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After a short diversion to cover the latest crises in Syria and Obama Care, this our fifth post this month covering the latest stupidity, insanity, and antics of the American political class. You do enough of these posts and the associated research and it makes you realize why these politicians have never resolved a major issue facing Americans over the past few decades. They are either unwilling, unable, or to wrapped up in their own personal careers and personal enrichment to care if an issue ever gets resolved.
The continuing saga of political class incompetency and embarrassments starts here:
1) According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the August 30, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, banks, insurers, and other financial institutions have ponied up $10 million to members of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. Pretty disgraceful show of business cronies supporting their political cronies for favorable government treatment.
The really embarrassing part of this bribery scheme is that there are a whopping 61 Congressmen and women that actually sit on this committee. 61 members is about 14% of the entire House of Representatives. These 61 obviously know where to go to get the money they need to stay in office. You can bet if this committee had something to do with an insignificant part of the economy, unlike financial services, there would NOT be 61 members clamoring to get on the committee. Disgraceful.
2) In a related set of insanity involving the financial services industry, consider an article from the latest edition of Business Week. The Dodd-Frank legislation that was supposed to fix all of the problems in the financial services industry so that another “Great Recession” never happened again, was passed into law three years ago. We have shown numerous times how the tenets of this law are already proving inadequate to stop financial services misdeeds with the collapse of MF Global being just one glaring example.
However, according to the article, one reason why this legislation may not be working, besides the fact that is was a horrible piece of legislation, is the fact that less than 40% of the processes and regulations that are needed to implement Dodd-Frank have not yet been written. At this rate, it will take at least 7-8 years to implement the legislation, a time length that will likely render anything positive in the law, if there is anything positive, obsolete, as the world moves on.
How poorly is a piece of legislation written if it takes years and years to make it operational> In 7-8 years, the country will likely have gone through at least two more recessions, given historical patterns, any one of which could be caused by the same factors that caused the Great Recession.
Obama recently called a meeting to find out what the problem is and the attendees at the meeting are a good indication of why this is a snail-like process. At the meeting were people representing the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Consumer Financial Bureau, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nine Federal bureaucracies are working on operationalizing Dodd-Frank and they cannot get out of their own way.
Nine Federal entities and less than 40% of the way there after three years. And many of these entities were the very ones that should have seen the Great Recession coming and were asleep at the wheel until the recession hit them in the face. What are the odds they can even operationalize the legislation, given their history of ineptness?
Thus, we have legislation written by people that probably never read it or understood what was in it which was then handed off to massive Federal bureaucracies that have to make it work even though they have not done their watchdog jobs in the past. Oh yeah, this is going to work out fine. Just like Obama Care, this is what happens when politicians pass bills that are well over a thousand pages long.
3) Staying with the financial services industry again, a recent article in Business Week reported on a Federal Reserve analysis and conclusion that five years after the Great Recession began, major U.S. banks are still not fully ready for the next economic disaster.
The Fed found that although these banks have increased their capital levels, recent financial stress tests indicate the banks have not done enough to test for and anticipate major changes and trends in the economy. This puts them on a par with the Washington political class and the nine Federal bureaucracies listed above who are also not prepared to protect Americans from the next economic blow up. Failure all around.
4) Over 20 million Americans are either unemployed or under employed. This pathetic situation has resulted in many, many Americans defaulting on their mortgages and losing their homes or putting them under intense financial pressure to make their house payments. A very sad situation as the dream of home ownership is shot down by the economy.
But, that has not stopped the Obama administration from spending $313 million of taxpayer wealth on mortgages …for Palestinian homeowners. Yes, American taxpayers are paying for the funding of $313 million in home mortgages for Palestinians living in the West Bank, according to a recently released Government Accountability Office report .
And to add insult to injury, the U.S. will also guarantee $110 million in loans to small- and medium-sized businesses located on the West Bank. The mortgage and business-loan activities will be managed by the Federal Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). “OPIC is the U.S. Government’s development finance institution,” says OPIC’s website. “OPIC provides financial products, such as loans and guaranties; political risk insurance; and support for investment funds, all of which help American businesses expand into emerging markets.”
