Which Should I Buy, Health Insurance or a New Car?

I have a 2005 Honda Accord with 160,000 miles.  Fortunately, Honda makes a pretty good car, and mine still runs well.  However, I'm ready to trade it in and get a new one.  In fact, I would make that big purchase this weekend, but something is stopping me.  What is it?  Obamacare.

I can't afford a new car payment with my health insurance premiums going up by $550/month next year.  I know you liberals are going to say that I'm a greedy conservative.  I should just buy a used car so the poor can have free health care and free health insurance.  Wow!  I am a terrible person for even thinking of buying a new car.

Of course, the price of used cars is up significantly thanks to government intervention in the auto market.  Do you remember "Cash for Clunkers?"  That little tax incentive was intended to get older, greenhouse gas spewing cars off the streets and into the junkyard car crusher.  That reduced the supply of used cars.  The terrible economy also reduced the availability of low mileage used cars, because people were keeping their cars longer and longer.  They just couldn't afford to buy new cars.  Now, if you try to buy a used car with less than 60,000 miles, it can cost as much as 75% of the cost of a new one.  To me the new car with a warranty and three to five more years of life is a much better deal.  Am I supposed to accept the poorer deal because I can't afford the new car?

By the way, is it good to "punish" me for having a job and the ability to pay for my own food, housing, and health care?  Is it good to punish me by making it difficult to buy a new car?  Why don't you ask an auto worker?  Whether we are talking about workers in an assembly plant, an engine plant, a component manufacturing plant, or a new car dealership, they won't be helped by punishing me this way.  It can be an American brand or a foreign brand, but the result for the workers is the same.  I'll bet they won't be happy that I spend my money on health care for the family instead of the new car.

Liberals are in the business of creating the MessAPolitico.  They certainly need folks to have the opinion that anyone that can afford to live without government assistance got that way by "stealing" from the poor.  We need to have compassion for the folks that have been made poor by the MessAPolitico.

Obamacare Faces A New Legal Challenge

I'm not sure what has taken so long, but US Representative Trent Franks of Arizona has gotten together with other members of the House and filed an amicus brief challenging Obamacare.  Their suit is based on the origination clause in the Constitution.  That's the clause that says all bills imposing taxation must originate in the people's House of Representatives.  You probably recall that the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by redefining the fines intended to force folks to buy insurance as taxes.  If that is truly the case and Obamacare imposes taxes on us, then the bill must have originated in the House.  That is a big problem for the PPACA.  It originated in the Senate.

This may be our last hope to kill this MessAPolitico, before it starts to kill Americans.  I know that Obama would like to use the website problems as an excuse to delay implementation until after the elections next November.  He knows that the more we see about the PPACA, the more we will want to avoid Democrats in the voting booth.  The Democrats might have underestimated how Americans feel about the government messing around in something as important as our health care.  If the President lets this MessAPolitico continue flailing along, it will stay in the news.  The possibility certainly exists that the website will still be a mess next fall.  The possibility exists that more people will either have their premiums raised dramatically or their policies cancelled over the next 12 months.  The Democrats desperately need to get this thing out of the news long before the next election, or they are toast.  If America has a longer memory about something as important as health care, they may be toast anyway.  In fact, paying that higher premium every month may just be all the reminder we need.

The PPACA is unconstitutional.  It is the government forcing us to buy a product.  It is the government telling us what features and benefits the product must have.  Politicians decide for us what we need and what we want.

It is also unconstitutional for the President to stand up and defy the stipulations in the implementation of the PPACA or any other law.  Somehow, the President believes that he can change the timeline laid out very explicitly in the bill as passed.  If the thing isn't working right, then Congress has the option of repealing it or amending it.  The President can ask for that.  The President cannot legislate.  The Constitution specifically created a separation of powers.  Legislation is done in Congress and only in Congress.  The President can sign a law or veto it, but he cannot write it or amend it or repeal it.

It will be interesting to see if the media picks up on this new congressional challenge to the PPACA.  Is this a story that warrants any media reports?  Will they present stories educating the American people about the origination clause of the Constitution?  Will they tell us about the dangers of giving up our freedoms to the federal government?  Do you expect them to report on the possible long term ramifications of government intervention in health care?  Let's watch and see.

Is Martin Bashir Really Sorry?

