Evolutionary Ecologist & Scientific Inquiry

Retired math teacher with a master’s in evolutionary ecology Roger Guffey’s op-ed of 25 October in the Lexington [Ky.] Herald-Leader was headlined “In defense of science and Kentucky’s new [education] standards.” His issue mainly concerned people objecting to the teaching of “[human] evolution and climate change” in the public schools. There’s no argument with evolution per se as it relates to things not human and there’s no argument with climate undergoing change constantly.

Even bona fide evolutionary-ecologists concede that global heat (without known industrialization) in 1100 AD was much greater than currently and that hot-cool cycles have obtained through recorded history. After the torrid 1930s-40s in the industrialized U.S., the “climate experts” insisted in the 1970s that a horrendous ice-age was threatening the world, as happened in one of the ice-ages (maybe the third) when the Ohio River was dug by a glacier either going or coming. After 40 years, still no ice-age!

Guffey worried that “creationism” was about to be taught as a science, though it’s always been presented as just a theory, and that will not change. Creationists hold that God created everything out of nothing in a way described in the Genesis account. Guffey knows both things so his actual intention in the op-ed was the putdown of “ignoramuses” who believe in creationism.

Guffey wrote that “belief systems lie completely outside the realm of scientific inquiry,” notwithstanding that his non-belief concerning creationism comprises a “belief system” of his own, i.e., that science has systematically disproved creationism, though there’s no scientific evidence relative to the origin of earth or anything connected thereto, only theories. I’m a creationist but I don’t believe the earth “happened” spontaneously 6,000 years ago and couldn’t care less if others believe otherwise.

Appropriate definitions. Science: “the state of knowing: knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.” Inquiry: “examination into facts or principles.” Principle: “a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption.” (Merriam-Webster Collegiate, 11th edition)

By definition, consequently, scientific inquiry is gaining knowledge by examination into facts or comprehensive, fundamental laws, doctrines, or assumptions. Everything, including belief systems of any kind, is susceptible to scientific inquiry. Creationism is a religious belief-system Guffey submitted to scientific inquiry and determined its status (nonexistent), thus contradicting himself and merely opinionating, as a creationist does.

Using scientific inquiry, scientists developed the atomic bomb in the 1940s, a cold technological instrument. Guffey said “the religious and philosophical values we possess” are outside “the realm of scientific inquiry.” Yet, the decision concerning the bomb was based on scientific inquiry, i.e., determining how many people could justifiably die (especially U.S. GIs) on the basis of the values held by most Americans. The same situation obtained any time a field commander decided upon an attack…or not, determining the worth of a project vis-à-vis deaths and destruction.

Guffey said the biological constants that drive evolution are reproduction and competition; however, the constant that drives evolution is mutation, however structured or in what manner, competitive or otherwise. Reproduction is fairly automatic and predictable, but mutations can even be produced by outside influences—hybrid corn, for instance.

I hope the climate will be discussed in education in an informed manner. Global temperature, virtually unaffected by people, has not warmed in 15 years and sea-ice in the Antarctic region is at the highest volume ever recorded. The UN-IPCC (climate gurus) has been thoroughly discredited (Manhattan under water by 2100) not just through its main gurus’ self-admitted fraud of 2009 but by credible scientific findings. Students should understand the purely political aspect of the alarmism.

Non-creationists are driven by jealousy accruing to their inability to create anything. They can merely use, modify, combine, rearrange or otherwise configure elements that have always existed in some form to make—not create—things. They treat human evolution as a science instead of a theory to convince students that a supreme being is an impossibility because scientists cannot create (or even understand) it.

Periodically, the “missing link” in the evolution chain is ballyhooed as being discovered, along with pictures of skulls and bones, sometimes artificially fleshed out to resemble at least a biped, though usually with a lot of hair. Rubbish!

Educationally, after the legislature’s 1990 education-reform debacle harming two generations of students anything looks good.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

An Emperor with No Clothes?

During the Obama rule, the long-of-tooth have watched the United States of America morph into the United States of Monarchy, which is defined as “undivided rule or absolute sovereignty by a single person.” Most strikingly, this metamorphosis has happened because the nation is currently damned by a feckless Congress too timid to handle its responsibility as the “third leg of the governmental stool.” Most likely, the main reason has to do with being called “racist” if one seriously questions the ruler.

