In direct response to the irresponsible and profligate spending by both Republicans and Democrats, three Republican politicians have proposed a Spending Limit Amendment. This would serve to rein in and constrain such runaway spending whether it is by the President or Congress.
Given our financially dire present situation and an angry America as evidenced by the ascendancy of the Tea Party, it may just stand a chance.
Tea Party Amendment
Investors Business Daily 03/03/2010
Fiscal Crisis: Tea Partyers have made it clear they don't trust politicians — Democrat or Republican. Their historic uprising may now have a surefire way to stop politicians from spending us into the abyss.
In what promises to be a consequential election year, Republican leaders are eager to get the masses who make up the Tea Party movement on their side. But Tea Partyers remember that the GOP Congress and GOP president themselves spent way too much — even expanding the fiscally doomed Medicare entitlement program. Some Tea Party leaders even accuse Republican spendthrifts of practicing socialism.
GOP Reps. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Mike Pence of Indiana and John Campbell of California may have just hit on a way of focusing the energy of a movement that's been accused by Democrats such as former Senate aide and Forbes columnist Dan Gerstein of being "incoherent, indiscriminate" and "all over the place" in its complaints.
The three have proposed a Spending Limit Amendment to the Constitution that would restrain the federal government to the average expenditures of the post-World War II era — 20% of the U.S. economy. It would take a declaration of war or a two-thirds vote by Congress to waive the spending constraints.
Tea Partyers will no doubt be impressed by the fact that the idea comes from no less than Thomas Jefferson. In 1798, the Declaration's author wrote: "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government."
There really is no credible argument against the idea. In common-sense fashion, the constraint would be suspended during a declared war, and any other real emergency would surely be recognized as such by two-thirds of lawmakers.
Other attempts to save Americans from the drunken sailors they send to Washington have failed. The automatic cuts of the Gramm-Rudman "sequester" of the 1980s worked, but the Supreme Court judged much of the law to be an unconstitutional restriction on presidential powers, and Congress defanged it. Gramm-Rudman's successor, Paygo, didn't use fixed targets, and expired in 2002. The line-item veto was famously ruled unconstitutional by the high court.
The Hensarling-Pence-Campbell Spending Limit Amendment is actually preferable to the line-item veto because it doesn't discriminate between big-spending Congresses and profligate presidents. It snaps the public purse closed on every Washington politician's fingers.
The SLA couldn't come at a more opportune time. The president and Congress want to add to our current $12 trillion in national debt a $2-trillion-plus big government health overhaul. Medicare, in the meantime, is less than a decade from bankruptcy, Social Security less than three decades away. As the plan points out, "if the SLA is not adopted, all of these programs are doomed on their current auto-pilot glide path as these three entitlement programs alone — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — are set to consume the entirety of the federal budget by 2036."
Investor's Business Daily on Wednesday asked Hensarling and Pence about the difficulties of getting three-quarters of the states to approve an amendment when so many amendment attempts by both sides of the aisle — from equal rights for women to abortion to flag desecration — have failed in recent decades.
"We're not naive," Hensarling said, noting that of about 5,000 proposed amendments only 27 have been ratified. But both men said that based on attending town halls and other venues, they have never seen the American people so incensed about runaway spending. The SLA "might be one of those simple ideas," Pence said, whose time has finally come.
If the Tea Party movement embraces this simple idea, with Thomas Jefferson as the SLA's avatar, there's no telling how big the political tsunami to strike Washington could end up becoming.
Obama and many Congressional Democrats aim to pass government run healthcare no matter what the cost, financially or politically. They are arrogantly and relentlessly pursuing this despite the vehement opposition of a large majority of Americans. In fact, both they and the fifth column news media have added the contemptuous tactics of calling Americans who oppose it dumb, ignorant, and too stupid to understand the complexities of the bill. Of course, they have made many other derogatory claims.
As we have mentioned numerous times, THIS IS NOT TRULY ABOUT HEALTHCARE. Obamacare is a crucial piece in the puzzle that will further co-opt the individual’s rights and transfer it to an all powerful and controlling central government. It is a confiscation by legislation of an additional 16% of our economy which would mean that nearly 50% of it is directly owned and controlled by the government.
Have you noticed how many czars and other officials selected by Obama ardently support communism? This is not by accident. It is part of the overall plan.
The rhetoric of Obama and select Democrats regarding healthcare reform are complete lies. There is no cost savings with this plan. In fact, their claimed costs probably underestimate the total 10 year costs by well in excess of three to four trillion dollars. Look at estimates of other federal programs and check out how they turned out. Most were off by a factor of three to ten times.
Unbelievable!
The following expose by Thomas Sowell eloquently and cogently examines the relevant issues and information regarding government controlled healthcare, truths, facts and political motivations.
Other Nations' Health Systems Are Overlooked
By Thomas Sowell 03/03/2010
What is most like Alice in Wonderland in medical care reform is the fact that it is being discussed in the abstract, as if there are not already government-run medical care systems in this country and elsewhere.
Yet there seems to be remarkably little interest in examining how government-run medical care actually turns out — medically and financially — whether in Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration hospitals in this country, or in government-run medical systems in other countries.
We are repeatedly being told that we need to have a government-controlled medical care system because other countries have it — as if our policies on something as serious as medical care should be based on the principle of monkey see, monkey do.
By all means look at other countries, but not just to see what to imitate. See how it actually turns out. Yet there seems to be an amazing lack of interest in examining what government-controlled medical care produces.
While our so-called health care "summit" last week was going on, British newspapers were carrying exposes of terrible, and often deadly, conditions in British hospitals under that country's National Health Service. But this has not become part of our debate on what to expect from government-controlled medical care.
Such scandals are an old story under the National Health Service in Britain, one repeatedly producing fresh scandals that their newspapers carry but ours ignore.
In addition to a whole series of National Health Service scandals in Britain over the years, the government-run medical system in Britain has far less high-tech medical equipment than there is in the United States. Neither in Britain and Canada nor in other countries with government-run medical care systems can people get to see doctors, especially surgeons, in as short a time as in the United States.
It is not uncommon for patients in those countries to have to wait for months before getting operations that Americans get within weeks, or even days, after being diagnosed with a condition that requires surgery. You can always "bring down the cost of medical care" by having a lower level of quality or availability.
But again, you may never learn any of this by following most of the American mainstream media. It is not that they don't make comparisons between medical care in different countries. But they tend to feature news that will promote government-controlled care.
One of the statistics they spin endlessly is that life expectancy in some countries with government-controlled medical care is higher than in the United States. What they don't tell you is that, in some of these countries, all the infants that die are not included in infant mortality statistics, as they are in the United States.
More important, both political and media supporters of government-controlled medical care consistently confuse medical care with health care.
Much, if not most, of health care depends on what individuals do in the way they live their own lives — including eating habits, alcohol intake, exercise, narcotics and homicide. A study some years ago found that Mormons live a decade longer than other Americans. But nobody believes that Mormons' doctors are that much better than other doctors. When you don't do a lot of things that shorten your life, you live longer. That is not rocket science.
Americans tend to have higher rates of obesity, narcotics use and homicide than people in some other countries. And there is not much that doctors can do about that.
If those who make international comparisons were serious, instead of clever, they would compare the things that medical science can have a great effect on — cancer survival rates, for example. Americans have some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, and for some particular cancers, the very highest.
When you can get to see a doctor faster, and get treatments under way without waiting for months while the cancer grows and spreads, you have a better chance of surviving. That, too, is not rocket science.
But it is also something that you are not likely to see featured in most of the media, where people are promoting their own pet notions and agendas, instead of giving you the facts on which you can make up your own mind.
The same Democratic leaders who were vehemently opposing the possible usage of reconciliation by Senate Republicans in 2005 are singing an antithetical tune now. Back then, they averred that such a maneuver amounted to a destruction of the institution of the Senate, loss of rights and freedoms and, in essence, an apocalyptic event. You would never know it now given their unrelenting support to this arcane rule now that they have power and are trying to pass healthcare reform legislation involving a government take over and abridgement of our freedom and rights stealing,.