Home mortgages for Palestinians, the same people that hate us for our support of Israel? Small business funding for Palestinian businesses when small businesses in America are being smothered and stamped out by Obama Care and other onerous government regulations? Hundreds of millions of dollars going to the one of the most corrupt government entities in the world? Ridiculous.
These wastes of money could have helped some struggling American families and small businesses. These wastes of money could have helped pay down the debt or provided tax relief to American taxpayers. These wastes of money could have kept White House tours operational for over 400 hundred years. But no, it will be sent half way around the world to people that hate us and our country. Pathetic.
5) Former Speaker of the House and current Congressional member, Nancy Pelosi is estimated to be worth in excess of $35 million according to the website, Celebrity Worth. In a “60 Minutes” report that we reviewed in this blog:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/washington-corruption-train-keeps-on.html
it was shown that she participated in up to nine different corporate IPOs, getting special insider financial advantage not available to ordinary Americans. In the space of a few days, she made over $100,000 by participating in the VISA credit card IPO. According to the Celebrity Wealth website, including in her wealth of $35 million is a multimillion dollar winery in California.
Her husband is very active and very wealthy in the California real estate market. Her Congressional salary is less than .5% of her family’s net worth. In other words, Nancy Pelosi is rich beyond most Americans’ dreams.
But ask her to take a pay cut for the good of the country and she goes ballistic. Earlier in the year when the sequester was requiring the Federal government to reduce the overall Federal budget by a nominal amount, Ms. Pelosi had this to say: “I don’t think we should do it [cut the pay of Congressional members, people who earn more than three times the average U.S. household income]; I think we should respect the work we do. I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”
Rather than cut their salaries, at least this member of Congress thinks it would be a blow to their so-called dignity. Apparently it is better, as a result of the sequester, to terminate White House tours, cut air traffic controller resources to inconvenience millions of America travelers, cut educational aid to native American schools, etc. than it is to ask a Congressional member worth over $35 million to give back a few thousand dollars to the American taxpayer in these times of economic stress.
Given the low performance of the current set of Washington politicians in Washington, there are many other words that I would use to describe their performance and results and none of them include the words dignity, respect, and reward. If these people were paid for the work they do in a merit based system, they would starve to death. The arrogance of these politicians is beyond disgraceful.
So, let’s review. Politicians that fight to be on the best Congressional committee to extort money for reelection purposes. Politicians that write cumbersome, inane laws that cannot be put into effect three years after they are passed. Politicians that fund home mortgage loans and small business loans for foreigners halfway around the world while American families and businesses suffer. And at least one politicians that thinks she is too valuable to have a pay cut despite being worth over $35 million. Pathetic is too kind of a word to describe these people.
And we are still not done for their insanity this month, more to follow at least through 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
This is hopefully the final installment in this month’s review of the insanity that has recently poured out of the American political class. If so, it will take us only six days this month to get all of the insanity and lunacy documented as compared to the record setting nine days it took last month.
However, please note that the Washington political class has been on vacation for the past four weeks so that is probably the reason for the lighter craziness this month. I shutter to think what we will need to cover next month once the minions are back in Washington for a month and causing trouble.
1) Back in 2009, the Citizens Against Government Waste organization applauded the Obama administration for saying it would attack wasteful government spending by slashing some programs including the infamous West Virginia “Road to Nowhere.” This embarrassment was a pet pork spending project of the late Senator Robert Byrd. The road had no financial or economic value at all except to divert American taxpayer wealth into some road construction jobs in his home state.
Well, four years later, Senator Byrd has passed away but the road to nowhere continues to get funding to go nowhere. A recent Washington Post article points out that Byrd’s ability to fund pork spending in his state is just as strong in death as in life, as the road continues to get $40 million a year from the Federal government and the U.S. taxpayer. It will continue to need that amount of money every year until 2035 when it should be finished but still lead to nowhere. Pathetic.
As a recent Cato Institute article points out, why don’t we just build a large statue honoring the late Senator and be done with this annual wasteful spending. Sounds good to me.
