Friday, July 31, 2009

The Real “Clunkers!”

“Cash for clunkers” is a government program envisioned to get people to trade in their gas guzzling clunker for a new more efficient car. The government has offered up to $4500 cash payment to dealers that accept these cars. A simple tax credit for every individual would have worked fine but what has happened?


Government screwed up this simple concept and made it a bureaucratic mess! Surprised? Of course not but the question is; what if this was something as important as your healthcare? Enough said…

Pathetic!

The largest numbers of US troops have been killed in Afghanistan this July and we have a president and VP sitting drinking a beer with a racist Harvard professor and the cop that arrested him. I am outraged and can’t even imagine if my son or daughter was in Afghanistan how I would feel!

This beer bull is a pathetic attempt to again hide this president’s tendency to see this country in the poorest of lights. He has a racial chip on his shoulder and he is doing everything he can to hide it because if Americans start believing he has a chip he is done. He is done because this country has spent 30 years bending over backwards for the Black community and they will not accept responsibility for any more failure.

Obama’s election was supposed to end the racial divide but what it has done is to shine a light on how elitist Black professors and unfortunately our president and his wife see white Americans. He is busy hiding his chip meanwhile there is no Commander in Chief for this country. When is the last time this president has acknowledged the importance of supporting our troop’s efforts to defeat the Taliban? Actually this administration thinks it is a good idea to negotiate with these woman hating thugs. But that is no surprise.

Instead of trying to take over America with his socialist agenda this president needs to abide by his constitutional obligation to lead our troops and protect this country. I don’t know about you but I feel so vulnerable to terrorism with this president in the White House. One attack and this president will be run out of office by a very angry public. This president needs to get his priorities straight and start focusing on his most important role; Commander in Chief. A role that unfortunately highlights what a lightweight this man truly is…

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Individuals or Government Bureaucrats?

When you think about the decisions you make in your daily life, are you more comfortable making your own decisions or would you rather have someone else make decisions for you? There are many decisions we make on a daily basis like the car we drive, the food we eat, where we shop, the clothes we wear, the house we live in, to rent or own, the doctor we see, the people we associate with, or don’t, our career choice, save more or spend more, to name just a few of the millions of decisions we make. I believe I make some really good decisions, and for the businesses and people I choose to deal with I think they get benefits as well. This is the basis of freedom. The bases of freedom is to allow individuals the right to associate with who they want and to engage in commerce with who they want which results in both good and bad outcomes.

Our constitution is one that respects, encourages, and protects individual freedom from group pressure and extortion. It is a concept we live every day and it works well for everyone including the greater society so why are we so easily convinced to give up those choices to government bureaucrats? Who are these government bureaucrats? And why will they make a better decision than the ones we will make?

I am amazed and one day may do a study on why we as Americans have a propensity to believe it is better to allow government to do something rather than private citizens or private business. My gut instinct is this concept of transposing our good onto others we don’t know. Also, years of demonizing private business, profits, and corporate executives has taken hold. Our media has done a horrible job of balancing coverage in this area.

Here are the beliefs our media has instilled:

• Profits encourage bad behavior
• Corporate executives are mostly greedy and will do anything for a buck
• Non profits are in it for the feel good outcome
• Government is benevolent and has the citizens best interest at the fore front

All of these premises are false and have only anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I have to believe that if we as individuals were to look at what government decisions have done to us over the years we would think twice about giving it more decision making power. I only ask you to remember the VA hospital expose showing the complete disregard for our veterans. They decided not to put money into the facilities which created despicable conditions. The federal government thought it was a good idea to give loans to people without verifying income because that was somehow discriminatory toward the poor. We have seen the results of that decision. The government’s lack of decisions to address the solvency of our Social Security program which will go bankrupt. The government’s decision to create a welfare system that incentivized woman to keep husbands out of the house. The result has been generations of fatherless children terrorizing our cities. I could go on and on…

