ObamaCare Eve

Posted by PoliticallyUnEZ on March 30, 2014
Posted in: Conservative Business, Conservative Principles, Social Conservative. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment

On the Eve of yet another Obamacare delay I am trying to sort out what will happen to my personal insurance coverage and the coverage of our key employees when our group policy renews in May and beyond.

With over 100 employees, some 90 of which are part time now, my key employees, 18 including my wife and I are fairly safe in our current policy.

Thanks to the absurdity of the mandates and the multiple delays, we are able to keep our current plan as long as we make absolutely no changes to it. The economics for our employees in us keeping our group plan works out very well; this year we will see only a 10% increase so that the average healthy late 20 something probably will still pay less than $300 /month of which we pay half. Of the 18 full time employees, only about 9 or so take advantage of this plan either because they are cover by a spouse, parent or are immortal. So far so good, right? Not so fast.

While it works out great for our 20 something employees who are smart enough to take advantage of the benefit, not so much for my wife and I. Thanks to O’Care, we have a decision to make. As members of our covered group, my wife and I, her a cancer survivor, me with moderate respiratory issues pay a hefty $28,000/yr for coverage. It now appears if we abandon our employees to the exchange and take out personal policies for my wife and I we can reduce our premiums by right at $14,000 / year? No kidding.

Our employees however will probably face massive increases in their premiums on the exchange and may end up uncovered given the ridiculous penalties which make it cheaper to pay them then to buy insurance. As a company we not only would save the $14k, we would also save the 50% co pay we were making toward our employees coverage.

Aren’t we worried about losing our key employees?
No, everyone is doing the same thing.
What about the penalties?
Nah, we get a pass on the first 30 employees and thanks to careful management for the last year, only have 18 full time employees.

Now thanks to Obamacare, our company could effectively save $20,000 / year at the expense of our employees.

Will we take this seemingly selfish move?
Probably, $20,000 is a lot of money. The other downside however affecting more than just our employees is that politically it plays right into the Democratic end goal of moving everyone toward a single payer system which will be the ultimate disaster for our healthcare system. … Another unexpected but planned consequence of Obamacare.

But wait, there is more redistributive good news this week Comrades. I received my auto policy renewal. It was just about a 100% increase. I had a minor fender bender in December. Rear ended my wife. But that is another story. Anyway, I was shocked at the increase for a minor event. But I was then told by my agent that the massive increase had nothing to do with the accident I had had 3 months earlier.

So why the incredible spike in premium? Remember Hurricane Sandy last year? Seems that our state was selected for these premium increases to make up for the losses that were sustained in the Northeast. I am still trying to figure out if it is just my carrier or a governmental program affecting all carriers. But check your renewals. Not that you’re likely to miss a 100% increase.

I’ll let you know via twitter how it works out.

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I Am One

Posted by PoliticallyUnEZ on March 11, 2014
Posted in: Conservative Principles, Reflective, Religious Conservatism, Social Conservative. Tagged: , , , . 8 Comments

I will stand and fight, I will walk on.

I will travel in groups, or alone on darkened roads.

I will scream the truth, or whisper it softly in your ear.

I will vote, I will rebel, I will preach, I will converse.

I will lead, I will follow.

I will stand in the bright sunshine, I will creep in the shadows.

I will take up arms, I will quietly wait.

I will keep watch, I will rest for the battle.

I will pray to God for the strength to carry on.

I will do all it takes of me to defend my God, my Country, my Family, my Freedom and Our American Liberty.

I AM AN AMERICAN PATRIOT

Its Deja Vu All Over Again

Posted by PoliticallyUnEZ on January 27, 2014
Posted in: Conservative Principles, National Politics, Social Conservative. Tagged: , , , , . 2 Comments

I heard today on the evening news a clip of a twit announcing “How Dare the conservatives attack the potentially First Woman President” in response to the conservative press and Conservative Caucus Members of Congress continuing to push Hillary on her involvement in the cover up of the murder of our four American Diplomats in Libya.

Have we not learned anything over the past five years?  Didn’t we make that mistake twice by allowing the Socio-Communist Left to Race Bait the American People into quiet acceptance while our Establishment GOP Co-Conspirators in Congress cowered in the darkness, desperate to be seen as inclusive and not to be called Racist instead of railing against the incompetence and criminality of everything Obama just because he was black?

Who are the real racists here?

