Trump “Enemies List” Should Include the Staff

Many Trump supporters have been dismayed by constant Opposition Media attacks on the president. Trumpistas worry that potential administration accomplishments could be undermined or defeated by leftists before Trump has served even a single year.

My advice is to save your fretting.

The left has already won and they did it by seizing the high ground in the administration’s Human Resources office. Why spend millions on political organizing and TV ads when a new Trojan Horse reports for work every week?

Trump’s apparent failure to get political appointees submitted to the Senate for confirmation begins to finally make some sense. The hundreds of vacant positions aren’t a symptom of Trump mismanagement, inefficiency or a desire to shrink the government.

The slow–walking must be plot on the part of the leftist cabal that runs the White House HR department. Their first goal is to get the moles into place and ready to leak, before supporters are nominated to implement Trumpismo initiatives.

Trump administration hiring decisions have completely reversed the newsgathering dynamic.

There’s a scene in the excellent new movie “The Case for Christ” where courtroom reporters rush madly to a bank of pay phones to call in a breaking story. This was a common occurrence before the invention of cell phones.

Today, when there’s momentous news, Trump’s White House staffers pretend to need a smoke, a vape or attend to their bowels as they rush off to find some privacy so they can call a reporter and be the first to drop administration linen before another ingrate beats them to the punch.

Trump’s administration isn’t draining the swamp; it’s restocking the swamp.

 So what is it with Republicans? Why are they such self–serving snakes and Democrats to loyal? My thoughts on the matter continue in the rest of my column found at Newsmax.com. Please click the link below:

https://www.newsmax.com/MichaelShannon/fbi-leakers-republican-yates/2017/05/16/id/790518/

 

The Car Dealership Solution to Health Insurance Costs

Bloomberg reports Obamacare premiums are scheduled to skyrocket up to 59 percent in Maryland, 38 percent in Virginia and 34 percent in Connecticut. A Baltimore 40–year–old would pay $715.00 a month for a plan with a $2,500 deductible.

Health insurance is costly for three reasons: Government interference, lack of price transparency and consumer overuse.

Here’s what would happen if we used car insurance like health insurance.

We’d expect oil changes to be covered after our $20.00 co–pay. There’d also be a long list of routine checks and diagnostics run each time your ride was in the shop, because the Dept. of Transportation requires mechanics to treat every vehicle like it was a 1961 DeSoto that had never had the oil changed.

Your $250.00 invoice would have itemized charges for GoJo, shop rags, coveralls, disposable ratchets, oil, opening the oil, oil filter and about a hundred other entries.

But that doesn’t matter, since after the co–pay, everything is free! Besides you feel sorry for DeSoto owners.

Later the car breaks down on the highway. You tell the CarFlight pilot to drop it off at the Mercedes dealer. Cost doesn’t matter once the deductible is paid, but you do demand a nice loaner while your car is in surgery.

Before leaving, you tell the mechanic to check the tires and see if they need replacing, because after all that’s what insurance is for, isn’t it?

Car insurance usage at that level would end our obesity crisis, because we’d soon be a nation of pedestrians. Obamacare would be joined by Obamacar.

Real Obamacare reform would require the health market to operate like the auto market.

I don’t mean the patient goes in the doctor’s office, negotiates for six hours and agrees on a price have his appendix removed. Then, in his weakened state, the finance manager pressures him into breast implants for the wife.

What I do mean is allowing consumer choice and provider accountability.

Smart consumers get an estimate before their car is serviced. If it’s too high, they talk to another shop. If it’s too much money to sink into an old car, you start shopping for new.

That’s price transparency. In health care we have price opacity. If you ask the hospital what it costs to have your appendix removed you get one of three replies: Uproarious, table–pounding laughter. Dead silence. Or thinly veiled contempt at such an ignorant question.

Price uncertainty might make sense if it was a brain transplant. Plenty of variables there, but that’s not the case with appendectomies.

The Annals of Surgery estimates 280,000 are performed each year. Producing a reliable cost estimate should be routine — give or take a sponge left inside.

