What’s (so very) Wrong with ObamaCare?

We hesitate to write this because, in order to do this accurately, we have to reveal some personal information. In doing this, which is something we are not usually given to do, something we are very much loathe to do, but nevertheless we must do, in order to offer concise and persuasive analysis.

Following a seventeen-year career with a major telecommunications carrier, we were laid off in 2016 as part of a very large reduction-in-force from that well-known company. We had survived such layoffs twelve times during our time with them but, sadly last year, we suppose that our number was up. Sniff-sniff, such layoffs happen every day. Enough said.

When we joined the company in 1999, we had first-class health and dental benefits, along with a pension plan and other fringe benefits that could not be beat. The pension plan went away as the result of an ill-advised merger with another wireless carrier in 2005, but the health insurance benefits were nevertheless very good, at the time.

Then, following the Democrat-only passage of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare), things started to change- and drastically so. Our employer started to ask and insist upon acquiring very personal information about the status of our health- wanting to know such things as our weight, LDL and HDL cholesterol levels, tobacco use, blood sugar levels, etc., all under the guise of offering supposed discount levels, all in order to comply with this outright invasion of privacy. To do otherwise would have set our premiums at a level which would have made continued employment untenable. So we complied, provided our employer very personal information and ended up paying about the same level of premium we had prior to this invasive initiative. In the years that followed, our “discounted” premiums steadily went up, while the co-pays associated with our coverage increased dramatically, as did the out-of-pocket costs of prescription medication- WAY up ! All of this was because of regulations associated with ObamaCare.

When our severance package expired, we were forced to seek medical insurance coverage through what is laughingly called the “open market.” In Virginia, there is only one service provider and, in order to acquire “Bronze” level coverage for my wife and myself, we were told that our premiums would be $ 1,560.00 per month. At the “Bronze” level, no financial benefits would accrue until my wife and I had spent $ 13,000.00 out-of-pocket, mind you, in network, after which in-network coverage would be on a shared 50/50 basis.

In other words, we would have to spend- get this- $ 31,720.00 per year before any benefit associated with this coverage would begin to kick in. Given the choice of having to decide between mortgage foreclosure, which would have been a certainty, or complying with a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, which would only be of any tangible benefit in the most unforeseen of catastrophic circumstances, we basically said, “We are NOT going to lose our home to these sons-of-bitches, and we don’t care if they put us in jail for being non-compliant.”

Understand that the figures referenced above were the costs prior to the increase in coverage for this calendar year.

This is NOT healthcare. This is NOT affordable. This is ONLY a means of forcibly taking money from us, and redistributing it to the poor and the indigent, who pay little if nothing for healthcare services…

…and this is why ObamaCare MUST go- sooner, rather than later.

 

-Drew Nickell, 23 February 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

now available at Amazon

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The Fading Relevance of an Expired Card

Back in the day of formal balls and debutants, a young lady would carry a dance card, which essentially was a detailed schedule of the men with whom she would dance each successive dance, on that particular evening. After the last dance, the dance card would then become a souvenir remembrance of the evening, one that could be re-read again and again in detail- providing the lady with fond and precise memories that would last a lifetime, as pages yellowed and ink faded throughout the many years. There was nothing sadder than an empty dance card, for it lay bare the disinterest men had, in dancing with a young lady unblessed with beauty or comeliness.  For such ladies back then, who never married, the dance card would often prove to be a painful reminder of the stigma associated with spending a lifetime unwed.

In an old West Point ballad from the nineteenth century, as famously quoted by General Douglas MacArthur in his 1951 farewell address to Congress, it is said that “old soldiers never die, they just fade away…” In the same manner, old politicians who have had their run never seem to die, but rather fade into oblivion with the loss of their own relevance. When once their influence was sought and something to be cherished, they have an unfortunate tendency to serve that one-too-many additional term, and often make the end of their political career look vapid and trivial, bereft of ideas. This is especially true for senators on both sides of the aisle, who once gained the nomination of their party for the nation’s top job, but who were denied victory, in the end. No longer garnering attention from the media as they once had, some take to making outrageous statements in an effort to claim relevance that has passed them by.

Consider the yellowed and fading dance card that is Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) as revealed in the invective he hurls at President Trump, taking each and every opportunity to remind us that he does not like, nor support, the forty-fifth president. He wasn’t nearly as hard on Trump’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, who defeated McCain quite convincingly in the 2008 presidential election. Judging how the longtime Arizona senator ran his presidential campaign that year, it is not certain that he really wanted to win. Not once did he ever take on his Democrat opponent anywhere near to the extent he has taken on the current Republican president- going back to the days and weeks well before Trump infamously took the Senator to task, saying “He insulted me, and he insulted everyone in that room… He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured… perhaps he was a war hero, but right now he’s said a lot of very bad things about a lot of people.”

