I Am A Global Warming Doubter And A Believer In Science Upate, Part 1: Fact Checking The Obama Administration, More Scientists Rebuttals, And The Biofuels Sham

Over the past few years or so we have been running a periodic series called, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” I started the series because I am a true believer in science and scientific principles/processes and the good they can do.

However, I resent being told, or yelled at, by people like Al Gore that I must be a science hating heathen because I do not blindly except his premise that global warming is strictly being caused by mankind and that the science is settled. In his closed mind, I must be an idiot. as are all of the other doubters in the world.

If one reviews our past postings on this subject, it is quite obvious to all but the most closed mind Al Gore supporters that the science is not settled. We have pointed out dozens of studies, research projects, realities, and other proof that the global warming science of Al Gore is not settled. Our “doubter” position has recently been fortified since the global warming mania has been “redefined,” much like a cereal rebranding marketing program, to now be called “climate change.”

Much like falling cereal sales, if you cannot fix the problem, try a redefinition of the problem. The main driver of this rebranding or redefinition is the simple fact that for the past 17 years or so global warming has stopped, contrary to Al Gore and all of the forecast models that global warming advocates tried to scare us with over the years. Their models and their theories have failed, just like the failing cereal, and rather than pull the plug on the theory they are now trying to reposition their egos and their arguments.

You can access our many posts on the “I am a global warming doubter but a believer in science” by entering that phrase in the search box above. Or, you can start with some of these posts directly:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-2013-i-am-global-warming_29.html

If you are still convinced that the science on global warming is settled, even after reading such facts as the premier physics facility in the world, the CERN Institute, proving that manmade global warming was a myth, maybe the following current rebuttals to Al Gore can change your mind:

1) The Obama administration recently released a large report on climate change or global warming or whatever, still beating the same drum that we are facing a climatic disaster and the Washington political class needs to take action to avert this disaster. However, the Heritage Foundation recently took a look at the administration claims, and using valid and current scientific data and realities, pretty much debunked the whole report and its premise:

Obama Administration Report Quote: “Precipitation patterns are changing”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: Precipitation patterns were never constant. Creating a crisis from the normal allows climate catastrophists to point to every abnormal bit of wet or dry as being “consistent with models” that predict one horrible outcome or another.

Obama Administration Report Quote: “sea level is rising”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: Yes sea level is rising, which it has done since the end of the last ice age. But the frequent claims and predictions of accelerating sea-level rise are not borne out in the data. In fact sea-level rise has slowed recently. One main-stream climatologist says this variation “makes the 21st century of sea level rise projections seem like unjustified arm waving.”

Obama Administration Report Quote: “the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events are increasing”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: The latest report on the science from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and analysis provided by the administration’s own National Climatic Data Center conclude that there isn’t a case for extreme weather increases – no significant trends for floods, droughts, hurricanes or tornadoes.

Obama Administration report Quote: “In Arctic Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: Global warming is supposedly global. Global sea ice (Arctic and Antarctic) is above average and, for this time of year, it is at its highest level in 30 years, which is the third-highest on record.

Obama Administration Report Quote: “It is notable that as these data records have grown longer and climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed.”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: The past 15 years have seen the climate model predictions stray farther and farther from actual temperatures (here and here). Last year, prominent climatologist, Hans von Storch, said, “If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models.” Maybe Professor von Storch needs four more years to be sure the models are wrong, but there are no grounds on which the models can be declared “confirmed.” Instead, the predictions are getting worse and worse.

The last claim by the administration is really the most bold faced deception. As we have shown any number of times in previous blog posts on this subject, many, many credible sources have shown that the major global warming models have severely overestimated the impacts of man on the environment and global warming. 

This is easily fact checked to prove that the last point above from the report is pure fallacy. Makes one wonder what other quotes in the report are also fallacies.

2) Although this global warming doubter story is a couple of years old, I just came across it and find nothing wrong with its content and assertions, given the scientists that support it. This story appeared in the Wall Street Journal about two years ago and was written or signed of on by sixteen scientists. 