Yet you can’t get an estimate because consumer knowledge is consumer power.

One way to begin imposing market discipline would be to require any hospital taking federal money to post turnkey prices for the 25 most common hospitalized surgical procedures; the 25 most common out–patient procedures and the 25 most common tests. All charges must match the best price offered insurance companies.

The howls this would generate from the medical–industrial complex prove how useful the information is. (More details on this in an earlier column here.)

And speaking of sponges, if you take your car in to the shop for an engine overhaul and a mechanic leaves a wrench in the crankcase, that car is going back to the shop. The subsequent repair–to–fix–the–repair is free.

That’s not the way it works with hospitals. Hospitals make money on their mistakes and get away with it because consumers send the bill to the insurance company.

That means higher premiums in the long run and it encourages incompetence. If the guy who works on your car has to fix his mistakes for free, the guy who works on your heart should, too.

People should pay for routine doctor’s visits out of their own pocket and save insurance for major expenses. When my family was between insurance policies I negotiated the cost of doctor’s appointments and lab tests by offering to pay in full right before I left. I saved 30 to 40 percent by taking the insurance company out of the equation.

Putting a middleman between the provider and the patient adds another layer of cost and bureaucracy. Hiding the cost of medical services encourages overuse.

Consumers can choose health insurance coverage options just like they can choose auto insurance coverage. Government “experts” requiring coverage simply guarantees a lifetime income to lobbyists and treats citizens like serfs.

My car market analogy isn’t perfect. Legislators protect in–state auto dealers from out of state completion, just like health insurance companies are protected now. It is certainly a start, though, and a vast improvement over what we have now.

Why Expecting Subway Passengers to Pay Is Racist

A select group of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) passengers discovered what happens when government ignores the “Broken Windows” theory of policing in favor of the left’s “Let It All Hang Out” philosophy.

“Broken Windows,” introduced by James Wilson and George Kelling, held that a community starts to deteriorate when political leadership de–emphasizes enforcement of “quality of life” ordinances.

Wilson and Kelling used the example of a building with a couple of broken windows. If the windows aren’t repaired, vandals will continue to break windows until there is no glass at all. Failure to repair the first few signals that there won’t be any consequences for breaking more in the future.

Deterioration continues until vandals break into the building and destroy the inside, too.

The social scientists contended the same thing happens in cities. If law enforcement ignores “quality of life” crimes like public urination, drinking in public, littering, graffiti and vandalism then disorder spreads and escalates.

By 1990 William Bratton, chief of New York City’s Transit Police, was tired of supervising the transit equivalent of Subway from Hell so he ordered his troops to crackdown on quality of life offenders. Plainclothes cops started arresting fare jumpers, aggressive panhandlers and vandals. Crime plummeted as a result of enhanced enforcement.

New York’s subway system became safe enough for politicians to ride.

In 2017 BART discovered it, too, has a problem with fare jumpers. The San Francisco Chronicle reports “22,000 people a day may be illegally riding BART for free — and depriving the transit system of as much as $25 million a year.”

For most of us that’s a lot of money, but for some BART board members it was a small price to pay if it kept BART cops from harassing minorities.

BART board member Lateefah Simon — a former fare–jumper herself— is convinced there are just as many upper–income seniors jumping fares as there are minority leapers, but BART cops will someone concentrate their enforcement on “teens, minorities and the homeless.”

“We don’t want to create more problems than we solve,” she explained.

So while the board was dithering a problem created itself.

Five days after Simon pooh–poohed a plan for fare enforcement, a mob hijacked a BART train. As reported by SFGate, “A mob of 40­60 young people streamed onto a BART train in Oakland Saturday night, robbing multiple riders of bags and cell phones and injuring at least two people.

“Juveniles jumped the fare gates and rushed aboard at least two cars of a Dublin-bound train at Coliseum Station shortly before 9:30 p.m. Some members of the group held doors open, stalling the train, while others ran through cars and some robbed and assaulted passengers.”

BART management was contrite: “Before all else, our hearts go out to the passengers who were victims of Saturday’s robbery.”

