Goin’ To Pot

The other day I’m sitting in the doctor’s waiting room just wasting my time like I was being paid a premium for it, and this pimple-face kid -- well, maybe in his upper teens -- sits down beside me looking excited. Both of his legs are going to some sort of music only he can hear.

He turns to me and asks, “is this doctor dude mellow?”

“Mellow?” I ask. “What do you mean by mellow?”

“Like, can he get me a prescription?” He asks.

“He’s a doctor. That’s what doctors usually do when they find something wrong with you that they can treat.”

“Oh wow, dude, I got something bad!”

At this point, I am not too sure I should be sitting next to this kid. “Bad? How bad?”

“It’s my eyes, dude. They got like guacamole!”

Trying unsuccessfully not to laugh too loud, I said “guacamole? Do you mean Glaucoma?”

“Yeah, that’s it. I need a prescription for like some medical marijuana, dude.”

“Well in the first place, that problem should be seen by an optician. This is a family practice doctor. I doubt he would see you for Glaucoma. In the second place, they will usually give you eye drops for that.”

He sat there for a while with a miffed look on his face and said, “Bummer! Well, I have like Arthuritis too. You take pot for that don’t you?”

“I don’t. But if the doctor truly believes that would help, I suppose he might give you a prescription for that. Some doctors seem eager to issue prescriptions for marijuana to cure anything from hangnails to heart attacks. I don’t know how this doctor feels about it, though.”

“I been smoking the stuff for like a while now and got busted the other day. Dudes on the street said I should like get a medical marijuana card and be legal. They all like have one! Dudes said that gauca… what was it, like Glaucoma stuff was like a sure thing for a card.”

“So you’re what, eighteen, nineteen?”

“Nineteen, dude.”

“And you’re going to tell the doctor you have arthritis?”

“Yeah, dude. I gotta get that card.”

“That would be a real stretch of medical probabilities, but I suppose if this doctor doesn’t prescribe marijuana, another one will. I would wish you good luck, but for your own sake I hope he is more ethical than that.”

“Why dude? It won’t be long and weed will be like legal everywhere. It ain’t hurtin’ no one, and ain’t as bad as alcohol!”

“And how would you know? Have you seen any scientific studies that tell you that?”

“My friends all like do it, and there’s like nothing wrong with them.”

“Well, son, I have seen studies, and they all say that crap is bad for you. One study published in Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers for the first time comprehensively describe existing abnormalities in brain function and structure of long-term marijuana users with multiple magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. Findings show chronic marijuana users have smaller brain volume in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) a part of the brain commonly associated with addiction, but also increased brain connectivity.

“To put it another way, pot shrinks your brain. How many of your friends are rocket scientists?”

“Uhh?”

“Okay, here are some facts from Colorado, where pot has been legal since 2012: The majority of DUI arrests involve marijuana and 25 to 40 percent were for marijuana alone. In 2013, 48.4 percent of adult arrestees tested positive for marijuana, which is a 16 percent increase from 2008. From 2011 through 2013, there was a 57 percent increase of marijuana-related emergency room visits. Hospitalizations related to marijuana increased 82 percent since 2008. I won’t even bother to tell you the bad things that happen to school age kids, but believe me it ain’t pretty. It’s all in a report from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area titled The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact.”

The kid had a blank look on his face. “Dude, those are just like… facts. Pot makes me feel good! I hear these dispensaries have like special blends of pot that will like blow your mind!”

About that time, he was called into the doctor’s office. I guess it is true about pot shrinking your brain, if this kid was any example. The sad part is these kids will be running the country before long.

Class Warfare or Class Welfare

It is no secret that the middle class in America is shrinking. The recent recession – if we can believe it is over – has left far too many people still struggling to make ends meet. In way too many instances, those that lost jobs that gave them not only a living wage but also left them money in their pockets to save or spend on enjoyment found jobs that pay far below the jobs they once held.

I’m no economist, but then, what do they know? Someone, I can’t remember who, once said, “if all economists were laid end to end, they would still point the wrong direction.” I look at this problem from a more practical viewpoint.

The term “class” as commonly used in this country today, refers to a category of the amount of wealth one has. The lower class being the poor, the upper class is the rich, and everything in between is the middle class. Economists like to assign degrees to each class, such as upper-middle and lower-middle, but does it really make much difference to you and me? We know if we are not rich and not poor, we must be somewhere in the middle.

