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Obamacare: The Final Nail In The Coffin For The Middle Class

CoffinIf there were any shreds of hope left that the stunning decline of the middle class could be turned around, Obamacare has absolutely destroyed them.  Over the past decade or so, the middle class in the United States has been absolutely eviscerated.  The number of working age Americans without a job has increased by 27 million since the year 2000, median household income in the U.S. has fallen for five years in a row, and the poverty numbers in this country are spiraling out of control.  And now here comes Obamacare.  As you will see below, Obamacare is causing millions of Americans to lose their current health insurance policies, it is causing health insurance premiums to explode to absolutely ridiculous levels, and it is systematically killing jobs even though the employer mandate has been delayed for a while.  All of this is creating a tremendous amount of stress for millions of middle class families that are already stretched extremely thin financially.  According to CNN, a survey that was conducted earlier this year found that 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  Most of those families simply cannot afford to pay much higher health insurance premiums for new policies that also come with much larger deductibles and significantly increased out-of-pocket costs.  Millions of those families will ultimately end up choosing to do without health insurance altogether, and that will create a whole host of new problems.  This is a disaster that is so enormous that it is really hard to put into words.  If the U.S. health care system was a separate country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire globe all by itself.  And now Obamacare is going to bring the entire U.S. health care system to its knees.

Obamacare: Since October 1st, The Number Of Americans With Health Insurance Has Fallen By Nearly 4 Million

Last week, Barack Obama decided to allow Americans to keep their current health insurance plans for one more year.

Isn’t that generous of him?  Especially considering the fact that he promised us over and over that if we liked our current health insurance policies that we would be able to keep them permanently.

The funny thing is that Obama is not actually changing the law.  So if your health insurance company allows you to stay on your current health insurance plan that does not meet the requirements of Obamacare, it is technically breaking the law.

And if you continue to stay on that current health insurance plan that does not meet the requirements of Obamacare, you are technically breaking the law.

It is just that Obama has promised not to enforce what the law says for one year.

For a president to just blatantly disregard the rule of law is a very dangerous precedent.  Do we really want the president to have the power to decide what laws are going to be enforced and what laws are not going to be enforced?

That sounds dangerously close to a dictatorship to me.

And in any event, there are many Americans that are not going to be able to keep their current policies no matter what Obama says.  For example, just two hours after Obama announced his plan last week, the state of Washington announced that they would not be allowing insurance companies to extend their old health insurance plans if they don’t comply with Obamacare under any circumstances…

State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler has rejected President Obama’s proposal to allow insurance companies to extend health insurance policies for people who have received notices that their policies will be cancelled at the end of the year.

Within two hours of President Obama’s news conference announcing the proposed administrative fix for Americans upset by their policy cancellations, Kreidler issued a statement rejecting the proposal.

“I understand that many people are upset by the notices they have recently received from their health plans and they may not need the new benefits [in the Affordable Care Act] today,” he said. “But I have serious concerns about how President Obama’s proposal would be implemented and more significantly, its potential impact on the overall stability of our health insurance market.”

“I do not believe his proposal is a good deal for the state of Washington,” Kreidler’s statement continued. “We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies.”

How do you think the people of the state of Washington will respond to that?

Things are getting crazy out there, and the number of people that are losing their health insurance policies is absolutely stunning.

According to the Wall Street Journal, so far 106,185 Americans have enrolled in Obamacare since October 1st.  Most of those that have successfully enrolled have done so through the state insurance exchanges.  So far, only 26,794 Americans have signed up for health insurance using the federally run exchanges on HealthCare.gov.

Meanwhile, during that same time frame, 4.02 million Americans have had their health insurance policies cancelled.

So that means that the number of Americans with health insurance has actually decreased by 3,918,205 since October 1st.

Wasn’t Obamacare supposed to result in more Americans being covered?

And according to U.S. Senator Rand Paul, Obama not only knew that this would happen, he actually wrote the regulation that caused this to happen…

“I’m still learning about it. It’s 20,000 pages of regulations. The Bill was 2,000 pages and I didn’t realize this until this week, the whole idea of you losing or getting your insurance cancelled wasn’t in the original Obamacare. It was a regulation WRITTEN BY PRESIDENT OBAMA, three months later. So we had a vote, this is before I got up there. The Republicans had a vote to try to cancel that regulation so you COULDN’T BE CANCELLED, to grandfather everybody in. You know what the vote was? Straight party line. EVERY DEMOCRAT VOTED TO KEEP THE RULE THAT CANCELS YOUR INSURANCE.”

So now millions of Americans, including women battling cancer, are losing health insurance plans that they were depending upon.

Thanks Obama?

Obamacare: Skyrocketing Health Insurance Premiums

How much more are you willing to pay for health insurance than you are paying right now?

10 percent?

20 percent?

30 percent?

Well, according to one study health insurance premiums for men are going to go up by an average of 99 percent under Obamacare and health insurance premiums for women are going to go up by an average of 62 percent under Obamacare.

And of course some groups are going to see increases that are much larger than that.  For example, it is being projected that health insurance premiums for healthy 30-year-old men will rise by an average of 260 percent.

Ouch.

And there are some families out there that have already been hit with health insurance premium increases that are absolutely jaw-dropping.  In a previous article, I included the example of one family down in Texas that has been hit with a 539% rate increase…

Obamacare is named the “Affordable Care Act,” after all, and the President promised the rates would be “as low as a phone bill.” But I just received a confirmed letter from a friend in Texas showing a 539% rate increase on an existing policy that’s been in good standing for years.

As the letter reveals (see below), the cost for this couple’s policy under Humana is increasing from $212.10 per month to $1,356.60 per month. This is for a couple in good health whose combined income is less than $70K — a middle-class family, in other words.

Obamacare: Enormous Deductibles And Huge Out-Of-Pocket Expenses For All

It isn’t just health insurance premiums that are going up either.  Deductibles are going up too.  In fact, just check out what one survey of Americans living in seven different states recently discovered…

Expenses for some policies can reach $6,350 for a single person and $12,700 per family, the most allowed by the health-care law, according to a survey by HealthPocket Inc. of seven states, including California and Ohio. That’s 26 percent higher than the average deductible in the seven states, and a scenario likely repeated across the country, said Kev Coleman, head of research and data at Sunnyvale, California-based HealthPocket.

That same article has a great quote from an elderly New Jersey resident.  82-year-old Larry Saphire thinks that if you have to pay a $5,000 deductible up front, “you might as well not have any insurance at all”…

“If you have to pay $5,000 upfront” when illness hits, “you might as well not have any insurance at all,” said Larry Saphire, 82, of West Orange, New Jersey, who shopped for coverage for his wife and two children, ages 16 and 21. “That’s not insurance.”

On California’s state-run exchange site, the standard low-premium “bronze” plan carries a $5,000 deductible per person, a $60 co-pay to see a doctor and a 30 percent fee, known as coinsurance, on hospital care. In Rhode Island, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s bronze plan has a $5,800 deductible while Missouri’s U.S.-run exchange offers plans by Anthem Blue Cross with the maximum-allowable $6,350 in out-of-pocket costs.

Obamacare: The Quality Of Care Is Going To Go Into The Toilet

A lot of Americans that are signing up for Obamacare are going to be in for a huge shock.  Many of the best hospitals and many of the best doctors are not covered by their plans…

Meanwhile, sometime between March and June, the other shoe drops: People who bought exchange policies realize that the restricted networks insurers created to keep the premium costs low cut out the best hospitals and doctors. A newly insured child with cancer cannot get into a top pediatric hospital because her insurance has zero coverage for out-of-network emergency care. Tearful Mom goes on the evening news and says that she thought when they went on Obamacare, that meant they were safe, and why can’t I take my baby to Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, Mr. President?

Can you imagine being a parent in that situation?

In response, some hospitals are already filing suit over this.  For instance, check out what is happening over in Seattle…

Seattle Children’s Hospital filed suit against Washington State’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner this week, after Obamacare implementation caused the hospital to be cut from four of the six insurance plans offered by the new Washington Health Benefit Exchange.