The prez set the stage (July 2009) soon after his first inauguration when, without knowing any facts of a matter, he, exhibiting monarchical elitism/arrogance, accused a white policeman of “acting stupidly.” If he was unhappy, he could have contacted the Cambridge police chief but chose instead to make an issue of the matter in letting the hoi polloi know who was boss.

Before that, he had announced that he would close Gitmo, but Gitmo remains. The Congress deserves some credit since it turned the prez around on that one. He learned then to use executive orders (unilateral governance/bypassing Congress) to get his agenda in place whenever possible. In March 2009, the ruler took over General Motors and Chrysler and using tax monies led both into bankruptcy, wiping out the shareholders. Chrysler was sold to Fiat. In that deal, the U.S. lost $1 billion. Taxpayers likely will not recoup the federal funds shot on GM, either.

In 2009, King Barack won the Nobel Peace Prize, mostly because he had proved uber-monarchical status by sticking Congress in the eye. About the same time, he went to Stockholm to be THE MOST POWERFUL MONARCH there by announcing the potential end of the world through manmade global warming only to discover that his subject was a complete hoax, as it is today. The perpetrators of the hoax (Gore’s inconvenient truth) condemned themselves account having little enough sense to explain their perfidy through e-mails.

In January 2011, the prez spoke at a memorial service in Tucson and used the occasion to unofficially kickoff his kingship-run for 2012. Had them in the aisles! The king then began to show inordinate power by informing other heads of state that they had to give up their positions and turn their countries over to the rabble, like the Muslim Brotherhood. The various rabbles thought he meant he was sending in the Marines to do the deed but didn’t understand monarchical lying, so they languish. Syria’s Assad just laughed, and he’s still laughing.

King Barack in March 2011 realized that he hadn’t proved his mettle by winning a war, something any despot worth the name must do. The troops he needed were languishing (and dying for no reason) in Afghanistan so he looked around for a country weak enough to overcome in what he said would be days, not weeks. He found one—Libya—but knew the Congress (necessary to declare war) would never go along since Libya posed no threat to any country.

So…the king didn’t bother with Congress, and the Congress was too weak or working so hard on campaigning that the Constitution meant nothing to it, either. King Barack Hussein twisted NATO’s arm for some help since not a drop of U.S. or NATO’s blood could be risked and the U.S. and NATO (mostly just the king—the others ran out ammo) simply bombed the bejesus out of Libya for seven long and bloody months, killing women, children, demolishing buildings—a sort of Muslim-like operation, maybe the king’s pet method, too.

Libya’s population was 2 million less than that of New York City and it had 76,000 troops compared to the king’s 1.6 million. Just Britain, France and Germany boasted another 664,100 boots, comprising a force of 2.2 million troops to overcome wicked, powerful Qaddafi, who was fighting al Qaeda in his country at the time. Now, thanks to the king and NATO, al Qaeda virtually owns Libya.

Oh yes…Obamacare! The king ruled that the monarchy should rule everyone’s health matters, including the end of them. He’s ruled which parts will be in force and which will not (illegal except for kings). Congress-people (okay, just democrats), trying to get home for Christmas in 2010, passed Obamacare on a technicality without even bothering to read the huge legislation. They’re finding out now in spades that the program is in a shambles and insurance companies are canceling policies by the thousands in anticipation of a huge windfall from King Barack’s treasures, mostly borrowed from China, a perpetual mortgage on his subjects, a gift to Wall Street friends.

Result: the emperor seems to have no clothes.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Unintended Consequences

Unfortunately, programs inculcated as a nation drives itself toward becoming a welfare state are configured with little thought of conditions obtaining beyond their enacting time-frames. In 1937, when Social Security became operative, average life expectancy for men and women born that year was 63 and 65, respectively, meaning that multitudes were never expected to draw benefits. Those born in 1900 had life-expectancies of 46 and 48 years respectively, meaning that most of them were not expected to live to retirement age or even close.

The law of unintended consequences always plagues good intentions. When Medicare became operative fulltime in 1967, life expectancy for men and women was 67 and 75 years, respectively (all races). The government outlay in Medicare payments in 1967 was $3.4 billion. The accumulative inflation-rate since 1967 is 600%, so that figure was $20.4 billion in today’s dollars. The Medicare outlay this year will be $588.7 billion minus $78.1 billion in premiums for a total of $510.6 billion, or an increase in 46 years of 2,003%, enormous by any standard.

