The Failure of HMO's

One night 23 years ago, just before I turned 18, I was walking to the convenience store since my rust bucket of a car wouldn't start (I bought it for $200.00 what did I expect right?). To make a long story short, I was hit by a drunk driver and ended up in the Intensive Care Unit for about 2 weeks. It would take another couple of weeks in a regular room before I would be allowed to go home. Total Bill .... $275,000.00, got the bill shortly after I turned 18, so I was now "legally responsible for it". I had no insurance, only a measly $10,000.00 PIP (Personal Injury Protection) on my car, but
I wasn't driving my car (they paid anyway).
I was standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom, shortly after taking a shower, looking at my shattered face with tears streaming down my face contemplating what the hell was I going to do to take care of this huge hole in my nose, and this massive hole in my wallet called a hospital bill. I could no longer do Tile setting (what I was doing at the time) because of injuries to my back, hell I could barely stand up straight from the abdominal surgery I had just had to put my stomach and pancreas back together (and the removal of my spleen). To top it off, I could just barely use my left leg or my left arm (which was dislocated). I ran some warm water to rinse my face, I didn't want my Mom to see that I was upset when all of a sudden a blood clot on my nose dissolved and blood started pulsating out of the middle of my nose and on to the mirror in front of me. Shocked I grabbed a towel and put it over my face and yelled out, Maaaaaooom!!!
She called the Doctor that did the re-constructive surgery on my face in and he told us to come into his office and he would take care of me right away, he explained to me that he didn't take care of it that fateful night, because he was busy putting my forehead, chin and other areas of my face back together and basically ran out of time after 20 something hours of surgery. After a short office procedure, he took a pebble that had embedded itself in my nose out, cauterized the offending vein and did a fantastic job of fixing me up, and straightening out my nose.
We went to the hospital the following week to see what we could do about the bill. We explained that I was only going to get $10,000.00 from my PIP insurance, and another $10,000.00 from the Drunk Driver's insurance, and that was it, we had no other insurance and no money to pay such a massive bill, and I was unable to work at the time due to my injuries. The hospital then proceeded to contact all the Doctors, they accepted something like 5 cents on the dollar each and the Hospital wrote off their portion of it and that was that. I was no longer responsible for almost $300K in medical bills.
The reason I tell you this story is to illustrate, that I wasn't thrown out in the street. I wasn't refused treatment because I was poor and uninsured. I basically had access to the best health care system in the world. So first things first, let's take the "John Q" image out of our heads, because THAT is not reality.
The video above starts with John McCain's vision of how to fix the Health Care system in the U.S. He is then summarily attacked by the left on the fact that they feel that his policy's don't address things like basic coverage, and 'minimum standards', being from the left they simply do not understand things like 'market forces', it's a completely foreign principal to them. We can only fix the problem, if we understand how we got to the mess that we have today.
People who think we have a lot of economic problems today, definitely didn't live through, or remember the late 70's. Especially during the Carter Administration. We had about double the unemployment figures, four times the inflation rates and Interest rates to buy homes, was 3 times what it is today. As you can imagine back then, people were looking for any possible way to save on their expenses. In this kind of backdrop most people purchased an Indemnity form of health insurance that usually cost about $150.00 a month for a family of 4. The way that it worked was a little complex; you got sick, you went to the doctor, you paid the doctor an office visit. Back then it was anywhere from $25 to $50.00, you make sure you save your receipts or canceled check, done. You got a prescription, your medicine was maybe $10.00 to $25.00, paid for it and saved the receipt. Once you paid out about $250.00, anything over that would be reimbursed to you on an 80% Basis. Once you spent between $500.00 to $2,000.00 out of pocket, depending on the quality of the policy, the Insurance company would take over and pay 100%, up to about 1 Million, again depending on the quality of the policy. Clearly insurance wasn't to be used for the 'minor things' it was only to be used for absolute emergency's. Something like what happened to me.
In the backdrop of the economic upheavals of the 70's, HMO's which originally came out in the '50's started becoming more popular. The promise of the HMO was simple. Your Premium was about the same, possibly a bit higher, but instead of paying up front, filing claims, waiting to get reimbursed, save receipts, all you had to do was pay a Co-payment. See the Doctor, it's only $10.00, go to the Hospital, it's only $50.00 a day, done. There was no forms, no paperwork, no headaches. Seemed like the perfect solution to the Health Care problem. HMO's believed that they could 'manage' health care by providing incentives to the doctors for providing preventative care. An good example of preventative care is Diabetics. Preventative care in this group can have huge cost savings in the prevention of things like Amputations, blindness and other maladies associated with Diabetics. HMO's started having a problem though; whereas before, people would only go to see the doctor when they had a serious problem, like their kids have a fever. Now it's only 10 bucks, no big deal, so they started going to see the doctors as soon as the kids got a sniffle, and demanding Antibiotics to boot! (I'm not even going to go into THAT problem). The point is, people started over using the system, much more often than the HMO benchmarks, which were based on the number of visits people had made under the old system of indemnity insurance, so they had to adjust. The 'adjustments' have been moving skyward for 3 decades now.
