Jonathan Gruber – The Burning Platform

Emails Show Jonathan Gruber Played Bigger Role with Obama Administration on Healthcare Than Previously Admitted

Jonathan Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist whose comments about the health-care law touched off a political furor, worked more closely than previously known with the White House and top federal officials to shape the law, previously unreleased emails show.

The emails show frequent consultations between Mr. Gruber and top Obama administration staffers and advisers in the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services on the Affordable Care Act. They show he informed HHS about interviews with reporters and discussions with lawmakers, and he consulted with HHS about how to publicly describe his role.

The White House has described Mr. Gruber as having a limited role in crafting the law. President Barack Obama in 2014 said Mr. Gruber was “some adviser who never worked on our staff.” Mr. Gruber told Congress last year he disagreed with the widespread characterization of his role as the “architect” of Mr. Obama’s health-care plan.

“Thank you for being an integral part of getting us to this historic moment,” according to Sept. 9, 2009 email to Mr. Gruber from Jeanne Lambrew, a top Obama administration health adviser who worked at HHS and the White House. In a November 2009 email, she called Mr. Gruber “our hero.”

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– From the Wall Street Journal article: MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber Had Bigger Role in Health Law, Emails Show

Pretty much anyone reading this post will be intimately familiar with Jonathan “stupidity of the American voter” Gruber. In case you need a refresher, here’s an excerpt from last fall’s piece, Video of the Day – Obamacare Architect Credits “Lack of Transparency” and “Stupidity of the American People” for Passage of Healthcare Law:

An architect of the federal healthcare law said last year that a “lack of transparency” and the “stupidity of the American voter” helped Congress approve ObamaCare.

He suggested that many lawmakers and voters didn’t know what was in the law or how its financing worked, and that this helped it win approval.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber said. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

Continue reading “Emails Show Jonathan Gruber Played Bigger Role with Obama Administration on Healthcare Than Previously Admitted”

OBAMACARE WILL ONLY COST $50,000 PER NEWLY INSURED AMERICAN

How is the Savior doing?

Why isn’t this the lead news story on every mainstream media station in America? Why is the only story about this in a UK newspaper?

Obama declared in 2009 that Obamacare wouldn’t add one dime to the deficits. He was right. It is going to add AT LEAST $1.35 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years according to the usually wildly optimistic CBO. You can probably double that to get the real cost.

When Obama and his shills were propagandizing their healthcare plan to the ignorant masses, they declared that 30 million uninsured Americans would be insured. According to the CBO, 30 million Americans will still be uninsured in 2025, and we will have incurred $1.35 trillion of costs to insure some 25 million people over the next ten years. That is $50,000 per newly insured person.

And I don’t believe that either. The MSM and Obama keep blathering about 9 million people signing up for Obamacare. They aren’t newly insured. The majority have dropped plans they already had to get some “free” healthcare. Companies are booting people who had insurance to help their bottom lines and let the American taxpayer foot the bill.

Obamacare was a scam from the very beginning. It was sold to the American public with blatant lies, misinformation, and propaganda. How are you spending that $2,500 annual savings in healthcare premiums Obama promised in 2009?

The criminal class ruling this country will do anything to get what they want, pillage your wealth, and destroy the country. They even admit it:

“You can’t do it political, you just literally cannot do it. Transparent financing and also transparent spending. I mean, this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes the bill dies. Okay? So it’s written to do that,” Gruber said. “In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in, you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical to get for the thing to pass. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.” – Jonathan Gruber – Obamacare architect

Hat tip Thinker

Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says bombshell budget report

Stunning figure comes from Congressional Budget Office report that revised cost estimates for the next 10 years
Government will spend $1.993 TRILLION over a decade and take in $643 BILLION in new taxes, penalties and fees related to Obamacare
The $1.35 trillion net cost will result in ‘between 24 million and 27 million’ fewer Americans being uninsured – a $50,000 price tag per person at best
The law will still leave ‘between 29 million and 31 million’ nonelderly Americans without medical insurance
Numbers assume Obamacare insurance exchange enrollment will double between now and 2025

Continue reading “OBAMACARE WILL ONLY COST $50,000 PER NEWLY INSURED AMERICAN”

Obamacare Architects At Harvard Furious After Learning They Are Not Exempt From Obamacare

My sides hurt from laughing so hard.

The money quote: ” what is really pissing Harvard off, is that as its perennial next door competitor MIT, as expressed by one professor Jonathan Gruber, made it quite clear that only a nation as stupid as America would allow such as an opaque law as Obamacare to be passed. “

Via ZeroHedge

The brain incubator at Harvard, the place which according to legend, and certainly the US News and World Report’s annual paid college infomercial, is the repository for some of the smartest people in the world, is furious.

