Obama's Hard Struggle for Epic Failure

Obama & Sebelious offer just more empty political talk.The complaints are growing as the Obamacare roll out debacle worsens over the software implementation, administration and legislation that is actually involved within the Affordable Care Act. "Our present...management is marked by over staffing, organizational overlapping, complicated procedures and extremely low efficiency," "Everything is often drowned in empty political talk." "Right now a big problem...is that nobody takes responsibility." "In theory, there is collective responsibility. In fact, this means that no one is responsible."

Now after spending over $700 Million dollars on software, the Obama administration admits that one out of ten enrollees have not successfully been registered. That may not sound significant, only 10%, but would you expect that 10% of your mail would be just tossed into a mud puddle on the street or your doctor would get 10% of your diagnosis correct or you would get 10% of your drugs delivered or a restaurant serves you food that 10% of the time makes you violently ill? Hmm...only 10%, and some say upwards to 25% of the enrollees are not registered in some states too.

Ironically, all of the "complaints" in the first paragraph were actual quotes made by Chinese Leader, Deng Xiaoping's speech at the 1978 Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. Trying to distance from the Cultural Revolution practice which put politics before economy, Deng was complaining about the central planning system and the solution was to transfer decision-making in state enterprises from the government bureaucracy to corporate management. Deng wanted, "Chinese companies to be run in a more independent, professional and capitalist fashion". It has paid off and China has grown exponentially since. Obama is embracing Marxist socialism as China has turned away from it. Does that possibly say something about our dear leader, Obama's motives? Or, will Obama again plead further surprise and ignorance as the next debacle unfolds?

Obama - Rubik's Sub-Par "Rube" Cube

Barack Obama - The "Child-in-Chief" of World Politics

Rubiks Cube - sub-cube piecesThe historical U.S. political and military foreign policies enacted in the Near, Middle and Far east fit together like sub-cubes in a mystical ‘Rubik’s Cube’ that are puzzled over by many history scholars, generals, and armchair strategists as a subject of contentious analysis, opinion and debate. They have searched these U.S. policies for answers about how United States diplomacy and actions have influenced these areas since early as President Woodrow Wilson after WW1, 1919. One has to ask, "What does all this mean to the U.S. policies going forward in the 21st Century? - We don't need another 'Rube", a country bumpkin green amateur, we have to get an EXPERIENCED Leader!

Vietnam Background History. ["As World War One came to a close in 1919, a young Vietnamese patriot named Nguyen That Thanh arrived in 1920 during the Paris Peace Conference to speak with the powerful men negotiating the terms for peace. On behalf of his people living within the French empire in Indochina, Thanh sought to lobby the Western leaders for greater rights. He hoped to take American President Woodrow Wilson up on his promise of "self-determination," the principle of national sovereignty, and free Vietnam from colonial rule. But Thanh, like many other advocates of colonial independence who descended upon the Paris peace talks, discovered that the pledge was too good to be true. The British and the French refused to enforce self-rule for their colonies, and despite Thanh's direct appeal to President Wilson, the three powers ultimately ignored the young Vietnamese nationalist.

"In the following years, Thanh, disillusioned by the Western democratic process, pursued new and more radical solutions to imperial rule in his country. He had been deeply impressed by the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and by the ability of the Bolsheviks to rally support among the Soviet masses. So in the 1920s, while still in France, he joined the Communist Party. With the adopted name 'Ho Chi Minh,' meaning 'enlightened one,' he planned to take his teachings home to Vietnam to awaken his own people, to unite and train them, and to lead them in their own revolution."]

First elected as U.S. President in 1913, this former President of Princeton University was seen as a boorish, intellectual snob who highly regarded his own opinions as to know best for all. He vainly coveted a 'pince-nez' or 'pinched nose' eye glasses that literally pinch the bridge of the nose with no hinged arms which emphasized his erudition, a 'learned, scholarly professorial' image.  (See our Wilson's Legacy to Obama Presidency to read about a very terminally egocentric man.)

A liberal Progressive Democrat Politician, President Woodrow Wilson used the slogan “He kept U.S. out of war” effectively in his 1916 reelection bid to win in March, 1917. However, politically realizing the treasures in spoils and booty to divide up from World War One, a mere one month later in April, 1917, just after he won an election on “He kept U.S. out of war” slogan, Wilson hastily jumped into war during the remaining year or so, with only nineteen months left, before the Germans signing the Armistice of  Compiègne in France in November, 1918.

