America, through the years, has suffered from many the incompetent president. With much foresight, the Founders intended that the executive branch be a weak office with expressly limited duties. Since 1900, America has been saddled with five presidents who have done especially heinous damage to our supposed Federal Republic way of life. Here I am referring to Woodrow Wilson who (1) wrongly got America into WWI on the ground and (2) gave us both the Fed and the progressive income tax. Also headlining the list is FDR, followed by Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and now Barack Obama. America must change course in 2014 and 2016, or our Federal Republic form of government is probably gone forever. There is a reason you are reading more and more about states talking secession. Most Americans are fed up with socialism and the Big Government way, but we are too disorganized (as a country) to do anything about it.

Make no mistake though, while America is currently getting the O’Shaft from a guy who sits virtually clueless and frozen in the Oval Office, Republicans have offered little in exchange. I blame the Bush administration and the Boehner-led crowd currently in office for an almost total failure to support the Constitution and our Federal Republic form of government. Americans have been hoodwinked into believing that government is the answer, which is why the Founders’ intent was for a weak executive branch. Just read the Constitution, and you will be horrified at how Congress and the president have overstepped their bounds.

Americans can respond by working to dramatically reduce the federal government’s footprint in our lives. A good place to start would be a full repeal of O’Care and a junking of the tax code, with a move to a flat tax, 10/10/10 plan. Our military remains frozen in a WWII anti Soviet Union mode and must be rearranged to reflect 21st Century realism. The best guide I have read in this regard is the Cato Institute’s Chris Preble’s The Power Problem . The best policy organization in America by a long shot is the Cato Institute, which Debbie and I enthusiastically support. Cato is America’s leader in supporting the Constitution and the Federal Republic form of government intended by our Founders. Cato scholars are experts on the theme of small government. No other scholars in the country have done a better job in warning Americans about the perils of O’Care than have Michael Cannon and Michael Tanner. I speak with both gentlemen at Cato conclaves and regularly post their research for you on this site.

This upcoming February, Cato will hold its annual Naples (Florida) policy conclave. Debbie and I do not miss these special events and will be there this February. Go to Cato.org for the schedule, as well as for all the latest breaking news from the Cato Institute. And I hope you will become as enthusiastic a benefactor of Cato as Debbie and I have become. It is time to reverse the destructive political process that has overwhelmed the country since Ronald Reagan spent his final days in the White House. (Read: Getting Back on the Right Path)

Related video:

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America is in a mighty tailspin, thanks to our incompetent president and a bought and paid for Congress. Here the WSJ explains how Americans must now pay first-class fares for coach-seat-quality health care. Why? Because we have a highly Marxist-influenced president whose goal is first and foremost about social equity and income redistribution. Do you know whose health plans are being taken away? America’s self-employed and small business owners are getting the O’Shaft. As I have written often, these are just the risk-taking Americans who create most of the new jobs in America. Do you know that O’Care is limited to just four plans? The Journal explains here that nearly half the plans are tightly managed HMOs and that patients face the prospect of waiting months and driving miles to clinics and county hospitals. Do you know that with O’Care, even if you do not have children, you must have pediatric vision benefits? O’Care is the worst act of government mayhem since FDR’s National Recovery Act.

Regulators mandated a very rich level of “essential” health benefits that all plans in the individual market must cover, regardless of cost. This year eHealth reported that its data show individual premiums must be 47% higher than the old average to fund the new categories in the individual market.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare’s plans are limited to essentially four. Yes, four. The law converts insurance products on the ObamaCare exchanges into interchangeable commodities that finance the same standard benefit at the same average expense over four tiers known as bronze, silver, gold and platinum.

So, for example, a bronze plan covers 60% of health-care expenses and the beneficiary pays a lower premium to pick up the remaining 40% out of pocket. Platinum carries a higher premium for a 90%-10% split. But there can be little deviation from the formulas—that is, there is little room for innovation or policy choice—to suit customer preferences.

In any case all four tiers are scrap-metal grade, because the rules ObamaCare imposes to create a supposedly superior insurance product are resulting in an objectively inferiormedical product. The new mandates and rules raise costs, so insurers must compensate by offering narrow and less costly networks of doctors, hospitals and other providers in their ObamaCare products. Insurers thus restrict care and patient choice of physicians in exchange for discounted reimbursement rates, much as Medicaid does.

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No one knows the history of gun control better than Stephen P. Halbrook. Here Mr. Halbrook remembers the Night of the Broken Glass. Halbrook’s new book is a must for all Second Amendment supporters.