And even if you are on Medicare that does not mean that the quality of your care is going to stay the same either.  As Reuters just reported, UnitedHealth is dumping “thousands of doctors” from their Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly because of Obamacare…

UnitedHealth Group dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks, leaving many elderly patients unsure whether they need to switch plans to continue seeing their doctors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The insurer said in October that underfunding of Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly could not be fully offset by the company’s other healthcare business. The company also reported spending more healthcare premiums on medical claims in the third quarter, due mainly to government cuts to payments for Medicare Advantage services.

In the United States, we already pay much more for health care than everyone else in the world, and we typically have to wait longer to see a doctor than most of the rest of the industrialized world does.

Now Obamacare is going to make all of this even worse, and the quality of the care that we receive is going to go downhill fast.

Obamacare: The Jobs Killer

A while back, Obama unilaterally made the decision to delay the implementation of the employer mandate until 2015.

That was probably a good political decision, because it would have been a huge political issue in the 2014 elections.

But the truth is that we won’t have to wait until 2015 for Obamacare to start killing jobs.  In fact, according to CNBC it is already happening…

Approximately one-third of business decision-makers at companies with between 40 and 500 employees, say the health-care law has already increased their costs due to hikes in both the cost of insurance and compliance, according to a recent report from political-research firm Public Opinion Strategies. As a result, many business leaders say they are already making personnel decisions based on the Affordable Care Act.

Among franchised businesses, 27 percent report their company has replaced full-time workers with part-time workers and 31 percent have reduced worker hours. Among non-franchised businesses, 12 percent are replacing full-time workers with part-time workers or reducing hours. This is happening now, with more than a year before the mandate goes into effect; and undoubtedly, these numbers will rise as we approach next July’s “look back” period for tabulating workers’ hours.

It is kind of startling that we are already seeing employers make such big changes even though the employer mandate does not come into effect until 2015.  You can find a very long list of some of the employers that have already either eliminated jobs or cut hours because of Obamacare right here.

Remember, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Once we get closer to the deadline things are going to get much, much worse.

At a time when the middle class desperately needs jobs, Obamacare is going to slaughter them.

And even if you are able to keep your current job, that does not mean that your health plan will remain the same.  In fact, Forbes is projecting that a staggering 51 percent of all employment-based health insurance plans will be canceled and replaced with new ones.

Overall, Forbes is projecting that an astounding 93 million Americans will eventually lose their current health insurance policies due to Obamacare.

Obamacare: Providing Huge Incentives For Many Americans To Work Less And Make Less Money

Did you know that Obamacare is going to cause millions of Americans to want to keep their incomes under certain levels?

If you make too much money under Obamacare, you will miss out on some absolutely massive health care subsidies.  The following is an excerpt from one of my previous articles…

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The figures that you are about to see were calculated using the Kaiser Family Foundation subsidy calculator.  These numbers apply to a husband and a wife that are both 62 years old.

A non-smoking, married couple living in San Francisco, California earning $63,000 a year will have to pay $20,318 a year for a silver plan under Obamacare and $12,647 a year for a bronze plan.

At $63,000, that couple would be making too much money to be eligible for a subsidy, so that couple will have to pay the total cost of whatever plan they choose by themselves.

But if that couple only made $62,000 a year, things would dramatically change.

The plans would still cost the same, but the couple would now be eligible for an Obamacare subsidy of $14,428.

So a silver plan would end up costing them only $5,890, and they would ultimately pay nothing for a bronze plan.

In other words, by reducing their income by $1,000, that couple would save $14,428 if they got a silver plan or they would save $12,647 if they got a bronze plan.

Isn’t that bizarre?

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In the end, millions upon millions of middle class families will decide to go without health insurance entirely for one reason or another.

This will work great until they get into an accident or become seriously ill.

As I have discussed previously, approximately 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical bills.  And most of those bankruptcies actually happen to people that are supposedly “covered” by health insurance.

Obamacare is going to make all of this so much worse.  Millions of middle class families will end up with no health insurance at all, and because so many of them are living paycheck to paycheck a single health emergency will be enough to send them hurtling down the path to financial oblivion.

If you get into an accident, a visit to the emergency room and a single night in the hospital can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars in many areas of the country.

If you get a serious illness such as cancer, the medical bills can be absolutely astronomical.  For instance, there are many cancer patients that rack up medical bills well in excess of a million dollars by the time that they die.

Something desperately needs to be done about our horrible health care system.  Unfortunately, Obamacare is going to make just about everything that is bad about our current system much, much worse.

And the American people are becoming increasingly disgusted and frustrated with Obamacare.  According to Real Clear Politics, an average of recent opinion polls shows that the American people are opposed to Obamacare by an average margin of 14.2 percentage points.

So what do you think about Obamacare?

Please feel free to share your opinion by posting a comment below, and please share this information with as many people as you possibly can.

Coffin

10 Signs That Obamacare Is Going To Wreck The U.S. Economy

Obamacare LineIt is hard to find the words to adequately describe how much of a disaster Obamacare is turning out to be.  The debut of Healthcare.gov has been probably the worst launch of a major website in history, millions of Americans are having their current health insurance policies canceled, millions of others are seeing the size of their health insurance premiums absolutely explode, and this new law is going to result in massive numbers of jobs being lost.  It is almost as if Obamacare was specifically designed to wreck the U.S. economy.  Not that what we had before Obamacare was great.  In fact, I have long argued that the U.S. health care system is a complete and total train wreck.  But now Obamacare is making everything that was bad about our system much, much worse.  Americans are going to pay far more for health care, the quality of that care is going to go down, they are going to have to deal with far more medical red tape, and thousands upon thousands of U.S. employers are considering getting rid of the health plans that they offer to employees altogether due to Obamacare.  If the U.S. health care system was a separate nation, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet, and now Obamacare is going to absolutely cripple it.  To say that Obamacare is an “economic catastrophe” would be a massive understatement.

Of course we were assured that it wouldn’t turn out this way.  We were promised over and over that we were going to pay less for health care, get better coverage, and be able to keep our current health plans if we were pleased with them.  The following is what Obama said at a rally in 2009…

“First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”

Oh really?

That was such a dramatic lie that even NBC News is turning on him.  They discovered that Obama has known for three years that most people that rely on individual health insurance policies would not be able to keep them…

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Pretty much everything that Obama told us when he was selling us on his plan has turned out to be a lie.

So what can we expect from Obamacare moving forward?  The following are 10 signs that Obamacare is going to wreck the U.S. economy…

#1 It is being projected that millions upon millions of Americans are going to lose their current health insurance plans thanks to Obamacare.  Most will be faced with the choice of either purchasing much more expensive health insurance or going uninsured.  This will put even more stress on a middle class that is already disintegrating rapidly.  The following is from the recent NBC News investigation mentioned above…

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”

#2 The health insurance premium increases that some families are experiencing are absolutely mind boggling.  According to Mike Adams of Natural News, one family in Texas just got hit with a 539% rate increase…

Obamacare is named the “Affordable Care Act,” after all, and the President promised the rates would be “as low as a phone bill.” But I just received a confirmed letter from a friend in Texas showing a 539% rate increase on an existing policy that’s been in good standing for years.

As the letter reveals (see below), the cost for this couple’s policy under Humana is increasing from $212.10 per month to $1,356.60 per month. This is for a couple in good health whose combined income is less than $70K — a middle-class family, in other words.

According to NBC News, an elderly couple in North Carolina was hit with a similar rate increase…

George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was “perfectly happy” with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The “comparable” plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible.

Many Americans that were formerly in favor of Obamacare are now against it after they have seen what it is going to do to their budgets.  The following is one example of this from a recent Los Angeles Times article…

Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.

“She said, ‘I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'” Kehaly said.

#3 Obamacare actually includes incentives for people to work less and make less money.  The following is one example from a recent article by Sean Davis…

In California, a couple earning $64,000 a year would not qualify for health care subsidies. A bronze plan for them through Kaiser would cost them about $1,300 each month, or $15,600 a year. But if that same family earned just $2,000 less, it would qualify for over $14,000 in annual health care subsidies, dropping their premiums for that same Kaiser plan to less than $100 per month.