Population increased 1967-2013 from 200 million to 310 million—55%—so that has to be factored in the equation—more people living longer—thus an increase in Medicare payments could not have been expected to amount to just 55%. People born this year have life expectancies of about 76 and 81 years, respectively, for men and women. These statistics are from HHS, U.S. government. Twenty-five percent of Medicare payments are made in the last year of an old codger’s life, thus adding to the problem – age-weakened/sickened people living much longer than anticipated in 1967 or even now. An 85-year-old male in 2010 could expect to live 7 more years, according to HHS.

Social Security collections and benefits are based on irrefutable data and therefore totally unsusceptible to corruption. Contrarily, Medicare and Obamacare are based on what the market/government will bear, both honestly and dishonestly. Suppose Medicare payments had merely quintupled (increased by 500%) since 1967 as the population increased by a tenth or so of that percentage. The outlay in 2013 would be about $100 billion, not $510.6 billion. The costly difference between SS and these programs accrues to the fact that people/corporations/pharmaceuticals/government and the medical profession have vested interests in them, with profit and/or corruption the driving forces and virtually no accountability.

The national debt stands at $17 trillion, far beyond comprehension. Annual deficits run at $1 trillion, meaning the nation subsists on borrowed money without a prayer under current circumstances to crawl out of the hole, just mostly pay the interest on debt and print money. Obamacare is slated to cost $1.8 trillion over the next decade, with the government claiming $771.3 billion in revenue to take care of new Medicaid expenses, not nearly covering the shortfall.

Another $1 trillion is slated for spending on subsidies until 2023 for insurance payments for individuals making up to nearly $46,000 per year, $94,200 for a family of four. This should give an idea of what the government expects the insurance premiums to be—out of sight. This leads to the obvious design of the president, to wit, keep raising taxes—everyone’s taxes—to pay for a program so absolutely unpredictable as to be beyond reason.

The figures are shocking, especially when thinking of the immense graft and waste that will attach to Obamacare, just as with Medicare and Medicaid. That which belongs to the government belongs to no one and is thus subject to whatever fraud/gaming that can be contrived to subvert it. The projected ten-year spending of $2.8 trillion means nothing. No one has any idea what the actual cost will be except that it will be far more than projected.

The president understands the pitfalls and by executive order or some such instrument nullified until 2015 the hugely important part of Obamacare (enacted for enforcement in January 2014) requiring businesses to furnish employee-insurance via government fiat, the result being businesses installing part-time jobs to beat the law. This enhances the recession and makes the elections in 2014 critical to the nation’s solvency. The shutdown that has just been lifted only puts off until after January the same battle over righting the U.S. financially, with a new threat of shutdown.

There have been no winners in October, but plenty of whiners.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Redtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters by the noted author C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite books. The long letters were written by a man for the purpose of instructing his nephew in how to evangelize an ordinary man against God and into following Satan and going to hell. I’ve been working on a book probably titled the Redtape Letters, with a man instructing his nephew vis-à-vis politics/society and how to guide the nation into socialism. Here is a letter dealing with religion:

My Dear Gullible,

You mentioned in your last letter that you had been to church with your girlfriend but didn’t indicate how serious she is about religion, though the fact that she goes to church absent some sort of coercion suggests that (horrors) she may be devout, in which case I offer some info regarding the Force and religion, firstly, that they are mutually exclusive. Religion is pervasive in this country, of course, and most citizens claim to be religious, though many say they are simply “spiritual,” not loyal to any creed, denomination or church. These folks are relatively harmless but devout believers form a formidable roadblock to success. So-called bedrock religious principles such as worship, fidelity, only heterosexual marriage as normative, same-sex marriage as sinful and tithing as just the minimum in supporting religious causes are absolute anathema to the Force, to which religion actually is the “opium of the people,” as suggested by Marx, a belief in a god and in a hereafter.

In times past, the drivers of the Force have consciously opposed the church, especially using the separation-of-church-and-state requirement as the weapon, but this has been largely unsuccessful since the Judeo-Christian God is not only mentioned in the Constitution but seems (erroneously, of course) to be its foundation and the term “God” appears on currency, buildings, government documents, etc., even at the Supreme Court. There has been much success but the battle is tiring and too lengthy. Organizations such as the ACLU and Democrat Party have made dramatic strides but haven’t made a dent in removing nativity scenes at Christmas, for instance. Even though the culture becomes more secular and even hedonistic every day, the people insist upon keeping religious entities in place, thus salving their “souls,” I guess. As Marx said, it is the drug that gives them some sort of high though even by their own religious standards they fall far short of deserving anything but harsh justice, not mercy.