Dems in ‘05 51 Vote ‘Nuclear Option’ Is ‘Arrogant’ Power Grab Against the Founders’ Intent
We can better appreciate the attitudes, bellicosity and tactics of the Democratic Party and more specifically, both Chambers of Congress, by understanding the predominant occupation of the Senators and Representatives.
Lawyers.
Their legal training, mind set and approaches foster more government, control, regulations and lawsuits and do much to restrain our freedoms and rights. The following was written almost 2 years ago and is still quite relevant.
The Lawyers' Party
By Bruce Walker
The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers' Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer and so is his wife Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate.) Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers. Newt Gingrich was a history professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office thirty-one years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work. The Democratic Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history like Gingrich.
The Lawyers' Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And so we have seen the procession of official enemies in the eyes of the Lawyers' Party grow. Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.
This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.
Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all consuming. Some Americans become "adverse parties" of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class action suit. We are citizens of a republic which promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws, we are contorted by judicial decisions, we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to use, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
We cannot expect the Lawyers' Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America. Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.
Quite consistent with their arrogant and imperious rhetoric, it appears that Obama and Pelosi will pursue the “nuclear option” in attempting to pass Obamacare. This, of course, is in direct opposition to the preferences of the majority of Americans and lucidly illustrates that this is not truly about healthcare as they ostensibly claim. It is about the government repealing the rights and freedoms of the individual American to make their own decisions about healthcare and instead granting full control to the Federal government. It is an ideological power play that will be a suicide mission if they go forth with their plans.
Voters should remember this come Election Day and dethrone all these Democrats.
White House: Simple up-or-down vote on health care
By Jim Kuhnhenn Mar 1, 2010
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House called for a "simple up-or-down" vote on health care legislation Sunday as Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Barack Obama's chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers.
In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama's intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.
Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic proposals. Without GOP support, Obama's only chance of emerging with a policy and political victory is to bypass the bipartisanship he promoted during his televised seven-hour health care summit Thursday.
"We're not talking about changing any rules here," DeParle said. "All the president's talking about is: Do we need to address this problem and does it make sense to have a simple, up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to fix these problems?"
DeParle was optimistic that the president would have the votes to pass the massive bill. But none of legislation's advocates who spoke on Sunday indicated that those votes were in hand.
"I think we will get to that point where we will have the votes," predicted Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. "I believe that we will pass health care reform this spring."
In a sober call to arms, Pelosi said lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public. "We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."
Pelosi said it took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."
It's unclear whether Pelosi's remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmakers unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.
Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.
Her comments seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall - maybe a lot.
They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help.
"Time is up," she said. "We really have to go forth."
Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking Republican leader in the House, made it clear Republicans see a Democrats-only bill as an election-year issue.
"If Speaker Pelosi rams through this bill, through the House ... they will lose their majority in Congress in November," he said.
The White House is redoubling efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December with 60 votes. Every Republican voted against that bill. A Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts in January, however, left Democrats one vote shy of the number necessary to overcome GOP filibusters.
As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters.
Exactly what the legislation would look like remained a matter of negotiation within Democratic ranks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, "is working with his caucus, the White House and the House leadership on strategy and next steps," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Sunday.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky renewed his party's demand that Obama and the Democrats start over and write a bipartisan health care bill. He said that while the reconciliation process has been used to pass legislation in the past, it should not apply to health care legislation.
"There are a number of other Republicans who do not think something of this magnitude ought to be jammed down the throats of a public that doesn't want it through this kind of device," McConnell said.
Pelosi said that "in a matter of days" Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.
"When we have a bill," she said, "you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell."
At that point, added House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, top Democrats will make their pitch to their members.
"Within the next couple of weeks we're going to have a specific proposal and start counting votes to see whether or not those proposals could pass," he said.
Pelosi appeared on ABC's "This Week" and CNN's "State of the Union." DeParle and Cantor were on NBC's "Meet the Press," Hoyer was on CBS'"Face the Nation," while Menendez appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and McConnell spoke on CNN.
---
Associated Press writer Charles Babington contributed to this article.
Americans don’t need a government controlled, bureaucratic, bloated, corrupt, inherently inefficient and unnecessarily costly healthcare system. And that’s not even considering Obamacare. There are many relatively simple solutions that can make the whole system less costly, complex and more efficient for everyone.
The only problem is that these possibilities may remove some of the potential to promulgate corrupt deals and legislation by Obama and Congress.
A Modest And Effective Health Reform
By Benjamin Zycher
Notwithstanding the election outcome in Massachusetts last month, efforts inside the Beltway to "reform" the health insurance system — that is, to centralize the rules and outcomes of health coverage — will continue, and still may prove successful if the drumbeat for "compromise" with fatally flawed ideas is heeded.
This centralization would be a disaster because government does not have patients. It has interest groups, an eternal truth that casts a shadow long and dark in the context of a federal takeover of the health insurance market.
Decentralization — a reduction in the role of government — is the only path that can lead toward reduced cost pressures and increased choices for patients with vastly heterogeneous needs and preferences.
One straightforward reform that could be adopted quickly is the implementation of a nationally available "entrepreneurs" health coverage policy freed from the many benefit mandates imposed upon the health insurance market.
State governments, responsible for regulating health insurers, for years have required health insurance policies to cover particular services and categories of providers. This means that individuals must pay for such mandated coverage even if they otherwise might choose not to do so.
The average state imposes about 35 such mandates, and a conservative estimate of the marginal cost of each is about 0.3% of premiums. Premiums thus are forced up by about $1,294 per year in the average state for a group (employer-based) family policy, ranging from $260 per year in Idaho, the state with the fewest mandates (8), to $2,486 per year in Rhode Island, the state with the most mandates (62).
The specifics of coverage policies freed from such mandates would be determined by competition in the market. But premiums incontrovertibly would fall.
A new study from the Pacific Research Institute shows that these policies would enroll about 13.6 million individuals now covered by private insurance, and, very conservatively, about 3.2 million of those now uninsured. This represents about 8% of those insured privately or uninsured for the U.S. as a whole, ranging from about 1.6% for Idaho to about 11.9% for Rhode Island.
By eliminating the many benefit and provider mandates now imposed by state laws, entrepreneurs' coverage would reduce the degree to which consumers treat health insurance as a way to shift known costs onto others, rather than as a way to pool the risks of future adverse health events.
This would be an important step toward restoring health insurance as protection against catastrophic events rather than prepayment for anticipated medical services, and so would strengthen incentives to economize on the use of health care resources.
More generally, such a reform would be driven by market forces — the preferences of consumers and the costs faced by insurers — and so would decentralize and depoliticize the system.
Because representative democracy is the art of wealth redistribution, and because resources are limited always and everywhere even (or especially) for the federal government, a system of health coverage centralized in the Beltway inexorably would be transformed into a massive tug-of-war among groups seeking both increased allocations for the treatments in which they are particularly interested, and a shift of costs onto others.
Merely consider the tempest over breast mammograms that erupted late last year. Mammograms, of course, are hardly the only medical service for which there is a constituency, and enactment of centralized "reform" legislation would be the beginning rather than the end of such interest-group competition.
Thus would insurance coverage — and therefore the delivery — of various medical procedures increasingly come to be politicized over time.
A new public policy allowing individuals and groups to escape the constraints imposed by state benefit mandates would have the opposite effect, and thus would represent real reform.
Other important reforms include:
• Elimination of the tax preference that now favors coverage purchased in the group (employer) market over the non-group market.
• A rollback of the rules and tax preferences that induce groups and individuals to purchase expensive coverage with low deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket maximums.
• An end to the regulatory restrictions that prevent interstate competition in health insurance.
In greater and lesser degrees, such sensible reforms would decentralize decision-making and unleash the competitive processes that offer consumers expanded choice among myriad alternative insurance contracts, thus improving the efficiency of resource use in the health care sector, and restoring the doctor-patient relationship as the final authority with respect to medical decisions.
• Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.
The feeding frenzy by the Federal government and the news media regarding Toyota illustrates the dangers and threats to rights of “non-preferred” groups and companies that a too powerful, corrupt central government presents. It should serve as a warning for all of us including those who may still support Obamacare and government take-overs of other areas of our economy.