#4 Thankfully the employer mandate in Obamacare was delayed for a little while, but it will ultimately result in widespread job losses all over the country.  In fact, we are already starting to see this happen.  The following is from a recent article in the Economist…

BEFORE the recession, Richard Clark’s cleaning company in Florida had 200 employees, about half of them working full time. These days it has about 150, with 80% part-time. The downturn explains some of this. But Mr Clark also blames Barack Obama’s health reform. When it comes into effect in January 2015, Obamacare will require firms with 50 or more full-time employees to offer them affordable health insurance or pay a fine of $2,000-3,000 per worker. That is a daunting prospect for firms that do not already offer coverage. But for many, there is a way round the law.

Mr Clark says he is “very careful with the threshold”. To keep his full-time workforce below the magic number of 50, he is relying more on part-timers. He is not alone. More than one in ten firms surveyed by Mercer, a consultancy—and one in five retail and hospitality companies—say they will cut workers’ hours because of Obamacare. A hundred part-timers can flip as many burgers as 50 full-timers, and the former will soon be much cheaper.

You can find a very long list of some of the employers that have either eliminated jobs or cut hours because of Obamacare right here.

#5 Even if you are able to keep your job, there is no guarantee that your employer will continue to offer health insurance as an employee benefit.  In fact, it is being reported that large numbers of employers have already decided to no longer offer health insurance to their employees because of Obamacare.

#6 According to CBS News, so far the number of people that have had their health insurance policies canceled is more than three times greater than the number of people that have signed up for new policies under Obamacare…

CBS News has learned more than two million Americans have been told they cannot renew their current insurance policies — more than triple the number of people said to be buying insurance under the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

#7 If what is going on in New York is any indication, those that are signing up for health insurance under Obamacare are going to have a really, really hard time finding a doctor…

New York doctors are treating ObamaCare like the plague, a new survey reveals.

A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation’s new health-care plan.

Another 33 percent say they’re still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers.

Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges.

#8 Obamacare is turning out to be a gold mine for hackers and identity thieves.  The personal information of millions of Americans could potentially end up being compromised.  According to CNN, Healthcare.gov was found to be teeming with security holes…

The Obamacare website has more than annoying bugs. A cybersecurity expert found a way to hack into users’ accounts.

Until the Department of Health fixed the security hole last week, anyone could easily reset your Healthcare.gov password without your knowledge and potentially hijack your account.

And according to the New York Post, Healthcare.gov has been designed so badly from a security standpoint that it might have to be “rebuilt from scratch”…

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said ObamaCare’s website, already a tangled mess, might need to be rebuilt from scratch to to protect against cyber-thieves because he fears it’s not a safe place right now for health-care consumers to deposit their personal information.

“I know that they’ve called in another private entity to try to help with the security of it. The problem is, they may have to redesign the entire system,” Rep. Mike Rogers said on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” political talk show. “The way the system is designed, it is not secure.”

#9 As I noted in a previous article, approximately 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical bills.  Because millions of Americans are now losing their health insurance policies and millions of others will choose to pay the fine rather than sign up for Obamacare, more Americans than ever will find themselves overwhelmed with medical bills when they get seriously sick.  This will result in even more personal bankruptcies.

#10 In the end, the burden for paying for the subsidies that Obamacare offers is going to overwhelmingly fall on the taxpayers.  This is going to cause our nightmarish national debt to get even worse.  Peter Schiff recently explained why this is going to happen…

It is also ironic that high-deductible, catastrophic plans are precisely what young people should be buying in the first place. They are inexpensive because they provide coverage for unlikely, but expensive, events. Routine care is best paid for out-of-pocket by value conscious consumers. But Obamacare outlaws these plans, in favor of what amounts to prepaid medical treatment that shifts the cost of services to taxpayers. In such a system, patients have no incentive to contain costs. Since the biggest factor driving health care costs higher in the first place has been the over use of insurance that results from government-provided tax incentives, and the lack of cost accountability that results from a third-party payer system, Obamacare will bend the cost curve even higher. The fact that Obamacare does nothing to rein in costs while providing an open-ended insurance subsidy may be good news for hospitals and insurance companies, but it’s bad news for taxpayers, on whom this increased burden will ultimately fall.

So what do you think of Obamacare?

Has it directly affected your life yet?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

Power Mad Obama Offers Two Choices: Unconditional Surrender Or Default

Obama SleepingBarack Obama is warning that if he does not get everything that he wants that he will force the U.S. government into a devastating debt default which will cripple the entire global economy.  In essence, Obama has become so power mad that he is actually willing to take the entire planet hostage in order to achieve his goals.  A lot of people are blaming the government shutdown on the Republicans, but they have already voted to fund the entire government except for Obamacare.  The U.S. Constitution requires that all spending bills originate in the House of Representatives, and the House did their duty by passing a spending bill.  If the Senate or the President do not like the bill that the House has passed, then negotiations need to take place.  That is how our system works.  And the weak-kneed Republicans have already indicated that they are willing to give up virtually all of their prior demands.  In fact, if Obama offered all of them 20 dollar gift certificates to Denny’s to end this crisis they would probably jump at that deal.  But that is not good enough for Obama.  He has made it clear that he will settle for nothing less than the complete and unconditional surrender of the Republican Party.

Why is Obama doing this?  Why is Obama willing to bring the country to the brink of financial disaster?

It isn’t hard to figure out.  Just check out what one senior Obama administration official said last week…

“We are winning…. It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts “because what matters is the end result,” a senior Obama Administration official told the Wall Street Journal last week.

This is all about a political victory and crushing the Republicans.  Obama doesn’t really care how long this crisis lasts because he believes that he is getting the end result that he wants.

According to Obama, the Republican Party is just supposed to roll over and give him the exact spending bill that he wants and also give him another trillion dollar increase in the debt limit.

If the Republicans do not give him that, he is willing to plunge us into financial oblivion.

The funny thing is that most Americans do not want the debt limit increased.  According to one new poll, 58 percent of all Americans do not even want the debt ceiling to be increased by a single penny.

And recent polls show that Americans are against Obamacare by an average margin of about 10 percent.

But the pathetic Republican Party is actually willing to hand Obama a trillion dollar debt ceiling increase and fully fund Obamacare if Obama will at least give them something.

Unfortunately, Obama won’t even give them the time of day.

So don’t blame the Republicans for what is happening.  The Republicans have already compromised themselves to the point of utter disgrace.  If Obama had been willing to even compromise a couple of inches this entire crisis would already be over.

And nobody should be claiming that the Republicans won’t vote to end this shutdown.  They have already voted to end it.  The following is from a recent article by Thomas Sowell…

There is really nothing complicated about the facts. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going — except for ObamaCare.

This is not a matter of opinion. You can check the Congressional Record.

As for the House of Representatives’ right to grant or withhold money, that is not a matter of opinion either. You can check the Constitution of the United States. All spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, which means that Congressmen there have a right to decide whether or not they want to spend money on a particular government activity.

Whether ObamaCare is good, bad or indifferent is a matter of opinion. But it is a matter of fact that members of the House of Representatives have a right to make spending decisions based on their opinion.

Once again, the Republicans have already indicated that they are willing to fund Obamacare.  They just want Obama to throw them a bone.

And Obama will not do it.

So either the Republicans are going to cave in completely (a very real possibility) or we are going to pass the “debt ceiling deadline”.

What happens then?

Well, we would have more of a “real government shutdown” than the fake shutdown that we are having right now.

Once the federal government cannot borrow any more money, it will only be able to spend what it actually has on hand.  That means that a lot more government functions will have to shut down.

Money will still be coming in to the government, but it won’t be enough to fund everything.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the federal government will still have enough money to pay interest on the debt, make Social Security payments, make Medicare payments, make Medicaid payments, provide food stamp benefits and pay the military if they cut almost everything else out.

