My View

Random ruminations from your resident curmudgeon...


Remember when Obamacare was being rammed down our throats? One of the main contentions about this debacle that was iterated from President Obama, his White House staff, and his minions in the media was that this program of socialized medicine was going to cost the taxpayers in this country "only" $900 billion dollars. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence knew this was not the case, as there were obvious flawed assumptions in this plan as well as numerous hidden costs. We now have a better idea of what this disaster is going to cost us if it is not repealed. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has now projected that Obamacare will cost us $1.76 trillion (TRILLION!) over the next 10 years. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that many companies are dropping their insurance for their employees because of soaring costs and forcing their employees into government sponsored coverage. This is a natural market response to government intervention in the marketplace. Government interference in any market makes it difficult for private enterprise to compete and often drives those private companies out of business. Couple this economic situation with the fact that many costs in Obamacare were hidden or just outright misconstrued, and you have a financial disaster of brobdingnagian that has been foisted on the taxpaying public.

My wife is always complaining that I don't listen to her. Or something like that.

So we have misrepresentation by our elected leaders regarding the costs associated with socialized medicine. We have unemployment numbers that are calculated by arbitrarily excluding some some of the unemployed to make the current administration look good. We are told that inflation is "benign" because the government chooses to exclude the cost of food and energy, two of the largest expenditures in many household budgets. Now I know that you as a reader of this blog are very intelligent, and I know that you are seeing the trend here. Politicians from the left and the right bend the numbers and skew the data to try to look good. More and more, however, we are seeing numbers, data, and facts that appear to have been pulled out thin air or some bodily orifice, and at a critical juncture in our history, the credibility of many elected leaders, of the bureaucracy, and of Washington as a collective representation of government is damaged, perhaps irreparably. Part of the problem is the arrogance of Washington, with elected leaders and bureaucrats believing that they are smarter than us and know better than we what is good for us. The other side of the equation, however, is that we as voters and as citizens have allowed those in Washington to do this. The upcoming election represents a critical juncture for our country, and it is important that we as citizens re-engage in the process and demand accountability and honesty from those that are elected to lead our nation.

Women really like men who are self confident. At least I think they do.

While we focus on costly programs like Obamacare, it is critical to keep our eye on the cost of regulations that are often implemented by the myriad of federal bureaucracies that have a dramatic impact on our economy, our businesses, and our wallets. According to data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), in the first three years of the Obama administration, 10,215 new federal regulations have been implemented that cost individuals, and businesses over $46 BILLION annually. By comparison, President Bush's first three years in office saw the federal government implement 10,674 new regulations but with an annual cost of $8.1 billion. Every administration in Washington, whether Republican or Democrat, does this. It is a matter of severity, and the real issue is, in my view, the arrogance of those in Washington believing they can micro-manage the economy, our businesses, and our lives. These numbers point out that the over-reach of our federal government is stunningly vast and will only get worse if we do not rein it back. And it is not just elected officials that must be held in check. Bloated and self serving bureaucracies like the Environmental Protection Agency have, unchecked, implemented unilateral regulations in 2011 that cost over $4 billion to further an increasingly radical agenda. And Washington wonders why it is so difficult to get the economy growing.

Bigamy: one wife too many. Monogamy: same thing

And that, my friends, is my view.