Obama’s Example Screwed By Obamacare

Jessica Sanford of Washington State did not have health insurance for 15 years because the single mother could not afford it. She was self employed and received no child support so she was on her own.

[note]I question whether she was actually on her own. There are a number of government programs that provide for low income people, particularly single women with children. It is more likely that she is part of the huge number of uninsured who never took the time to sign up for one of the existing programs.[/note]

She went on her state exchange website and signed up. She was told that she qualified for a tax credit and she selected a plan she could afford. She was so excited that she wrote an email to Barack Obama.

I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed. And I haven’t had insurance for 15 years because it’s too expensive. I was crying the other day when I signed up, so much stress lifted. Weekly Standard

Barack Obama used her email at an event.

A funny thing happened on the way to Obamacare for Ms. Sanford. She first received notice that the tax credit quoted was too high and it was reduced which meant she had to pay more of her premium.

Then she received notice that she was not eligible AT ALL for a tax credit. She was responsible for the entire premium.

And that my friends, was an amount that she could not afford.

Now that they have her information and she has selected a plan I am willing to bet she won’t be able to cancel it. She should be able to because she was given incorrect information but that will probably not mean much. Even if they allowed her to cancel her information is on file so if she fails to select another plan she will be taxed for not having one.

She states in the article that for now, she won’t be getting insurance.

Here comes the tax man…

Obamacare is a disaster.

But then again, so is Obama.

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

Post Office To Charge More For Less

The United States Postal Service is a bloated government agency that is charged with delivering our mail efficiently. It charges for the service so the money it gets to operate is not supposed to come from the taxpayer. The establishment of the Post Office is a Constitutional requirement but there is no Constitutional requirement for that service to be run by the government.

Government does NOTHING efficiently and money is never a concern because government begs, borrows, or steals the money it gets and since it makes the laws, it can beg, borrow, or steal as much as it wants without the fear of being jailed.

The Post Office is a prime example of government inefficiency. It has grown, and grown, and grown, over the years while offering extravagant benefits to the people who work for it. The Postal Service has tens of thousands more employees than it needs but can’t seem to downsize appropriately.

In addition, those tens of thousands of employees retire and receive very generous benefits. Those benefits are a huge part of the Postal Service’s fiscal problems because the Service is required to pay into the benefit fund up front and the cost has risen to more than the Service can afford.

This has not stopped the Service from keeping employees on or from closing facilities over the years regardless of the dire circumstances. It seems to live in a vacuum ignoring the reality of its fiscal circumstances in hopes that some Congressman will bail it out.

The Postal Service claims it is finally doing something because it is facing bankruptcy. Some sorting facilities will be closed and the cost of a First Class letter will rise to 45 cents (up one cent) starting January. I doubt the increase will have an immediate impact because the Postal Service sells what it calls forever stamps. Purchase them at the current price and you can use them forever regardless of what the actual rate is. People will be buying a lot of forever stamps this month. In addition, the Service will have reduced service in that letters will take longer to arrive. Yes, we will pay more for decreased service.

There are several problems with what the Postal Service is doing. The biggest is that it is retaining its employees. No one who works at the closing facilities will be released, they will just be reassigned. The amount of mail has decreased year after year but they can’t seem to downsize the workforce.

Another problem is that the Postal Service is a branch of government. It is, by its very nature, inefficient. There is little regard given for costs or to fiscal responsibility (until they start talking about reducing pensions) and there is no concern for efficiency. One only needs to go to a Post Office this time of the year to see one clerk at the counter with a line around the block. It is not like they don’t have enough people to man the place, they just don’t do so. It is almost as if they do it on purpose to fool the public into believing they need more help (or to punish us)…

The government is responsible for the Post Office. This cannot change as it is a Constitutional requirement. However, serious consideration should be given to making the Postal Service a private entity that can work efficiently and for profit. The government would still have legal and oversight authority but a private company would work to deliver our mail. It could earn a certain profit and all other money would go to the federal coffers. If several companies were allowed to carry out postal functions they could compete for our business and provide better service.

Don’t look for this to happen any time soon (if at all).

Perhaps it is time to go postal on the Postal Service…

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

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Obama Ignores Disasters But Looks For The Money

Barack Obama’s regime denied federal assistance to the state of Texas which has been hammered with wildfires. A cynic would say that this is because Texas is a red state and Obama has no chance to win the large pool of electoral votes in the next election. Obama has however, gone to Texas to raise money for the political campaign and I bet there are plenty of liberals there who will give it to him. He will ignore their pleas for help but they will not ignore his.

To get to Texas Obama flew over the Mississippi River and the devastation that it has caused through middle America. The water is at record levels and places are flooded all over and various accounts report that Obama did not even look out the window to get a look at the damage. He was too busy thinking about what to say to Hispanics in Texas regarding amnesty so that he can get their cash now and their votes in 2012.

