Voodoo Mathematics

Bill Brown 

We have been told since before his first race for the presidency how exquisitely brilliant is Barack Obama.  While I am not fully convinced (I say that with tongue firmly in cheek) of our President’s genius status, I am definitely impressed with the figures that his Administration’s mathematicians have put together regarding the cost of Obamacare.

 

Genius is not a strong enough word to describe those who are able to provide  MUCH more coverage than most of us have ever had or felt we needed to at least thirty million MORE people who have not been able to afford insurance before.  Yes, your insurance will include contraceptive coverage—even if you are ninety years old and sex is only a distant memory.  Your wife may be seventy-five years of age, but her coverage will include obstetric and pediatric insurance, in the unlikely event that she should become pregnant.  You never know, right?  But you will get that extra coverage and so much more for LESS money than your more minimal package cost you before Obamacare! Isn’t that remarkable?  How often these days do you get so much more for so much less?

 

But you haven’t heard anything yet.  Do you remember all those for whom the Progressives used to shed crocodile tears—those with pre-existing conditions that made them all but uninsurable; if they were able to find a company that would insure them, the policy was prohibitively expensive?  Well, rejoice!  Those people will now be insured, whether the insurance companies want to cover them or not.  And the best news is—it won’t cost them any more than your policy costs you—even if you are in the pink of health and have never been sick a day in your life!  And of course, they get all this for LESS MONEY than your more minimal coverage cost you under the old system!  While the insurance company that holds the policy of a person whose illnesses can be depended upon to require treatments costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, the cost of their policy will never be more than $25 or $30 a month; maybe slightly more, as Administration spokespersons explain it.

 

I’m waiting on these same geniuses to show life insurance companies how they can insure a seventy-six year old overweight, chronically tired old man who has endured six or seven surgeries, has high blood pressure and HBP (prostate) and a number of other health issues for one million dollars coverage for $25 a month.  Don’t tell me it can’t be done!  If they can figure out how to provide Obamacare to desperately ill people for the amount of money they claim their insurance will cost, figuring the latter problem out will be a snap. It wouldn’t be fair to lump me in with other old geezers with one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel.  I want to be charged what that eighteen-year-old young man pays who is playing football at an extremely high level because his conditioning and health are perfect.  It would be unfair to charge me more for life insurance simply because I’m old and sick.

 

Any problem you want these brilliant people to solve for you?  You don’t doubt that they can do it, do you?

 

 

 

If anything in this article is overstated, it might be because NOBODY knows what is in this monstrosity of a bill, and NOBODY knows how much it will cost.  All I know is, it will cost a hell of a lot more than the Progressives have told you!

AN UNREDEEMED PRESIDENCY

As election day draws near and the presidential campaigns execute their final strategies the winds of success appear to be at the backs of the Romney/Ryan team, and it’s not too imperious to envisage a Romney/Ryan victory. It appears that a significant part of the electorate agrees with the title of Niall Ferguson’s cogent essay entitled “Obama’s Gotta Go”. As we eagerly await their promising triumph on November 6th and, risking impetuousness, we deign to contemplate what a Romney presidency will resemble in its maiden year. 

From any perspective, looking forward, President Romney will undoubtedly have to play the part of America’s master repairman.  He has the unenviable task of repaving America’s avenue of exceptionalism, a road rendered potholed and fractured by the Obama administration. There are considerable fixes Romney the new renovator-in-chief must undertake, and if anyone is deserved of a “blame Obama” free pass it will be the new Chief Executive. But leaders don’t blame, they take responsibility for their actions, so it’s doubtful President Romney will exhibit behavior beneath his character and the office of the presidency.

President Romney will have to refurbish America’s ruptured domestic economic environment laden with Obama’s absurdist wealth redistribution policies and profligate spending sprees. He will have to remake a hegemonic America in decline due to President Obama’s feckless appeasement of America’s enemies and indifference and disregard towards its allies. But perhaps President Romney’s most daunting task for renovating America’s path of exceptionalism will be to restore a united America torn asunder by an Obama-led class warfare crusade. A crusade pitting American against American to assuage his personal disdain for a hallmark of Americanism embodied by the freedom loving rugged individualist who takes personal responsibility for their successes and failures. These are the very Americans President Obama fears and derides because he cannot control their independent spirit, intimidate their freedom of thought, nor render insecure their confident natures.

While a Romney presidency is committed to a renewal of American exceptionalism, the Obama presidency is only a remembrance of unfulfilled promise. The 2008 Obama pledges are legendary for their hollowness and now have the status of a parlor joke, to wit, “how is that hope and change working out for you?” Space does not permit the entire smorgasbord of utopias (over 500 by some accounts) offered up by candidate and President Obama. But because of their far-reaching consequences a few warrant call outs to capture the essence of his disappointing term. Candidate Obama professed he would revolutionize American governance by replacing backroom political cronyism with a presidency that would be “the most transparent administration in the history of our country”. It was candidate Obama who swore that he would reduce the national deficit in half by the end of his first term. In 2009 President Obama guaranteed that unemployment would be at 5.2% at the end of his first term and there would be 3% to 4% GDP growth in the final three years of his first term. There were the President’s infamous assurances that his ObamaCare legislation would be budget neutral, reduce premium costs and allow individuals to keep their existing coverage. The President avowed he would commence a “new beginning” between America and the Arab world through his policies of appeasement toward America’s enemies. These and the preponderance of other hopeful pieces of paradise promised by an Obama presidency are relegated to a wasteland of deceit and deception.