We should never have allowed the fear of being labeled cause us to accept the Constitutional Perversions pervasively practiced by this administration over the past 5 years.  I have listed the areas in which our Country has been put at risk through the incompetence of Obama and the steadfast ideology of Progressivism in a previous post.  Their ideas and direction are mis-timed and unfitting in a dangerous world, yet we allowed it to happen despite years of warning about the dangers of Political Correctness.   Our failure to call incompetence and subversion what it is out of fear of being called Racist, Biased, Non Inclusive, Anti this or that, has nearly cost us our Republic.

We CANNOT let the same game be played by the left with any future candidate, community leader, etc., despite race, gender, or persuasion.   We do not have to denigrate to educate.  We do not have to engage in personal attacks against race, gender or persuasion.  We DO however, have to speak the truth at all costs.

The first truth of this new Presidential Election Season is that Hillary Clinton is unfit for office because of issues and unanswered questions going back as far as Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, The Hillary Rodham Cattle Controversy, The Lewinsky cover up, Hillary-care, and most recently and most importantly Benghazi.   And she happens to be a woman.

To quote Hillary herself, “What Does It Matter ! “

Its Not Paranoia If They Really Are Watching You

Posted by PoliticallyUnEZ on January 27, 2014
Posted in: Conservative Principles, Florida Politics, National Politics, Social Conservative. Tagged: , , , . 5 Comments

There is a controversy brewing mainly among legitimate Libertarians sparked by the overreaching intrusion into our privacy by the DHS,  NSA and other Obama spy agencies.  It should be causing more outcry among mainstream America, but the media has done a good job of making anyone who questions expenditures on security measures appear as loons.  So you are not hearing much about this outside of local city council chambers where votes pass under various consent agendas to accept federal money for enhanced security measures which prop-up budget tight police departments.

The controversy revolves around DHS grants for the implementation of closed circuit cameras being offered to municipalities.  Of the myriad things wrong and potentially wrong with this program, the opportunities for abuse are astounding and therefore should make these cameras, regardless of their placement difficult to defend, but instead make them nearly impossible to prevent.

When stories do break about these programs, people are scared. And that is not too strong a term.  For those old enough to have studied history in school, the point we find ourselves at today, leaning further left then ever before in our history, with a verifiable Socialist in the White House, an all out attack on the Constitution, the pushing of the bounds of legality in government’s relationship with its people finds us teetering with Tyranny.  Thinking people who are paying attention have a right to be scared.

Many legal immigrants fled their homelands in fear for their lives, from regimes which started out as this “Progressive” administration did in 2008 and continued to progress past this point to all out totalitarian rule.  Can’t Happen Here? Well they are not so sure it can’t.   We got close under Wilson and Roosevelt.  But have we ever been this close?  The current Progressive Liberal Government is socializing our education system, our healthcare system, our banking system, our Auto Industry, increasing taxes and fees on small business, advancing unemployment and advancing unemployment compensation, increasing the rolls of welfare and various entitlement programs, allowing millions of illegal immigrants across our borders and vying for amnesty, legalizing drugs, providing more disinformation then facts thus resembling a ministry of propaganda, spying on everybody through DHS and the NSA, using the EPA and the IRS as political weapons to stumble and punish their enemies at all levels, abandoning our allies, dismantling our military, making deals with our enemies, decapitating conservative military leaders through phony scandals, indicting writers and journalist and conservative politicians, and captains of industry who express disagreement with the current ideology on trumped up charges, and engaging in race baiting, class warfare while implementing comprehensive wealth redistribution policies and so much more …..

Is it any wonder people are fearful and suspicious about DHS grants providing for the implementation of surveillance cameras in American cities and towns which could be used to further track the movements of anyone who doesn’t tow the line?   No it is not.    So why are so many small municipalities biting off on this deal?   Money like everything else.  The current regime knows that our liberty is for sale.   Just that easy.  For the cost of a few cameras to allow local governments to keep tabs on their water treatment plants, busy intersections, downtown areas, government buildings, etc., under the guise of protecting the facilities and infrastructure from the threat of terror, our Socio-Communist masters will have the modern day equivalent of the ever present jack-booted Stasi in the GDR mounted on poles, monitored 24/7 and there is no way cash strapped cities, towns and counties are going to say no.

I remember walking down the sidewalk in Reading, UK on a business trip several years ago where the cameras followed me while I window shopped.  So are they safer from terrorism and threat in the UK because of these invasive tactics?  I would find it hard to make that argument in light of a growing number of Sharia Courts there.  It appears the sacrifice of freedom and liberty was for nothing in light of the deterioration of British Culture and Society in various parts of England by those who have sworn to destroy our way of life.  And so I guess even in small town American we’ll have to get used to an Orwellian future that has arrived too soon and without resistance, pretending its for our own safety, while our benefactors let our enemies in the front door to rape our culture while pocketing vast amounts of wealth while pretending to fight income inequality.   Doesn’t sound much like Utopia to me….