You probably have heard that Martin Bashir said some nasty stuff about Sarah Palin recently on MSNBC.  Mrs. Palin had made comments comparing the national debt to a form of slavery.  She said we would someday be beholden to the foreign governments that hold a large amount of this debt.  Mr. Bashir responded, calling Mrs. Palin ignorant and suggesting that she should be subjected to the same punishment that was reportedly practiced by a slave owner, Thomas Thistlewood.  According his diaries, the slaves were kept "in line" by the minority white slave owners by extremely brutal treatment ranging from floggings to other less "mainstream" tactics.  When a slave committed an "offense" requiring punishment, they sometimes had another slave defecate or urinate in their mouth.  Then, the mouth was wired shut for four or five hours.

I'm not sure which is more offensive, Mr. Bashir making the personal attack on Mrs. Palin or suggesting that she should be treated brutally for expressing an opinion that is different from his.  If any of you watch MSNBC, I'm surprised.  The odds are certainly against it considering their ratings.  The folks running MSNBC or even NBC News certainly would have editors reviewing the verbiage on the teleprompter before it is read and broadcast.  It seems just a little disingenuous for the MSNBC "big wigs" to apologize and demand that Mr. Bashir take it all back.  I'm sure they are really appalled.  Ha!  Ha!

Was Martin Bashir really sorry about the stuff he said?  I doubt it.  Did management at MSNBC regret that he made those comments?  Not at all.  They used the whole thing to get mentioned extensively on every news outlet in America, including Fox News.  I'll bet their ratings have gone up dramatically.  I hope you aren't one of the 10 extra people that are watching now, doubling their viewership.

Now, what would have happened if Rush Limbaugh had made a comment like this aimed at Hillary Clinton?  Can you hear the outcry from every mainstream media outlet?  Can you imagine the calls for advertisers to boycott Rush?  Just think about the folks that would demand that advertisers be boycotted as well.  Why can't we demand a similar boycott?  I'd love to tell you the names of advertisers on MSNBC, but I don't know who they are.  I am asking for the help of any of you that might watch MSNBC.  What companies should we avoid when making our purchase decisions?  Please respond by commenting on my blog.

I think we should squelch free speech in the same way the liberals do it.  If you can't stop the MessAPolitico any other way, then let's use the tactics they have demonstrated so many times.

Was All of the Obamacare MessAPolitico Planned?

There has been a massive uproar over the Obamacare rollout.  President Obama has currently got the lowest approval rating of his five years in the White House.  A lot of regular folks are scared to death about everything going on with health care.  Rand Paul was being interviewed last night on Fox News, and he was asked about how well the rollout was working in his home state of Kentucky.  He responded by saying that the ratio of folks losing their healthcare coverage in Kentucky to those signed up for Obamacare coverage was 40:1.  That's right.  7,000 Kentuckians have signed up for Obamacare, while about 280,000 have lost coverage.

With the information coming out of the hearings in Washington, somewhere between 30% and 70% of the work on the back end of the Obamacare website hasn't been done yet.  The president's folks were saying that the website would be finished by the end of November, and now Obama says it will be ready by January 1, 2014.  What do you believe?  I don't think it will be working well enough a year from now to cover everyone that is losing their coverage as of the end of 2013.

There are a lot of Democrats up for election in November 2014, and they are scared to death.  The smarter of these politicians are getting together with the Republicans to offer bills in the House to give their constituents relief.  It's a nice gesture, but I think it is a little too late.  Are the insurance companies just going to reinstate the same old policies that were made unlawful under the PPACA?  Obama told them to do that, but how can it be done?

Of course, Obama is acting like he cares, but I have to wonder if all of this was planned.  Obama doesn't care at all about his approval rating, considering that he will never run for office again.  Obama doesn't really care about the other Democrats either when you get right down to it.  Could it be that the upheaval and turmoil in the health insurance world these days is designed to collapse the system?  I have heard the clandestine recording of Obama speaking to some liberal, socialist group during the 2008 campaign where he said that a "one payer system" was his ultimate goal.  He believed correctly that this goal couldn't be achieved all in one step.  The system must be gradually moved in this direction until it seems like a good idea.  The rollout of Obamacare has been gradual over several years.  Now we have reached the culmination, and suddenly most people are finding Obamacare to be even worse than expected.  Is all of this upheaval going to be blamed on the insurance companies cancelling your coverage?  Are you going to have no choice in the end but to sign up of your "free" coverage?  Is this the Alinsky method of achieving radical change through upheaval?

The voters in the United States voted in Obama to his first term in 2008.  That started a drastic acceleration of the MessAPolitico.  I couldn't believe it happened in 2008, but the 2012 presidential election left me frustrated, disheartened, and is total disbelief.  The Socialist revolution in America has begun, and the people did it to themselves.  The leftist elitists are in command, and their goal is destroy the middle and upper classes.  They were voted in because their message sounds like the wealth will be transferred from the rich to the poor, but that's not quite right.  The wealth is coming from the middle class too, and it's headed to the elitist ruling class.  Their Totalitarian style of "ruling" the USA is destroying us slowly from within, and the MessAPolitico is just the first stage.  It may be too late to stop it, but we've got to try.