2) The Independent Journal review had some interesting statistics and findings in an article it published on August 22, 2013:
- A recent Gallup poll asked a set of Americans how much they trusted the Federal government and the politicians that operate it to do the right thing, "how much of the time do you trust the government in Washington to do what is right: just about always, most of the time, only some of the time and never."
Their latest survey found that a whopping 81% of Americans do not think that the Federal government will do the right thing just about always or most of the time, only 19% think it will. This finding of 81% has been trending worse for the past five years or so with 70% saying government will not do the right thing (still not a great perception) as late as 2007.
Another confirmation of our hypothesis that we are living under the worst set of Washington politicians in the history of our country, a hypothesis confirmed by over 80% of Americans thinking that Washington hardly ever does the right thing.
- Despite President Obama’s assertion that the economy has fully recovered, recent research from Pew Research indicates that only 28% of Americans agree with him while 46% think economic recovery is a long way off. Looks like the President needs to get out of his cocoon of non-reality and get out into the real world where the real unemployment rate is still about 14% and over twenty million Americans are unemployed or under employed.
I would hate to see what he thinks America looks like if it had not fully recovered, given these dismal statistics.
- According to another Pew Research study from May, 2013, 66% of Americans think that the public education system and processes in this country either need a major overhaul or need to be torn down and started over. However, in the four and a half years that Obama has been President, there has been absolutely no effort made on his behalf to change this negative status quo to stop under educating our kids. Perhaps it is because his kids and most of the rest of the politicians in Washington send their kids to elite private schools.
- When the Obama Care legislation was passed three years ago only 46% of Americans had a favorable view of it. Today, that number has dropped to 37%, probably as a result of the myriad of problems and stupidity that was embedded in the law and how much of that insanity has now become public.
However, Obama and other political types in Washington continue to insist that this is a wonderful bill, that they have exempted themselves from much of, and that there will only be a few bumps in the road to roll it out. Highly doubtful
I think what these statistics point out is that the politicians in Washington have a gross misunderstanding of the reality of what Americans think about the major issues and even what the major issues are. A paragraph from the article sums up this disconnect quite nicely:
Even a blind monkey with half a brain could tell you that there’s a disconnect between the current administration and the public. Just how big is this disconnect? As you probably expect, massive. On the major issues that dominate interviews and debates each year, political leaders are increasingly distancing themselves from the views of the majority of American people.
The President is taking multi-million dollar vacations while regular Americans are decreasing their number of paid off days just to keep their jobs. Legislators are enrolling their children in elite private schools while the rest of us are volunteering personal time and money to help our local public school systems. The NSA is defending its right to access public phone records, though we are adamantly calling for it to stop.
Well said, a major disconnect between what the political class perceives and what reality is throughout America.
3) An August 16, 2013 article from the wonderful website, Bankrupting America, had a great example of how perverted reason and logic can be in Washington D.C. According to the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Virginia recently passed their yearly food assistance/food stamp audit with flying colors. Virginia had one of the lowest food assistance mistake rates in the country. They mistakenly paid out ONLY $19 million in taxpayer wealth in their state program. ONLY $19 million and they were one of the best states with the lowest mistake rate. I cannot imagine what the millions and millions of dollars the worst states paid out mistakenly.
Even if Virginia was one of the best, $19 million is still a lot of waste. But how did the USDA reward a state like Virginia that over-issued $19 million worth of food stamps?The USDA gave the state a whopping $2 million bonus for being the best of a bad lot.
Makes no sense: get rewarded with two million dollars for mistakenly paying out $19 million. Maybe Virginia should have paid back the American taxpayer $2 million for being so incompetent. Talk about rewarding idiocy. And, again, Virginia had one of the lowest mistake rates in the country! In 2012, the USDA rewarded 14 states a total of $22,325,811 million in rewards. Florida earned the top spot with over $8 million from the USDA.
At the same time that states were being paid bonuses for mistakenly giving out food stamps, Tom Vilsack, Secretary of the USDA, claimed that the only way he could deal with the minor budget cuts that came about as a result of the sequester, was to layoff 500 firefighters to make up for the $52 million budget cut he had to absorb. Seems that if the states, and the Federal government that was overseeing the states and their food stamp/food assistance programs were actually doing their jobs correctly, it would have been no problem to overcome that $52 million budget reduction.