“And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.”  1984 George Orwell

 

 

 

Education Cometh

Posted by PoliticallyUnEZ on September 19, 2013
Posted in: Conservative Business, Conservative Principles, Florida Politics, National Politics. Tagged: , , , , . 3 Comments

We are small business people. We own 4 fast food restaurants, are part owners in a marketing company, are on the board of directors of a Medical products company and are community active. Altogether we have about 125 employees with roughly 100 of those between the ages of 20 and 35.

During the election of 2012, we tried to the best of our ability to educate these political neophytes on the importance of un-electing any and all socialists and the difficult times to come if we did not.

As evident as it was to those of us who garnered the experience of years what was to come, many of these, who would soon be in Obama’s middles class worker’s crosshairs possessed the apathy of innocence … And ignorance and the vast majority simply could not muster the interest to vote.

I have had the opportunity on several occasions when as an elder of this tribe I have been asked what was happening to pontificate that Elections have Consequences. The smug contentment of having an I told you so moment at their expense although momentarily satisfying has been fleeting.

Over the past few months we have been working our way through a very difficult task. That of telling our full time hourly employees that although we had been there for them as they built proficiency in a job, got married, bought their first home and some even started families, we were going to have to reduce their hours to below 30 in order to maintain the financial viability of the company and comply with the requirements of the ACA. It was hard. Some understood and were able to find outside part time work to make ends meet. Others simply had to leave us after years of service.

This month, we start the next phase of adding government insult to injury. Having to inform all of our employees that although most struggle now to make ends meet, they are going to be responsible for and required to purchase family insurance through the exchange or face the ridiculous burden of government imposed penalties. Gone is their freedom to choose how and when to protect their family. Gone is yet another sliver of liberty and one that imposes an unnecessary financial burden to their short adult lives. I struggle to not say, Elections have Consequences over and over, but do often, and prod them to not let another opportunity slip by without exercising their Constitutional right to vote to protect their freedom and personal interest. To read and study what they were never taught in school.

Even though we are a small business we have been forced to join the ranks of Darden, IBM, The Cleveland Institute and so many more who are making the tough choices of maintaining profitability to be able to continue to provide for their families and continue to provide jobs for their communities. The American working middle class is reluctantly shifting from 40 hour work weeks to 28 hour work weeks because this president has blindly and prejudicially inflicted undue and unnecessary hardship firmly on the middle class he duped into supporting his agenda of lies in 2012.

For those who voted for him, you reap what you sow. Oh well.

For those who did not vote, I hope this will be the most important and most expensive lesson of their lives.

One thing is Obvious to those of us over 40. History Does repeat itself and it always works out the same. The truly poor are always taken care of. The business owners and the rich, ALWAYS have options and ways to shelter their businesses and capital. The Working Middle Class are always the useful idiots. First and most easily duped or lulled into the utopian socialist hype and ALWAYS left holding the bag and paying the price. Thank God the government allowed their schools to teach history, civics and government when I attended, but political correctness and intended Social engineering has left the current generation woefully inept and incapable of seeing through the charade until it’s much to late and effects them personally. Well, unfortunately that time is here in January 2014. The clue train is pulling into the station.

If they don’t get it now, then to quote a great philosopher friend of mine, “We are So Screwed”

The Message is all wrong

Posted by PoliticallyUnEZ on August 4, 2013
Posted in: Conservative Principles, Religious Conservatism, Social Conservative. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

The Message is all wrong

For quite some time now I have been struggling with the juxtaposition of Religious doctrine espoused weekly in our local churches against their growing toe dipping into the political sphere.  They are of course following the lead of their Diocese, conferences, etc., and it is a centuries old story.  Church corruption and the manipulation of God’s plan to suit social and political ideologies have been a root cause of repression, aggression and obsession for millennia; the rise and fall of the Holy Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Reformation, etc.  It’s not new in our Time or in our culture.

In my lifetime and especially of late, I am increasingly finding myself at odds with Church and state.  God’s message of Love, caring, responsibility and good works have transgressed itself on the pulpit into social political commentary relative to division of the societal classes being exacerbated by our nation’s current socialist political leanings.  The targeted political divisiveness strategy now being employed by our country’s leadership for political expediency of advancing the Socialist agenda has ripped more than one hole in the underlying fabric of our Liberty and harmony as a nation. More has been done in five years to purposefully divide our Union than in the last two hundred and thirty-seven.