The reason – Harvard’s illustrious faculty has learned that they too will be subject to their own policy recommendations as relates to Obamacare, which they themselves helped conceive. As the left-leaning NYT reported earlier today, “for years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.”

Because Harvard’s brilliant ivory tower economists and public policy wonks know precisely how to fix the world… as long as said fix never applies to them.

And sure enough, the faculty did everything in its power to make sure it never had to suffer the consequences of its own brilliance…

“Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.“

… But it was too late:

The faculty vote came too late to stop the cost increases from taking effect this month, and the anger on campus remains focused on questions that are agitating many workplaces: How should the burden of health costs be shared by employers and employees? If employees have to bear more of the cost, will they skimp on medically necessary care, curtail the use of less valuable services, or both?

And it just gets better:

“Harvard is a microcosm of what’s happening in health care in the country,” said David M. Cutler, a health economist at the university who was an adviser to President Obama’s 2008 campaign. But only up to a point: Professors at Harvard have until now generally avoided the higher expenses that other employers have been passing on to employees. That makes the outrage among the faculty remarkable, Mr. Cutler said, because “Harvard was and remains a very generous employer.”

Ah, hypocrisy: exactly the same whether it is at the lowliest of community colleges or the leading bastion of liberal thought.

In Harvard’s health care enrollment guide for 2015, the university said it “must respond to the national trend of rising health care costs, including some driven by health care reform,” otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act. The guide said that Harvard faced “added costs” because of provisions in the health care law that extend coverage for children up to age 26, offer free preventive services like mammograms and colonoscopies and, starting in 2018, add a tax on high-cost insurance, known as the Cadillac tax.

The faculty is enraged, ENRAGED that what it hoped would only apply to the plebian peasantry is just as applicable to the self-appointed smartest people in the world. Here’s Dick:

Richard F. Thomas, a Harvard professor of classics and one of the world’s leading authorities on Virgil, called the changes “deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university.”

And here’s Mary:

Mary D. Lewis, a professor who specializes in the history of modern France and has led opposition to the benefit changes, said they were tantamount to a pay cut. “Moreover,” she said, “this pay cut will be timed to come at precisely the moment when you are sick, stressed or facing the challenges of being a new parent.”

Why the anger? Because Harvard thought that it would be, drumroll, exempt from the Affordable Care Act which it was instrumental in conceiving :

The university is adopting standard features of most employer-sponsored health plans: Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor’s office visit, the charge is $20. For most other services, patients will pay 10 percent of the cost until they reach the out-of-pocket limit of $1,500 for an individual and $4,500 for a family.
Continue reading the main story

Previously, Harvard employees paid a portion of insurance premiums and had low out-of-pocket costs when they received care.

Kinda like how America worked before the tax that is Obamacare was forcefully shoved down everyone’s throat thanks to Harvard brilliant geniuses no less who decided it was time to treat the free market like their own socialist lab experiment. But hey, at least it helped “boost” Q1 Q3 GDP by 1%.

It has gotten so bad that Harvard, realizing it is not exempt for socialist utopia, is suffering from “distress” and “anxiety.”

The president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, acknowledged in a letter to the faculty that the changes in health benefits — though based on recommendations from some of the university’s own health policy experts — were “causing distress” and had “generated anxiety” on campus. But she said the changes were necessary because Harvard’s health benefit costs were growing faster than operating revenues or staff salaries and were threatening the budget for other priorities like teaching, research and student aid.

In response, Harvard professors, including mathematicians and microeconomists, have dissected the university’s data and question whether its health costs have been growing as fast as the university says. Some created spreadsheets and contended that the university’s arguments about the growth of employee health costs were misleading. In recent years, national health spending has been growing at an exceptionally slow rate.

We also learn that the only reason why it was called “Affordable Care” is because, apparently, it was unaffordable.

some ideas that looked good to academia in theory are now causing consternation. In 2009, while Congress was considering the health care legislation, Dr. Alan M. Garber — then a Stanford professor and now the provost of Harvard — led a group of economists who sent an open letter to Mr. Obama endorsing cost-control features of the bill. They praised the Cadillac tax as a way to rein in health costs and premiums.

Dr. Garber, a physician and health economist, has been at the center of the current Harvard debate. He approved the changes in benefits, which were recommended by a committee that included university administrators and experts on health policy.

In an interview, Dr. Garber acknowledged that Harvard employees would face greater cost-sharing, but he defended the changes. “Cost-sharing, if done appropriately, can slow the growth of health spending,” he said. “We need to be prepared for the very real possibility that health expenditure growth will take off again.”

But Jerry R. Green, a professor of economics and a former provost who has been on the Harvard faculty for more than four decades, said the new out-of-pocket costs could lead people to defer medical care or diagnostic tests, causing more serious illnesses and costly complications in the future.

