Post Scripts

Posted by Tina

A Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee investigation led by Tom Coburn (R-OK) has uncovered a coordinated fraud ring worth billions in SS Disability benefits :

Eric Christopher Conn, known as “Mr. Social Security,” made $4.5 million in attorney fees from the Social Security Administration (SSA), gaming the system with discredited doctors signing off on medical conditions and working with a judge to expedite the claims process.

Judge David B. Daugherty, an Administrative Law Judge (AJL) assigned to review disability hearings in the Huntington, W.V., SSA office, prioritized Conn’s cases, approving claims at an extremely high rate and holding hearings as short as 15 minutes.

According to the report, Conn provided a list of clients every month to be approved for disability benefits by Judge Daugherty. Daugherty would advise Conn which clients needed medical evidence to qualify, which was then given by doctors who in many cases had lost their license to practice.
“By 2011, Mr. Conn and Judge Daugherty had collaborated on a scheme that enabled the judge to approve, in assembly-line fashion, hundreds of clients for disability benefits using manufactured medical evidence,” the report said.

In comments Coburn faulted the SSA for “inept agency oversight” and emphasized the harm to the disabled and the already stressed trust fund: “This report highlights the very problems Congress needs to focus on but too often ignores. In just two years, the Social Security Disability Trust Fund could be depleted. That means millions of disabled Americans will face benefit cuts while every American could see an increase in their payroll taxes. That is unacceptable.”

The big government bureaucracy is complacent, dysfunctional, and expensive. They are likewise unconcerned about waste in government…at the very least they feel helpless to do anything about it. We are plagued by entitlement or bandit mentality. Earning, saving and investing is almost a foreign concept. People seem more apt to believe that they deserve to take what others have earned. We are numb, oblivious to the declining state of our society and to what it is costing us. Morality is absent from our homes and our schools. We are fed a constant stream of low morality entertainment that we watch incessantly. Is it surprising them that the lawyers, doctors, judges and citizens that participated in this scam represent nothing unusual.

We are not at all shocked or surprised by this scam; it is just one of many. The problem is that people can’t see the cost to themselves personally. But we pay and pay dearly in lost jobs, higher taxes, higher prices on the goods we buy…and government operating in constant crisis.

The committee report hasn’t yet led to indictments so far as I can tell. The lawyer involved in this scam is apparently now working in California…where else?

Posted by Harold

Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.

Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.

Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.

“Welcome to the club,” said Robert Laszewksi, a prominent health care consultant and president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates in Virginia.

For years, the nation has been embroiled in the political rhetoric of “Obamacare,” but this past week the reality of the new law sank in as millions of Americans had their first good look at how the… CONT

by Jack

The way I see it, and feel free to tell me if I’m wrong, is no matter what happens next there is still plenty of blame to go around. My gripe is if republicans had ONLY acted earlier when they had the chance and reformed some of the glaring defects in our healthcare system we would not be having this conversation. The GOP could have removed the reason for ObamaCare when they controlled the White House, Congress and the Senate. It’s not like this wasn’t an issue back them!

Now…regarding who is the most responsible for failing to fund government, only a few percentage points separate the two parties and this gives both sides some credibility for talking points. However, the republicans are still lagging in this area and as the days pass the media is doing their best to make sure they lag! (Time is not on their side)

At any moment the President can use his power to break the statement, he’s the decider-in-chief! All he has to say is, “Fund government, except for the ACA, and we can discuss that part later.” Or Harry Reid and Pelosi could do it, but they all refuse! The republicans want to open discussions and fund gov now! But, they might as well be talking to a wall.

But, here’s the part that gets me. This shutdown is happening because the federal government doesn’t have a budget for fiscal 2014, which starts today. The reason it doesn’t have a budget is because the Republican-led House passed a budget calling for $3.5 trillion in spending, the Democratically controlled Senate passed a budget calling for $3.7 trillion in spending, and President Obama issued a proposal calling for $3.77 trillion in spending. This happened back in the spring…what the heck have they been doing? Actually, Obama hasn’t created a budget since he’s been in office, it’s been left up to Congress. That makes it his problem we’re in a shutdown. Afterall, he’s the leader, but where’s the leadership?