Woodrow Wilson since 1914 had deliberately kept the American army near its paltry peacetime size as a roundabout way to maintain his slogan, "He kept U.S. out of war", to defeat the interventionists; after all, with a standing army of just over 120,000 soldiers, about one-twentieth the size of any of the major European powers, what could the U.S. possibly contribute to the war effort? Most estimates were that it would be up to a year before an American army, now slated to grow to well over one million, might contribute to the European battlefield in any significant way.

In Woodrow Wilson's rush to join the war effort he also foolishly misjudged the time to enlist civilians and supply arms while tragically miscalculating the unintended loss of lives. Our young, inexperienced civilian military rookies were trained in hastily drawn combat exercises and so before they even entered the war front it cost the U.S. many lives needlessly before soldiers were actually lost in real combat in the trenches. Boy, that intellectual Princeton President sure knew how to lecture about sociology and political science theories, just not much in the actual practicalities and applications, just ask those dead young soldiers.

In January, 1919 the Paris Peace Conference convened with the "Big Four." They were the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, where prior to Wilson's arrival in Europe, no American president had ever visited Europe while in office; the Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Lloyd George; the Prime Minister of France, Georges Clemenceau; and the Prime Minister of Italy, Vittorio Orlando. They met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, which in turn were ratified by the others.

Woodrow Wilson's narcissist goal was his presidential legacy for the 'League of Nations' for global control of the actions of countries and people. He had support by another 'liberal thinker", David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Britain (1916-22), who was a key figure in Parliament for passing the modern 'British welfare state' reforms. Consequently, the welfare program's costly aftermath split up his coalition of more Conservatives than his own Liberals, a key factor in the decline of the Liberal Party as a serious political force thereafter. After 1922 he was a marginalized and widely mistrusted figure in Britain.

By November, 1919 in the U.S., the League of Nations proved too controversial with its treaties and activities and so the Senate voted to never join or sign any treaties, but instead made separate treaties.

1920 League of Nations inaugural General AssemblyThe Paris Peace Conference came to an end in January, 1920 with the inaugural General Assembly of the League of Nations to vote on five major peace treaties prepared at the Paris Peace Conference, including the most contentious one with results of the 'Treaty of Versailles,' which weakened Germany's military, and required her to pay reparations. Bingo! ...Big pay-off to the allies! It was a natural set-up later for German animosities towards the reparations and humilities suffered leading to the rise of Hitler's Third Reich in 1932.

Some later blame that Wilson had his first stroke in 1920 during tours after tirelessly speaking about the League of Nations. He had two more strokes during his last term in office, 1921. President Wilson died dejected in 1924. The League of Nations lasted only from 1920 to 1935, really an ineffectual body since there was no U.S. participation.

The 1931 League of Nations Meeting - Iranian Delegation.

From left: 1- Abolhassan Hakimi  2- Abdol Hossein Sardari my maternal uncle who was a member of the League of Nations Secretariat  3- My father Anoshiravan Khan Sepahbodi, Iran's Head of Mission at the League of Nations and also Minister of Iran to Bern , Switzerland  4- Abdollah Entezam 6- Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad-Ali Foroughi "Zoka-al-Molk"  7- Mrs. Hakimi wife of Abolhassan Hakimi  8- Movassagh-al-Dowleh Khajeh Nouri. In the middle with overcoat and hat in hand between H.E. Foroughi and my father is H.E. Mr. Abbasgohli Khan Gharib, "Motarjomalmalek".

The century from 1912 to 2011 has demonstrated for anybody whose eyes are open the complete and absolute failure of "progressivism" and its cousins socialism and communism. Unfortunately, Progressives have continued to push their ideas and agendas, despite the fact that things never happen the way progressives claim that they will. In fact, Barack Obama is the epitome of the failed progressive movement.

So history repeats itself as Obama attempts to convene what amounts to a publicity-held tribunal resurrecting his own legacy to alter its fate in his final term of office as a U.S. foreign policy maker in the Iranian Nuclear talks, Obama still remains a dismal loser. I guess the Iranians will get into another picture, except at the United Nations this time, in 2013 or 82 years later--Some things never change except nuclear bombs.

Obama now needs his 'big score' internationally working through the 'United Nations'. The Middle east tensions, especially between Israel and Iran, are almost Biblical if not epochal in their historical importance to maintaining peace in this diversely populated region. And apparently no one is buying any of the manure that Obama is spreading in the negotiations because he has no conceptions or clues on who and what the dynamics are that exist. Alas, Obama needs those original ghost writers who exhumed his past from his birth through early adulthood to reconstruct and build their story in a book like 'Dreams from my Father.'