With every price increase on items we need to survive that is not followed by a corresponding income increase, we lose ground and slip closer to the lower class. Because of the recession, a lot of people who were comfortably in the middle class are now knocking on the door of the poverty level.

Mr. Obama’s latest State of the Union speech was intended to give hope to those holding on by their fingernails to the middle-class status. He wants to raise the minimum wage, increase family tax credits, and give away free junior college. To pay for this he wants to increase taxes on the “rich”, end tax cuts on capital gains, and eliminate tax cuts on inheritances. It’s yet another wealth redistribution plan won’t work and has never worked.

Many economists call this class warfare. I call it class welfare. You take from those that have earned theirs and give to those that have not – the socialist utopia. Mr. Obama claims this will end the slide of the middle class. If that is his goal, he is going about it the wrong way.

Henry Ford created the middle class in America. He devised a method for manufacturing a large number of automobiles, reduced the price of his cars so everyone could buy one, added an enormous workforce, paid them high wages, reduced their hours, and grew his company. In the process, he created a ready market for his product by giving his workforce higher wages with extra money to save or spend and time to use the extra wages.

The middle class was formed due to Ford’s manufacturing strategy and ethic, not by some government program or presidential order.

The bottom line is that government can best reduce slippage of the middle class by allowing manufacturing to expand. They need to give manufacturers the ability to invest in larger, more modern plants, and in research and development. It is here that you find the good-paying jobs. The ones that won’t just stop the slide from middle-class, but bring everyone up from the depths of economic anxiety and solidly back into the middle class.

If Obama was truly interested in helping the middle class, he would kill the inheritance tax, eliminate corporate tax, and give tax incentives for manufacturing expansion and research. Instead, he mistakenly believes that class welfare and redistribution of wealth might somehow create a sustainable economic environment and bring more people into the middle class.

Well he is right about one aspect, there will be more middle-class people. But it will be populated by those formerly in the upper class. Obama’s way cannot and will not create a sustainable economic environment that can promote GDP growth or prosperity.

Je suis Charlie

I suspect few in this country have ever read the French satirical weekly “Charlie Hebdo” even if you do speak French. Until recently, I doubt many have ever even heard of “Charlie Hebdo.” Today you would be hard pressed to find anyone who hasn’t heard of the publication.

Charlie Hebdo is an irreverent left-wing French publication created in 1970 as a successor of Hara-Kiri magazine after it was banned for mocking the death of former French President Charles de Gaulle. Charlie stopped publishing in 1982, but resumed in 1992 and currently has a circulation of 45,000. It’s sort of a magazine version of The Daily Show.

Charlie has a long history of rubbing the wrong people the wrong way. The recent attack on Charlie Hebdo by Muslim extremists was not the first such incident. In 2007, the Grand Mosque, the Muslim World League and the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF) sued, claiming the cartoon edition included racist cartoons. In March of 2007, executive editor Philippe Val was acquitted by the court. Following the state attorney's reasoning, the court ruled that two of the three cartoons were not an attack on Islam, but on Muslim terrorists, and that the third cartoon with Muhammad with a bomb in his turban should be seen in the context of the magazine in question, which attacked religious fundamentalism.

A November 2011 issue was renamed "Charia Hebdo" (a reference to Sharia law) and "guest-edited" by Muhammad, depicted Muhammad saying: "100 lashes of the whip if you don't die laughing." Apparently, Muslim radicals don’t have much of a sense of humor when it comes to Muhammad. On 2 November, the newspaper's office was firebombed and its website hacked.

This year on the 7^th of January, two Islamist gunmen forced their way into the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire killing twelve and wounding eleven, four of them seriously.

During the attack, the gunmen shouted "Allahu akbar" ("God is great" in Arabic) and also "the Prophet is avenged.” President Francois Hollande described it as a "terrorist attack of the most extreme barbarity". Police later hunted down and killed the two gunmen, Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kouachi, French Muslim brothers of Algerian.

End of story? Not even! It has been evident to authorities for some time that there were sleeper cells of Muslim terrorists in Europe. Directly on the heels of the Charlie Hebdo incident, another Muslim gunman killed a policewoman and took hostages at a Jewish supermarket, killing four people. The gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, was killed by police.

These incidents have been perceived as direct attacks on freedom of the press and attempts to silence criticism of the horrific acts perpetrated by radical Islamic militants. On Sunday, January 11, a march for unity was held in Paris. Around 40 world leaders joined more than one million people in a march to honor the victims of the Paris shootings. Conspicuously absent were high-level leaders of the United States. Apparently, our own President was too busy (did he have a pressing Tee time?), and lesser minions were deemed unnecessary to attend.