Predictably, the mainstream media, Trump’s Republican rivals for the nomination, and everyone else opposed to Trump’s candidacy pulled out McCain’s “hero card,” and excoriated Trump for insulting McCain, who suffered torture as a prisoner of war in the notorious Hanoi Hilton of North Viet Nam. That particular card is pulled any and every time a Republican criticizes the senior senator from Arizona, and it’s a card that has expired from overuse, long ago. 

What is left for an aging and tired old senator who has made a political career of being the unpredictable “maverick” just as likely to oppose his own party as to suck up to the opposing party? To be honest, he has never been truly conservative, or for that matter, really Republican- and he uses this modus operandi to garner attention and assert relevance that he otherwise neither has nor merits. McCain has done this for decades, so it is no surprise that he goes to Europe, and solidly chastises the new president and openly questions his competence for all the world to see and hear. McCain’s dance card is fading, and he knows it, which is why he acts like the south end of a northbound horse, and thus ignores the tradition of politics ending at the shores of his country.

Call Senator McCain a hero if you will, but he is no patriot…not anymore.

-Drew Nickell, 20 February 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

now available at Amazon

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Coordinated Insurrection- the #Resist Movement Against President Trump

Monday, February 20^th is unofficially known as Presidents Day, a day in which the nation pauses to honor the forty-four men who have served as the chief executive of the United States. An outgrowth of what used to be a national holiday to exclusively honor the first president, George Washington, on the occasion of his February 22^nd birthday, and in conjunction with many state holidays which honor the February 12^th birthday of its sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, the day became fixed as an annual holiday to be observed on the third Monday of February, beginning in 1971. Prior to then, Washington’s Birthday, as it is still officially known, was celebrated on the 22^nd of February, each year.

Monday, February 20^th also marks the first month of Donald Trump’s presidency. In that first month, Senate Democrats have intentionally stalled the completion of his cabinet for no other reason than to spite and to thwart the new president in any way they can. Such posturing is not the norm, as recent presidents have entered their second month with their cabinets largely in place, regardless of party. Thanks to the Democrats’ prior leader, Harry Reid, a simple majority is only needed to confirm a presidential appointee, where once a sixty vote approval was necessary to prevent a filibuster against any single nominee. No matter and despite the lower threshold, the new president is forced to pursue his presidency without a full cabinet- a hindrance not shared by any of his predecessors. In short, Democrats who don’t get their way in a national election get nasty to a degree never seen when it was Republicans who found themselves in the minority, as they did following Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

If that wasn’t bad enough, four liberal judges- selected for their predisposition against the new president, have erected the first hurdle in front of President Trump, by halting his executive order to temporarily delay the entry of people from seven countries which are unable or unwilling to document their travelers. Despite the fact that at least three of his predecessors, on occasion, did the same thing, these judges have suddenly found reason to block Trump where they did not see such reason to block his predecessors, before.

In the wake of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s forced resignation, it has now come to light that there were at least nine illegal and unauthorized leaks detailing a private telephone conversation he had with the Russian ambassador that were released to the press. While the sources of these leaks have yet to be precisely determined, it is obvious that down-level apparatchiks retained from the Obama administration released this information, in a further attempt to sabotage the new administration. This is not the only time that this has happened since Donald Trump won the November election and became president on January 20^th. Nevertheless, this has caused House and Senate Democrats, as well as several #NeverTrump Republicans, to smell the blood of scandal in the new administration, and they are drooling at the prospects of further investigation- all in an effort to bring down the presidency of a man who they hate beyond reason.

This effort is by no means limited to the halls of Congress. There is a concerted, well-financed and well-coordinated effort to sew discord amongst the voters and encourage vehement and sometimes violent resistance to the Trump administration, and the agenda of the Republicans, on a slew of initiatives. Republican House members, holding town hall meetings back in their home districts across the country, are being routinely disrupted by recruited and paid protesters, brought in from outside their districts, who seek to silence free speech that is not in lockstep with liberal dogma. Their attempts to recruit trainees in the art of disruption have even infested meetup invitations, such as the following we received just in the past few days, under the header and text that reads as follows:

“For Education #Resist-

Meetup has always served as an organizing platform for a wide range of political views, welcoming everyone from the Howard Dean-iacs to  the Tea Party. Meetup will always welcome people with different beliefs. But after the recent executive order aimed to block people on the basis of nationality and religion (a lie), a line was crossed. At a time  when core democratic ideals feel under attack, we feel a duty to spark more civic participation.   Last week, we created 1,000+ #Resist Meetup Groups to act as local hubs     for actions on behalf of democracy, equality, human rights, social justice,  and sustainability. Already 50,000+ people have joined.  These #Resist Meetups are open to anyone who want to create a  bright future that’s rich with opportunity and freedom for all.  Meetup exists to connect people so they create opportunity and make the world they want. We hope members take these Meetups forward to be powerful together.”