The most recent effort to take away more freedom is the Healthcare debate. Healthcare is currently a mess because individuals have been taken out of the payment for healthcare services. The current system has Insurance people making decisions on how much a doctor’s services are worth. And the government pricing controls on Medicare and Medicaid have falsified the true cost of services having a negative effect on the entire market. A completely government run program will be worse. Just think about it for a moment; the results are predictable; higher costs, lower quality, government rationing, less doctor’s willing to practice, underground markets, earlier death rates for our grandparents, greater intrusion into our personal choices under the guise that our choice to eat Twinkies or drink beer will cost the government healthcare system more therefore the government will punish you for consuming them, and a finally giving government a role in healthcare will be a complete hand over of our God given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But the simple question really is why would we let any decision that impacts us as individuals be made by anyone but ourselves? Why would we give up our freedom to choose anything in life to a government bureaucrat? The results are clear and documented. Government decisions end in failure. Freedom is a precious commodity, a God given right, but so easily given away under a promise of making life easier. Life is not easy, freedom is not easy, but both are worth the time it takes each individual to make choices.

Do you choose your destiny in life or do you hand it over to some government bureaucrat to make the right choices? Based on the evidence I think the answer is easy…

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Window into the president's mind…

The president continues to share his thoughts and in turn these thoughts have become a window into what the president truly believes and the way he believes people are prone to act. The most recent comment about doctors choosing to perform a tonsillectomy because the monetary benefits are more attractive than doing what’s right for the patient is what Obama thinks most doctors will do when given that scenario. That may be what he would do but I believe most doctors are more concerned with patient health than the patient billing.

Doctors make a lot of money because they make a huge investment of both money and time before ever making a nickel. People become doctors because they are prone to help people and if they make the huge educational investment they will be duly rewarded for their expertise. Barack Obama believes anyone that makes money is only concerned with money, and he is wrong.

He believes this because he has a chip on his shoulder, has never had to manage a business, and has spent his life hating the system that has made this country the wealthiest and most benevolent in the world. He believes you only get ahead because of who you know, not what you know, again he is wrong. There are millions of successful people that have no connections in the political world and prefer it that way. Obama also sees everything through the prism of race.

Race is a dominant driver of his programs and policies. Look at his latest foray into the white Cambridge police officer and the black Harvard Professor. He believes the Black community has been held down by racism and the larger society, and again he is wrong. The Black community has invested its future in government instead of themselves as individuals, and that is why there is so much poverty still today in the Black community. The Black “leaders” like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, and the president’s personal mentor Reverend Wright, are race baiters that blame everything on white oppression and an unfair system designed to hold back the black community. Wrong.

The president spent a lot of his youth in Kenya and comes from a culture of distrust and political turmoil. He doesn’t even have a true American perspective and he believes that America is a problem, not a solution. He has an outsider’s view of the world. You hear it every time he apologizes for America. As a true American I am insulted every time I hear him do this. I love this country and believe we have been the true source of good in this world, not perfect but the best hope this world has for a stable and successful future.

This president has a hard time saluting troops, dealing with dictators and enemies of our country and life style, hates the constitution, and despises the people’s ability to shut him down. Listen to his words and the examples he uses to justify government intrusion into our lives and you have a window into his mind. A mind that is determined to destroy the greatness of this country and all of the progress we have made between White and Black Americans…

Monday, July 27, 2009

We can end Social Security!

If the new “healthcare’ bill the president is pushing goes through we will no longer need Social Security. I kept wondering where Obama was getting his “savings” from in a plan that is sure to boost the cost of getting medical care. Now I get it; in the plan there are provisions that ration healthcare for the elderly and encourage counseling that will push people to choose death over therapeutic care.

So if you are age 60 or above you are going to be asked to consider death as a way to reduce the cost of healthcare. You will be asked to choose death and in the beginning you may have a choice but after a couple of years all choices will not be yours, they will be made by some faceless bureaucrat in Washington DC. You will be told you are too old and too costly to spend “healthcare” dollars on.

This is great news for the younglings in our country because the elderly population that has been experiencing a surge in age due to the best medical care in the world will no longer be approved for these life saving procedures so our grandparents will start dying younger. Isn’t this great! Our government is going to start killing our elderly population off so we are going to have to pay so many less elderly their Social Security checks!