Their view is the same as ours: there has been no further global warming for many, many years, the global warning models have all been severely deficient in prediction accuracy, and the science is not settled, not close to be settled. If anything, the science is close to be settled for the exact opposite of global warming.

The entire article and associated details can be read at:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The main conclusion from these scientists can be summed up from one of their paragraphs within the article:

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

“There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action…” Sounds like a lot is still unsettled according to these scientists.

The writers and scientific signers of this article work at or teach at the Institute for the Study of the Earth, the University of Paris, the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University, the American Physical Society, the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences, Princeton University, University of Cambridge, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, MIT, Virginia Technical University, the New York Academy of Sciences, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, the Royal Dutch Meteorological Service, and the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva. 

Al Gore fails to mention these types of scientists and global warming doubters, i.e. the science is NOT settled.

3) One of the proposals to combat global warming that was cooked up by the political class and its business cronies was to develop biofuels for use as an energy source, particularly with our cars. The faulty thought process was that if we could displace at least part of the gasoline with biofuels in our gas tanks, less carbon would be released into the atmosphere and thus, less global warming.

It was more a political decision than a valid scientific reason and strategy according to a recent United Nations report where they found some severe “unintended consequences” of biofuels (why do we always seem to find out about “unintended consequences” AFTER the political class gets us way down the road to failure?)”

The new United Nation’s report and analysis comes from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"

• The researchers found that that while biofuels do indeed release smaller amounts of greenhouse gases than gasoline or diesel, "for some biofuels indirect emissions — including from land use change — can lead to GREATER (my emphasis) total emissions than when using petroleum products." 
• Additionally, the negative consequences of including corn ethanol related biofuels in the fuel supply are enormous in other areas of life including serious damage to the world’s food supply. 
• For example, in 2000, more than 90% of the corn grown in the United States went to feed people and livestock, including many people in undeveloped countries, and less than 5% was used to produce ethanol. 
• By 2013, according to mandates from the Federal government and Washington politicians, 40% percent of the U.S. corn crop went to produce ethanol, 45% fed livestock, and just 15% was used for foods and beverages, according to a Forbes magazine investigation. 
• This translates into the U.S. annually using nearly 5 billion bushels of corn to produce more than 13 billion gallons of corn based ethanol biofuel. 
• By taking 5 billion bushels of corn out of the food chain, corn harvesting would lose the ability to feed 500 million people a year compared to what corn crops were doing in 2000.
• 500 million people is equivalent to the entire population of the Western Hemisphere outside the United States, according to Forbes writer James Conca. 
• By 2007, the diverting of the corn crop to biofuel uses caused the global price of corn to double, leading to increases in the price of milk, cheese, eggs, meat, cereals, and corn-based sweeteners, and world grain reserves dwindled to their lowest level in over 30 years. 
• Increased corn prices also impact a wide array of other products, including toothpaste, cosmetics, shampoo, and adhesives. 
• "Additional unintended effects from the increase in ethanol production include the dramatic rise in land rents," as well as an increase in the use of natural gas and fertilizer chemicals, over use of water aquifers, and clear-cutting of forests to plant corn crops, Forbes reported. 
• Other news reports, including Bloomberg, assert that vehicles' fuel systems are being damaged by the use of ethanol. 
• The International Institute for Sustainable Development has estimated that the benefits of carbon displacement by replacing petroleum fuels with biofuels like ethanol are "basically zero."

“Basically zero.” After spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to support biofuel usage via subsidies, after causing unnecessary price increases in food and other consumer products, and after causing severe environmental damage from driving up corn production, we end up with “basically zero” net positive impacts on carbon emissions, according to the most recent U.N. analyses and report.

