Republicans Celebrate Saving Obamacare

I was interviewed today by a CNBC reporter about repealing Obamacare and replacing it with the American Healthcare Act, a.k.a. Trumpcare. Since few people had time to actually read the bill before the vote and there was no real debate in the House, and the only debates on the news occurred after the fact, I thought it worth sharing these points from our conversation:

Members of Congress are still exempt so that says a lot about how great this plan is going to be for the American people.

There seem to be a number of items in the bill funneling federal tax money to the states so the states can decide how to use the money. If ever there was an inefficient system that can only promote waste and abuse, this is it. Instead of the federal government taking our money and giving some to the states to make our healthcare decisions for us, how about we just keep our money and use it to to pay our doctors?

The new bill does not repeal Obamacare. It does not remove the individual mandate that forces us to pay for healthcare whether we want it or not. The president and the republican party have proven they are entirely without principles. The republicans like to talk about free markets during the election but they never follow through once in office. The republicans have caved in and accepted the basic premise of Obamacare that the government can force us to buy anything they want us to buy.

We don't have a two-party system, we have a one party system and everyone's invited - except the American people who pay for the party.

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15 Reasons to Protest That Have Nothing to do with Trump

It's great to see so many Americans angry enough to take time from their lives to protest in the streets. Since smashing windows, setting fires and yelling, "F-Trump" doesn't seem like a very effective form of protest, I scribbled this list of a few pressing issues that not only are worth

We have many reasons to protest that are unrelated to Trump. Photo: Variety

protesting but if the protests were successful in sparking government action then the world would be a better place. Here are some issues worth protesting, in no particular order, feel free to add others in the comments:

1. We've been at war non-stop since we needlessly invaded Iraq and thousands of innocent people have been killed in our name with insane amounts of our tax money

2. The Internet was developed with our taxes yet its control was quietly given away to the United Nations

3. 3,500 infants die each year from SIDS, according to the CDC. Really? Healthy babies just suddenly die for no reason?

4. Bankers and other financial criminals continue to engage in illegal, fraudulent activities yet rarely go to jail and when caught, any fines are paid by our own taxes

5. Police brutality and outright murder, racially motivated and otherwise, continue, along with secret locations for "questioning"

6. Ordinary Americans are subjected to abuse, theft and destruction of property at the hands of the USDA, EPA, BLM and other gov't agencies

7. The DNC Wikileaks “leak” revealed Citigroup chose the cabinet for the previous president

8. Federal housing policy keeps poor people poor and is largely racist in nature

9. The surveillance state monitors much of our activity 24/7 in violation of the Constitution and the information was very recently allowed to be shared throughout the federal gov't

10. "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," yet we're restricted by many laws that abridge our right to free speech and the free press is under siege. There's no such thing as a free speech zone – the entire country is already a free speech zone

11. The death tax continues to take our money that had already been taxed as income – this tax continues to destroy family farms and other family businesses

12. The gov't takes billions of our dollars via taxes and gives it to corrupt dictators around the world while being entirely indifferent to the thousands upon thousands of homeless people on our own streets

13. The federal reserve banking cartel has no legal right to decide the interest rate on loans or to create our currency - 1913 Act entirely unconstitutional 

14. The federal gov't has no legal or natural right to take our money via income tax

15. We're still subject to unconstitutional stop and frisk

And the last reason to protest that's more legitimate than shouting "F Trump":

16. NFL coaches still can't challenge penalties

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Your home loan is under water - so why do we have to pay?

Nearly every time I’ve driven a car off the dealer’s lot, the market value of the car instantly dropped to the point where it was worth less than the amount of my loan balance. When the collateral underlying a loan becomes worth less than the loan balance, it’s called being under water. So, I guess my car loans have been under water four or five times. I once had a home equity loan where the interest rate was higher than the market interest rate, after rates had fallen considerably. This loan also would be termed under water. Yet it never occurred to me to cry foul and demand that someone else either pay my loan for me or give me money as compensation for my situation or for the questionable deal to which I’d agreed and contracted. But for some reason, people think a home loan is extra special and if it’s under water then the borrower needs to be legally entitled to take your money and mine.

Is something so different about a home loan? Please someone explain what is so different about a home mortgage loan that stealing from others needs to be made legal and acceptable. People demand payments if their home values decline yet I haven’t heard of anyone lining up to pay more in property taxes when their home values increase.

Once we accept and allow this type of stealing via taxation to compensate “victims” of under water home loans, we’ll soon be paying “victims” of under water car loans, home equity loans and student loans – yes!... “because the job I was promised doesn’t pay what I thought it would pay - my anticipated earnings are less than my student loan balance and I demand compensation.”

Silly? Just wait. It doesn’t end there. Once we’ve legalized and accepted this kind of theft, then nearly any kind of theft becomes acceptable, subject to the whims of the people who hold political office. And that’s not a very trustworthy lot to depend on, is it?

