our wealth, and our freedoms. When that happens, remember how a recent Heritage Foundation report showed where a million dollars of that growing $19 trillion went. Christopher Oleska and Romina Boccia, writing for the Heritage Foundation on February 8, 2016, reported that from July, 2013 until June, 2014, over 4,000 separate transaction totally $1 million in taxpayer wealth were incurred at gambling casinos using Defense Department government travel and credit cards.

But it gets even worse. Nine hundred more transactions were incurred, at an expense of $96,576, at “adult entertainment establishments.” And it gets even worse: as of May, 2015 only 41% of these transactions went punished.

But we should not be surprised. The Defense Department is not the only abuser of government credit and travel cards:

• Employees of the State Department abused the cards by funding unauthorized first class trips to Hawaii.
• Over $600,000 was used for golf and tennis lessons and other abuses instead of being used for the intended purposes of helping Hurricane Katrina victims.
• IRS employees abused their cards by buying everything from diet pills to alcohol and pornography for their own personal use.

Disgusting abuse. But as the article points out, every law passed by Congress to stop the abuse over the past several years has been a failure, much like everything else Congress does.

4) Speaking of wasting taxpayer money, the Labor Department recently announced that it will spend $20 million this summer to create summer jobs and “career pathways” for young Americans. On the surface, this seems like a good thing. The unemployment rate among teenagers is very high and the lack of summer and other part time jobs does not give them the experience in the work force that would serve them well in the future. 

In fact, the unemployment rate for kids aged 16 to 19 is 16%, more than three times the overall unemployment rate. Up to $2 million will go to each of 10 local workforce development organizations to pump up existing summer job programs.

But if you do the math, this is really an insanely bad idea and waste of taxpayer wealth. Let’s make a few assumptions:

• Assume the kids work for 12 weeks over their summer vacation.
• Assume they work 40 hours a week.
• Assume they get paid $10 an hour.
• If we multiply 12 weeks times 40 hours times $10 an hour and divide that into $20 million, we find that this program will create, wait for it, about 4,000 summer jobs for the whole country or about 80 summer jobs per state on average.

Given that millions and millions of kids need summer jobs, this effort of 4,000 jobs is a nit on a much bigger problem and resolves nothing except wasting $20 million of taxpayer wealth. And this assumes that all $20 million is used to finance jobs, knowing how government works, a big chunk of that $20 million is likely to be lost in administrative overhead or criminal fraud.

A better solution is to have politicians who have some sense of how to put sound economic policies in place, reduce business taxes, and reduce the staggering burden of government regulation so that the market creates jobs naturally. 

But since the Obama administration in particular and Congress in general have no idea how to execute a well run economy we get stuck paying for these minimal piecemeal government programs that resolve nothing and just waste money.

5) But politicians do not only waste money on stupid ideas, they also waste time on stupid ideas.The state of Illinois is a financial basket case wasting to die. Their current expense streams and future expense liabilities are much greater than their current tax revenue streams. But raising taxes to help pay the outrageously high government expenses is likely to drive away businesses and families from the state, further reducing the tax revenue streams.

Things had gotten so bad last year from a revenue perspective and political gridlock perspective that for a while the state did not have the money to pay off state lottery winners or pay the claims of state workers’ health insurance plans. It was behind in payment to vendors for months and months. It is a state in dire need of leadership, focus, and strategic planning.

But instead of those traits, Illinois state politicians have recently been working on legislation that would establish a state holiday in honor of Barack Obama. Under the proposed state legislation, it would be a state wide holiday for which state employees would get the day off with pay, as if the state did not have enough financial challenges.

Talk about bad priorities. A state that was technically in default of its debt for a short time in 2015, a state that has bloated pension and retirement benefits for state workers, so bloated that it may bankrupt the state government, city schools that do not educate, a gun and homicide epidemic in its biggest city, and the political leaders are worried about establishing a state holiday for a President who should have been impeached years ago, a President whose administration has been a failure on so many levels. Insanity.

That will definitely do it for this month’s insanity, I cannot take anymore. But rest assured, more insanity is sure to put up by this time next month.

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

January, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care:Costs Are Up, Competition Is Down, and Personal Stories Of Obama Care Disasters

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements it rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.
• You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here but with a big exception: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

For the past several days we have been reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) The Freedom Works website recently had an interesting graph in an article on its website (click on the graph for a larger view):



It is my understanding that this is the per person cost that governments paid in 2012 for health care in their country divided by the number of people in their country. As you can see, with the exception of Norway and the Netherlands, no other country spent more government money and wealth on health care for their citizens than the United States.

By 2014, the U.S. government was spending almost $1.4 TRILLION of taxpayer wealth on health care or about $4,500 per U.S. citizen, every man, woman, and child. Thus, in just two years, in the presence of Obama Care which was supposed to reduce healthcare costs as promised by the President, U.S. government spending on healthcare increased by almost 8.2%, orders of magnitudes higher than the overall inflation rate in the country. Thus, by this measure, government spending on healthcare per capita, Obama Care has failed to accomplish a main goal of its original intent, reduce healthcare costs. It has not “bent the cost curve” like Obama promised.