Once the sympathy was out of the way, BART reverted to best practices for leftists that put a higher priority on political correctness than keeping the peace. It lied.

“Overall, crime has been on the decline, and we want to stress that this robbery is neither reflective of the safety of our system nor of public transportation generally. We strive to provide a safe place for our passengers….”

Only crime isn’t down. Crime is up 22 percent in the first quarter of 2017. In fact crime is so obvious and out of control that acting chief Jeffery Jennings has declared a state of emergency.

Sympathy after the fact would not have been necessary if BART management practiced competence before the incident. Ignoring an obvious and expensive problem like rampant fare jumping only encourages the practitioners to push the limits and escalate their law breaking.

A sensible solution would be to let the data determine where to enforce. I think the term for that is science and the left claims to be the party of science.

The system has cameras in the stations and it can determine which stations are hotspots and at what time incidents occur. This common sense research might have prevented the taking of the BART train, since it occurred right after a juvenile–heavy event ended.

There is no indication the board will even try to mine the data. Adopting a “Broken Windows” policy might result in too many minority arrests, so the board is willing to risk a few broken heads.

I’m not so sure passengers on the Dublin–bound train agree with that choice.

Quality of life laws aren’t designed to inflict discrimination; they’re designed to establish a baseline for public behavior. These laws protect the elderly, the infirm, the young, the female and the wimpy, while restraining the unruly.

Regardless of whether government tolerates broken windows or broken turnstiles, it always leads to broken heads in the end.

Moral Instruction From the Opposition Media

How accurate is a poll based on a set of facts that don’t exist?

The WaPost’s Greg Sargent is excited about a new CNN poll claiming a vast majority of Americans essentially support open borders. But before we decide to delete the 4^th of July from the calendar and add Cinco de Mayo, it’s crucial to know the entire question, so as to judge the accuracy of the result.

It reads:

“Now, thinking about how the U.S. government should treat illegal immigrants who have been in this country for a number of years, hold a job, speak English and are willing to pay any back taxes that they owe.

Would you favor or oppose a bill that allowed those immigrants to stay in this country rather than being deported and eventually allow them to apply for U.S. citizenship?”

CNN may as well have asked respondents their view on the commercial viability of unicorn ranching. A more accurate question would have included the qualifier “and meet only one of the following four conditions.”

An accurate question is both longer and more truthful:

Estimates of the number of illegal or undocumented immigrants currently living in the US range from 9 million to 19 million. One approach to dealing with those who have lived here a number of years is to offer amnesty or a path to citizenship. [Rotate description]. Supporters say it’s morally right that illegal or undocumented immigrants who have a job, speak English and are willing to pay back taxes should have the opportunity to become productive and legal. Opponents say the jobs illegal or undocumented immigrants hold are taken from citizens, bi–lingual ballots prove the requirement to speak English is not enforced now and depending on immigrants to admit to owing taxes is unrealistic and back taxes won’t be paid. [Rotate arguments]

Knowing this do you favor or oppose a bill that allowed those immigrants to stay in the country rather than be deported and eventually be offered amnesty or a path to citizenship?

That balanced question reflects reality and produces an answer that would merit news coverage and analysis, rather than the 90 percent approval CNN’s fantasy question got.

So what did the media make of these results and how were they wrong? You guessed it, click on the link below and go to my complete Newsmax column:

https://www.newsmax.com/MichaelShannon/bannon-california-cnn/2017/04/27/id/786847/

 

 

Dr. Dao’s Loss Was Our Gain

The saga of former United Airlines customer Dr. David Dao is getting more and more expensive for the airline. According to the Daily Mail, he didn’t get home with all his teeth or his baggage. It seems that although United’s O’Hare Airport staff had time to order Dao beaten, which caused the loss of two teeth, they didn’t have time to take his luggage off the plane before it departed.

Maybe the baggage compartment isn’t subject to being oversold.