In writing Presidential histories, which include legacies, historians have to be careful about their facts. Gordon Goldstein's book, 'Lessons in Disaster', which is a favorite Vietnam book for the Obama White House. It recycles past caricatures of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem as a corrupt and ineffective autocrat and ignores the difficulties within an authoritarian society at war. This blindsided political biased portrayal clouds anyone from arriving at a balanced judgement of the real history--it simply ain't so, unless such rendering leads the reader to assume that the Vietnam War was unwinnable as liberals, like Obama, who cling to this historical rewrite scenario to defend their aversion to military intervention at all costs.

Americans were puzzled by their defeat in Vietnam. How could the most powerful nation on earth have been defeated by a rag-tag bunch of peasant guerrillas? However, as post-war results came out, a major contributor to the collapse of the South-Vietnamese war effort between 1963 and 1965 was the difficulty for Diem seeing that the majority of Americans believed that part of the answer to South Vietnam’s problems was to make it like the United States. However, American political cure-alls did not suit the Vietnamese cultural landscape and Diem’s very resistance to reform proved that he was not a puppet of the United States as many history books contended. This is where the travesty lies in rewriting history politically instead of factually. I lived during those war years and came to realize the same conclusion early in those many years ago as it finally ended in 1975. The American people's thinking of establishing any U.S. style democracy relied upon their pure folly underlying cultural ignorance of other societies. 

The TroglodytesToday, although our country has achieved more than any others through our Constitutional rule of laws protecting personal and property rights, we must be mindful to respect other countries' sovereignty ...But, as they should respect ours too!--specifically not terrorism or Islamist Jihadism directed towards the U.S. One fact is undeniable after U.S. intervention in Vietnam, Laos, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. How many countries are not suited for a democracy? Most, and that's not good, because all their indigenous people will remain little educated, poorly fed, meagerly clothed, barely housed, mostly unemployed and deep-rooted in superstitions--truly 'troglodytes.'

So how do freedom seeking people change their societies?

There are no set rules.

"In many Middle Eastern countries, poverty is deep and it is spreading, women lack rights and are denied schooling. Whole societies remain stagnant while the world moves ahead. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export," - President George W. Bush.

Dr. Gerard Pince founded in 2001 the World Freedom Academy. He has lived, worked and traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and Africa for over forty years. His authoritative views were focused through the prism in the world of economics, finance and banking; so no doubt, he became keenly aware of how Islamation was surreptitiously spreading its repercussions throughout the economies of those societies. I have offered Dr. Pince's quite blunt, disturbing observations and conclusions that follow--the truth really smarts!

"Terrorism, fanaticism, Grand corruption, dictatorships, Illegal immigration, proliferation and constant threat for the civilized world--In such a context, it is fruitless to make recommendations. The road to democracy should imply a complete reeducation ( And notably a reform of Islam) similar to the denazification process which was implemented in Germany by the end of World War 2. Such a process had a meaning in Germany because this country was a great civilization. On the contrary, we do not think that the Middle East and North Africa merit endless wars and the losses of brave soldiers."

"Since September 11, 2001, the Free world is at war. The enemy is not only terrorism. Islamism is the enemy. It is new fascist ideology based on hate for freedom and sponsored by the Arab dictatorships.

"Indeed, Islamism is not only seeking to influence one religion or control one region: Islamism is waging war against all the civilizations and not only against the “Jews and Crusaders.”

"According to this core analysis:

• Firstly, we have to neutralize the terrorist network implemented in the democracies, and to overthrow the dictatorships which are the sponsors of this plague.

• Secondly, we must underline that the ultimate solution to Islamism relies on the extent of democracy into the Arab world.

• Thirdly, we need a moral and psychological rearmament in order to fight the flow of disinformation. We have to promote education in order to eradicate obscurantism [preventing enlightenment to facts, being vague] and negative beliefs.

"Clearly, it is sure that we shall win the war on terrorism. It is not sure that we shall succeed in implementing 'Democracy.'--In this case, a containment policy should be appropriate."

 Will Barack Hussein Obama fight Islamism, Moderate or Radical Muslims?

Obama's Orwellian Roots - '1984' Math Lesson

 In George Orwell's '1984' it says, "Two and Two are Five."