“It’s equivalent to taxing the sick,” Professor Green said. “I don’t think there’s any government in the world that would tax the sick.”

But in her view, there are drawbacks to the Harvard plan and others like it that require consumers to pay a share of health care costs at the time of service. “Consumer cost-sharing is a blunt instrument,” Professor Rosenthal said. “It will save money, but we have strong evidence that when faced with high out-of-pocket costs, consumers make choices that do not appear to be in their best interests in terms of health.”

If you aren’t crying with laughter yet, you will now once the sheer idiocy of central planning, even when conceived by the world’s smartest people, is unveiled:

Harvard’s new plan is far more generous than plans sold on public insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. Harvard says its plan pays 91 percent of the cost of care for a typical consumer, while the most popular plans on the exchanges, known as silver plans, pay 70 percent, on average.

In many states, consumers have complained about health plans that limit their choice of doctors and hospitals. Some Harvard employees have said they will gladly accept a narrower network of health care providers if it lowers their costs. But Harvard’s ability to create such networks is complicated by the fact that some of Boston’s best-known, most expensive hospitals are affiliated with Harvard Medical School. To create a network of high-value providers, Harvard would probably need to exclude some of its own teaching hospitals, or discourage their use.

“Harvard employees want access to everything,” said Dr. Barbara J. McNeil, the head of the health care policy department at Harvard Medical School and a member of the benefits committee. “They don’t want to be restricted in what institutions they can get care from.”

In other words, compared to the rest of the socialist experiment they helped conceive, Harvard has it much, much better. “Although out-of-pocket costs over all for a typical Harvard employee are to increase in 2015, administrators said premiums would decline slightly. They noted that the university, which has an endowment valued at more than $36 billion, had an unusual program to provide protection against high out-of-pocket costs for employees earning $95,000 a year or less. Still, professors said the protections did not offset the new financial burdens that would fall on junior faculty and lower-paid staff members.”

But the punchline comes from none other than a sociologist:

“It seems that Harvard is trying to save money by shifting costs to sick people,” said Mary C. Waters, a professor of sociology. “I don’t understand why a university with Harvard’s incredible resources would do this. What is the crisis?”

Indeed: how dare a university with such “incredible resources” be forced to comply with the policy it itself helped create?

Of course, none of the above is the issue at hand: what is really pissing Harvard off, is that as its perennial next door competitor MIT, as expressed by one professor Jonathan Gruber, made it quite clear that only a nation as stupid as America would allow such as an opaque law as Obamacare to be passed. And, by implication, Harvard being subject to this law, makes its faculty about as stupid as the average American voter. And there is nothing more crushing, “distressing” and “anxiety-provoking” for a bunch of wealthy, ivory tower dwellers than seeing their own egos go down in flames.

Or, said otherwise: MIT 1 – Harvard 0.

Elite Contempt for Ordinary Americans

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and paid architect of Obamacare, has shocked and disgusted many Americans. In 2013, he explained to a University of Pennsylvania audience: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure (the Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” He added that the “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.” Most insulting were his previous statements that “the American voter is too stupid to understand” and his boast of Obamacare’s “exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”

We recall that back in 2010, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” That comment was just as insightful as her response to a CNSNews.com reporter who asked, “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” Unable to respond intelligently, Speaker Pelosi gave her best political response: “Are you serious? Are you serious?” When asked recently about Gruber, Pelosi said: “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill.” She was quickly caught in a lie because during the 2009 health care debate, she mentioned Gruber’s analysis at a news conference.

One little-noticed feature of Gruber’s speeches was the type of place where he felt comfortable talking about the use of deception and mocking American intelligence. His speeches took place at the University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Rhode Island. Universities are home to the academic elite — people who believe they have more intelligence than and superior wisdom to the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Gruber and his fellow academic elite have what they consider to be good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. But every tyrant who has ever lived has had what he considered good reasons.

America’s elite found on university campuses, in news media and in political office are chief supporters of reduced private property rights and reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion by the state. Their plan requires the elimination or attenuation of the free market and what is implied by it — voluntary exchange. Their reasoning is simple. Tyrants do not trust that people acting voluntarily will do what the tyrants think they should do. Therefore, tyrants want to replace the market and voluntary exchange with economic planning. Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite backed up by the brute force of government.

In a 1991 speech, Yale University President Benno Schmidt warned: “The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.” I watched the videos of Gruber’s speeches. Academics raised little concern as to either the dishonesty of Obamacare or the claim that Americans were too stupid to understand.