Vilsack could have closed about 80% of that budget hit just by making sure that Virginia no longer had an annual $19 million mistake and if he eliminated the silly reward system, over $22 million annually, for rewarding incompetence. That gets him back $41 million before he even fixed anything in the other 49 dysfunctional state food assistance programs. Instead, he let’s the status quo go on and endangers the lives of Americans and their assets and property by cutting fire fighting resources. Pathetic set of priorities.
4) Einstein once said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Keep those insightful words in mind as you read the following information, as reported by the California Report website.
In 2011, as a result of the housing collapse and the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve and other government entities, agencies, wisely decided to tighten lending rules for Qualified Residential Mortgages (QRMs). In the lead up to the Great Recession, recall that many homeowners were able to get mortgages that they could not afford by signing up for mortgages that required little or no down payment and mortgages that did not require an income or asset verification. Millions of these mortgage holders eventually defaulted on their mortgages, leading to the near collapse of the financial system and the crash of the stock market and the end of many, many banks.
In order to not duplicate this devastating economic meltdown in the future in the housing industry, the Fed and other government organizations instituted common sense changes to the home mortgage process. These changes required the buyer to put up a 20% down on the purchase, have viable assets, personally fund his own closing costs and not exceed 36% total debt to household income, including all housing costs. Good, solid guidelines to make sure people did not get into mortgage payments that were over their financial means.
But the definition of insanity…. Citing the dismal recovery in the housing market and rising rates, the Fed and other regulators recently announced that the rules on QRMs would be relaxed in order to stimulate the market and give many more people an opportunity to purchase a home. These changed rules include a proposal to not require ANY down payment and a debt to income ratio of 43%. In exchange, banks who make these loans would hold a 5% stake in the loans sold off on the secondary market.
We just came off a housing induced Great Recession, took remedial steps to fix what caused the Great Recession and we now want to allow banks, the same banks that got bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, to do the same stupid mortgage things all over again. While these relaxed rules and guidelines will probably allow more people to purchase a home, it will in no way make them more likely to afford a new home in tough financial times. You cannot make up this stupidity.
That will do it for today, I promise that tomorrow will be the final political class insanity post for this month. You will be surprised, shocked, and ticked off to see what your Federal politicians are spending your tax money on as we explore a new, insightful source of wasteful government spending.
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
I know that I promised that yesterday’s post on Obama Care disasters would be the last for September, I need to go one more day on the unfolding disasters of this lousy piece of legislation. As quickly as I have been able to summarize what is going on as the legislation gets closer and closer to reality, more and more fiascoes pop up. This will be the absolutely last September Obama Care update because frankly, it is getting too depressing to review what this legislation is doing to ravage the economy, family budgets, and our health care system and processes.
1) On September 11, 2013, the Arlington Patch newspaper out of Virginia, citing a Huffington Post article, reported that Trader Joe's, the grocer once recognized for providing health care coverage to it's part-time workers, is about to push those employees off their plan since the company will stop covering employees who work less than 30 hours per week as a result of Obama Care. The change is set for the start of 2014. Instead of insurance, workers will get a check for $500 come January.
More disruption to Americans’ lives for a program and law that has very little chance of ever succeeding. This is just another in a long line of companies, unions, universities, etc. that cannot afford Obama Care and are forced to kick their employees off of existing, completely satisfactory company health care plans in order to stay financially solvent. It will add more Americans to the Obama Care exchanges, probably increasing the cost of operating them and increasing the national debt or will result in more Americans going without health care insurance, the exact opposite of what the legislation was supposed to do. Insanity.
2) A recent research report from Stanford University verifies one of these potential outcomes, namely that under Obama Care, employers may find it less expensive to dump some or all of their current employees onto Obama Care exchanges as a result of the regulations and penalties in the law. This would substantially add to the cost burden on the Federal government, really the American taxpayer, who would have larger subsidy costs with more Americans dumped into the exchanges.