The other day, I suggested that the federal government could potentially start defaulting on interest payments on the debt as early as November.  But that would only happen if the federal government manages their money foolishly.

If the federal government managed their money smartly and saved cash for the interest payments as they came due, they would not have to miss any.

But when was the last time the federal government ever did anything “smartly”?

For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume that the federal government can manage money wisely and can save up enough cash ahead of time for large interest payments as they come due.

If that could somehow be managed, then according to Paul Mampilly the government would never need to actually default…

The U.S. Treasury always has money coming into its accounts. So its always got some amount of cash that it can use to pay interest on bonds. That’s especially true right now because the government is partially shutdown and there’s no cash going out from its accounts.

In fact, when you look at it the U.S. Treasury should simply have no trouble making interest payments on bonds that it has issued.

And there’s no restriction on the U.S. Treasury prioritizing interest payments. Why?

The obligation to pay interest is set by the 1917 Second Liberty Bond Act and laws that commanded the Treasury to pay interest on the debt. You can look this up in section 3123 of Title 31 of the U.S. Code and section 4 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and in Supreme Court precedent (Perry v. United States). It’s all there in black and white.

So the only possible way the U.S. defaults on its debt is if Barack Obama, President of the United States, instructs his Treasury secretary Jack Lew to default on the debt.

And according to the Washington Post, Moody’s has just issued a memo that also indicates that the federal government should be able to make all interest payments even if the debt limit is not increased…

In a memo being circulated on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Moody’s Investors Service offers “answers to frequently asked questions” about the government shutdown, now in its second week, and the federal debt limit. President Obama has said that, unless Congress acts to raise the $16.7 trillion limit by next Thursday, the nation will be at risk of default.

Not so, Moody’s says in the memo dated Oct. 7.

“We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact,” the memo says. “The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury’s extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default.”

Of course the federal government would have to stop throwing money around like a drunk gambler at a casino in Las Vegas in order for this to work.

On the very first day of the government shutdown, the feds gave $445 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  Apparently Elmo is considered to be “essential personnel” by the Obama administration.

And according to CNS News, the U.S. Army has committed more than $47,000 to buy a mechanical bull during this “shutdown”…

The government shutdown may be keeping furloughed federal workers at home, but on Monday the U.S. Army contracted to buy a mechanical bull.

The $47,174 contract was awarded on Oct. 7 to Mechanical Bull Sales Inc. of State College, Penn.

So needless to say, there is some serious doubt about whether the federal government would be able to manage their money effectively in the event that the debt ceiling deadline passes.

And if the U.S. did start defaulting on debt payments, it would be absolutely disastrous for the global economy as I discussed in a previous article…

“A U.S. debt default would cause stocks to crash, would cause bonds to crash, would cause interest rates to soar wildly out of control, would cause a massive credit crunch, and would cause a derivatives panic that would be absolutely unprecedented.  And that would just be for starters.”

Other nations that we depend upon to lend us money would stop lending to us and would start dumping U.S. debt instead.

Could you imagine what would happen if China started dumping a large portion of the 1.3 trillion dollars in U.S. debt that they are holding?

It would be a total nightmare.  The collapse of Lehman Brothers would pale in comparison.

And already some banks are stuffing their ATM machines with extra cash just in case the general public starts to panic.

But none of this has to happen.

If Obama decides to negotiate with the Republicans, this crisis will likely end very rapidly.

If not, and we pass the “debt ceiling deadline”, the federal government will still have enough money to make interest payments on the debt as long as they manage their money correctly.

Unfortunately, Obama seems far more interested in playing political games than he is in solving our problems.

In fact, Park Service rangers have been ordered to “make life as difficult for people as we can” during this government shutdown.  Obama has apparently decided to punish the American people in order to get leverage on the Republicans.  Just check out the following example from a new Weekly Standard article…

There’s a cute little historic site just outside of the capital in McLean, Virginia, called the Claude Moore Colonial Farm. They do historical reenactments, and once upon a time the National Park Service helped run the place. But in 1980, the NPS cut the farm out of its budget. A group of private citizens set up an endowment to take care of the farm’s expenses. Ever since, the site has operated independently through a combination of private donations and volunteer workers.

The Park Service told Claude Moore Colonial Farm to shut down.

The farm’s administrators appealed this directive​—​they explained that the Park Service doesn’t actually do anything for the historic site. The folks at the NPS were unmoved. And so, last week, the National Park Service found the scratch to send officers to the park to forcibly remove both volunteer workers and visitors.

Think about that for a minute. The Park Service, which is supposed to serve the public by administering parks, is now in the business of forcing parks they don’t administer to close. As Homer Simpson famously asked, did we lose a war?

The hypocrisy that Obama has demonstrated during this “government shutdown” has been astounding.

He has barricaded open air war memorials to keep military veterans from visiting them, but he temporarily reopened the National Mall so that a huge pro-immigration rally that would benefit him politically could be held.

He has continued to fund al-Qaeda rebels in Syria that are trying to overthrow the Syrian government, but he has been withholding death benefits from families of fallen U.S. soldiers.

The conduct of the Obama administration during this shutdown has been so egregious that is hard to put into words.  Obama has chosen to purposely harm the American people in order to score political points.

But this is how our politicians view us these days.  As Monty Pelerin recently explained, most of our politicians have absolutely no problem with exploiting us for their own purposes…

The concept of political service has been replaced by that of masked exploitation. The public is no longer viewed as clients or constituents to be served. Instead they have become political prey. Politicians see the public as a collection of wallets and votes, fair game to be hunted as the means to expand power and wealth. Constituents are now the Soylent Green of the political food chain.

The political class assumes the public exists to serve them, not the other way around. Public participation beyond the lightening of wallets or the provision of votes is unwelcome. It is considered “interference” that must be deterred by the ruling class.

The political class is now a huge, voracious parasite. Like the plant in the Little Shop of Horrors, its needs have grown to the point where it threatens anything productive. Its needs now exceed the willingness for continued sacrifice on the part of the productive. The parasite threatens the very existence of the host.

The political Ponzi scheme of tax, borrow and spend has reached its limit. Either it will die when citizens turn on it or it will kill the productive, ensuring its own destruction.

It perishes in the end. Whether it takes civilization with it is the bigger question.

Is there anyone out there that still does not believe that our system is broken?

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and power mad Obama will decide to toss the Republicans a few crumbs and this crisis will be resolved.

Because if this crisis is not resolved soon, it could have consequences that are far beyond what any of us could possibly imagine.

Extreme Hypocrisy! Obama Orders Federal Workers To “Make Life As Difficult For People As We Can”

Barack Obama On The Phone In The Oval OfficeWhy would the president of the United States try to purposely hurt the American people?  Well, in 2013 this is done in order to score political points and force the opposition in to doing what you want them to do.  A few days ago, an angry Park Service ranger publicly admitted that he and his fellow rangers have been ordered to “make life as difficult for people as we can” during this government shutdown.  That Park Service ranger would never have received such an order unless it came from the very top.  Apparently the Obama administration plans to cause as much pain as possible until Obama gets everything that he is demanding.  In many cases, it is actually going to cost far more money to put up barricades and use guards to keep Americans from visiting open air memorials, driving on roads, and fishing in bodies of water than it would to put up a “closed” sign and simply go home.  As you will see from the examples posted below, the Obama administration is being extremely spiteful and vindictive.  And the level of hypocrisy that we are now witnessing is hard to fathom.  For instance, the National Mall has been totally closed to the public, but the Obama administration is specifically reopening it for a massive pro-immigration rally that will benefit the Democrats politically.  The abuse of power that is taking place is absolutely staggering, and the American people need to demand that those that are abusing it be held accountable when all of this is over.

The following are just a few examples of how Obama is using this shutdown to make life as difficult for people as possible…

#1 The Obama administration is doing all it can to keep Americans from even getting a glimpse of Mount Rushmore, but Barack Obama’s chefs have been deemed “essential” and are still preparing his meals.

#2 Small businesses cannot get loans, but the exclusive gyms that are only for members of Congress have been deemed “essential” and remain open.