A study by my George Mason University colleague Daniel B. Klein, along with Charlotta Stern of the Swedish Institute for Social Research, titled “Professors and Their Politics: The Policy Views of Social Scientists” (http://tinyurl.com/qxne3db) concluded: “The academic social sciences are pretty much a one-party system. Were the Democratic tent broad, the one-party system might have intellectual diversity. But the data show almost no diversity of opinion among the Democratic professors when it comes to the regulatory, redistributive state: they like it. Especially when it comes to the minimum wage, workplace-safety regulation, pharmaceutical regulation, environmental regulation, discrimination regulation, gun control, income redistribution, and public schooling.”

Focusing only on Professor Gruber’s arrogance, we ignore the more important fact that he is highly representative of the academic mindset — the people who are brainwashing our youngsters.

In Defense of Obamacare’s Jonathan Gruber

Guest Post by Bill Bonner

The Divinely Appointed and the Elected

US stocks hit new highs last week. Gold fell back below the $1,200-an-ounce mark…

… and MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber came dangerously close to committing truth.

The ancient Egyptians believed Pharaoh was divine. They called him a god. That gave him the right to tell people what to do.

This belief persisted in ancient Rome. The Romans referred to the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar, as Divi Filius – “Son of the Divine.” Later, the emperor Caligula declared himself a god. (After announcing he would leave Rome to live in Alexandria to be worshiped as a god, his guardsmen assassinated him.)

And in Britain up until the Revolution of 1688, and in France up until its revolution a century later, people believed their king was divinely appointed. He wasn’t a god. But God had given him the divine right to tell others what to do.

Now people believe that God has nothing to do with it. Voters elect their leaders, who do what the public wants them to do.

cali

Malcolm McDowell as Caligula (1979)

Popular Myths

All of these descriptions of government are popular myths. Diary readers will recognize a drop of fresh water in the murky puddle of political fantasy in the recent remarks of Mr. Gruber who, as a consultant, helped put together the Obamacare bill:

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting this thing to pass.

If you have a law that makes explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it wouldn’t have passed.”

Poor Gruber is getting little support or appreciation. Instead of being thanked for helping us understand how the system really works, he is being assailed from right and left.

To the right, he is a slick political operative, deceiving the public to get what he wants. To the left, he is a dumbbell and a traitor, who has revealed a few too many unsavory ingredients in the Democrats’ sausages.

What can we do but rise in defense of Gruber, as we do with all underdogs, diehards and mental defectives? He is wrong about the stupidity of the American people. The typical voter is no dumber than the typical person he votes for.

Voters have better things to do than to study the rampant folderol of the legislative process. It would be time wasted, anyway, because he can do nothing about it. Besides, he is just doing what he should do: playing his role in the fantasy.

jonathan-gruber-ap #Grubered: admittedly the hashtag-spawning Dr. Gruber has greatly enhanced the entertainment value of the political circus

(Photo credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo)

A More Corrupt World

French king Louis XIV reportedly believed God gave him his job assignment. The king was supposed to rule; the population of France was supposed to submit to his rule. Each had a role to play.

Likewise in today’s America, the elite who control the workings of the government are supposed to pretend they are acting on behalf of the voters. Voters are supposed to believe it.

Voters could perfectly well understand what is going on if they invested the time and energy to look at it closely. But what would be the point? The system depends on the cooperation of the conniving Grubers as well as the “stupid” goobers. Both must work together to make a more corrupt world.

USA Today helped elucidate the mechanics of the fantasy in an article on “dark money” last week. Big Pharma sets up “advocacy groups” that pretend to be genuine public interest outfits, but whose real purpose is to push drugs.

The nuclear power industry operates a “Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.” It sounds like a citizens’ lobby; in reality it is an extension of the industry’s lobbying efforts.

And the Center for Consumer Freedom is a front for the junk-food industry, says USA Today. The newspaper doesn’t seem to like “dark money.” It wants the elite to do something to stop it. Why?

Like an alarm at 5 a.m., it disturbs the dream.

alarmclock

Dream-disturbing device

The above article is taken from the Diary of a Rogue Economist originally written for Bonner & Partners. Bill Bonner founded Agora, Inc in 1978. It has since grown into one of the largest independent newsletter publishing companies in the world. He has also written three New York Times bestselling books, Financial Reckoning Day, Empire of Debt and Mobs, Messiahs and Markets.

Post-Obamacare Syndrome Gruber Therapy®

Guest Post by Michelle Obama’s Mirror

The list of people who have been “Grubered” is growing by the hour.

The Wise Cockatoo, with his little peacock.

The list – which started with the stupid American people – soon included stupid journalists who were mis-misinformed about the math, and then stupid politicians like Max Baucus, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. And then yesterday Big Guy himself added his name to the list of the “grubered” when he said he was shocked about the controversy involving “some advisor, not even on staff” and claimed again that ObamaCare was 110% transparent.

