Even the Rats Know

 This is kind of hilarious. A California Education official lives in Texas for years and the state of California doesn't even know it until recently. Not only that, but California is actively banning any sort of state funded entity from traveling to red states over various policies with which the Left in California doesn't agree. But it seems even those on the Left-a certainly this person much be to have gotten the job she was assigned-realize that the taxation and overkill on mandates is destroying their ability to live free.

You can read it here.

Tax Reality

My son broke his ankle last January. This was followed by a series of economic hurdles that included having to pay $5000 out of pocket just to get admitted to the hospital. After the surgery-two plates and sixteen screws-my son missed nearly two months of full time work. It was simply impossible for him to do his job as a high end bike sales rep. He couldn't drive. He couldn't stand up all day. But his company held his job and created opportunities for him to contribute. The end bill was around $45K for surgery and two and a half days of hospitalization.

This is where the trouble began. The nurses and doctors didn't wean him from the IV pain meds until he was being wheeled out the door. Because I teach school and had already missed several days to care for him, his older brother picked him up. My son suffered outrageous withdrawals, for which nobody seemed to have answers. He endured the agony for four days. Then we began getting bills. Although the hospital that the surgeon used had the brand name of a hospital on my son's insurance, because it was 51% owned by the doctors working there, we had to haggle to get the amount covered. We had no choice really. He broke the ankle on New Year's Day and the longer we waited, the worse the recovery would be. There were only two doctors from a list of 20 given by his insurance who could see him. Likewise, we had to either choose the facility offered or risk waiting two to three weeks. Now I ask you, does that sound like prudent and immediate care? But I digress.

Fast forward to this week. All my son's papers were in order (sounds menacing doesn't it) for filing taxes. He did get compensation from his company's accident insurance policy to cover his out of pocket expenses. He still ended up missing two months of work and had to make up for lost income. But when he went to file taxes, he was told that the compensation he used to pay off the hospital and doctor would be TAXED. So even though he ended up spending 12% of his annual gross income on medical bills, my son, who work retail, who has only recently made enough to afford to move out and live on his own, will owe money. When he told the person doing the taxes effectively that he would not be filing, she replied "but you make more than lots of people."

This is how conservatives are made.

My Letter to The White House OR Why Obamacare Doesn't Work

This is a copy of the letter I wrote to the White House and President Obama. Of course I doubt he will read it. But I am hoping others do read it as a cautionary tale.

"Let me tell you what ACA has done for us. My son, who is 24 and works full time and has had insurance from his work for nearly a year, broke his ankle. It is a complex break and dislocation. He went to the ER and they demanded $250, which I didn't question. But then the surgeon we called demanded $1400 up front. Last but not least, the hospital said that if my son couldn't come up with $1500 up front, that they would "postpone the surgery until he had the money." He works retail, he has to be able to walk or at least move. It would take him months, maybe years to save that much. This is what is happening. This is your fault. You and the Democrat have lied to us. And kids like my son are suffering and will suffer. The only people who benefit are those who are uninsured who will skip their bills. I am so disappointed."

The last six days have been stressful to say the least. ER visits usually are. My youngest son has worked so hard to get out of debt and to be responsible in paying for child care and such. He was finally looking at moving out. Then this. An accident. But he has insurance so that makes it alright.....right? No. Think again.
I didn't really think much when the ER wanted $250 up front. That's a normal think with ER visits, then you get billed later. But when after visiting with the orthopedist (and after having to hear the absolute agony of my son as they struggled to reduce the fracture which was not done properly at the ER) we got a phone call demanding $1400 up front and then the call from Baylor Hospital demanding the full amount of the deductible up front, this poor kid broke down. How are people ever supposed to get out from under debt when the costs of insurance along with the cost of deductibles rising? The irony is that if he was indigent or irresponsible, he would end up at Parkland or John Peter Smith and get the same services for a billing payment or even free.

Buying insurance is for saps. Why do we do it? It seems to offer few benefits and more liabilities. And the mumbo jumbo gibberish of the insurance jargon is enough to drive Ben Franklin insane. My blood pressure was already high. Luckily I am able to help out-but I know others that are not. What of those poor kids with $10,000 deductibles on their insurance? How will they pay? This isn't even the first week of January and it's already ugly. It's going to get uglier still.

People, I've been saying this since 2009, Obamacare is a trap. It is not about less expensive care or even more accessible care-it is a surreptitious tax on those that work to subsidize those demographic populations the ruling party find to be more deserving of services.

