This is the second part about USA. Again, It ain’t pretty to say the least!
Where the same absurd Alice in Wonderland economic and political farce is playing out in the USA. And as in Europe it is, as usual, the common people who are paying the price.
And as in Europe, the US crisis is anything but over regardless of what the political elites are trying to tell the people in USA. In USA the role of ECB is played by the FED (the Federal Reserve), which creates money out of “thin air” to support the gigantic and increasing debt. And to keep the stock market going and lower the price of the dollar.
So that the federal US government can spend your tax money like a drunken sailor.
In USA, Goldman Sachs and the other investment banks, plus the big Hedge Funds, are pushing leverage to ridiculous and dangerous extremes.
If you read the Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of National Banks, report for the second quarter 2012 “Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities”, you get utterly horrified of the totals of the open derivatives positions in the US market.
Four of the largest U.S. banks are walking an extreme tightrope of risk, leverage and debt when it comes to derivatives. Below you are going to find just how utterly exposed they are.
But first what is leverage?
Most people do not understand “leverage” and what it actually means. If they did, they would not sleep at night knowing what’s going on right now.
To put it simple: leverage means that these banks etc use a leverage of say 1:50 or 1:100 in their speculations. Which means that they only put up 1 of their own dollars for an investment worth 50 or 100 dollar. Their dollars are “worth” 50 or 100 times more than they actually are.
It ALSO means that IF “things” goes wrong way they LOSE 50 or 100 dollars for every dollar they invested in that trade or position. Or much, much more.
And usually when things goes wrong, it goes very fast when it comes to trading with these kind of leverages. So very quickly, these sums get astronomical. In a couple of days they can literally lose ALL their capital and more.
This has happened time and time again. Just to mention a few:
– Lehman Brothers (was the 4th largest inv. bank in the US).
– Bear Stearns
– American International Group
– Northern Rock (a medium-sized British bank)
– Washington Mutual
– American Savings and Loan
– Landsbanki and Glitnir
– Barings Bank
– Société Générale
– JP Morgan Chase & Co
– Morgan Stanley
– Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM)
As I said before, this is JUST A VERY SHORT LIST
This would not per se be a problem if this were a truly free and capitalist market. Because then these banks would go bankrupt and the owners and investors would lose their money. As they are supposed to do if the do bad business or trades.
But as we all know,this is NOT a free and capitalist market. Our “dear” politicians have “decided” that these banks with all their wild speculations are too important or to big, to be allowed to fail.
So instead, they have used taxpayer’s money and put whole countries at risk and in extreme debt just to bail out these banks.
And the banks knows that whatever speculations they do, REGARDLESS of how much or bad they speculate, and as you can see below their speculations are horrific, the politicians are going to bail them out with our tax money.
JP Morgan Chase
Total Assets: $1,812,837,000,000 (just over 1.8 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $69,238,349,000,000 (more than 69 trillion dollars)
Citibank
Total Assets: $1,347,841,000,000 (a bit more than 1.3 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $52,150,970,000,000 (more than 52 trillion dollars)
Bank Of America
Total Assets: $1,445,093,000,000 (a bit more than 1.4 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,405,372,000,000 (more than 44 trillion dollars)
Goldman Sachs
Total Assets: $114,693,000,000 (a bit more than 114 billion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $41,580,395,000,000 (more than 41 trillion dollars)
To sum up – TOTAL EXPOSURE TO DERIVATES for ONLY these four banks:
TOTAL ASSETS for these four banks: 4,720,464,000,000TRILLION DOLLARS
So they can “cover” 2,27 % of the Total Exposure with ALL their Assets!
So who is going to pay for the “rest”: 202, 654, 622, 000, 000 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!! if anything goes wrong?
Well, we know the answer to that doesn’t we. So far, it’s the common people, i.e. the taxpayers, who had to cover for all the banks bad speculations thanks to our dear politicians.
Take another look at those figures for Goldman Sachs. If you do the math, Goldman Sachs has total exposure to derivatives contracts that is more than 364 times greaterthan their total assets!
That is utter insanity, but everyone just keeps pretending that the emperor actually has clothes on.
And why are “our” politicians SO EAGER to protect these speculators?
To put these GIGANTIC sums into perspective lets compare with the GDP from USA and all of EU from 2011
There a lot of different way to calculate GDP and the figures for each year. Add to that exchange fluctuations, conversion rates etc. So the figures below comes from the same source (IMF) to make the comparison easier. And it is their conversion.
GDP USA 2011 – 15,094,025 billion US dollars
GDP EU 2011 – 17,610,826 billion US dollars
Total GDP for EU and USA 2011: 32,704,851 billion US dollars.
Lets compare these 32,704,851 billion US dollars with TOTAL EXPOSURE TO DERIVATES for these four above mentioned banks:
32,704,851 billion US dollars in COMBINED GDP of EU and USA
Anyone see any problem???
Problem solved all right. So just move on, nothing to notice here or worry about.
Because according to out “dear” politicians, bankers and political elites from EU and USA there is NO SERIOUS PROBLEM HERE. The problems in USA and EU are more or less solved etc.
So the ones that put as in the mess in the first place, very “reassuringly” tells us: “We take care of it”.
Yeah sure!
Let’s move on to another “bright spot” –the federal budget and debt. The figures are based on the 2012/2013 data:
2012 US Tax Revenue: $2,469,000,000,000
2012 Federal budget: $3,796,000,000,000
2012 Budget deficit: $1,327,000,000,000
US Federal Debt as of January 22, 2013: $16,471,084,067,491
Total interest paid on the debt in 2012: $359,796,008,919
Budget INCREASE between 2012 and 2013: $38,500,000,000
To make these gigantic sums understandable here is how these figures would look like for a “normal” family:
Annual family income: $24,690
Annual family expenses: $37,960. 154%of the annual family income.
Annual family shortfall borrowed from friends/neighbors etc: $13,270. 54%of the annual family income.
Total interest the family paid last year: $3,598 (at near 0% interest). Nearly 15% of the annual family income
Total family debt (mortgage, auto, credit card): $164,471.This is 666% of the annual family income.
Change in family spending this year: an increase of $385
This looks like a very responsible family wouldn’t you say?
And do you think this family would get any loans from the banks?
When you look at it this way, it really seems absurd. Yet it’s true… a slow motion train wreck. That any person with more than one functioning brain cell can see coming miles away. Except our “dear” politicians. They are in ACTUAL FACT increasing the spending AND the debt.
Here’s another way to look at the debt ceiling I found in a paper. It’s very symptomatic:
Let’s say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood… and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.
What do you think you should do?
Raise the ceilings, or remove the crap?
Well, or “dear” politicians are franticly at an increasing speed trying to raise the ceiling at the same time as the “sewage” is increasing EVEN MORE.
Yeap, there you have politicians in a nutshell.
Why fix the problem that they themselves caused, when the politicians can pretend that they are the giver of all gods and bearer of all gifts to all the people all the time.
And it doesn’t cost anything for anybody. It’s ALL free forever. And they all lived happily ever after.
It is a very sad day indeed to see a people voluntarily decide to throw themselves and their country over the cliff.
Let’s look at the economy (the figures are from the Congressional Budget Office):
In the Fiscal Year 2011, the federal government collected $2.303 trillion in tax revenue. Interest on the debt that year totaled$454.4 billion, and mandatory spending totaled $2,025 billion. In sum, mandatory spending plus debt interest totaled $2.479 trillion –. exceeding total revenue by $176.4 billion.
(Mandatory spending includes entitlements like Medicare, Social Security etc. which are REQUIRED by law to be paid. Congress in practical terms do not see this money, it is automatically deducted.)
For the Fiscal Year 2012, which just ended 37 days ago, that deficit increased 43% to$251.8 billion.
In other words, they could cut the entire Federal Government’s discretionary budget – No military, SEC, FBI, EPA, DHS, IRS, etc.- and they would still be in deficit by a quarter of a trillion dollars.
(Discretionary spending includes nearly everything we think of related to government- the US military, the Department of Homeland Security, IRS, EPA etc.)
The only thing showing any growth in the US, besides the debilitating regulatory burdens, is the national debt. It took over 200 years for the US government to accumulate its first trillion dollars in debt. It took just 286 days to accumulate the most recent trillion (to $16 trillion).
Last month alone, the first month of Fiscal Year 2013, the US government accumulated nearly $200 billion in new debtin just 31 days.
And the numbers will only continue to get worse. 10,000 people each day begin receiving mandatory entitlements. Fewer people remain behind to pay into the system. The debt keeps rising, and interest payments will continue to rise even more. In addition, the dollar is going to decline.
The result, the US government is legally bound to spend more money on mandatory entitlements and interest than it can raise in tax revenue. It will not make any difference how high the federal, state or local government raise taxes, or even if they cut everything.
Another effect of Obama economics is that the poor are getting poorer, especially the black. Under Obama the poorest Americans has suffered the single largest drop in income ever.
And the Black Americans in the same lowest income quintile have suffered almost double as the average American in the same quintile under Obama:
The drop is– 11.58% in one year(2010) and is at the lowest level ever.
That’s what I call “change”!But I would not call it “hope”.
And the number of people classified as poor are getting larger and larger.
Then on top of that, we have the equally disastrous foreign policy. Where the Obama administration systematically have thrown their former allies (Eastern Europe, Britain, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc) under the bus, and helped parties like the Muslim Brotherhood that hate everything that USA and the western world stands for, to power.
See my 19 posts on Syria etc as some examples of that disastrous foreign policy:
I could go on with many more examples but I think I will stop here.
But as the old saying goes (Joseph de Maistre in a letter from St Petersburg August 1811): a country has the politicians/government that they deserve. So enjoy!
In addition, this quote from a reader’s commentary in The Prager Zeitung in March 2010 (translated from Czech) sums it up quite well really:
“Multitude of Fools
The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool.
It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.“
P.S. If you are wondering about the title, see this video with music by Spike Jones. There is another long story behind the lyrics but that you have to find out yourself. D.S.
Senator Rand Paul on Consumer Choice in Energy Committee Hearing. He questions why Kathleen Hogan, US deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency, takes away consumer choice, again and again, in their Legislation.
Which they force on us regardless of we like it or not. Even if we say that the whole idea is idiotic and is not going to work. And it is going to be extremely costly and counterproductive.
Why? Because these ideological driven bureaucrats, administrators, government officials think we, the people, are stupid and don’t understand “important” things. But they do. And they know best.
So they force us by taxes, regulations, fines or law.
We are treated like serfs even if they are supposed to “work for us”. And in unguarded moments you really can see their disdain for us and how “superior” they think they are. (Ron Schiller NPR anyone?)
So therefore it is refreshing to see Rand Paul let them taste their own medicine.
The first Tsunami wave is just rolling in over the Washington establishment.
Sitting here late at night (02:35 am) and watching the American election drama unfold minute by minute via a lot of different channels; I just want to say one thing – it is an honour to see a democracy in action where the common people are sending a very strong and clear message to the political elite. And are actually throwing them out.
And folks, this could NOT happen in Europe. So you should be really proud of yourself.
And remember, this is just the first wave!
This is a picture of the first early results in the house in the states where the polling stations have closed:
And this is a picture of the first early results in the senate in the states where the polling stations have closed:
I am going to finish this 10 part series in the same way as I started it: YOU MUST VOTE!
So go and vote for some you can trust (yeah I know it’s hard), some one that upholds the constitution and knows what it actually means (yeah, there are not many left), some one that want to rein in the Big Government Agenda and REALLY means it (yeah I know, there are many turncoats), and some one that want to protect YOUR liberty, freedom and the American way of life (yeah, that’s another hard one).
There is in the end only one way you can judge them – By their actions.
Your vote REALLY MATTERS! This time more than ever!
Sooo much is at stake this time – The constitution, the American way of life with freedom and free markets. America is at a crucial crossroads.
Do you want a government for the elites, of the elites and by the elites?
Or a government for the people, of the people and by the people?
It is YOUR CHOICE! A very clear choice! You have to get out and flood the voting booths November 2.
And if you don’t choose, it’s going to be the former.
The turnout of voting-age population in the mid term elections 2006 – 37,1%, and 2002 – 37.0% was pathetic and a joke. 63 % of the voting age population apparently doesn’t care what is happening to their country.
If you don’t wake up now when will you ever do? You have to stand up for freedom and liberty. Or sit back and let the American dream become a nightmare.
”All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826.
America, your whole system has been hijacked, and you have done nothing, so far, to stop it. What the Obama administration has done during the last one and half year makes a mockery of your constitution and the principle of separation of power.”
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know.
The people in congress who voted for these bills, this is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with these bills. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.
Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.
In short, it is very troubling to see a country on a path of economic and political self destruction. But if the present trend continues you are, to put it simple: toast.
It’s time for the people of America to take their country back. Otherwise the consequences for you as a country are going to be devastating. Especially for the common people.
Perhaps you’re having a tiny last minute qualm about voting Republican. Take heart. And take the House and the Senate. Yes, there are a few flakes of dander in the fair tresses of the GOP’s crowning glory—an isolated isolationist or two, a hint of gold buggery, and Christine O’Donnell announcing that she’s not a witch. (I ask you, has Hillary Clinton ever cleared this up?) Fret not over Republican peccadilloes such as the Tea Party finding the single, solitary person in Nevada who couldn’t poll ten to one against Harry Reid. Better to have a few cockeyed mutts running the dog pound than Michael Vick.
I take it back. Using the metaphor of Michael Vick for the Democratic party leadership implies they are people with a capacity for moral redemption who want to call good plays on the legislative gridiron.They aren’t. They don’t. The reason is simple. They hate our guts.
They don’t just hate our Republican, conservative, libertarian, strict constructionist, family values guts. They hate everybody’s guts. And they hate everybody who has any. Democrats hate men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, gays, straights, the rich, the poor, and the middle class.
Democrats hate Democrats most of all. Witness the policies that Democrats have inflicted on their core constituencies, resulting in vile schools, lawless slums, economic stagnation, and social immobility. Democrats will do anything to make sure that Democratic voters stay helpless and hopeless enough to vote for Democrats.
Whence all this hate? Is it the usual story of love gone wrong? Do Democrats have a mad infatuation with the political system, an unhealthy obsession with an idealized body politic? Do they dream of capturing and ravishing representational democracy? Are they crazed stalkers of our constitutional republic?
No. It’s worse than that. Democrats aren’t just dateless dweebs clambering upon the Statue of Liberty carrying a wilted bouquet and trying to cop a feel. Theirs is a different kind of love story. Power, not politics, is what the Democrats love. Politics is merely a way to power’s heart. When politics is the technique of seduction, good looks are unnecessary, good morals are unneeded, and good sense is a positive liability.Thus Democrats are the perfect Lotharios. And politics comes with that reliable boost for pathetic egos, a weapon: legal monopoly on force. If persuasion fails to win the day, coercion is always an option.
Armed with the panoply of lawmaking, these moonstruck fools for power go about in a jealous rage. They fear power’s charms may be lavished elsewhere, even for a moment.
Democrats hate success. Success could supply the funds for a power elopement. Fire up the Learjet. Flight plan: Grand Cayman. Democrats hate failure too. The true American loser laughs at legal monopoly on force. He’s got his own gun.
Democrats hate productivity, lest production be outsourced to someplace their beloved power can’t go. And Democrats also hate us none-too-productive drones in our cubicles or behind the counters of our service economy jobs. Tax us as hard as they will, we modest earners don’t generate enough government revenue to dress and adorn the power that Democrats worship.
Democrats hate stay-at-home spouses, no matter what gender or gender preference. Democratic advocacy for feminism, gay marriage, children’s rights, and “reproductive choice” is simply a way to invade -power’s little realm of domestic private life and bring it under the domination of Democrats.
Democrats hate immigrants. Immigrants can’t stay illegal because illegality puts immigrants outside the legal monopoly on force. But immigrants can’t become legal either. They’d prosper and vote Republican.
Democrats hate America being a world power because world power gives power to the nation instead of to Democrats.
And Democrats hate the military, of course. Soldiers set a bad example. Here are men and women who possess what, if they chose, could be complete control over power. Yet they treat power with honor and respect. Members of the armed forces fight not to seize power for themselves but to ensure that power can bestow its favors upon all Americans.
This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order. Power has been trapped, abused and exploited by Democrats. Go to the ballot box and put an end to this abusive relationship. And let’s not hear any nonsense about letting the Democrats off if they promise to get counseling.
P. J. O’Rourke, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, is the author of a new book, Don’t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards (Atlantic Monthly Press).
Twenty months ago, on February 19, 2009, business reporter Rick Santelli of CNBC took to the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to deliver his famous rant against government bail-outs, and call for “a Chicago tea party.”
Santelli may have sparked the Tea Party movement. But he only tapped into outrage that had been growing in many of us for decades.
For too long, you and I have watched helplessly as a clique of politicians, intellectuals, activists, and bureaucrats from both parties have tried to obliterate our Constitution, our capitalist system, and our personal liberty. This “bipartisan Ruling Class”—as scholar Angelo Codevilla describes it—sees itself as a moral, cultural, and intellectual elite. Codevilla says that “Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits.”
Oozing sanctimonious arrogance, viewing the rest of us as coarse, unsophisticated rubes who cling bitterly to guns and bibles, this class seeks to impose its own supposedly superior values and visions upon the rest of us, by force of law.
As we know too well, the ultimate goal of our Ruling Class is power. They exist—not to produce, not to invent, not to create—but to manipulate and master others.Ronald Reagan memorably summed up the Ruling Class’s governing outlook this way: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
By contrast, the rest of us Americans seek power over circumstances, but not over each other. We acquire our personal sense of identity and self-esteem through productive work—not through imposing our will, values, and visions on our neighbors. We accept a “live and let live” philosophy.
This is the spirit embodied in our “Declaration of Independence.” That document was more than a declaration of political independence from our European rulers; it was a declaration of the moral independence of every human being. It was a declaration of each individual’s moral right to his own life, his own liberty, his own pursuit of happiness.
This is the vision enshrined in our Constitution. That governing framework grants to public officials only specific, enumerated, and narrowly limited powers. As James Madison and the other Framers made explicitly clear, the Constitution was intended—for the first time in human history—to bridle the authority of politicians and bureaucrats, and thus to protect the moral right of Americans to go about our lives without interference.
So, the Constitution imposes upon government officials a host of constraints: separations of powers, checks and balances, the Bill of Rights. By constraining government, citizens enjoy the fruits of freedom.
Which explains why, since the early twentieth-century Progressive Era, Ruling Class power-seekers have targeted the Constitution for annihilation. The regimes of Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt subjected constitutional limitations on power to systematic, bipartisan attack. So did the “New Deal” of Franklin Roosevelt and the “Great Society” of Lyndon Johnson.
In our time, the clamor against individual rights and constitutional constraints on power has risen to a crescendo. And that is why we’re here. Today’s Ruling Class consists of the intellectual heirs of the earlier progressives. From Obama to McCain, from Arianna Huffington to David Gergen, from George Soros to Michael Bloomberg, our Beltway grandees continue to impart their wisdom and good taste upon us by law—telling us what to eat, what our children should learn and in what kind of schools, what vehicles we should travel in, what fuels should power them, where we should live, where our thermostats should be set, what we should grow, how we should use our land, with whom we should engage in business, what we should sell and at what prices, what portion of our earnings we may be allowed to keep, what “good causes” we must support, what language we must use in conversations about “sensitive” topics ranging from race to romance to religion, what medical coverage we must have, who must provide it, and at what price, and on, and on, and on.