You can be sure if this were a problem with GM or Chrysler vehicles which the government presently owns, we would not be witnessing such a spectacle. In fact, these two companies have had decades of history of woefully inferior and flawed vehicles that have been subject to countless recalls yet Congress rarely besmirched them as they are doing with Toyota right now. During most of this period, Toyota has been the paragon of excellence and a great employer for hundreds of thousands of workers.
This is not to say that Toyota is innocent of charges. They are not. But, the Federal government, now with the Democrats in charge, clearly has a severe conflict of interest and is paying back and going to bat for one of its largest and most powerful constituencies, the labor unions. You see, Toyota has its plants in non-union right to work states, a situation that the labor unions and their leaders abhor.
Congress Puts Toyota On Show Trial
Investors Business Daily 02/23/2010
Commerce: Toyota's leaders are in for nasty star-chamber hearings in Congress, with politicians grandstanding and regulators pointing fingers. It's no way to treat a big employer that contributes so much to our economy.
When Toyota first came to the U.S. in the 1950s and took out TV ads in the 1960s, the Japan-based company was ridiculed. How could its dinky little cars compete with the mighty Big Three automakers for the American market?
But by the 1970s, word got out that Toyota was making a superior energy-efficient product and it won the public over.
That success seems to be why Toyota is being singled out for loud hearings by two congressional panels for its recent recall of nearly 650,000 cars. "While Honda recalled 636,000 models last month and Ford recalled more than 4 million vehicles last year, neither company was subjected to a Congressional Hearing," noted Americans for Tax Reform in a statement.
Small wonder then that a Toyota internal memo declared the current climate in Washington is "not industry friendly."
That's a fact.
The problem is that while beating up Toyota may serve the political aims of some, its real effect will be to kill jobs, corrupt any semblance of impartial regulatory action, discourage foreign investment, and defund cities and towns whose tax bases depend much on Toyota dealers. In short, the show trial will make us all poorer.
For starters, Toyota employs over 200,000 Americans across the spectrum of the auto industry. Parts plants, assembly plants, dealerships and repair shops all owe their existence to Toyota.
Already plants are shutting down and employees are being laid off, beyond all proportion to the recall problem, because of the congressional effort to drag Toyota through the mud.
City governments take in significant revenues from these operations. Don't think they won't feel the impact of these hearings.
Yet there's more than a whiff of Saul Alinsky's community organizing principles in this noisy government campaign against Toyota — "Pick a target, personalize it, freeze it, polarize it."
So now Congressional committees are hauling in Toyota's president Akio Toyoda all the way from Tokyo to testify. It's a sorry spectacle because Toyota has tried to be a good corporate citizen.
Recall that the first complaint against Toyota in the 1970s was that it imported cars to the U.S. instead of built them here.
So, Toyota built plants here, employing some 30,000 U.S. citizens directly. In the process, it also subcontracted to American companies — such as the one that makes the pedals in question now — all to make the "Buy American" crowd happy.
Toyota also bowed down to Jesse Jackson's race-baiting corporate shakedowns, giving him much of the $7.8 billion it set aside for "diversity" to hand out to his favored groups for his programs.
Now with the recent events — including Toyota's president making an unprecedented apology for the recall of 8.5 million vehicles with suspect accelerator pedals, a humiliating loss of face in Asian culture — Toyota officials must be wondering why they even tried.
The effort to take them down continues because of one thing the unions — and the union-friendly Obama administration — can't forgive: Toyota's choice of states for its plants, states with good investment climates and nonunion right-to-work laws.
As U.S. rivals like GM and Chrysler survive on government bailout money and continue to employ inefficient and expensive union labor, and their U.S. government owners try to regain market share for them, what better way than to discredit Toyota out of all proportion to its supposed sins by using Alinsky-style tactics?
Evidence is piling up that this is political.
First, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who has a conflicting dual role as both regulator and owner of rival auto companies, advised Americans not to drive Toyotas.
Now Politico reports that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee is calling for an investigation of Transportation department officials' e-mails. These may show they improperly conferred with insurance agency officials about congressional testimony to cover up for Transportation Department neglect of its regulatory duties.
In an atmosphere like this, why would Toyota want to invest more, hire more or try to please political powers as a good corporate citizen? Or any other company?
As Congress tries to discredit Toyota and destroy its market share out of all proportion to its transgressions, the ultimate effect will be to hurt America's interests most.
We have come to expect as routine, duplicitous politicians who want to “have it both ways” when dealing with different elements of their constituencies. It is a sad commentary but infinitely true. Unfortunately, like an aggressively metastasizing cancer, this wanton lack of integrity and sincerity has increasingly invaded other areas of our culture that had previously been somewhat respected.
Most recently, we have witnessed the global collusion of numerous scientists involved in the Climategate scandal, manufacturing or cherry picking data in order to fraudulently substantiate their flawed, perverted beliefs and ideologies. If their schemes hadn’t been uncovered, it could have cost this country tens of trillions of dollars and strangled our economy and standard of living.
In the past, you might have figured a Nobel Laureate should be worthy of respect, a person who has achieved so much in their field and who, by definition, has made supreme contributions to the world or society.
No more! It has largely become a sham with many of these individuals possessing the same ethics as your white collar criminal though on a more grandiose scale.
To wit: Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Yassar Arafat all receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. And let’s not forget the epitome of corruption and a vacuum of morals, Al (Global Warming) Gore.
There is another member of this pantheon of corrupt and dishonest intellectuals: left wing economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
It is most evident that in the world we live today, we are forced by circumstances to teach our children to be infinitely cynical, trust no one, and that “facts” including “scientific discoveries” may just be fiction. We can’t believe our Government and have witnessed far too much egregious behavior, absence of integrity, and intellectual dishonesty to trust our teachers, scientists, clergy, etc.
Bush's Deficit Bad, Obama's Deficit Good: So Sayeth Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate
By Larry Elder 02/11/2010
Left-wing economist, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hates deficits in tough economic times — when the president of the United States is named George W. Bush.
In a November 2004 interview, Krugman criticized the "enormous" Bush deficit.
"We have a world-class budget deficit," he said, "not just as in absolute terms, of course — it's the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world — but it's a budget deficit that, as a share of GDP, is right up there."
The deficit in fiscal 2004 was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product.
Back then, a disapproving Krugman called the deficit "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country. ... The only time postwar that the United States has had anything like these deficits is the middle Reagan years, and that was with unemployment close to 10%."
Take away the Social Security surplus spent by the government, he said, and "we're running at a deficit of more than 6% of GDP, and that is unprecedented."
He considered the Bush tax cuts irresponsible and a major contributor — along with two wars — to the deficit. But he also warned of the growing cost of autopilot entitlements:
"We have the huge bulge in the population that starts to collect benefits. ... If there isn't a clear path towards fiscal sanity well before (the next decade), then I think the financial markets are going to say, 'Well, gee, where is this going?'"
Three months earlier, Krugman had said, "Here we are more than 2 1/2 years after the official end of the recession, and we're still well below, of course, pre-Bush employment."
In October 2004, unemployment was 5.5% and continued to slowly decline. At the time, Krugman described the economy as "weak," with "job creation ... essentially nonexistent."
How bad would it get? If we don't get our "financial house in order," he said, "I think we're looking for a collapse of confidence some time in the not-too-distant future."
Fast-forward to 2010.
The projected deficit for fiscal year 2010 is over $1.5 trillion, or more than 10% of GDP. This sets a post-WWII record in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of GDP. And if the Obama administration's optimistic projections of economic growth fall short, things will get much worse.
So what does Krugman say now? We must guard against "deficit hysteria." In "Fiscal Scare Tactics," his recent column, Krugman writes:
"These days it's hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we're told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world.
"These claims generally aren't stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they're reported as if they were facts, plain and simple."
He continues: "And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction."
Krugman believes Bush lied us into the Iraq War. Just as people unreasonably feared Saddam Hussein, they now have an unwarranted fear of today's deficit.
Questions:
• Didn't Krugman, less than six years ago, call the deficit "enormous"?