Mayor Bloomberg Knows What's Best

It looks like Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, is at it again.  Several years ago he led the charge to outlaw large beverages in New York City.  Now, they have added taxes to raise the price of a pack of cigarettes to $10.50 in the city.  Of course, New Yorkers that want to smoke and can't afford the high price can always go to New Jersey or Connecticut to buy cigarettes.  So the folks getting hurt are the cigarette vendors in New York.  Of course, in case anyone is thinking of evading the New York taxes, that has been addressed with new, increased penalties.

First, I will tell you that I don't smoke.  I never have, except a few times as a young kid.  I think cigarette smoking is a bad habit that can damage your health.  A number of my family members have died from emphysema, and one of my cousins had lung cancer.  My brother-in-law smoked until he had heart bypass surgery.  Many of my co-workers smoke, and I hear them hacking and coughing all day long.

This is not about what I think about cigarette smoking, because I wish everyone would stop.  However, it isn't my place to tell other adults that they shouldn't smoke.  In fact, it isn't the place of a government official to decide whether any adult should smoke either.  Of course, Mayor Bloomberg hasn't banned smoking altogether in New York City.  Instead, taxes are being used to discourage smoking.  If the government wasn't paying for your health care, it truly wouldn't be any of their business that folks choose to suck tobacco smoke into their lungs.  If the city run hospitals weren't providing free care to these folks when they are indigent, it wouldn't cost the government a dime.

Maybe you smoke, or maybe you don't.  Do you do anything that is considered unhealthy?  Do you like a good, thick, juicy steak?  What if we had a tax on red meat to discourage you from eating that steak?  How about French fries?  Do you think a tax on fries is a good idea?  Maybe McDonald's is your favorite fast food joint.  Would it be a good idea for a government panel to be appointed that decides which restaurants are good for you and which ones aren't?  Those guys could levy a tax on any restaurant the serves meals with too many calories or too much salt or too much fat or any ingredient that has been deemed unhealthy.  Maybe cars should be sold with a governor on the engine that won't allow you to exceed the speed limit based on a GPS reading of where you are driving.  Would that be good for you?  The government could mandate a maximum size and horsepower for your car, and make the automaker include all kinds of rear view cameras and automatic braking systems to prevent accidents.  These new features may raise the price so much that you can't afford a new car.  Maybe your family is too big to fit in one of those small, green vehicles.  Should the government tax you for having extra kids that inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide?

These sorts of things are exactly the reason why the federal tax code is such a convoluted mess.  Politicians everywhere are using the tax code to steer Americans to do the right thing as defined by them.  Now it takes a degree in accounting, an expensive tax preparer, or tax preparation software to get the tax return filled out.  That, of course, is the least of the problem though.  In fact, the MessAPolitico is using the tax code to run your life.  Wake up America; more of your freedoms are being stolen by the MessAPolitico every day.

The War On Poverty

We've been fighting the war on poverty since Lyndon Johnson was president.  If you think the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are dragging on, how about the war on poverty.  So far, it has lasted about 50 years.  The end is not in sight.  That light at the end of the tunnel is definitely a train headed toward us.  Our fiscal situation in Washington is the proverbial train wreck about to happen.

In the 1970's, 1 in 50 people were receiving food stamps.  Today that number has risen to 1 in 7.  Most of these families have at least one person that is healthy enough and capable to work, but that person is unemployed.  As everyone knows, there are quite a few people these days that are perpetually unemployed.  They don't even bother looking for employment.  They are considered unemployable.

If a person is healthy, why are they unemployable?  Very simply said, their skills are not very valuable in the employment market.  Today, we have minimum wage laws, and many people believe that they raise the average wages in America.  It is true that they raise the average wage of employed Americans.  However, if you look at the average wages of everyone, included the unemployed who earn $0 in wages, the average wage goes down.  That is because anyone whose skills are worth less than the minimum wage are unemployable.

The welfare/food stamps/government assistance level also comes into play here.  If you don't earn more working than you would collecting government entitlements, then why bother getting up to go to work?  Of course, there are a number of the so called "low cost countries" around the world where workers earn far less than our US minimum wage, and these workers receive little of no benefits.  There are issues of quality, shipping costs, logistics, etc. that make overseas manufacturing more challenging, but there is a point where the wage differential is so great that the business must move overseas.