A good analogy is to think of your Auto insurance. You pay about $1000.00 a year. If your car is destroyed, they give you the value of the car. Well imagine if congress passed a law that said that your Insurer now has to cover your Oil changes, replace Batteries, Break Pads, any mechanical breakdown, repair ripped seats, repaint your car every few years, replace burned out lights. Do you think your insurance would still be only $1000.00 a year? It would probably triple! At that point, you would probably go to your insurance company and say, hey "I can pay for oil changes I just want basic inexpensive insurance that pays for the stuff that's too expensive for me". They would then say, sorry, Congress says we HAVE to cover all this other stuff. Is this what we've gotten to. Americans are the wealthiest group of individuals on the planet. Your tell me that they can't pay for a Doctor visit, without someone else paying for it?
If you can indulge me for another moment I'd like to tell you another personal experience. I recently called a doctor that had been referred to us to help us treat our son who has Autism. After explaining to me what they do, I agreed that this might help my son, so I asked how much it would cost. He asked what type of insurance I had and i explained that my insurance, just as most insurance, doesn't pay for Autism, I would have to pay cash. He explained that he normally charges $250.00 for the initial evaluation, then $85.00 per session and recommended 2 sessions per week. I told him that I couldn't afford that, and if he could give me a cash discount. He dropped the initial consultation by $50.00, and the per session fee by $10.00. I then asked how many people he had in his billing dept. He said he had 2 very capable girls. I told him, "Listen doc, Not for nothing, but the truth is at the end of each visit with you, I'm going to write you a check or give you a credit card. You're not going to have to utilize your wonderful staff for me, so they can be chasing dollars due from another patient. You're not going to have to wait 2 or 3 months of fighting red tape with the Insurance Companies or Medicare, your going to have the cash immediately to do what ever you want with, Can we drop the Initial consultation down to $150.00 and the subsequent visits to $65.00?". He paused for a bit, but then agreed. I then went further and explained that I take every Tues. and Thurs. off to take care of my son, and my wife takes every Mon, Weds, and Friday off to take care of him, would it be possible that you can teach us what to do, give us a plan, and we'll just come in once a month for him to review and let us know if we're on the right track. He said that was a wonderful Idea, a little every day would be worth much more than 2 half hour sessions a week. If this was all covered by insurance, would I be as motivated to save some money? Probably not, but I'm saving $8000.00 a year, and my son is progressing very well. While YES this is a very unique situation, I share this with you to illustrate what can happen when market forces are re-introduced into a system where for a long time, there were none.
So here's the whole point. The reason the Health Care system has gotten completely out of whack and out of touch with your average person is because as health care costs began to rise, Doctors found it necessary to start hiring medical billing specialists to handle getting reimbursed by the insurance companies. You know, that annoying little task that most Americans didn't want to handle, well it turns out that it's easy for us, because we simply make our co-payments, but it's not so easy for the doctors. As the HMO's made it more difficult for Doctors to get paid, they hired more Medical Billing Specialists, and so of course, they had to compensate by charging more for their services. It isn't uncommon to find anywhere from 1 to 3 Medical Billing specialists in your average practice, and usually those people make around $30,000.00 per year plus taxes and benefits. When all is said and done, that's about $50,000.00 per year in costs that the Doctors have to incur, just to take care of billing. These expenses have to then be calculated back into the cost of the average office visit. A busy office that has an appointment every 15 Minutes, will see about 32 people a day, figure 50 weeks (have to take vacations right?), that's about 1600 patient visit per year. If that same office has 2 billing specialists, you would have to charge $62.50 per visit just to cover the cost of the Billing Specialists, about another $62.50 for the Nurse and Secretary, another $62.50 for Rent and Insurance, and another $62.50 for the Doctor himself, which brings us to the average of $250.00 for an office visit today. Using this example, If we could cut the Billing Specialists out of the equation, that would reduce an average office visit down by about 25%. The question is how do we do this? Some advocate to use the French Model. All insurance is paid via a clearing house, so the doctors only deal with a single entity to process billing. It's not uncommon to go to a French Doctor, and he is the only one in the office. After he sees you, he processes your billing via the Electronic Payment system and he's done. While Initially, this would definitely cut a MASSIVE amount of waste in the system, you're still left with the same underlying problem which is, that someone else is picking up the tab. There's zero incentive to cut waste and excessive utilization out of the system. Once you have your initial costs savings, Healthcare inflation will continue unabated, because again, they're not billing YOU, they're billing some faceless multi-billion dollar Insurance company or multi-trillion dollar government. Once an inflexible and self serving system like this becomes entrenched, it becomes increasingly unresponsive to the individual needs of the patient. Everywhere that socialized medicine has been tried, the end result has always been rationing of care, long wait times and in many cases people dying, while waiting for treatment, either as an endemic part of the system as in Canada, where countless die in huge waiting lists for many 'common' procedures, or in shortfalls in emergencies, like in France where 14,000 died in the heat wave of 2004.