But we are used to getting “basically zero” from the Washington political class in all aspects of our lives, from failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, escalating health care costs, etc. so getting nothing from this one large global warming initiative should not be a surprise. Thus, even if you still buy into the Al Gore global warming hype, what makes anyone think that the current members of the Washington political class can resolve this potential scenario, given their track record in biofuels and every other issue they confront? They are not the solution, their typical “unintended consequences” often make the situation worse.

More “global doubter but believers in science” discussion 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

The More Things Politicians Change The More They Stay The Same, Despite Spending Trillions Of Dollars, Part 2; Housing Bubbles, Health Care Costs, and More

Yesterday was the first of a two part pictorial series where we proved that despite forty years of half-hearted trying and the expenditure of trillions and trillions of dollars of taxpayer wealth, the American political class has failed miserably to resolve just one of the major issues facing Americans over the years. Yesterday we proved that:

1. Despite ever increasing expenditures and resources on our public school processes, the reading, math, and science scores of Americans kids have not increased in about forty years and our kids fail miserably in those categories when compared to kids around the world.
2. Despite spending trillions of dollars and causing the Great Recession, the Washington drive to make it affordable for more families to own their own home as resulted in the percentage of home ownership to be right where it started during the Carter administration.
3. Despite fighting the infamous “war on drugs” for over forty years, drug usage and prison incarceration for illegal drug use has never been higher, roughly ten times higher than when the so-called war was declared.

The details and graphs of these failures can be read in detail at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-more-things-politicians-change-more.html

Let’s finish up our pictorial review of major political class failures today with a whole new set of disasters:

1) The Great Recession was, at its core, a collapse of the housing market due to any number of factors. These factors artificially inflated the price of housing in the country and when the pricing bubble collapsed, as all financial bubbles do, it rained havoc on banks, mortgage brokers, the housing industry, government housing entities, and the overall economy.

The following chart shows the historical average monthly price of homes in the U.S. over the past several decades, on both a real time value and an inflation adjusted value (click on the graph for a larger view):

Up until the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, the prices of homes in the U.S. were slowly going up on a lazy growth trend, especially visible if you look at the inflation adjusted prices. However, as we get into the 2000s, the average prices start to skyrocket due to cheap money from the Federal Reserve Board, faulty legislation from the political class in Washington, lax oversight of Federal regulators in the banking and mortgage industries, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going wild from lax oversight and political cronyism.

What we eventually see is a classic financial bubble that burst in 2008, spinning the country into the Great Recession. Which raises a critical question: given all of the money the American taxpayers pay in taxes in order for the Federal Reserve Board, the Treasury Department, the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Housing and Urban Development, Senate committees and housing and banking, House of Representatives committees on housing and banking, the FDIC, and other government organizations to manage the economy, how come not a single Federal analyst, statistician, or economist working for the government did not look at this chart in the 2005-2008 timeframe, say “Uh-oh!” and raise the red flag? 

Pathetic economic oversight over the past decade or so, not even looking at a simple graph to see what was inevitable, the housing crash and the Great Recession.

2) It is no secret that health care costs are escalating quickly in this country, having been going up for decades. Obama Care was supposed to resolve this major issue, resulting in the infamous lie from the President that the average American household would see a $2,500 annual reduction in their health care costs. 

Well, Obama Care was finally launched in late 2013 and look what happened:

According to real life data, quarterly growth in healthcare spending in this country over the past five years had its two largest quarterly increases in the first six months that Obama Care went live. In other words, we see the classic political class case of unintended consequences: pass a law to address a problem and the exact opposite happens, the law makes the problem worse, not better.

In this case, early results look like Obama Care, which was supposed to REDUCE health care costs and spending, has had the exact opposite effects in its first six months, actually INCREASING health care costs and spending. Thus, even when they try to fix something, the political class usually gets the solution wrong or makes the original problem worse.

3) Remember when the Democrats in Washington went bat crazy during the Bush administration when gas prices exceeded $3.00 a gallon, horrors! The following photo op picture shows their disgust with high gas prices:

What American would not kill to be paying $3.19 a gallon today? In some places in America, a gallon of gas, five and a half years after Bush left office, is over $4.00 a gallon and the national average is almost double what it was when Obama took office and the Democrats took over both houses of Congress. 

