Yesterday, a private health insurance carrier doubled your monthly premium. This increase follows similar decisions by another carrier who insures your vehicle and home. Simultaneously, the cost of all medical services has risen ferociously, thanks to your  Federal Government. After decades of his predecessors’ failed attempts, Lyndon (God Help Us) Johnson and his Congress pushed Medicare through and the rest is hideous socialist history. Everything that man touched was foul beyond description. For that matter, everything that government touches is some form of malfeasance. Your parents had no insurance. They were poor. By comparison to them, the poor today are rich. But your parents paid for your birth and later for the occasional Doc. You can’t recall any family member hospitalized. Little by little, things changed. Married with four children, you took part in group insurance plans at work. Those plans had one goal — protect your family against catastrophic illness. For the cost of run-of-the-mill hospital visit, in addition to your monthly premiums, you paid 20% and insurance paid 80%, with an out-of-pocket limit. You paid for years with no hospital visits. Insurance didn’t pay doctors or dentists. You paid them direct. In particular, pediatricians were a monthly expense — a necessary cost of living year after year. You didn’t begrudge the expense. But somewhere along the way, people decided they didn’t want to be responsible for the state of their health, much less pay for it. Somewhere along the way, healthcare became a right. And right on schedule, the Healthcare Industrial Complex grew exponentially, becoming a giant bureaucracy. Now, doctors submit to essentially being employees of HMO’s. A night’s stay in ER costs thousands. Pharma dominates TV, drumming disease after disease and drug after drug. As healthcare rules the national scene, the United States spends more on healthcare than any other high-income country but is the sickest country among those same nations. According to recent reports, the US has “the highest rates of deaths from avoidable or treatable causes and the highest maternal and infant death rates.” * The U.S.consumes approximately 80 percent of the global opioid supply. And coincident with RNA vaccine proliferation, all-cause mortality is through the roof. ** You can thank the Federal Government — all governments, really — for skyrocketing health costs as just one part of the 37 trillion dollar disaster plaguing America. Medicare is just one atrocity. Taxation is another. Congress taxes the hell out of people. Congress spends and spends, borrows and borrows — and when the income isn’t enough, issues more debt — keeps spending — and prints and prints more money — creating inflation. Inflation steals. It sucks more money from the people in the form of rising prices for all of life’s necessities. There is no excuse for this wrongdoing. Robin Hood’s enemy, King John, who inflicted ruinous taxes on the poor of 1377, was a cream puff compared to Congress. No one in America should pay taxes on wages. Consider what you pay — income tax, sales tax, property tax, capital gains tax, business tax and all manner of other taxes. Without an ounce of fiscal restraint, adding insult to injury, the Federal Government decides to divvy up your donations to thousands of recipients, foreign and domestic — picking winners and losers in the process. The mismanagement of the people’s money is nothing short of evil. For his crime, Bernie Madoff sat in prison for 11 years before his death. For their crimes, congressmen and congresswomen sit in revered seats in the People’s House to enjoy highly lucrative careers, jacking their jaws and voting on interminable bills that mostly place shackles on those who can least afford them. Whatever pain it causes, DOGE can’t work quickly enough to slash and burn the Fed’s size and return it to its Constitutionally enumerated jurisdiction. If Speaker Mike Johnson wants to make history, he should stand before his peers and accuse himself and his political pals for breaking their venerated oaths of office — “we, and those who came before us, are guilty of conducting a criminal charade — for driving this great country to ruin; and in doing so, we spit in the faces of those patriots who gave us their lives.” But you won’t hold your breath for that speech. He’s too busy sending emails complaining about the bad guys and the broken system. Of course, what he’s really doing is  asking for money. Duh.