A good friend of mine is part of the problem that I'm talking about here in the U.S. Self employed, he pays about $1200.00 a month for a top notch HMO that covers himself, his wife and his 2 kids. I pointed out to him that he could buy a 'Catastrophic' policy for only $300.00 a month and save himself $10,000.00 a year. he then exclaimed, "yeah, but that has a $5000.00 deductible!" I told him, are you kidding me? You're saving $10,000.00 a year! When was the last time you even went to the doctor? He said he couldn't remember, but decided to keep his plan anyway. People like him are the problem, because since the Doctor knows that HE is not paying him, it's his Insurance company paying, they don't have to be competitive. They don't have to care about what their price is, and only once we get that dynamic back into the system, will we see real change in the way that things are done.

Keeping this in mind, direct payments under $500.00 to doctors from Insurance companies needs to be outlawed. If people went back to the old system en masse to where they called got a quote, shopped around, that would go a long way towards putting Market Forces and price sanity back into the system. A way to insulate people like my friend would be to create a new type of policy. Replace HMO's with MSA's or Medical Savings Accounts. Here's how it would work. Insurance companies can offer it as a package deal and charge the client the same amount per month that they're charging now for an HMO, with the difference being that the premium will only be, like in my friend's case, $300.00 and the $900.00 a month balance goes in the MSA. MSA accounts would be linked to a 401K, and once the balance exceeds $5000.00, anything over that amount would go into the 401K. Insurance companies wouldn't be allowed to make exceptions for things like Autism, like they do now, and everyone should be required to buy a policy, even if it's just a basic Catastrophic plan with no MSA attached. The reasoning behind this would be to keep hospitals from being on the hook for a couple hundred thousand, like what happened to me. This should help to keep costs down. The Poor should also get catastrophic policies paid for by either employers, or by the government if they can't afford their own policy and are unemployed. Smaller businesses of less than 25 employees should have part of their payroll taxes defrayed to help with the costs, based upon the profitability of the company. The poor should also get MSA accounts, funded by a combination of Employers, and Existing Social Security and Medicare taxes. Keep in mind that the Government ALREADY pays for Medicare, and this would simply be a diversion of existing funds, new taxes would not be needed to fund this.
The reason HMO's and PPO's need to be eliminated, is because with about half the population enrolled in either an HMO or PPO, it takes those shoppers out of the market. They are not out there shopping their doctors, asking for price breaks and most of all, those people still require the battalions of Billing Specialists to be employed by the doctors. With the Billing specialists still on the Doctors payroll, it will be difficult for them to lower their prices.
The dictionary defines Insurance as "coverage by contract in which one party agrees to indemnify or reimburse another for loss that occurs under the terms of the contract" Instead of letting us pay for something, then get reimburse us for it, the HMO's have redefined insurance to take on a MUCH larger role in our lives than we would like to admit. HMO's have themselves become a form of "social program" that decides, what doctors we get to see, what specialists we get to visit and what particular things they will and will not pay for. We need to put these decisions back in our own hands and remove this "overlord" type of system that makes far too many of our own personal decisions for us. Switching to a Catastrophic Policy model in combination with MSA's would go a long way towards giving us back our freedom of choice and as an added bonus, better retirement security.

Does the U.S. Government Need More Taxes?

To hear Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama speak, you would think that the Federal Government is in Dire Straights. “The Rich need to pay their fair share” and “we need to invest Oil Profits”. Last year the federal government spent almost 2.8 Trillion Dollars. That figure is a just over a 13 fold increase since 1970. What you don’t hear, is that the government has also had an almost 13 fold increase in recipients as well. Think about this for a moment, in that same time span, the median household income in the U.S. has grown at only half that rate, and while the deficit has definitely gone up, to the tune over 300 Billion a year, it’s still relatively small compared to total inflows.

The reason the Government has been able to get away with this is simple, they utilize politics of class warfare and envy. While the bottom 50% of income earners share of taxes has gone down to a historic low of less than 4% of all personal taxes collected, the wealthy in this country, or at least those in the top 50% of income earners are paying over 96% of all personal income taxes collected, with the top 1% of income earners paying almost 40% of all personal income taxes collected. To top it off, Corporate taxes in the U.S. are at an all time high of 35 to 39%, the 3rd highest in the industrialized world. Only Japan and Germany are higher, and both of those companies have record numbers of factories moving overseas, so the next time people talk about NAFTA and China taking away jobs, we here in the U.S. make it very difficult for companies to make money, and then once they do make money, they have to hand over a third of it to the government. They then wonder why the companies want to move offshore? Most other countries throughout the world tax their corporations at anywhere from 12 to 25%! Ever since Ireland had adopted a low corporate tax of just 12.5%, it has seen an economic boom that has powered it's economy twice as fast as other European nations. Obviously, going the route that Clinton and Obama are espousing would cause more companies to take Intel and Dell's lead and move more operations to Ireland and other low corporate tax nations.