• Wouldn't he, therefore, consider a $1.5 trillion deficit at 10% of GDP mega-normous?
• Didn't he describe the economy with 5.5% unemployment as "weak"? Isn't the current economy, at 9.7% unemployment, even weaker?
• If the 2004 deficit was "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country," wouldn't today's much bigger deficit cause even more heartburn?
Nope. Now a huge deficit is actually a good thing: "The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs."
The deficit "should be bigger"?!
Long term, Krugman says, we've got concerns about revenue and spending. But as for now:
"There's no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade."
In 2004, Krugman warned that without a "clear path towards fiscal sanity" before "the next decade," we faced a "crunch."
Presumably, we now have this "clear path."
Let's review. In 2004, an unhappy Krugman criticized Bush's "weak" economy and "miserable" job creation. Running an "enormous" deficit was a bad thing. Times were awful — "by a large margin" the worst job crash and performance since Herbert Hoover.
Today the deficit is four times as large in an even weaker economy with much higher unemployment. Times are awful. Now, though, the deficit is a good thing and should be even bigger.
Krugman's flip-flop on the deficit demonstrates a modern economic equation. Hatred of Bush + love for Obama = intellectual dishonesty.
The big, centralized government rhetoric of the Democratic Party is eerily reminiscent of that of the old Soviet Union which doesn’t bode well for the country or economy. Adding to the problem is the sinister brainwashing of our children to believe in the virtues of a large, powerful centralized government and denigrate capitalism and free choice.
Inexplicably, those who have the most to lose such as American Jews, are actually the most ardent supporters of these far left ideologies.
Perspectives Of A Soviet Immigrant (No. 6)
By Svetlana Kunin
There was an old Soviet saying: If you need to find food to fill your refrigerator, plug it into the microphone of a party leader giving a speech.
Today in America, if we plug a refrigerator into our leader's teleprompter, I suspect the refrigerator will stop working.
Democratic party leaders speak incessantly of limiting profits and regulating salaries.
It brings back to memory another Soviet line: You pretend you are paying us salaries, and we pretend we are working. If bureaucrats predetermine the value of your work, there is no incentive to be productive. This is the quickest way to kill a dynamic economy.
I never expected to hear this kind of rhetoric in the USA. Today, the American educational machine teaches exactly the same points the Soviets taught.
It idealizes Socialist societies and denigrates America, especially its economic system.
American students are brainwashed to despise economic freedom and to yearn for a big government state.
Freed from their parents' control, but intimidated by the relentlessly negative portrayal of America, young Americans look for politicians to show them the way.
As someone who experienced real government-approved anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, I am amazed by the obliviousness of American Jews, the most fervent supporters of left-wing politics.
They support a party that is obsessed with pitting one group against another, and that incessantly plays on envy and hatred for bankers, rich people, big business and doctors.
They fail to notice that the success of Jews, as well as other minorities, in the sciences, business and arts is directly correlated to their freedom from oppressive, centralized control. American Jews who support big government do not understand what their ancestors escaped from.
Persecutions of Jews throughout history all have one thing in common: a centralized power that manipulates and directs people's anger away from themselves onto an easy target.
No matter how much Jews align themselves with the power structure and work for noble causes, they will remain an easy target.
As they said in the Soviet Union pertaining to Soviet Jews: They don't beat your record; they beat your face — meaning that no matter how much you try to assimilate, no matter how many good deeds you do, the centralized power can direct populist anger toward you and crush you when it suits them.
When the Bolsheviks took power after the 1917 proletarian revolution, their first steps were to take control of the banks and the media.
Of course, it is not fair to compare our current American democratic leaders with the Bolsheviks.
Yes, they both use the same slogans in their speeches.
Yes, they both stir up envy and class warfare to distract from their failures.
Yes, both political movements sought control of the banks as the foundation for their new egalitarian vision.
And yes, they are both opposed to free speech, as was made clear by the reaction of American leftists to the recent
Supreme Court decision.
But you would never find a Czar anywhere in the Soviet government.
• Kunin lived in the Soviet Union until 1980, working as a civil engineer. She is now a retired software developer living in Connecticut.
She is an arrogant, condescending, imperious politician who may serve the interests of the country better as an exercise instructor.
Move over, Richard Simmons!
Obama, Pelosi, Reid and a litany of Democratic politicians as well as a majority of the news media disingenuously claim that when it comes to healthcare, the Republicans are a party of “No”. They maliciously denounce them as obstructionists of Obamacare or any healthcare reform, further but falsely claiming that they have no plan of their own.
These are also the same people who adhere to the belief that the American public is too stupid to understand Obamacare but if they did, they would like it! In fact, Obama has stated that maybe he and Congress have not done a good enough job explaining the legislation to the people.
Hello!!
The American public fully understands the overall effects and implications of this insanely expensive and unaffordable government takeover of the healthcare system and that is precisely why they oppose the bill by at least a two to one ratio.
Up until now, the Republicans have been shut out of the healthcare debate by Pelosi, Reid, et. al. because the Democrats had a supermajority and they could. Despite attempts to share their recommendations and ideas, the Republicans were legislatively thwarted. They do have many concrete suggestions, some which have been implemented either on a limited basis previously or at a state level, that have been shown to be quite cost effective.
Ten GOP Health Ideas for Obama We don't need to study lawsuit reform for one minute longer.
By Newt Gingrich and John C. Goodman
'If you have a better idea, show it to me." That was President Barack Obama's challenge two weeks ago to House Republicans regarding health-care reform. He has since called for a bipartisan forum, not to start over on health reform but to "move forward" on the "best ideas that are out there."
The best ideas out there are not those that were passed by the House and Senate last year, which consist of more spending, more regulations and more bureaucracy. If the president is serious about building a system that delivers more quality choices at lower cost for every American, here's where he should start:
• Make insurance affordable. The current taxation of health insurance is arbitrary and unfair, giving lavish subsidies to some, like those who get Cadillac coverage from their employers, and almost no relief to people who have to buy their own. More equitable tax treatment would lower costs for individuals and families. Many health economists conclude that tax relief for health insurance should be a fixed-dollar amount, independent of the amount of insurance purchased. A step in the right direction would be to give Americans the choice of a generous tax credit or the ability to deduct the value of their health insurance up to a certain amount.
• Make health insurance portable. The first step toward genuine portability—and the best way of solving the problems of pre-existing conditions—is to change federal policy. Employers should be encouraged to provide employees with insurance that travels with them from job to job and in and out of the labor market. Also, individuals should have the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines. When insurers compete for consumers, prices will fall and quality will improve.
• Meet the needs of the chronically ill. Most individuals with chronic diseases want to be in charge of their own care. The mother of an asthmatic child, for example, should have a device at home that measures the child's peak airflow and should be taught when to change his medication, rather than going to the doctor each time.
Having the ability to obtain and manage more health dollars in Health Savings Accounts is a start. A good model for self-management is the Cash and Counseling program for the homebound disabled under Medicaid. Individuals in this program are able to manage their own budgets and hire and fire the people who provide them with custodial services and medical care. Satisfaction rates approach 100%, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
We should also encourage health plans to specialize in managing chronic diseases instead of demanding that every plan must be all things to all people. For example, special-needs plans in Medicare Advantage actively compete to enroll and cover the sickest Medicare beneficiaries, and stay in business by meeting their needs. This is the alternative to forcing insurers to take high-cost patients for cut-rate premiums, which guarantees that these patients will be unwanted.
• Allow doctors and patients to control costs. Doctors and patients are currently trapped by government-imposed payment rates. Under Medicare, doctors are not paid if they communicate with their patients by phone or e-mail. Medicare pays by task—there is a list of about 7,500—but doctors do not get paid to advise patients on how to lower their drug costs or how to comparison shop on the Web. In short, they get paid when people are sick, not to keep them healthy.
So long as total cost to the government does not rise and quality of care does not suffer, doctors should have the freedom to repackage and reprice their services. And payment should take into account the quality of the care that is delivered. Once physicians are liberated under Medicare, private insurers will follow.