The research conclusion was that the additional cost to the national debt would be about $132 billion. It gave no indication over what time period that would be but since most of Obama Care planning has been over ten year periods, that is probably their window also. According to the research, Washington politicians “should plan for the possibility that the exchange subsidies may end up costing the federal government much more than currently projected.”
This research paints a perfect picture of the whole underlying fallacy of Obama Care. It does NOT reduce health care costs in this country, which is what is needed, it only shifts around the costs. While companies may pay less for health care insurance since they either dumped their plans altogether or forced employees onto the Obama Care exchanges, the American taxpayer will pay more through their Federal taxes since more money will be needed to keep the exchanges going because of more employees having been dumped into the exchanges.
It is nothing more than a huge circuit that gets us right back where we started: high and ever escalating health care costs. The root causes have those high costs are not addressed by Obama Care. All this law does is create a huge Rube Goldberg system that disrupts businesses and their employees without reducing overall costs. Pathetic.
3) According to an article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on August 21, 2013, United Parcel Service Inc. plans to remove 15,000 spouses from its medical plan because they are eligible for coverage elsewhere. The Atlanta-based logistics company blames Obama Care as a big reason for the decision: “Rising medical costs combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act [Obama Care], have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost.”
UPS expects the move, which applies to non-union U.S. workers only, to save about $60 million a year according to a company spokeswoman. More lives disrupted, more distractions for no good reason. I would bet two underlying realities exist here:
First, since most of my contacts with UPS have been male employees, I would bet the vast majority of those 15,000 spouses are women. Ironic that the last Obama Presidential campaign constantly said they were fighting against the fictitious “war on women” and here their fatally flawed but boastful legislation is causing major headaches and disruptions to thousands of women’s lives.
Second, I would also bet that those UPS families will end up paying more for their overall family health care insurance since they will now be dealing with two separate companies health insurance providers rather than being served together as a family and with other UPS families in a larger and probably less costly group plan.
4) In that same article regarding 15,000 spouses scrambling to get new healthcare insurance, is a quote from a government official: "The health care law will make health insurance more affordable, strengthen small businesses and make it easier for employers to provide coverage to their workers," said Joanne Peters, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
It is quotes like these that really undermine my trust in the people that are running this government and the country:
- Are they that out of touch with the realities of Obama Care that they can issue such obviously inane statements?
- Do they really understand how bad this legislation is and are just touting a company line, hoping that somehow everything will work out in the end?
An old saying correctly states that “hope is not a strategy” if that is what they really think. Denying reality does not make it go away or change if that is what they really think. Come on Ms. Peters, check out reality:
UPS spouses, Trader Joe employees and a whole raft of other companies’ employees are losing their current health care insurance coverage because of Obama Care, it will not make it easier for employers to provide coverage to their workers.
Every analysis that has been done so far, every state that has put together their health care insurance exchange programs‘ costs, every unbiased consulting firm analysis has shown that individual health care insurance under Obama care will go up significantly, it will not make health insurance more affordable.
Story after story in a whole slew of news publications have definitively shown that Obama Care is causing small businesses to lay off workers, delay hiring workers, cutting workers’ hours, halting expansion plans, crimping their profit realities and potential, etc., Obama Care is not going to strengthen small businesses.
So out of touch and so dangerous to be so out of touch. Denying reality or having only hope as your strategy never works out well in the end for anybody.
5) Obama Care was passed by a Democratic Party controlled House of Representatives and a Democratic Party controlled Senate and was signed by a Democratic Party President. Not a single Republican in either the House or Senate voted to pass Obama Care. It is a Democratic party contraption and unfolding disaster.
But we have previously reported on Democrats who are jumping or who have already jumped the SS Sinking Obama Care. A lot of unions, who originally supported passage of Obama Care, now want to see it repealed or radically changed since they now understand the negative ramifications on union members’ lives. Democrat Montana Senator Max Baucus has called the implementation of Obama Care a “train wreck.” Democrat Florida Senator Bill Nelson has also voiced his concerns of how poorly Obama Care is shaping up in the real world.