Did I miss anything?

Posted by Tina

Two groups of angry citizens will make their way to Washington this weekend in protest of our dysfunctional government. It should make for an interesting weekend in Washington.

Washington Times

On Sunday October 13, 2013 the Million Vet March is going to take place t 9:00 a.m. at the World War II Memorial. …

… According to the Million Vet March website, the organizers are not concerned about what anyone’s political leaning are, be they Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, if anyone who saw the World War II veterans barricaded from their memorial this past week and felt outrage, they want you to join them in their protest.

The organizers believe that the veterans are being used as pawns that have unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a political battle, and according to the organizers statement, that should never happen.

You can sign a petition of support for our Vets here.

A group of Truckers that had previously planned the Truckers Ride for the Constitution will also be in Washington with their trucks to “protest the corruption of the government and to participate in a strike as part of the protest by not hauling freight during the days of October 11 – 13.”

Let’s Hope their messages ring loud and clear.

Posted by Tina

According to one Park Ranger charged with carrying out the Presidents National Parks closure edict, the President ordered them to “make life as difficult for people as we can.”

Visitors to Yellowstone National Park got to experience the Jack Boot thuggery of the Presidents vindictive leadership approach first hand. A bus load of tourists, some from Canada, Japan, and Australia, were inside the park when the closure was ordered and they were treated very poorly per the Presidents instructions:

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.

Some of the foreign visitors said they would never come back to America again.

Nice going President Dictator.

Posted by Tina

The Patriot Post sums up the frosty negotiating style of our stubborn, arrogant “leader”:

Obama did say over the weekend that he’s willing to negotiate changes to ObamaCare … but only after Republicans end the shutdown with a “clean” continuing resolution and then agree to hike the debt ceiling. That’s convincing – give him everything he wants and then he’ll talk. Of course, negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, craps on the board and then struts around like it won the game.

Exactly!

Ever wonder….

Why do supermarkets make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front?
Why do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke?
Why do banks leave vault doors open and then chain the pens to the counters?
Why do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in our driveways and put our useless junk in the garage?

Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?
Why can’t women put on mascara with their mouth closed?
Why don’t you ever see the headline ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?
Why is ‘abbreviated’ such a long word?
Why is it that doctors and attorneys call what they do ‘practice’?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavoring, and dish washing liquid made with real lemons?
Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?
Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?
You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff??
Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains?

Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?
If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

Posted by Tina

My thanks go out to Pie for directing us to the Daily Beast article, “California’s New Feudalism Benefits a Few at the Expense of the Multitude,” by Joel Kotkin. I’m bringing it to the front page so we can better discuss the fate of the state many of us have cherished as home. California was once the sixth greatest economy in the world. It was a land of abundant opportunity in technology, farming, entertainment, energy, and recreational industries. California was the wave of the future. Unfortunately if that is still true the future looks pretty dim.

California is among the states that have a high median income of $60,000. California is also among those states with “inequality above the national average of .39, indicating both their very large populations, their very complex ethnicity, and large metropolitan economies rich in high income earners, entrenched concentrations of poverty, and high levels of immigration.” Inequality is now greater in California that it is in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana,” and is among the states with the highest poverty rates. California is home to one in nine billionaires worldwide.

I don’t have a problem with California being home to billionaires. I have a problem with a state whose government is hostile to investment and business. Let’s look at the trends that have led California into rapid decline: high taxation and regulation on business, hostility toward the bread basket area of the Central Valley, radical regulation on land use, stridently strict regulation on energy production and use, failing schools, and single party control in government and in the public education system. The elitist ruling classes of California are inspired by leftist radical ideology and extremism. They have embraced the communal model of Marx and left the American ideal of freedom supported by the rule of law in the dust. Power, control, and wealth at the top and redistribution to the masses. The more their ideas are implemented the more middle class and poor Californians are delegated to serfdom, her children left without hope.

The Daily Beast article is one for the record books. I highly recommend it, depressing as it may be.

More and more, the state of Jefferson sounds mighty appealing!