The chart below shows the overall budget between 1970 to 2007, 75&76 are a bit skewed because of accounting changes, but has you can clearly see the amount of cash being collected by the government is at an all time high. According to Pig Book, 17.2 Billion of the deficit spending, was attributed to Pork Barrel spending alone, both the Senate and theHouse are guilty of indulging their constituents.

On Nov. 7^th, 2006 voters across the country signaled their disgust for the system and the status quo with a mandate for the Democrats to clean house. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that they’re listening. Spending between 2006 and 2007 is up by a 4%, adjusted to inflation a 1% increase, but no cuts. Considering the fact that the deficit is only 13% of the budget, a simply slowing spending to say, half of inflation coupled with eliminating Pork Barrel spending would have brought the deficit down by 8%, a few years like that and the entire deficit could be wiped out, without too much pain. The worst part is that we blew a golden opportunity between 2004 and 2007, while the economy was booming, receipts increased by an average of 11% a year, this would have been a perfect opportunity to balance the budget, but instead, spending each year, exceeded receipts. Bush, once again offered more of the same, instead of leadership on this issue, when he issues his proposed budget of 3.1 Trillion Dollars, that had 2.9 Trillion in spending.

Congress Needs To Show Us They Care

By congress' own actions, I would say that they agree with the findings of the Economic Policy Institute, in their assessment is that "Higher gas prices .. incentivize conserving". In other words, they seem to believe that higher Gas prices are "good" for the country, because the force people to conserve and use less gas. The sad part is that by my conversations with people in Coffee shops and people I meet in stores, many American's, or at least Rich American's (I live in one of the wealthiest areas in the country), feel the same way. The biggest problem with this line of thinking is that, as the Economic Policy Institute so astutely observed, it affects the bottom half of income earners the hardest; not to mention the devastating effects these policies have on the world's poor. Gas and corn prices have gone up at least 50% and 100% respectively, since Congress was taken over by the Democrats almost 2 years ago. In other words, we're building this brave new "Green World", on the backs of the ones who can afford it the least. Everyone talks about about oil as if it's passe technology, like we don't need it anymore. We should just move on. NewsFlash! The world still runs on oil, and we still don't have any alternative that is as economically viable as oil.
This morning President Bush expounded on Congress to do something to increase domestic drilling to help the economy. His comments were dismissed mostly because Congress, despite the high prices, seems to feel that we need to focus more on Green Fuels. Unfortunately, they know that Green Fuels can't compete with cheap gas and so they are reluctant to act, even if it's what the American People want. Popular Mechanics did a great story last year, where they show that Green Fuels have a long way to go be competitive with Gas, this is still true even with the recent run up in prices, especially corn based ethanol, which is about 50% higher than last year, due to increases in oil and corn.
On January 28th 1981, Reagan, faced with gas at 3X what it was when Carter stepped into office, decided that the government tried and failed in their attempts at regulating the Oil and Gas business. He decided to let the free markets dictate the price. In the book Envy of the World: A History of the US Economy and Big Business by Timothy, J. Botti, on page 392, the author talks about how, "Reagan dropped all price controls on the industry for the first time since 1971. In addition, he cut Carter's windfall profits tax of 30% on new oil exploration in half". Later, in 1988, after the ensuing Oil Glut, Reagan was able to eliminate the tax entirely, since the Oil industry was just barely making a profit. The U.S. consumer benefited with lower gas prices for the next 20 years! This my friends is what is called Leadership, something sorely needed by our so called leaders today. The reason it worked was simple, unshackled by excessive taxation and regulation, the industry found so much oil, that our reserves during the 80's increased by over 29%. To top it off, in order to compete with the U.S. massive oil output, OPEC, ended up cutting prices to the point to where Oil was as low as $8.00 a barrel!
Instead of following the example of what worked, set by Reagan, here's what congress is doing:

1. Subsidizing millionaire farmers.
2. Restricting Oil Exploration and production.
3. Ignoring Maryland's call to restart the 'Synthetic Fuels Corporation'.
4. Focusing on Corn based Ethanol, which only benefits Agribusiness.

How did we get here? After the Oil collapse of 1985, Oil companies started to consolidate the industry through mergers and acquisitions to become more profitable, and in many cases to stem huge losses. At the same time, OPEC seeing a threat from a more energy independent U.S. Started cutting prices to the point to where it costs less for us to buy our oil, than to go out, try to find it, extract it and so forth. The U.S. not only had excess capacity of Oil, we had a HUGE excess gas capacity as well. If gas prices had stayed high, they could still make money, but by the end of 1985, gas prices bottomed out at about .89 cents a gallon, too low for them to make any money. Through merger's acquisitions (and explosions) we cut the number of gas refineries down do about half today of what we had during the Reagan years, but unfortunately, congress used the Exxon Valdez spill as an excuse to once again, shower the industry with regulations, most of which had nothing to do with Shipping, and environmental spills, and more to do with protecting the industry from newcomers getting into the business. This had the effect of allowing the industry to continue to consolidate, and cut costs, while at the same time preventing any newcomers installing new refineries or oil drilling to compete with the existing business. In other industries, such as Airlines, smaller carriers like Spirit or Jet Blue enter the market to provide low cost choices, where Mergers caused those low cost choices to disappear, not so in the Oil industry. The past few years has seen the merger of Exxon and Mobile, Chevron and Texaco, British Petroleum and Amoco. Where are the new startups to challenge these guys?