Religion is driven by the enemy, of course, though not in the usual way. The cultural trend toward hedonism, especially as it is fueled by various perversions, connects the enemy to religion. Just as boot camp is designed to break a recruit and then rebuild him, the Force demands the dismantling of a governmental system in order to rebuild it. Government systems usually implode rather than being overcome by outside forces…internal rot, in other words. This is happening in the U.S., thus making our work so much easier. Using the courts that are either grossly incompetent or perverted or both, devotees to perversions are evoking decisions that run counter to religious principles and thus counter to civility, these disruptions absolute musts in the scheme of the Force. An example is the breakup of the family, the fundamental unit of society. The Bible insists that marriage is possible only between a man and woman and nearly all the states have laws and constitutional amendments affirming that religious and obviously biological mandate but corrupt judges have ruled this to be discriminatory against homosexuals and therefore unconstitutional. So, now it is legal in some states for men to marry men and women to marry women, never mind that this runs counter to the very definition of marriage, its most important facet being the propagation of the race. Two men or two women can’t conceive a child, obviously, thus the government merely places its imprimatur on sexual perversion, the sanctioning of some sort of lust, perhaps.

Religion also demands that fidelity in marriage be observed, but the society is more and more accepting of infidelity as not only cute but a pathway to happiness. This is seen in popular TV shows and movies in which family normalcy is shown to be built on mistrust and sleaze. The same is true in the modern novels and other literature. This worship of adultery and fornication, as well as the current glorification of homosexual behavior, is replacing the worship of God with what the enemy’s advocates term as worshiping the devil and rotting from the inside, which, of course it is, the very thing that breaks the society and makes it vulnerable to radical change…sort of the fact that standing for nothing eventuates in falling for anything. This is not all pure luck, however, since the Force has operatives like me in the entertainment and publishing industries, as well as in government itself. The president, for instance, announced that he had “evolved” from the one-man/one-woman marriage-stance in 2008 to approval of same-sex marriages by 2012 and had directed the attorney general not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act enacted into law in the 1990s. This was an un-Constitutional, impeachable act on his part but demonstrates a method used by the Force to introduce chaos into the society, the better to overcome it and implant the Force’s system, i.e., the president, an obvious supporter of the Force, governs in large part in every area through executive orders, thus bypassing the legislative and court systems. His claim to be a Christian lacks credibility since the Bible is quite clear about these matters, but he is wise enough to claim Christianity since that belief is vital in elections.

Organized religion has also been infiltrated. As the church has stagnated and then started downward in membership and influence it has attempted to attract congregants by appearing more “worldly,” for want of a better term. The Force has representatives in this area, who have been successful in efforts such as making same-sex marriage biblically approved through weird interpretations of scripture (or none at all…just forget the Holy Book). Even church leaders as high in the order as bishops and heads of denominations openly live with homosexual partners, all in the name of honoring political correctness instead of biblical values, as the enemy claims. The result is further rot, a sort of sticking one’s thumb in God’s eye. Worship services feature rock bands and singers designated as worship-teams, which both sound and look the part of the rock scene. Preachers drone on about togetherness and love as if love is something that drives everything, even the acceptance/approval of something as obscene as homosexual behavior. This rot, as claimed by the enemy, is hastening the country toward the Force. It’s worth noting that the highest profile Greek philosopher and, some say, an articulator of Western Thought was also the highest profile homosexual/pedophile/pederast, as were the movers and shakers in both Greek and Roman antiquity. The Greco/Roman empires rotted out as their leaders abjured Christian principles and engaged in perverse hedonistic practices, the perfect model for destroying civility and replacing it by the Force.

It’s worth noting, also, that Islam—teaching “death to the infidel”—is constantly touted in the U.S. now as a religion, one of its other features being that a Moslem man can have four wives and may discard any one of his harem at any time without official sanction. Most of the president’s childhood was spent in a Moslem home and that may account for his cavalier approach to marriage. Accounting Islam as a religion, placing it on the same plane as Judeo-Christianity, cheapens the latter, another element of importance to the Force.