George Orwell's '1984' dystopian classic is a disturbing novel describing cataclysmic decline in our society; a debilitating dystopia so totally undesirable as an extreme opposite of utopia. "Two and Two are Five." It represents how the power of 'Big Brother' can corrupt whatever reality it deems fit. While being tortured, the novel's main character, Winston Smith, was repeatedly directed to accept Big Brother's omnipotence by being forced to admit 2 plus 2 are equal to whatever he was told it would be; but he constantly resisted. Ultimately, however, Winston eventually yields to Big Brother altering reality with humankinds' perception of it.

Although this novel was written almost sixty-five years ago, it eerily depicts what is happening domestically in the United States today--witness the powerful, intrusive Federal Government interdictions, i.e, NRA spying, IRS watch lists, USDOJ investigations and DHS surveillances. Officially mandated U.S. agency regulations have been usurped under the Obama administration.  They have been turned against the public to illegally monitor people, track activities, collect data and harass dissidents--this is '1984' in real time mode.

The Affordable Care Act - "Two and Two are Five."

Our Federal government wants us to believe that the Affordable Care Act is like two and two are five.  Again, it does not add up and the only thing that does add up here is just more Federal deficit spending by a socialist Progressive President pushing Nationalized healthcare.  

President Obama originally said, "No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."

President Obama new addendum, ...."as long as the plans hadn’t changed since ObamaCare was signed into law you are grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it [in order to match ACA Guidelines], then what we're saying is they have got to change it to a higher standard [ACA Guidelines inclusive/more coverage option standards regardless of each individual needs or ability to pay]. They've got to make it better." [ACA Guidelines knows better than enrollees what insurance plan accordingly is their ideal enrollee options coverage.]

Orwell Bio:  George Orwell’s Own Letter on Why He Wrote ‘1984’ - In 1944, three years before writing, in 1947, and five years before publishing 1984,  in 1949, George Orwell penned a letter detailing the thesis of his great novel. The letter, warning of the rise of totalitarian police states that will ‘say that two and two are five,’ is reprinted from George Orwell: A Life in Letters, edited by Peter Davison and published today by Liveright. Plus, Orwell's advice to Arthur Koestler on how to review books. 

Is it a '1929 Great' or '1873 Long' Depression?

1873 vs 1929  - Are We Looking at the Wrong Depression?

Street Apple Vendor - 1929 Great DepressionIn order to understand the current economic stagnation and Obamacare costs, decision-makers are increasingly looking to economic history to offer some guidance. 

"Comparisons between this current downturn and the brief 'Great Depression' Era 1929 - 1932 are misleading, and that prescribing solutions based on their efficacy in the previous crisis is misguided.  Rather, economists should point decision-makers to the 'Long Depression,' which lasted from 1873 to 1896, as it bears much greater resemblance to the current situation."

Many make immediate comparison to the Great Depression between 1929 and 1932 and call for the same Keynesian solution now of spending that was implemented then. However, there remain crucial differences between the current financial crisis and the Great Depression, says Stephen Davies, academic director at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.

The fall in cost of goods in the 1800s was due to higher production at lower cost. There were innovations and advancements that allowed prices to fall, (i.e., cotton gin, lightbulb, telephone, typewriter, sewing machine, machine tools, assembly lines, looms, and railroad transportation) In 1879, the Scott Paper Company began selling the first toilet paper on a roll. The Long Depression of 1873 production had consistently risen on through to the early 1900s.  

The fall in cost of goods in the 1930s was due to the Progressive Congressional protectionists getting their way by tariffs placed on imported goods to protect jobs; while on the contrary, U.S. production slowed in all industries across the nation.  As foreign competition pressure diminished, the domestic labor market cost increased pressures to raise prices to meet payrolls; which caused U.S. consumer demand to drop and production to fall.  It was a classic cyclical catastrophe brought about by the central government unable to dictate free-market values and conditions. 

The only difference now between 2013 and 1930 are the protectionist tariffs that were enacted purportedly as market-opening accords which actually seek to dictate marketplace results, or increase bureaucratic interference in the economy as a condition of market access. However, the beat of these drums are now loudly picking up as they drown out reason again to start another march on Washington for protectionism to save our jobs. Don't we learn anything from history?

The final crucial points of building policies for this financial crisis are:

Policymakers should avoid drastic measures and significant fiscal expenditures to combat what appears to be a persistent lack of demand. This means that a fiscal stimulus would be ineffective and wasteful, since the underlying problem is not a simple decline in demand. Presently, the Obama Administration 2013 Q4 FED directive is to print more money and buy more U.S. Treasury Securities to bolster those failed domestic fiscal policies.