It goes on without limit, because our Ruling Class accepts no limits, legal or moral, on its power to “do good” to us. We are mere mortar and bricks for their social engineering.Like missionaries visiting primitive tribes, they view us as savages, whom they must cage and civilize.
We see their boundless arrogance in Barack Obama, who tells his fellow Ruling Class members that “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” with his nose held so high in the air that any passing rainstorm would waterboard him. We see it in Senator John Kerry when, like some monarch, he refers to himself in the third person. We see it in Barney Frank, the only human on the planet who is able to strut even while sitting. We see it in Harry Reid, who told us the other day that, “But for me, we’d be in a world-wide depression.” We see it in Nancy Pelosi, who—when asked where in the Constitution was Congress granted the power to order us to buy health insurance—replied: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Never mind that the Ruling Class and its progressive policies have failed miserably to achieve their announced objectives. For more than a century, countless government programs have plundered untold trillions of dollars from taxpayers, then redirected them, supposedly to eradicate poverty, to end unemployment, to prevent disastrous business cycles, to put everyone in his own home.
But what do we see? Record levels of people on food stamps; soaring unemployment rates; a recession longer and deeper than any since the 1930s; a debacle in the housing market. Yet, what does the Ruling Class do in response? It demands more power to enact more of the same.
They say that a sure sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different outcome. By that criterion, progressives are bat-crap crazy.
But then, what are we, if we re-elect them?
Bad as this is, it is even more sickening to watch ambitious young men and women trying desperately to enter the Ruling Class, then rise through its corrupt ranks, in their lust for power and position. For an example, look no farther than our freshman congressman in Maryland’s First District. In his disgustingly dishonest campaign ads, as well as his voting record, Frank Kratovil has demonstrated that he’ll eagerly sell his soul for a seat at a Ruling Class table.
Mr. Kratovil has spent most of his campaign running away from his voting record—even from his party affiliation. From his ads, you would think he’s running as an “Independent,” not a Democrat. He demonstrates this independence by voting with his party 84.6 percent of the time—then accepting well over a million dollars in campaign contributions from party coffers.
Consider his votes on ObamaCare. Like Hamlet, Mr. Kratovil spent a year in anguished public indecision. This waffling persisted all the way to the last week before the final vote, while Nancy Pelosi collected the backing she needed to pass the bill. Then, after Pelosi had lined up enough support to let him off the hook, Kratovil first voted for ObamaCare to proceed to a final vote, then announced he would vote against the final bill on the floor. But since then, he has refused to back a bill to repeal ObamaCare.
Doing John Kerry one better, Kratovil was for ObamaCare before he was against it, before he was for it once again. This, he says, demonstrates his independence from the Democratic party line.
On the other big bills of the past two years—namely, the “stimulus” and “cap and tax” bills—this self-described “fiscal conservative” voted to add more than one-and-a-half trillion dollars to the government credit card. The stimulus boondoggle poured billions of tax dollars into pork projects for public-employee unions. Meanwhile, cap-and-tax was designed to clobber the oil, coal, and natural-gas industries, and to raise your energy costs $1600 per household. Kratovil voted for other earmarks and pork projects, too.
Two years ago, Frank Kratovil boarded a flight headed into Ruling Class territory. He’s well on his way—unless you cancel his flight on November 2nd.
Happily, I think that will happen. And it will happen to many other members of the self-appointed elite. Signs are everywhere that people are, at last, wising up and fighting back. Your presence here today is one of those signs.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been paying close attention to politics since I was a teenager in the 1960s. I’ve never been so optimistic about America’s future—and you are a major reason for that. For nearly half a century, I wrote and preached about our lost liberties and endangered rights, feeling like a lonely voice in the wilderness. But now, millions of voices are carrying that message.
However, we can’t stop on November 2nd. Our next task must be to transform the Republican Party into something more than an auxiliary chapter of the Ruling Class clique. The GOP has pretended for decades to be the party of freedom, capitalism, and limited government. And it has betrayed those principles repeatedly.
But we have not just a political party, but a cultural legacy, to reclaim—a legacy often described as American individualism. From our nation’s earliest days, when our pioneer ancestors blazed trails through forbidding frontiers, we Americans havenever viewed ourselves as victims of circumstances. Fiercely self-assertive, proudly independent, we, more than any other people on earth, view ourselves as masters of our fates, as captains of our souls.
The spirit of American individualism, and the moral quest for personal liberty, motivated the Foundersto pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause. It is a cause for which many have fought and died, so that we don’t have to.
So, let us win a peaceful victory for that cause on November 2nd—and then, in the words of Washington, let us continue in the months and years ahead to raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know.
Together with all the people in congress who voted for this bill. This is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with this bill. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.
Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.
I, and many, many others told you so before the Obama Care “reform” was rammed through at all costs against the will of the American people.
We where told by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it”
Well, we REALLY did find out a lot of things, and remember it’s just the beginning:
It’s going to ruin states, it’s going to be ENFORCED by IRS, close hospitals, fewer doctors, rationing (the new government agency, the Medicare Advisory Board, Section 3403 of the senate bill, that is going to decide (ration) what kind of Medicare you are going to receive), cuts in Medicare, increase the health care costs for companies by billions (and who do you think is going to pay for that?), etc. etc.
And then there were ALL these kickbacks, bribes and pork barrel spending in there to get the bill through at ALL COST.
And worst of all, the blatant hypocrisy from this new nomenklatura:
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.
Meanwhile, we STILL await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
And remember – They DELIBERATELY PULLED THE TRIGGER ON THIS LOADED GUN knowing fully well “most” of the consequences.
Here are just a few articles:
Lost in Taxation – The IRS’s vast new ObamaCare powers..
“The reality is that voters who oppose ObamaCare are far more knowledgeable about the law and its consequences than most Congressmen who voted for it.”
“..the top actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid revealed that millions of American seniors will have to pay increased out-of-pocket health care costs next year for “less generous benefit packages” as a direct result of Obamacare.”
“Last month, a Kaiser Family Foundation report showed that family health care costs are up by 14 percent in 2010 – with even larger increases forecast for future years, again as a result of Obamacare.
“Health reform mandates new levels of coverage that will increase employers’ costs at least until 2014,” a Kaiser analyst noted.
Beyond higher costs, “Obamacare” is already reneging on government promises regarding prescription drug plans – another benefit that never should have been subsidized by taxpayers. According to a study released earlier this year by Avalare Heath, as many as 3.7 million seniors could be forced out of their prescription drug coverage under the new law next year – ostensibly so the government can provide them with “more meaningful choices.”
All across the country, Obamacare’s costly new mandates are driving Americans out of their existing coverage and forcing them to pay increased out-of-pocket expenses – perpetuating the worst inefficiencies of government-run health care.
“This much is clear: If the law with its expensive mandates remains on the books, millions of Americans are going to lose the health care plans they have now — plans the president repeatedly promised they could keep,” Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe wrote recently.”
Rasmussen’s final pre-election poll on the repeal of Obamacare shows that independents favor repeal by the colossal margin of 45 points (70 to 25 percent).
“Eighty-four percent (84%) of voters who have health insurance rate their coverage as good or excellent. Only two percent (2%) describe it as poor. Among voters with health insurance, 60% favor repeal of the health care law.”
“As has been the case since the health care debate first began to heat up in September 2009, there is a large divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters.Seventy-six percent (76%) of Mainstream voters favor repeal of the health care law, while 76% of the Political Class are opposed.
Seventy-nine percent (79%) of voters in the Political Class say the law will be good for the country. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Mainstream voters disagree.“
“Voters now rank health care secondon a list of 10 important issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The economy continues to be the most important issue on voters’ minds. “
Health Care: The more we know about ObamaCare, the more we find out it wasn’t designed to cut costs but to eventually eliminate private insurance coverage and create a government-run system.
Provisions of the Democrats’ health care overhaul started to become law only a month ago, yet the list of companies dropping medical benefits for their employers is piling up.
Mega-firms such as AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and Verizon are among those that are either considering ending coverage for their employees or have already chosen to do so.
It’s not just the big companies eliminating benefits, either. Smaller employers are doing the same. Larry M. Elkin, president of Palisades Hudson Financial Group, wrote Thursday in the Business Insider: ”For 15 years, I have taken pride in paying the full cost of health insurance for every full-time PalisadesHudson employee who wanted it. This month marks the last time I will do that.”
Elkin said that every one of his employees has the option of staying on the company plan. But those who choose that route ”will have to pay the entire cost — ranging from $574 to $683 per month — themselves, through payroll deductions.”
And where will those who don’t opt for staying on the company plan go? Maybe they end up leaning on the government along with the 46 million or so other uninsured Americans the Democrats are trying to cover.”
“As the debate over ObamaCare raged, Americans were assured by the president himself that those of us who like our insurance plans would be able to keep them. But workers will not only lose their employers’ plans due to their employers’ increasing costs under the law, they will also be losing coverage because carriers are dropping some of the policy options they offer.
WellPoint, Cigna, CoventryOne, Humana, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna and Golden Rule have, for instance, announced that they will no longer sell child-only policies under the Democrats’ health care regime.”
In some cases — the Principal Group and its 840,000 customers is one example — carriers are dropping out of the health insurance market entirely.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s and 29 other companies told Washington that ObamaCare was going to force them to drop insurance coverage for some workers. Had those companies not been granted federal waivers from the requirement that they raise the minimum annual benefits of their low-cost health plans, roughly 1 million Americans would have been added to the rolls of the uninsured.
Don’t think it can’t get worse, because under the Democrats’ ill-thought-out plan, it will. Large pieces of ObamaCare that will make the system painfully expensive and increase federal intrusion still haven’t become law. The next Congress needs to get focused fast on stopping the march toward costly, substandard care.”
Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf on Obama Care: ObamaCare includes work disincentives likely to shrink the amount of labor used in the economy.
Factoring in additional demand for workers in health care and insurance, CBO estimates that “the legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by roughly half a percent,” he said. (For perspective, half a percent of current payrolls is 651,000 jobs, though the impact would show up in both fewer jobs and fewer hours worked.)
“Perhaps the most comprehensive critique can be found in ”Fresh Medicine,” a new book by Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat. In a year in which he isn’t even running for re-election, Mr. Bredesen pulls few punches. ”Congress and the Obama administration have just added over 30 million people into an obsolete and broken system and done little to address the underlying problems; in multiple ways, they’ve made them worse,” he wrote. ”Worse” is an understatement. Lower quality health care, higher costs, more complexity and more regulations would be Obamacare’s legacy.
The American people have a chance to stop it from happening. Just as the drubbing of congressional Democrats in 1994 in the wake of the Clinton gun ban has kept overt gun-control measures out of the national spotlight, the 2010 drubbing could kill the desire for health care nationalization once and for all. Already, 71 percent of voters in Missouri have approved a ballot measure that will block implementation of Obamacare at the state level. Big votes tomorrow on similar constitutional amendments in Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma will make it clear once and for all that Obamacare is not long for this world.”
– The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001
– The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.
– The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
– As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
– Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
– In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
– Dell Inc. has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
– Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
– If our trade deficit with China increases at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
– As of the end of July, the trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
– The Census Bureau says 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty, which is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
“So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?
How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?
How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?
How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?
The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.
If you disagree with this article, I have a direct challenge for you. If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future, please do so below in the comments section.
America is in deep, deep trouble folks. It is time to It is time to wake up.”
18 Iconic Products That America Doesn’t Make Anymore
Rawlings baseballs, Etch-a-sketch, Chuck Taylors shoes, Stainless steel rebar, Mattel toys, Minivans, Vending machines, Levi jeans, Radio Flyer’s Red Wagon, Televisions, Cell phones, Railroad parts, Dell computers, Canned sardines, Incandescent light bulb, Forks, spoons, and knives.
”Buying American” used to be a popular political gesture. But these days it’s becoming impossible. “
Is this the end result if present political and economic trend continues? “Why do great nations fail?…. They all make the same mistakes. .. He He Now they work for us.”
Chinese Professor
79% of Private Sector Job Growth Over Last 5 Years Has Been in Texas
“In total, over 2 million jobs have been eliminated, in contrast to the over 3 million more jobs Americans were promised if Democrats’ 2009 stimulus plan passed. The only place in America that has exceeded its projected job growth following Democrats’ stimulus is Washington, D.C.”
“The study, ”The Adult Recession: Age-Adjusted Unemployment at Post-War Highs,” adjusts the current unemployment rate to account for demographic differences and finds that the unemployment rate has not fallen below 10.8 percent in the last 12 months. During the worst episode of the recession of the 1980s — the second half of 1982 and the first half of 1983 — unemployment passed 10 percent for 7 months.
The analysis notes that the population is older today than it was in the 1980s, which has the effect of lowering today’s unemployment rate relative to the past. Since they change jobs more frequently and are more likely to move in and out of the labor market, Young people have a higher unemployment rate than older workers. Adjusting for this older workforce shows that the United States is experiencing the weakest labor market since the Great Depression.”
60 Minutes Shock Report: National Unemployed and Underemployed 17.5%; California 22%
”When you take into account the underemployed as well as the unemployed, the national rate hits 17% and California a staggering 22%.
To put a face on the realities of the underemployed in America under Obamanomincs, reporter Scott Pelley spoke with a fiber-optics engineering manager who has been looking for work for over a year. He just took a job working at a Target. 20% of the unemployed in America have college degrees.
According to the report, 1/3 of the unemployed have been out of work for over a year. This hasn’t happened since the Great Depression.”
Licensing to Kill
A new study showshow city regulations harm small business.
“When most people think of occupations requiring fingerprints and police reports, corner bookshop owners don’t spring to mind. Try telling that to Los Angeles,where many used booksellers are required by law to get a police permit and take a thumbprint from every 40-something trying to offload his collection of French poetry.
That’s one scene from a study to be released this week by the Institute for Justice, which has collected dozens of examples of regulations choking economic growth by taxing and over-licensing small businesses. In a survey of eight major cities, the study found that entrepreneurs routinely face obstacles …”
“While Republicans have been taking aim at Democrats voting record, including their backing a $787 billion stimulus that failed to produce the promised jobs and a $500 billion cut to Medicare for Seniors, Democrats have gotten mean with ad hominen attacks.”
”It’s a political game played by both sides of the aisle in every election, of course. But there are indications the midterm election of 2010 is emerging as one of the dirtiest races ever with most of the mud flying from Democratic ramparts.”
“The Democrats are wary of trying to brag about anything, given the bad mood and the recession,” said Eugene Kiely, an official with the FactCheck.org watchdog. ”So they have done relatively few positive ads.
”It’s been attack from the beginning,” he told The Huffington Post.”
New York Times: Democrats Backing Fake Tea Party Candidates
“Increasingly desperate and fearful of a GOP takeover of Congress, the Democratic Party is secretly supporting fake tea party and other third-party candidates in the hopes of diverting votes from Republican contenders.”
“Seeking any advantage in their effort to retain control of Congress, Democrats are working behind the scenes in a number of tight races to bolster long-shot third-party candidates who have platforms at odds with the Democratic agenda but hold the promise of siphoning Republican votes.
The efforts are taking place across the country with varying degrees of stealth. And in many cases, they seem to hold as much risk as potential reward for Democrats, prompting accusations of hypocrisy and dirty tricks from Republicans and the third-party movements that are on the receiving end of the unlikely, and sometimes unwelcome, support.“
In Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate for a suburban Philadelphia House seat, Bryan Lentz, admitted this week that his volunteers helped Jim Schneller — a prominent skeptic of President Obama’s citizenship — collect petitions to run against Mr. Lentz and his Republican opponent, Pat Meehan.
“It is one of the dirtiest moves,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, a vice chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “It’s not as though the Democrats are playing to compete against the third party — they’re helping to build the third party up to make those votes not count.” Calling it “a concerted effort,” Mr. McCarthy added, “In Congressional races, it could steer the tide for the majority.”
“In other efforts, Democrats have tried to keep a lower profile, though they have not always succeeded.
Democrat Dirty Tricks: A Primer on Stealing Elections
“Democrats are desperate to stop the red tide spreading from the heart of the nation and heading toward the coasts. They are eager to preserve and protect their liberal agenda and extend it in the years to come. They fear that Republican ascendancy in the House might lead to the defunding of several elements of ObamaCare and thus put it on life support until they can deliver the coup de grace in 2012 under a veto-proof majority or a new president.
Democrats are reaching into their bag of tricks. They are going beyond garden-variety tactics such as push polls and misrepresenting their own records, positions, and even identities (including stripping their party designation, the Scarlet D, from ads; hiding the fact that they are incumbents; denying one’s paternity, as in the case of Harry Reid’s son, who went the way of Cher during his campaign and used just his first name, Rory; running away from Barack Obama and their own votes on ObamaCare and the stimulus; pledging to vote to repeal ObamaCare and extend tax cuts for one and all; misrepresenting the views of their opponents; and portraying themselves as Blue Dogs despite being Pelosi Lapdogs). And, of course, they are postponing ethics trials of prominent Democrats until after November 2. “
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we are beginning to see the Democrats start to rely on ”dirty tricks” to spoil the fun (because if you have to run from the policies that are destroying your party’s popularity, you have to resort to all means, fair and foul — and mostly foul — to win). Politics is war by another means, and when the Democrats are led by the CookCounty Gang that could not play straight, all sorts of tactics will emerge.
Let’s take a tour across the political landscape and catch some highlights:
The Department of Justice, The Secretary of State Project, Smear Campaigns, Death to the Tea Party, False Flags”
“False, misleading or fraudulent claims have long brought the wrath of juries, judges and government agencies down on perpetrators. So have substandard manufacturing practices.
Who could oppose following the rules, making quality products and being honest? But shouldn’t these values apply where far more is at stake than a few companies, pills, baseball records or bad role models? Shouldn’t we demand that these rules apply to people and actions that have unprecedented impact on lives, livelihoods, liberties and communities throughout the country?
Can we afford to continue having double standards that let government officials violate basic standards of honesty and accountability that they apply “vigorously” to citizens and companies?Why should legislators, regulators and investigators be exempt from rules they devise and impose on everyone else? Shouldn’t we teach our kids that government officials mustn’t lie to us, either?
“Military voters from the land of Lincoln could be shut out of the midterm election after the Justice Department reached an agreement with Illinois that gave the state ”a pass” for violating federal election law, an advocacy group warned Monday. “
“Eric Eversole, a former Justice voting section attorney who runs the nonprofit Military Voter Protection Project, told FoxNews.com the deal effectively lets wayward Illinois election officials off the hook and does little to ensure the state’s military voters get their ballots in time.
”For at least 29 counties, there were absolutely no consequences,” he said. ”Illinois is precisely the reason why you can’t wait until a week before the election to try and resolve a clear violation of military voting rights.”