#3 The National Mall has been closed to the public, but it will be opened for a huge pro-immigration rally being held by Obama supporters.

#4 Last chance cancer treatments for children with cancer have been suspended, but the IRS continues to collect taxes from us.

#5 The NIH has stopped therapy dogs from visiting sick children, but Obama and Congress are still getting paid.

#6 The USDA website has been shut down, but Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move website is still operating.

#7 A runner has been fined $100 for jogging through Valley Forge National Historical Park, but the military golf course that Obama uses regularly is still open.

#8 The Obama administration has shut down the Grand Canyon, but the new two billion dollar NSA spy center is still spying on all of us.

#9 The federal government has forced an elderly couple out of their home on Lake Mead during this shutdown, but the operations of the Federal Reserve have not been affected at all.

#10 In South Carolina, the Obama administration is actually using Park Service rangers to keep people away from a privately-owned hotel.

#11 In Tennessee, the feds have totally shut down the Foothills Parkway, a major thoroughfare that runs through Blount County.  At this point the feds are not even letting people visit the graves of their dead relatives.

#12 The Obama administration has actually removed all of the well pumps along a 184 mile trail that goes from Washington D.C. to Pittsburgh just so that anyone that decides to use the trail will not be able to get any water to drink.

#13 The Obama administration is actually attempting to close 1,100 square miles of ocean off of the coast of Florida.  It is going to take a tremendous amount of time, money and energy to keep fishing boats out of that area.

#14 According to one news report, “Gestapo tactics” were used against one tour group made up mostly of senior citizens at Yellowstone National Park…

Pat Vaillancourt went on a trip last week that was intended to showcase some of America’s greatest treasures.

Instead, the Salisbury resident said she and others on her tour bus witnessed an ugly spectacle that made her embarrassed, angry and heartbroken for her country.

Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.

The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.

When finally allowed to leave, the bus was not allowed to halt at all along the 2.5-hour trip out of the park, not even to stop at private bathrooms that were open along the route.

#15 Of course one of the most disturbing abuses of power is how the Obama administration is using barricades and guards to keep military veterans away from open air memorials such as the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial and the Iwo Jima Memorial that are normally open to the public 24 hours a day.

It is beyond disgusting for Barack Obama to take these memorials hostage for political gain.

And a lot of military veterans have decided that they are not going to take this slap in the face.  In fact, one group is organizing a “Million Veteran March on the Memorials” this weekend.  You can find their Facebook page right here.  According to their page, a mass protest is being planned for 9 AM this Sunday morning…

“Join fellow Veterans at the war memorials in Washington DC on Sunday October 13th at 9 AM and at memorials across these United States.”

And veterans will not be the only ones in D.C. this weekend.  An organization known as “Truckers Ride for the Constitution” will also be there.  You can find their Facebook page right here.  The truckers are planning a three day strike and protest which will stretch from Friday to Sunday…

“The American people are sick and tired of the corruption that is destroying America! We therefore declare a national protest in support of our nation’s truckers on the weekend of October 11-13, 2013! Truck drivers will not haul freight! Americans can strike in solidarity with truck drivers! Truckers will lead the path to saving our country if every American rides with them!”

Many truckers are even planning to take their trucks right into the heart of Washington D.C. itself.

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens.

Personally, I have never seen anything like what we are witnessing right now.  The president of the United States is actually trying to purposely hurt the American people in order to put pressure on Congress.  He isn’t even being subtle about it.

Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent, you have got to be absolutely disgusted by what Obama is doing.  He is showing an astounding lack of respect for the American people.

It is one thing to play hardball with Congress.  That is acceptable.  It is quite another thing to spitefully abuse the American people in order to get what you want.

What Obama has done goes way over the line.  If the American people are not outraged by this, what will it take to wake them up?

Government Shutdown? 36 Facts Which Prove That Almost Everything Is Still Running

The West Front of the U.S. CapitolAll of this whining and crying about a “government shutdown” is a total joke.  You see, there really is very little reason why this “government shutdown” cannot continue indefinitely because almost everything is still running.  63 percent of all federal workers are still working, and 85 percent of all government activities are still being funded during this “shutdown”.  Yes, the Obama administration has been making a big show of taking down government websites and blocking off the World War II Memorial, but overall business in Washington D.C. is being conducted pretty much as usual.  It turns out that the definition of “essential personnel” has expanded so much over the years that almost everyone is considered “essential” at this point.  In fact, this shutdown is such a non-event that even referring to it as a “partial government shutdown” would really be overstating what is actually happening.  The following are 36 facts which prove that almost everything is still running during this government shutdown…

#1 According to U.S. Senator Rand Paul, 85 percent of all government activities are actually being funded during this “government shutdown”.

#2 Approximately 1,350,000 “essential” federal employees will continue to work during this “government shutdown”.

#3 Overall, 63 percent of the federal workforce will continue to work during this “government shutdown”.

#4 The U.S. Postal Service will continue to deliver our mail.

#5 U.S. military personnel will remain on duty and will continue to get paid.

#6 Social Security recipients will continue to get their benefits.

#7 Medicare recipients will continue to get their benefits.

#8 Medicaid recipients will continue to get their benefits.

#9 Food stamp recipients will continue to get their benefits.

#10 Those on unemployment will continue to get their benefits.

#11 Federal retirees will continue to get their pensions.

#12 The federal school lunch program has enough money to go through at least the end of this month.

#13 Public schools all over the country will continue to stay open.

#14 Almost all federal law enforcement officials will continue working.

#15 The Federal Reserve will remain “completely functional“.

#16 The Supreme Court will continue to operate normally and federal courts have enough money to keep going for at least two weeks.

#17 TSA employees will continue to molest travelers at our airports.

#18 Air traffic controllers will continue to monitor traffic at our airports.

#19 Hopelessly outmanned border patrol agents will continue to try to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

#20 Visas and passports will continue to be issued by the State Department.

#21 The Veterans Administration will continue to offer substandard medical services, and it will be able to continue processing benefit payments at least for now.

#22 The Obama administration apparently has plenty of money to spend on closing open-air memorials that are usually open to the public 24 hours a day.

#23 The Department of Defense announced the awarding of 94 new contracts worth a combined total of more than 5 billion dollars on September 30th – the day right before the “government shutdown”.

#24 The “government shutdown” has not prevented the new two billion dollar NSA spy center from opening up.

#25 Federal prisons will continue to operate normally.

#26 Amtrak trains will continue to run.

#27 The Patent and Trademark Office will be open.

#28 The Consumer Product Safety Commission will continue to issue product recalls if the products “create an immediate threat to the safety of human life“.

#29 The National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center will continue to track weather patterns.

#30 If the federal government needs to respond to a natural disaster, this “shutdown” will not affect that.

#31 NASA will continue to support the Mars Rover and the two American astronauts up on the International Space Station.

#32 All city employees of the D.C. government have been deemed “essential” and will continue to go to work.

#33 Even though the Obamacare exchanges are not working properly, people will still be able to access them.

#34 The IRS will continue to collect taxes, but it will be suspending punitive audits of conservative organizations.

#35 Barack Obama will continue to get paid for the full duration of this “shutdown”.

#36 The U.S. Congress will continue to get paid for the full duration of this “shutdown”.

Of course not everything is operating normally during this government shutdown.  Government parks are closed.  The EPA and the Department of Energy have almost totally closed up shop.  But overall, most Americans are not going to notice much of a difference.

And perhaps now is a good time for the American people to evaluate whether or not they actually need a gigantic federal government that wastes enormous mountains of our money.

For example, our federal government recently spent $98,670 to construct a single outhouse in Alaska.

That is more than a lot of Americans pay for their entire houses.

For many more examples like this, please see my previous article entitled “The Waste List: 66 Crazy Ways That The U.S. Government Is Wasting Your Hard-Earned Money“.

