Here is what we learned about this administration in the wake of purported Russian "phishing" of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s email.

Valuable DNC secrets were protected by an elaborate set of fail-safe passwords. This followed years of high-level DNC meetings where attendees openly discussed their mothers’ maiden names, the names of their first pets and their favorite movies on their Facebook pages.

The hacking of government computers has been going on for years. CIA Director Brennan's AOL account was hacked. Twelve federal agencies, including the White House, IRS, State Department and Defense Department, have been hacked just since 2009.

To Obama, apparently, this was no biggie.

However, if a hacker hacks DNC political hack John Podesta’s Gmail account, then President Obama orders a very public investigation. If you cyber-attack government, that is OK and you get a stern warning to “Cut it out.”

Keep in mind, the DNC is a private organization; all of the 12 hacks mentioned above are our government. So hack our government and you are told by Obama to “Cut it out.”  Monkey with his political machine? Sanctions!

In essence, getting the intelligence agencies to doctor the Benghazi report — and arguably Bush’s team spinning yellowcake and WMD stories in Iraq — show how partisan these agencies have become. Some intelligence group changed the talking points on Benghazi to blame a YouTube video so it didn’t hurt Obama leading up to his re-election in November of 2012.

The real lesson learned in the intelligence communities' intel report sweepstakes was to please the president when he asked them to look into this. They knew what he wanted them to say.

In areas the feds do control, the IRS leaked Trump's tax returns. "Access Hollywood" tapes were disseminated without his permission — but there was no interest in pursuing any investigation because those incursions hurt their opponent.

I’m walking a narrow plank here and might get arrested next week for questioning these clandestine agencies, but we should determine if we have too many of them. What’s worth stealing from our government? You look at Joe Biden and cannot imagine someone wanting to know what he knows.

A two-year investigation by The Washington Post, published in 2010, discovered a "Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine."

The investigation's other findings included:

*Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

*An estimated 854,000 people — nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C. — hold top-secret security clearances.

*In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001, collectively about 17 million square feet of space. Remember the illegal NSA data-mining monstrosity in Utah?

*Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks. These are terrorists who don’t have cable TV or processed cheese; maybe tracking their money is not the issue.

*Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing some 50,000 intelligence reports each year — works routinely ignored except by foreign agents who hack in and read them.

For years, the CIA famously tried to kill Castro Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner-style with exploding cigars and poison. Well, at age 90, it looks like the arsenic finally kicked in.

Stories abound that our CIA got Nelson Mandela jailed. The intel community also provided “intelligence” that led to our mistakes in Syria, Libya and Egypt. We still need a strong, secular Arab leader in the Middle East to enforce order. But we invaded and occupied Iraq, found and hanged him. The intel community also told us to go into Iraq because Saddam Hussein had WMD and had to go. This totally destabilized the region.

Saddam famously had body doubles. If the CIA can find one, I have a plan for them to stabilize Iraq again.

Ron Hart, a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, is a frequent guest on CNN. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or tweet@RonaldHart.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Time to review our spying industrial complex

Health care continues to be at the center of debate across our nation and in Florida’s capital.

At the national level, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Tom Price are vowing to make tort reform a key part of their replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act, which is usually referred to as ObamaCare. But while many focus on the number of Floridians covered by some form of health insurance, equal attention should be paid to the ever-increasing cost of health care.

The cost of health care affects everyone: the insured, the uninsured, employers and the state. If costs decline, by definition health care becomes more accessible and more affordable for all Floridians. We must, therefore, look at spending on the front end and develop effective mechanisms to contain costs while considering any state options for extending coverage to more people.

Currently in Florida, the fear of medical litigation among physicians has manifested itself in the practice of defensive medicine. By definition, defensive medicine is ordering unnecessary medical tests, medications, CT scans, referrals to specialists, procedures and consultations with little clinical or no therapeutic value. However, it may help physicians protect themselves against a potential malpractice lawsuit.

In Florida alone, the practice of defensive medicine costs all Floridians more than $40 billion per year. Each year, billions of dollars are wasted on unnecessary health care expenses. And defensive medicine is a hidden driver in the cost of health care. According to the Gallup Organization, wasteful, defensive medicine accounts for as much as 26 percent of overall health care spending.