Of course, the other White Elephant in the room is Global Warming. Too many of congress' decisions are based upon the whole "Carbon Footprint" theory, that somehow we are causing Global Warming. Before you dismiss me outright, let's keep in mind that the Southern Hemisphere has been cooling about as much as the northern hemisphere has been warming over the last decade or so. Also, 3 of the 5 or 6 hottest days on record since 1890, happened over 70 years ago. There's absolutely no proof that we are outside of normal variations. In addition, the tales of the oceans rising, it turns out were falsified. Even a British judge has said that Gore's movie, needed to be shown with Guidance notes to point out the "Political Indoctrination" and "Factual Errors".

But here we are betting our entire future that this is all correct, when in reality it's nothing more than the latest political fad du jour. A hundred years from now, when the next Glaciation Cycle starts, historians will be saying, "What the hell were those people thinking? Didn't they have the technology to study history back then?" I'll get into that in another post.
Back to the subject at hand, if congress really cares about us, here's what they need to do to lower prices on Gas.

1. Realizing the Industry is cleaner than it's ever been, streamline the EPA process required to get a new site up and running.
2. Reform the EPA to actually allow more Gasoline Refineries to be built in the U.S. (without it costing Billions to do)
3. Restart the Synthetic Fuels Corporation.
4. Offer tax breaks to companies to switch Power Generation from Oil to Coal.
5. Mandate higher fuel efficiency for vehicles.
6. Mandate all new homes be built with Solar Hot Water Heaters at the bare minimum.
7. Mandate higher energy efficiency in Homes and appliances.
8. Mandate to all electric utilities that they MUST buy any available electricity at the same cost, that it costs them to generate that electricity (this way if someone builds a Garbage powered generator, he can sell the electricity back to the utility.

If these policies are announced on the SAME DAY that they announce a stop in Emergency Reserve purchases until the end of the summer driving season, AND a stop to interest rate cuts, believe it would be enough to burst the current Oil bubble that is powering oil up even higher every day.

So there you have it congress, now show us you care!

Recap of references used in this Story on Diigo.

The Democrats Have a Nominee: It's Clinton!

WSJ Reported... "The Democrats Have a Nominee: It's Obama! Other than ensuring the Greatest Show on Earth will continue, does it matter that Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama Tuesday in Pennsylvania by nine-plus points? Barack Obama is the nominee."

This reporting though, fails to take certain things into account. The first is the entire reason why the 'Super Delegates' were created in the first place. It wasn't to mirror what the party wanted, it was created for exactly the reasons that the WSJ stated about the Democrat Party Primary Process, "No centrist can secure the party's nomination in a primary system dominated by left-liberal activists". Which is fine, if left leaning leberals are electable, but as the past has shown us, they are not. Obama, is nothing more than a modern day McGovern, completely unelectable, or did the newspaper not get the news? They wrote in this same article that McGovern (1972), Mondale ('84), Dukakis ('88), Gore ('00) and Kerry ('04), were exactly the types of far leaning left liberals that Middle America won't vote for. Obama is no different.
North Carolina is a perfect example of the massive problems the Democrats have if they side with Obama, According to Rasmussen, even though as of April 5th, Obama leads Clinton by 20 points, over half of Clinton Supporters say they won't vote for Obama against McCain, if he wins the nomination. North Carolina is just one of the 30 States that went with Bush in the 2000 General election against Gore, and they're also one of the 31 States that went with Bush in the 2004 General Election vs Kerry. The WSJ fails to see that in addition to having a huge block of voters that won't vote for Obama in the general election, Clinton has also won the states with the Most Electoral College votes. Ultimately most Obama voters would vote for Clinton in the General Election, which makes her the more electable of the two candidates. Also, Obama voters tend to be younger and less likely to vote than the Older voters that Clinton has.
One last thing that the WSJ fails to see is that both Florida and Michigan's vote WILL count in the general election, and if the Democrat Party fails to take them into account, they will lose the general election.
If the Super Delegates don't see this or won't act on it, then why have the Super Delegate system in the first place? They might as well adopt the same system the Republicans have and avoid all these headaches in the future.

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Bush Answers - How Presidential Candidates Would Handle a Zombie Threat

I found this story about how the Candidates would handle the issue of Zombie's but, Apparently, only Bush has answered this question so far. Bush again shows leadership in an issue where there are few leaders to be found.