I know that any day now we are going to hear from Obama or the “death Czar” of healthcare reform that they are going to end the Social Security tax because we will no longer need it because we will be killing people starting at 60. This should be good news for all of us since we can now forget about saving for retirement and can spend ourselves into oblivion. I know, even more than we are now!

So the bad news is the government “healthcare” program is going to kill you but the good news is we don’t have to save for retirement, and I’m sure any day now we will be hearing about the end to the Social Security tax. I am holding my breath, how about you? We all must do our part…

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Tenth Amendment continues to “get legs”…

The movement has been long seeded and is finally becoming the clear rallying point for concerned Americans. The brilliance of the constitution and in particular the Tenth Amendment is its clarity of purpose.

The Tenth Amendment clearly states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The beauty of clarity! There are basically 17 enumerated powers given to the federal government, which are defined but relatively broad as to not completely hamstring the government. They were made broad by the Founders because they believed there were other areas of the constitution that would reign in any abuse of power like the Tenth Amendment.

The states were extremely reluctant to sign the constitution and although it took over 200 years to play out, we can now understand the basis for their reluctance to get involved with a centralized authority. They were right to be concerned about man’s propensity to control and dominate others. But the states considered the Tenth Amendment the “ace in the hole”. It was clear that if this centralized government became too big they could control it by insisting the government cease activity based on the amendment.

The states were the true power at our founding and through Chief Justice Marshall, Hamilton, Lincoln, FDR and others, we have allowed a government to completely ignore the constitutional limitations with arguments based on emotion and faulty logic. To be fair the people have allowed this to happen based on circumstances of the times but that is water under the bridge.

Just because we have allowed these intrusions of federal authority to happen does not mean they can’t be challenge and changed. The Tenth Amendment is still the Tenth Amendment, it has not changed Its meaning has not changed, and it has only become more apparent that it is the amendment that must be resurrected to stop this massive federal takeover of our freedoms.

Every day new articles and movements are cropping up about governors and state legislators adopting resolutions to confirm the Tenth Amendment. Go to the Tenth Amendment Center to see all of the activity.

It has been a long time coming but the time has arrived. The American people have finally seen the massive failure of centralization and want to take back control from this faceless behemoth of a government. States are not perfect either but they are easier to get involved with.

It is time to support candidates at the state level that support enforcement of the Tenth Amendment. Recognizing the amendment exists was the first step but now it is time to take real action. We must recognize that the power of the federal government is in its individual taxing authority and this must be challenged on the grounds that taking money from one state to give to private companies in another (car bailouts) is unconstitutional. Where in the constitution does the federal government derive that right?

That is money that is stolen from a state to give to private business in another. There are many angles to cut off the funding of the central government and they all derive from the Tenth Amendment. People are starting to understand our future is now at risk but there is an answer.

We must cut off the funding and bring back control where it belongs; to the states. The movement is getting legs; it needs your legs to keep marching on. Join the fight and join with others like the Tenth Amendment Center to get informed and involved. We are in exciting political times and every citizen that loves the greatness of this country must get armed with the knowledge of the Tenth Amendment. It is the most powerful “weapon” in our arsenal…

Saturday, July 25, 2009

A Few Reforms in Healthcare…

We have the greatest system of healthcare in the world but we have a payment system that is broken. This is a fact that can’t be refuted. Our doctors, nurses, technicians, EMT professionals, fire fighters, and our hospitals are great examples of our dedication to improving and saving lives. It is the question of how we pay that is at the root of the healthcare problem and I have a couple of quick changes that would immediately reap some rewards:

· Make every patient pay for their own care. This is done by reform #2.

· End employers paying for health insurance. Instead give each employee an amount of money per year placed in a health payment account, tax free, to handle basic care that we can use to pay our medical bills.

· Included as part of the employer program is a catastrophic insurance plan to cover significant illnesses that often can bankrupt families whose premiums are also less costly due to actuarial table data.

· If you are self employed you can contribute to your own plan same as above.

· Cap all lawsuits involving medical issues and for unique cases that do involve gross malpractice have a review board made up of medical experts, lawyers, and civilians with at least a college degree, to decide if cases warrant additional compensation and or criminal action. This will allow real negligence cases to be handled as they should be but filters out the “ambulance chasers” with a jury that is prone to “screw” the rich doctor or insurance company.