In short, have nothing to with religion except expressing an avid disparagement of it, except for Islam and its bent toward chaos and death. Believe none of it. Ballyhoo its constraints as stupid and old-fashioned. I’m not suggesting that you perform acts of perversion yourself, only that you approve of them as normal. I’m not meddling but do advise you to dump this girlfriend. People like her can be very persuasive, but believing in God is anti-Force to the core. Be fair and attend a sermon at a mosque. Don’t believe anything you hear there, either, but just appreciate the difference. Islamists can also be dangerous to the Force (or any system because of Moslem segments such as al Qaeda) but they can help in perverting the U.S. government.

As ever,
Redtape

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Redtape

The Screwtape Letters by the noted author C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite books. The long letters were written by a man for the purpose of instructing his nephew in how to evangelize an ordinary man against God and into following Satan and going to hell. I’ve been working on a book probably titled the Redtape Letters, with a man instructing his nephew vis-à-vis politics and how to guide the nation into socialism (the Force). Here is a letter:

Dear Nephew,

An overriding subject in U.S. society, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is race or ethnicity-insensitivity or color-apprehension or any term having to do with the fact that white people are routinely accused of being guilty of something related to it. There’s racism – the short definition of which is “racial prejudice or discrimination” – in every culture or people-group but in the U.S. racism is confined as an attribute only of white folks. This is true within much of the white community itself, especially among those like myself, devotees to the Force. The charge or even admission-of by white people like me of racism is used in many areas – political, religious, social, cultural…you get the picture. Even the president – especially the president – has made use of this subject, whether in calling attention to himself or accusing others of pointing attention to either him or other blacks. In 2008, when you were barely a teen and might not have noticed, the president as a then-candidate made a famous speech in Germany, with its most salient point being that he was somehow “different from what Germans might have expected,” i.e., that he should have been white, perfectly understandable, of course, since the black population is only 14% of the total U.S. population. In the first half of last century, German leaders simply used the army to wipe out minorities, certainly not elect them to office.

To be sure, racism is a moral issue and is an attitude never to be tolerated, at least under normal circumstances; however, sometimes fire has to be fought with fire in societies in which malice can be a motivator encouraging governmental disruption/dysfunction and even oppression of the targets of racists. In the U.S., 90% of racists are republicans, easily proven in black voting patterns. Blacks vote as a 95% bloc favoring democrats against republicans, the vast majority of whom are white, thus the proof. The president accented this fact in an interview in Philadelphia in 2008 when he said that the typical white person was like his late (white) grandmother, who raised him, i.e., that she was wary of people not like her—him, in other words. This explanation of racism was brilliant of him, a first-hand example, though his grandmother probably didn’t have horns (little joke there). This interview was on the day after an entire speech on the subject of race in which the president exhorted white racist-Americans to try to understand the president’s black non-racist minister, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who had publicly and justifiably exhorted God to damn America because, for instance, a previous president (white, of course) had ordered the unspeakable destruction of Hiroshima. This ended WWII and saved millions of lives but you needn’t bother with that fact as you discuss racism (racially motivated mistreatment of the Japanese) with your friends.

So, you see – at least I hope you see – that there’s a benign use to be made of a bad thing. Usually, this use accrues to a political reason. Some would claim that the president was playing the race card, but actually he was educating the republican citizenry, namely, imposing upon it the guilt it so richly deserves. In the process, he used an important tool of the Force—class warfare. Class warfare sounds like a bad thing, but it’s good in that opposition to a good thing, like a level playing field, can be divided in order to conquer. This would not be possible, of course, if democrats were also racist but, while admitting they, too, are mostly white, I assure you that democrats form the party of compassion, goodwill, color-blindness, ethnicity-centeredness and warm hugs all around.

In the final analysis, it can be said that racism accrues to the slavery question, though just how, no one ever seems to explain. Slavery was abolished nearly 150 years ago and the current president is black. However, racial antagonisms have never quite disappeared, an expected eventuality of the bloodiest war in probably the world’s history until then. Descendents of slaves justifiably hate most, not all, white people, since some, not all, are the descendents of some slave-owners, while descendents of the 600,000 or so white soldiers who died in the war freeing slaves seem to exhibit an unjustifiable attitude resenting their loss. After all, war is war. You must be careful in this area as you make your points, hopefully in favor of the philosophy of the Force, which is diametrically opposed to republicanism. It’s true, as I’m sure you’ve heard, that the democrats stood in the way of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, while republicans furnished the votes to make it successful. In 1966, for instance, the Congress was 68% democrat, but these are facts I’m giving you so you can construct arguments to explain them away, the main attribute of any serious scholar.