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(Just a bit of a comedy break guys, don't take it too seriously)

Run and Hide Obama, Run and Hide

The Washington Post reported how Obama, is opting not to engage Clinton in debates anymore, since apparently she does better in that format. I really wish I had good video editing software, I can envision the scene in Oceans 11, where once the owner of the Bellagio realizes what's going on, he says... "So I have complied with your every request that you made of me".. "Good".... "Now I have one request of you"... Run and Hide Obama, Run and Hide.

In all seriousness though, do we really want a president that's afraid to engage and forcefully put forth his vision for America? Why wouldn't he want to answer the tough questions, if he so strongly believes in his answers? This also begs other questions, like how would he push through any reforms, if he's afraid of engaging those who disagree with him once he's in the White house? Actually though, I think he just doesn't want to answer any more questions about his associates. There's also his lies about not taking money from the Oil industry and other "Mis-spoken words". The biggest problem with Obama is that the more he goes "Off Script", the more "Problems" he has with the media.

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Obama Cash Machine - Overrun by 'Operation Chaos'

Obama outspent Clinton by 3 to 1 and in some markets as much as 5 to 1, yet he was unable to close the margin of Clintons victory to less than 10 points. Conceding that he didn't think he could win, Obama was at least hoping to close the margin down to single digits. A very close victory for Clinton here, would have signaled that the Democrat Primary race was pretty much over, but now it doesn't look like this will happen. Or did it? A full 14% of all Democrats voting in yesterday's Pennsylvania Primary, were brand spanking new registered Democrats. How many of those were operatives in Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos? Did Operation Chaos tip the vote in Clinton's favor, extending the Chaos going on in the Democrat party?

Clinton, emboldened by her victory, entered the Philadelphia auditorium singing, "I'll stand my ground, and I won't back down!" and then said "Some people counted me out and said to drop out, but the American people don't quit and they deserve a president who doesn't quit either"

My analisis of this situation raises some questions though, the problem that I have with this, is the fact that Clinton's Cash Machine, only raised 20 Million in the month of March, about a 50% decline from February, while Obama's Cash Machine raised 40 Million in March, while still a drop from February (super Tuesday month), the drop wasn't nearly as huge as Clinton's drop in contributions. If Clinton is surging ahead of Obama this way, why haven't her finance number's reflected this? This leads me to believe that Obama really did win among true democrats and her margin of victory is almost entirely attributed to Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos. While true, that now that she's shown a win, her contributions have soared, but prior to this win, it seems that her support was waning with calls among democrats to drop out of the election.

Rush Limbaugh, commenting on their last debate relished on what he sees is his pivotal "Operatives" changing the outcome of the vote, claiming that "Obama is Damaged Goods, but Radical Hillary Can't Close the Deal".

At the same time, the other side is that Exit polls showed that the vast majority of new registrants voted for Obama, so this begs the question. Did Rush's Operation Chaos win the race for Clinton, or did she win because all of Obama's issues are starting to catch up to him. Are Obama's chickens "coming home to roost"?

Carter Suffering From StockHolm Syndrome

According to the Wikipedia, Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger in which the hostage has been placed. The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28 in 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their victimizers, and even defended their captors after they were freed from their six-day ordeal. The term Stockholm Syndrome was coined by the criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during the robbery, and referred to the syndrome in a news broadcast.

What else could possibly explain Carter's second visit to Hamas, a Terrorist group funded by Iran, the same country that humiliated him during his presidency. A presidency held hostage to the Iran Hostage Crisis. It's almost as if he wants these Brutal killers to "like him".
Carter Claims that he's there to broker a release of the hostage soldier, Gilad Shalit, but neither Israel, nor the U.S. Government have requested, nor do they want his participation. As Condoleezza Rice said before the trip, via State Department spokesman Sean McCormack "Carter had opened himself up to 'exploitation' by both Hamas and the Syrian government. (Since Carter also met with Syrian President Bashar Assad.). The two Palestinians he met with an hour ago, are considered terrorists by the U.S. government and Israel accuses them of masterminding attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians.

I suppose that Carter has forgotten the lessons learned about dealing with the Iranians, you don't negotiate with Terrorists. He is being used as a tool in their propaganda machine to lend legitimacy to their government and to their cause. Not wanting to leave an impression that Carter won any concessions, Hamas said Friday that Shalit would "not see the light" until Palestinian prisoners are also released in an exchange - code for "we want hundreds released for this one". Talk about your slap in the face.

They also spoke of a way to end the siege on the palestinians by Israel. Let's not forget that it was Hamas who started this whole thing, by Kidnapping Shalit, and begun the Shelling of Israel, via lands that Israel conceded to the Palestinian Authority. I wonder if Carter glossed over that little factoid.

In a move reminiscent of the Nazi Party, Hamas, once a minority group in Palestine, has forcibly seized control of Gaza from Fatah in June, utilizing financing and weapons provided by the Iranian Government. They then proceeded to setup a Rival regime to the legitimate government of President Mahmoud Abbas' West Bank Government. Just as the Nazi's their stated purpose is the death and destruction and displacement of all Jews.