Such efforts to disrupt the Trump administration include such groups such as Organizing for America, the brainchild of former President Barack Obama, who created the group following his election in 2008. Willfully encouraged by Obama to organize resistance against his successor’s presidency, it marks the first time in United States history, that an outgoing president is actively encouraging insurrection and revolt against his successor. Couple this with the actions of Obama’s apparatchiks who remain in government service, and who seek to bring down his successor’s presidency, and the makings of sedition and insurrection within government thus pose a threat to national security, as well.

This is how civil wars begin. This is how the left wants to overturn the results of a free and fair election and, in so doing, destroy the country.

Be wary. The rats are in the cornfield and they threaten our survival.

 

-Drew Nickell, 15 February 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

now available at Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Bending-Your-Ear-Collection-Essays/dp/1633932907?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:

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Enter the Lawyers: Completing the Tripartite Against Donald Trump’s Presidency

Joining Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans in the Senate and House, along with the mainstream media, four anti-Trump Lawyers on the west coast have now revealed the third force in a tripartite cabal bent on the de-legitimization and eventual destruction of the Donald Trump presidency.

It is not enough that a third of House Democrats boycott the president’s inauguration. It is not enough to do everything they can to block President Trump from having every part of his cabinet in place, nor enough to slander and libel fellow Senator Jeff Sessoms (R-AL) to a level of disgust never seen in the U.S. Senate. It isn’t even enough that the mainstream media is approaching the new administration with a level of hostility not seen before in U.S. history.

No, now it is the lawyers who enter the fray- two appointed by George W. Bush (U.S. District Court Judge James Robart and Ninth Circuit Court Justice Richard Clifton), one appointed by Barack Obama (Ninth Circuit Court Justice Michelle Friedland), and one by Jimmy Carter (Ninth Circuit Court Justice William Canby), and who join forces with politicians, press and pundits, to block President Trump at every turn.

“What cannot be achieved in legislation, must be achieved in the courtroom,” so sayeth the mantra of liberalism in the United States, today.

“Trump was elected, but not legitimately, so we are going to do everything we can to stymie and block everything he wants to do, regardless of what the people have to say about it- national security be damned.” Such is the pathetic pledge of allegiance binding Democrats, NeverTrump Republicans, the mainstream media, and, now, leftist litigators who all share a hatred of all things Donald, to a degree not seen this side of Hollywood.

The actual law in question is beyond dispute:

“Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

                                                -Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952

Oh, but don’t let a little thing like the law or the United States Constitution get in the way of doing the “right thing,” and putting a lasso around a president for whom none of the aforementioned judges voted. U.S. District Judge James Robart didn’t even mention the law in his ruling to put the kibosh on President Trump’s temporary travel ban on seven countries- countries which cannot or will not ascertain the true identity of travelers flying from their airports to ours. An activist on a mission to aid immigrants of all types, legal and otherwise, James Robart was the man who could “get it done” for Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson. He and his staff knew before the fact that Judge Robart would play along. After all, the judge was appointed by the open-border and globalist former president George W. Bush, whose Ninth Circuit appointee, Richard Clifton, would join Michelle Friedland (Obama’s) and William Canby (Carter’s) to stick it to the current president. The law was also missing from the Ninth Circuit ruling but, when it comes to reigning in a man like Trump, what matter?

Never mind that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has a notorious history in their radical and extremist rulings, leading all other circuit courts in having their decisions overruled in the Supreme Court. This is the same court that once ordered the motto “In God, We Trust” banned, and the phrase “under God” be excised from the pledge of allegiance. Thankfully, both of these rulings were tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the fact that such undertakings went that far demonstrate a predisposition and predilection on the ninth Circuit Court’s part, to appease the demands of liberals who seek to tear this nation asunder, any way possible. While leftist and looney lawyers are lining up their legal challenges to stop President Trump at every turn, rest assured that most of these actions will find their way through Ninth Circuit Court, and this is a pattern that will oft be repeated, since they are powerless to stop him in the chambers of Congress where Democrats are in the minority.

It is as if they are saying, “What’s a little thing like national security matter, when it’s the president who needs to learn who runs things around here- and it ain’t him.”

Not that all Republicans can be counted on to back up their party’s president. Trump wasn’t in office three weeks before Senator John McCain (R-AZ) openly criticized and put a negative slur on an otherwise successful intelligence mission (Trump’s first) in Yemen, which cost the life of Ryan Owens, a member of Navy Seal Team 6. Citing his death, the Senator questioned the mission and its success for no reason other than to get attention by once again jabbing his president. Then, Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) another NeverTrump Republican, joined Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in opening an investigation looking into presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway, who voiced support for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line in the wake of Nordstrom’s (and others’) decision to drop the product line from its stores.