It is about time that Washington D.C. started experiencing some of the “belt-tightening” that the rest of the country has been going through.  For far too long, the fatcats in D.C. have been living in an alternate reality where they have been able to live the high life at our expense.  A recent blog post by Daniel Greenfield discussed how this shutdown is going to affect the alternate reality that the Obamas have been living in…

The government shutdown has forced Obama to make do with only a quarter of his 1,701 person staff. That would leave 436 “vital” employees. The 90 people who look after his living quarters would be slashed to 15 to “provide minimum maintenance and support”.

Buckingham Palace, which is twelve times the size of the White House and has its own clockmaker, only has an 800 person staff. King Harald V of Norway and his court make do with 152 staffers. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden gets by with 203.

On Twitter, Michelle Obama announced that she is unable to Tweet on her own without the aid of all of her sixteen assistants; many of whom take home six figure salaries. There are more directors, associate directors and deputy associate directors on Michelle Obama’s staff than there were in George Washington’s entire administration.

Presidents have fought wars and made peace, explored and annexed vast territories and built a nation out of a handful of colonies with fewer senior staffers than are needed to handle Michelle Obama’s Twitter account.

Oh the humanity!  Will Michelle Obama ever tweet again?  And how will the White House continue to function without at least one projectionist on duty at the White House 24 hours a day?

No wonder Barack Obama is so upset about this shutdown.

In the end, this shutdown could turn out to be very good for America.  We have a government that is wildly out of control and that desperately needs to be reigned in.

During the Obama administration, federal debt held by the public has risen by 90 percent, and overall federal government spending has risen by a whopping 317 percent since 1990.

So is it really a bad thing that the federal government has been forced to cut back for a little while?

Our politicians can whine and cry all they want.  They won’t be getting any sympathy from me.

About 40 Percent Of All Food In The United States Is Thrown In The Garbage

LandfillCould that headline actually be true?  Do Americans waste about 40 percent of all the food that we produce?  That sounds like an absolutely crazy number, but it is actually quite accurate according to a study conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council.  What the NRDC discovered is that approximately 40 percent of our total food supply is either thrown into dumpsters by grocery stores, is discarded by restaurants, never gets harvested on our farms, or is thrown into the garbage by consumers in their homes.  Even though 47 million Americans are on food stamps and millions of children go to bed hungry in this country every single night, we continue to waste approximately 263 million pounds of food every single day of the year.  One day people will look back and regard us as probably the most wasteful society in the history of the planet.

So where does all of that food go?

Well, according to a recent Seattle Times article, “food waste” takes up more space in our landfills than anything else does…

Last year, the NRDC found that Americans throw out as much as 40 percent of the country’s food supply each year, adding up to $165 billion in losses.

Food waste makes up the largest portion of solid trash in landfills, according to researchers.

Some $900 million of expired food is dumped from the supply chain annually, much of it a result of confusion. Misinterpreted date labels cause the average American household of four to lose as much as $455 a year on squandered food, according to researchers.

The expired food that gets wasted is one of my personal pet peeves.

I don’t do this a lot, but today I am going to share a personal story with you.

Earlier today I was out running errands and I decided that I wanted to pick up some mini-cupcakes from Safeway that I just love.  I do try to eat a healthy diet, but I do also like a treat from time to time.  So I got over to Safeway, and I noticed that the only mini-cupcakes that they had out were ones with chocolate frosting, but I wanted ones with vanilla frosting.

So I went up to the bakery counter and there was nobody there, but behind the counter I saw a stack of several containers of vanilla cupcakes.  I waited until the bakery lady got back and I asked her if I could have them.

I was astounded when she very firmly told me that I could not buy them.

She said that it was against regulations.

I implored her to sell them to me.  I explained that I had come over to Safeway just to buy them and I didn’t care if they were a little old.

Again she very firmly told me that I could not buy them.

I could not understand this.  I knew that the cupcakes were just going to be thrown out, so I asked to speak to her manager.

After a few moments her manager came over and I was once again told very firmly that under no circumstances would I be able to buy the cupcakes.

So needless to say, I left the store with a sad look on my face and without any cupcakes.

Now of course I probably didn’t need the cupcakes anyway.  They are not healthy for me.  But big chains such as Safeway throw away massive amounts of very good food as well.  The level of the waste that goes on is absolutely astounding.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans that are dealing with hunger and malnutrition grows with each passing day.  I want to share with you an excerpt from a recent article authored by Jason Ford entitled “I Work On The Breadline“…

I work as a cashier at a nationally known discount store. I sell clothing, cleaning products, house wares and food. The people I sell to are people of all colors, races, ages and sex, but most of them have one thing in common; EBT cards. I would say about half of every transaction I do is paid for with an EBT card. Sometimes people will use three different methods of payment. They will use whatever is left on their EBT card, then use whatever is left on their debit card, and then scrape their purse to find the remaining balance, and sometimes they still don’t have enough.

Another common trait of the people I serve besides the poverty is the poor health. The food I sell is not healthy, by any stretch. I sell potato chips, candy bars, bread, canned food, ice cream, soda, packaged meat, cigarettes and alcohol. I noticed quickly that a common ingredient of most of the foods is sugar and grains. Sugar and grains are easy to grow and produce cheaply and are used as fillers in processed food to cut cost and mask the taste of other questionable ingredients. Grains work in conjunction with sugars to inflame the body and compromise the immune system. Grains and sugars also have no nutritional value besides calories, so on top of inflaming the body; they do not provide the sustenance the body needs to survive. As the functions of the body require these nutrients the diet lacks, the body sucks these minerals from the bones, teeth and brain. Bone loss, and tooth decay and decreased brain function are the unfortunate symptoms of malnutrition. The poorest of the customers I serve are also the sickest. I have witnessed toothless mouths in the young and old. Mental retardation is also a common trait among many of them. I have even witnessed one unfortunate woman whose skin was a pale green color. These people are dying a slow starvation and they don’t even know it.

Doesn’t that just break your heart?

People are living like that, and yet America discards 263 million pounds of food every single day.

Something is fundamentally wrong with the way our system works.

So what is society going to do as the number of hungry people continues to grow in this country and around the world?

Well, according to ABC News, some scientists plan to feed them with flour made out of bugs…

A team of MBA students were the recipients of the 2013 Hult Prize earlier this week, providing them with $1 million in seed money to produce an insect-based, protein-rich flour for feeding malnourished populations in other countries. The product is called Power Flour.

“It’s a huge deal because we had a very ambitious but highly executable five-year plan in place,” said team captain Mohammed Ashour, whose team hails from McGill University in Montreal. “So winning this prize is a great step in that direction.”

Ashour, along with teammates Shobhita Soor, Jesse Pearlstein, Zev Thompson and Gabe Mott, will be immediately working with an advisory board to recruit farmers and workers in Mexico, where a population of roughly 4 million live in slum conditions with widespread malnutrition.

“We will be starting with grasshoppers,” Ashour said.

Are you ready for a “protein-rich flour” made out of grasshoppers?

I know that I am not.

And in Japan, scientists have actually been working on a way to create meat out of poop.  You can read more about that right here.

Perhaps if we just quit wasting so much food we would be able to feed everybody without resorting to such craziness.

These days, an increasing number of Americans are fighting back against the colossal waste that they see all around them.  Some have even chosen to take advantage of the waste by regularly going “dumpster diving”.  The following is how I described “dumpster diving” in one of my previous articles…

Have you ever thought about getting your food out of a trash can?  Don’t laugh.  Dumpster diving has become a hot new trend in America.  In fact, dumpster divers even have a trendy new name.  They call themselves “freegans”, and as the economy crumbles their numbers are multiplying.  Many freegans consider dumpster diving to be a great way to save money on groceries.  Others do it because they want to live more simply.  Freegans that are concerned about the environment view dumpster diving as a great way to “recycle” and other politically-minded freegans consider dumpster diving to be a form of political protest.  But whatever you want to call it, the reality is that thousands upon thousands of Americans will break out their boots, rubber gloves and flashlights and will be jumping into dumpsters looking for food once again tonight.

Who knows – perhaps some enterprising young dumpster diver will end up fishing the vanilla cupcakes that I wanted out of Safeway’s dumpsters this evening.