Incensed with Carter's undermining of U.S. policy not to negotiate with Terrorists, Rep. Sue Myrick of N.C. has called on Rice to revoke Carter's passport. Citing, "Former President Carter has acted in contradiction of international agreements to isolate Hamas".

No telling on the effect this move will have on Obama's support among the Jewish community in the U.S., Obama has been critical of Carter's visit, since Carter had hinted on supporting Obama. Obama has been very unfortunate, in that many of his supporters, such as Wright, Farrakhan, and now Carter, seem to be insensitive, if not hostile to the needs of the Jewish Community.

Can Mr. Wonderful win the Race?

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Everywhere you look. ABC's Blogs about the coverage of the Debate. The Huffington Post's blogs about how unfair ABC was, the Obama supporters are in an absolute uproar. It's like a collective "How Dare They" came out of their mouths all at the same time. What Obama supporters are failing to realize is that Americans have questions.
There are many issues on which we here at NoSocialism.com can go after Obama, I've written previously about why we believe he can't win, mostly because of the fact that we believe that he does in fact have some very socialist tendency's. However, with the left trying to define the kinds of questions that are appropriate or that can be asked, I'd like to focus for a moment, not so much on the issues, but on what kinds of questions are the right questions, that we should be asking a presidential candidate. I'm going to make an analogy and I know many of you will take this the wrong way, but here we go.
If a white guy named "Mr. Wonderful" came out running for the most powerful office in the country, or even if it was just for mayor of your city, and he came up with a grand plan that would save everyone. Everyone was in complete agreement that the plan was the right plan, but they then found out the man's best friend was the GrandMaster of the KKK, who despite being a Scoutmaster and an upstanding Citizen, used to get supporters in an uproar over how "Blacks have it in for them". In addition, they found out that another friend, hated Jews and was a member of the American Nazi Party, who was trying to organize a Million White Man March. Finally, there was also a revelation that this Mr. Wonderful, that could speak circles around anyone. That seemed to have a solution for every issue, also held strategy meetings at Timothy McVeigh's home at one time, when he lived down the street from him. Would it be fair to say that this "Mr. Wonderful, would be absolutely crucified by the media in every shape and form that they could? Would comments by Mr. Wonderful that 'We can Move Beyond this" be enough to placate his critics that maybe he's not so wonderful? Would these even be fair questions if the plan he had was so absolutely brilliant?
So here we are, with Obama's claims that his 20 year relationship with his Pastor is irrelevant. Here is a man that has said things from, "White people introduced AIDS to the Black community to kill them off" to "America's Chickens are coming home to roost", over the 9/11 Incident. That 20 year relationship, isn't indicative of how he thinks? That relationship doesn't represent his views. The vast majority of people that I know, usually have the closest relationships, with people that they agree with on many, many levels. Most usually tend to distance themselves from people that have viewpoints that are very different then theirs. As for his relationship with Farrakhan, who clearly hates not only Whites but also Jews. He went to his Million Man March, his church, and Pastor Wright gave Farrakhan an Award saying he "Epitomized Greatness". To top it all off, he goes to Bill Ayers home, (formerly of the Weather Underground) where Bill proceeds to host an event for Obama when he was running for State Senator. Clearly this is more than "simply an acquaintance".
According to Obama's supporter's these kinds of questions are a waste of time. We should only be talking about the issues. If it was Mr. Wonderful, would that be the case? Or would we begin to question the man's character and the man's ability to simply "do the right thing". Character is extremely important, and how can you know a man's character, without knowing anything about the company that he keeps? Let's do some super simple math, without getting into too many details.
About 45% of voters always vote Democrat, and about 45% of voters always vote Republican. There's a swing vote, of about 10% that could go either way, and usually don't really solidify their position, until just weeks before the election. Like it or not, Obama Supporters, right now a bit less than HALF of your party is supporting Clinton, let's just say that it's 22% of all voters, Republican, Democrat and undecided. That leaves Obama supporters with 23%, McCain 45% and then there's the 10% Swingers. (Pun intended seeing as they like to jump in either bed). I know what you're thinking, you can get the 22% supporting Clinton, once she's out and, you can get the 10% swingers too, for a 55 to 45 win. Not so fast. You see, you guys might see it that way, but the rest of us don't. Again, right now, as it stands you're in the Minority, with only 23% and you can't define all the issues, we are 77%, and also have a say in what questions are asked and we believe that Character is important. We believe that it's important the we see the kinds of people that you choose to surround yourself with. We believe that it's important to not only define a plan for the country, but to also let us know what kind of person you are and can you be trusted. We are trusting the president with the most powerful position in the entire planet. If we can't ask these kinds of questions of a potential candidate, then that candidate should not be running, period.

Congress Behind Latest Increases in Gas and Oil

Chris Mehl of the Wilderness Society was ecstatic, Kohlman Co., an Oil & Gas development firm, agreed to cede it's oil and gas leases on 33,411 acres along the "Front" to Trout Unlimited, a conservation group. So far the group has racked up 40,074 Acres from companies giving up their leases on the land. 4 companies have agreed to give up their leases on the land since Congress passed a law giving tax credits to companies who give up their leases on 400,000 acres of Federal lands along the Front.