“Washington, D.C. – Nearly six weeks after receiving a waiver of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, which allowed New York to mail absentee ballots to our troops no later than October 1, 2010, the New York State Board of Elections admitted on Tuesday that New York City and several counties failed to meet the deadline and still have not mailed their absentee ballots. [Read more: http://www.fvap.gov/resources/media/ny_delivery_cert.pdf%5D With only 25 days before the election, thousands of New York military voters now stand on the brink of having their voices silenced in the upcoming elections.”
The right to vote is one of the most fundamental rights of American democracy. It has been defended for well over 200 years by the sacrifices our men and women in uniform. Yet, when it comes to their right to vote—our military members’ right to choose the next Commander in Chief or their elected representatives—their voices have long been silenced by an electoral process that has failed them. That silence was most evident in the 2008 when thousands of absentee military ballots never received by the military voter or received after the election. The MVP Project is here to defend our military members’ right to vote and to provide them with the very right that they defend
Mayor Bloomberg Slams Board of Elections for Failure to Mail Military Ballots
“Bloomberg told Fox News. ”We send our young men and women overseas to fight and to die for us and we don’t care enough to make sure they get the right to exercise their franchise ? That’s what they’re over there fighting for as much as anything else.”
“Not only did Maryland fight like crazy to deprive soldiers of their constitutional right to vote for state candidates, they might appeal today’s victory for military voters against Maryland. I wonder if the Baltimore Sun will FOIA how much it is costing the taxpayers to litigate so as to avoid mailing ballots to military voters. But Maryland doesn’t seem to be a state that places high priority on military voters. They are more interested in registering 16 year olds to vote and where you can hunt ducks.More on Maryland’s unfortunate position. “
At DOJ, Military Voting Rights Hang in the Balance
“Eric Holder’s DOJ isn’t interested in making sure our military members’ votes are protected and counted, so PJM is gathering evidence to ensure that problems are reported properly and will be fixed.
Pajamas Media is asking military voters who had problems getting their ballots to send their stories to story@pajamasmedia.com. Why? Because the MOVE Act may likely be rewritten next year, and information about problems you experienced will be essential to get it right in 2012.”
”Sixteen states and territories, at least, blew it and didn’t mail ballots on time. The Maine secretary of state, amazingly, told Fox News last week that compliance has been “pretty impressive.” I’d hate to see what he thinks is pretty “awful.”
”But the Eric Holder Justice Department deserves enormous blame. As far back as February, a manager at the Voting Section told state election officials that the new law was vague and the DOJ didn’t really want to sue anyone. State election officials were flabbergasted and acted accordingly. They assumed compliance with the new law wasn’t a big deal to the DOJ, the agency charged with enforcement.
Then things really got bad. In the spring, the DOJ never provided the Pentagon waiver guidance despite the Pentagon’s repeated requests. And how many lawsuits did the DOJ file despite the multiple states that were facially out of compliance with too-late primary elections? Zero. The summer dribbled away with analysis, talk, and chatter instead of action.”
Disgrace: DOJ Fails to Protect Military Voting Rights
“In 2008, some 17,000 servicemen and servicewomen mailed home completed ballots that were never counted. The DOJ barely lifted a finger to prevent or prosecute this travesty. What will happen in 2010?”
”Election ’10: The president’s home state gets a pass from the Justice Department on ensuring its soldiers overseas can vote. An administration obsessed with gays in the military doesn’t care about voting rights for GIs.
You can call it a tragedy of errors, a perfect storm of incompetent and uncaring bureaucrats, or you can call it a deliberate attempt to steal what looks to be a close race for both governor and U.S. senator in President Obama’s home state by disenfranchising its servicemen overseas, votes likely to tilt Republican.”
“Meanwhile, the Chicago Board of Elections hand-delivers ballots to inmates in CookCounty Jail. The board doesn’t even wait for the inmates to apply — it brings the applications with the ballots! More than 2,600 inmates have cast ballots — strikingly similar to the 2,600 soldiers who will likely not receive a ballot for Tuesday’s election.”
Holder puts felons over soldiers. The Justice Department obstructs military voting rights
“Obama Justice Department outrages never cease. The politically charged gang led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is more interested in helping felons vote than in helping the military to vote. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, has put a legislative hold on the already troubled nomination of James M. Cole to be deputy attorney general until the attorney general ensures full protection for voting rights of our military (and associated civilian personnel) stationed abroad. The senator is right to raise a ruckus.
Mr. Cornyn co-authored a 2009 law mandating that states mail absentee ballots to military voters at least 45 days before the election. Yet, as former Justice Department lawyer Eric Eversole first reported in The Washington Times last week, the department seems to be encouraging states to apply for waivers so they won’t have to follow that law. More than 17,000 Americans serving overseas were denied the vote in 2008 – but, presumably because military personnel are thought to lean conservative, the liberal Obama administration is in no hurry to correct the situation.
The Justice Department is so unenthusiastic about military voting that its website still lists the old requirement for a shorter 30-day military voting window, rather than the current law mandating 45 days. On the other hand, the Justice Department has no legislative mandate whatsoever to involve itself with helping felons to vote, but its website devotes a large section – 2,314 words – to advising felons how to regain voting privileges.”
You can help fight the vote fraud and rigging of the election: There’s an app where you can report about voter fraud, intimidation, or other irregular election activity. Download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ireport2010/id398437175?mt=8
“We’re looking for citizen journalists/poll watchers from across the country to help us report on cases of voter fraud, intimidation or other voting misconduct. Sign up using the form below to get involved.” Sign up here: http://pajamasmedia.com/voter-fraud-watch-2/
“Election watchers True the Vote have found disturbing amounts of fraud in Harris County, Texas. Rather than support their important work, the Texas Democratic Party (among others) is suing them. “
“Talk about denial! A group of liberal activists is making the media rounds, assuring reporters and editors that election fraud is a fairy tale. Nothing serious, they assert, nothing to see here. Too bad for them that citizens in Houston, energized by the Tea Party movement, have formed a group called True the Vote. Their hard work has demonstrated that, in some parts of the country at least, our election system is still infested with problems.”
“True the Vote reports that at least four noncitizens have been registered to vote in Harris County. The group provided Justice with the actual voter registration forms where applicants marked “NO” to the question: “Are you a U.S. Citizen?” The group also provided the voter registration numbers of these confessed noncitizens. Yes, astonishingly, HarrisCounty registered them to vote anyway. They are now on the rolls and able to participate in the upcoming midterm elections.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was supposed to stop this from happening. But this federal legislation is only as good as the Justice Department’s willingness to enforce it. If Harris County is registering noncitizens, then it is violating numerous provisions of federal law, including those that prohibit the registration of foreigners to vote in federal elections.
True the Vote uncovered other types of fraud as well. The group forwarded to DOJ seven voter registration forms with applicant names different from the signature name. For example: Ta’mackayn Harrison’s application was signed by “Bra Kelly.” Jason King’s was signed by “Jemma Noel.” Yet HarrisCounty inexplicably approved all of these applications. Jason King, aka Jemma Noel, is now on the voter rolls in Houston.
The citizens group also found multiple registrations for individual voters. For example, True the Vote provided the Justice Department government documents showing that at least four persons, including Jose Gomez and Victor Nickerson, had registered to vote multiple times successfully.
These problems were found by True the Vote in just a small sampling of the county’s voter registration list. How many other, similar problems would turn up in a comprehensive review? Don’t forget: every vote counts. Which also means that every legitimate vote cancelled out by a fraudulent vote should be a concern to anyone interested in fair elections and protecting the right to vote.”
Stunner. AZ Group Accused of Massive Voter Fraud Is Offshoot of SEIU
“What the Yuma Sun did not tell you is that over 65% of these last minute registrations were invalid due to the registrant not being a citizen, a wrong/invalid address, or a false signature.”
Raul Grijalva fakes “terrorist attack” to cover up Yuma voter fraud story
“Here is a perfect example of political cynicism from the gangster Congressman in Arizona’s 7th District.
Just hours after the Yuma Sun reports that 3000 voter registrations had been dumped at the Yuma County Recorder’s Office by a group affiliated with the SEIU (with most of them subsequently found to be fraudulent), Raul Grijalva’s office received a suspicious package covered in swastikas with a white powder inside.
Now the story about the suspicious package — the “terrorist attack” as Grijalva puts it — has gone national, and the voter fraud story has gone unnoticed by the mainstream media. How convenient, right?
Raul Grijalva part-time staffer Emily Romero has repeatedly bragged to Democratic insiders that the campaign concocts these threats to take attention away from bad publicity. In this case, the campaign decided to fake a “terrorist attack” on themselves to cover up the story of voter fraud that had just broken. “
Watch this video of a poll watcher’s story about what she has seen during early voting in Houston, Texas. This is eyewitness testimony to voter fraud in the form of poll worker casting votes on behalf of voters,
Tea Partiers Outraged Over Democratic Tea Party Plant’s Fraudulent Google Ads
“Tea Party groups in New Jersey are outraged over ads that have mysteriously surfaced in support of a supposed Tea Party candidate. The sponsored ads on Google are being served up all over the web, in places like BlogTalkRadio, in support of one Peter DeStefano, and direct viewers to the website of njteapartycoalition.org.
The problem is, the NJ Tea Party Coalition, the owners of that website, did not purchase any such ads.
It’s one thing to use dirty Democratic tricks to get on the ballot in an effort to siphon votes away from the Republican candidate, former NFL football player Jon Runyan. But it’s another to fraudulently represent yourself as another existing Tea Party organization in online advertising campaigns, even using that group’s URL to make it seem as though that group has endorsed your fake candidate.
So, the latest question still remains. Who is fraudulently using the NJ Tea Party Coalition’s website address in Google advertisements?”
See also
Tea Party candidate Peter DeStefano was backed by John Adler campaign
“Do you remember when Barack Obama said: “The SEIU Agenda Is My Agenda”?
The same SEIU offshoot group that is accused of turning in thousands of bogus voter registrations in Arizona has come under fire in Colorado.Mi Familia Vota is accused of turning in 6,000 bogus voter registrations in Colorado.”
Rule Of Law: Suspicious voting-machine malfunctions and cheating candidates are the stuff of banana republics, not America. With Democrats about to suffer historic losses, is our election’s integrity in question?
‘It can’t happen here,” most Americans would say about the chances of voting one way and seeing your votes recorded the opposite. But that’s what happened in early voting in North Carolina’s unfortunately named Craven County last week.
Voter Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern found that ”an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended,” the New Bern Sun Journal reported.
Laughinghouse ”pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked,” the local paper reported. ”He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result.”
Election personnel eventually straightened it out, but clearly a less observant Republican voter would have inadvertently voted for every Democrat on his ballot. Chuck Tyson, chairman of the Craven County Republican Party, told the Sun Journal he ”got two or three calls” from voters experiencing the same problem and is not satisfied with state election officials’ efforts to fix it.
In Boulder City, Nev., meanwhile, where voters use computer screens, another disturbing episode was reported by Fox News. When voter Joyce Ferrara and her husband went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, they — and several others, according to Ferrara — found that Democratic incumbent Harry Reid’s name was already checked. The county registrar’s explanation: The high-tech voting screens are sensitive.
The Nevada case is especially disturbing because the seat of the most powerful Democrat in the Senate is at stake.”
“Power is hard to give up, but when those in power compromise campaign and election rules, we cross a sacrosanct threshold.”
The union SEIU controls voting machines in Clark County, NV and the ballots are pre-marked for Harry Reid. What a coincidence wouldn’t you say? Especially since SEIU are spending $44 million of their member’s fees (and the members have no say in this) on helping democrats. How reassuring that the same people are in charge of the voting machines.
They have also spent $225,000.00 of their member’s fees to fight Sharron Angle (R).
“According to Joyce Ferrara who was an eyewitness to this strange ballot ordeal, the problem was widespread, “One person that’s a fluke. Two, that’s strange. But several within a five minute period of time — that’s wrong.”
It is particularly troubling that Clark County has put the uber left-wing SEIU Local 1107 in charge of their voting machines.”
Ballots In Nevada Are Cast For Reid Before Voters Vote
Notice, this video was first published on January 3 2010 long before the Obama Care bill was passed
America Rising: An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians
”America elected you on a promise of hope and change. We trusted you. So we elected you. We regret it. So in 2010…. You Will Lose Big. No more taxes. No more spending. No more socialism. We tried to warn you. But you wouldn’t listen. So now you will pay.We’re taking our country back. From radical leftists and liberals. We’re coming after you.
Blue collar democrats, libertarians, independents, and conservatives. We love our country. We are proud of our founders. And we will fight for our traditions. We don’t want your revolution! “
America Rising Part 2- A Call for the Republican Party to Join!
This is your last chance, Republican Party, to prove to the American voter that you are serious and mean what you say. No more co-opting freshmen to model them to stooges. (read John Trent (R) in WP July 18: “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them”)
Frank Caprio (D) Gubernatorial candidate for Rhode Island:
“I never asked for President Obama’s endorsement. You know, he can take his endorsement and shove it as far as I’m concerned. The reality here is that Rhode Islanders are hurting. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. We had one of the worst floods in the history of the United States a few months back. And President Obama didn’t even do a flyover of Rhode Island like President Bush did when New Orleans had their problems. He ignored us, and now he is coming into Rhode Island and treating us like an ATM machine.”
“Another laugh at Mr. Obama’s expense came when he was responding to a line of questioning from Mr. Stewart that encapsulated the liberal critique of his presidency; namely, that he hasn’t done enough to bring about the promised ”fundamental transformation” of America. For the left, there is a widening audacity gap. Would Mr. Obama have to change his slogan, ”Yes, we can?”the president began. ”I think what I would say is ‘yes, we can, but … .’ ” At that point, Mr. Stewart and the crowd began laughing. The president dude looked a little foolish. Hope and change died with that ”but.”
Is America Really A 50-50 Nation? Not Even Close, New Polling Finds
“Here’s a well-kept secret: Americans are in overwhelming agreement on social issues. Here’s a not-so-well-kept secret. Many in the media and politics have absolutely no idea.”
Campaign’s Big Spender
Public-Employees Union Now Leads All Groups in Independent Election Outlays
“The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is now the biggest outside spender of the 2010 elections, thanks to an 11th-hour effort to boost Democrats that has vaulted the public-sector union ahead of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and a flock of new Republican groups in campaign spending.
The 1.6 million-member AFSCMEis spending a total of $87.5 million on the elections after tapping into a $16 million emergency account to help fortify the Democrats’ hold on Congress. Last week, AFSCME dug deeper, taking out a $2 million loan to fund its push. The group is spending money on television advertisements, phone calls, campaign mailings and other political efforts, helped by a Supreme Court decision that loosened restrictions on campaign spending.
”We’re the big dog,” said Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME’s political operations. ”But we don’t like to brag.”
A recent Gallup poll piled on bad news for President Obama. At the beginning of 2010 the president enjoyed support from 69% of Hispanics. By May that number was down to 57%. Now just 55% of Hispanics support the president and his liberal agenda.
But what’s going on behind the numbers could possibly be a harbinger of doom for Obama’s re-election in 2012. Across the country conservative Latino organizations are springing up as fast as illegal immigrants are streaming across the border. And these organizations are not content to just conduct meetings and complain about the liberal takeover in Washington. Some are taking action. In Dallas, Amigos de Patriots is launching an online and TV ad campaign called “Vote your Values, Vote Conservative.” The idea is to remind Hispanics that their ancestors fled countries where prosperity was killed by left-wing regimes. The 30-second spots also take on social issues like abortion, a practice that is dear to liberals and Democrats but that the Latino community at large finds offensive.
“In 2006, 17 categories favored Democrats, which helped them take control of the House and Senate from Republicans. Democrats picked up six Senate seats and 30 House seats.
In the Pew Poll, 23 of the 28 categories of voters now favor Republicans. What’s more, 22 of the 28 categories support the GOP by 49 percent or more. There are only four categories of voters that are under 40 percent: those making less than $30,000 a year, at 39 percent; voters who are unaffiliated with a religion, at 37 percent; black voters, at 10 percent; and Democrats, at 8 percent.
What is most remarkable is how far some categories have swung away from Democrats and toward the GOP.
Democrats have lost a significant advantage with women voters, who supported Democrats by a 48 to 41 percent margin in 2006, but who have now flipped to supporting the GOP by 49 to 43 percent.
Voters over 65 years old were for Democrats by a 48 to 42 percent margin four years ago. They now favor Republicans by 52 to 38 percent. That’s a 20 point swing.
Perhaps most damaging for Democrats, they have suffered huge losses among Independents. Democrats were up 7 points in 2006, by 42 to 35 percent. They now are down 19 points, 49 to 30 percent. That’s a 26-point swing.
”The first: the tea party is not a ”threat” to the Republican Party, the tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn’t remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.
In a practical sense, the tea party saved the Republican Party in this cycle by not going third-party. It could have. The broadly based, locally autonomous movement seems to have made a rolling decision, group by group, to take part in Republican primaries and back Republican hopefuls. (According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, four million more Republicans voted in primaries this year than Democrats, the GOP’s highest such turnout since 1970. I wonder who those people were?)
Because of this, because they did not go third-party, Nov. 2 is not going to be a disaster for the Republicans, but a triumph.
The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration’s spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. In doing this, the tea party allowed the Republican establishment itself to get out from under Mr. Bush: ”We had to, boss, it was a political necessity!” They released the GOP establishment from its shame cringe.
And they not only freed the Washington establishment, they woke it up. That establishment, composed largely of 50- to 75-year-olds who came to Washington during the Reagan era in a great rush of idealism, in many cases stayed on, as they say, not to do good but to do well. They populated a conservative infrastructure that barely existed when Reagan was coming up: the think tanks and PR groups, the media outlets and governmental organizations. They did not do what conservatives are supposed to do, which is finish their patriotic work and go home, taking the knowledge and sophistication derived from Washington and applying it to local problems. (This accounts in part for the esteem in which former Bush budget chief and current Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is held. He went home.) “
On a personal note: The material for this post ended up being nearly 60 pages full of quotes, facts, figures, links, videos, reference material etc. Why? Because this is an important subject – directly for the future of the American people and your way of life, indirectly for the rest of the world. But this is way too much to make a meaningful and readable blog post. So I had to drastically cut it down and split it up. My only hope is that I got it reasonable right, you are the judge of that.
So I split this post into different parts: You must vote, The campaign, The voter fraud, Dirtiest election ever, Some points on the economic situation, The Government, All these lies about Obama Care, The speech by Robert Bidinotto and the article by P. J. O’Rourke
You must vote
So go and vote for some you can trust (yeah I know it’s hard), some one that upholds the constitution and knows what it actually means (yeah, there are not many left), some one that want to rein in the Big Government Agenda and REALLY means it (yeah I know, there are many turncoats), and some one that want to protect YOUR liberty, freedom and the American way of life (yeah, that’s another hard one).
There is in the end only one way you can judge them – By their actions.
Your vote REALLY MATTERS! This time more than ever!
Sooo much is at stake this time – The constitution, the American way of life with freedom and free markets. America is at a crucial crossroads.
Do you want a government for the elites, of the elites and by the elites?
Or a government for the people, of the people and by the people?
It is YOUR CHOICE! A very clear choice! You have to get out and flood the voting booths November 2.