After the incident United CEO Oscar Munoz evidently decided to emulate Jim Carrey in the movie “Liar, Liar” and kick his own a**. He issued a number of news releases and endured a series of interviews that only served to illustrate the truth of the old public relations adage: When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

First Munoz contended the 69–year–old doctor was “belligerent.” Then Bloomberg reports that Munoz said no United employees would lose their job or be punished in the wake of the incident. “It was a system failure across various areas, so there was never a consideration for firing an employee or anyone around it,” he explained.

Although accurate, the statement doesn’t begin to address all of United’s legal problems. Dao was bumped because of what was termed at the time an “oversold” condition. The contract United customers enter into and never read when they buy a ticket addresses “denied boarding” on an oversold flight. United’s enormous liability problem is Dao wasn’t denied boarding; he was boarded and seated on the aircraft, so the contract provisions no longer applied.

After the initial death–by–streaming the video caused, United clarified the situation. Their particularly aggressive brand of musical chairs wasn’t caused by overbooking. United needed to move a crew of four to Louisville for a flight the next day and Dao was in the fourth seat.

Now there are many examples of passengers being beaten during their commute. An entire train was hijacked in Oakland just this week. But Dao may be the first person in history who was beaten so someone else could commute.

What many people don’t know about the airline business is many, if not most, of their cabin crews don’t live near the airports where they’re assigned. Crews flying out of Louisville may choose to live in a happenin’ city like Chicago, since the airborne commute is free. Dao’s teeth–rattling adventure could well have been the result of a lifestyle choice by the cabin crew in question. A tidbit that will cost even more if the case goes to trial.

The airline’s “system failure” was a pennywise–and–pound–foolish approach to overbooking. United supports the free market when it helps to make money, but dislikes the market when it costs money.

United began the market–based bidding process by offering $400 to passengers, but there were no takers. Then United offered $800. When that didn’t work the bidding was abruptly closed.

The supervisor hadn’t even gone up to the $1,350 maximum compensation required by law when he awarded Dao a free trip to Fist City.

And this is where the doctor’s loss becomes our gain.

Delta Airlines saw the post–knockout $1.4 billion drop in United’s stock price and decided to expand its auction for oversold seats. The Daily Caller reports Delta gate agents can now offer up to $2,000 in compensation and ground supervisors can go up to $9,950.

Now United is following Delta’s lead.

I’m a very satisfied Premier 1K flyer with United and today I received an email acknowledgement from Munoz that admits, “Our procedures got in the way of our employees doing what they know is right.”

To show Dr. Dao didn’t bleed in vain, in the future United “will increase incentives for voluntary rebooking up to $10,000.” Now the only violence in the cabin during an overbooked event will be when passengers didn’t think a volunteer held out for enough money and reduced compensation for the rest of the volunteers.

Even better, United now has a “no–questions–asked” $1,500 reimbursement policy for misplaced baggage. So if Dr. Dao’s new dentures are lost during a future flight he won’t have to supply the baggage supervisor with a cast of his teeth.

This is the most customer–oriented policy change that I can remember in the airline industry and we owe it all to Dr. Dao. I would almost suggest we start a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the good doctor’s physical therapy and PTSD sessions to demonstrate our gratitude.

But something tells me that after either the settlement talks or the trial concludes, Dr. Dao will have so much money he won’t be participating in any seat auctions regardless of how high the bidding goes.

Bystander Named Trump Blamed for Crash

Donald Trump is minding the people’s business in the Oval Office when he hears a commotion outside. He looks up and to his horror sees that the Resistance fence–jumper scheduled for Wednesday has gored himself on a spike and fallen on the White House lawn.

Trump grabs the nearest intelligence briefing and rushes outside in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately the briefing book is so thin — the Deep State only trusts the opposition media with real secrets these days — that it has almost no absorptive power and the jumper bleeds out.

Is it Trump’s fault the Resistance jumper wasn’t wearing a p***y hat, which is great for absorbing blood? Or is it Trump’s fault the jumper’s tire sandals slipped and caused him to fall on the spike?

Of course not, so how is it Trump’s fault that House Speaker Paul RINO’s Obamacare Lite bill is still impaled on the fence outside the House?