This is another favorite and unproductive tactic of Washington politicians. Fake outrage over some major issue to make political and photo op points, and then ignore the problem, never resolving it, even when they have the opportunity and power to do so. 

In either case, gas prices are far above the contempt level these politicians showed many years ago, indicating these Democrats, did not have the will, the smarts, or the creativity to resolve the energy crises in this country.

Two days of pictures and graphs, forty years of spending trillions of dollars with little resolution on the major issues of our times, and a set of current politicians that have shown no ability, will, or intelligence to break that decades long losing streak of failure. And still, we continue to throw good money after bad when it comes to the Federal government:



Federal spending has gone up twelve times faster than our income levels, leaving us poorer and less free to live our lives as we choose. It would have been one thing if increased Federal spending had won the war on drugs, fixed our failing public schools, prevented the Great Recession, put a strategic and comprehensive energy plan in place (as opposed as standing in front of a gas station), reined in runaway health care costs, monitored the economy for self induced bubbles, or resolved any other of the major issues of our times.

But alas, the increased in spending did none of these things except leave us with a $17.5 TRILLION national debt that grows by billions of dollars every week. That is why implementing term limits is so important. After forty years and trillions of dollars, isn’t it finally time to throw the incumbents out of office, many of whom have been in office for all or most of those forty years, and replace them with fresh minds with fresh ideas and less corruption? You can help do that at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Failure to do so soon, will result in the following picture becoming our reality in the near future:



We cannot afford to wait another forty years to figure out that Washington still has not resolved any major issues, we do not have that much time.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

The More Things Politicians Change The More They Stay The Same, Despite Spending Trillions Of Dollars, Part 1; Education, Housing, And Illegal Drugs

One of the problems I have always had with the American political class is that even though we give them a very large percentage of our wealth each year, our politicians never seem to resolve any of the major issues that we give them the money for. Failing public schools, escalating health care costs, rising energy costs, failed immigration policies, etc., nothing ever gets resolved.

President Obama is calling for nearly a $4 TRILLION Federal government budget for the next fiscal year without any concrete plans or strategies to fix any of our major problems with that $4 TRILLION. By the way, that $4 TRILLION comes out to almost $11 billion a DAY, or a half a billion an HOUR, over $7 million a MINUTE. For that level of spending, we should not have any problems in our lives at all.

But we do have major problems in our lives and those major issues have been with us for decades despite TRILLIONs and TRILLIONs of taxpayer dollars spent in the hope that they would get resolved. Furthermore, the political class has rigged the election processes so that incumbent politicians continue to get reelected even though they are always a failure while serving in office.

Today and tomorrow we will look at a series of graphs and pictures that vividly illustrate how inept and useless our politicians have been over the past few decades despite the oppressive tax burden they now subject us to.

1) Nowhere has the political class failed the nation more then in the education of our kids. Every year we pay more and more at both the local and Federal government level to educate our kids with dismal results, relative to kids around the world, and our own national standards. Consider the following graph of educational attainment and the amount of resources we have put towards educational attainment over the past few decades (click on the graph for a larger view):

While the amount of money spent on education over the years is up almost 200% and the number of employees in the education field is up almost 100% over the past 42 years, math, reading, and science scores have barely budged over the same time frame. This is not a good investment for our money despite a Federal government Department of Education that spends tens of billions of dollars every year in its budget for apparently no results.

