Troubles at the department of Veteran Affairs have been known for a long, long time. For example, over a dozen years ago, Don Imus, an ex Marine and host of the nationally syndicated Imus in the Morning, was on a tear about the deplorable treatment American vets were receiving.

In Saturday’s WSJ, Senator John McCain makes the case that the VA is in worse shape now than it was five years ago when Barack Obama took office. In 2008, then-Senator Obama said of the VA under President Bush’s watch that it was “an outrage,” “a betrayal,” and that “we are all dishonored.” Allegations of abuse at the VA reportedly have been known to the Obama administration for many years, yet even now Obama is treating it more as a political problem rather than a national crisis that needs to be solved pronto. As Senator McCain points out, asking veterans to rely on a healthcare system that is overrun with problems is “patently unacceptable.” Our veterans have earned the right be able to choose where and when they get medical care. The VA allocates about $10,000 per year per veteran. Could not this disgraceful problem be solved immediately with a voucher system for American vets? Where in the world has John McCain as well as our Fund Raiser in Chief been?

Marine Le Pen’s French Front National grabbed 25% of the French vote to easily roll over Francois Hollande’s Socialist party in the European elections. FN is strongly anti-EU and anti-immigration, especially from the Muslim world, the Third World, and Eastern Europe. Now FN is in a position to push for reform. Francois Hollande and the Socialists have sunk to a new low among French voters. I have seen this unfolding in France for years. The public is fed up not only with Hollande and the Socialists, but also with old guard politicians and old ways in general.

The Telegraph reports:

Marine Le Pen declared victory in European Union elections tonight as voters backed populist, far-Right and Left-wing parties in a backlash against immigration and the euro’s economic policies.

In a stunning defeat for the European political establishment, exit polls forecast that the French Front National, which wants to leave the euro and the EU, would win 25 per cent of the vote, more than ten points ahead of Francois Hollande’s Socialists.

The victory means that Miss Le Pen’s Front National will increase its number of MEPs from three to 24 in an earthquake for French and eurozone politics.

“Our people demand one type of politics: politics by the French, for the French, with the French. They don’t want to be led anymore from outside, to submit to laws,” said Miss Le Pen.

“Tonight is a massive rejection of the EU. What is happening in France prefigures what will happen in all European countries, the return of the nation.”

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“I’ve never been busier”, is a phrase I often hear from retirees. We all think we’ll have tons of free time in retirement. And we do. But the hours still get filled-up with things to do. That’s why it’s crucial to plan ahead and understand some of the pitfalls out there. I’ve advised that you should rent your second home, at least to start off with, so you can get your bearings. I like this article in the The WSJ by Tom Lauricella on “The Five Myths About Retirement”:

1. You’ll probably retire earlier than expected.

Sounds like a good thing, but it’s not. Among the most critical variables determining the size of a retirement nest egg is how many years money is saved before withdrawals start. These days, many financial plans assume delayed retirement, and to a large degree it’s happening.

But not by as much as some have planned. Some 22% of workers say that they expect to wait until age 70 to retire, according to the most recent survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. But only 9% of retirees actually retired at that age, the survey found.

Meanwhile, EBRI has found that a sizable number of retirees leave the workforce earlier than planned for negative reasons. In the group’s 2014 survey, 49% retired early, but 61% of them said it was because of a health problem or disability. Many others are forced out of a job by changes at their company.

And for some early retirees, it was health problems of a spouse or other family member that led to leaving a full-time job.

By contrast, 26% of the early retirees told EBRI they had retired early because they could afford to..

For those who had banked on working longer to save more, “it means having to start drawing on their investments sooner than they had expected,” says Judy Ward, a senior financial planner at T. Rowe Price Group. In addition, it may mean signing up for Social Security sooner than planned, which can result in a smaller monthly benefit.

2. It’s not easy to get back into the workplace.

Meanwhile, retirees often find it hard to find new work. Roughly two-thirds of retirees say they plan to work in retirement, but just 27% report actually doing so, EBRI says. In part, the same dynamics that make it harder for older workers in general to find jobs also hinder retirees.

“Forced unemployment typically means they will seek re-employment comparative to the same job skills,” says Catherine Seeber, senior financial adviser at Wescott Financial Advisory Group in Philadelphia. “The problem is, they aren’t equipped to compete with the younger, more socially savvy job seeker, and employers aren’t eager to ‘pay the price’ for the experience.”

For some, the very health issues that prompted early retirement in the first place limit their ability to work.