The bill, passed by congress in 2006, expanded the 1997 decision to remove 365,000 acres of Federal land from Oil & Gas leases along the Front. The Front is the area where the Northern Rockies and the Great Plains meet from Montana Hwy. 200 to Glacier National Park in the North.

Chris Hunt, of Trout Unlimited, said the Badger ­Two Medicine area is home to the state fish, as well as grizzly bears that move back and forth between the plains and moun­tains.

“This is a treasured place for hunters and anglers,” Hunt said.

"Bob", A commenter on the Great Falls Tribune Website said, "May do some good for the trout, paid guides, people with the money to go on these wilderness trips and foreign governments that sell us their oil and gas and then kill us with our own money. But chock up another loss for the working class. These development companies are under such strict reclamation regulations and I've seen these newer developments myself in other states and they look fine. All that's left is a small fenced area with a pipe sticking out of the ground in most cases and a nice well maintained road." Roads that can be dismantled later after the well is exhausted.

Indeed, the industry is being blocked at every turn, in California, New Mexico, Utah, everywhere you look there are new roadblocks, new restrictions and more and more regulations being placed on the industry making it more difficult to find and extract the energy that America needs.

While Americans certainly wish to preserve their pristine places is such action really warranted?

With Gas prices hovering at well over $3.00 a Gallon and pricing experts saying that Gas should hit $4.00 a gallon very soon, and possibly much higher in the future, is Congress doing something, Anything to get a handle on this?

With the Technology that we have today, from zero noise drilling platforms, to Horizontal Drilling techniques, the actual footprint of oil drilling equipment is getting smaller and smaller. Even in the hotly contested area of ANWR, a report issued on March of 2003 on the North Slope, showed that Caribou populations in the area were through the roof, despite 30 years of drilling. The report showed that the environmental impact in the area was incredibly small. Less than 1% of the total area was affected.

According to BP, a 20 Acre well pad in 1970 could access about 502 acres of land, meaning you had to dot the landscape with Pads to get to the oil. With today's techniques, a pad of 5 to 6 Acres can access oil on about 32,000 acres of land. Clearly, with new technology, we no longer need to dot the entire landscape with drilling pads, which of course means a lot less access roads need to be built. Additionally, frozen areas like ANWAR, new Exploration techniques are leaving nary a trace of a footprint. Solid Ice Bases and Ice Roads are being implemented that simply melt out of existence in the Summer. Leaving a single capped well head as the only evidence that humans were there.

We need to ask congress, why with rising Food and Gas prices, are they, instead of urging the Oil companies to develop more oil, they instead are doing everything they can to make more and more lands not accessible to Drilling.

Instead, congress recently passed a huge tax increase (HR 5351) on the Oil and Gas industry that discourages the very investments on technology that have made the industry much cleaner. While it might feel good to "Stick it to them", if anything this will lead to even higher prices, as the industry attempts to compensate for higher costs of doing business.

These tax increases will have the effect of telling the industry to just buy the oil from overseas and resell here at the Gas Stations, since Capital Investments will no longer be tax deductible for them, like it is for every industry in the U.S. This coupled with the closure of more and more areas to drilling, will only have the future effect of making oil even more scarce, and the more scarce things get, the more expensive things get. It's a basic law of supply and demand.

But congress isn't done raising your Gas prices, not by a long shot, a proposed Bill S. 1419, includes provisions for the Oil industry to subsidize Ethanol. A move that could double the price of Gas by 2016, even without any additional increases in Oil. And if that's not enough, congress is also considering 29 Billion in new taxes on the Oil industry to subsidize Wind and Solar Power, a move that will surely increase the price of gas even more. If all of these provisions are passed, we could easily be paying $10-$15.00 a Gallon within the next 10 years.

When the Oil Embargo of 73 happened, it had devastating effects on our economy. We ended up with the tripled gas prices, long lines to purchase gas, gas rationing, double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, 21% Interest rates to buy cars, more people were unemployed since at any time since the Great Depression. Back then we only imported 35% of our oil. Today we import 53%! More and more of our money is ending up in the hands of enemies like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the Middle East, who have a penchant for funding Islamic Extremist of the sort that would rather see us dead. What happens to us now if there's a future disruption of supply?

The results are clear. With the artificial caps on production, and less and less supply every year, the prices of oil will continue to skyrocket. We're starting to see the huge problems that Green Fuels deliver, so that's not a real alternative. It turns out that the debate on Global Warming, really isn't over, so we shouldn't just stop producing oil, and destroy our economy for something that might be a mistake. It's nice to dream of some day when we will have cheap and plentiful clean power from some new mystical invention in the future, but right now our economy runs on Oil. And it's running out of Gas. We need to tell congress to be part of the Solution and not part of the Problem.