And if you don’t choose, it’s going to be the former.
The turnout of voting-age population in the mid term elections 2006 – 37,1%, and 2002 – 37.0% was pathetic and a joke. 63 % of the voting age population apparently doesn’t care what is happening to their country.
If you don’t wake up now when will you ever do? You have to stand up for freedom and liberty. Or sit back and let the American dream become a nightmare.
Five quotations come to mind. All apply describing the present situation:
”All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826.
”No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) from her book ”This Is My Story”, 1937.
”It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedomthat it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say … that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.” Etienne de la Boetie’s (French judge, writher, philosopher and “politician” during the16 century), The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin 1706–1790, was written sometime shortly before February 17,1775 as part of his notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly.
”Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom”. – Albert Einstein
“President Obama, one of the men behind the Biggest Heist in American History – Cap and Trade, and who at ALL COSTS want to ram through the cap and trade bill, has now put in place an administrative system that allows him, at will, to totally bypass Congress.
After the EPA, Health care bill and now the financial bill, they can sneak it trough in big chunks through administrative orders. Not the whole cap and trade bill at once, but in two, tree maybe four steps.
America, your whole system has been hijacked, and you have done nothing, so far, to stop it. What the Obama administration has done during the last one and half year makes a mockery of your constitution and the principle of separation of power.”
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know. (see for example my post Obama Care 30)
The people in congress who voted for these bills, this is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with these bills. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.
Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.
As I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism.And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda.It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.
All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.
And these guys spends billions and TRILLIONS of $ of our tax money.
While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.
This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.
They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.
How ironic that today most of this parasitic class is leftists and so called “liberals”.
In fact, it is the PERFECT scam and heist – the more they can get you to feel guilty, the more money they earn. And the more control they get over society.
In short, it is very troubling to see a country on a path of economic and political self destruction. But if the present trend continues you are, to put it simple: toast.
It’s time for the people of America to take their country back. Otherwise the consequences for you as a country are going to be devastating. Especially for the common people.
Meanwhile, we STILL await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
“President Obama, one of the men behind the Biggest Heist in American History – Cap and Trade, and who at ALL COSTS want to ram through the cap and trade bill, has now put in place an administrative system that allows him, at will, to totally bypass Congress
After the EPA, Health care bill and now the financial bill, they can sneak it trough in big chunks through administrative orders. Not the whole cap and trade bill at once, but in two, tree maybe four steps.
America, your whole system has been hijacked, and you have done nothing, so far, to stop it. What the Obama administration has done during the last one and half year makes a mockery of your constitution and the principle of separation of power.”
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know.
The people in congress who voted for these bills, this is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with these bills. But to get it through Congress they gladly and wilfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.
Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.
As I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism. And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda. It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.
All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.
And these guys spends billions and TRILLIONS of $ of our tax money.
While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.
This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.
They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.
How ironic that today most of this parasitic class is leftists and so called “liberals”.
In fact, it is the PERFECT scam and heist – the more they can get you to feel guilty, the more money they earn. And the more control they get over society.
In short, it is very troubling to see a country on a path of economic and political self destruction. But if the present trend continues you are, to put it simple: toast.
Just one small example – the increase in federal taxes and regulations (EPA, Healthcare etc.), the cost of running a business has increased so much during the last year that it has become in many ways uninteresting. On top of that, the huge tax increases that is coming January first next year.
Not to speak about all the uncertainties what is going to happen in the near future.
As more and more people are discovering this and becoming aware of this the biggest heist in American history (see the letter below), President Obama, and his administration, is not doing so well. His approval index is at bottom. As is all the other indicators (see below).
It’s time for the people of America to take their country back. Otherwise the consequences for you as a country are going to be devastating. Especially for the common people. .
Meanwhile, we STILL await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
In today’s dangerous world, we need a president with experience, leadership and courage. Unfortunately, you have shown us little of those traits.
Your childhood and younger years denied you the opportunity to grow up as an American man, and that is no fault of your own. Unfortunately, your lack of empathy for and experience of a traditional American upbringing has left you out of touch with those of us who grew up learning the traditions and work ethic of our predecessors.
You have never accepted the honor of military service, or held and survived in any sort of entry-level working position. You are bereft of many of the basic building blocks of a true American personality and worldview.
You have never experienced the icy hand of fear caressing your gut during a firefight when your very survival from second to second depends on your luck, wits, fellow troopers and the grace of God. You have never sweated out a payroll when your receivables are late.
You’ve missed the rewarding feeling of flogging a loaded truck all night to deliver a load 500 miles away at 7 a.m. You never shoveled cow manure for less than minimum wage to earn enough for a rattletrap car. You missed out on greasing dump trucks on the night shift, and never had the opportunity to start out cleaning restrooms and sweeping floors in a factory.
Your education was in the law, and you ignored any opportunity to absorb the lessons of history or the theories of economics. You have never experienced the law of the jungle in the private sector.
While you play golf and basketball and surround yourself with ”the swells” enjoying concerts in the People’s House, those of us in the general public dine on Spam and Costco burgers. I can’t put my wife on a 747 and send her to Spain so she can be ready to spend 10 days on Martha’s Vineyard when she gets back. She works seven days a week and so do I — spreading four full- and part-time jobs between us to make ends meet.
(My explanation: ”Let them eat cake” is the traditional translation of the French phrase ”Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, supposedly said by a French princess upon learning that the peasants had no bread. As brioche is a luxury bread enriched with eggs and butter, it would reflect the princess’s obliviousness to the nature of a famine.)
I watch in pain while my business venture slides into oblivion and my small IRA erodes as your economic policies push the nation into a double-dip recession. This economy is locking up again, and you cannot blame former President Bush. The great construction jobs I created are ending while you pour trillions in borrowed money into the public sector to buy votes. I blame you personally for appointing the ship of fools you have as Cabinet officials and advisers.
You are repeating the gross mistakes of Japan in the ’90s and the Roosevelt administration in the ’30s — both of which failed and lengthened severe economic problems for a decade or more. You are intentionally smothering our private sector with regulations, taxes and mandates at the same time you squander the wages and futures of our children and grandkids.
I deplore your continued efforts to divide the greatest nation of immigrants in the world along race and class lines. Pandering to various groups and attempting to set them against other Americans is demagoguery at its worst. I sincerely hope such actions end up damaging you in the end and not our country.
You will leave office with a big pension, Secret Service protection and gold-plated health care for life. I may well end up with 40 years of hard work down the drain, living in a mobile home in the backwoods.
I do not resent you for your good fortune — you worked hard to become president and won the election fair and square. I do, however, despise your policies and the damage they are visiting on our nation, its economy and our future. I have dedicated my remaining years to fighting you and your policies and protecting our children’s futures.
I may well end up destroyed financially from the results of your misguided and dangerous actions — but you will never break me psychologically or crush my spirit. I am a Marine, I have a wonderful wife and family, and last but not least, I live in the greatest nation in the world. I shall work to my last breath to keep it that way, and you, sir, shall fail to destroy that dream.
• Howard, a Marine Corps veteran, University of Washington graduate and heavy-equipment supervisor for two decades, is now a developer with projects in Washington and Oregon.
Together with all the people in congress who voted for this bill. This is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with this bill. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.
I, and many, many others told you so before the Obama Care “reform” was rammed through at all costs against the will of the American people.
We where told by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it”
Well, we REALLY did find out a lot of things, and remember it’s just the beginning:
It’s going to ruin states, it’s going to be ENFORCED by IRS, close hospitals, fewer doctors, rationing (the new government agency, the Medicare Advisory Board, Section 3403 of the senate bill, that is going to decide (ration) what kind of Medicare you are going to receive), cuts in Medicare, increase the health care costs for companies by billions (and who do you think is going to pay for that?), etc. etc.
And then there were ALL these kickbacks, bribes and pork barrel spending in there to get the bill through at ALL COST.
And worst of all, the blatant hypocrisy from this new nomenklatura:
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.
And as I have said before:
Meanwhile,we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
And remember – They DELIBERATELY PULLED THE TRIGGER ON THIS LOADED GUN knowing fully well “most” of the consequences.
Here are just two examples– abortion and IRS :
This is what president Obama said on radio August 19, 2009 about abortion funding. And remember, he was talking to religious leaders. That’s why he use such “biblical language” as “bearing false witness”:
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: “There are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness. But I want everyone to know what health insurance reform is all about. You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government-funding of abortion. Not true. This is all — these are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation.”
President Obama deliberately lied strait in to the faces of these religious leaders. Nice man wouldn’t you say?
“Is the ink Mr President even dry on your executive order? What is your word worth Sir?”
Remember, President Obama issued an executive order to reassure, and promise democrat Stupack and other democrat protesters so that they would vote for the bill,that the health care bill WOULD NEVER FEDERAL FUND ANY ABORTION.
The Executive order Mach 24:
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s Consistency with Longstanding Restrictions on the Use of Federal Funds for Abortion
These Democrats – from Michigan and Pennsylvania respectively – were two of the final six supposedly pro-life House members who voted to pass Obamacare. They sold their anti-abortion principles for the fool’s goldof an executive order purportedly banning the use of federal funds for destroying unborn children. Now comes the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), in a finding released yesterday, to show proof positive just how tarnished that fool’s gold actually is.
In Rep. Dahlkemper‘s own Keystone State, the federal government on June 28 approved rules governing $160 million in federal taxpayer money for a ”high risk” insurance program that will – repeat: absolutely, positively will – cover just about any abortion before the 24th week of pregnancy. The Pennsylvania plan submitted to the feds provides coverage for ”only” those abortions that satisfy certain state laws. But the key, applicable state law allows abortion if a single doctor decides it is necessary for reasons that include psychology, emotions or the woman’s age.
This isn’t merely a loophole you can drive a truck through; it’s a canyon you can fly through in O Force One. It’s as open an invitation to taxpayer-funded abortion as can be imagined.
What’s worse is that this high-risk insurance program evades laws that ordinarily would govern the use of both federal and Pennsylvania tax money. It skirts the executive order because the order applies only to new insurance ”exchanges” and ”community health programs,” not these purportedly high risk insurance programs. It also avoids state law 3215(c), which forbids state government funds from being used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or threats to the mother’s life. Because this state program is to be run entirely with federal funds, not state funds, 3215(c) doesn’t apply. How clever.
When the Stupak-Dahlkemper gang sold their souls to support passage of Obamacare, both the NRLC and the pro-abortion Planned Parenthood organization dismissed the executive order.The presidential concession is so loophole-ridden and so legally unenforceable to make it only ”a symbolic gesture,” in the words of Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.
”The Obamacare law is full of faucets that can be opened to provide abortion subsidies,” NRLC legislative director Douglas Johnson told The Washington Times yesterday. ”Regrettably, this is just the first.” It also is the one that will most directly affect Mrs. Dahlkemper‘s constituents – most notably her future constituents who won’t even be born because of this program, created directly as a result of her unconscionable vote. That’s a pretty dark legacy for a congressional freshman who campaigned as a pro-lifer.
If it seems as if the tax code was conceived by graphic artist M.C. Escher, wait until you meet the new and not improved Internal Revenue Service created by ObamaCare.What, you’re not already on a first-name basis with your local IRS agent?
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates inside the IRS, highlighted the agency’s new mission in her annual report to Congress last week. Look out below. She notes that the IRS is already ”greatly taxed”—pun intended?—”by the additional role it is playing in delivering social benefits and programs to the American public,” like tax credits for first-time homebuyers or purchasing electric cars. Yet with ObamaCare, the agency is now responsible for ”the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history.” And without ”sufficient funding” it won’t be able to discharge these new duties.
That wouldn’t be tragic, given that those new duties include audits to determine who has the insurance ”as required by law” and collecting penalties from Americans who don’t. Companies that don’t sponsor health plans will also be punished. This crackdown will ”involve nearly every division and function of the IRS,” Ms. Olson reports.
Well, well. Republicans argued during the health debate that the IRS would have to hire hundreds of new agents and staff to enforce ObamaCare. They were brushed off by Democrats and the press corps as if they believed the President was born on the moon. The IRS says it hasn’t figured out how much extra money and manpower it will need but admits that both numbers are greater than zero.
Ms. Olson also exposed a damaging provision that she estimates will hit some 30 million sole proprietorships and subchapter S corporations, two million farmsand one million charities and other tax-exempt organizations. Prior to ObamaCare, businesses only had to tell the IRS the value of services they purchase. But starting in 2013 they will also have to report the value of goods they buy from a single vendor that total more than $600 annually—including office supplies and the like.
Democrats snuck in this obligation to narrow the mythical ”tax gap” of unreported business income, but Ms. Olson says that the tracking costs for small businesses will be ”disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance.” Job creation, here we come . . . at least for the accountants who will attempt to comply with a vast new 1099 reporting burden.
Meanwhile, the IRS will be inundated with useless information, because without a huge upgrade its information systems won’t be able to manage and track the nanodetails.
In a Monday letter, even Democratic Senators Mark Begich (Alaska), Ben Nelson (Nebraska), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire) and Evan Bayh (Indiana)denounce this new ”burden” on small businesses and insist that the IRS use its discretion to find ”better ways to structure this reporting requirement.” In other words, they want regulators to fix one problem among many that all four Senators created by voting for ObamaCare.
We never thought anyone would be nostalgic for the tax system of a few months ago, but post-ObamaCare, here we are.
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution; and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know.
We where told by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it”
Well, we did find out a lot of things, and remember it’s just the beginning:
It’s going to ruin states, it’s going to be ENFORCED by IRS, close hospitals, fewer doctors, rationing (the new government agency (the Medicare Advisory Board, Section 3403 of the senate bill, that is going to decide (ration) what kind of Medicare you are going to receive), cuts in Medicare, increase the health care costs for companies bybillions (and who do you think is going to pay for that?), etc. etc.
And then there were ALL these kickbacks, bribes and pork barrel spending in there to get the bill through at ALL COST.
And worst of all, the blatant hypocrisy from this new nomenklatura:
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health carelaw exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.
Well, well, now some of the members of Congress and congressional staff have to their surprise “discovered” that they may be removed from their current coverage under the gold-plated Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
This came to light after the Congressional Research Service was besieged by calls from concerned congressmen who didn’t realize they might have to give up their own super-duper health care coverage.They only meant to strip us of our good health care coverage, not theirs.
Now they’re angry.
What is this! Do YOU REALLY MEAN THAT I HAVE TO FOLLOW THE SAME LAW THAT I PASSED AGAINST THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE? That it applies to me to? This is preposterous!
This is not what I signed up for!
Repeal! Repeal!At least that section that says that we ARE NOT EXEMPTED.
And as I have said before:
Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
And remember – They DELIBERATELY PULLED THE TRIGGER ON THIS LOADED GUN knowing fully well “most” of the consequences.
Health Overhaul: Many thought Nancy Pelosi was joking when she said, ”We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.” But the more we learn about her 2,400-page horror, the more we realize the joke’s on us.
Barely a day goes by without some new revelation of what the health care bill contains — and how its provisions are already starting to hurt millions of people. The overhaul has already begun tearing down our old health care system — the best in the world — and replacing it with something mediocre, bureaucratic, costly and even dangerous.
Here’s just a sample of how, as the speaker of the House put it, we’re now ”finding out what’s in it”:
• Despite promises that ObamaCare would cut costs for average Americans, we now see a front-page headline in the Los Angeles Times that tells us ”Health care overhaul won’t stop premium increases.” Why? ”Although Democrats promised greater consumer protection, the overhaul does not give the federal government broad regulatory power to prevent increases.”
If it did, the health insurance industry would soon go the way of the Dodo bird. Contrary to overhaul supporters’ propaganda, the industry’s profit margin is tiny — just 3.5% of sales. Premiums are rising not because of insurers’ greed, but due to higher health care costs driven by out-of-control government spending, which is growing twice as fast as the private sector.
• An IBD/TIPP Poll last summer showed that as many as 45% of practicing physicians would consider retiring or giving up their practice if ObamaCare was passed. That’s bad enough. Now comes this tidbit from the Wall Street Journal: ”At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.”
It’s no surprise that fewer smart, talented, driven people want to become doctors. Why should they? To face an endless barrage of bureaucratic paperwork? To be second-guessed on every procedure they perform or prescription they write? To have their incomes capped forever?
Government already makes up half the $2.5 trillion spent last year on health care. What reasonable person would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on schooling and more than a decade on training just to work for a government bureaucracy? The answer is obvious. And the numbers show it.
• Along with fewer doctors, we’re now about to see fewer hospitals — all thanks to ObamaCare.The new law essentially forbids doctor-owned hospitals from expanding, and makes it nearly impossible for doctors to open new hospitals.
As Molly Sandvig, executive director of Physician Hospitals of America, told CNSNews.com, more than 60 doctor-owned hospitals being developed around the country will be canceled. ”That’s a lot of access to communities that will be denied,” she said.
• The rules of the new bill (with 2,400 pages plus 153 of amendments) are byzantine in their complexity — so much so that even members of Congress still have no idea what they passed.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that, to the surprise of many lawmakers,one provision states that members of Congress and congressional staff may be removed from their current coverage under the gold-plated Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
Serves them right. This came to light after the Congressional Research Service was besieged by calls from concerned congressmen who didn’t realize they might have to give up their own super-duper health care coverage.They only meant to strip us of our good health care coverage, not theirs. Now they’re angry.
• Then there’s the promise that only those earning over $200,000 — you know, the ”rich” — would be taxed for Obama-Care. In fact, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, those making less than $200,000 will pay taxes of $15.2 billion over the next 10 years — despite what was promised.
By 2019, the JCT says, 14.8 million taxpayers will be affected by the health care overhaul’s limits on tax deductions of medical expenses. Of those, 14.7 million will earn less than $200,000.
If you’re wondering what the overhaul hath wrought, you’re not alone. It’s less than a month after passage of the bill that seized control of 17% of the economy with nary a congressman reading it, and already Americans are being hurt. Another few months of this, and repeal may not be an option, but a necessity.
More on these “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care against the will of the people. And who openly admit they don’t care about the constitution.
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution; they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t give a sh.. that they don’t know.
And this guy claims that he read the whole text (nearly 3 000 pages) 3 times!
Sure!
And even worse, if he did, how in the he.. could he then vote for it KNOWING ALL the kickbacks, bribes and pork barrel spending in there. And the limitations, the new government agency (the Medicare Advisory Board, Section 3403 of the senate bill) that is going to decide (ration) what kind of Medicare you are going to receive, cuts in Medicare, enforced by IRS agents, the higher taxes etc.
And worst of all, the blatant hypocrisy from this new nomenklatura:
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health carelaw exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.
Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
Judge Andrew Napolitano gives a very good overview why Obama Care is unconstitutional. Together with Bill Mccollum (Attorney general FL), Rany Barnett (Law Professor) and John Tamny (Real Clear).
Ramifications of health care bill already surfacing
Since the passage of ObamaCare, several major U.S. companies — so far, they include AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M — have announced that they expect the law to cost them billions of dollars in higher health care expenses.
This has prompted an angry Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and one of many Democrats who swore up and down that the measure would actually cut costs, to summon some of the executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment.