That's right; I wrote that the business MUST move out of the US.  The competition we see on store shelves here in America comes from all over the globe.  If a US manufacturing organization can't compete with one from China or Vietnam or Mexico or the Dominican Republic or Korea or wherever, then they will very simply go out of business.  Their only choice is to move manufacturing somewhere else less expensive.  This may mean picking up the US manufacturing plant and moving it overseas or farming out production to a foreign manufacturing company with a plant over there already.  When that happens, we take manufacturing employees and place them on unemployment, and when that runs out, they collect welfare and other forms of government assistance.

Manufacturing employees range from assembly line workers to skilled machinists to plant management folks to skilled support staff.  That includes manufacturing engineers, mechanics, and electricians.  The plants also don't purchase machinery when they quit manufacturing.  The electricity and natural gas used to run the machines drops to nearly nothing.  They won't buy lubricants and parts to refurbish and maintain the equipment.  When manufacturing jobs move overseas, a lot is lost.

The MessAPolitico is perfectly happy to play politics and drive good manufacturing jobs overseas.  Look at all of the benefits they get for themselves:

• The MessAPolitico can talk about how evil big business is in America and say that they will protect the little guy with government regulations and minimum wage laws.
• The MessAPolitico will pay people for the rest of their lives, using our tax dollars to buy votes.
• The folks getting the entitlements will always vote for the MessAPolitico to perpetuate their government hand-outs.
• The MessAPolitico can talk about how much cleaner the air and water is without manufacturers producing pollution (even though the plants in "low cost countries" generally produce more pollution than ours in the USA).
• The MessAPolitico can talk about their compassion for the poor and needy amongst us, while the evil rich folks don't give a hoot about anything but their stacks of cash gained on the backs of the little guys.
• The MessAPolitico can say that the amount of energy used and green house gases produced under their watch is reduced.
• The MessAPolitico can take money from the rich and the upper middle class and use it to give away free everything to the poor from food to shelter to health care.

The MessAPolitico does things that they say are fighting the war on poverty, but paying people to do nothing besides being poor only perpetuates poverty.  This is a lot like supplying arms to your enemy that you are fighting against in a real war.  They raise minimum wage rates to make people better off, but those people end up unemployed and making less instead.  I guess this is another case of the MessAPolitico taking care of themselves and their re-election at the expense of those who vote for them.

The MessAPolitico just doesn't care about America.  They are the ones that are greedy.   They are the ones that are destroying America for their own benefit.  This is what I'm compassionate about.  I will scream this message from the mountaintop or from this blog until folks start to notice.  The MessAPolitico must be stopped before they have destroyed the greatest country on earth.

How About the Success of Keynesian Economics?

The media loves to blame the economy on government shutdowns or something George W. Bush did while president.  In the words of Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit, that "barbecues my ass."  The Democrats were fully in charge of everything for two years after the 2008 election.  They made it a point to do all the wrong things during those two years.  This could have been different.  We could have had a normal recession of a year and a half to two years, but only if the government had done things to encourage economic growth.  They discouraged it in every way.  They punished prosperity.  They left the business leaders wondering what would come next.

When the Republicans took over control of the House in 2010, the Democrats were only slowed down a little.  We still have endured tax increases.  The debt limit has risen several times, and spending hasn't dropped an iota.  The Obama administration continues to use its EPA to stop pipelines from being built and to shutdown coal fired power plants that produce cheap electricity.  So, how is it that the Republicans have caused and perpetuated the recession?  Somebody, please explain to me how the media story is right?

It's interesting that recessions have drug along for years and years only twice in the history of our country.  The presidents on those two occasions were Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama.  Both of these presidents believed that the economy could only be saved by massive government spending.  Massive government programs were believed to be the answer.  Certainly, Keynesian economic policies were used to extreme in both administrations.

In both cases, these programs kept a blanket on the economy.  Of course, Obama says that things would have been much worse had these steps not been taken.  We will never know if that is true.  Neither Obama nor Roosevelt can prove that that is true.  I can't prove that it is false either.  Of course, there is one little fact that indicates that I'm right and they are wrong.  These are the only two cases in history where our government has taken Keynesian economics to the extreme.  These are also the only two cases where the recession has been so long-lived.

This is the center of the debate between liberals and conservatives.  Keynesian economics are practiced by the MessAPolitico.  Keynesian economics is the cause of the great depression, and if this isn't the second great depression, then the Obama multi year recession has been caused by this same misguided policy.  Economic prosperity isn't created by the MessAPolitico; it is created by the private sector.  Let's vote to remove the MessAPolitico in the next election.