But they are not the only Democrats who are finally realizing, “holy mackerel, what have we done” relative to all or major parts of Obama Care, according to an Independent Journal Report analysis from August 10, 2013:
- Democratic Senator Ben Nelson has voiced his opposition to Obama Care's individual mandate. He told MSNBC that the law has "attracted questions about its Constitutionality," and stated that it's time to look for a "market based approach".
- Three Arizona Democrats in the House of Representatives, Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick, and Kyrsten Sinema, have formally also pledged their support of a bill to repeal the IPAB, i.e. the “death panel“ component of Obama Care that is supposed to keep runaway medical costs under control. It is a major component of Obama Care. “The Hill” reported that all three lawmakers "are considered vulnerable in next year’s election, highlighting the stakes and the political angst surrounding the healthcare measure". In other words, holy mackerel, we need to disassociate ourselves with this lousy piece of legislation if we think we can get reelected.
- Former Massachusetts Democratic Representative Barney Frank co-sponsored a bill to terminate Obama Care's Independent Payment Advisory Board, i.e. death panel. Frank's spokesman had stated that he was against "legislation that would place authority for Medicare payment policy in an unelected, executive branch commission or board.” (Washington Times)
- In 2010, the Virginia state government approved a law protecting residents from “any penalty, assessment, fee or fine as a result of his failure to procure or obtain health-insurance coverage.” In Virginia’s House of Delegates, 55% of Democrats backed this anti-Obama Care legislation, as did 8 of 11 (73%) of its Black Caucus members. (NY Post)
- According to The Washington Times, Vice President Joe Biden recently joined Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, former Chief of Staff Richard Daley and five Democratic Senators in opposition to the President's universal female-contraception requirements, a tenet of the law that tramples the freedom of religion promise of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
- Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Chairman called for Obama Care's controversial cost-cutting board, the IPAB or death panel, to be repealed. He wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "Getting rid of the IPAB is something Democrats and Republicans ought to agree on.”
What does this say about the legislation when DEMOCRATS want to gut or terminate major portions of the legislation? Remember how Obama and members of Congress agreed to illegally ignore the part of Obama Care that says no taxpayer subsidies should be given to members of Congress or their staffs to pay for Obama Care insurance coverage?
Remember how we reported that the vast majority of IRS employees (>90%), the government entity responsible for implementing a lot of the logistics of Obama Care, said they wanted no part of Obama Care for?
Members of Congress personally want nothing to do with this law. IRS employees want nothing to do with this law. Major Democratic political figures and organizations have finally recognized that this law in whole or in parts needs to be put to into permanent retirement. Small businesses want nothing to do with this law. American workers who are having their hours cut, their jobs terminated, or their health insurance cancelled want nothing to do with this law. American workers who now need to go find health insurance coverage for their families or their spouses want nothing to do with this law. 34 states that refused to set up their own Obama Care health insurance exchanges want nothing to do with this law. Anyone who values freedom of choice and freedom from excessive and unnecessary government intervention in their lives want nothing to do with this law.
Makes you wonder who, outside of Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Ms. Peters, who we cited above, in this country actually want this monstrosity to come into their lives, a monstrosity that has no chance of ever being successful
As a last thought, many, if not most, of the Democrats in Congress who voted to pass this legislation, the vast majority of whom never read it, have been in their positions for a long time. Please support our drive for term limits for all Federal officials so that these people are relieved of duty and politically punished for passing such a lousy piece of legislation. You can join our term limits cause at:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
This is the fourth and and possibly final update we will be doing this month on the Obama Care disasters that continue to unfold. It is not because we have covered all of the latest disasters and failures, I am just too tired to continue pointing out how this is the worst piece of legislation that the Federal government has ever passed.
It is riddled with irrational thought, it’s implementation has been a train wreck, it is destroying the economy and the ability of Americans to find full time work, and worst of all it has no chance of success since it never understood and never addressed the underlying causes of our high health care costs. Just remember that the idiocy and failures you have read about Obama Care in the past three days in this blog or the failures from the nine part series we did in August, we still have not covered all of the shortcomings.