Rep. Waxman is also demanding that the executives give lawmakers internal company documents related to health care finances, a move one committee Republican describes to Byron York of the Washington Examiner as ”an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents” of ObamaCare.
Perhaps these Democrats really are surprised – perhaps (as Republicans consistently warned) they never actually read and comprehended what was in their nearly 3,000-page social engineering experiment.
”Most of these people (in the administration) have never had a real job in their lives,” a senior lobbyist for one of the firms told the American Spectator over the weekend. ”They don’t understand a thing about business, and that includes the president. My CEO sat with the president over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the president what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general.First the president didn’t understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying.”
Nor is this just coming from Republicans. One Democratic staffer affiliated with the Waxman committee told the magazine that neither Rep. Waxman nor Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel, had anything more than a cursory understanding of how the many sections of the bill would impact business or even individuals before they voted on the legislation.
”We had memos on these issues, but none of our people, we think, looked at them,” says the staffer. ”When they saw the stories last week about the charges some of the companies were taking, they were genuinely surprised and assumed that the companies were just doing this to embarrass them. … They just didn’t understand what they were voting on.”
So the wave of corporate writedowns—led by AT&T’s $1 billion—isn’t caused by ObamaCare after all. The White House claims CEOs are reducing the value of their companies and returns for shareholders merely out of political pique.
A White House staffer told the American Spectator that ”These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general. Where do you hear about this stuff? The Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative Web sites. No one else picked up on this but you guys. It’s BS.” (We called the White House for elaboration but got no response.)
In other words, CEOs who must abide by U.S. accounting laws under pain of SEC sanction, and who warned about such writedowns for months, are merely trying to ruin President Obama’s moment of glory. Sure.
Presumably the White House is familiar with the Financial Standard Accounting Board’s 1990 statement No. 106, which requires businesses to immediately restate their earnings in light of their expected future retiree health liabilities. AT&T, Deere & Co., AK Steel, Prudential and Caterpillar, among others, are simply reporting the corporate costs of the Democratic decision to raise taxes on retiree drug benefits to finance ObamaCare.
When the Medicare prescription drug plan was debated in 2003, many feared that companies already offering such coverage would cash out and dump the costs on government. So Congress created a modest subsidy, equal to 28% of the cost of these plans for seniors who would otherwise enroll in Medicare. This subsidy is tax-free, and companies used to be allowed to deduct the full cost of the benefit from their corporate income taxes (beyond the 72% employer portion).
Democrats chose to eliminate the full exclusion and said they were closing a loophole. But whatever it’s called, eliminating it ”will be highly destabilizing for retirees who rely upon employer sponsored drug coverage” and ”will impose a dramatic and immediate impact on company financial statements.”
That’s how the AFL-CIO put it in a December 10 letter. The Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers—also known as the AT&T and Verizon workforce—were opposed too. So much for White House claims that reporting these facts is partisan.
As for whether this change is better tax policy, the new health-care bill creates a similar $5 billion fund that will subsidize health costs for early retirees between the ages of 55 and 64. These payments won’t be subject to taxation, and companies will likely be able to deduct the full cost of such coverage. (The language is vague and some experts disagree.) The Democrats now feigning tax outrage—but who are really outraged by political appearances—didn’t think twice about writing the same loophole back into the tax code. This new reinsurance program was a priority of the United Auto Workers.
The deeper concern—apart from imposing senseless business losses in a still-uncertain economy—is that companies will start terminating private retiree coverage, which in turn will boost government costs. The Employee Benefit Research Institute calculates that the 28% subsidy on average will run taxpayers $665 in 2011 and that the tax dispensation is worth $233. The same plan in Medicare costs $1,209.
Given that Congress has already committed the original sin of creating a drug entitlement that crowds out private coverage, $233 in corporate tax breaks to avoid spending $1,209 seems like a deal. If one out of four retirees is now moved into Medicare, the public fisc will take on huge new liabilities.
Meanwhile, Democrats have responded to these writedowns not by rethinking their policy blunder but by hauling the CEOs before Congress on April 21 for an intimidation session. The letter demanding their attendance from House barons Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak declared that ”The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern.”
Perhaps Mr. Waxman should move his hearing to the Syracuse Carrier Dome. The Towers Watson consulting firm estimates that the total writeoffs will be as much as $14 billion, and the 3,500 businesses that offer retiree drug benefits are by law required to report and expense their losses this quarter or next. But ‘twas a famous victory, ObamaCare.
The Obama administration – the new American nomenklatura a la Soviet style. One rule for the “masses” another for the “elite”.
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course. I mean there are limits to democracy and the rule of law. Do you REALLY have to follow the rules and laws that you yourself enacted?
I mean come on – we are “liberals” and on your side. Isn’t that enough?
Meanwhile, we are still awaiting Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
Government: With the passage of health care reform and the ongoing boom in federal hiring, it’s becoming increasingly clear that America is now run by a new, privileged class of bureaucrats.
For those who remember the old Soviet Union, it was a grim place — at least for average citizens. But not so for those in government. Contrary to the official ideals of equality and a classless society that the ruling communist regime espoused, the USSR created a privileged class of party members inside government —the nomenklatura.
This semipermanent bureaucracy earned higher incomes, got better health care, ate better food and had greater job security than average Russians, the much-despised proletarians. Today, our bloated federal government seems, in significant ways, to be creating this same dynamic.
Take the just-passed health care bill that carefully excluded the White House, congressional leaders and their staffs from having to live under the reforms’ restrictions.
”President Obama will not have to live under the Obama health care reforms, and neither will the congressional staff who helped to write the overhaul,” said Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. ”The message to the people at the grass roots is that it’s good enough for you, but not for us.”
The hypocrisy of these officials and the contempt they show for average Americans is bad enough. But Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public can also go to jail or be fined up to $250,000 for not buying insurance. And the government is spending $10 billion to hire 16,500 new IRS agents to make sure they don’t escape the new system.
Under current budget plans, this won’t end soon. With $45 trillion in new government spending planned over the next decade, this new privileged governing class can only grow.
Today, as we witness a massive shift of resources from the private to the public sector, the only place adding jobs is government. Since the start of last year, the federal government has added 81,000 jobs. By contrast, private-sector payrolls have shed 4.71 million.
Big government is the place to be these days. Federal workers are some of the country’s best-paid, earning far in excess of their counterparts in the private sector. A recent report in Politico.com, for example, noted that 2,000 congressional staffers now have incomes in excess of $100,000, and that 43 make the $172,500 maximum.
But the bureaucrats — that silent, permanent government that now exceeds 2.8 million in number — make out just as well. USA Today recently looked at federal pay vs. private pay in 2008 for specific occupations ranging from airline pilot and cook to computer manager and registered nurse. What they found was more than a little disquieting for those in the private sector.
The average federal worker that year took home on average $67,691 in salary, compared with $60,046 in the private sector — a difference of $7,645. Not that much, you say? Well, that was before benefits are factored.
The average government worker gets a whopping $40,785 a year in health care, pension and other benefits compared to $9,882 for a private worker. The difference in total compensation widens to $38,548 a year — for the same job with the same duties.
Anyone who has visited the slow-moving Post Office, talked to the surly and often hostile IRS agent or even gone to the local DMV to spend time in waiting-room hell can tell you that pay gap doesn’t represent productivity, training or ability.
What it does represent is the new Nomenklatura — the privileged apparatchiks who now run our government and with it, sadly, much of our lives. This is very much a result of years of ”progressive” thinking that has pushed the Democratic Party sharply leftward across the political spectrum.
Since the Civil War, the so-called Progressive Movement’s dream has been to exalt bureaucratic expertise and control over free-market efficiency. With the new administration, their dream has become our nightmare.
The health care bill that President Obama signed last week bears little resemblance to the reform package he once touted from the campaign trail.
With the final legislative product in hand, it’s worth evaluating how it compares to the promises Mr. Obama made to voters regarding the plan’s cost, its features and the reform process itself. The difference between then and now couldn’t be more stark.
Candidate Obama repeatedly assured the public that his health care plan would cost between $500 billion and $650 billion. This modest amount was to be covered entirety by discontinuing the George W. Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 a year.
Today, we know that Obamacare will cost at least double that amount. The basic price tag is $940 billion over 10 years, to which one must add the $208 billion ”doc fix.” This adjustment to the reimbursement doctors receive under Medicare was separated out from the main package to hide Obamacare’s true cost.
Obviously, eliminating the Bush tax cuts isn’t what’s going to cover these enormous sums. Obamacare must cut Medicare and raise taxes on high-quality health insurance, medical devices, drugs and insurance companies.These increaseswill hit anyone who gets sick or buys insurance, regardless of income. So much for the promised ”middle-class tax cut.”
Mr. Obama is still trying to hide the extent of the bait-and-switch. During the campaign he said, ”If you like your plan and you like your doctor, you won’t have to do a thing…. You keep your plan; you keep your doctor.” While he repeated this claim in a speech in Iowa last week, he also reluctantly admitted when questioned more closely that, yes, people may well lose their plan or their doctor.
Even aspects of reform that candidate Obama sharply criticized in a 2008 primary debate with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have become law. Mr. Obama claimed he was offended by the idea that every American should be forced to buy a government-approved health policy or face a fine. ”When Clinton says mandate, it’s not a mandate on government – it’s a mandate on individuals,” he said. ”… In some cases, people are paying fines, which means they can’t afford premiums, which means they don’t have coverage. … Both of us seek to get to universal health care. I have a substantive difference … on how to get there.”
The ”differences” between Sen. Clinton’s and Sen. Obama’s health care plans have disappeared. Households without a government-approved health care plan face a fine of $2,085. The promised transparency in the legislative drafting process also has disappeared despite the pledge, ”These negotiations will be on C-SPAN.” A one-day presidential infomercial hardly counts.
President Obama’s deals were cut behind closed doors without input from the public or even congressional Republicans – and for good reason. Lawmakers rushed through a plan that bears no resemblance to what voters once were promised.
The corporate damage rolls in, and Democrats are shocked!
It’s been a banner week for Democrats: ObamaCare passed Congress in its final form on Thursday night, and the returns are already rolling in. Yesterday AT&T announced that it will be forced to make a $1 billion writedown due solely to the health bill, in what has become a wave of such corporate losses.
This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or ”political.”
Perhaps that explains why the Administration is now so touchy. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke took to the White House blog to write that while ObamaCare is great for business, ”In the last few days, though, we have seen a couple of companies imply that reform will raise costs for them.” In a Thursday interview on CNBC, Mr. Locke said ”for them to come out, I think is premature and irresponsible.”
Meanwhile, Henry Waxman and House Democrats announced yesterday that they will haul these companies in for an April 21 hearing because their judgment ”appears to conflict with independent analyses, which show that the new law will expand coverage and bring down costs.”
In other words, shoot the messenger. Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. Should these companies have played chicken with the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid this politically inconvenient reality? Democrats don’t like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet.
On top of AT&T’s $1 billion, the writedown wave so far includes Deere & Co., $150 million; Caterpillar, $100 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; and Valero Energy, up to $20 million. Verizon has also warned its employees about its new higher health-care costs, and there will be many more in the coming days and weeks.
As Joe Biden might put it, this is a big, er, deal for shareholders and the economy. The consulting firm Towers Watson estimates that the total hit this year will reach nearly $14 billion, unless corporations cut retiree drug benefits when their labor contracts let them.
Meanwhile, John DiStaso of the New Hampshire Union Leader reported this week that ObamaCare could cost the GraniteState‘s major ski resorts as much as $1 million in fines, because they hire large numbers of seasonal workers without offering health benefits. ”The choices are pretty clear, either increase prices or cut costs, which could mean hiring fewer workers next winter,” he wrote.
The Democratic political calculation with ObamaCare is the proverbial boiling frog:Gradually introduce a health-care entitlement by hiding the true costs, hook the middle class on new subsidies until they become unrepealable, but try to delay the adverse consequences and major new tax hikes so voters don’t make the connection between their policy and the economic wreckage. But their bill was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected.
The Last Line of Defense between ObamaCare and Kansans
By Milton R. Wolf, MD
I am Milton Wolf. After this last week, you probably know me as the doctor who is Barack Obama’s cousin.
Like millions of other Americans, I watched with bafflement and frustration as Congress wrestled with the onerous task of reforming our health care system. After studying both the House and Senate’s health care plans, and a lot of sleepless nights, I knew I had to take a stand for my patients, my profession, my state, and my country. I made the decision to ”go public” with my opposition to ”ObamaCare.”
I wish my cousin well, but my oath is to my patients.
What began as a humble blog led to a Washington Times op-ed. Then a massive media storm erupted. Morning news with a visit to the Curvy Couch, radio interviews, ruffled feathers at Media Matters & Democratic Underground, another op-ed, an army of Davids carrying my questions to their representatives in Congress, Hannity, more FOX & Friends, radio, and more print and internet opinions than I could ever read. Last Saturday, it all culminated in an address to thirty thousand patriots who set their lives aside long enough to rush to the Capitol and try one more time to be heard by their elected leaders in Washington.
My message is simple: Patients will suffer under ObamaCare.
This plan goes ”all in” on the government failures that have already had a tremendously detrimental effect on medicine. It’s not that health care rationing might happen under the plan; it’s that it will. In fact, it’s already written into the plan.
Section 3403 of the Senate bill creates the Medicare Advisory Board, the express purpose of which is to reduce funding for Medicare.These unelected, unaccountable officials are required to make recommendations for Medicare cuts.These recommendations will have the effect of law, even if the Congress does not act on them.
We are given a preview of what this rationing board will try in section 3007 of the Senate bill. This portion of the health care bill addresses a scheme that actually penalizes your primary care doctor for providing the care he has determined that your family needs. The top ten percent of doctors who refer patients to specialists, no matter how valid the reason, will be penalized. This ignores the expertise of the family care physician. It does not care if your daughter hurt her arm and needs an orthopedic surgeon. It does not care if your mother is short of breath and needs a pulmonologist. It matters to them only how many of your doctor’s patients are sick enough to need a specialist.
There’s no other way to say it: ”ObamaCare” penalizes your doctor for providing medical care. This is rationing.It will get worse as costs continue their upward climb and more doctors opt out of Medicare and medicine altogether.
After my experience in Washington, D.C., I understand that the reality is that the only ones who can save Kansas are Kansans.
Washington, D.C. may be satisfied with government taking over the health care system, but Kansans have a choice. The Kansas Health Care Freedom Amendment was supposed to be the final firewall to protect the citizens of Kansas from being forced into a government-run health care system that would rob them of their freedom to make their own health care decisions. The Kansas House defeated the amendment, but the Kansas State Senate has yet to act. Any Kansas legislator who opposed this amendment will be held directly answerable for foisting ”ObamaCare” upon Kansans. We should hold them just as responsible as Barack Obama himself.
Milton R. Wolf, M.D., is a practicing diagnostic radiologist and second cousin to President Barack Obama. He has spoken and written publicly against ObamaCare. He operates the website TheWolfFiles.com.
Democrats exempt themselves from socialist medicine
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health carelaw exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.
Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
Staffers who wrote the health-care bill exempted themselves from the requirement to join the state-run insurance exchanges.
By ALLYSIA FINLEY
Congressional leaders apparently not only made quid pro quos with congressmen who voted for ObamaCare, but also with congressional staff who crafted the legislation.
A key loophole is how the bill defines ”congressional staff” as ”employees employed by the official office of a member of Congress, whether in the district office or in Washington.” That phrase has been interpreted by the Congressional Research Service to exclude various professional staff and those working for leadership offices — the very staffers who wrote the bill.
In the name of solidarity with the voting public, legislators required themselves and their office staffs to join the bill’s newly created state insurance exchanges. But the loophole exempts high-level leadership and committee staffers. For example, staffers who work in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada Senate office would be required to join.Those who work under him as Senate Majority Leader would not. In their own cases at least, key staffers obviously were prepared to make sure President Obama kept his promise that those happy with their current coverage can keep it.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who has led the charge in publicizing what he calls a double standard, says: ”The message to grassroots America is that it’s good enough for you, but not for us.”
Democrats call the loophole unintentional, but both Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn and Mr. Grassley say they tried to close it last year but were stymied by Mr. Reid. Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz told Politico.com: ”Obviously staffers are anxious about it. The whole bill is full of loopholes, it’s such a mess.”
And what does it say about ObamaCare that the warriors on the frontline in writing and passing it wanted no part of it?
First he is abandoned by Alfred E Neuman (i.e. MAD). And since his motto is “”What, me worry?” we should REALLY be worried when Alfred E Neuman is worried.
Then the kiss of death – an endorsement from Cuban marxist dictator Fidel Castro.
“Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Thursday declared passage of American health care reform ”a miracle” and a major victory for Obama’s presidency, but couldn’t help chide the United States for taking so long to enact what communist Cuba achieved decades ago. “
Massachusetts‘s pilot program has been a fiscal train wreck.
By TIMOTHY P. CAHILL
White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod hailed the Massachusetts health-care program as ”the template” for the national health-care reform legislation the president signed into law earlier this week. That should be cause for serious concern about this law’s ability to improve our health-care system at an affordable cost.
As state treasurer, I can speak with authority about the Massachusetts pilot program. It has been a fiscal train wreck.
The universal insurance coverage we adopted in 2006 was projected to cost taxpayers $88 million a year. However, since this program was adopted in 2006, our health-care costs have in total exceeded $4 billion. The cost of Massachusetts’ plan has blown a hole in the Commonwealth’s budget. Just last Thursday, Gov. Deval Patrick’s office announced a $294 million shortfall related to health-care costs.
If not for federal Medicaid reimbursements and commitments from Washington to prop up this plan, Massachusetts would be broke. The only reason MassCare has survived is that we have been repeatedly bailed out by the federal government. But that raises the question: Who will bail America out if we implement a similar program?
While everyone should have access to affordable health care, our experience in Massachusetts tells us that the new federal entitlement will burden future taxpayers with unfunded liabilities they cannot afford. Health-care inflation will continue. Mandates will increase insurance premiums. And the deficit will reach frightening levels as the law’s costs greatly exceed the projections of its advocates.
As lawmakers push for changes in the bill, they should start by being honest about its costs and focus on making health care more affordable without bankrupting the country.
Mr. Cahill is the state treasurer of Massachusetts. He is currently running as an independent for governor.
Democrats exempt themselves from socialist medicine
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health carelaw exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.
Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
A new army of IRS agents will enforce medical mandates
President Obama’s nationalization of health care is bad enough on its own, but the plan’s implementation will require drastic measures that are just as troubling to those who value freedom. Of particular concern is the bill’s expansion of the Internal Revenue Service.
A report released last week by House Ways and Means Committee Republicans estimated that the dreaded agency’s ranks would swell by 16,500. The newly sworn agents would be charged with ensuring the public’s obedience to Mr. Obama’s health care directives. The IRS also would enjoy the enhanced powers and budgetary authority required for monitoring the health care status of 300 million Americans on a month-to-month basis. The total cost of the effort is likely to exceed $10 billion.
The investigations will gradually ramp up until 2016, when the individual mandate tax kicks in fully. After that, if the O Force wins a second term, the unprecedented levy will fall upon citizens who fail to purchase health care coverage acceptable to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. IRS agents would conduct the audits and impose a fine of either $2,085 or 2.5 percent of income – whichever is greater – on disobedient households. According to Congressional Budget Office figures, this tax will generate $17 billion by 2019.
