My View

Random ruminations from your resident curmudgeon...

From the past is prologue department... Lois Lerner, the embattled IRS executive in charge of the division that approved non-profit applications for tax exempt status, was the Director of the Federal Election Commission  Enforcement Division in the late 90's. Lerner exhibited her animosity toward conservative groups in this role, a trait that carried over to her tenure at the IRS. Lerner's division at the FEC sued the Christian Coalition (the government lost) and was involved in numerous harassing activities against conservative groups and political candidates. In 1996, her division of the FEC sued Al Salvi, a Republican candidate for Congress from Illinois. Salvi was running against Richard Durbin,  a Democrat who currently holds the seat. Salvi loaned his campaign  over a million dollars in the last weeks of the contest to buy ads in the Chicago media market. Although a legal action, the Democrats filed suit with the FEC and Salvi had a meeting with Lerner. Salvi recounts to the Illinois Review the following: after several minutes into their meeting had elapsed, Lerner made this offer, "Promise me you  will never run for office again and we will drop this case."  The audacity of this statement by a supposedly unbiased FEC official is breathtaking. Lerner, as a tool of the Democrats, has taken these same tactics to the IRS and expanded them. Over 500 conservative groups were illegally targeted by her Division at the behest of the current administration. The necessity to clean up the IRS and the bloated federal bureaucracy  has never been more pressing, and the current brouhaha with the IRS should be a clarion call to all of us to demand this begin now.

My favorite camping store had a sale on boat paddles. It was quite an oar deal!

In 2011, the FBI raided Gibson Guitar Company in Nashville with a warrant to seize the company's inventory of wood used to make guitars. The premise for the warrant was a supposed violation of the 100 year old Lacey Act, in which Gibson was accused of improperly procuring wood from foreign sources, sources that harvested endangered species of wood. Gibson was never shown to have violated the Lacey Act; they did not illegally source their raw materials; and the final disposition of this matter (after a costly settlement to avoid a lengthy trial) from the government was that Gibson was warned that there was some "risk" in their supply chain as to suppliers potentially obtaining illegal materials. Here is the interesting fact: Henry Juszkiewicz is an active supporter of conservative causes and Republican politicians. Gibson's biggest competitor, C. F. Martin Company, the manufacturer of Martin Guitars, uses the same sources and suppliers for wood for their guitars. Guess what? Chris Martin, the owner, is a major supporter of liberal causes and Democrat candidates for office. Wanna guess if Martin Guitars was raided by the FBI? If you said "no" then you have been paying attention to the scandalous manipulation of the various departments of the federal government by the Obama administration to attack perceived "enemies". Pay attention to these scandals that are unfolding with this administration. The mindset that Washington should have all power and punish those who disagree with that view is exceedingly dangerous.

I asked my wife what a woman really want out the man in her life. She said "attentive lover", or maybe it was "a tent of lovers". I wasn't really paying attention.

You should get to know the name Judy Faulkner. Faulkner is a billionaire, a top Obama donor, and subsequently very well connected to the President. But that isn't why you should know her. She is the founder and CEO of Epic Systems, a taxpayer subsidized electronic medical records (EMR) company that will soon store nearly half of Americans medical records. On the surface, EMR should make the healthcare system more efficient by eliminating paper and streamlining the record keeping process. That's on the surface. The potential for dysfunction arises when one EMR system has a lack of interoperability with other systems. If a patient moves from one provider who uses one EMR system to another that uses a different system, those systems have to "talk" to each other to seamlessly transfer information. You know what I am about to say- EPIC Systems has zero operability with other EMR systems. It is a closed end system that cannot communicate with other systems and provide that efficient transfer of medical information. Now this might be something that you can work through if you are changing healthcare providers, but imagine if you require immediate emergency care. And your ER and hospital where you need that care doesn't use Epic Systems. There will be no access to your medical records. See the problem? The Obama administration has already spent $4 billion to move to an EMR system, and has committed another $6 billion. You don't need to be told where the lion's share of that money has gone.  We are spending an enormous amount of money on systems that will not improve patient outcomes and will actually create significant problems. So why are we spending our tax dollars to subsidize them? I think you know the answer to that one.

With all the scary news about problems with different foods, I practice safe eating. I always use a condiment.

And that, my friends, is my view.