3. You’ll regret buying that second home.

A dream of some retirees is to buy a second home to live in part time, and eventually sell their primary home. The advice from advisers: don’t. “Our experience with the second home has generally been that they are expensive, a hassle and a mistake,” says Neil Hokanson, a financial adviser in Solana Beach, Calif. “Clients could stay at the Ritz-Carlton when they go to their second-home area for far less, and with none of the hassle of frozen pipes, neighbor disputes, volatile housing values.”

That challenge gets magnified as retirees age and become less able to take care of one house, never mind two.

4. Medicare doesn’t cover what you think it does.

It’s no secret that health costs are a major burden, but many people wrongly assume that once they pass 65, Medicare will be there to deal with the problem.

Not even close. Traditional Medicare, the federal health insurance program, covers on average just 48% of an enrollee’s health costs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

There are routine costs Medicare generally doesn’t cover, such as eyeglasses and hearing aids. Dental care, where it’s easy to rack up bills totaling thousands of dollars for a root canal, isn’t covered. Retirees still have to pay deductibles, which when dealing with a chronic or serious illness can quickly run up the tab.

The biggest problem: Medicare doesn’t cover the cost of a long-term-care facility or of home health-care aides. Shirley Whitenack, an elder-care attorney in Florham Park, N.J., says many retirees need a Medicare supplemental insurance policy, otherwise known as Medigap.

According to Kaiser, the average Medigap premium was $2,200 a year in 2010. But premiums vary by age. At 80, beneficiaries paid 52% more than 65-year-olds. “It is important to budget the cost of a Medigap policy in the retirement years,” Ms. Whitenack says. Even then, she notes, Medigap policies won’t cover nursing-home care.

5. Your budget is unrealistic.

A major part of retirement planning is figuring out how much money you’ll need. This usually focuses on generating the income needed to sustain a particular standard of living. Many people work on the assumption that they will spend less when they’re no longer working.

It’s true lower taxes and the end of retirement-account contributions usually reduce income needs. But many advisers say retirees don’t account for the general rise in out-of-pocket spending, especially when retirees are young and healthy.

“They have more time to go out, shop and travel,” says Heather Locus, a financial adviser at Balasa Dinverno Foltz, in Itasca, Ill. The risk then becomes putting a hole in a nest egg that can’t be repaired.

The key, she says, is building extra room into the budget. “We try to offset this by helping our clients get a good idea of their spending the past few years before retirement and then adjusting for increased travel or hobby expenses.”

And then later in life, they allow for higher medical costs in a plan, she says.

In The New York Times, Thomas Friedman explains how Putin and Russia took it on the chin after Ukraine’s independence movement began. Friedman writes here that Putin blinked when faced with the punishing economic sanctions and a cold shoulder from the developed world. Friedman thinks Russia’s annexation of Crimea has done the country more harm than good.

“Let’s add it up: Putin’s seizure of Crimea has weakened the Russian economy, led to China getting a bargain gas deal, revived NATO, spurred Europe to start ending its addiction to Russian gas and begun a debate across Europe about increasing defense spending. Nice work, Vladimir. That’s why I say the country Putin threatens most today is Russia.”

I have met Governor Scott a couple of times at Cato Institute conclaves. Rick Scott came into office with the goal of helping to bring business to Florida. The governor has absolutely delivered on his promise and in the Florida gubernatorial race is the hands down choice against the insipid, party hopping Charlie Christ.  As a Florida resident I cannot imagine that any Florida resident concerned about jobs for Florida would not get out and get behind the jobs delivering Governor, Rick Scott. Polling says Scott leads Crist today.

In Morning Jolt, NRO’s Jim Geraghty reports on a 2005 Veteran Affairs study that rated Chicago the worst regional office in the country. In 2013, five veterans died while waiting for care at Hines. VA secretary Eric Shinseki has now appointed the man in charge at Edward Hines VA Hospital in Cook County, Illinois—Dr. Jeffery Murawsky—to oversight responsibility of the entire VA system. How comforting must it have been to veterans to receive Mr. Shinseki’s 22 May “Message to Veterans” that the VA would investigate itself?

Dr. Hal Scherz, a pediatric urological surgeon in Atlanta, writes in the opinion page of the WSJ of his experience at VA hospitals in San Antonio and San Diego. Clinics were understaffed and overscheduled, appointments for X-rays and other tests had to be scheduled months in advance, and even longer for surgery. Worse, administrators not only limited operating time, but also made sure that work stopped by 3 p.m.