Obama partisans are chock full of excuses for the president’s fiascos.  Some justify President Obama’s failures due to his executive inexperience, so perhaps Mr. Obama ran afoul of one of the cardinal rules of business, which is to never over promise and under deliver. But his devotees also plead that now since that he has gotten his feet wet give him four more years. But, to quote one of Vice-President Joe Biden’s few lucid remarks, “…the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.” Some of the president’s acolytes have chalked up his failures as a consequence of his predecessor’s policies igniting the “blame Bush” strategy. If that is at play, and since every president inherits some undesirable policies and unfavorable domestic and geo-political environments, then it is reason enough to man the Oval office with someone who can live up to the challenges of the presidency. Finally, in keeping with the Obama finger-pointing presidency, the President’s disciples accuse the republicans in congress of partisanship and obstruction. This is mendacious and preposterous given that the Obama policies, which laid the groundwork for America’s current decline, were undertaken in the President’s first two years in office, a period in which the democrats controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The Obama presidency was unique for both it’s promise and it’s fortification. Without any notable experience to speak of on the part of candidate Obama an adoring mainstream media colluded with an ingenious presidential campaign to successfully fabricate the illusion of a candidate that was infallible and omnipotent. Candidate Obama was lauded and praised as the savior for the woes of the American Republic and he would right the injustices of the past with a wave of his majestic hand. From the failed, pork ridden stimulus to the Benghazi tragedy with flyovers to ObamaCare, Solyndra and his Middle East “American Apology Tour” the media’s coddling continued into his presidency while President Obama’s advisers strove feverishly to enable, defend and rationalize his failures. But the President’s aura of entitlement and enablement were ironically the causes of his failures and disappointments.

However it was how he failed that signifies the tragedy of his presidency. America’s post-modern presidential version of the “emperor with no clothes” luxuriated in praise and fumed at criticism. Handed every opportunity to succeed he stubbornly ignored the obvious manifestations of his failed socialist ideologies. He dug in his heels insisting on an economic agenda that wreaked havoc and misery on the middle class, the very group he claimed to champion in his class warfare campaign. His lethargic foreign engagement characterized as “leading from behind” emboldened America’s enemies resulting in a much more dangerous and tumultuous world for America than when he took office.

In spite of the dangers to America’s economic and international well being, the future of the Republic and his disregard for his oath of office the President was obdurate in his single mindedness. The Constitution is clear as to the president’s responsibilities and President Obama disregarded his solemn oath which was “to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Perhaps it is his ability that is at issue.

But the time for entertaining excuses or conjecture is over. In the parlance of the President’s many “let me be clear” moments it is now history’s time to write the Obama epitaph. Historians, unlike the President's sycophants, will not justify his failures nor inoculate his shortcomings. As with all Presidents Mr. Obama’s presidency will be reviewed and recollected historically on the merits of his accomplishments. He was dealt a hand that he willingly accepted and he failed to deliver. It was President Obama’s personal decision to selfishly satiate his personal dogmata at the expense of his sworn responsibility to act as steward of America’s welfare. For that reason he shall not be forgiven, and for that reason the Obama presidency's epitaph will forever be known as an unredeemed presidency.

FAST AND FURIOUS, SOLYNDRA AND ALL THAT JAZZ

“I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists — and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."

Presidential candidate Barack Obama, Des Moines, IA, November 10, 2007

Be wary of holier than thou campaign decrees. As the left’s messiah was paying tribute to himself in Iowa, George Kaiser, key Obama political bundler and investor in Solyndra, was most likely collecting his thoughts on how to wrangle some payola from his candidate, if elected. To wit paybacks are a bitch, especially for the American taxpayer.

The Obama regime has been busy lately triaging a number “what did you know and when did you know it” scandals, which are a hodgepodge of incompetence, cronyism and partisan bullying. The conventional wisdom is how they appear to be very Watergate-like. But the aroma of these scandals reeks more of “plead the fifth” Chicago- style gangsterism, the President's hometown, than the inside the beltway cloak and dagger trappings of Watergate.

Number one on the hit list resulted in the tragic death of an American border agent. “Fast and Furious" was an ATF gunrunning operation where 2,000 weapons were sold to small-time gun buyers in the hopes of tracing them to Mexican drug lords trafficking in weapons along the southwestern border and into Mexico. This botched sting operation has been connected to at least 11 violent crimes in the United States, including the killing of border patrol agent Brian Terry in Arizona with one of the ATF Fast and Furious weapons, and approximately 200 violent crimes in Mexico.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is busy investigating Fast and Furious and the Solyndra scandals. Rep. Issa also sits on the House Judiciary Committee and AG Eric Holder, America’s “crack” chief law enforcement officer, testified to that committee on May 3 claiming “sin conocimiento” in the whole Fast and Furious mess up until just a few weeks before the hearing.