* www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/health/us-health-care-spending-global-perspective/index.html

** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHpvhZFvUl4

www.conventionofstates.com

 

Insolent, irresponsible children occupying choice seats play games with life and death. That was a quick thought that popped up during the State of the Union. As you surveyed the room, a bunch of juvenile Democrats held up signs that shouted “FALSE” in response to Donald Trump’s observations and assertions. Most likely, a brilliant political consultant gave them the idea; or they got it from a family sixth grader. You have no doubt Donald knew this was not the time or place to lie, not with enemy fact checkers drooling over the opportunity to nail him. But what if he did lie? So what? The guy he replaced was (and still is) a world-class liar. Ranks right up there with the best of the best, including her eminence Hillary. Washington D.C. should erect a Liar’s Hall of Fame since that city has more illustrious liars to choose from — more of them than anywhere else on earth. Many of them were in attendance January 4, 2025. Smugly, sullenly, they sat in their assigned seats to repudiate everything Trump offered. They would not even bring themselves to show a speck of sympathy for a bereaved Mother whose daughter was murdered by an illegal alien. Keep in mind that callous disrespect as you face an even harsher reality — 75 million people voted for the leader of the left side of the congressional aisle. They also voted for spiteful lawmakers who silently renounced anything and everything that Trump believes will strengthen them and their country. For them, not one Trump policy had merit. Can that be true? Not one policy? Yes, not one. You see, Matilda, the animosity for Trump is as brutal as the slug that clipped his ear in Butler, Pa. But party hatred wasn’t always the case. For a century, the Dem and GOP Parties competed civilly for power and the perks that go with it. They co-existed — a sort of reciprocal arrangement — to enhance and protect a greedy self interest that could only be sustained by the continued growth of the Federal bureaucracy. Within the past 50 years, this cooperation exemplified the administrations of Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush 1 & 2. Even Barack Obama’s radical socialist agenda was no threat to the Beltway inner sanctum. But along came an outlier, an irreverent maverick businessman who blew up the whole shebang. In so many words, he said the Beltway was corrupt to the bone. Naturally, the political royalty went nuts. A hand grenade would have done them less damage. Fast forward. On March 4, Trump outlined the plans for his second term — essentially to roll back political corruption, bury Neo-Marxism and lift up the American people. You studied the left side occupants as he specifically mentioned the border calamity that was brought on by unrestrained mass migration. As he spoke about it, Trump couldn’t miss the deadpan, disinterested smirks. But he couldn’t or wouldn’t choose to do what you silently begged him to do — make steady eye contact and speak directly to the Democrat opposition as if they were the only people in the chamber. Too bad “the rules” didn’t let him say what needs to be said — that their boss was personally responsible for rape, murder, fentanyl and child trafficking — responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans. It wasn’t as if Biden, Harris and the Party didn’t see  their mistake and move quickly to rectify it. No. They saw the carnage and eagerly stepped on the gas, confirming premeditation. You wanted Trump to look at the hostile faces and say “every one of you sitting there is an accessory to rape, murder, and drug and child trafficking. As you leave this room, you leave with blood on your hands.” Too bad. It needs to be said. It needed to be said publicly in 2021 by the opposition Party.  It needs to be said by every politician who believes in justice. People still sitting in the seats of power in Washington have played political games with life and death. They have betrayed their oaths of office, engaged in corruption and routinely committed perjury under oath. And the highest court in the land lets them get away with it. Regardless, the State of the Union does have its rules.  So does Congress — 118 Rules comprising a Code of Conduct — also a committee on Ethics. My, my. Tell that to 12 year-old Jocelyn Nungaray’s mom.

P.S. On Jan. 4, the President made a strong case for law & order in America. Your respectful suggestion: Begin in Washington.

www.conventionofstates.com

 

Foreword.

Rant after rant. Complaint after complaint. You’ve had your share of negative strokes. Especially now, when so many people, starved for tranquility, see signs of better days ahead. But you can’t blame Legacy Media and online mercenaries for continuing to dish out deception — for television programmers and advertisers still hellbent on brainwashing a nation — for online disinformation that invades your privacy. It’s what left-leaning media hacks and political ringleaders  consistently do — Trump or no Trump. It’s also what you do, foolishly, in response. You cooperate. You choose to ignore the online opportunities to “Unsubscribe.” You choose to access the Almighty Tube for hours on end. For months, really. No, for years. You willingly tune-in to the lies, hypocrisy and treachery. Why? Psychologists probing this behavior might brand you a “couch flagellant,” because you clearly choose to punish yourself, to magnify your anger by chasing the very things you hate. Definitely true, Matilda. The only excuse you can offer is something called “irresistible impulse,” an insanity plea argued in at least one celebrated murder trial. But now is no time dwell on the tyranny of the past four years, when murder frequently crossed your mind — when you chose to repeatedly condemn those in power for crimes against humanity.