Alas, as Clarice points out, Jonny was not as insignificant as many would have him:

But you cannot pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars, cite him in your speeches and on your websites and in your briefs as an authority and then credibly pretend you don’t know him.(READ THE REST!)

And apparently we haven’t even heard the worst of it yet according to Rich Weinstein, private citizen and investigative cub reporter at large.

So it strikes me that there may be many of you out there who in the coming days will find yourselves wishing you had a way to wipe that smug, condescending smirk off the elitist face of “ Mr. Mandate” Gruber. Well, now you can, with my patented Post-Obamacare Syndrome (POS) Gruber Therapy®!

If you’ve already taken advantage of my free POS Barry Therapy®, no further instructions are required. If you’re new to my clinic, the therapy sessions are easy and free (unlike ObamaCare!). It requires no previous experience, very little knowledge, has no rules and the objective is unclear – just like our foreign policy.

For relief at any time, here’s all you have to do:

Navigate to my permanent Barry Therapy Clinic (it’s over there -–> in my sidebar) and select the “Gruber” session
Watch Gruber free fall, banging into and bouncing off the ObamaCare bumpers to your hearts’ content
When Jonny lands in a crevasse and stops falling, just grab him by the head, butt or feet with your mouse and push, pull or squeeze him over, under or through the bumpers. He’ll even fit through invisible cracks – just like a rodent!
If at any time you feel the need to increase the intensity of the session, just grab Gruber with your mouse and fling him wherever you want! He’ll just keep falling.

No prescription is required and treatment will be available whenever you need it. So go ahead, give both levels of my customized POS Gruber Therapy® a go (Level I, with bumpers and Level II, with exposed hypodermic needles). I’m certain you’ll feel better instantly.

Remember: you can’t fix smug, butt you can fling it around

Level I:

Level II

BAD WEEK FOR FREEDOM

“We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.”– Henry Miller

With each passing week it seems this country spirals further into the depths of a frightening dystopian fantasy reminiscent of Huxley and Orwell’s dark world of isolation, fear and government brutality portrayed in their masterpieces Brave New World and 1984. I keep speculating whether it’s me that’s crazy and not the things I’m witnessing on a daily basis. The President signs the National Defense Authorization Act, passed by an overwhelming majority of Congress, which allows the government to imprison American citizens indefinitely without charge. And there is barely a squeak from the docile masses as they are soothed by Obama promising to never use that part of the law. I bet you $10,000 a President will invoke that portion of the NDAA in the very near future.

Jon Corzine, a card carrying member of the ruling elite .01%, remains free to roam one of his five palatial estates after stealing $1.6 billion from the accounts of farmers, widows, and thousands of other “clients” of MF Global. In his spare time he raises money for Obama’s re-election campaign. The Federal government, Federal courts and Wall Street banking cabal have circled the wagons and declared the money just vaporized, even though it sits in Jamie Dimon’s vaults at J.P. Morgan. No one is being prosecuted for this deliberate thievery. The psychopathic Wall Street criminals have been getting away with murder for so long they act invulnerable to societal mores and scoff at our laws, rules and regulations. Those are for the 99%. When you control the politicians, regulators, courts, and mainstream media, it’s easy to get away with murder. The jackals and hyenas are laughing in their NYC penthouse suites as they continue to collect $20 million bonuses for a job well done.

After this past week I’m apoplectic with rage and fury as the rule of law has been discarded and the Constitution trampled upon by a wealthy connected oligarchy bent upon using their absolute power to further enrich themselves. The Wall Street banks that committed the largest financial crime in history, including: fraud in the inducement, forgery, fabricating documents, bribing rating agencies to rate toxic mortgages as AAA, selling fraudulent derivatives to customers, shorting the derivatives they sold to their customers, throwing millions of Americans out of their homes, charging inflated and bogus fees during the foreclosure process, and conducting a colossal cover-up, were slapped on the wrist and made to pay a miniscule $5 billion to the millions of victims of their crimes. Not one banker has been prosecuted. Not one person has gone to jail. Justice in this country is a putrid joke. There has been no outrage from the general public. The propaganda spewed by the corporate media instructs the masses to rejoice at this fair and just verdict. The truth is that 95% of the population didn’t know or didn’t care about the 50 state foreclosure-gate settlement. They were engrossed by the huge controversy over M.I.A. flipping the bird during the Super Bowl halftime show and whether Madonna was upset about the incident.