So I am dismayed to have been sitting in a small town Methodist sanctuary this morning listening the a mature but new Minister to this congregation degenerate a message about God’s Calling of the Heart and His imploring of His flock to seek Him through their Love and their deeds at all costs and with every fiber of their total capability, into a wealth is Evil and the Wealthy are Damned message.

It was clearly not his intent.  I believe somewhere in his conscience, his heart was true.  But wrapped up in all the orchestrated propaganda afflicting our lives each day, he just could not help himself.  The truth of his political leanings had to come out and his personal message of redistributed wealth over shadowed the beauty of God’s word.  In watching the Congregation and their reaction to his words, I would suspect he did some damage to the foundations of his Church this morning.

The dominant offshoot of the class warfare strategy is that it has divided the society into producers and consumers, givers and takers.  So many people are being cultivated to Take and Expect and to Believe they are Entitled to what others have made and earned  that the generosity of the producers is being tested to the core.

I personally no longer give like I used to, I still give generously, but I pick and choose my Charities VERY carefully after fully vetting their social leanings, their commitment to those they seek to help and the needs of those they provide for.  The Lord says we are not to sit in judgement of others, but He also compels us to be wise in using His Gifts to do good in the world.  We must be wary of Charlatans and Deceivers.  We must be just as wary of those who manipulate His Message for the advancement of political ideology as we must of those who do so for their own personal gain.

Knowing that the head of a Religious organization to which I could offer more of my time and talents in his heart believes I am evil for not writing a bigger check to his Church so that he can redistribute my time and talents for me makes my decision a lot easier.  I shall continue to give generously to do good in the world with organizations who will wisely use my gifts and not squander my talents to advance a redistributive political policy.

 

President Obama’s “Phony” Scandals” – a new post by contributing blogger Ed Riordan

Posted by PoliticallyUnEZ on July 26, 2013
Posted in: Conservative Principles, National Politics, Social Conservative. Tagged: , , , , , , . 1 Comment

President Obama’s “Phony” Scandals

Yesterday, the President of the United States appeared in Jacksonville to roundup this week’s portion of his current speaking tour on the subject of the economy. Pundits and observers agree that the appearances he has made in the past week were merely presentations of recycled speeches from the campaign trail, and the real purpose of his road trip to a number of American cities was a political one, designed to gin up his support base at a time of his plummeting popularity in the polls, and to distract the public from the plethora of scandals plaguing his administration. Some of the President’s more notable remarks, made reference to Washington’s focus on what he termed “phony” scandals. With unresolved issues like the tragic death of four Americans in Benghazi, the targeting of political enemies by the IRS, the spying done on of American citizens by the NSA, and the intrusion on the first amendment rights of the press at the top of most Americans minds when this President’s scandals are mentioned, his remarks were the red meat dream of his political opponents.  One after another the intellectually honest talking heads in the media lambasted Mr. Obama for referring to such real and important open investigations as “phony”.

This writer agrees with that sentiment, but, in the interest of taking the POTUS literally, took pause to reflect on the real “phony scandals” he continues to be faced with. In the first major act of his Presidency, challenged with addressing a national unemployment rate of 7.8%, Mr. Obama stood on a stage before all Americans espousing the benefits of a massive $1.2 Trillion economic stimulus package, making the promise that all that targeted spending for shovel ready jobs would reduce our unemployment rate to less than 6% by the end of 2012. Since that time, the President begrudgingly admitted there really were no shovel ready jobs, and according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the unemployment rate at the close of June 2013 in the US was 7.6%.
When selling the public benefits of his later adopted landmark achievement, the Affordable Care Act, the President promised Americans that liked their insurance that they could keep it, those who liked their doctors could keep them, and that insurance premiums would plummet as a result, saving the Average American $2,500 a year. As the implementation of Obamacare has evolved, Americans have found all three promises amounted to one tall tale of deceit.

Obama also frequently promised Americans he would oversee the most transparent administration in the history of the Nation, but we were in fact treated to a roll out of stonewalling and cover ups on all the controversies of his tenure from Fast and Furious, to Benghazi and the use of the IRS to assault his political enemies.
For all his promises of the first post-racial Presidency, Mr. Obama has in fact played the race card at every opportunity, to be divisive and gin up distrust at times of critical opportunities to unite Americans.

While some would say with righteous indignation that there are no “phony” scandals before us, I’ll choose to disagree by remembering the scandals of phony promises to Americans like me who are becoming resoundingly disappointed with the phony in the Whitehouse.