• Don't cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong. There is no question that Medicare is on an unsustainable course; the government has promised far more than it can deliver. But this problem will not be solved by cutting Medicare in order to create new unfunded liabilities for young people.
• Protect early retirees. More than 80% of the 78 million baby boomers will likely retire before they become eligible for Medicare. This is often the most difficult time for individuals and families to find affordable insurance. A viable bridge to Medicare can be built by allowing employers to obtain individually owned insurance for their retirees at group rates; allowing them to deposit some or all of the premium amount for post-retirement insurance into a retiree's Health Savings Account; and giving employers and younger employees the ability to save tax-free for post-retirement health.
• Inform consumers. Patients need to have clear, reliable data about cost and quality before they make decisions about their care. But finding such information is virtually impossible. Sources like Medicare claims data (stripped of patient information) can help consumers answer important questions about their care. Government data—paid for by the taxpayers—can answer these questions and should be made public.
• Eliminate junk lawsuits. Last year the president pledged to consider civil justice reform. We do not need to study or test medical malpractice any longer: The current system is broken. States across the country—Texas in particular—have already implemented key reforms including liability protection for using health information technology or following clinical standards of care; caps on non-economic damages; loser pays laws; and new alternative dispute resolution where patients get compensated for unexpected, adverse medical outcomes without lawyers, courtrooms, judges and juries.
• Stop health-care fraud. Every year up to $120 billion is stolen by criminals who defraud public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, according to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. We can help prevent this by using responsible approaches such as enhanced coordination of benefits, third-party liability verification, and electronic payment.
• Make medical breakthroughs accessible to patients. Breakthrough drugs, innovative devices and new therapies to treat rare, complex diseases as well as chronic conditions should be sped to the market. We can do this by cutting red tape before and during review by the Food and Drug Administration and by deploying information technology to monitor the quality of drugs and devices once they reach the marketplace.
The solutions presented here can be the foundation for a patient-centered system. Let's hope the president has the courage to embrace them.
Mr. Gingrich is former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and founder of the Center for Health Transformation. Mr. Goodman is president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Her Royal Highness, Nancy Pelosi, continues to legislate like a haughty, contemptuous monarch who is dismissive of the wishes of her subjects. The American public has demonstrated many times and ways in no uncertain terms and by a 2 to 1 margin that it vehemently opposes Obamacare and government takeover of our healthcare system. We thought the previously unthinkable, odds defying upset win of Republican Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts over the Democratic challenger for the seat held by the Kennedy family for over 50 years was the final nail in the coffin. So did virtually everyone else.
Pelosi doesn’t seem to think so. Her attitude can be summed up by:
Pelosi Makes Her Case: A Majority Is 51 Votes
By Steven T. Dennis Feb. 10, 2010
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pinning the blame on Republicans for a lack of bipartisanship in Congress and plans to bypass them if they continue to oppose efforts to enact near-universal health care.
“A constitutional majority is 51 votes,” Pelosi said in an interview Tuesday with Roll Call. “If in fact the Republicans are going to say nothing can be done except by 60 percent, then maybe we all should be elected with 60 percent. It isn’t legitimate in terms of passing legislation.”
Pelosi has been wary of publicly giving advice to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or President Barack Obama, but it’s no secret that House Democrats have been increasingly frustrated at the dysfunction on the opposite side of the building.
“There is some unease when you talk about, well, what’s happening to the initiatives to help the American people?” Pelosi said. “Is there never anything that can be done without 60 votes?”
The shattering of the 60-vote Democratic Senate supermajority with the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has revived talk among Democrats of bypassing filibusters, and Pelosi has forcefully argued for doing just that to complete work on the party’s stalled health care package.
The Speaker, who oversaw her chamber’s passage of a $1.2 trillion health care bill last fall, has repeatedly balked at White House suggestions following Brown’s election that the House merely accept the Senate’s version of the overhaul and has been pushing the Senate to adopt a host of changes through a separate, filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill.
In her interview with Roll Call, Pelosi stopped short of saying the filibuster should be done away with altogether, but she used some of her bluntest language yet to defend the use of reconciliation as something that has been used with regularity by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.
“We have set the stage for that. It’s important for us to remind the American people of the inconsistency that the Republicans have in saying this is unusual. No, five times President Bush used it. ... This is what the Republicans did to pass their bills, their tax cuts for the rich,” Pelosi said.
“It’s up to us to make sure the public knows that this is not extraordinary. And the public knows that a constitutional majority is 51. It would be a reflection on us if we could not convince people that this is not an unusual place to go.”
And Pelosi complained about the never-ending filibusters by Senate Republicans going far beyond the health care debate.
“Yes, the filibuster has its place, it may even have its place in health care — it’s a very big issue. But does it have its place on every appointment and every piece of legislation? We have over 200 bills over there that haven’t been taken up. Most of them, 70 percent of them, were passed with over 50 Republican votes in the House. ...
“We haven’t gotten as much done as we should and one of those reasons is because of what the Republicans are doing. ...
The American people have to make a judgment about the conduct of the Republicans in insisting on that on every vote, and the Democrats in the Senate have to deal with the challenge that they have.”
She declined to criticize Obama, who many rank-and-file House Democrats have complained hasn’t pushed the Senate hard enough during the health care debate.
“We want a bill,” she said. “Without the president’s leadership we would not be as close as we are. We are in the red zone.
“This is very doable. ...
“Our responsibility is to be ready for compromise, to find common ground so we can move forward with health care, and I think that we will.”
Pelosi also said she is open to Republicans presenting new ideas at the Feb. 25 bipartisan health care summit called for by Obama, but she said she’s already seen the Republican health care alternative offered on the House floor and said it only provided insurance for an additional 3 million people instead of the more than 30 million in the Democratic bill.
Pelosi also defended her party’s record on bipartisanship, saying Democrats accepted 15 Republican amendments to the House health care bill.
“Whatever the good idea comes from if it works for the American people, we are receptive to that,” she said. But she said Democrats did not plan to “throw our people to the wolves when it came to their health.”
Beyond health care reform, however, Pelosi said Democrats have shown they know how to work across the aisle. For instance, she said it was Democrats who helped President George W. Bush get some of his top priorities done including an energy package, a stimulus tax credit bill and the Trouble Asset Relief Program.
“This whole thing of bipartisanship is sort of a new thing for [Republicans], because they weren’t even for their own president on the TARP. A minority of the minority voted for that,” she said.
Still, Pelosi was confident Democrats and Republicans will align on a jobs package.
“It’s easier to find common ground because everybody wants to create jobs,” Pelosi said. “Clearly everybody does not want to have, believe that we should have universal access to quality health care for all Americans,” she said.
The unabated arrogance and contemptuousness that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid display toward the American people is unparalleled. They are completely dismissive of the public's negative sentiments regarding Obamanocare and are scheming to pass it come hell or high water. This disdainful attitude was clearly displayed by Obama during his State of the Union address.
In the following video, there is a short clip of Nancy Pelosi voicing her plan to pass the bill by whatever means possible.
Pelosi Says She’ll 'Poll Vault' Obamacare Through Congress
It may seem tiring and redundant to continue to hear and read about the global warming fraud but in the end if we don’t fight hard enough to figuratively “bury” the issue, the all too willing corrupt and ideological perverted Congressional Democrats and Obama will “bury” us instead with massive taxation and severe restrictions of our choices and activities at all levels. A majority of Americans recognize this political and scientific scam for what it is … and there is surely an over abundance of incriminating evidence.
The following outlines some additional and important revelations regarding this malfeasance.
Climate Flimflam Flaming Out
Investors Business Daily 01/25/2010
Environment: The United Nations makes a claim that can't be supported by science, and U.S. researchers ignore temperature data from frigid regions. The crack-up of the global warming fraud is picking up speed.
With so much of the science behind climate change coming under attack, especially among scientists, it's been a harsh winter for the global warming crowd:
• In late November, thousands of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were leaked to the public. The evidence strongly suggests that researchers colluded to prove the global warming scientific "consensus" by rigging, burying and destroying data that ran counter to their political agenda.
• Last week, the public learned that claims made by the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change were not based on science, but on speculation. Specifically, the IPCC's 2007 report said the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 due to man-made global warming.