Policymakers should then draw comparisons from the Long Depression of 1873 and recognize the current crisis for what it is: a gradual long-term economic realignment of American labor in response to 21st Century technological innovations.

A warning, however, of a modern-day disaster exacerbating acute crisis proportions that contains the Affordable Care Act, federal socialized medicine, which will toss this entire forecasting model out and back to 1873. So the Obamacare Act in 2014 will add years, decades, onto the legacy of the 'Obama Long Depression of 2008' easily dragging it to the goal line of history for fifty more years - two more generations will have lived and died under American socialized medicine. The elite who are politically exempt or others who can afford it are not affected - whew, for minute there I thought the politicians and wealthy would not get into their own boutique healthcare plans with private doctors and hospitals. As Marie Antoinette purportedly said so elegantly about those middle-class, riff-raff bourgeoisie, "Let them eat cake." 

Moral of the Story: 

Don't create Federal Government policies for printing more money to spend and grow the economy by selectively investing in businesses or stimulating consumers to buy themselves out of this current Recession - Instead, promote education and vocational training programs for the labor force in order to do the technology jobs of the future to earn our way back to prosperity.

FDR Wage & Price Controls Hangover for Obamacare

1933 Natioal Recovery AdministrationThe liberal FDR programs are still meddling in our national economy today, believe it or not, and resurfaced again in Obamacare. Starting with FDR's 1933 NRA - National Recovery Administration which was a big failure, it all worked against the free marketplace system's supply and demand dictating prices to control labor costs and prices with substantially greater unintended consequences for our country's future.

Under the NRA Act, a majority of firms in any industry had government approval backed by force to determine how much a factory could expand, what wages had to be paid, the number of hours to be worked, and the prices of products. Whether or not a businessman helped write the code for his industry, he was bound by the terms and subject to a fine or jail term if he violated them. It eventually succumbed in the 1935 to the Supreme Court vote of 9-0 against its over 400 unconstitutional laws in FDR's NRA program.

However, price and wage controls reemerged in other plans along the way as we entered into World War II. All the fights in World War II were not just on the battlefields of Europe. They were also fought right here within all the companies who faced the pressure of the Federal Government's laws and mandates to control businesses throughout the war years under the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration.

The Federal government and business hammered out a deal so wages were allowed to be raised, but without the "wages" increased, thereby satisfying the government's edict for wage controls. A deduction for an 'untaxable benefit' for employers who provided health insurance to employees allowed businesses to write the cost off as an expense while the employees did not pay anything extra to receive a costly benefit tax-free. It has been in force ever since World War II.

The buzz-word these days in government is 'transparancy', but when it comes to 'see-through', it is not so 'clear' at all any more. Our field of vision was clouded over by Federal government regulations which created unintended barriers to consumers today in the health care industry since World War II, over 75 years. Employees have been insulated from the costs of healthcare which are due to:

• Employer Health Insurance Paid Programs which allow large employers to bid down overhead costs to gain volume medical discounts. 
  
• Employees have little incentive to inquire about competitive costs since they are largely covered in a comprehensive group plans.
• Standard Pricing Lists are relatively non-existent since pricing can change widely depending on the insurer and health care provider contracts.
• Uninsured pricing fluctuates wildly based on the deals cut with providers and therefore have no standard across-the-board reference base. 
  
• Doctors, hospitals, medical services, device mfgs or drugstores normally do not post or advertise fee schedules or price lists which further discourage keeping professionals from competing publically or offering price comparisons.  
  

So, our current Healthcare Industry accounts for 18% of our Gross Domestic Product. Americans want to control costs, but they have almost no information to let them compare prices. Now with Obamacare the race to competition for business is dwindling because healthcare practitioners and facilities are consolidating to manage the massive regulation and costs of hospitalization.  

The government insurance monopolies have replaced the marketplace choices for healthcare competition - Check with your own 'Navigators" to look at all your 'personal' IRS returns, IRA investment portfolios, checking and savings accts and health records to determine where you qualify for Obamacare. Note: All 'Navigators" have attended a 20 hr.  'Certification' course and will not tell anybody about your secret stuff either. Many are ex-Acorn 'Community Organizers.'

The important question now is how do the patients become better consumers as patients? The honest answer under Obamacare is nothing, it will fail due to the management costs, dismal subscriber sign-ups, unbearable premium hikes, poor healthcare services and under coverage of benefits.