“Free” Healthcare

While this travesty of justice was playing out, we were treated to a glimpse into the future of healthcare in America administered by politicians and bureaucrats based upon vote count expediency. The government drones at DHHS mandated from on high that every woman in America would receive “free” contraceptives from their employers. Obama had made this decision and instructed his minions to implement his visionary dictate. The outrage and anger from religious groups and employers was instantaneous. Obama saw the 2012 election slipping away and reversed course within a day. He is quite the man of principle. His “solution” was to force insurance companies to provide “free” contraception to any employee of a religious employer that didn’t provide that coverage in their insurance plan. When I hear these sociopathic politicians use the word “free” when describing healthcare or any of their thousands of bankrupt government programs, I have an overpowering impulse to smash something. Insurance companies will not provide “free” contraceptives to women. Insurance premiums will rise for everyone.

Remember Obama’s assertion about his government takeover of healthcare:

“As a consequence of the Affordable Care Act, premiums are going to be lower than they would be otherwise; health care costs overall are going to be lower than they would be otherwise.”

The next government program that reduces costs, provides better service, and is more efficient than the private market will be the first government program to do so. Examples of government ineptitude, corruption and waste include: Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, the Energy Dept., the Education Dept., and the Dept. of War. Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and chief architect of Obamacare and Romneycare, recently admitted the truth about Obamacare:

“After the application of tax subsidies, 59% of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31%. My findings reflect the high cost of folding state high risk pools into the [federal government’s] exchange — without using the money the state was already spending to subsidize those high risk pools.”

Based on what Obamacare has done for the American people before its full implementation in 2014, you’ll be begging for a death panel to put you out of your misery. The following “free” healthcare services were required to be covered by insurance companies in 2010:

Cover preventive care without co-pays or deductibles.
Allow adult children to stay on parents’ policies until age 26.
Increase annual coverage limits.
Cover children without regard for preexisting conditions.

Obama’s promise that families would save $2,500 per year in the future might come up a tad short, as insurance premiums skyrocketed by 9% in 2011. Not only have premiums soared, but many companies have increased co-pays from $10 to $25 for doctor visits.

Only a deceitful government busybody do-gooder would actually argue that forcing insurance companies to cover millions more Americans and cover pre-existing conditions would result in lower costs for the average family. I wonder what will happen in 2014 when 30 million more Americans are guaranteed “free” healthcare under Obamacare. The saddest part of this oncoming train wreck is that millions of willfully ignorant people actually believed the blatant lies and false storyline fed to them by sociopathic politicians who desire to control every aspect of their lives. These people believe they know what is best for you. They believe they are smarter than you. They do not care what means are required to achieve their ends of absolute domination over your life. Personal freedom, individual liberty and a critical thinking populace are the antithesis to the desires of the governing elite.

Home Sweet Home

The central planners within government and inhabiting the Federal Reserve are never in doubt that their theories, programs, solutions, mandates and schemes will achieve their desired outcome. The trouble for the American people is the desired result is not designed or planned to actually benefit them. The psychopaths drawn to politics, regulatory agencies, and government bureaucracies have no remorse or qualms about lying, utilizing propaganda, and instilling fear to achieve the ends that endorse their self serving agenda. Every dime of government spending is seized from the people by force or created out of thin air by an all knowing self-proclaimed Great Depression expert named Ben Bernanke. This Ivy League professor who has spent his entire life in academia and government thinks he knows which levers to pull to revive an economy that he destroyed. His wisdom is borne out in his prescient assessment of the U.S. housing market as it was imploding:

“We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.” – July 2005

“House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.” – October 2005

“Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.” – February 2006

“All that said, given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system. The vast majority of mortgages, including even subprime mortgages, continue to perform well. Past gains in house prices have left most homeowners with significant amounts of home equity, and growth in jobs and incomes should help keep the financial obligations of most households manageable.” – May 2007

It should be clear to everyone that Ben is a goddamn genius. You can see why the mainstream corporate media hangs on his every utterance. He has accepted no responsibility for his part in producing an epic housing collapse and the subsequent recession that continues to this day. His lack of conscience comes in handy as he has destroyed the finances of millions of senior citizens dependent upon interest income to make ends meet. Having no guiding principles or ethics allows him to declare with a straight face that inflation is well contained as gas prices approach $4.00 per gallon, food prices surge 10%, and his inflationary policies contribute to revolutions around the globe.

Last week this sage spoke to the Home Builders Association and left no doubt that he has no interest in what is best for the American people. His economic remedies are the exact opposite of what is needed to cure the disease of a debt ravaged society. Dr. Bernake’s prescription is more debt fueled spending by consumers to refill the coffers on Wall Street. This is not surprising considering he is nothing but a puppet of Dimon, Pandit, Blankfein and the rest of the Wall Street cabal. His speech revealed his allegiances:

“One of the effects of declines in housing wealth is to reduce the ability and willingness of households to spend. It appears that recent declines in housing wealth may be reducing consumer spending between $200 billion and $375 billion per year. That reduction corresponds to lower living standards for many Americans. And, importantly, lower sales of goods and services also reduce the incentives of firms to invest and hire, thereby slowing the recovery. Low or negative equity creates additional problems for households. It reduces financial flexibility: Homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages cannot tap home equity to pay for emergency health expenses or their children’s college educations.”