1) We have already reported on how hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses, large and small, have had to make their full time workers part time workers in order to survive under the tenets of Obama Care. The latest business to face this depressing situation is Sea World.
Sea World recently announced that it will be cutting the weekly hours of thousands of its employees to total no more than 28 hours a week. This is a result of trying to stay financially solvent under Obama Care’s rules and regulations. Thus, many more Americans will see their take home pay cut for no good reason and probably with no increase in their ability to pay for high health care insurance costs. Pathetic.
2) The Chicago Tribune had in interesting Op-Ed piece in its July 31, 2013 issue. The piece started with the following paragraph:
The Affordable Care Act will give companies — and, surprisingly, their workers — a big incentive to embrace more part-time employment. That isn't necessarily a problem, except when it comes to paying the health-insurance bills for all those part-timers. Looks like that job will fall to you, taxpayers.
I will not go into the math details of what they discovered, you can do so for yourself at the OP-ED piece itself:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-07-31/opinion/ct-edit-parttime-0728-jm-20130728_1_employers-obamacare-workers
The bottom line is that the Obama Care legislation was written so poorly that it appears that millions of Americans would be better off financially if they actually became part time workers. In these cases, the government, I.e. the American taxpayer, would step in with Obama Care health insurance subsidies that for many Americans would more than offset their take home pay if they had stayed as full time employees.
Think about that for a minute. Millions of Americans will likely fall into an Obama Care niche where working less gets them more money. Great deal for them, lousy deal for the American taxpayer who pays for their lucky break as a result of idiotic legislative writing. You can not make up this type of insanity.
3) Back in mid-July, 2013, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is responsible for implementing Obama Care, was speaking at the NAACP convention in Orlando when compared the opponents of Obama Care to the segregationist opponents of civil rights:
You showed it in the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation. You showed it by ensuring inalienable rights are secured in the courtroom and at the ballot box. And you showed it by supporting a health law 100 years in the making. With each step forward, you said to forces of the status quo, “This will work,” “We can’t slow down,” “We can’t wait,” “We won’t turn back.”
This is really getting old from the Obama administration. Anyone that disagrees with its policies must be racist. Since Obama Care was passed, we have tried to fairly present the facts, statistics, the realities of Obama Care and the impact it is having on the nation. We have cited government sources, expert opinions, main stream media outlets, non mainstream media outlets, etc. in making every attempt to see the truth of Obama Care.
We would welcome a sit down discussion with Sebelius or anyone in the Obama administration to go over the points we have made, the observations we have developed and our final conclusion that this is a shoddy piece of legislation. In truth, the administration itself has shut down major components of the law (e.g. CLASS) and has delayed other major portions of the law because of how poorly it was developed and written.
However, in observing these activities of this administration, Sebelius and others like her ignore these realities. Instead, Sebelius is the latest administration hatchet woman to refuse our sit down offer to discuss the stark realities of Obama Care and just rely on racism and racial taunts to attack the law. Pathetic leadership, pathetic way to fix what is wrong in this country.
4) Consider a June, 2013 Associated Press article on how yet another quirk in the Obama Care legislation might actually cause more Americans to lose their healthcare insurance. The title of the article was, “Coverage may be unaffordable for low-wage workers” and it went through the potential scenario of why more Americans might lose their insurance under Obama Care:
- According to the article, “because of a wrinkle in the law, companies can meet their legal obligations by offering policies that would be too expensive for many low-wage workers. For the employee, it's like a mirage — attractive but out of reach.”
- As we have already discussed, companies with 50 or more full-time workers are required to offer coverage that meets certain basic standards and costs no more than 9.5% of an employee's income. Failure to do offer an insurance option means fines for the employer.
- However, for an employee making $21,000 a year, 9.5% of their income could mean premiums as high as $1,995 or almost 10% of their gross income.
- Under Obama Care guidelines, this expensive insurance, relative to an employee’s pay rate, would still be considered affordable.
- Even worse, these steep insurance premiums wouldn't be the only expense for employees. Since for a basic health insurance plan they could also face an annual deductible amounting to $3,000 or so, before insurance starts paying. $3,000 would be about 15% of someone’s gross work pay of $21,000 a year from the example above.