George Bush was hammered by the press and the liberals when he was photographed looking out the window of Air Force One at the damage from Hurricane Katrina. He was said to be uncaring and Kanye West said that he hated black people.

Obama is only concerned with power and how to hold onto it. His gig in the White House gets him the best tee times on cleared golf courses and free flights to all the hot vacation spots in the world. He needs to hold onto the power he has so he can continue to improve his golf game while working on transforming America into a Socialist country.

And don’t worry about missing anything. The government is working on a mandatory system that will allow it to text your cell phone in the event of an emergency. Of course, it will likely be a plan where those who pay for their cell phones continue to do so while the government uses their tax dollars to pay for phones for those who cannot afford them. It would not be fair, after all, for those poor folks not to get the same warnings as the people who pay for cell phones. Whatever happened to the Emergency Broadcast System?

At least the government will have a way to blast text messages to all of us from Dear Leader.

Wouldn’t want the masses to miss an Obama plea for campaign cash…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

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We Are From the Government, and We Are Here To Help

What a lie. The government never helps- oh that is not to say they do not at times try, feebly- but mostly all they ever manage to do is salt the ground with so many rules and regs that nothing will ever work. Every disaster we have had in the last ten years at least has been aggravated negatively by the Federal Government.
Contrary to what you might wish to believe, they are last in, and first to leave. You could see that in Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Now you can see it in their handling of Ike.

Katrina was a wake up call for FEMA, but in fairness, much of the blame could be laid at the feet of the Mayor of New Orleans, and Governor of Louisiana, who really messed things up by not asking the Feds in soon enough. Not everyone knows that you have to invite the feds into your state to take control of a situation, courtesy of the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, but this is so, and so FEMA was delayed even more than normal.

Then Rita struck the same year, and while you might think that since FEMA was already in the area, they might be quicker in their response, oh no- that was not the case.

Now fast- forward to Hurricane Ike, in 2008- this was the Hurricane whose Eyewall went literally over my house at 6:00 in the morning with 100 mph winds, and all these nice little mini- tornados these storms produce. I had to cut my way out of the driveway when the storm had passed, which was no piece of cake if you have arthritis and two foot thick pine trees. I had a tallow tree that fell on our house, but we were spared major damage. We were extremely lucky, and I am the first to say this.

Fema took three days to get any ice, or food out to anyone near me. I had prepared, having been a life- long resident of Texas and veteran of Hurricanes my whole life, and I pretty much have no use for the Feds- they are always a day late and a dollar short, so I had ice chests, propane stove, and a horse trough full of water I had stored and tarped. Others were not so prepared, and particularly on the coast, where everything was literally scraped clean of any living thing, FEMA just looked at the devastation, and thought well, there’s no one here- why are we?

It has taken us in Texas a year, almost, to begin to put our lives back together, but still, we are much more fortunate than Louisiana, who still today is relying on the Federal government to give them back their lives, and that’s not going to happen. It is, #1- not the business of the government (you have to work at it yourself also), and #2-when the government does try to help, they most often get it wrong, because they have no clue how people live, or what people need.

Trailers to live in after Katrina did not arrive until three months or more after the event. You might think the Federal government could have done better by the time Ike came around, but in some cases, trailers didn’t arrive for four months, and now, before people can rebuild their own homes, Fema wants to take the trailers away. And yet we still have people living rent- free in apartments four years after Katrina. There is no logic to the government.

So it appears that Texans get penalized for being more prepared and able to withstand a storm that could be seen as coming for a week or more, but the people of New Orleans are still treated as helpless babies all because they didn’t do the sensible thing and flee when they had the chance. Oh, that’s right, the Mayor of a city that sits 12 feet BELOW sea level didn’t see a reason to evacuate- now THERE’S a sensible man. He let buses that could have evacuated most of the people sit underwater, and be ruined, while people had to cut themselves out of their attics. Wonderful. While his people were floating on the floodwaters, Mayor Nagin was living in Dallas, high and dry. That’s right- he came to Texas.

Now I said that to say this- if you are expecting the Federal government to bail you out, or to fix anything, make the economy better, or even do ANYTHING competent, you will be waiting a long time. Between the natural tendency of bureaucracy to do as little as possible, to the infighting between the various agencies as to who has the biggest, well, bureaucracy- you are better off doing for yourself, because I, and most everyone on the Gulf Coast, know that the Federal government is pretty well useless, and hasn’t gotten any better with this new iteration of “leaders”.

I mean, now we REALLY don’t have the money to help our people- just ask anyone in California.

Of course, they are their own disaster.
Blake
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