Whenever I read Bernanke’s words, I’m reminded of George Orwell’s quote about intelligent people:

“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”

This is a man who believes he knows better than the market. He’s an economics professor that doesn’t believe in the law of supply and demand as taught in Econ 101. He thinks he can control home prices. He thinks he knows the ideal interest rate. He thinks he knows just how much money printing will revive the economy. He believes a healthy economy is driven by artificially propping up home prices, encouraging people to spend money they don’t have, recommending that homeowners borrow against their homes ($3 trillion borrowed and pissed away from 2003 through 2008), and forcing banks to make loans to subprime borrowers – again. His solution to the millions of bank owned homes is to use the taxpayer owned Fannie and Freddie to initiate bulk discount sales of these homes to his friends in the .01% so they can turn around and rent them to their former owners. I wish someone could explain to me how this helps the 99%. It is another backdoor bailout of Wall Street on the straining backs of the American taxpayer.

Obama’s housing solutions in 2009-2010 included multiple home buyer tax credits, loan modification programs, and a myriad of other Keynesian claptrap spending schemes. Bernanke supported all of those measures. They spent $30 billion of your tax dollars in an effort to artificially prop up home prices. Home prices have fallen 10% since they threw your money down the rat hole where all government programs reside, and they continue to fall. These central government planners don’t like to publicize the fact they continue to operate Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA as a way to shift losses from Wall Street to Main Street. Fannie and Freddie have lost $160 billion of your tax dollars since 2008, but amazingly the losses don’t show up in the Federal budget because reality has no place in politics or governmental accounting. The FHA just announced they will require a taxpayer bailout for the first time in their 78 year existence, as they lose $5 billion of your money per year on behalf of the Wall Street banking cartel. The toxic mortgages that don’t reside on the books of Fannie, Freddie and the FHA are sitting on Ben’s balance sheet. They reside, hidden from public view, in the “Other Assets” section of the chart below. His tripling of the Federal Reserve balance sheet was done for one reason only – to save the Wall Street bankers, their shareholders, and their bondholders. His actions have in no way benefitted the American people or the American economy.

It is mind boggling the degree to which central planners like Bernanke, Geithner, Obama and Congress will inflict their vision of how the economy and world in general should operate upon the trusting masses. The American people want to believe their leaders are doing what is best for them. They like dwelling in a land of delusion, security and luxury, where government guarantees to protect them from: terrorists; Iranian invasion; saving for retirement; looking out for their own health; educating themselves; and accepting the consequences of living above their means. Their ability to distinguish between truth and propaganda has been thoroughly degraded by years of government proscribed education. We have chosen to become a knowingly ignorant nation of true believers. There is no time for critical thinking while we anticipate our next tweet about the death of drug addicted pop singer. We have been taught to love our servitude.

“…most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”– Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

The fallacy of government protecting you, taking care of you and providing you “free” benefits is so ingrained in the American psyche that it is virtually impossible to voluntarily reverse the trend. The truth that Americans refuse to acknowledge is that nothing is free in this life. We are not entitled to own a home, a free education, free healthcare, or a comfy privileged existence. Everything government provides is taken by force from someone else. Everything government does has a cost. Americans have traded freedom and liberty for the appearance of safety and security.The cost is constant war, getting groped by TSA perverts, surveillance by government agencies, threat of imprisonment without charges and a $1 trillion price tag per year. The cost of “free” healthcare is mind numbingly ludicrous rules and regulations for doctors and patients, massive fraud, outrageously expensive procedures and medications, and a $100 trillion unfunded liability left for future generations. The ultimate cost of an overbearing, all controlling government will be economic collapse and revolution.

Who Decides?

“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” – Joseph Stalin

The concluding act during this bad week for freedom occurred on Saturday in the great state of Maine. When it became clear that Ron Paul was going to win the Maine caucuses, the GOP establishment, that has already anointed Mitt Romney the Republican nominee, decided the people of Maine would be told who won. Using the excuse of an impending snowstorm (less than 1 inch), the powers that be cancelled the caucuses in Washington County where a large contingent of youthful Ron Paul supporters dominated. The Girl Scouts didn’t cancel their event in the same county that day. The men who cancelled the caucus are strong Romney supporters. This was a blatant Stalinist act of voter disenfranchisement. The GOP leaders declared those votes would not count in the totals. Despite this despicable act of rigging an election, Ron Paul doubled his vote percentage from 2008. His message of freedom, liberty, non-interventionism, sound money and self-reliance is reverberating across the land among young people who have not been programmed by the governing elite and the corporate mass media. The establishment will do everything in their power, including vote fraud, to prevent Ron Paul’s anti-establishment message from being heard.