The current dysfunctional and inefficient medical malpractice system is, therefore, imposing an avoidable and onerous burden on a wide swath of Florida’s economy, affecting Florida’s physicians, patients and businesses. A proposal called the Patients’ Compensation System is intended to transform the broken medical malpractice system in Florida and preserve the physician-patient relationship.

The proposal would remove medical malpractice from the inefficient court system and place it in a streamlined administrative system. Rather than flooding the courts with lawsuits that take years to resolve, the administrative model allows for a less contentious, more fair and timely determination of any compensation that should be paid to an injured patient.

Joanna Shepherd, associate professor of law at Emory University School of Law, detailed in her article “Justice in Crisis” that the current system offers justice for 3 percent and no justice for 97 percent of medically injured patients. Most attorneys require minimum expected damages of $500,000 to accept a case. The high cost of medical malpractice litigation limits plaintiff attorneys to take cases below this threshold.

This creates a major access to effective health justice issue for a significant number of injured patients in our state that have no access to a judge and jury. Yet, attorneys and insurers have created a profitable niche within the existing medical tort system. We need a system that ensures access to legitimate health justice that fairly and appropriately compensates all medically injured patients.

The Patients’ Compensation System works to ensure costs savings to our state, private employers and citizens, eliminates frivolous lawsuits, and ensures all legitimately medically injured patients receive fair compensation, especially those who are currently denied access under the existing system.

Affordability extends to everyone across the health care spectrum — whether using private or public health insurance. The Patients’ Compensation System would make Florida a national model for how to protect the physician-patient relationship while bringing down health care spending in Florida.

The proposed Patients’ Compensation System will likely be considered in the 2017 Legislative Session by Florida’s legislators.

Wayne W. Oliver, Executive Director, Patient for Fair Compensation

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: A solution to address healthcare affordability

One of the greatest internal dynamics that any human can possess is motivation. Life is difficult for many Americans because they have lost their motivation.

I recently saw a story about a 100-year-old man who skydived out of an airplane. The reporter covering the story said the man also enjoys doing yoga and lives an active life.

A friend of mine who, at the age of almost 80, continues to build and sell hotels. He owns several but occasionally sells a couple for a lot of money and then builds another one or two. He started with very little but just kept trying and today he has millions of dollars.

We've all heard stories of people who just kept trying. We hear the success stories but often we don't hear too much about all the people who spent years trying and eventually gave up.

Nashville has countless gifted musicians who have never made it to the top — and countless more who gave up and went home. Hollywood, New York and other entertainment cities have had lots of starving artists who never made it to the level they aspired. Many people have dreamed of being president of the United States and worked hard to achieve their goal, but it hasn't happened for them and never will.

Millions have dropped out of college, failed at marriage, failed as parents, failed at dieting and exercise, and feel hopeless at life.

How do you stay motivated when you feel like you have failed? Do something you enjoy. 

Why do we have to be so serious all the time? Life is serious. People get sick and die. We battle cancer and other diseases. We struggle with money and relationships and other people complicate our lives.

The hardest thing you may accomplish this week is to do something fun, but I suggest you engage in something that is entertaining and fun for you. Too many Americans are burned out in survival mode. They desperately tread the choppy waters of life. Stress, lack of sleep and worries fill their every day.

You might die tomorrow, so what is there that you might enjoy doing today? Doing something that brings a smile to your face occasionally is good for your heart and spirit. I always found that if I enjoy something, just a little, then I am drawn to it like a magnet.

Don't jump off cliffs without a parachute. If you have a day job then hold onto it until something else works out. Having a stable job of some sort is usually tiring and stressful. However, if you have a paycheck coming in then you have the mental wherewithal to experiment and be creative. You will have less time to be creative but at least you will have food in your stomach while you are trying.

Stability normally gives us a foundation to stand on and enhances motivation.

Occasionally, write down three or four things that you want to do. Your list might include planting a garden for this spring. Maybe you would like to join an exercise class, start walking a mile every day or start a new business venture. Writing it down and looking at your list for a few days will remind you what is important.

Forget failures and disappointments. We all have them. We've tried things that didn't work but occasionally something works and when it does, it's gratifying.

Finally, have something that you are going to do tomorrow. We must have something that we want to do tomorrow so that we are motivated to get out of bed, shower and pursue the day.

Glenn Mollette is an American syndicated columnist and author.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Don’t wait — be motivated today