While Israel’s Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas saw fit to join in marching arm-in-arm with the likes of Germany’s Angela Merkel, England’s David Cameron, and France’s Francois Hollande among others, the most notable figure was the one that was not there. The US President Barack Obama “let the world down” by failing to make the journey to France, according to the front page of the New York Daily News.

It seems Je suis Charlie (I am Charlie) does not apply to the one country that prides itself on the constitutional guaranty of freedom of the press. Maybe this is just another example of Mr. Obama’s detestation for the constitution. Or did he simply not want to offend the Muslims in his cabinet by attending an event protesting deadly attacks by Muslims lacking a sense of humor?

By the way, the surviving staff of Charlie Hebdo sold over a million issues the week following the attack. Their normal run is 60,000. Issues on eBay have reportedly sold for $1,000 apiece. Not bad for an irreverent left-wing, dirt stirring rag.

A Beat Up New Years Baby

I would like to wish everyone a happy new year. I would like to, but realistically, we will still be working on the problems left over from 2014… and 2013… and, well you get the idea. In other words, it’s a new year with the same old problems.

Iraq, ISIS, Afghanistan, the Taliban, Obama Care, GITMO, Illegal immigration, the list goes on, and it keeps getting longer. Depressing? Yes it is. But what positive steps are being take to solve any of these problems?

GITMO: Obama made a campaign promise in 2008 to close the Cuban terrorist prison. He found that promise difficult to keep when no country wanted to take the inmates – not even their home countries. It looks like Obama may have finally twisted enough arms (or greased enough palms) to find new homes for these terrorists.

In one instance, he traded (probably illegally) five high-level terrorists for one Army deserter. In another instance, The Saudis agreed to take some prisoners and detain them at their “rehabilitation center”, a posh resort for wayward terrorists where they can contemplate their evil deeds and learn new ways to terrorize the world. We can look forward to seeing these men back in the game in the not too distant future.

Afghanistan: Well, the end is here. We know that because our Commander-in-Chief said so, although we still have troops stationed there “for training purposes.” After 13 years, the Afghan Army is suddenly declared capable of holding on to their country. And Grandma’s big teeth pose no threat to Little Red Riding Hood. The Afghan Army did prove adept at shooting our “trainers” in the back, though. Is the war finally over? That was what Obama told us about Iraq when he pulled our troops out because there was an X marked on the calendar for that day.

ISIS (or ISIL, or IS, or whatever this scum calls itself these days): This is a graphic example of what happens when we try to set an arbitrary deadline for ending a conflict. The hostilities between Sunni and Shiite Muslims have been ongoing for some 1300 years. Don’t look for it to end in the coming year. We are fighting a perverted religious notion being promoted by murderous zealots in an uneducated and backward country. The situation will get a lot worse before it gets better – if that is even possible.

Obama Care: As Nancy Pelosi (the House Speaker that told congress they need to sign the bill to find out what’s in it) said, “It’s the law.” Unfortunately, it is a bad law. And people are now finding out just how bad it is. Premiums are going up, while coverage is getting worse. Sure, more people now have health coverage. This has been achieved by charging more to those that pay, while giving others a free ride. It should have been no surprise, though. Obama told Joe the Plumber we need to spread the wealth around.

In 2015, both houses of congress will be controlled by Republicans – the same people who tried 41 times to repeal Obamacare. Regardless of which party controls congress, bills require the President’s signature to become law. Head-on confrontation with Obama over the healthcare law will go nowhere. It might be better for the Republicans to try fixing the law – if possible – rather than spinning their wheels trying to dump it.

Illegal Immigration: Okay, Obama unilaterally (and probably illegally) declared amnesty for some 22 million people in the country here illegally. Sure, he threw up some hoops and hurdles for the illegals to jump through. I am sure they won’t be too much hindrance for some slick immigration lawyer to avoid. The Democrats need those votes, so don’t look for that problem to go away this year.

And here is a new problem fresh for the new year, the Imperial Presidency. Obama may have lost his roadblock to Republican bills in the Senate, but as he says, “I have a pen.” We have already seen the damage he can do with that pen, when he unilaterally ordered amnesty for illegal aliens. The fact is the US Constitution says nothing about the President being able to make law through executive orders. It takes the House, Senate, and President to create a law. From day 1, Congress gave the President, as chief executive, the power to issue executive orders to administer the country’s business. They did not give him the power to create laws. Congress needs to better define Presidential authority on this matter.