A small delegation of authoritative, rich men continues to pull the strings in this country. The examples I’ve sited in the last week prove we are moving ever more rapidly towards what Friedrich Hayek described as a‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. The actions of the governing class point to no other conclusion as described by Simon Black:

Hundreds of thousands of mortgage contracts abrogated by the Federal government;
Suspension of gun rights by several local governments;
The continued criminalization of protest and free assembly;
Increased surveillance and police state tactics;
Authorization of military force and detention against the citizens;
Seizing and/or voiding pension systems into which workers have paid lifelong contributions;
Rejection of long-standing senior debt positions in favor of labor unions;
Executive and police agencies ruling by regulation and policy, not by legislative process;

When you pose the possibility of a dictatorship in America, the defender of freedom and democracy, old timers scoff and laugh off the possibility. We are the bright shining light on the mountaintop – that preemptively invades other countries; murders suspected foes with predator drones; imprisons and tortures foreigners in secret prisons; and plans to have 30,000 spy drones patrolling the skies over U.S. cities within the next few years. The government now has the authority to imprison U.S. citizens without cause for as long as they see fit. The government plans to lock down and control the internet. How could we possibly descend toward dictatorial rule? The conditions are perfect for sociopaths dwelling in government bureaucracies to make their move, as elucidated by Doug Casey:

“You may be thinking that what happened in places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and scores of other countries in recent history could not, for some reason, happen in the US. Actually, there’s no reason it won’t at this point. All the institutions that made America exceptional – including a belief in capitalism, individualism, self-reliance and the restraints of the Constitution – are now only historical artifacts.On the other hand, the distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time. Per capita, there were no more evil people in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Ceausescu’s Romania or Pol Pot’s Cambodia than there are today in the US. All you need is favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm.”- Casey Report

Call me a raging optimist, but I see positive signs that an irate tireless minority of Americans are coming to their senses and preparing for a showdown with the ruling oligarchy. The tremendous support for Ron Paul’s message among those under the age of 30 is inspiring. His devoted followers have incredible enthusiasm and will be a force to be reckoned with. The upcoming election will be won or lost based upon whether Ron Paul decides to run as a 3^rd Party candidate, spreading his inspirational message. The Occupy Movement is also being driven by people under the age of 30. Their courage and audacity in standing up to brutal establishment military tactics and focusing the attention of the world on the greed, avarice and corruption rampant throughout our economic and political system has given me hope that the good guys can win. Every day the Millenial generation gains strength as the power of the older generations slowly wanes.

The internet has proven to be the best weapon in the fight against the governing elite. It offers people the freedom to ignore government sponsored propaganda being blasted by the corporate media. Critical thinkers can connect with other critical thinkers, while seeking the truth and spreading ideas. You can examine websites like Zero Hedge, Jesse’s Café Americain, Of Two Minds, and Mish to comprehend what is really happening in your world. The tumult and outrage exhibited by millions when the despotic Congressional jackals attempted to pass SOPA and PIPA was inspirational. The people’s voice was heard loud and clear. The politicians ruling over our lives have no guiding principles or moral code. They peddle their votes to the highest bidder. They conduct polls to determine what their constituents want to hear and then shockingly tailor a message that voters find to be exactly what they think. These sociopaths only respond to one thing – being exposed as liars and thieves. When they are confronted by an irate citizenry they scatter like roaches in a West Philly row house kitchen when you turn the light on. Yes votes on SOPA turned to No votes quicker than the Federal government can spend a billion of your tax dollars (10 hours). Obama showed how principled his positions are by backtracking on his “free” contraception mandate in less than 24 hours. If we speak loud enough they will listen, or else.

The “or else” is reflected in the chart below showing gun purchases over the last ten years. Millions of good law abiding Americans are armed. The accelerating trend is a hopeful sign that we will not allow a small contingent of corrupt politicians backed by shadowy rich men (22 men have contributed 67% of all the Super Pac money in the GOP primaries), hiding from public view, to treat this country as their personal playground.

It was a bad week for freedom loving people, but I believe there are enough patriots left in this country to change our course. We are being buried under a blizzard of lies on a daily basis. We have a choice. We can support the existing corrupt crony capitalist establishment (Obama & Romney) or we can declare war on lies, deceit and misinformation by rallying behind the only person who would truly attempt to reverse decades of corruption, sleaze, incompetence, bloat, debt accumulation, and a warped version of free market capitalism – Ron Paul. He is the only public figure willing to level with the American people and tell them the truth. Will we let the concept of truth fade out of the world? The choice is ours.

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” – George Orwell