The claim, used at the U.N. Copenhagen climate change conference in cold and snowy December to rush through a restrictive greenhouse-gas-emissions treaty, was not based on a scientific study. It was based on a telephone call that a reporter had with a scientist who was speculating.
The IPCC has withdrawn the claim. Murari Lal, the scientist who included the contention in the U.N. report, admitted that he knew it wasn't based on peer-reviewed scientific research.
• Also in the last week, it was revealed that U.S. researchers working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are excluding temperature data from cold regions for a database used by the U.N. in its global warming scare campaign.
Canwest News Service, a Canadian agency that also owns a chain of newspapers, reported Friday, "In the 1970s, nearly 600 Canadian weather stations fed surface temperature readings into a global database assembled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Today, NOAA only collects data from 35 stations across Canada.
"Worse, only one station — at Eureka on Ellesmere Island — is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.
"The Canadian government, meanwhile, operates 1,400 surface weather stations across the country, and more than 100 above the Arctic Circle, according to Environment Canada."
Canwest also reports that Americans Joseph D'Aleo, a meteorologist, and E. Michael Smith, a computer programmer, say that the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has "reduced the total number of Canadian weather stations in the database" and has "cherry-picked" the stations.
The NASA agency uses data from "sites in relatively warmer places, including more southerly locations, or sites closer to airports, cities or the sea — which has a warming effect on winter weather."
In a paper published on the Science and Public Policy Institute Web site, D'Aleo and Smith say the "NOAA ... systematically eliminated 75% of the world's stations with a clear bias toward removing higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.
"The thermometers, in a sense, marched toward the tropics, the sea and to airport tarmacs."
• Then, just last weekend, we find that same 2007 IPCC report included another phony claim: that "the rapidly rising costs" of natural disasters since the 1970s is linked to global warming.
British newspapers reported Sunday that that assertion was neither peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific paper when the IPCC report was issued. When the paper that the claim was based on was published in 2008, its authors said:
"We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."
Now the IPCC says it is "reassessing the evidence."
All threads of fiction unravel eventually, and the deterioration flies out of control as the end nears.
Is this what we are seeing with the contention that man-made greenhouse-gas emissions are causing the planet to overheat?
We can't see into the future, but this myth has taken so many hits from the truth that its survival is in doubt.
It actually isn’t a slow news day. However, we wanted to expose to the voters of America another fine example of the all too common type of politician involved in ruling our country… er, representing us and our interests. Imperious. Arrogant. Condescending. Corrupt. Of course, this doesn’t even cover their intellectual deficits such as incompetence, ignorance, ideological perversions, etc.
We have seen all too many of these despicable politicians in action over the past year such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, John Murtha, Alan Grayson, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Obama’s many czars and Cabinet members – for starters. Many have made it almost a career for life.
We surely don’t want to forget Pete Stark who has a litany of reprehensible tirades, bad behavior and despicable comments and sound bites over his 37 years in the House of Representatives. He is yet another Democrat who champions a Big, Powerful and Regulatory Government that knows what is best for their peon subjects.
Pete Stark Blows Up Over National Debt
And, of course, that classic outburst from the past...
The unadulterated evidence reveals irrefutably that the earth is not in a death spiral of global warming that will destroy humanity and nature. In fact, it appears that over approximately the last ten years there has been a cooling trend. All you need to do is check the trend of worldwide record low temperatures and massive snowfalls including in places which don’t normally experience such events.
This is not to say that man has no effect on the environment which we do. However, the scam being perpetrated in the name of global warming is not based on reality but instead on corrupt and venal motives of individuals, corporations and governments for a multitude of reasons. The most notable face at the forefront of this worldwide fraud is Al Gore who has enriched himself tremendously.
Too many Americans either do not have the perspective to appreciate the freedoms that we have or adhere to a perverted sense of a world utopia (ie. Hollywood liberals) - often after they have benefitted from these very freedoms. Fortunately, as evidenced by the Tea Party movement and the national groundswell of support for recently elected U.S. Senator, Scott Brown, millions of Americans are cognizant of how precious freedom, rights and individuality really are and how ephemeral they can be as evidenced by the proposed and effected changes under the imperious government of the Obama Administration and far left Congressional Democrats.
The following editorial is another prescient editorial written by Svetlana Kunin, a Russian immigrant who persevered under Russian rule and now lives in America.
Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant (No. 5)
By Svetlana Kunin 01/21/2010
Visitors to national parks are warned not to feed the wildlife because this interferes with the natural survival ability of the animals. Progressives do not make the same connection with human nature.
The image of a country where government takes care of its citizens attracts the liberal mind. This image has two dimensions: fairness and equality.
Many American intellectuals admired the Olympic opening ceremony last summer in Beijing: Hundreds of expressionless men moved and beat their drums in perfect unison, an impressive and symbolic image as, in real life, each man has an allocated and regulated place and function.
Serving Ideology
Hollywood liberals are impressed with Venezuela, where the evil capitalists are kicked out of the country and the government controls the media.
Democratic congressmen admire the idea of the Cuban system. They ignore the fact that the government prohibits its citizens from leaving the country, and foreigners are allowed to see only what the government wants them to see.
Released Soviet archives show how a society can project an image of glory and prosperity, as long as the intended audience is shown only two dimensions. But they also reveal the third dimension: the dimension of cruelty.
In such societies, individuals, science, education, art and sport are subservient to ideology. There are numerous examples.
A whole branch of science — genetics — was eliminated for 20 years when party leaders declared it to be a bourgeois pseudoscience and a "whore of capitalism" because it contradicted the theory of Marxism-Leninism.
Scientists were sent to labor camps or killed. Leading Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov died in prison.
The control of mediocrity over talent is the defining structure of these societies. There are political rules. If you conform, then you are living among equals. If you break the rules, then you suffer. If you are part of the ideological machine, you are a beneficiary of the system. That is why there are former citizens who have fond memories of the USSR.
American Zoo
Such ideological oppression is insidious, and we increasingly find it in America. Already, American parents are forced to send their children to failing schools. Americans will soon find the same to be true of their medical care. Political correctness limits their speech and corrupts their actions, as was on display in the Fort Hood attack.
How can correctness be political? If it is political, then it is an agenda.
In contrast to the progressive vision, the strength of America is built on ideals such as individual liberty and the law of the land. These two dimensions gave life to the third dimension: opportunities.
Americans have the opportunity to make choices free from any centralized control. Free individuals have the opportunity to escape a bad situation, and explore their talents and aptitude. The American Constitution protects individuals from oppressive government.
How do our current political leaders propose to transform America? They ignore the Constitution. They will collect the income of citizens living today and those not yet born. They envision a zoolike country where the citizens are assigned a place to live, to work, the medical care they can get and the food they eat.
Our leaders will be our zookeepers, fairly distributing services and goods. People will rely on zookeepers and forget how to plan their own lives and take care of themselves.
The image of a fair and equal society will be projected, but the third dimension — a bureaucratic cruelty over defenseless individuals — will result. This is not a progressive society; it's an oppressive one. There is no escape from oppressive centralized state control.
Those who support this transformation cannot see beyond the flat two-dimensional image of utopia.
The stunning election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate from Massachusetts should serve as a clarion call to Congressional Democrats and Obama that the American public is very angry at them over several key issues including healthcare reform, their profligate spending of our tax dollars, the contemptuousness for the voters, greater intrusions into our lives and their disgraceful conduct in attempting to pass legislation.
If these politicians continue to ignore the will of the people, it will be at their peril!
Keith Olbermann: NBC News: Brown a 'Homophobic, Racist, Teabagging' Misogynist
Can anyone really prove that Keith Olbermann delivered this rant on the news? After all, NBC News has virtually no viewers who would have witnessed it due to its countenancing of such unprofessional, vitriolic, gratuitous and partisan outbursts which constitutes its news reporting. If you closed your eyes while listening to the following video, you could actually imagine this screed being also delivered by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Charles Schumer, John Murtha, Al Franken, etc. of the Democratic Party.
Maybe Olbermann should consider applying for a job on “The View”! He might actually get along with somebody – like Joy Behar!