Okay my friends. Enjoy the New Years celebration. Raise toasts to the brand new year. When the party dies down and reality sets in, remember the ghosts of New Years past. They’re going to haunt us for a long while to come.

Dear “Concerned”

As a columnist, I find it always nice to receive feedback. You know at least someone is reading your stuff. Whether negative or positive, feedback can be interesting if not always constructive. And although I usually don’t respond directly to either type, occasionally something comes across my desk that just begs to be addressed.

This time it is a letter from a “Concerned American Citizen.” This letter stood out because it wasn’t criticizing or praising something I wrote. Actually, it was more of a plea for help with a distinct tone on frustration and despair.

Mister or misses (could not tell the gender) “Concerned” was retired from the Perris School District after thirty-five years of service, owned a home, had a mortgage, and was now being forced out of that home by the loan company. No, this is not unusual; foreclosures are still rampant in the Inland Empire.

What caught my attention in this situation was that the bank had foreclosed on the home and sold then it to illegal immigrants. Although I have no way to corroborate this claim or the immigration status of the buyers, I find this type of action occurring so often that I have no reason to doubt the allegation.

No. Wait. It gets even weirder. “Concerned” had tried to re-finance the home, but was denied – for what reason was not stated. The letter said that “Concerned” was told by the bank that he/she was the “wrong type of Mexican.” That “had [he/she] come from Mexico”, he/she would have been able to keep the home. Presumably, the bank was telling “Concerned” that they would have been able to qualify the re-finance had he/she been in the country illegally!

Bizarre as it sounds, this is probably true. For years, there have been reports that many loan companies are soliciting and giving preference to illegal immigrants for mortgages. Proof of citizenship is not a requirement to own property in this country, and most loan companies will accept the ITIN (taxpayer number) in lieu of a Social Security number for a loan.

“Concerned” blames the situation on Obama, and with Obama’s executive amnesty, it’s tempting to accept this excuse. Unfortunately, this was going on long before Obama officially blessed illegal entry into our country,

The banks like getting money from any source and pushed the government to create the ITIN for those that don’t have a Social Security number. The government likes getting income taxes so they created the ITIN so people could file a tax return in spite of not having legal residency or a legal right to work here. Everyone just gives a blind eye to illegal border crossers saying, “it ain’t my problem; it’s the Border Patrol’s problem.” They just want the money.

Well, “Concerned” is now paying rent while people who have no legal right to be here or even work here are living in what was his home. In the vernacular, that sucks!

During the Great Depression, banks were shown to be heartless beasts driving families from their homes and farms. Almost a century later, the only change seems to be that after taking the family homestead they now give preference to ownership by those who have no right to even be in the country.

I’m no Ann Landers, but my reply to “Concerned” is: I can truly sympathize with your plight, but the near future doesn’t look too rosy with Obama’s illegal executive amnesty. My only suggestion is what the Democrats would tell you – suck it up. Apparently, America is no longer for Americans.

Stay Healthy, My Friend

 The other day I was with a good friend when me to look at a medical bill he had received. He had studied it for days, but still couldn’t figure it out.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s have a look.”

He handed me a bill from a billing company for a local hospital. The only entry on it was that he owed $170 for a visit to the emergency room. I knew that his son had insisted on taking him there after a scratch on his arm from his dog’s claws would not quit bleeding. At the Emergency Room, they bandaged the arm, gave him a Tetanus shot, and sent him home. The whole visit took about two hours with the actual procedure taking a mere 20 minutes. “Looks about right,” I said. “A hundred-seventy bucks isn’t all that bad for an Emergency Room visit.”

“Look at this.” He said handing me a statement from Medicare.

It turns out the visit had actually cost $2700! Only his share of the bill was $170. A further study of the Medicare statement revealed that Medicare actually only paid $90 of the hospital bill. Who paid the difference?

I’m no CPA, but even I could see something didn’t make sense here. We decided to call the hospital billing company and ask for a detailed statement to see who paid the difference.

“ We don’t have a detailed statement to send.” I was told. Well, we chased our tails for several turns while the person at the billing office kept repeating the same thing.

“You are telling me that the hospital charged my friend $2700 for the ER visit, Medicare paid $90 and you billed my friend for $170.”

“That’s right.”

“Well this must have something to do with the new math because my figures show about $2440 floating around somewhere that still remains to be paid.” I said.

For the third time she said, “There was an adjustment.”