· Repeal the laws that force hospitals to take the uninsured. People don’t need health insurance if the emergency room will take them for the flu or an appendix. It should be a hospital’s choice and professional decision on whether or not to treat a non emergency patient. Our emergency rooms need to be a place for real emergencies, not just a back door way to get to see a doctor, or deliver a baby.

· We also need to allow nursing professionals to open clinics to take care of simple and common health issues like the flu, physicals, vaccinations, strep throat, runny noses, and simple follow up visits.

We have a very large group of elderly heading toward the finish line and they will need a lot of medical services. Much of what is needed can be taken care of by having services broken out from the expensive hospital and surgical centers we currently use. We only need surgical and advanced medical conditions to be using hospitals.

I know doctors want to protect their turf but there will be more than enough business to go around in the coming years. There is no need to worry about that! Doctors deserve to make a lot of money because they have invested a huge amount of their life and money to their career but by creating easier and more accessible health care locations at a lower cost will actually create more business not less.

These are the issues we need to discuss, and if you noticed not one of these reforms have anything to do with government. They already have a mess on their hands with Medicare and Medicaid. They don’t need anything else to make a mess of right now. They are doing quite well already without breaking the greatest system of healthcare services in the world…

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Why do we keep asking for more?

Why is the government the first answer to everything when there appears to be a problem? People are talking on their phones in the car and getting into accidents; what is the government going to do about it? People are getting fat; what is the government going to do about it? People are smoking cigarettes; what is the government going to do about it? A kid tragically drowns in a pool; what is the government going to do about it? Kids are failing in school; what is the government going to do about it? College is getting too expensive; what is the government going to do about it? Gas is getting too expensive; what is the government going to do about it? Teens are drinking and driving; what is the government going to do about it? Kids are wearing their pants too low on their butt; what is the government going to do about it?

It doesn’t matter what it is the knee jerk reaction for too many is; what is the government going to do about it? How about this; what are you and I going to do about it? How can we as a community of individuals do something about it? How can we resolve problems if we keep asking the government to get involved?

Have we not figured out that the more we request the government to act the worse off we have become as a nation? The facts are right in front of our face. Most problems are tied directly to bad behavior of individual’s and the answer lies in the individual taking responsibility for their lives not asking for more government intervention. We are on a collision course to disaster. The disaster is the end of the United States as we know it; the home of individual freedom and ingenuity. We are becoming sheep out to slaughter.

Most politicians have never done the hard work you do every day so why ask them to solve something you are best suited to solve? They are usually the most privileged amongst us and believe you are incapable. They have the nerve to lecture us about our lives? Look at what they have done to this great nation? Enough said.

Most Americans when they take the time to think things through agree; government is inefficient and wasteful, not to say it steals people’s future. So why do we keep asking government to do what it can’t? We have seen the results and the results are clear; government is the problem, it is not the solution… Hasn’t the government done enough to us?

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Government “Stimulus” depresses the economy…

The Obama administration is touting that their economic “stimulus” is on track to accomplish what it set out to do; spend money. The problem is and the reason unemployment remains high is because the government is not stimulating the job creation, they are giving money to people and state governments that are transferring it to individuals that are trying to stay afloat.

If you want to stimulate the business community, the engine of the economy, you have to do something for them. They don’t want money they want clear policy and a reduction of costs to hire, produce, and expand their business. How do you do that? Make it cheaper to do business. The US is the second most costly place to do business in the world. That is the problem.

All the government would have to do is cut employment taxes, capital gains taxes, and reduce the top marginal tax rate to 30% and maintain it for five years. That would be a start and that would be a stimulus. Instead they are doling out money to things that have nothing to do with job creation and are just putting us into more debt.

Taking money from the “rich” (people who risk, and create jobs; small business) does exactly the opposite than the goal of stimulating the economy. The two questions you have to ask are; is it because they don’t know what they’re doing they are leaving out the tax cut option or is it because this is exactly what they want to do to this country?