2) The best way to keep costs down in any market is to ensure that there is a healthy and large mix of competitors in that market that compete for customers. Basic economics: fewer competitors, higher costs for consumers, more competitors, lower costs for consumers. Which is what Obama Care should have been trying to do, increase the competition in the health care industry and let market forces drive down costs.

Of course, given how the legislation was written, it did the exact opposite. We have already reviewed how the largest insurers in the country have gotten even larger by merging with their large competitors. We have already reviewed how hospital groups have merged with their competitors in order to compete with the now larger health care insurers.

And now a recent Businessweek article discussed how drug companies are getting into the larger and larger mode when last November, two drug company giants, Pfizer and Allergan were merged in a mind boggling deal worth $183.7 billion. Thus, in all aspects of the American health care industry, insurers, hospitals and now drug companies, the competitors are getting fewer and fewer and remaining competitors are getting larger and larger, the exact opposite of what one would want from an economic perspective. Fewer players = ever higher costs, all due to Obama Care.

3) We will end today’s discussion on Obama Care disasters and this month’s discussion with a series of heartbreaking stories of how Obama Care has messed up the lives of Americans and their families. These stories are self reported and collected on the website, www.ourhealthcarestories.com. They tell the stories of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, insurance policies, and hospitals, of Americans paying ever more for insurance premiums, co-pays, and deductibles. They tell the stories of people changing doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals in the middle of cancer treatments. These are the real stories of what Obama Care did to America, beyond the macro financial, economic results and numbers, it screwed Americans all over the country.PATRICIA - MINNESOTA: In order to keep my monthly payment the same, I had to raise my annual deductible from $3,000.00 to $5,000.00. I also lost the three times each year that I could go to the doctor for a $30.00 co-pay. I also lost the flat fee I paid on prescriptions of $10.00 for generic and $25.00 for non-generic. These items I now pay from dollar one. This conceivably could cost me a lot of money each year.REBECCA - KENTUCKY: I know I can't keep my plan, which I liked, but as I'm trying to decide what to do going forward, I've spent weeks, with days on the phone getting confidently delivered wrong answers, conflicting information, it's becoming quite obvious to me a lot of agencies, almost everyone I talk to, is having a lot of trouble figuring out the new rules.DENNIS - FLORIDA: I had great insurance for my daughter and myself. In 2008 I paid only $200 a month. On December 31st I lose my insurance because it is to good for the law. I have an autoimmune disease and will not have access to my medications since the managed plans do not cover them. I only see specialist which will end since I will need a referral every time. The price of the new plans $450 a month for less coverage. President Obama is a liar.RON - MICHIGAN: His name is Ron Byelich from Higgins Lake. He is semi-retired and had insurance with BC/BS of Michigan for $179/mth with a $1,000 deductable. He was about to have neck surgery, but received a letter that his insurance was cancelled because it didn’t meet the HHS requirements. He went on the site and found out that a similar policy would cost $640/mth with a $1,000 – 1,500 deductable. So now he has no insurance and can’t afford the neck surgery.JOHN - NEW HAMPSHIRE: I was probably one of the very first victims of the Affordable Care Act. I was a self employed entrepreneur who was purchasing in the state of New Hampshire a major medical insurance policy, "that I liked". And that worked for me in my budget, I paid for my own medical, eye and dental exams. Because I believe that regular doctor visits precluded serious medical injuries and am insuring myself only in the event of something serious happening with the major medical policy.I was notified in the early stages of the ACA when all the states were being told what the insurance regulations required had to be at a specific level. Mine was not an except able level and was not being offered again by my insurance carrier. The new regulations required a plan that was not cost effective, though I'm sure it would have covered many things, prenatal exams, pregnancy tests, Viagra, birth control pills and even the doctor visits that I was already paying for out of my pocket because it's cheaper. Yes! Thanks to the wonders of Obamacare.I have been with out any catastrophic medical coverage for the past few years, in which I have had to pay out an $8,000.00 medical expense because of an emergency room visit while on vacation for kidney stones, which would have been covered under my original major medical coverage. Yes I'm in favor of repealing the ACA! I want to be I charge of my body, not be forced to do things that will encumber my life. "It's my body, I want the government out of it!"Sad, sad stories. More unfolding disaster from Obama Care next month, the worst piece of legislation passed by the worst set of Washington politicians ever.



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

Drain Cleaners In Illinois, Viagra In Ohio, Toilet Paper In Trenton - You Do Not Have To Be A Washington Politician To Have Incompentent Priorities

The old saying, "The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it is so rare," has been attributed to former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The Senator represented New York state several decades ago. In my opinion, he was one of the few politicians in my lifetime who actually was in touch with reality and was not shy about pointing out the mass of nonsense constantly generated by the American political class.