This exemplifies why a majority of Americans are fleeing not only NBC but also ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC ... and watching Fox News instead.
You undoubtedly have learned about the corrupt deal recently consummated between the labor unions, a major constituency of the Democratic party, and the Congressional Democrats in order to shore up their support for Obamacare. This latest outrageous perversion of power will preferentially exclude all members of these labor unions such as of the SEIU from having to pay a hefty 40% punitive tax on health insurance plans whose annual costs exceed a selected annual dollar amount. All other Americans will still be legally coerced to pay this tax PLUS be responsible for the amount the government won’t be collecting from union members!
Further adding insult to injury, it would be egregious enough if this were the only example of such corruption but IT IS NOT! This is the modus operandi of Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the Democrats. Stimulus money going exceedingly disproportionately to the Democrat supporting blue states; blatant disregard for any consideration for tort reform that could save tens of billions of dollars annually from the cost of healthcare – as payback to attorneys who almost monolithically support and contribute to the Democratic party; the Sen. Ben Nelson Nebraska Cornhusker kickback and Sen. Mary Landrieu Louisiana Purchase bribe – using our tax dollars – in order to acquire critical support for the passage of the healthcare legislation; ETC.
THIS CORRUPTION, ARROGANCE AND CONTEMPTUOUSNESS BY DEMOCRATS MUST BE STOPPED!!
We must unite in our cause and vote them out of office as soon as possible!
Another rank deal
By Rich Lowry January 15, 2010
What happens when the irresistible force of the Democratic urge to tax runs up against the immovable object of Democratic loyalty to the labor unions? Another ugly deal in a health-care bill that already was a grotesquerie of payoffs to favored politicians and interests.
The levy in question is a 40 percent excise tax on high-end employer-provided insurance plans that -- typically -- has been sold as a tax on "the rich." It's called the "Cadillac tax," a name redolent of corporate executives cackling in their Escalades over their cushy benefits.
The unions, which make it a point to negotiate generous insurance plans with their employers (to the point of bankrupting them), were chagrined to learn that for purposes of this tax, they're among the rich. They howled in terms that could have been drawn from Henry Hazlitt's free-market classic "Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics."
The excise tax is supposed to be paid by evil insurers and employers. Except in this one case affecting their self-interest directly, the unions see through the fiction and understand that the tax will trickle down onto them. How disorienting to hear unions implicitly recognize that corporations ultimately don't pay taxes, their customers and employees do.
"While the excise tax is slated to be imposed on the insurers on so-called high cost plans, the tax will be passed on to enrollees in the form of higher premiums, co-pays or reduced benefits," a coalition of public-employee unions wrote congressional leaders. "Characterizing this tax proposal as a 'Cadillac tax' is a misnomer. It hits the average blue collar and white collar employee."
The unions also bristled at a fairly typical trick of liberal taxation -- bracket creep. The Cadillac tax affects few people when it begins in 2013. Since it's not indexed to account for the ever-rising expense of health care, though, it will catch more and more people over time.
This is why New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called it "a middle-class tax time bomb," and Nancy Pelosi made an oblique reference to President Obama breaking his promise not to increase taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year. Obama's support for the Cadillac tax not only violates that forlorn pledge, but also directly contradicts one of his chief lines of attack against John McCain in the 2008 campaign.
McCain wanted to end the tax exemption for employer-provided insurance coverage and compensate people with a tax credit to buy their own plans -- a systematic approach to controlling costs and increasing choice. Obama's plan will increase costs and reduce choice, but he needs $150 billion in revenue over 10 years to try to make it look deficit-neutral so he's -- as he put it in his unrelenting anti-McCain ads -- "taxing health benefits for the first time in history."
But pressure from the unions has now forced the White House to agree to raise the $23,000-per-household threshold of the tax slightly and -- more importantly -- exempt insurance plans that are the product of collective-bargaining agreements until 2018. This Labor Loophole stands in the finest tradition of the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback. With no possible public-policy justification, it puts the awesome power to tax and spend at the service of nakedly political ends.
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said that taxes are the price of civilization. In this case, taxes are the price of not belonging to a group that pours countless millions of dollars into the Democratic coffers. Under the Cadillac tax, there's one set of rules for the Service Employees International Union and another for everyone else.
Obama is currently haranguing the banks so he doesn't get pegged as a "Wall Street Liberal." The more dangerous rubric for him is a "Washington Liberal," a politician knee-deep in the special-interest politics of the Beltway as he pushes an unpopular agenda of rapid government expansion. Obama's style of politics has gone from inspiring to revolting in the space of a year.
The global warming movement along with its de facto leaders (ie. Al Gore) is exposed once again to be nothing more than an egregious subterfuge for avaricious, corrupt, immoral individuals (Al Gore again) and corporations. It also provides the fabricated ammunition to support the goals of the implementation of draconian environmental measures for the green movement and for far left ideologues, an ostensibly more palatable excuse to impose local and global wealth redistribution and socialistic changes.
The CO2 Lie
Investors Business Daily 01/05/2010
Climate Change: A new study shows that Earth's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from all sources, including man, has remained unchanged for 160 years. As it turns out, there may be no carbon to offset.
A major tenet of the global warming religion, straight from the Book of Gore, has been that the ability of the earth to handle increasing CO2 emissions is finite and that once the "tipping point" is reached, the earth will warm uncontrollably. Well, another climate domino has fallen — the myth that man-made CO2 is leading to climate catastrophe.
This "settled science" has been upended by an unsettling (for warm-mongers) new study out of the University of Bristol in England. Unlike the Climate-gate charlatans at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Wolfgang Knorr of Bristol's Earth Sciences Department followed the data where it led instead of trying to manipulate it to "hide the decline" in global temperatures the earth has experienced in the last decade.
The new study, published in the online journal Geophysical Research Letters, does not deny that increasing amounts of CO2 have been generated as the world has industrialized, eradicated disease, produced agricultural abundance and improved man's standard of living. It does show that only 45% of man's emissions, not 100% as warmers claim, stays in the atmosphere, and that includes the carbon emissions of the private jets that flew to Copenhagen last month and the limos that drove the occupants around.
The rest is absorbed by nature, and that percentage hasn't changed since 1850. Knorr arrived at that figure by relying solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice. He did not rely, as the CRU did, on badly written computer models with built-in fudge factors to direct the data to a foregone conclusion.
Another result of this study, reports Anthony Watts at WattsUpWithThat.com, is that emissions from deforestation, caused in large part by the clearing of forest land to grow allegedly planet-saving biofuels, may have been grossly overestimated. This finding agrees with results published in November in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University in Amsterdam. It reanalyzed deforestation data and concluded that resulting emissions have been overestimated by a factor of two.
We have tried to help document this growing disparity between observable data and apocalyptic computer models that cannot even predict the past. This post-Climate-gate study provides another nail in the coffin of cap-and-trade and shows why the Environmental Protection Agency should not be allowed to destroy the U.S. economy by absurdly regulating carbon dioxide, the basis for all life on earth, as a pollutant.
Reputable scientists have concluded that earth's climate is the result of an infinite number of variables and processes that are not completely understood. There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in their computer models. Cyclical ocean currents, solar cycles, even cosmic rays have been documented as affecting earth's atmosphere and weather.
As Weather Channel founder and eminent meteorologist John Coleman notes, "The sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost 10 straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where's the global warming?" More and more Americans are asking the same question as the earth is under an Arctic siege.
Temperatures in Iowa are 30 degrees below normal. In South Burlington, Vt., 33 inches of snow fell — an all-time record for a storm. Three deaths due to cold were reported in Memphis, Tenn., as Miami experienced the coldest temperatures in, uh, a decade. AccuWeather.com chief meteorologist and expert forecaster Joe Bastardi says this could be the worst winter in 25 years.
As more scientists reveal inconvenient truths, we too ask: Where's the warming, Al Gore?