Trump has proven he’s not exactly a demon on details, but Ryan’s small–ball bill didn’t bother to include the one Obamacare reform Trump promised on the campaign trail: Removing “the lines around the states,” which the rest of us refer to as the ability to sell health insurance policies across state lines.

That particular reform was coming on the promised “third prong,” which was supposed to arrive sometime in the indefinite future and contain “moderate Moslems,” a “deportation force” and a Mexican check for the wall.

As you know this version of “Obamacare reform” didn’t pass the House and in fact didn’t come up for a vote. I think there may be a silver lining to the legislative cloud. To learn what it is, please click the Newsmax link below for the rest of the column:

https://www.newsmax.com/MichaelShannon/trump-obamacare-lite-paul-ryan/2017/03/29/id/781380/

Gullible Republican Voters Fooled Again

When Republican voters went to the polls last November, electing Trump meant seizing the last branch of government in Washington. Trump would join the existing Republican House and Senate. These optimistic voters looked forward to ushering in a new era of unchallenged conservative government. Trump’s election would be a stunning repudiation of Obama’s eight years of big government, soft socialism,

Instead, what Trump voters got was Vichy France.

Although in fairness to the French, when President Albert Lebrun surrendered to the Germans in 1940 Hitler was at the height of his power.

Republicans in Washington — led by Curator of the Senate, Mitch McConnell —surrendered to Chuck Schumer after Hillary lost the presidential election and Schumer failed to capture the Senate. But Democrats don’t have to actually win to defeat Republicans.

Democrats just have to exist.

I’m sure the explanation for this rout has something to do with the 2018 mid–term election.

In the run up to the 2016 vote, Republicans were warned not to expect too much in the way of conservative legislation from the GOP–controlled Senate and House. The GOP was defending more incumbent Senate seats than Democrats and McConnell had to protect the vulnerable.

In 2018 it looks like Republican voters can’t expect a return to conservative government this time because the Democrats are defending more incumbent Senate seats.

How does this budget bill betray the base who keeps electing Republicans and the new voters Trump added? You’ll see for yourself when you click the link below to the rest of the column on Newsmax.

https://www.newsmax.com/MichaelShannon/congress-goals-legislation/2017/05/02/id/787714/

 

Is a Man Competing on a Woman’s Team a Sex Offender?

Conservatives were wrong when they said granting alternative lifestyle practitioners special rights would put the country on a slippery slope. It wasn’t a slope at all. America jumped off a cliff.

Today sexual confusion isn’t concerned with whether a young adult should remain a virgin until marriage. It’s concerned with whether a young adult should remain a member of the sex into which they were born.

Unless your daughter is Brienne the Maid of Tarth, she doesn’t have a chance competing against hemales.

The desperately confused, unhappy people that believe they “are a man trapped in a woman’s body” would simply be sad if they lived out their torment privately. Unfortunately, no one does anything in private any more. The closet is vacant.

Elite opinion makers in media, politics and law demand society participate in the delusion. Call it mass hysterectomy.

The average American is supposed to embrace the theory that a baby is destined to be a homosexual in the womb, but whether the baby is a boy or a girl can only be determined sometime after birth when the child has weighed all its options.

Americans who didn’t want to make a fuss deluded themselves into thinking that if they just avoided certain areas — San Francisco parades, dance clubs with extensive Village People playlists and trendier florists — they could live their lives in peace and let bi–genders be bygones.

That is no longer true. Making sure the kids drained their bladders before going to Target is not enough. Now the gender benders are invading sports.

Formerly I was aware of the odd teenage boy who wanted to compete on the girl’s track team, but according to WND.com America is way past that. Men have invaded women’s sport at every level. Average or has–been men no longer have to be content with being an also–ran. If they are willing to undergo a wardrobe change, in no time at all they can be diamond–level competitors on the distaff side.

If you have a daughter who wants to compete, there’s a distinct possibility she’ll be competing against men, to say nothing of changing with them.