2) Back in the 1970s, the Washington political class under Jimmy Carter decided that it would be a good idea if it was easy for every American to own their own home, even those in the lower income brackets. That resulted in the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, a piece of legislation that directly led to the Great Recession of 2008. For a detailed assessment of that conclusion, please go to the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/who-really-caused-great-recession-part.html

Since the Carter administration, we have spent trillions of dollars supporting the home purchases of lower income Americans and the subsequent bail outs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 

For all of this expense and the trillions of dollars of economic damage from the Great Recession, how successful was the Federal government in increasing home ownership? Consider the following graph:

Yes, back in the Carter administration, the percentage of Americans who owned their own home was about 65%. About 40 years and trillions of dollars later, the percentage of Americans who own their own home is…. about 65%. 40 years and trillions of dollars later we are right back where we started. Pathetic.

3) Over 40 years ago, the Nixon administration declared a “war on drugs.” If that war had been successful, than after trillions of dollars and 40 years, one would have hoped that the political class would have finally won that war resulting in two situations: 1) the amount of money spent in this country on illegal drugs would now be close to zero and 2) the number of citizens in jail for using illegal drugs would have been dropping significantly as the war was being run and won.

However, just the opposite happened, not unexpected since the exact opposite usually happens when politicians are involved. According to a recent study by the Rand corporation, every year, Americans spend about $109 billion on all types of illegal drugs. You cannot say you have won the war on drugs when the illegal market for illegal drugs is still over $2 billion a week.

And to our second point as far as drug abuser prison populations, over time the number of citizens being jailed for using illegal drugs has been growing substantially:



When the war on drugs began, there were less than 50,000 Americans in jail for illegal drug violations. Four decades later, there are about ten times as many Americans in jail for illegal drug violations. If the war on drugs had been successful, one would have expected the number of jailed Americans for drug violations would be less than when the war started. Not the case.

This is not a commentary on whether or not drugs should be decriminalized or legalized. It is a simple observation that we still have a drug addiction problem in this country that the war on drugs has turned into a criminal problem while wasting trillions of dollars in the process.

We will finish this discussion of political class failure tomorrow. Today we learned that despite spending trillions of dollars, our kids are still undereducated, the housing market is right where it was forty years ago, and the war on drugs has made the situation at least ten times worse than when it began under Nixon. 

You have to really try to be this incompetent for so long. But somehow the political class in Washington has managed to exceed all standards of ineptness and we still have more to cover 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

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Bonus Post: The Obama Express Gets Indicted, More Medicare Screwups, and More

Okay, I know I promised that yesterday would be the last political class insanity for this month but not unexpectedly, new insanity popped up before I finished reviewing what insanity we already had. Thus, one more day, I promise, of the latest political class insanity from the most inept set of politicians this country has ever had to endure.

1) After President Obama was elected in 2008 as the first African American President, a string of Baltimore area convenient stores renamed themselves to Obama Express in his honor. Nice gesture but the following alleged criminal activities may result in the President ruing the day when he was thusly honored:

• According to a local television report, a Federal grand jury has indicted nine retail store owners in Baltimore City and Baltimore County for ‘food stamp trafficking’ at Obama Express stores.
• The indictments claim that the retailers redeemed the food stamps for cash and split the money with food stamp recipients. 
• The amounts totaled a whopping $7 million. 
• During these illegal transactions, the retailers provided no food, this was strictly a redemption of food stamps for cash criminal activity.
• To avoid detection, the defendants/retailers often debited the funds from the card in multiple transactions over a period of hours or days, resulting in the defendants obtaining more than $6,898,000 in EBT deposits for transactions in which the stores did not provide food.
• The suspects are all facing up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Pretty ironic that the President who has spent and wasted more on food stamps and food aid than any other President in the history of this country would have a set of retailer stores named after him that allegedly abused the food aid system to the tune of $7 million worth of taxpayer wealth.

2) Most Washington politicians leave office much wealthier than when they enter office. Not only do they make more than three times what the median U.S. household income level is, reputable news sources such as “Sixty Minutes” have shown that they take unfair advantage of their positions of power and insider information to further enrich themselves in ways that would be illegal for other Americans to do so.

Given how they rigged the system, it is surprising when you find a long term Washington politician who actually has a negative net worth despite the money making opportunities available to politicians in Washington. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz somehow has a personal net worth of NEGATIVE $1.04 million. That makes Ms Wassermen-Schlutz the 3rd poorest member of Congress, according to the website Rollcall.com.