Of course, not everyone will pay. The Democrats carved out exemptions for two of its favorite constituencies: illegal aliens and imprisoned criminals. Only law-abiding citizens will face the wrath of the IRS – a wrath that can be substantial.
Consider the case of Aaron Zeff, owner of Harv’s Metro Car Wash in Sacramento, Calif. Mr. Zeff paid his taxes on time and did everything he was supposed to do. Nonetheless, a team of IRS agents descended on his business earlier this month. ”They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending,” Mr. Zeff said in describing the incident to the Sacramento Bee. His crime? Mr. Zeff reportedly owed 4 cents on his taxes in 2006.
That’s the type of overzealous enforcement and lousy customer service we can look forward to as IRS agents are handed more power to terrorize law-abiding Americans. The president’s plan moves us in the wrong direction. We need to dismantle, not expand, the most hated agency of the federal government. Fundamental tax reform and repeal of Obamacare would go a long way toward restoring American freedoms.
California could take big hit from healthcare overhaul
The landmark federal reforms could cost the state $2 billion to $3 billion annually. State officials say there needs to be more of a partnership with the U.S. government.
George Skelton, Capitol Journal
5:04 PM PDT, March 24, 2010
From Sacramento
Figure $2 billion to $3 billion. That’s the state of California’s rough estimate of what national healthcare expansion ultimately will cost it each year.
Forget the Washington gobbledygook about it saving the federal treasury money over the next 10 or 20 years. Nobody seems to be able to predict federal spending over a two-month period, let alone two decades.
But if the feds do realize a net gain, as backers of the legislation predict, it will be at the states’ expense.
While Democrats in Washington have been rejoicing in victory and Republicans have been predicting Armageddon, California officials have been quietly pondering the numbers.
And it isn’t necessarily contradictory to both support a national healthcare overhaul and acknowledge that it’s likely to be another hit on California’s bleeding budget. That’s just intellectually honest.
As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put it after the U.S. House passed the legislation Sunday night:
”I have always supported the need for comprehensive health reform. However, for healthcare reform to succeed, states must either have the flexibility to live within the revenues that are available to them or the federal resources to fully fund its mandates.”
On Wednesday the governor told reporters that Washingtonhas ”shifted the funding from the federal government and said, ‘Hey, you state, we want to cut down on our deficit. So you pick up the difference. . . .’ And it will cost us $3 billion more.”
Schwarzenegger has been trying to tread lightly, expressing dissatisfaction with Congress’ final product, but not criticizing President Obama, whose goal of reform he strongly supports.
The governor struck out taking a big swing at passing his own healthcare reform for California in 2007, partly because legislators concluded the state couldn’t afford it as the economy began tumbling.
Now the burden of implementing the federal healthcare expansion will fall on the states through their various Medicaid programs. In California, it’s called Medi-Cal.
”States are in such deep financial straits that not only have we already made [Medicaid] cuts, but we’re looking to make even deeper cuts,” says Kim Belshe, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency.
”Now we’re being asked to begin planning for the biggest implementation of a social program since Medicaid was created. . . . Medicaid is crumbling. It makes no sense to be building on a house that’s falling apart. . . .
”This needs to be a partnership with the federal government. If Medicaid is going to be the foundation for broad healthcare expansion — and right now it’s very fragile — we need changes in program flexibility and equitable financing,” Belshe says.
The Schwarzenegger administration has been seeking flexibility from Washington to pare back certain benefits, such as In-Home Supportive Services, and to tighten eligibility requirements for such programs as Medi-Cal and Healthy Families.
The $2-billion to $3-billion rough estimate of net state costs for the federal program comes from Belshe’s shop. It’s $1 billion less than the price tag calculated in December for a Senate-passed bill.
In a letter then to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Schwarzenegger warned that ”this crushing new burden will be added to a [state] safety net that is already shredding under billions of dollars in unfunded federal mandates.”
The House gave states more money than the Senate did for Medicaid expansion, which will begin in 2014.
Under the final version, the feds will pay 100% of the cost for new Medi-Cal enrollees for two years, reduce it to 95%, then permanently kick in 90% starting in 2020. That’s a good deal, but not the whole story. The largesse will cover only those new recipients who qualify under the overhaul’s looser eligibility rules.
The feds won’t be nearly as generous for another group of new enrollees, providing only 50% of the cost. These are the people who currently are eligible for Medi-Cal and for whatever reason — perhaps stigma — haven’t signed up. But under the new law, they’ll be forced to obtain insurance. And it’s estimated that half will go into Medi-Cal.
Actually, as part of the federal economic stimulus, the feds now are paying 60% of Medi-Cal costs, rather than 50%. But that’s only temporary.
Nobody in Sacramento pretends to thoroughly understand the complex new legislation or its potential impact on the state budget. Only that it will be a drain.
The federal government will fund higher reimbursements for primary care physicians who treat Medi-Cal recipients, but only for two years. Who pays after that?
There’ll be start-up costs of many millions in an administration strapped by civil service furloughs, vacancies and layoffs — while the front-running Republican candidate for governor, Meg Whitman, vows to eliminate 40,000 more jobs.
”Fundamentally, we all know that the state budget situation is dire and financing for Medi-Cal is precarious,” says Marian Mulkey, senior program officer for the California Healthcare Foundation.
”On balance, if the reform is fully realized, a huge number of Californians will get better care.
”But at the same time, the state cost issues are very real. It’s hard to imagine this being implemented as envisioned unless we get on a more secure state fiscal footing.”
Anthony Wright, executive secretary of Health Access California, calls the overhaul ”a boon rather than a burden.”
”I don’t disagree with the fact that this may cost something,” Wright adds, ”but the benefit is so much greater.”
Yes, this may be a terrific and historic program, but it is going to cost the state money. We shouldn’t kid ourselves.
It wasn’t the Tea Partiers and conservative radio hosts who had the harshest things to say about Obamacare. Left-wing bloggers offered some of the sharpest attacks – and some of them made lots of sense.
From the beginning of the debate a year ago, Jane Hamsher of the influential blog Firedoglake insisted that no ”reform” without a public option would be acceptable. Her fetish for a public option was misguided, but some of her reasoning was solid.
The day after the bill passed, for instance, Ms. Hamsher wrote: ”This bill fundamentally shifts the relationships of governance in order to achieve its objectives. … We have empowered another quasi-governmental, ‘too big to fail’ industry with alarming nonchalance.”
On March 17, four days before the vote, Ms. Hamsher was even harsher:
”The claims made by the administration about the virtues of the health care bill are outright fabrications. As Marcy Wheeler has documented in her post entitled ‘Health Care and the Road to Neofeudalism,’ it does not control either insurance premiums or health care costs.Forcing 31 million people to buy a product they don’t want and can’t afford to use does not constitute health care reform.”
She’s right, of course. The ”individual mandate” that forces every American to purchase health insurance is an assault on liberty and clearly unconstitutional. It must be repealed.
The next sentences from Firedoglake get even tougher: ”Once again, the poor get used as human shields so corporations can be the beneficiaries of massive government bailout. Rather than actually helping the poor, this bill is a dangerous and unprecedented step on the road to domination of government by private corporate players who use it to suppress competition and secure their profits – the textbook definition of fascism.”
Ms. Hamsher helpfully provided an online link to the very definition of fascism in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: ”Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the ‘national interest’ – that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it.”
One need not sling around labels or endorse such a loaded term as fascism to understand that Obamacare is anathema to the American system of free enterpriseand limited government. Also anathema were the bait-and-switch, strong-arm, kneecapping tactics used to ram this bill into law against the wishes of an overwhelming public majority. Again, here is Firedoglake: ”Members of Congress are dealing their seats away, planning to retire after the vote is cast in exchange for appointments or other sinecures from the administration.” And ”the corruption, lies and lack of affordability that were the hallmarks of the bill” helped demonstrate ”the bad faith with which the president engaged in the health care debate.”
From right, left and center, almost anybody could see how bad a bill and distasteful a process this government takeover of health care was. It must not stand.
Companies are already warning about higher health-care costs..
Democrats dragged themselves over the health-care finish line in part by repeating that voters would like the plan once it passed. Let’s see what they think when they learn their insurance costs will jump right away.
Even before President Obama signed the bill on Tuesday, Caterpillar said it would cost the company at least $100 million more in the first year alone. Medical device maker Medtronic warned that new taxes on its products could force it to lay off a thousand workers. Now Verizon joins the roll of businesses staring at adverse consequences.
In an email titled ”President Obama Signs Health Care Legislation” sent to all employees Tuesday night, the telecom giant warned that ”we expect that Verizon’s costs will increase in the short term.” While executive vice president for human resources Marc Reed wrote that ”it is difficult at this point to gauge the precise impact of this legislation,” and that ObamaCare does reflect some of the company’s policy priorities, the message to workers was clear: Expect changes for the worse to your health benefits as the direct result of this bill, and maybe as soon as this year.
Mr. Reed specifically cited a change in the tax treatment of retiree health benefits. When Congress created the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003, it included a modest tax subsidy to encourage employers to keep drug plans for retirees, rather than dumping them on the government. The Employee Benefit Research Institute says this exclusion—equal to 28% of the cost of a drug plan—will run taxpayers $665 per person next year, while the same Medicare coverage would cost $1,209.
In a $5.4 billion revenue grab, Democrats decided that this $665 fillip should be subject to the ordinary corporate income tax of 35%. Most consulting firms and independent analysts say the higher costs will induce some companies to drop drug coverage, which could affect about five million retirees and 3,500 businesses. Verizon and other large corporations warned about this outcome.
U.S. accounting laws also require businesses to immediately restate their earnings in light of the higher tax burden on their long-term retiree health liabilities. This will have a big effect on their 2010 earnings.
While the drug tax subsidy is for retirees, companies consider their benefit costs as a total package. The new bill might cause some to drop retiree coverage altogether. Others may be bound by labor contracts to retirees, but then they will find other ways to cut costs. This means raising costs or reducing coverage for other employees. So much for Mr. Obama’s claim that if you like your coverage, you can keep it—even at Fortune 500 companies.
In its employee note, Verizon also warned about the 40% tax on high-end health plans, though that won’t take effect until 2018. ”Many of the plans that Verizon offers to employees and retirees are projected to have costs above the threshold in the legislation and will be subject to the 40 percent excise tax.” These costs will start to show up soon, and, as we repeatedly argued, the tax is unlikely to drive down costs. The tax burden will simply be spread to all workers—the result of the White House’s too-clever decision to tax insurers, rather than individuals.
A Verizon spokesman said the company is merely addressing employee questions about ObamaCare, not making a political statement. But these and many other changes were enabled by the support of the Business Roundtable that counts Verizon as a member. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg’s health-reform ideas are 180 degrees from Mr. Obama’s, but Verizon’s shareholders and 900,000 employees and retirees will still pay the price.
Businesses around the country are making the same calculations as Verizon and no doubt sending out similar messages. It’s only a small measure of the destruction that will be churned out by the rewrite of health, tax, labor and welfare laws that is ObamaCare, and only the vanguard of much worse to come.
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Democrats exempt themselves from socialist medicine
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health carelaw exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.
Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI): “So This Is What Change Looks Like”
“So this is what change looks like. If he were here, Mr. Speaker, in this time of momentous national distress, I would remind the President of the United States that he is not the leader of a party or an ideology; he is the leader of our country—one founded, not to emulate others, but to inspire the world.
As families lose their jobs, their homes, and their dreams for their children; as our troops fight and sacrifice in foreign fields for our liberty and security, President Obama’s obsessive-compulsive pursuit of an abominable government takeover of health care has defied the public’s objections, despoiled this, “The People’s House,” and further alienated Americans from their representative government.
As President Obama’s campaign mantra of “hope and change” has degenerated into “tax and hate,” reputable surveys prior to this vote report: the public overwhelmingly thinks that the U.S. Government is broken. Only 21 percent of the public thinks it is being governed with its consent. Only 26 percent of the public trusts the Federal Government most of the time or always; 56 percent of Americans think the Federal Government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedom of ordinary citizens; 70 percent believethe government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors; and 71 percent of Americans think the Federal Government is a special interest.
In the wake of this health care debate’s despicable, dysfunctional process and product, it is clear: The most dangerous special interest is Big Government and President Obama is its lobbyist.
In contrast to Americans’ faith in themselves, every major piece of legislation proffered by the President and his Democratic Congress expands and empowers Big Government at the expense of the people.Possessed of a smug, cynical, patronizing view of Americans as dependents desiring State benefits, this arrogant administration and its enablers have defied the American people and bi-partisan opposition in Congress to unilaterally jam through a trillion-dollar government takeover of health care.
Why? For so many Americans, the answer is that this President and his Democratic Congress think they are smarter than you; want to run your life; and want to make government your ruler, not your servant.
Such hubristhreatens not only our health care system but it tears the social fabric and political contract of our Nation. Instead of working for a more perfect Union, the President’s ideological obstinacy exacerbated the disorder and divisions within our Nation, and wrought a crisis of consent—one that puts America’s exceptional experiment in human freedom and self-government on the precipice of implosion.
To do so the President has the power, but not the right. Thus he has merely scored a Pyrrhic victory over the American people. Ultimately, his government-run medicine scheme will be repealed and replaced with free- market, patient-centered wellness, because America’s strength and salvation remains her free people, not a person.
And this November, America’s sovereign citizens will remind the President and his Democratic Congress that We the People do not work for government; the government works for us.
No, the President and his Democratic Congress will not break us beneath Big Government. Devoted to our freedom and a more perfect Union, we will keep the faith, trust the public, calm the times, and heal our country.”
Democrats exempt themselves from socialist medicine
March 23, 2010
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well. A weasel-worded definition of ”staff” includes only the members’ personal staff in the new system; the committee staff that drafted the legislation opted themselves out. Because they were more familiar with the contents of the law than anyone in the country, it says a lot that they carved out their own special loophole. Anyway, the law is intended to affect ”ordinary Americans,” according to Vice President JoeBiden (who – being a heartbeat away from the presidency – also is not covered), not Washington insiders.
Mr. Obama frequently tossed around the talking point that the new law gave people the same type of coverage as Congress enjoyed. In his March 20 health care pep talk to wavering Democrats on Capitol Hill, the president said one of the advantages of the health care legislation was that ”people will have choice and competition just like members of Congress have choice and competition.” At yesterday’s signing ceremony, Mr. Obama said Americans will be ”part of a big pool, just like federal employees are part of a big pool. They’ll have the same choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves.” But the American people will have a public pool; the executive branch and congressional staffers kept their country-club pool private.
Last year, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, spearheaded efforts to have all Americans included in the plan, but he ran into heavy opposition from unions representing federal workers – the same unions that were pro-Obamacare stalwarts. In September, the Senate approved a scaled-down amendment that covered members of Congress and their staff. When this provision later emerged from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office, the leadership and committee staff loophole had appeared.A move in December by Mr. Grassley and Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to close this loophole and to extend the law to senior members of the executive branch – including the president, vice president and Cabinet members –was blocked by Senate Democratic leaders.
Mr. Grassley has introduced an amendment to the Senate health care reconciliation bill that also will apply the law to the upper tier of the executive branch and all Capitol Hill staffers, but it remains to be seen whether Democrats will let this measure move forward.
The special exemptions slipped into the health care law are another example of how those statists who rule consider themselves a privileged class, imposing burdens on the country that they will not accept themselves. Candidates for office in 2010 should pledge to close these and other loopholes in the law that impose unequal burdens and create exclusive privileged classes in America.Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
If there is anything good to say about Democrat control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, it’s that their extraordinarily brazen, heavy-handed acts have aroused a level of constitutional interest among the American people that has been dormant for far too long.
Part of this heightened interest is seen in the strength of the Tea Party movement around the nation. Another is the angry reception that many congressmen received at their district town hall meetings.
Yet another is seen by the exchanges on the nation’s most popular radio talk shows such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and others. Then there’s the rising popularity of conservative/libertarian television shows such as Glenn Beck, John Stossel and Fox News.
Cost Of Office
While the odds-on favorite is that the Republicans will do well in the fall elections, Americans who want constitutional government should not see Republican control as a solution to what our founders would have called ”a long train of abuses and usurpations.”
Solutions to our nation’s problems require correct diagnostics and answers to questions like: Why did 2008 presidential and congressional candidates spend over $5 billion campaigning for office?Why did special interests pay Washington lobbyists over $3 billion that same year? What are reasons why corporations, unions and other interest groups fork over these billions of dollars to lobbyists and into the campaign coffers of politicians?
Don’t Believe It
One might say that these groups are simply extraordinarily civic-minded Americans who have a deep and abiding interest in elected officials living up to their oath of office to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. Another response is that these politicians, and the people who spend billions of dollars on them, just love participating in the political process.
If you believe either of these explanations, you’re probably a candidate for some medicine, a straitjacket and a padded cell.
A far better explanation for the billions going to the campaign coffers of Washington politicians and lobbyists lies in the awesome government power and control over business, property, employment and other areas of our lives. Having such power, Washington politicians are in the position to grant favors and commit acts that if committed by a private person would land him in jail.
Here’s one among thousands of examples: Incandescent light bulbs are far more convenient and less expensive than the compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) that General Electric now produces. So how can General Electric sell its costly CFLs?They know that Congress has the power to outlaw incandescent light bulbs.
General Electric was the prominent lobbyist for outlawing incandescent light bulbs and in 2008 had a $20 million lobbying budget.Also, it should come as no surprise that General Electric is a contributor to global warmers who helped convince Congress that incandescent bulbs were destroying the planet.
The greater Congress’ ability to grant favors and take one American’s earnings to give to another American, the greater the value of influencing congressional decision-making. There’s no better influence than money. The generic favor sought is to get Congress, under one ruse or another, to grant a privilege or right to one group of Americans that will be denied another group of Americans.
On The Edge
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, covering up for a corrupt Ways and Means Committee chairman, Charles Rangel, said that his behavior was ”a violation of the rules of the House” but it ”was not something that jeopardized our country in any way.” Pelosi is right in minimizing Rangel’s corruption. It pales in comparison, in terms of harm to our nation, to the legalized corruption that’s a part of Washington’s daily dealing.
Hopefully, our nation’s constitutional reawakening will begin to deliver us from the precipice. There is no constitutional authority for two-thirds to three-quarters of what Congress does.
Our Constitution’s father, James Madison, explained: ”The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined … (to be) exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce.”
The Vote: Conned by the promise of an ephemeral executive order, the last holdouts cave and ObamaCare advances. It doesn’t add a single doctor or hospital room, but needs 17,000 new IRS agents to enforce it.
Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Mich., spent months spelling out in minute detail how the Senate version of the health care overhaul permitted federal funding of abortion through its failure to expressly prohibit it.
In the end, he cashed in his principles for an unenforceable executive order that is trumped by the Senate bill he voted to pass.
An executive order is not the law of the land. Neither can you amend a law via executive order. The Senate version of socialized medicine will be the law of the land. It trumps any executive order, a ruling every court will make every time. As Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., reminded Stupak before the vote, this executive order can also be erased by another executive order at any time. It has the strength of gelatin and the life expectancy of a fruit fly.