The First Thirty Days

Now is the time to look ahead, to the next four years, to spread the gospels of confidence and optimism.  But, please, do so without mimicking the gloating delirium of Trump fans. Now’s the time to look calmly at the scorecard of the new administration. Undeniably, Donald Trump is the Usain Bolt of the Beltway, making him the fastest-moving patriot since Paul Revere’s horse Brown Beauty.  In the first 30 days, over 100 executive actions invaded the federal bureaucracy — the economy, health, foreign policy, energy, national security, education and immigration. Too many actions to name but a dozen that are too important not to call out:

Declare national emergency at Southern border.
End DEI at all Federal agencies.
Approve eliminating USAID.
Restructure or abolish DOE.
Abolish or restructure FEMA.
Terminate thousands of career bureaucrats.
Freeze spending.
Enact reciprocal tariffs.
Withdraw from WHO.
Withdraw from U.N. Human Rights Council
Pardon Jan 6 and pro-life activists.
Set immediate Ukraine peace talks.

Neither A Trump Advocate

Before anyone gives a fist pump, understand that speeding alongside the Trump train, six dozen lawsuits have been filed, looking for Progressive judges to derail or weaken his agenda. Anyone counting on a Trump sprint to the finish needs a reality check. Prepare for a cross-country marathon. And better keep your eyes on Congress and SCOTUS,  because neither body sanctions the Musk chainsaw. Neither one supports any weakening of Federal Government size and jurisdiction. And, frankly, to vastly understate it, neither one is a Trump advocate. But please don’t view this reality as gloom and doom. The President is not alone. And, politically, he now  is far more astute, more able to spot a Judas. Therefore, you should come along for a little fun to recommend what Donald Trump might realistically accomplish in four short years.

The Wish List

Immediately educate Americans about what you’re doing and what it means to America. Publish it. The Trump Manifesto.

Shut down mass migration from both borders and erase drugs and human trafficking.

Limit the size, scope and jurisdiction of the Federal Government by at least 30%, or the rest of this exercise doesn’t matter.

Take the national debt from 36 to 26 trillion.

Abolish half the Cabinet Departments and enjoy doing it.

Tell the DOJ to clean house and seek indictments for perjury and treason. If nothing else, execute Fauci for mass murder. And put Adam Schiff in J. Epstein’s old jail cell.

Sweep America’s Intelligence agencies to root out dark operations.

Rev the economy and raise all boats.

Slash foreign aid across the board.

Help give Putin and Zelensky a way out.

Tell Black Americans to get off the Federal plantation.

The Elusive Answer

So much for the wish list. There’s no crystal ball here. You’re on the outside looking in — no way to  predict a one-year result, much less four.  You might ask political pundits. They get paid big bucks to investigate, evaluate, correlate and eventually intimate what lies ahead. Based on their track records, however, you sooner would consult Vegas bookmakers. History doesn’t help either. What you’ve learned from the great minds of antiquity is that destructive behavior repeats itself century after century. Visibly, the 21c  has continued that dark tradition.  Why? Why must hostility win? Why has America abandoned the historic principles of governance that made Her the envy of the world? Why are America’s elected officials unable or unwilling to harness the genius of The Constitution? Why won’t they ignite its moral and ethical conscience to remedy their own behavior?  You thought If you explored these questions widely enough, analyzed deeply enough and followed ethical pathways, you were bound to produce the elusive answer. You were bound to discover a persuasive strategy that could heal the country and unify the people. So you embarked on the circuitous trail of serious scholarship, going back and forth and round and round;  and following hours, days and months, you ended up where you began. Nowhere. As in, searching for the meaning of life. Why then do you, without scholarly credentials, presume to give anyone counsel? Alan and Marilyn Bergman wrote some lyrics about it — which neatly sum up the merit and value of your critical thinking.

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmill of your mind.

You should be Muslim.  The answer to America’s future?

“It is written.”

www.conventionofstates.com