Ms. Wassermann-Schultz has two home mortgages that are taking up the bulk of her debt, totaling $750,000 for both of them. Additionally, she has more than $350,000 in personal and home equity loans, plus an enormous credit card debt of more than $50,000. 

I personally could not care less what her financial status is except for the fact that she sits on the House Appropriations Committee, a committee which has the power of appropriating money to Congress. This scares me since if she cannot manage her own personal financial life, I cannot imagine what havoc she is causing to the country’s financial status. Given the high rate of unemployment and our $17.5 TRILLON national debt, is there a direct cause and effect relationship here? 

3) The following political class insanity crosses over the line from disgraceful to disgusting. According to an April 28, 2014 article in the Chicago Tribune, a former Illinois state representative politician, Keith Farnham, was recently arrested and charged with using both personal and state-owned computers to trade hundreds of images and videos depicting child pornography and engaging in graphic online chats in which he allegedly bragged about sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl. 

The Federal criminal indictment alleges that Farnham, possessed two videos depicting child pornography on a computer that was taken from his state office in a week before his sudden resignation in March. Investigators also linked an email account used by Farnham to a online website in which he chatted with other users about his sexual preferences. Those preferences alleged included sexual encounters with young girls, preferably younger than 12 years old. Disgusting if true.

Now, I am pretty sure that this type of behavior is not rampant across every member of the political class. However, according to the one bad apple spoils them all theory, it is pretty hard to respect and follow these types of people when this behavior comes from a politician. Why child pornography has a special place in hell for those that practice it, let’s not forget the adultery, lying, thievery, and other bad behaviors that constantly emanate from our politicians and how that behavior destroys whatever respect and dignity we ever had for the profession and its members.

4) In previous posts we have reviewed the government estimates that put the criminal fraud infecting Medicare and Medicaid at between $90 and $110 billion a year. A recent Business Week article quoted a 2012 article in the Journal Of the American Medical Association that put that estimate anywhere between $30 and $98 billion a year. In either case, there are tens of billions of dollars wasted via these two Federal government programs every year, waste and fraud that has been going on for decades without the Washington political class having the will or the smarts to fix the problem.

Examples of how bad the fraud and insanity is and how deep it goes was provided elsewhere in that Business Week article:

• Medicare paid a California doctor over half a million dollars in 2012, one of many doctors the Federal government paid even though many of them had had their medical licenses revoked, had been disciplined for gross malpractice, battery, and violating drug laws.
• One cardiologist, Robert Graor, continued to bill and be paid by Medicare despite the fact he had previously been convicted, not accused, of stealing over $1 million from the Cleveland Clinic in 1995 and was barred from practicing medicine in Ohio.
• Graor simply got a new medical license in New Mexico and in 2012 billed Medicare for over $660,000.
• The California doctor mentioned above billed Medicare for $538,742 worth of services in 2012, performing 6,000 services for only 42 patients, performing on average a whopping 143 services for each patient.
• His billing records indicate that on average he spent two and a half hours with each of patient on each visit, a highly unlikely ratio.

The article points out that Medicare investigators recovered over $4 billion in misspent funds in 2013. But if the criminal fraud is actually about $98 billion, then recovering over $4 billion is less than a 5% recovery rate, making this a very lucrative and low risk criminal activity. And even if you do get caught, as the California doctor and Cleveland Clinic doctor were, you still get to go back to the Medicare trough, since according to the article, both doctors are still listed as valid options on the Medicare website.

Okay, that will definitely do it for this month’s political class insanity. A Medicare program that is riddled with stupidity and fraud, at least one sexual deviant politician arises, a Congresswoman who has substantial input to the nation’s financial dealings but cannot manage her own finances, and the Obama Express stores are indicted for food aid fraud under the food aid President of the same name. Insane.

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