Stupak was had. So was a bare party-line majority of the House of Representatives, in the face of bipartisan opposition, which proved the adage about everyone having a price, whether it be increased water rations for California’s San Joaquin Valley or a bank in Rep. Earl Pomeroy’s North Dakota that’s now the only one in the country that can still issue student loans.
Such bribes were necessary because the Democrats’ ”reform” doesn’t improve care, expand coverage or reduce costs. As GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin recently stated, ”If you take all the double counting out of the bill, which the (Congressional Budget Office) can’t do because that’s the way it’s put in front of them, this thing has a $460 billion deficit in the first 10 years, a $1.4 trillion deficit in the second 10 years.”
With accounting tricks that would make Bernie Madoff blush, revenue and savings from the feds taking over student loans is counted as medical savings. A $250 billion dollar ”doctor fix” to compensate for $500 billion in Medicare cuts is not counted as an increased cost.
This legislation will cause doctors to flee in droves. The New England Journal of Medicine just released a survey, confirming our own polling, finding that 46% of primary care physicians would consider quitting medicine under this bill.
House Subcommittee on Oversight ranking member Charles Boustany, R-La., said the Internal Revenue Service provision in the bill ”dangerously expands, in an ominous way the tentacles of the IRS and its reach into every American family.”
The IRS now can make sure everyone buys health insurance acceptable to the federal government and collect the fines of up to $2,250 per family or 2% of income if it doesn’t.
The CBO expects the IRS will need roughly $10 billion over the next 10 years and nearly 17,000 new employees to meet its new responsibilities under socialized medicine.The American people will be faced with fines, even possible imprisonment, if they don’t comply with this unique federal mandate. Now an IRS agent will come between you and your doctor.
These IRS agents will have the job of enforcing a new and unconstitutional mandate.The Constitution specifically enumerates the powers given to each branch of governmentand says that any power not mentioned revert to the states and to the people. Nowhere does it say the feds can compel you to buy health insurance.
A swarm of state attorneys general is ready to march into federal court to defend the Constitution and the 10th Amendment in particular from this assault on democracy and freedom. The law officials have behind them the support of an American electorate overwhelmingly opposed to this expansion of government power being rammed down their throats.
Constitution: Republicans vow to repeal health care reform. But no social entitlement, once signed into law, has ever been overturned. The way to stop this federal overreach is through the courts.
Fox pundit Bill Kristol predicts that Republicans will repeal the law in 2013. Rep. Jim DeMint and other GOP leaders have already pledged to do so.
But that assumes a lot. Republicans must first regain control of both houses of Congress, which will require sustaining the current level of public outrage for six months after the fact.
That won’t be easy. While additional negative details about the 2,074-page bill will come out over the coming months, the worst parts won’t go into effect for years. And the White House is already reselling the few positives, such as covering pre-existing conditions, which go into effect right away.
Yes, Republicans won Congress for the first time in 50 years after Clinton tried to socialize medicine. And yes, this bill is arguably worse, with 732 more pages, 109 more bureaucracies and just as many new taxes.
But HillaryCare failed, and was cast as a major Democrat defeat. ObamaCare, on the other hand, will be hailed as a big Democrat win. Even in the off chance that they do take back Congress, Republicans seeking repeal will have to fend off all the lobbyists who will cement around new health care rules, programs and benefits.
Then they’ll have to override President Obama’s veto.
The nation’s best chance to kill this monstrosity before it can ruin the best health care system in the world is to get the courts to declare it unconstitutional.
The ”individual mandate” is a violation of the 9th and 14th amendments. The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate the health care industry on issues of interstate trade.It does not give it the authority to force individuals to buy a service from private industry. This is unheard of. Even in World War II, the feds did not make citizens buy war bonds, for instance.
Already Virginia, Florida and South Carolina are preparing constitutional challenges.
The high court — which thankfully (for now) is led by strict constructionists — will not let stand this violence against the Constitution, which the framers designed to limit federal powers.
If the bench were to uphold mandated universal participation in a federal health system, it would give Congress license to do anything it wants under the Commerce Clause. Nothing would be out of bounds.
Health Overhaul: Sunday’s vote exposed the ugly truth that ObamaCare is not really about health care at all. It’s all about who pays for it and who controls it — in effect a massive wealth-redistribution scheme.
Those who believe this will lead to some medical nirvana will likely be disappointed. Fact is, this poorly designed monstrosity will lead to lower-quality care, higher costs, fewer practicing physicians, higher taxes and fewer jobs.
We’ve done more than 150 editorials in the past year or so documenting these problems. Democrats surely understand them. Yet, despite a recent CNN poll showing that 59% of Americans oppose ObamaCare, Congress approved it anyway.
Why? Because it’s not really about health care. It’s the largest wealth grab in American history, masquerading as health care ”reform,” another step in the socialization of Americans’ income in the name of ”fairness” and ”spread(ing) the wealth around,” as Obama himself has put it.
That’s why we call the program a lie.
The idea behind all this, simply put, is control. This is a vast expansion of government that will require as much as $3 trillion in added spending over a decade. All claims of deficit neutrality are a joke.
This is socialization through the tax code. That $3 trillion has to be paid for. As we showed last week, the health care bill levies $569.2 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years alone.
At the same time, as noted by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office, it will increase U.S. budget deficits by $562 billion.
Who’ll pay all these taxes? Those deemed ”rich” by Democrats, and businesses. Specifically, the bulk of the money comes from a special 3.8% Medicare tax on 5 million people earning more than $200,000 a year. That tax is imposed on capital gains, dividends, rents, royalties and interest — that is, investment income.
Obama already has proposed boosting these taxes in his budget. So the top tax take on dividends and cap gains will rise to 23.8% from 15%, an increase of nearly 59%, while top rates on interest and rents will soar from 15% to nearly 44%, a 193% jump.
About 50% of this higher-taxed group reports small business or partnership income. So don’t be fooled: These aren’t taxes on the ”rich,” but on small businesses and jobs.
In ObamaCare, the taxes will be ruinous. Unlike real insurance, where individuals pay to cover their risks, this program covers everyone — including 32 million uninsured — and pays for it by a ”mandate” ( read: ”tax” ) and by taking money from other people to subsidize those who can’t pay. And this just scratches the surface of the new taxes — we literally don’t have room to list them here.
Hmm. Taking money from one group, and giving it to another. That’s called welfare — or, perhaps, health-fare. It’s not insurance.
Once the new program is finished wrecking what remains of the private health insurance industry — as it ultimately will — we’ll be stuck with the government declaring that ”the market doesn’t work” and forcing all of us into a single-payer government plan.
That’s what those Democrats who back ”Medicare for all” want — to kill what’s left of the private market for health care, which has created the best medical system on earth, and use ”reform” to expand an already-bankrupt Medicare system.
The math behind this is ugly. Medicare’s long-term liabilities now total $89 trillion, according to the Government Accountability Office. Based on projected deficits, the just-passed health reform will take that to $136 trillion.
It will take a lot more than the ”rich,” as defined today, to make up such unfathomable tax shortfalls. That’s when they’ll come for the rest of us — poor, middle-class and rich alike — and we all will be paying vastly higher taxes for vastly inferior medical care.
Obama and the Democratic leadership have nationalized healthcare by proxy.
By Jonah Goldberg
March 23, 2010
First: Congratulations to President Obama and the Democratic leadership. You won dirty against bipartisan opposition from both Congress and the majority of Americans. You’ve definitely polarized the country even more, and quite possibly bankrupted us too. But hey, you won. Bubbly for everyone.
Simply, you have nationalized healthcare by proxy. Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington! They will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when healthcare costs rise — and they will — Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame and out from thisObamacare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.
The Obama administration has turned the insurance industry into the Blackwater of socialized medicine.
That’s always what Obama had in mind. During the now-legendary healthcare summit, Obama, who loves to talk about ”risk pools,” ”competition,” ”consumer choice” and the like, let it slip that he actually doesn’t believe in insurance as commonly understood. The notion that Americans should buy the healthcare ”equivalent of Acme Insurance that I had for my car” seemed preposterous to him. ”I’m buying that to protect me from some catastrophic situation,” he explained. ”Otherwise, I’m just paying out of pocket. I don’t go to the doctor. I don’t get preventive care. There are a whole bunch of things I just do without. But if I get hit by a truck, maybe I don’t go bankrupt.” Apparently, people are just too stupid to go to the doctor — or maintain their homes — if they have to pay much of anything out of pocket.
The endgame was to get the young and healthy to buy more expensive insurance than they need or want. ”Expanding the risk pool” and ”spreading out the risk” by mandating — i.e., forcing — young people to buy insurance is just market-based spin for socialist ends. A risk pool is an actuarial device where a lot of people pay a small sum to cover themselves against a ”rainy day” problem that will affect only a few people. Such ”peace of mind” health insurance is gone. What we have now is health assurance. With health assurance, there are no ”risk pools” really, only payment plans.
Under the new law, all the exits from the system are blocked. You can’t opt out or buy cheap, high-deductible Acme Car-type insurance, even if that’s what you need. Ultimately, even that coercion won’t be enough to make the whole thing work because the ”cost curve” will not be bending.
Profit-hungry insurance companies were never the problem. (according to American Enterprise Institute economist Andrew Biggs, industry profit margins are around 3%and the entire industry recorded profits of just $13 billion last year, close to a rounding error in Medicare fraud estimates.) Rather, healthcare costs have been skyrocketing because consumers treat health insurance like an expense account. Putting almost everyone into one ”risk pool” doesn’t change that dynamic; it universalizes it. And eventually, the only way to cut costs will be to ration care.
In September, Obama got into a semantic argument with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who noted that requiring all Americans to pay premiums for a government-guaranteed service sounds an awful lot like a tax. ”No. That’s not true, George,” Obama said. ”For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is . . . that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you.” Stephanopoulos invoked a dictionary definition of a tax: ”a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.” Obama laughed off the idea that a dictionary might outrank him as the final arbiter of a word’s meaning.
”George, the fact that you looked up . . . the definition of tax increase indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.”
OK, put aside your dictionaries. The legislation allocates $10 billion to pay for 16,500 IRS agents who will collect and enforce mandatory ”premiums.” Does that sound like the private sector at work to you?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
— C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)
“If you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn’t call it a ‘failure of swimming’. So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a ‘failure of capitalism’?”
George Mason University professor Peter Boettke,
“America was founded on the principle of individual rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The first round of the political battle over health care has gone to those who would violate those rights. But this is still our country. If Americans commit to fighting for their lives and their freedom, then the final victory can still be ours.”
Paul Hsieh, MD, practices in the south Denver metro area. He is co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (MD).
And of course there is the “example” of Massachusetts Model which was the precursor to Obama Care. So let’s see what happened during it’s 4 years in practice, AND THEN MULTIPLY THE RESULTS WITH 50 TO GET A ROUGH FIGURE FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY:
“The Massachusetts treasurer said Tuesday that Congress will ”threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years” if it adopts a health care overhaul modeled after the Bay State’s.
Treasurer Timothy Cahill — a former Democrat running as an independent for governor — said the 2006 law has succeeded only because of huge subsidies and favorable regulatory changes from the federal government.
”Who, exactly, is going to bail out the federal government if this plan goes national?” He asked.”
”If President (Barack) Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform adopted here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” the treasurer said.
Cahill’s comments came as the Patrick administration launched three days of hearings on rising health care costs. Insurance premiums in Massachusetts rose more than 12 percent over a two-year period.
At the hearing, Attorney General Martha Coakley released a study that found prices paid by health insurers to hospitals vary widely within the same geographic area and cannot be explained by the quality of care.
Massachusetts Miracle or Massachusetts Miserable
What the Failure of the “Massachusetts Model” Tells Us about Health Care Reform
All these kickbacks and bribes to get this legislation through AT ALL COSTS.
A STUPAK PAYOFF “U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee) announced three airports in northern Michigan have received grants totaling $726,409 for airport maintenance and improvements. The funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration.”
Just a coincidence wouldn’t you say?
STUPAK ANNOUNCES $726,409 FOR AIRPORTS IN ALPENA, DELTA AND CHIPPEWA COUNTIES
Give Rep. Bart Stupak, D-MI, credit, the guy knows how to act. He kept up the charade of opposing Obamacare on principle – no abortion funding with tax dollars – right to the end, then switched once he was satisfied he’d found a sufficient fig leaf to be able to work the issue both ways.
This is classic political hypocrisy. But it’s not like Stupak didn’t tell us that’s what he would do before. Speaking in a constituent meeting in Cheboygan Oct. 24, 2009, Stupak laid out a scenario that is eerily like what just transpired in the nation’s capitol. Substitute ”Executive Order” for ”Amendment” in Stupak’s description, and you’ve got it.
“First there was the ”Louisiana Purchase,” $100 million in extra Medicaid money for the Bayou State, requested by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
Then came the ”Cornhusker Kickback,” another $100 million in extra Medicaid money, this ti me for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).
This was followed by word that Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) had written into the legislation $100 million meant for a medical center in his state. This one was quickly dubbed the ”U Con.”
Earlier, when GOP staff member mistakenly thought the medical center was destined for Indiana rather than Connecticut, they named it the ”Bayh Off” for Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.).
For Democratic leaders, this created an appearance problem. Fortunately, they had removed from the bill the tax on cosmetic procedures (the ”Botax”) and replaced it with a tax on tanning (which would primarily impact House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio).
”I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reasoned when asked at a news conference Monday about the cash-for-cloture accusation. ”And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”
Indeed, the proliferation of deals has outpaced the ability of Capitol Hill cynics to name them.
Gator Aid: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) inserted a grandfather clause that would allow Floridians to preserve their pricey Medicare Advantage program.
Handout Montana: Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) secured Medicare coverage for anybody exposed to asbestos — as long as they worked in a mine in Libby, Mont.
Iowa Pork and Omaha Prime Cuts: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) won more Medicare money for low-volume hospitals of the sort commonly found in Iowa, while Nebraska’s Nelsonwon a ”carve out” provision that would reduce fees for Mutual of Omaha and other Nebraska insurers.
Meanwhile, Sens. Byron Dorganand Kent Conrad, both North Dakota Democrats, would enjoy a provision bringing higher Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in ”frontier counties” of states such as — let’s see here — North Dakota!
Hawaii, with two Democratic senators,would get richer payments to hospitals that treat many uninsured people. Michigan, home of two other Democrats, would earn higher Medicare payments and some reduced fees for Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) held out for larger Medicaid payments for his state (neighboring Massachusetts would get some, too).
As news of the agreements proliferated, Republican senators went to the floor to protest. ”This will not stand the test of the Constitution, I hope, because the deals that have been made to get votes from specific states’ senators cannot be considered equal protection under the law,” argued Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.).
Her Texas colleague, Sen. John Cornyn, took issue with White House strategist David Axelrod‘s claim that such deals are ”the way it will always be.” Said the Texan: ”Maybe in Chicago, but not in my state, and not in the heartland.”
Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) even disavowed Nelson’s Cornhusker Kickback. ”Nebraskans are frustrated and angry that our beloved state has been thrust into the same pot with all of the other special deals that get cut here,” he reported. “
“Top prosecutors in South Carolina and Florida said Friday they are ready to sue if health care reform legislation passes this weekend as expected.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum will file a federal lawsuit challenging the bill’s constitutionality.
”We are ready to kill it,” McMaster said. ”When the national government and Congress start going wild, it’s up to the states to rein them in.”
“On Thursday, McMaster said he and McCollum had a conference call with those other attorneys general, whom they expect to sign onto the lawsuit next week.
”It’s essentially a direct tax on the people for which there is no authority,” McMaster said. ”It’s the national government requiring a citizen to buy something that he may or may not want to buy. There’s no authority in the Constitution that allows the Congress to do that.”
McCollum’s office confirmed Friday their participation in the legal action.
”Like all of these people, I swore an oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of South Carolina,” McMaster said. ”It is difficult to understand how the president and the Congress can believe that this is constitutional. It is harmful, and that’s why we’re going to kill it.”
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
With the House set to vote on health-care legislation, the congressional debate on the issue seems to be nearing its conclusion. But if the bill does become law, the battle over federal control of health care will inevitably shift to the courts. Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli II, has said he will file a legal challenge to the bill, arguing in a column this month that reform legislation ”violate[s] the plain text of both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.” On Friday, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced that they will file a federal lawsuit if health-care reform legislation passes.
Will these cases get anywhere? Here is a guide to the possible legal challenges to a comprehensive health-care bill.
The individual mandate.
Can Congress really require that every person purchase health insurance from a private company or face a penalty? The answer lies in the commerce clause of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power ”to regulate commerce . . . among the several states.”Historically, insurance contracts were not considered commerce, which referred to trade and carriage of merchandise. That’s why insurance has traditionally been regulated by states. But the Supreme Court has long allowed Congress to regulate and prohibit all sorts of ”economic” activities that are not, strictly speaking, commerce. The key is that those activities substantially affect interstate commerce, and that’s how the court would probably view the regulation of health insurance.
But the individual mandate extends the commerce clause’s power beyond economic activity, to economic inactivity. That is unprecedented. While Congress has used its taxing power to fund Social Security and Medicare, never before has it used its commerce power to mandate that an individual person engage in an economic transaction with a private company. Regulating the auto industry or paying ”cash for clunkers” is one thing; making everyone buy a Chevy is quite another. Even during World War II, the federal government did not mandate that individual citizens purchase war bonds.
If you choose to drive a car, then maybe you can be made to buy insurance against the possibility of inflicting harm on others. But making you buy insurance merely because you are alive is a claim of power from which many Americans instinctively shrink. Senate Republicans made this objection, and it was defeated on a party-line vote, but it will return.
The Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator Aid and other deals.
Some states are threatening lawsuits to block the special deals brokered by individual senators in exchange for their votes. Unless the reconciliation bill passes the Senate, such deals could remain in place. Article I of the Constitution allows Congress to tax and spend to ”provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” Normally, this is no barrier to legislation benefiting a particular state or city. Congress can always argue that, say, an Air Force base in Nebraska benefits the United States as a whole. But the deals in the Senate bill are different. It is really hard to identify a benefit to all the states from exempting one state from an increase in Medicare costs or allowing only the citizens of Florida to get Medicare Advantage.
The Slaughter House rule.
A far graver threat to the bill would have been to declare it unconstitutional because it was never formally voted on by the House and therefore never became law. Article I requires that every bill ”shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate” to become law, and that ”the votes of both houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered in the journal of each House respectively.”
The whole purpose of the ”deem and pass” procedure — which was advocated by Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter — was to avoid a separate vote on the Senate bill, which many House members find objectionable, and instead vote on the reconciliation bill and simultaneously ”deem” the Senate measure passed. Although Democrats cited prior examples of deem and pass, ”the Republicans did it” is not a recognized constitutional argument —especially if the public and the justices have never heard of such a thing. This constitutional objection seems to have succeeded, as House leaders decided on Saturday to take a separate vote on the Senate version, rather than ”deeming” it passed.
State sovereignty provisions.