Wow! Talk about scandals! Oh, but the shoes, the shoes!

What’s really at stake is the fact that there is a new president, sent by the people to upend the status quo ante, and drain the swamp of the special interests and the inherent corruption it breeds. The politicians who protest the loudest are the very ones who have the most to lose, and fear that their days of influence are coming to an end with the presidency of one Donald Trump.

Hence, such are the words of those whose days are numbered, and we suspect they know it, all too well.

-Drew Nickell, 10 February 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

now available at Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Bending-Your-Ear-Collection-Essays/dp/1633932907?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:

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Leftist Intolerance and Children of the Scorn

Decades long in the making, going all the way back to when the Blame America First pathos, first born in the hallowed halls of universities in the early years of the twentieth century, this is what has become of higher education in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Read the signs: “Become Ungovernable” and “This is War.” Such advocacy of anarchy- so praised by the intelligentsia, and so funded by the likes of George Soros- is quickly becoming the greatest domestic threat in the history of the United States. The lazy and collusive mainstream media will put forth and echo the lie, that such discord is a reaction to the presidency of Donald Trump. Yet, the real source of this discontent, as expressed by these protesters, can be traced to the campus classroom. These young protesters and professional anarchists, awaiting the next opportunity to destroy and wreak havoc, are the children of the seditious scorn which is held by professors across this land, and even around the world.

The seeds of anti-Americanism- the stepchild of European-style socialism, itself an ideology that touched off bloody revolutions and unimaginable cruelty throughout the twentieth century, was the brainchild of the intellectual elite and academics, who held nothing but scorn for the working classes, and looked down their bespectacled noses at quaint concepts of patriotism and piety. They found common cause with communism in the 1930s, throughout World War II, and into the decades which followed. They acted as both apologists and deniers for the Soviet Union and Maoist China, and railed against efforts to snuff them out. This mindset bore malicious, and sometimes, violent fruit on university campuses in the 1960s and well into the 1970s, and these young revolutionaries, who once demanded the freedom to protest against their government under the guise of free speech, eventually became the elder professors who dominate and rule the university campus today, and who advocate anything but free speech.

All speech, and for that matter all thought, that is not in lockstep with leftist ideology, is not to be tolerated in the halls, and on the malls of our institutions of higher learning. Whenever conservative, Republican or libertarian voices are heard, they are shut down and labeled as pariah, not fit for the ears and eyes of college students. When on occasion, conservative guest speakers- be they Condoleezza Rice, Milo Yiannopoulos, or Gavin McInnes- are invited to speak, the call to arms is sent out by their professors to raise objection, protest in great numbers and escalate to the point, where such invitations are cancelled. Merely wear a ball cap that says “Make America Great Again,” and be rewarded for your own right to expression with pepper-spray to the face.

If this hostility towards diversity of thought isn’t bad enough, add in the legions of paid anarchistic thugs who throw gasoline on the fires of discontent and cause damage and destruction in their wake. University and municipal police, commanded to “give space” to the protesters and rioters, are rendered impotent to protect public safety and they themselves become targets of the assailants.

Into the maelstrom of radicalism run amok, enter a new president, Donald J. Trump, and a new administration, very different from the all-too-appeasing and encouraging Obama administration. During his presidency, Barack Obama encouraged young people to take to the streets, and give voice to the malcontented and resentful ideology that he espoused. Obama, totally lacking in the class and dignified restraint of his own predecessor George W. Bush, has already begun to voice opposition to his successor and still encourages such protests, saying that they are “exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”

President Trump, a man not given towards appeasing anarchists or placating protesters, will have to seize control of such unrest and bring to justice the financiers of these bad actors, or else preside over a country which teeters on the brink of ideological civil war. Predictably, the mainstream media and his political opponents will portray his doing so as the modus operandi of a police state, and will continue to portray him as the authoritarian heir to Adolf Hitler. In doing so, they will continue to incur the shrinking level of trust among the electorate, and will further marginalize their own influence over the people they are supposed to serve.

Yet, if the new president does not act, this pathology that has taken hold of the “children of the scorn,” will touch off the ideological civil war between those who love this country, and those who seek to render it asunder. Anarchy in the streets of cities today will spread to the streets of the suburbs tomorrow, and the freedoms we cherish will hang in the balance, if this unrest is not soon stopped.

The day of our national reckoning draws nigh.

 

-Drew Nickell, 3 February 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

now available at Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Bending-Your-Ear-Collection-Essays/dp/1633932907?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:

http://www.drewnickell.com

Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2