According to Dr. Scherz, the luckiest thing that could happen to a patient in the VA system was that the services the patient needed were not available. When not available, the VA outsourced care to doctors in the community, where problems were quickly addressed. It is no surprise that a majority of doctors have opposed a mammoth federal regulatory apparatus to control health care (Obamacare) in America. Dr. Scherz warns, “The systemic problems with the VA are a harbinger of things to come.”

As Peggy Noonan recently noted, “(Obamacare) exists because the people who pushed for it fell in love with an abstract notion and gave not a thought to what the law would actually do and how it would work.” For Dr. Scherz’s entire article on his and other doctors’ war stories from VA hospitals, click here.

Ralph Nader has written a masterpiece on how to dismantle the corporate sate that has engulfed our Federal Republic. Every American, whether liberal, conservative or libertarian, will come away from a thorough reading of Unstoppable with new hope for the future of a Federal Republic form of government. Mr. Nader envisions an emerging left-right alliance that could be truly unstoppable.

For example, Ralph writes about Pat Buchanan and tells readers, “Writing as a traditional conservative, Buchanan in his 2004 book Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Highjacked the Bush Presidency, hurls thickets of historical fact against the neocons’ myths, lies, and hypocrisies, which they garnish with a belief in militaristic, patriotic exceptionalism, touting America’s leaders’ inherent humanism, faith belied by deliberate slaughter of civilians in the United States during the Civil War and the mass incinerations over Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, whose purpose was to ‘terrorize the population,’ to use language of our leaders at the time.”

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Yesterday I wrote to you about how the 10 largest bond funds are increasing risk by loading up on junk bonds. The only fund company of the group not doing this is Vanguard. No surprise there. Vanguard always seems to do the right thing for investors. But there’s another narrative inside this grouping of behemoths that I want to share with you today. Who is the biggest holder of junk and who will pay the price when markets turn?

DoubleLine Total Return bond fund has loaded its portfolio with 28% of its assets junk rated. You may recall this beauty of a quote from its manager. He said that investors “want exposure to these high-yield and distressed securities and they’ve become comfortable with what we’re doing.” Again, as I wrote to you yesterday, in my close to 20 years working with investors, no one is comfortable losing money. And that’s exactly what this fund is set up to do in a major way when credits turn.

But the big losers are not going to be the fund’s managers. They’ll be fine raking in their fat fees. It will be the firemen, police officers, and retired teachers that will take the hit. They’ve put their trust in the managers and the pension board to do the right thing with their hard earned money. But as is often the case in the institutional investing game, it’s simply a beauty contest to determine where money is invested.

DoubleLine Total Return happens to be the belle of the ball today. It has fattened up to $31 billion under management in only four years. Its assets have grown by 689% since inception. We all know how this fairy tale will end.

My friend, Cato Institute’s Chris Preble’s aptly titled post is both shocking and depressing. Americans are being played the sucker by our own government. You may have thought that your government was spending your tax dollars to subsidize the defense of wealthy nations around the world. But I bet you had no idea of the actual extent of the international free ride. Well here are the numbers in concise and orderly fashion. It is long past time that we Americans demand that our elected politicians in Washington put and end to the international military free ride.

The average American spends nearly $1,900 each year on the military, based on the latest data available. In fact, Americans spend much more than that, because that figure includes the costs of the Pentagon’s base budget, as well as the costs of the wars, but excludes other national security-related expenditures in the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and Energy. Still, that conservative $1,896 figure is roughly four and a half times more than what the average person in other NATO countries spends on defense. These countries boast a collective GDP of approximately $19 trillion, 18 percent higher than the United States. They obviously can afford to spend more, but they don’t. The disparity between what Americans spend relative to our Asian allies is nearly as stark: South Koreans spend about a third as much, and Americans outspend people in Japan by more than four to one.

The reason why is obvious: people are disinclined to pay for things that others will buy for them. Countries are no different. Uncle Sam has picked up the tab for defending other countries since the earliest days of the Cold War, and that pattern continues to this day.

In practical terms, this means that U.S. alliances constitute a massive wealth transfer from U.S. taxpayers to bloated European welfare states and technologically-advanced Asian nations. In most of these countries, the governments who are relieved of the responsibility of defending their citizens from threats have chosen to spend their money on other things.

Consider, for example, the disparity between what the United States spends on the military as a share of total government spending, and what other countries spend. While the United States spends 16.8 percent of the budget on the military, Japan spends a paltry 2.4 percent. Our NATO allies? The average is 3.45 percent. Even South Korea’s share of military spending is only 11 percent, and they have an erratic, hostile regime on their northern border. By promising to provide for these countries’ security, and by spending hundreds of billions of dollars to back up these promises, we have encouraged them to divert resources away from defense.

Check out the shocking infographic here.

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