- "If you make $20,000, are you really going to buy that?" asked Tracy Watts, health care reform leader at Mercer, a major benefits consulting firm. Probably not if you are paying up to 10% of your pay for the privilege of paying another $3,000 in an annual deductible before you get any benefit from your insurance policy.
- The best financial scenario but possibly not the best health care scenario is to not take your employer up on this deal and go without health care insurance.
- Under Obama Care, this is perfectly legal for the employer to go this route and use the 9.5% cap as a ceiling and a way to shed employee health care insurance expense. Insanity.
- And to add insult to injury, low-wage workers making more than about $15,900 won't be eligible for the law's Medicaid expansion, shutting down another possibility for getting covered.
So like the other ways that Obama Care actually drives people out of having health care insurance, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do, this little quirk in the law got by those who wrote and voted for it. Obviously not a lot of those who did so read what they were voting on or these types of idiotic unintended outcomes may not have happened.
The article also cites another potential reason with insanity like this is going down as a result of the law. Remember how Obama and the Democrats rushed this legislation through the Congress? That happened because they were about to lose their 60 seat majority in the Senate when Republican Scot Brown was elected in Massachusetts. They rushed the House version through to approval without any fine tuning, without House/Senate conferencing to iron out stupidity like this. As a result, a law that was supposed to get more people health insurance will actually end up making people lose affordable health insurance.
5) A couple of quick hitters to finish this up. A July 18, 2013 KSAT radio interview in San Antonio of a major restaurant owner, Jim Hasslocher, revealed that he estimated Obama Care will add $1 million to his annual restaurant costs and expenses to cover the insurance needs of his 1,100 employees. One million dollars that will not allow him to give raises, open new eateries to expand the economy, improve his service, etc.
As a result he is faced with a number of choices, none of them very good, to keep his business viable in the face of a potential $1 million added cost: raise prices, close locations, fire employees, reduce the hours of employees, or do the little trick above to force the employees to not take his insurance options because of how poorly the financials line up, particularly in the restaurant worker world.
6) Back in July, 2013, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a survey of their members regarding what their plans are in the face of Obama Care and what it’s regulations, higher taxes, and uncertainty will do to job creation”
- 28% percent of those businesses surveyed said they will cut hours to reduce full time employees
- 24% said they will reduce hiring.
- 23% said the planned to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering the Obama Care mandate.
And Obama wonders why the economy continues to just slog along and the only jobs getting created are part time jobs. Certainly out of touch with reality.
7) Back in July, 2013 President Obama issued the following upbeat report on Obama Care results: “In 2012, 13 million rebates went out, in all 50 states. Another 8.5 [million] rebates are being sent out this summer, averaging around 100 bucks each.”
However, about the same time, the Kaiser Family Foundation noted that its research showed that healthcare premiums for the average family cost $15,745 in 2012 – an increase of $1,975 from the $13,770 they cost in 2010, the year President Obama signed the Obama Care into law. I wonder why that little fact did not make it into the Presdeint;s speech.
Yes, I am assuming that he was correct, millions of people got about $100 back as a rebate from their insurance company. I am also assuming that Kaiser is also right that ALL households saw an average increase in their premiums of almost twenty times as much as the rebates that SOME households received. Not a very good trade off in my eyes.
8) Back in mid July, the heads of three major unions including the Teamsters Union, you know, the people that came out swinging in support of Obama Care three years ago, James P. Hoffa, Joseph Hansen and D. Taylor send an open letter to the Obama administration: “Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA [Obama Care] will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class. We can no longer stand silent in the face of elements of the Affordable Care Act that will destroy the very health and well being of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.”
My, how times have changed as people have begun to understand how bad this bill is written. I wonder if Sebelius thinks that all unions are segregationists also?
That will do it for now. I have much more material on how bad Obama Care is but I just cannot do any more bad news, at least in the short term. As major components of Obama Care rollout, I am sure we will be hit with a tsunami of bad news and debilitating impacts on our jobs, our insurance, our lives, and our economy. Hands down, worse piece of legislation ever enacted by the Washington political class.
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