It is amazing what some of these dumpster divers are able to recover from “the trash”.  In North Carolina, one man even takes his son dumpster diving with him…

A programmer by day, Todd takes to the streets of North Carolina by night, digging through Dumpsters at drug stores and grocery stores all around his rural neighborhood.

“You would be simply amazed at what businesses throw out,” he said. “I’ve only had to buy two loaves of bread all year. … Last week I had a trunk full of cereal, cookies, chips and ramen noodles.”

Todd slinks in and out of smelly places with low-light flashlights to evade rent-a-cops who will shoo him away.  Most nights, his 14-year-old son comes along.

Unfortunately, dumpster diving is not as easy as it used to be.

As dumpster diving has soared in popularity, some grocery stores have responded by putting locks on their dumpsters.

And in some areas of the country, police have even started regularly arresting dumpster divers.

But in the end, dumpster diving was not going to be a permanent solution anyway.

A permanent solution would be to quit wasting so much food.

I applaud the grocery store chains that choose to donate their expired food to homeless shelters and food banks.

We need to see a lot more of that going on.

And in our own homes we need to find ways to give more food away and waste less of it.

All of this needless wasting of food does not have to happen.  Let’s work together to find some solutions.

Thanks To Obamacare, Employer-Based Health Insurance Is Becoming An Endangered Species

Obamacare 2013Barack Obama promised to fundamentally transform America, and when it comes to health care he has definitely kept his promise.  Thanks to Obamacare, health care spending is up, health insurance premiums are up, the number of hours Americans are working is down and employer-based health insurance is becoming an endangered species.  Of course employer-based health insurance will not disappear completely any time soon, but it has been steadily shrinking for over a decade, and Obamacare will greatly accelerate that decline.  If you go back to 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  That was pretty good.  Today, only 54.9 percent of all Americans are covered by employment-based health insurance, and now thousands upon thousands of U.S. employers are considering reducing the scope of the health plans they offer to employees or eliminating them altogether due to Obamacare.  If you are thinking that this sounds like a potential nightmare for millions of Americans families, you would be exactly right.

There have already been widespread reports of companies dropping health insurance, but nobody knows for sure how widespread the carnage will be.  According to Businessweek, the surveys that have been done up to this point have come up with widely varying results…

A Deloitte study last year suggested 10 percent of employers would stop offering group health plans. A widely criticized McKinsey report from 2011 put the number as high as one-third. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest projections suggest 8 million fewer people will be covered by employer plans five years from now under the ACA than without it. Many of them will get policies through health insurance exchanges instead.

But what everyone does agree on is that employer-based health coverage will continue to diminish.

And we are already watching this happen right in front of our eyes.  Just this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the largest security guard firm in the United States is dropping health coverage for 55,000 employees…

The nation’s largest provider of security guards plans to discontinue its lowest-cost health plans and steer roughly 55,000 workers to new government-sponsored insurance exchanges for coverage next year, in the latest sign of the fraying ties between employment and health care.

The U.S. arm of Sweden’s Securitas AB is among more than 1,200 employers that offer the kind of bare-bones health plans that must be phased out beginning Jan. 1 under the health-care law. Nearly four million people are enrolled in these so-called mini-med plans, which cap benefits to participants, sometimes at as little as $3,000 a year.

“The mini-meds go away and we’re not replacing them,” said Jim McNulty, a spokesman for Securitas’s U.S. operation. “Their option is to go to the exchanges.”

Other big employers, including Darden Restaurants Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Trader Joe’s Co., say they will stop offering health insurance to part-time workers, and will direct those employees to the state exchanges. Darden, Home Depot and Trader Joe’s previously offered mini-meds to their part timers.

Speaking of Trader Joe’s, I wrote about how they are eliminating health coverage for part-time workers the other day.  Instead of providing health insurance for their part-time workers, Trader Joe’s will be writing them a check and pushing them on to the Obamacare exchanges…

Trader Joe’s, the grocer once lauded for providing health care coverage to its part-time workers, is about to push those employees off its plan.

According to a memo obtained by the Huffington Post, the company will stop covering employees who work less than 30 hours per week.

The change is set for the start of 2014. Instead of insurance, workers instead will get a check for $500 in January.

“Depending on income you may earn outside of Trader Joe’s, we believe that with the $500 from Trader Joe’s and the tax credits available under the [Affordable Care Act (ACA)], many of you should be able to obtain health care coverage at very little if any net cost to you,” said Trader Joe CEO Dan Bane in the memo.

And this is a huge reason why the shift from full-time work to part-time work in America has accelerated this year.  Obamacare creates an incentive for companies to have more part-time workers and less full-time workers.  In fact, almost all of the jobs that have been “created” by the U.S. economy in 2013 have been part-time jobs.

But it is incredibly difficult to try to support a family on a part-time job.  Sadly, the quality of our jobs continues to decline rapidly and only 47 percent of all adults have a full-time job in America today.  This is only going to continue to get even worse under Obamacare.

As a result of these trends, more Americans are going to be forced to go out and buy health insurance “on the individual market”.  When they do, they are likely to be in for a really nasty surprise…

Andy and Amy Mangione of Louisville, Ky. and their two boys are just the kind of people who should be helped by ObamaCare. But they recently got a nasty surprise in the mail.

“When I saw the letter when I came home from work,” Andy said, describing the large red wording on the envelope from his insurance carrier, “(it said) ‘your action required, benefit changes, act now.’ Of course I opened it immediately.”

It had stunning news. Insurance for the Mangiones and their two boys,which they bought on the individual market, was going to almost triple in 2014 — from $333 a month to $965.

The insurance carrier made it clear the increase was in order to be compliant with the new health care law.

Are you ready to have your health insurance premiums potentially double or triple?

In other cases, families are discovering that health insurance companies are simply cancelling their health insurance plans…

Across the country, insurers are sending out ObamaCare-induced health plan death notices to untold tens of thousands of other customers in the individual market. Twitter users are posting their ObamaCare cancellation notices and accompanying rate increases:

Linda Deright posted her letter from Regency of Washington state: “63 percent jump, old policy of 15 yrs. cancelled.” Karen J. Dugan wrote: “Received same notice from Blue Shield CA for our small business. Driving into exchange and no info since online site is down.” Chris Birk wrote: “Got notice from BCBS that my current health plan is not ACA compliant. New plan 2x as costly for worse coverage.” Small-business owner Villi Wilson posted his letter from HMSA Blue Cross Blue Shield canceling his individual plan and added: “I thought Obama said if I like my health care plan I can keep my health care plan.”

In fact, this even happened to one member of Congress.  U.S. Representative Cory Gardner had purchased health insurance on his own because he wanted to experience what his constituents were going through, and he recently got a letter informing him that his old plan had been “discontinued”…

“After my current plan is discontinued,” he wrote last week, “the closest comparable plan through our current provider will cost over 100 percent more, going from roughly $650 a month to $1,480 per month.” He now carries his ObamaCare cancellation notice with him as hardcore proof of the Democrats’ ultimate deception.

Is this what Obama was talking about when he promised that we could keep our old health insurance plans if we were happy with them?

In the end, millions upon millions of us are going to get pushed on to the Obamacare health insurance exchanges.

We were promised that there would be lots of competition and that prices would be reasonable.

Unfortunately, in some areas of the country it turns out that the “exchanges” are turning out to be “monopolies” where consumers will only have one company to choose from…

“Although seven insurance companies currently operate in North Carolina, under the new Obamacare exchanges, those options will dwindle down to one in the majority of counties,” Ellmers said Thursday following the disclosure of figures by federal health officials showing that more than 60 percent of North Carolina counties will have only one insurance provider option under Obamacare: Blue Cross Blue Shield.

“The whole point of an online marketplace was to provide options, so North Carolinians could go online, compare prices, and choose plans from different companies. That is how competition is supposed to work!,” Ellmers said.

Beginning October 1 under Obamacare, Blue Cross Blue Shield will be the only health insurance provider serving the entire state of North Carolina in the new Obamacare exchanges, serving all 100 of the state’s counties. Its competitor Coventry Health Care, which is owned by Aetna, will only reach 39 counties.