We usually talk about insanity, incompetence, bad priorities, and waste at the Federal government level:

• How the Federal political class oversees a government that loses over two hundred billion dollars a year through waste and criminal fraud in its Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs.
• How the Federal political class oversees a tax system and IRS that fails to collect over $300 billion a year from tax evaders.
• How the Federal political class allowed at least one government agency to waste over $800,000 on a lavish Las Vegas conference that included activities that made fun and light of how that agency wasted taxpayer wealth.
• How the Federal political class has allowed government spending to run up over $15 TRILLION in national debt without solving any of the major issues facing the country including our failing public schools, our lost war on drugs, our lack of a coherent energy strategy, our crumbling infrastructure, our leaky borders, our escalating health care costs, etc.

You get the idea. There is so much to talk about when it comes to Federal politicians that we sometimes lose track of the fact that our state and local political classes are not much better in performance or in setting realistic and worthwhile priorities in their work schedules.

Remember, most, if not all, local and state governments have faced many crises over the past few years due to declining tax revenues because of the ailing economy. This has resulted in the reductions in social services, cuts to school budgets, layoffs of government employees, and other pressing problems. Keep this in mind as we review the state government political class travesties below and how bad their priorities are.

Three recent cases come to mind:

* We have already covered this state government insanity but it is certainly pertinent to today's topic. If you live in Illinois and have a clogged drain, life has been made very complicated for you, courtesy of the Illinois political class. If you want to unclog your drain with an industrial strength drain cleaner or other "caustic or noxious substance," you have to register your name, your address, the date and time of your purchase, and the type, brand, and net weight of your purchase. This information will be entered into a government registry by the store clerk.

Stores who fail to comply with the regulations could get a fine of $150 for the first offense and up to $1,500 for each subsequent offense. The law has been such a hassle for both customers and stores that a local supermarket chain, Jewel-Osco, has responded to the hassle by no longer selling the affected drain cleaners.

And what was the cause of this explosion in bureaucracy and government intrusion? Bureaucracy that will affect hundreds of stores, thousands of homes, and thousands and thousands of citizens? Apparently, back in 2010, two Chicago women were badly injured by assailants who threw drain cleaner on them.

Now while I feel badly for the two women, this is a ridiculous reaction to only two incidents. First of all, passing a law like this will not eliminate the potential for this type of incident happening again:

1. Drain cleaning liquid is still available (except at Jewel-Osco) so future assaults could still occur. Law enforcement authorities could never trace who bought the drain cleaner used in a future assault.

2. If this was such a big problem, I am sure criminal elements could drive to neighboring states to buy drain cleaners. It does not appear to be a crime to transport drain cleaners across state lines.

3. If a criminal wanted to repeat this type of assault, they could just as easily use household bleach for the same assault affect. It does not appear that bleach is a dangerous substance according to the law, requiring a registry and other such nonsense required of drain cleaner purchasers.

Thus, another stupid law and another set of unintended negative consequences, consequences that make Americans' lives more complicated, add to government bureaucracy, and add to business costs without solving the original problem. In fact, I am not sure there was an original problem. There were only two assaults, two assaults that could have been done with any number of other caustic products, two assaults that will affect thousands of other citizens for no reason.

* Our Federal government and many of our state and local governments have been around for over two hundred years. One would have thought they could do some basic functions after these centuries including providing toilet paper in government buildings.

However, Trenton, New Jersey's politicians' ability to execute this basic toilet paper government function has not taken hold yet. Their failure to reach an agreement on what company to award the city's $42,000 toilet paper contract has led to police stations, senior centers, city hall, and other government buildings going weeks without toilet paper.

The state government and its politicians almost had to intercede to resolve the issue. Fortunately, there was at least some temporary relief in the toilet paper issue when the city council rushed through an emergency order to purchase $16,000 worth of toilet paper for the time being. After over two hundred years, our political class cannot even order and deploy adequate toilet paper supplies. Does not make you feel real confident that they will be able to fix any of the real issues facing most Americans today?

* The residents of Ohio do not have it any better when it comes to bad political class priorities. Ohio has also had a rough time with it economically over the past few years but you would not know it if you followed the career of Democratic state senator Nina Turner.

Apparently, the Senator has introduced a bill in the Ohio Senate that would require men to 1) take a cardiac stress test and 2) get a NOTARIZED affidavit from a sexual partner affirming impotency before they can receive a prescription for Viagra. The heck with reduced state tax revenues, the heck with failing schools and sagging school budgets, the heck with a creaky state economy, etc.

Let's get the state government involved in the sexual workings of thousands and thousands of consenting Ohio adults with intrusive paperwork and the excess costs of complying with an idiotic law and priority. You wonder what the thought process was that caused state government staff, resources, and a state senator to put this at the top of their priority lists. 

Given these three simple examples of state and local political class insanity and the state of our governments and our lives, Moynihan's quote is so accurate: "The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it is so rare." When drain cleaners, toilet paper, and Viagra regulation make headlines and eat up political attention, rare is an understatement.

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

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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 or 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/