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Moral of the Story: Hidden Taxes Always Go Up

With today's update, this story is now in its fourth year of life:

I had to pay $19.62 today as an “annual assessment levied on New Jersey Employers by the New Jersey Dept. of Labor and Workforce Development according to various statutes.” Talk about a hidden tax. Last year, when my assessment was about $9.00 (my first such assessment), my accountant advised me to “just pay it” since there’s nothing we could do about it.

This is infuriating. (1) I don’t like paying yet another tax (2) I don’t like paying yet another tax where my earnings are simply stolen and given to others (3) I don’t like that if this tax is going to be enacted, that it falls squarely on businesses to pay for people who are unemployed (4) I don’t like how the gov’t quietly enacts numerous little taxes so that none of them individually will get enough attention to block their passage, but taken together it’s a great cost and burden on us and on our economy. (5) I don’t like that I’m being forced to pay this with no opportunity to say, “No! I’m not paying this!" I wasn’t allowed to vote against it before it was enacted and I object to being forced to pay it. Sure, in theory it was enacted by the legislative branch, whose members I helped elect. And I had access to public records of bills and votes and therefore I was given an opportunity to voice my opinion. Unfortunately, political reality differs from political science. Funny how the insignificant $9.00 tax more than doubled in one year since nobody bothered to complain about it. Looking forward to next year’s letter.

UPDATE: Just received "next year's letter" and the tax went up almost 12 percent to $22.24.

UPDATE 2009: The tax went up to $24.37, another 9.5 percent.

UPDATE 2010: The tax went up to $25.37, a mere 4.0 percent increase.
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More Thievery

What if you were walking down the street and some thug stops you, takes your wallet, steals the money, gives you back your empty wallet and runs away? Then a few days later, you receive a letter in the mail from him stating he might give you some of your own money back - if he thinks you deserve it. But you’ll have to prove you’re deserving.

All you have to do is fill out a form and if you meet his arbitrary criteria, you just might get a few of your own dollars returned. How much is a few? You won't know until the check arrives. And this thug is earning interest on your money right up until you get your money back. Or you may get nothing back.

This might sound like an odd scenario for people who don’t live in New Jersey but for those of us who do, it’s a very real and very ridiculous scenario called the Homestead Rebate.

http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/index.html?relief.htm~mainFrame
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My Tour of Historic Trenton

I went into Trenton last week to walk the path our soldiers took at the Battle of Trenton. From a stop at Washington Crossing State Park on the New Jersey side, a second stop at one of the bridges where our troops hauled artillery down and up a ravine, we walked from the monument to the Assunpink Creek, to the barracks and elsewhere. How sad that Trenton, Mercer County and New Jersey have squandered their rightful places in our history as the site of many of the key Revolutionary War battles.

Most of us know about Washington crossing the Delaware but Pennsylvania - mostly through its marketing efforts and New Jersey’s absence of any marketing at all – has somehow captured the attention, recognition and tourist dollars. It’s the heroic struggle wintering at Valley Forge that’s become lore, not the heroic struggle wintering at Morristown. Sure, Washington had to start from Pennsylvania to cross the Delaware but he landed in New Jersey and the actual fighting was in New Jersey yet it seems as though New Jersey’s political leaders are bent on denying any role in the events or are at least indifferent to the fact such events occurred. Even the event is commonly referred to as Washington Crossing the Delaware, not the Battle of Trenton. I won't even mention there were two battles of Trenton.

We stopped at a cemetery with Revolutionary War period grave stones, including one of Col. Rall, the Hessian commander who died in the battle. Nearby, was a mass grave of Hessian soldiers hidden under a recently paved parking lot. Just baffling. Someone had to decide to pave over it and no one thought this was even remotely noteworthy. Maybe if there were Union soldiers from the Civil War, runaway slaves or veterans of Manzanar under the pavement the site would have earned some media coverage and a sign as a historic marker. Nope. It’s just the American Revolution. Is it ironic that the original bridge over Assunpink Creek, which was the site of intense fighting during the battle, was razed years ago to make room for the Dept. of Human Services building? Odd that the decline in Trenton’s manufacturing base seems to coincide with the rise of the socialist state. It’s almost inconceivable how Trenton could be dotted throughout the city with historic buildings and attractions, and do next to nothing to capitalize on it yet raise taxes year after year while crying about a lack of funds – and certainly a lack of funds for promoting history and tourism.

I’ve attended Trenton Thunder baseball games and Trenton Titans hockey games but the city offers little else as an enticement to stay longer. No cohesion of events and activities. We go to the game. We go home. New Jersey politicians find it so easy to raise taxes with virtually no consequences. Why should they work to strengthen its tourist economy when they can continually tax us and tax us and still get reelected?
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