Life of Chris

If the United States was under constant attacks on our homeland, houses and entire neighborhoods wiped out by another government half a world away for 20+ years, would you not want to do everything you can
in retaliation? Retaliation is also called blow back.

If you where spoon fed by the media, then you honestly believe that we where attacked because we are a freedom loving people, and that is what the media hyped and managed to convince our own government
into believing, and because the government believed it, the people believed it. Thanks to our positions in the UN we are a dominate military superpower. They always come to the United States because they
know our military can handle what is thrown at them, however, there is an unseen consequence. If a forigen nation is invaded under a UN resolution, the people in those countries don’t see the United Nations
emblem, they see the United States emblem, which has landed us blow back directly, upto including, and since 9-11-01, under many UN resolutions our forces have been bombing targets in Iraq, Afganistan, Saudi
Arabia, and Iran to an extent. By continuing an ongoing occupation and behaving as if we are policing the world and spread democracy to people who don’t want it, we will suffer even harder blow back. We’ve
had very little in terms of diplomacy and more aggressive force since the mid to late 70s and its not only cost us trillions of dollars in debts, but also cost us thousands of lives of our own soilders, but
also the 100,000′s of innocent civilians lost on the opposing side. We need to cut our ties to the United Nations so they can stop using the United States as a law enforcer, we need to bring our troops back
to the states, use their resources for protecting our land in defense rather than remain engaged in offensive wars of aggression.

Why is this such a big deal you may ask, its simple.  The U.S. government wants to mandate that everyone in america has health insurance. On the surface, this is a good thing, it will help keep the citizens in good health, stop hospital doctors from driving citizens bankrupt with medical expense fees etc.

So?  Why all the hype?

The short answer: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The long explainative answer:

Under the constitution the US government is not allowed to force its citizens to buy/purchase anything.

The state in which the citizen resides has the power to mandate insurance.  Many states such as Missouri (where I live) require everyone who drives a motor vehicle to have motor vehicle insurance in the form of Liability (including Medical deductibles) and Uninsured Motorist.

The same is and has been true for a long time with health care insurance.  There are a few big issues with forcing companies, organizations and individuals to pay for healthcare by law.  

For one, under the current draft of the PPAHCA contraception is included, I’ve already addressed this issue in an earlier post.

Secondly, allowing the federal government to regulate the health care system at all can lead to abuse of power. Maybe not by the current administration but it opens a whole that will allow the government (Democrat, Republican, Independent alike) to step in and tell businesses not to serve certain food items, or medications because its driving up the cost of health care regardless if the food or medication is certified by the Food and Drug Administration. This removes the right of citizens to make a choice which is the biggest part of our civil liberties in the United States.

Thirdly, the cost.  Health care is expensive.  Under the current draft, the federal government will be subsidizing the cost of health care for people who are unemployed or unable to afford health care.  This in turn pushes the cost to the tax payers (aka the citizens, or you and me).  At the time of this post, our government is 15.5 trillion dollars in debt, to pay this debt down every person on the planet would have to pay over $2,500 in gold bullion to the united states, but I digress.  The predicted subsidies was just under $900 billion, but as of two weeks ago the actual cost analysis says the PPAHCA will cost around $1.7 Trillion per year. Last year, the U.S. citizens as a whole payed a total of $1.5 trillion in taxes. The United States citizens can’t even generate the tax revenue needed to pay for the bill, let alone sustain a government operating budget that is used to pay our soldiers (god bless them), and the general government infrastructure.   This can be accomplished by raising taxes, but as our economy is in a slow recovery, raising taxes enough to pay for the cost of the bill, and pay for our infrastructure, raising the taxes to an appropriate level will cause the economy to start falling again because the tax rate would be so high people wouldn’t be able to spend their own money except on necessary purchases such as food, gas, housing.

And everything I just typed in that paragraph is just the government subsidizes of health care costs.

For health care beneficiaries through employment, the employer is paying for the health insurance costs. Which to an individual, doesn’t matter much. But to a small business owner, its everything.  The average employer will have to pay a total of $500 per quarter for each employee they hire, that may not sound like much for a 2 or 3 man operation, but as the business grows the costs grow with it. Example, if you start a business and you grow to 12 employees, your looking at a quarterly cost of $6000 of insurance.  Most small businesses may not make enough to pay their employee wages, and the mandatory insurance in a single quarter.  If they do not pay for insurance for their employees, its a cost of ~$2500 per quarter, which most small business would rather pay the fine then offer the insurance and have their employees receive the government paid subsidy. However paying the fine every quarter for too long can get the business into a lot of legal trouble which they can’t afford and will be forced to close down or go bankrupt.

In conclusion:

1. It is costly to the point where it could bankrupt our nation.

2. It is technically unconstitutional through the first amendments freedom of religion

3.  It is anti-small business which small business is what America is founded on.

4.  It works against the founding fathers intentions to keep the government from interfering with the lives of the citizens for the betterment of the countries future.

5. Civil liberties are being toyed with, which is what has most republicans and libertarians in defiance of it.

My final thoughts.

The President and House Majority leader wouldn’t let anyone see what was in the bill until it was passed.  To me, this was shady, and many others think as I do.  To me it looks more like a power grab from our president, then it does being helpful in the united states.

A good friend of mine argued the fact that there are many people who are ill, or on their death bed because they can’t afford the medication and are without a job.   It sounds dishearting to say but in a perfect world this would work, but the founders of our nation knew this wasn’t a perfect world which is why we have the constitution to protect us as citizens from the might of the United States government.

To quote a line from one of my favorite movies: “The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

We should be looking to move forward, something like this bill is moving in the wrong direction.

I am including in this Audio and transcripts from the US Supreme court concerning this case:

3-26-2012 - Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida
MP3 – Windows Media Audio   - PDF Transcript

3-27-2012 Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida
MP3 – Windows Media Audio – PDF Transcript

3-28-2012 Florida v. Department of Health and Human Servs.
MP3 – Windows Media Audio – PDF Transcript

Latly, we’ve seen gas prices take a steep rise in price, this is normal for this time  of year normally, unfortunately this past years oil consumption in the United States has not been normal. Nation wide we’ve had a mild winter. Some areas (like where I live) got very little snow, and higher then average temperatures. People weren’t working their heaters as much  therefore energy consumption for the past 3 months is at near an all time low.  The demand for oil this past quarter has been way down, and the United States has a surplus.  So the big question is: WHY IS GAS PREDICTED TO HIT $5.00 per gallon this summer?  Thats $70 per gas tank for a 14 gallon gas tank.  Demand is down, supply is high.  Somehow I recall a teacher of economics telling me that when demand is down, and supply is up, the price goes down.  Or am I wrong?

Well it appears that the US Government has decided to allow the oil companies (OPEC, EXXON, etc.) to export our excess oil reserves to other countries, thus keeping our oil and gas prices artificially high.  Raising tensions in the middle east will only start effecting  the gas prices in about 4-5 months after we burn through our reserve we currently have on hand.

The Keystone Pipeline that was declined by Barack Obama would have created new jobs, but wouldn’t have contributed to its second biggest promise of lowering gas/oil prices in the United States simply because what was refined and imported by the pipeline would have just been exported as well.