I think it is the later…

Friday, July 17, 2009

This Headline Says it All…

“We Have to Spend Money to Keep From Going Bankrupt”. Can you believe this? This is our Vice President speaking to members of AARP, the association that represents the elderly but unfortunately could care less about their member’s grandchildren.

Tell me this; if you borrowed money to pay your bills every week because you borrowed too much to begin with, is it better to stop spending and pay off the bills or continue to spend money? Do you buy another house and car when you can’t even pay for the house and car you own? As a family the decision is made for you because no one will lend you money if you can’t afford to pay it back. Why does this administration and politicians in general think borrowing and spending beyond our means is good for anyone?

We are in big trouble here folks. We need to all pay attention. We are losing our country to a bunch of imbeciles and ingrates…

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Targeting the wealthy…

In an act of typical congressional ignorance, Charles Rangel, referring to the way he and the other anti American congressman wish to fund a new healthcare debacle stated; we are targeting the wealthy because it “causes the least amount of pain on the least amount of people”. That’s an interesting comment that is completely and utterly false.

Let’s take one simple example. Ted Kennedy in his bright wisdom introduced and passed a tax on luxury boats sold in America targeting the wealthy because it causes the least amount of pain on the least amount of people. The result was American boat manufacturers moved to Bermuda, Bahamas, and everywhere else but America. They even closed down operations in his own state of Massachusetts at Boston Whaler.

You see the wealthy own the businesses where we work and derive our incomes. So when you try to inflict these unfair programs on them they just pick up and leave. Like the boating industry where the wealthy people instead of buying boats made in the US flew to the offshore locations and drove their boats home to dock in their San Diego harbor slip, the same will happen here. The wealthy will find a way out of the tax or they will find a new place to live. So instead of receiving additional tax benefits from the wealthy, these politicians put the people that make the boats out of work; me and you. Needless to say the boat tax was rescinded.

There is no reason to inflict “pain” on anyone here. We need to get the government out of our lives. That is the pain we need to address. This congress and administration is a total pain in the American way of life…

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Health Care not Health Insurance…

The debate about our healthcare system is not a debate about healthcare but has become an insurance debate. The real debate should focus on the quality of care, how to improve access to care that doesn’t necessarily mean money but increasing efficiency to deliver simple services like cold, flu, strep, cuts and bruises, blood pressure, etc… care.

We need to debate increasing the supply and choices in healthcare services. By doing that the costs could be controlled by market forces. Why do simple repeatable healthcare issues need a doctor when we know for example strep throat needs an antibiotic and could be handled by a nurse? If you think about it when you go to the doctor how much time is spent with the doctor?

Here is the debate we need to have:

  • Let’s review the care people receive in Britain and Canada and decide if these are models we want to duplicate
  • Let’s open up more competition in the market by allowing nurses and trained healthcare technicians to provide basic services in communities, without the threat of lawsuits.
  • Reform the legal process to limit liability and situations for civil suits related to medical treatment. Jury's need to include medical experts that understand the often complex evidence in medical lawsuits.
  • Utilize the new technology for all types of efficiencies including records management, and knowledge bases to help local clinics expand their ability to provide services.
  • Phase out Medicare due to its falsifying the true costs of services.
  • Streamline the FDA process for drug introduction. Allow development patents to extend out long enough to recoup costs and reward companies for their efforts.
These are a few issues to debate. We need to focus on increasing access and competition, utilize technology and knowledge, increase clinics focused on basic services, increase both doctors and nurses, and reform the legal process.


No one is talking about healthcare they are simply arguing who should control it; private or public insurance? The most important aspect is being left out; your health…

Thursday, July 2, 2009

In Honor of Independence Day

It is time to renew our pledge to the Declaration of Independence. It is just as relevant on July 4th, 2009 as it was July 4th, 1776.

We have:
· An over reaching out of control government
· Taxation without representation (Czars have replaced representative government)
· Agents of the government infringing on our local rights (dis-regard for the tenth amendment)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

This government is taking away our opportunity to these self evident truths by means of systematically infringing on our economy, healthcare and personal pursuits by destroying everything it touches. In honor of our founders let us ponder how we return to the constitution that was the result of this great declaration.

In honor of July 4th 2009 let us vow to return to independence from an out of control government…