Here is a brief list of the female sports that men have entered: Weightlifting, cycling, softball, track & field, wrestling, volleyball, basketball, cricket and mixed martial arts.

Average men who think they are women have innate genetic differences that give them an athletic advantage few superior women can overcome.

Men have greater muscle mass, greater aerobic capacity, more fast–twitch muscle fibers, larger hearts, larger lungs, greater bone density, longer bones and tougher ligaments. As WND.com points out, these advantages give men “mechanical advantages over women, since they have greater leverage, increased height and larger frames to support muscle.”

A visit to Victoria’s Secret and an estrogen regime won’t level the field genetically between men–pretending–to–be–women and the genuine article.

Even if your daughter is fortunate to be competing against other women, she can still be cheated by a disturbed girl who wants to be a boy. In Texas the legislature determined athletes must compete in the sex God selected for them. So Texas daughters may have to wrestle against anchor babies and sanctuary grapplers but at least they won’t be men.

Unfortunately, the legislature didn’t consider all the possibilities, because this year the 110 lb. girl’s wresting state championship was won by a girl that’s been taking testosterone treatments for over a year.

In a CNN interview, Dr. Brandon Mines, of Emory University’s Department of Orthopedics, explained, “Testosterone and anabolic steroids are in the same family and have the effect of increasing muscle mass and strength gains.”

As a result Texas girls were wrestling a competitor with the muscle mass of a teenage boy.

If the same lack of logic was applied to Lance Armstrong he could have entered the women’s cycling tour as Leslie Armstrong, taken all the drugs he wanted and still been a champion.

I can’t explain the motives for these disturbed people going public and demanding accommodation. Maybe it’s exhibitionism, craving for attention or the realization this is their only chance to claim Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, but parents and female competitors need to understand it’s all at your expense.

Parents of normal children need to make their voices heard. It’s not bigotry to insist your daughter compete only against genuine women. It’s common sense. Demand school boards regain their sanity and if necessary file a lawsuit. If that doesn’t work, organize other parents and boycott sports in government schools.

Form your own female youth leagues. Women who are adult competitors should make it very clear to organizers they won’t enter any event that allows cheating men to compete.

This isn’t a fight for intolerance or exclusion. It’s a fight to return reality and mental health to mainstream America.

Trump Looks for Love in All the Wrong Places

If President Trump is disappointed by the outcome of his dalliance with Amanda Knox, wait until he gets a load of what passes for reciprocity from Rep. Hal Rodgers.

This clown caucus is the last place Trump should go to for support.

Amanda Knox is the student that was accused of a particularly gruesome murder in Italy, where she was attending school. Most of us would gravitate toward OJ or Robert Durst if we were going to advocate for someone accused of a messy murder, but maybe Trump thought he already had senior offenders in the bag.

Trump picked the hot coed and tweeted during her appeal trial, “Everyone should boycott Italy if Amanda Knox is not freed – she is totally innocent.”

Fortunately for the Italian tourism board, Knox was found innocent and returned to the US, where she proceeded to display a politician’s gratitude. The Independent reports the accused murderer endorsed the enthusiastic abortion supporter, Hillary Clinton, instead of her Twitter buddy, Trump.

In a column Knox wrote for the West Seattle Herald she observed, “If Obama’s song was a rousing anthem, Clinton’s is a subtle symphony. And Trump, a broken trumpet. [Clinton’s] impending victory represents the triumph of nuance and poise over prejudice and childishness.”

I won’t go out on a limb and contend Trump’s elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts in his proposed budget was to make sure Amanda never received a “writer in residence” grant, but it is an intriguing thought.

Now Trump is looking for love in all the wrong places. I know Trump is new at this, but it’s time to focus. Reaching out to RINOs and Democrats in the White House means asking Ivanka to pass the salt. Doing so in Congress can have serious repercussions with Trump’s base.

How serious? To learn that you’ll have to click on the link below and read the rest of my column at Newsmax.com:

https://www.newsmax.com/MichaelShannon/trump-freedom-caucus-rep-hal-rodgers/2017/04/19/id/785266/