But evidence surfaced that Holder was in cover up mode and he knew of Fast and Furious as of July 2010. In fact he had a conversation on the operation with Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) in the Senator’s office in January, 2011 and also told Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) on March 10, 2011 that he had learned of "concerns" about the program. So obviously Mr. Holder lied under oath to Congress as to his knowledge of this fiasco. In the wake of Mr. Holder’s congressional canards he threw under the bus and fired a number of ATF and U.S. attorney officials.

The looming question is why was this feckless operation initiated in the first place. Be careful if you’re planning on posing this question to an Obama spokesperson lest you have your head handed to you, just ask CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson. ATF Special Agent Peter Forcelli testified to Rep. Issa’s committee’s that the entire operation was a grand waste by saying, “The thought that the techniques used in the “Fast and Furious” investigation would result in “taking down a cartel” given the toothless nature of the “straw purchasing law” and the lack of a strong “firearms trafficking statute” is, in my opinion, delusional.”

Was Fast and Furious simply more incompetence emanating from the Obama regime, a la its economic policies, or was there something more insidious at play? Some claim that Fast and Furious was an elaborate attempt to further the Obama regime’s efforts to satisfy second amendment restrictions for its special interest lobbyists. Rep. Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Grassley (R-IA) have even posited that the Obama administration actually initiated the program as an advance attempt at furthering gun control in the U.S. In fact, ATF and Explosives agent, John Dodson told Rep. Issa’s House Oversight Committee that David Voth, supervisor of Fast and Furious was “jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about" marked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico.”

Rep. Issa’s committee has subpoenaed communications from top Justice dept. officials. But regardless of the committee’s findings as to whether Fast and Furious was due to ineptness or treachery,  AG Holder's self-serving cover up  adds a disrespectful insult to the tragic deaths of agent Brian Terry and others.

From Fast and Furious’ sinister cover-up we turn to Solyndra’s crony capitalism. Solyndra is the poster child for Obama’s socialist utopia, where “omnipotent and brilliant” central planners such as he select society’s winners and losers,at the expense of the taxpayers; and you’re definitely a winner if you contributed heavily to the central planner’s campaign. It’s sordid details include George Kaiser, key Solyndra investor with a 35.7% stock ownership through his Foundations, billionaire oilman, a major Obama donor and frequent guest at the White House who openly indicated that the President was fast and loose with the taxpayer’s dollars saying, “There’s never been more money shoved out of the government’s door in world history, and probably never will be again, than in the last few months and in the next 18 months.” Kaiser’s Solyndra received $535 million loan federal guarantee and that’s a lot of shoving.

Solyndra was a solar panel manufacturing company that received its $535 million federal loan guarantee via Obama's failed Stimulus package. The President has a green jobs spending “slush” fund of approximately $30 billion which was rolled into the Stimulus plan which is devoted to playing Russian roulette with taxpayer’s money. The Solyndra plant cost $733 million, $535 million funded by taxpayers, and was replete with robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms. “The new building is like the Taj Mahal” said John Pierce who worked as a facilities manager at Solyndra. It’s comforting to know the Solyndra folks were enjoying state of the art comfort at taxpayer’s expense.

In April 2010 President Obama touted Solyndra as “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future”. But according to financial reports Solyndra didn’t have much of a future itself. A month before the President’s laudatory comments the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a warning about Solyndra’s going concern status by stating the company wasn't making money, never had, and this raised "substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."

Solyndra violated it’s government loan terms in December 2010 and admitted to the Obama regime it was running out of money. But the Obama regime continued to fund it despite it’s projected bankruptcy, continuing the process of throwing precious taxpayer money after a bad investment, and Solyndra subsequently filed for bankruptcy in September 2011. Solyndra isn’t the only failed green energy company to be selected by the Obama regime's scratch card venture capital lottery. It's one of 42 other projects in the Energy department’s taxpayer funded governmental venture capitalist lottery totaling $30 billion. At least four other “Solyndras” have received stimulus funding only to later file for bankruptcy.

So the Solyndra story ends with taxpayer’s losing $535 million in some bankrupt green company orchestrated by the Obama regime’s desire to play loan shark to one of his crony capitalist donors. But not to worry because there is a happy ending for the Obama cronies. Mr. Kaiser, the President’s favorite bundler, is fine since his Solyndra investment has preferential treatment in the bankruptcy proceedings, and the Solyndra executives have invoked the Fifth Amendment refusing to testify before Congress. So the old payola is alive and well in the Obama regime and his cronies, who in Chicago gangland fashion “copped the fifth”, would make Al Capone proud.

Fast and Furious and Solyndra-- the equivalent of Chicago’s Capone era St. Valentines’ Day massacre and gangster graft. The song lyrics to “My Kind Of Town”, the famous homage to President Obama's hometown,  say Chicago “has all that jazz”. It appears that the President has taken some of that jazz to the White House.