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You know there aren’t many guaranteed investments out there today. But If you are a participant in a defined contribution plan, such as a 401(k), you may have access to one of my favorites. It’s called the company match. The company match is when your employer matches your contribution up to a certain percent. For example, if the company match is 5% and you contribute 5% of your salary, you have a total contribution or savings of 10%. If you save 2% the company matches 2% and your total contribution is only 4%.  As you can see you want to meet that company match each and every year. It’s hard to do. But it’s one of the few guaranteed investments available to you today. Join those that are saving until it hurts (see chart) and imagine how far ahead of the pack you’ll be when you retire.

Source: BlackRock Defined Contribution Survey

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It’s hard to believe that legendary investor Warren Buffett got his start in New Bedford, MA. I grew up a couple of towns over in Mattapoisett. His Berkshire Hathaway deal didn’t turn out the way he had planned it would, but he obviously learned a thing or two from that experience. The Mayor of New Bedford is trying to salvage the property as the WSJ explains here:

NEW BEDFORD, Mass.—Americans tend to celebrate the birthplaces of great businesses, such as the garage in Los Altos, Calif., where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Inc. and Sam Walton’s Five and Dime in Bentonville, Ark., the origin of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

But there is little support thus far for a campaign by the mayor of New Bedford, Mass., to save from the bulldozer a squat, dilapidated office building once the headquarters of  Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Control of the New England textile manufacturer was acquired in 1965 by an ambitious 34-year-old investor named Warren Buffett, who made Berkshire Hathaway the base of his own budding conglomerate. It, of course, went on to become synonymous with investing prowess and business success.

But there is now a problem facing New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell in his efforts to salvage the property: The story of the old mill headquarters doesn’t exactly fit the Buffett mystique.

The billionaire investor, famous for his golden touch, lost money on the Berkshire Hathaway deal, even though the mill’s cash flow helped fund the early growth of the conglomerate. Famously unemotional about his investments, Mr. Buffett originally bought the mill partly because he was upset at the company’s then owner, he acknowledges in a phone interview.

Mr. Buffett even regrets transforming Berkshire Hathaway into his holding company. “One of the dumbest things was to make a textile company the base of other things we bought or invested in,” Mr. Buffett said. He never considered changing the name, though.

Mayor Mitchell is running out of time. The current owner of the 86-year-old office building wants to level it for a parking lot. The mayor has persuaded him to hold off for a few months in a final push to find a buyer.

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Chinese authorities quashed Bitcoin in their country today. The New York Times reports:

China moved on Thursday to restrict its banks from using Bitcoin as currency, citing concerns about money laundering and a threat to financial stability.

The action comes as monetary authorities around the world have begun to confront the issue of Bitcoin, a virtual currency whose value has soared in recent months as interest in it has spread. Part of its rise has been driven by intense demand for the virtual currency in China.

The notice curtailing financial institutions’ involvement with Bitcoin was issued by the People’s Bank of China and four other ministries and agencies, and the directive said the step was needed to “protect the status of the renminbi as the statutory currency, prevent risks of money laundering and protect financial stability.”

The notice said that Bitcoin was “not a currency in the real meaning of the word” but was rather a “virtual commodity that does not share the same legal status of a currency. Nor can, or should, it be circulated or used in the marketplace as a currency.”

A chart form Bitcoin price tracker Clark Moody’s website shows prices have recovered somewhat, but are still down significantly today on the news.

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Millions have lost their health-care coverage. And the pain hasn’t even started. Just wait. When the business mandate kicks in next year, millions more will find they cannot keep their plans, their premiums, their deductibles, their doctors. Here Peggy Noonan explains how shocked and dismayed Americans are at the dishonest and shamelessly abusive promises from this administration.

The program he created in 2009-10, ran on in 2012, and whose implantation he delayed until one year after that election—in retrospect, that delay seems meaningful, doesn’t it?—has turned out to be wildly misleading as to its basic facts.

Millions are finding you can’t keep your plan, your premium, your deductible, your doctor. And millions more will discover this when the business mandate kicks in.

All of this—the fraudulent nature of the program—came as a rolling shock to people the past two months.

It’s a shock for most people that it’s a shambles. A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “How could any president put his entire reputation on the line with a program and not be on the phone every day pushing people and making sure it will work? Do you know of any president who wouldn’t do that?” I couldn’t think of one, and it’s the same question I’d been asking myself. The questioner had been the manager of a great institution, a high stakes 24/7 operation with a lot of moving parts. He knew Murphy’s law—if it can go wrong, it will. Managers—presidents—have to obsess, have to put the fear of God, as Mr. Obama says, into those below them in the line of authority. They don’t have to get down in the weeds every day but they have to know there are weeds, and that things get caught in them.

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