That leaves 61 counties, or 61 percent of all the state’s counties, in a Blue Cross Blue Shield-only zone.

Not only that, but a lot of these exchanges are not even going to be ready to function properly on October 1st.  For example, according to the Washington Post, the D.C. “health marketplace” is a complete and total mess at this point…

Just days away from launch, the District of Columbia’s health marketplace is announcing a pretty significant delay.

While the D.C. Health Link will launch a Web site on October 1, shoppers will not have access to the their premium prices until mid-November. The delay comes after the District marketplace discovered “a high error rate” in calculating the tax credits that low- and middle-income people will use to purchase insurance on the marketplace.

The insurance marketplaces, if working as plan, are supposed to spit out an estimate for a tax credit after a shopper enters in some basic information about where she lives and how much she earns. In the District, that won’t happen next month. Instead, the eligibility determination will be made “off-line by experts” by early November.

So who is going to benefit from this new system?

Well, it turns out that the health insurance companies will greatly benefit.  Health insurance companies helped write Obamacare, and their stock prices have absolutely soared since Obamacare was signed into law.  If you doubt this, just check out the amazing charts in this article.

Not that they were hurting under the old system either.  They have been raking in gigantic mountains of cash for years while trying to provide as little health care as possible.  For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam“.

For the rest of us, Obamacare is going to be even worse than the old system.  A 2013 Health Care Survey that polled 200 top health care professionals discovered the following about what they believe Obamacare will bring…

— 53 percent, “Quality of health insurance policies will suffer.”

— 51 percent, “Quality of care will go down.”

— 49 percent, “The law is overly complicated.”

— 42 percent, “Insurance exchanges will be poorly managed.”

— 37 percent, “The law still allows insurance companies to be the middleman.”

— 32 percent, “Too complex for businesses.”

— 19 percent, “Americans will die earlier.”

So Americans are going to pay more, get worse care, have more paperwork and a more complicated system, and they are likely to die younger too?

Wow, that sounds like a great deal.

Where do we sign up?

$5.25 Million For Senate Hair Care And 21 Other Ways Politicians Are Living The High Life At Your Expense

Barack Obama John Boehner Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid Mitch McConnellIf you want to live the high life, you don’t have to become a rap star, a professional athlete or a Wall Street banker.  All it really takes is winning an election.  Right now, more than half of all the members of Congress are millionaires, and most of them leave “public service” far wealthier than when they entered it.  Since most of them have so much money, you would think that they would be willing to do a little “belt-tightening” for the sake of the American people.  After all, things are supposedly “extremely tight” in Washington D.C. right now.  In fact, just the other day Nancy Pelosi insisted that there were “no more cuts to make” to the federal budget.  But even as they claim that things are so tough right now, our politicians continue to live the high life at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.  The statistics that I am about to share with you are very disturbing.  Please share them with everyone that you know.  The American people deserve the truth.

According to the Weekly Standard, an absolutely insane amount of money is being spent on the “hair care needs” of U.S. Senators…

Senate Hair Care Services has cost taxpayers about $5.25 million over 15 years. They foot the bill of more than $40,000 for the shoeshine attendant last fiscal year. Six barbers took in more than $40,000 each, including nearly $80,000 for the head barber.

Keep in mind that there are only 100 U.S. Senators, and many of them don’t have much hair left at this point.

But hair care is just the tip of the iceberg.  The following are 21 other ways that our politicians are living the high life at your expense…

#1 According to Roll Call’s annual survey of Congressional wealth, the super wealthy in Congress just continue to get much wealthier even though they are supposedly dedicating their lives to “public service”…

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) is the richest Member of Congress for the second year in a row, reporting a vast fortune that in 2011 had a minimum net worth surpassing $300 million for the first time.

McCaul is followed by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who reported a minimum net worth of $198.65 million, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who reported a minimum net worth of $140.55 million. The two lawmakers swapped places since last year’s list.

The lawmakers who round out the top five, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), also flipped positions from 2010 to 2011, with Warner’s reported minimum worth rising about $9 million to $85.81 million and Rockefeller’s minimum worth rising slightly to $83.08 million.

#2 Amazingly, the 50th most wealthy member of Congress has a net worth of 6.14 million dollars.

#3 At this point, more than half of those “serving the American people” in Congress are millionaires.

#4 In one recent year, an average of $4,005,900 of U.S. taxpayer money was spent on “personal” and “office” expenses per U.S. Senator.

#5 Once they leave Washington, former members of Congress continue to collect huge checks for the rest of their lives…

In 2011, 280 former lawmakers who retired under a former government pension system received average annual pensions of $70,620, according to a Congressional Research Service report. They averaged around 20 years of service. At the same time, another 215 retirees (elected in 1984 or later with an average of 15 years of service) received average annual checks of roughly $40,000 a year.

#6 Speaker of the House John Boehner would bring home a yearly pension of close to $85,000 if he left Congress when his current term ends in 2014.

#7 At this point, quite a few former lawmakers are collecting federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually.  That list includes such notable names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.

#8 The U.S. government is spending approximately 3.6 million dollars a year to support the lavish lifestyles of former presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

#9 Nearly 500,000 federal employees now make at least $100,000 a year.

#10 During one recent year, the average federal employee in the Washington D.C. area received total compensation worth more than $126,000.

#11 During one recent year, compensation for federal employees came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.

#12 If you can believe it, there are 77,000 federal workers that make more than the governors of their own states do.

#13 When Joe Biden and his staff took a trip to London, the hotel bill cost U.S. taxpayers $459,388.65.

#14 Joe Biden and his staff also stopped in Paris for one night.  The hotel bill for that one night came to $585,000.50.

#15 When Biden and his staff visited Moscow for two days in 2011, the total hotel bill came to $665,445.00.

#16 During 2012, the salaries of Barack Obama’s three climate change advisers combined came to a grand total of more than $370,000.

#17 Overall, 139 different White House staffers were making at least $100,000 during 2012, and there were 20 staffers that made the maximum of $172,200.

#18 It is estimated that the trip that the Obamas took to Africa cost U.S. taxpayers about 100 million dollars.

#19 The Obamas only have one dog named “Bo”, but the White House “dog handler” reportedly makes $102,000 per year and sometimes he is even flown to where the Obamas are vacationing so that he can take care of the dog.

#20 There is always at least one projectionist at the White House 24 hours a day just in case there is someone that wants to watch a movie.  Apparently turning on a DVD player is too much to ask.

#21 In one recent year, more than 1.4 billion dollars was spent on the Obamas.  Meanwhile, British taxpayers only spent about 58 million dollars on the entire royal family.

So who pays for all of this extravagance?

The American people do of course.

Unfortunately, what most of our politicians fail to understand is that most families are struggling tremendously right now.

This week, Yahoo featured the story of a 77-year-old former executive that is now flipping burgers and serving drinks to make ends meet.  He says that he now earns in a week what he once earned in a single hour, but he is thankful to have a job in this economic environment…

It seems like another life. At the height of his corporate career, Tom Palome was pulling in a salary in the low six-figures and flying first class on business trips to Europe.

Today, the 77-year-old former vice president of marketing for Oral-B juggles two part-time jobs: one as a $10-an-hour food demonstrator at Sam’s Club, the other flipping burgers and serving drinks at a golf club grill for slightly more than minimum wage.

While Palome worked hard his entire career, paid off his mortgage and put his kids through college, like most Americans he didn’t save enough for retirement. Even many affluent baby boomers who are approaching the end of their careers haven’t come close to saving the 10 to 20 times their annual working income that investment experts say they’ll need to maintain their standard of living in old age.

So many Americans are barely making it from month to month at this point.  Most people work very, very hard for their money, and it is very discouraging to see our politicians waste our hard-earned tax dollars so frivolously.

Fortunately, there are signs that the American people are starting to get fed up with all of this.  According to a stunning new Gallup survey, more Americans than ever before (60 percent) believe that the federal government has too much power.

So what do you think?

Do you think that the government is too big and too wasteful?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

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