So Very Confused

I do my own taxes. I see no reason to pay someone to ask me the same exact questions that I can read for myself. So I've used Turbotax in the past. This year, originally, Turbotax imported the wrong amount for my total income. That's pretty disturbing because since Texas teachers don't pay into Social Security, that's a big difference in the total amount. In addition, it didn't pick up the taxes I had paid in. As a result, Turbotax had use owing money-very disappointing considering that my husband hasn't had a job for over 18 months and our income has been slashed by over 55%.

Just for the sake of argument, I tried H&R Block online. This is not an ad for them. But they did end up getting us nearly twice what Turbotax said we owed. I have gone over the data THREE TIMES on both programs and the input information is exactly the same. So why does one make us pay and the other does not? Now keep in mind, on both our audit risk is low because frankly, we don't make that much. But, having used Turbotax for the last five years, I am going to be mad as hell if we overpaid our taxes for years.

Yeah, yeah, I know, accountants want us to go to them. But I took my Mom to a clinic where there were a roomful of retired CPA's and depending on who you talked to this deduction or that was disallowed. This leads me to my final observation-our tax code is far too unwieldy. Millions of dollars are spent on trying to avoid paying taxes when by simplifying taxes and lowering them, MORE people will willingly pay. This also gets into the area of needless accumulation of paper. Why must we collect and retain copies of paper for years and years when the IRS has them on file? Why must we send them in? It's ridiculous. It's busy work.

Every Cent You Make.....

Another Global Warming "OOPSIE" Moment

So we have all these celebrity types who want to latch on and bask in the reflected glow of Al Gore under the dubious guise of "stopping Global Warming." Never mind that that particular moniker has recently been changed to "Global Change" which syncs nicely with someone's presidential campaign rhetoric, just pretend to go along. Well now it seems that some fairly heavy hitters who have spent more than a summer studying the weather, global currents and such are questioning the rush to judgment on the part of the Nobel committee and the Usual Suspects. Read the letter linked to the title above and the blog at Orange Punch and then ask yourself as the prices on gas rise and the demands of the liberal left further restrict domestic exploration and production if it's worth it to your family to keep throwing good money on bad science?
Bad Science

Basic Budgeting for Political Candidates

With the bridge collapse in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the politicians have come out of the woodwork demanding new and bigger spending for infrastructure. The federal government sets standards which the states are supposed to monitor and maintain for a variety of public works from electrical grid, levees, water supply and roadways. While the bridge collapse is certainly a tragic and dramatic example of system failure, does pointing fingers and laying blame based on a political model help at all? There are those in our legislatures that want the federal government to basically seize control of every issue. Do we really want to have to petition Washington to have a street widened or turn lanes installed? I ask that because that is what many in Congress claim to want. In essence, this would take local bond issue improvement funding and revert it to federal control. If you want an example of what that is like, consider that the state of Texas, for all of its highways, bridges, dams and such only gets back around 70% of the money sent to Washington in the form of fuel taxes. With larger populations and related larger numbers of Congressional members, more populous states would get the lion's share of funding under a federally controlled system,leaving states like Kansas, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Arizona with minimal attention. That is virtually the system now in place for federally funded programs, the results being things like "The Bridge to Nowhere" and "The Big Dig" both programs earmarked by well connected Congressmen.

The problem is WHERE do we spend our money? If your family income is say, $2000 a month-your first needs are shelter,food, utilities, transportation,clothing. Beer, cigarettes and lottery tickets are in that frill area of "want" over "need". If your family has problems making determinations about what is necessary over what is a frill, then you probably have serious cash flow problems. Ramp that up to a federal level, and unless the government creates new and bigger taxes, there is only so much money to go around. Yet we have Congresspersons and lobbyists that place pet projects in the way of real and necessary improvements. And that can come from a whole plethora of sources. Dams and levees can be almost permanently delayed by lobbying from environmental groups. Educational funding can be diverted for free lunches and ESL programs over books and computers. Highway funding can be delayed years, even decades, over silly internal squabbling such as we are seeing on the Trinity River parkway fiasco. And the list goes on and on and one.

With finite resources, the federal government CANNOT pay for everything. Right now, voters are being hit with a number of campaign proposals such as National Health Care, Infrastructure Improvements to highways, dams, power plants and water resources, Educational reform that would cost billions to implement and programs that we can't even begin to detail here. I know different people have different needs,but when you look at these promises, please stop and ask yourself from which pocket of income the funding for such programs will come. It has to come from somewhere. And the last big wave of corporate taxation is what led to massive offshoring of critical industries. Perhaps, like many families out here, the federal government needs to live within its means and allow a free citizenry to define their own priorities and pay for their own needs rather than taxing everyone and giving us back only a fraction of services in kind.