Several states are considering measures attempting to exempt their residents from an individual health insurance mandate. While such provisions may have a political impact, none is likely to have any effect on the legislation’s constitutionality. Under the 10th Amendment, if Congress enacts a law pursuant to one of the ”powers . . . delegated to the United States by the Constitution,” then that law is supreme, and nothing a state can do changes this. Any state power to ”nullify” unconstitutional federal laws has long been rejected.
Constitutional amendments.
Of course, there is one additional way for states to win a fight about the constitutionality of health-care legislation: Make it unconstitutional. Article V of the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to require Congress to convene a convention to propose an amendment to the Constitution. If two-thirds of state legislatures demand an amendment barring the federal regulation of health insurance or an individual mandate, Congress would be constitutionally bound to hold a convention. Something like this happened in 1933 when Congress proposed and two-thirds of the states ratified the 21st Amendment, removing from the Constitution the federal power to prohibit the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol. But the very threat of an amendment convention would probably induce Congress to repeal the bill.
Ultimately, there are three ways to think about whether a law is constitutional: Does it conflict with what the Constitution says? Does it conflict with what the Supreme Court has said? Will five justices accept a particular argument? Although the first three of the potential constitutional challenges to health-care reform have a sound basis in the text of the Constitution, and no Supreme Court precedents clearly bar their success, the smart money says there won’t be five votes to thwart the popular will to enact comprehensive health insurance reform.
But what if five justices think the legislation was carried bleeding across the finish line on a party-line vote over widespread bipartisan opposition? What if control of one or both houses of Congress flips parties while lawsuits are pending? Then there might just be five votes against regulating inactivity by compelling citizens to enter into a contract with a private company. This legislation won’t go into effect tomorrow. In the interim, it is far more vulnerable than if some citizens had already started to rely upon its benefits.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider another recent case in which the smart money doubted there were five votes to intervene in a politicized controversy involving technical procedures. A case in which five justices may have perceived that long-established rules were being gamed for purely partisan advantage.
You might have heard of it: Bush v. Gore.
Randy E. Barnett teaches constitutional law at GeorgetownUniversity. He is the author of ”Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty.”
A landmark of liberal governance whose price will be very steep.
MARCH 21, 2010
House Democrats last night passed President Obama’s federal takeover of the U.S. health-care system, and the ticker tape media parade is already underway. So this hour of liberal political victory is a good time to adapt the ”Pottery Barn” rule that Colin Powell once invoked on Iraq: You break it, you own it.
This week’s votes don’t end our health-care debates. By making medical care a subsidiary of Washington, they guarantee such debates will never end. And by ramming the vote through Congress on a narrow partisan majority, and against so much popular opposition, Democrats have taken responsibility for what comes next—to insurance premiums, government spending, doctor shortages and the quality of care. They are now the rulers of American medicine.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats have sold this takeover by promising that multiple benefits will follow: huge new subsidies for the middle class; lower insurance premiums for consumers, especially those in the individual market; vast reductions in the federal budget deficit and in overall health-care spending; a more competitive U.S. economy as business health-care costs decline; no reductions in Medicare benefits; and above all, in Mr. Obama’s words, that ”if you like your health-care plan, you keep your health-care plan.”
We think all of this except the subsidies will turn out to be illusory, as most of the American public seems intuitively to understand. As recently as Friday, Caterpillar Inc. announced that ObamaCare will increase its health-care costs by $100 million in the first year alone, due to a stray provision about the tax treatment of retiree benefits. This will not be the only such unhappy surprise.
While the subsidies don’t start until 2014, many of the new taxes and insurance mandates will take effect within six months. The first result will be turmoil in the insurance industry,as small insurers in particular find it impossible to make money under the new rules. A wave of consolidation is likely, and so are higher premiums as insurers absorb the cost of new benefits and the mandate to take all comers.
Liberals will try to blame insurers once again, but the public shouldn’t be fooled. WellPoint, Aetna and the rest are from now on going to be public utilities, essentially creatures of Congress and the Health and Human Services Department. When prices rise and quality and choice suffer, the fault will lie with ObamaCare.
While liberal Democrats are fulfilling their dream of a cradle-to-grave entitlement, their swing-district colleagues will pay the electoral price. Those on the fence fell in line out of party loyalty or in response to some bribe, and to show the party could govern. But even then Speaker Nancy Pelosi could only get 85% of her caucus and had to make promises that are sure to prove ephemeral.
Most prominently, she won over Michigan’s Bart Stupak and other anti-abortion Democrats with an executive order from Mr. Obama that will supposedly prevent public funds from subsidizing abortions. The wording of the order seems to do nothing more than the language of the Senate bill that Mr. Stupak had previously said he couldn’t support, and of course such an order can be revoked whenever it is politically convenient to do so.
We have never understood why pro-lifers consider abortion funding more morally significant than the rationing of care for cancer patients or at the end of life that will inevitably result from this bill. But in any case Democratic pro-lifers sold themselves for a song, as they usually do.
Then there are the self-styled ”deficit hawks” like Jim Cooper of Tennessee. These alleged scourges of government debt faced the most important fiscal vote of their careers and chose to endorse a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement.They did so knowing that the White House has already promised to restore some $250 billion in reimbursement cuts for doctors that were included in yesterday’s bill to make the deficit numbers look good. Watch for these Democrats to pivot immediately and again demand ”tough choices” on spending—and especially tax increases—but this vote has squandered whatever credibility they had left.
Mrs. Pelosi did at least abandon, albeit under pressure, the ”deem and pass” strategy that would have passed the legislation without a vote on the actual Senate language. We and many others criticized that ruse early last week, and the House decision to drop it exposes the likes of Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and other analysts who are always willing to defend the indefensible when Democrats are doing it.
All of this means the Senate’s Christmas Eve bill is ready for Mr. Obama’s signature, though only because rank-and-file House Members also passed a bill of amendments that will now go back to the Senate under ”reconciliation” rules that require only 50 votes. Those amendments almost certainly contravene the plain rules of reconciliation, and the goal for Senate Republicans should be to defeat this second ”fix-it” bill. It’s notable that Democrats didn’t show yesterday for a meeting with the Senate parliamentarian to consider GOP challenges, no doubt because they fear some of them might be upheld.
Though it’s hard to believe, the original Senate bill is marginally less harmful than the ”fixed” version, not least because the middle-class insurance subsidies are less costly and it would avert the giant new payroll tax. That’s the White House increase in the Medicare portion of the payroll tax to 3.8% that Democrats cooked up at the last minute and would apply to the investment income of taxpayers making more than $200,000.
If the reconciliation bill goes down, Big Labor and its Democratic clients would be forced to swallow a larger excise tax on high-cost insurance plans, and it would also forestall the private student-loan takeover that Democrats included as a sweetener. In other words, they’d be forced to eat the sausage they themselves made as they have abused Congressional procedure to push ObamaCare into law.
We also can’t mark this day without noting that it couldn’t have happened without the complicity of America‘s biggest health-care lobbies, including Big Pharma, the American Medical Association, the AmericanHospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, the Business Roundtable and such individual companies as Wal-Mart. They hope to get more customers, or to reduce their own costs, but in the end they have merely made themselves more vulnerable to the gilded clutches of the political class.
While the passage of Obama Care marks a liberal triumph, its impact will play out over many years. We fought this bill so vigorously because we have studied government health care in other countries, and the results include much higher taxes, slower economic growth and worse medical care. As for the politics, the first verdict arrives in November.
Taxes: If ObamaCare becomes permanent, no one will suffer more than U.S. businesses. They’ll face higher taxes, more regulations and a higher cost of capital. But don’t take our word for it. Go ask Caterpillar.
The heavy-equipment giant reckons its insurance costs will go up 20%, or $100 million, the first year after the health care system is overhauled, and may go even higher. Multiply that by literally tens of thousands of companies nationwide, large and small, and you can see how costs will soar.
”We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors,” said Greg Folley, a Caterpillar vice president. ”We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we’ve raised throughout the year.”
If you don’t care how this affects businesses, you should. Some 15 million people in this country don’t have jobs — and another 12 million work part-time but want full-time positions.
If America‘s major employers are hit with huge, government-mandated cost increases during an economic downturn, do you really think they’ll hire more when the economy starts growing on its own again? Of course not.
Despite this, the White House predicts its plan will ”cut costs” for businesses. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even makes the bizarre prediction that passage of health reform will lead to 400,000 new jobs ”immediately,” and millions more down the road.
Such claims don’t hold water because health reform includes $569.2 billion in new taxes, at last count 160 new bureaucracies and regulations, and 16,500 new IRS agents to collect all those taxes. Tax hits on businesses and industries include:
• $52 billion on companies that do not provide what the government deems ”acceptable” or ”affordable” insurance for workers.
• $60.1 billion on health insurers.
• $27 billion on drugmakers and importers.
• $20 billion on makers and importers of medical devices.
• $2.7 billion on the tanning industry.
And of course the companies themselves don’t pay. You do — both as a consumer, through higher prices, and as an employee, through lower wages.
As the Tax Policy Center, a center-liberal think tank, noted recently, ”Economists generally believe that the burden of payroll taxes is borne by workers in the form of lower wages, regardless of whether the tax is levied on the employer or employee.”
But that’s not the end of it.
A new Medicare tax on capital gains, dividends and other investment income has been raised from 2.9% to 3.8%. Supposedly, this is a tax on the ”wealthy,” those with $200,000 or more in income. It’s really a tax on small business, entrepreneurs and investors.
This provision will push the top cap-gains rate from 15% to almost 24%, while the dividend rate will rise from 35% to 43.4%.
This amounts a big new tax on the very people who are most likely to own or start a new business and hire workers. Health reform will tax large numbers of job creators out of business — and no one in the White House seems to know, or even care.
But it will have an enormous impact. As a result of the Obama-Care taxes on successful individuals and companies, investment in new companies will slow, and old companies will face a higher cost of capital. New jobs will be created offshore in places such India and China.
Economist Steve Entin of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation estimated the Medicare tax would reduce GDP by 1.3%, capital formation by 3.4% and after-tax incomes of those who don’t pay the tax directly by 1.2%.
And those estimates came when the tax was ”only” 2.9% — not the 3.8% it is in the current bill. So the economic losses would in fact be even larger than Entin estimated.
Because of these taxes and other faults in the plan, a group of 130 economists last Thursday sent President Obama a letter imploring him not to sign the bill, saying that it would be a job-killer.
”In our view,” the economists wrote, ”the health care bill contains a number of provisions that will eliminate jobs, reduce hours and wages, and limit future job creation.”
Health reform’s taxes and huge new costs will lead to semi-permanent stagnation in the U.S. economy, marked by higher unemployment and lower standards of living.
Is this how Americans see their future? Based on the Tea Party movement and growing anger at the government for seizing control of the economy’s high ground, we doubt it.
The only real question is, are the White House and Congress listening?
Health Reform: Not since the heyday of Bill Clinton have we had a leader play so fast and loose with the facts as President Obama. And as the health care debate reaches a crescendo, he’s been especially reckless.
Tired of waiting for the major media to take note, here’s a small sampling of whoppers we took from the president’s speeches last week in Ohio and Virginia, plus his interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier:
• ”We have incorporated the best ideas from Democrats and from Republicans.” Far from it. Some of the biggest omissions include tort reform, health savings accounts, portable insurance, expanding consumer access to plans across state lines and posting provider prices for services so patients can shop around.
Republicans were almost completely shut out from the process and at the early stages last summer, were not even permitted to read the bill. In an atmosphere like this, it’s little wonder the bill isn’t drawing a single vote of support from Republicans of either house. It’s fully a creature of the Democratic Party.
• (”This is not a) government takeover of health care.” How is it that government can dictate to private insurance companies what they can offer, to whom, under what circumstances and at what prices, and yet still not own it? Every basic business decision a private company can make has effectively been expropriated.
Even as Obama denied his health care plan was a government takeover, his vice president, Joe Biden, laid out the real deal: ”You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.” We’ll take him at his word.
• ”If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” That’s if your doctor chooses to remain in the profession. Unfortunately, our own IBD/TIPP Poll found that up to 45% would consider quitting if they’re going to be dictated to by unaccountable bureaucrats who couldn’t get into medical school.
Price controls will slash doctor salaries and raise workloads, mandating that doctors make up for losses with volume. Bureaucrats will crack the whip on costs by lowering payments and penalizing doctors who refer patients to specialists. All this, and zero tort reform relief,will drive many doctors out of the profession just as 32 million new patients enter the market.
• ”Our proposal is paid for … our cost-cutting measures would reduce most people’s premiums and bring down our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades.” Government programs always cost more than projected. Medicare, which has $86 trillion in unfunded liabilities, was supposed to cost $10 billion within 25 years of its implementation. It actually cost $107 billion.
The real cost of the Democrats’ reform plan, according to the Cato Institute, which isn’t handcuffed in its estimates like the Congressional Budget Office, is $2.5 trillionover the first decade.
• ”If this vote fails, then insurance companies will continue to run amok.” They’re not exactly wildcatting as it is. Health plan providers boast a profit margin of 3.4% — placing them 88th of 215 industries in Morningstar rankings. More than 2,000 state mandates dictate what coverages they provide.
• ”By the time the vote has taken place … you’ll know what’s in it because it’s going to be posted and everybody’s going to be able to evaluate it on the merits.” The final bill wouldn’t available to the public until Saturday morning, the day before the vote, congressional sources told us Friday. So in fact, nobody would have time to digest the 2,500-page leviathan.
• ”We’re not transforming one-sixth of the economy in one fell swoop.” Yes, Obama wants to take over the health care sector, but in pieces. In 2007, he said that ”economically it is better for us to start getting a system in place, a universal health care system, signed into law by the end of my first term as president.” Canada, he noted, ”did not start off immediately with a single-payer system, they had a similar transition step.” He’s been on record since at least 2003 as a ”proponent of single-payer, universal health care.”
• ”(This will be) the largest middle-class tax cut in the history of the country.” Tax cut? New taxes on prescription drug sales, medical devices, tanning services and an annual tax on health insurers for being health insurers will all end up on middle-class shoulders.
Then for families earning $250,000 there are taxes of 0.9% for hospital insurance, 2.9% on ”unearned income,” plus a tax on high-premium policies. The ”middle-class tax cut,” in the president’s misleading words, amounts to ”tax credits to help you afford” the more expensive insurance of the new (also misleadingly named) ”competitive marketplace.”
• ”$3,000 your employer doesn’t have to pay … maybe she can afford to give you a raise.” Premiums will not go down, but way, way up. The Associated Press last week found that $3,000 to misrepresent a Business Roundtable analysis last year that ”didn’t consider specific legislation.”
Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation told the AP ”it would be miraculous” if premiums went down under the legislation set to be passed. Using the HIS/Global Insight U.S. Macroeconomic model, a Heritage Foundation analysis found that with the new government-regulated exchanges ”crowding out the employer-sponsored market,” there will be ”an overall increase in the absolute amount of health spending on premiums.”
• ”Small business owners … can purchase more affordable coverage in a competitive marketplace.” In fact, small businesses will be slapped with new taxes — including a penalty if they don’t provide the level of health coverage Washington dictates. As owners of modest-sized firms cope with the new burdens, their employees may find themselves with substantially reduced coverage — or with pink slips.
As to the promised financial assistance for new employer mandates, it remains unknown what ”small business” will mean under ObamaCare. Will the definition apply only to micro-businesses of a couple dozen workers?
• (The reform legislation is) ”about the character of our country.” Let’s hope not. Never in American history have politicians sunk to lower depths than in the push to thrust this massive expansion of government down an unwilling America‘s throat.
From the unconstitutional ”Slaughter solution” that would pass it without a vote of the people’s representatives, to the taxpayer-funded bribery of the ”Cornhusker kickback” and ”Louisiana Purchase,” to the pretense of passing it as a budget item bypassing Senate filibusters, Democratic leaders have shown they will stop at nothing to set us on the road to European socialized medicine.
Obamacare is an historic moment – like the Black Plague
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The government takeover of health care will go down in history as the worst piece of legislation to emerge from a Congress held in general disdain by the American people. The only bipartisanship on the health bill was in the opposition.
Usually autopsies are reserved for after the patient has died, but in this case it is useful to get ahead of the matter. The malformed health legislation is not the only reason Democrats are facing political extinction in November, but it is one of the most dramatic. The legislative process in this country has never been so unseemly. Arm twisting, backroom deals, special privileges and potentially criminal ”government jobs for votes” agreements became a normal way of doing business. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fixated on the mantra that the Democrats’ health plan is ”historic,” but so was the Black Plague.
President Obama went to Capitol Hill on Saturday to give a final pep talk to Democrats, where he absurdly called his socialist health care measure ”one of the biggest deficit reduction measures in history.” This contradicts the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who says his staff currently has no idea what the impact of the plan is ”due to the complexity of the legislation.” Democrats have been hoodwinked into believing they won’t pay a political price for their actions, but they will soon discover they miscalculated.
The new system will suffer a tsunami of bad publicity when states sue the federal government over unfunded mandates,when the IRS begins enforcing the aspects of the bill that voters never knew existed, when small businesses start firing employees because they cannot afford the higher costs of the new system, when new and unforeseen costs blow out the already record federal budget deficit, and when seniors begin to feel the impact of Medicare cuts. All of this is what Mr. Obama euphemistically calls ”bending the curve” but which seniors will find out is better termed ”denial of care.” Whether the formal ”death panels” will convene before the November elections is still to be determined.
Many members of Congress probably don’t know exactly what is in the bill. The 2,300 pages of ”fixes” to the Senate bill presented last week were only a draft, and no member can be certain what has been slipped in. A frantic Democratic Party memo sent out Thursday instructed members — twice, in italics — not to ”get into a discussion of details of the [Congressional Budget Office] scores and the textual narrative” with the bill’s opponents. But the devil was in those details. Mrs. Pelosi’s offhand statement that members would learn what was in the bill after it was passed should have been a warning.
The majority party was even having problems over the weekend determining if they could vote to amend a law before it was signed by the president. It is a sad day for America when senior members of Congress either dont understand the Constitution or no longer think it applies.
Democrats in Congress refuse to believe the contempt with which the American people hold them. Gallup shows congressional approval ratings in the teens and headed downward. Gallup also found that ”more Americans believe the new legislation will make things worse rather than better for the U.S. as a whole, as well as for them personally.”
Democrats are in much worse shape than in 1994 when they lost power, and the opposition is far more energized. Once voters have a chance to tell the most irresponsible government in American history that enough is enough, the Democrats’ brief reign will expire, and be deemed death by suicide.
The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) of the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Key Democrat and impeached judge Rep. Alcee Hastings said this during a House Rules Meeting today (March 20) in defense of the Democrats’ health care approach:
“I wish that I had been there when Thomas Edison made the remark that I think applies here: ”There ain’t no rules around here, we’re trying to accomplish something.” And therefore, when the deal goes down, all this talk about rules, we make them up as we go along.
It should be noted that in 1981, Hastings was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribein exchange for a lenient sentence. Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury becoming only the sixth federal judge in the history of the United Statesto be removed from office by the Senate.
Michael Ramirez (Click on the cartoons and they get bigger):
UD/RK Samhälls Debatt 