This time it dawned on me what she meant. “Do you mean the hospital ate the difference?”

“Yes.” She said in relief. “The hospital has a contract with Medicare that allows them to make an adjustment.”

I told my friend, and he still didn’t understand. “What was the two-thousand dollars for?”

I looked at the Medicare statement again. They had charged $1073 for bandaging the arm (actually applying one large bandage), $1136 for just putting his nose through the Emergency Room door,  $197 for a Tetanus vaccine, and $300 just to “administer” the shot.

It looks to me like the government tells hospitals they can charge whatever they like for services but will only receive a set amount from Medicare. That’s great! But if the original charges are valid, how can the hospital afford to eat $2440 in this case? And what do they do with other Medicare cases?

Questions? Yeah, I still have a few. Like is it valid to charge a thousand dollars for a band-aid? Why does it cost $300 just to give a shot, when they give them free at most pharmacies? Then why does it cost $1000 just to set foot in the Emergency room?

Well folks, here’s the bottom-line. If you don’t have Medicare or health care insurance, you are paying for the hospital to eat the difference on every visit of this nature. If you are fortunate enough to actually have healthcare insurance, you are still paying with your inflated premiums.

Oh, but you have Obama care? Well check out your premiums and compare them to those who are paying little or no premiums. Yep, you are making up the difference.

Is there a reason health care has to be so expensive? That is the question we should be asking. Not who will pay for health care.

Working the Con

There are famous con men, people who swindle for a living. Frank Abagnale kited some 2.5 million dollars worth of bad checks while posing as an airline pilot, doctor, and eventually a lawyer and a teacher. Abagnale’s life story was made into the movie Catch Me If You Can. Then there is the infamous Charles Ponzi – the one they named the Pyramid Scheme after. One modern day practitioner of this scheme was Bernie Madoff, the ex-NASDAQ chief who bilked investors out of an estimated 68 billion dollars.

You might recall the movie The Sting where con men were portrayed as heroes who bilked the mob out of a pile of money. That may make for a great Hollywood story. In real life, though, these people are merely thieves who pull the wool over the eyes of trusting and unsuspecting individuals. Although many people admire the way these con men gain the trust of their victims, the practice is in fact a despicable and highly illegal practice that leaves the victims with a traumatic sense of being violated.

Now comes Professor Jonathan Gruber, who, along with his accomplices Nancy Pelosi and Barrack Obama, may have pulled the greatest con in America’s history.

Let’s examine Gruber. He is currently a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a research associate. An associate editor of the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Health Economics, Gruber has been heavily involved in crafting public health policy, including the Massachusetts healthcare policy aka. “Romneycare.”

Why is Gruber important? Well, it turns out the good professor helped write and promote the 905-page Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare that President Obama signed into Law in 2010.

Yes 905 pages of “tortured language” that very few in Congress bothered to read, let alone understood. The then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, stood at the podium of the House and told Congress they will have to “pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”

Well we did find out – the hard way. As the newly minted law began to be implemented, the American public found out they had been scammed. “If you like your doctor, you can keep it -- if you like your healthcare plan you can keep it” soon became the lie Obama could not overcome or explain away. As insurance premiums began to grow and the official Web Site rollout proved to be a disaster, Americans started to wonder just what the government had gotten us into.

Well we found out what those 905 pages were all about when the well-paid consultant, Gruber, appeared on television and explained that the bill was intentionally written in a way to deceive the “stupid voters.” Even more significant was the revelation that the law was written to avoid the appearance of it being a tax – one of the first controversial points that went before the Supreme Court.

Of course, the White House and Nancy Pelosi denied even knowing Jonathan Gruber. Another co-conspirator HHS secretary, Kathleen Sebelius denied knowing the professor, even though they both sat on the same committee, and she signed his paycheck for several hundred thousand dollars.

Deception upon deception, this fraud was foisted upon the American public – many of whom bought into it in good faith – just to learn that it was a scam promoted by unrepentant con men, including the Speaker of the House and President of the United States.

Do you feel violated and taken advantage of? I do. But then again, I never believed any of Obama’s lies. This bill passed without a single Republican vote and was signed into law by a Democratic President. Since the Republicans gained control of the House, they have tried some 40 times to repeal this fraudulent law only to be thwarted by Democrats in the Senate. It’s apparent that it will take a Republican controlled Congress and Republican President to set the Affordable Care Act right. Until then folks, you will just have to put up with being taken for a ride by the Democrats, and being the victim of the Great American con called Obamacare.