Admittedly, there are rare cases of reverse-racism, i.e., a black person certainly inadvertently casting aspersions/insults at a person of another race. This well documented incident – the president accusing a white policeman of acting stupidly – will come up in discussions, always by a republican thug. You need to explain that the president was probably just very tired, as he was during his campaign when he alluded to the 57 states he had visited and had only one more to go. The proper riposte is always to insist that a sinner should never cast a stone at another sinner, though the president was perfectly innocent of any racism as proven by his selection of multitudes of white czars to run the government on the philosophy of the Force.

Don’t be afraid to discuss race but be sure you have created the proper spin for every eventuality.

As ever,
Redtape

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Healthcare or Insurance Windfall?

With the government shut down and the president throwing public temper-tantrums, people are supposed to be applying now for health insurance unless they’re already covered, either privately or through employer plans. They’re being introduced to the insurance-angle of Obamacare, actually what the whole program is about.

Obamacare is less about health (the U.S. has the best healthcare worldwide) than about the insurance business, provider of bottomless pockets of cash for its lobbyists. Obama speaks now not about health but about health-insurance for everyone, though the homeless, the working-poor and the families on welfare will continue to go to the emergency-room or other treatment-centers just as they always have, with payments for their care made by the insured, also known as taxpayers.

There are four insurance levels—bronze, silver, gold and platinum. HHS seems to consider the second-tier silver plan as the one most likely to be used (Forbes). Though costs vary state-to-state (unfair but true), the average monthly-premium for this plan is $328, with the deductible at $2,550 for a combined yearly outlay of $6,486 before any benefit occurs.

Actually, all bets are off because no one seems to know exactly what’s in Obamacare, just as House Minority-Leader Pelosi said would be the case until the law was passed. It’s been passed and the president probably knows less about it than anyone else…except Pelosi, of course. Both know, however, that Congress-people and their staffers are largely exempt, with taxpayers ponying up for their goodies.

The prez and his party—elitists, all—figure the great unwashed lack sense enough to understand the insurance gig so $67 million has been spread nationwide to hire “navigators” to help them understand premiums, deductibles, etc. The worst problem is that those making too much to afford Medicaid-driven subsidies probably will not be able to afford insurance, thus back to the old ER. The navigators – with little training – are not supposed to push any plan, so laughs are in order. So far, the application process is a total mess.

Remember the well-publicized lady in Detroit (now being given $300 million borrowed from China by Obama) screaming about the free healthcare in 2010, with money furnished by Obama. She’s finding out now that there’s no free lunch. Kaiser Family of California furnishes some details. The policy mentioned above for a family of four and income of $50,000 carries a premium of $5070 per year ($422.50 monthly) with a possible (not guaranteed) government subsidy of $1705. But no benefits are available until the $2,550-deductible is satisfied.

People will likely not know what’s covered until they see a doctor and might receive a rude awakening. The labor unions, having negotiated beautiful healthcare plans with employers (especially the auto workers) discovered that their members are among the losers, made a trip to the White House to get the expected exemption, and left in a huff. They carried the water for the prez in 2012 after he earlier had saved jobs at GM and Chrysler, leading both to bankruptcy, with shareholders holding the bag. He’s not running again so…guess what!

The housing-bubble-bust-up occurred when people were told to buy houses whether or not they could afford them, with millions of defaults the result. An insurance-bubble is about to take place as people are told to buy insurance they can’t afford without incurring humongous deductibles. This is called bait-and-switch, the mother’s milk of government.

No argument here with healthcare being available for all but there’s also no free lunch! Elected Washington officials are very well paid (actually inordinately overpaid) and thus are out of touch with the hoi polloi. Senators and representatives receive $174,000 in salary and can earn in addition 15% of the level II executive rate, another $26,955 for a total of nearly $201,000 per year. The House Speaker makes $223,500 and the majority and minority leaders in both houses make $193,400. They also get great medical insurance and pension perks and have exempted themselves from Obamacare, which would cost them more than they would like to pay.

Obamacare hurts the most disadvantaged, who already suffer. Nothing has been more deplorable, however, than the president’s unilateral exemption of the business community (his friends) from the law until 2015 (after 2014 elections, then probably exempted again). As per the Constitution in personally nullifying settled law, Obama overreached and admitted the law is bad. Impeachment, anyone?

And so it goes.
Jim Clark