Whew! As incompetent, naïve and damaging to our country as Jimmy Carter was as President (and among the worst), he shines in comparison to Obama who hasn’t even completed his first year in office. As argued below, Carter was honest to a fault at times whereas Obama doesn’t know the meaning of the word. The former was part of middle America and aimed to serve and do what was best for the country even if his policies and implementation were poor. On the other hand, Obama comes across as angry, contemptuous foreign conqueror of a land he despises and has little interest in except as a source for personal aggrandizement of wealth and power in order to feed his insatiable narcissism and hedonism ala Nero. His goals for America are Evil - to impose his ideologies and ways on others, transforming the country to fit his perverted vision of what he feels America should be.
Comparisons Of Obama To Carter Are Inapt And Unfair (To Carter)
By Ernest S. Christian and Gary A. Robbins 01/05/2010
Because of President Obama's outrageous profligacy with the public purse, strong policy tilt to the left and weak performance on the world stage, some commentators foresee a failed presidency that does profound and permanent harm to the nation.
Others, although not predicting Armageddon, point to the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter when, like today, there was a confluence of economic crisis at home and dangerous timidity abroad.
But comparing Obama (and his potential destructiveness) to Carter (and his failure to achieve) is neither apt nor fair to President Carter.
Carter was mostly a typical Democrat of his time: naïve about the economy, enamored with government-engineered solutions, meddlesome by nature and weak on national defense. On the other hand, he was steeped in the traditions and values of middle class Americans. It was probably they who Carter-the-Baptist-Sunday-school- teacher had in mind on Inauguration Day when he swore to "preserve, protect and defend."
In contrast, Barack Obama's connections with mainstream America are slight. Before moving to Washington, his main experience was at Harvard and in the Hyde Park district of Chicago, both sui generis and certainly atypical of America.
Judged by his life record, his regard for the ways and worth of the American middle class is low.
Early in life (at about the same age Carter was when he joined the U.S. Navy), Obama joined the hardcore left in the "community organizing" business. He honed his skills and instructed his constituents in the techniques of using government power to gain money and wealth for themselves — at the expense of other people. He has since put this technique to good use in Washington.
Obama played in Chicago politics, sometimes aligning with practitioners of "grievance" politics who take a critical, often race-based view of America and its past, demanding redress, condemning market capitalism and, in some cases, disparaging America's Anglo-Saxon traditions of civil governance.
When he ran for president, Obama concealed his left-wing ideology, but true to its principles, eschewed the normally obligatory campaign obeisances to middle-class values and America's exceptional place in the firmament of nations.
Instead, he talked about "transforming" America and gulled 60 million voters into thinking that change meant restoration, not destruction.
Once elected, he lurched back to the left and has spent his first year in office assiduously laying the foundation for dismantling much that most Americans hold dear.
Somewhat reminiscent of Carter, Obama has failed to stand up to Iran, tends toward being neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (except when prodded vigorously) and has taken a weak, apologetic stance on behalf of America in world affairs.
Carter's dovishness in the 1970s reflected his own piety and humility, as well as his near-messianic belief in his anointed role as world peacemaker.
In Obama's case, the evidence suggests a very different explanation for his behavior: He simply is not an admirer of America and its longstanding ethos. He wants to change America's economic system, redistribute its wealth, recast its essentially middle-class Judeo-Christian culture and switch its foreign alliances.
Obama seems not to have his heart in the war on terrorism. In Afghanistan, he's phlegmatically gone through the motions, sending more troops to be killed while he's planning to withdraw.
In the meantime, military commanders still fighting to win are cautioned not to "overreach."
Obama either doesn't understand, or doesn't like, free market capitalism. He continues to prescribe high-risk government elixirs that, when administered in greater quantities, will permanently damage the economy.
Obama does, however, understand how to loot the American middle class with his onrushing combination of monetary, tax and spending policies designed to rob them of $5 trillion to $10 trillion over a decade.
When Jimmy Carter ran for president, he said, "I'll never lie to you." And he didn't. He was honest to a fault, once confessing to a journalist that he "lusted in his heart." From day one, Barack Obama has been the Great Pretender, spinning webs of half-truths calculated to deceive.
The ObamaCare monstrosity, stuffed with pork and deception, claiming to do what it does not and pretending to do good while inflicting harm, is a national disgrace, an insult to the intelligence of every American and a fitting monument to President Obama's first year in office.
Jimmy Carter was not the greatest, but he wasn't the worst president America has had. Barack Obama is so far winning the race to the bottom.
• Christian, an attorney, was a deputy assistant secretary of the treasury in the Ford administration.
• Robbins, an economist, served at the Treasury Department in the Reagan administration.
Read the article below which appeared in bostonherald.com:
Poll shocker: Scott Brown surges ahead in Senate race
By Jessica Van Sack | Friday, January 15, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com
Riding a wave of opposition to Democratic health-care reform, GOP upstart Scott Brown is leading in the U.S. Senate race, raising the odds of a historic upset that would reverberate all the way to the White House, a new poll shows.
Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.
“It’s a Brown-out,” said Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center. “It’s a massive change in the political landscape.”
The poll shows Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, besting Coakley, the state’s attorney general, by 50 percent to 46 percent, the first major survey to show Brown in the lead. Unenrolled long-shot Joseph L. Kennedy, an information technology executive with no relation to the famous family, gets 3 percent of the vote. Only 1 percent of voters were undecided.
Paleologos said bellwether models show high numbers of independent voters turning out on election day, which benefits Brown, who has 65 percent of that bloc compared to Coakley’s 30 percent. Kennedy earns just 3 percent of the independent vote, and 1 percent are undecided.
Given the 4.4-point margin of error, the poll shows Coakley could win the race, Paleologos said. But if Brown’s momentum holds, he is poised to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy - and to halt health-care reform, the issue the late senator dubbed “the cause of my life.”
Yet even in the bluest state, it appears Kennedy’s quest for universal health care has fallen out of favor, with 51 percent of voters saying they oppose the “national near-universal health-care package” and 61 percent saying they believe the government cannot afford to pay for it.
The poll, conducted Monday through Wednesday, surveyed 500 registered likely voters who knew the date of Tuesday’s election. It shows Brown leading all regions of the state except Suffolk County.
“Either Brown’s momentum accelerates and his lead widens, or this becomes a wake-up call for Coakley to become the ‘Comeback Kid’ this weekend,” Paleologos said.
And with 99 percent having made up their minds, voters may be hard to persuade.
The poll surveyed a carefully partitioned electorate meant to match voter turnout: 39 percent Democrat, 15 percent Republican and 45 percent unenrolled.
Brown wins among men and is remarkably competitive among women - trailing Coakley’s 50 percent with 45 percent.
While Brown has 91 percent of registered Republicans locked up, an astonishing 17 percent of Democrats report they’re jumping ship for Brown as well - likely a product of Coakley’s laser-focus on hard-core Dems, potentially at the exclusion of other Democrats whom she needed to win over, Paleologos said.
For Coakley, Brown’s surge may be as ominous as the fact that her campaign’s peril is not fully recognized, with 64 percent of voters still believing she’ll win - a perception that threatens to keep her supporters home.
Brown’s popularity is solid. He enjoys a 57 percent favorability rating compared to just 19 percent unfavorable.
Coakley’s favorability is 49 percent; her unfavorability, 41 percent.
No longer does Brown suffer from a name-recognition problem, with 95 percent of voters having heard of him statewide.
7News Political Editor Andy Hiller said, “Voters obviously think Brown is running a better campaign than Coakley. For months, it has been Coakley’s race to lose, and now in the last days that’s exactly what she may be doing.”
We are all aware and incensed at the unparalleled contemptuous that Congress in general and certain individuals in particular (Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, John Murtha, etc.) have for the American public and even the democratic process. They are running the government as a dictatorial aristocracy, imposing legislation on unwilling citizens seemingly at times by fiat. They are cognizant of their unfettered, completely unstoppable powers which is further abetted and protected by a sycophantic far left news media (except for Fox News).
The Democrats have a super-majority in the Senate which makes any legislation they formulate filibuster proof. To add insult to injury, they will use whatever means necessary to pass their bills – heavy handed threats, illegal procedural maneuvers, specious information and interminable corruption and bribery (using our tax dollars) as we have witnessed in their attempting to pass Obamacare.
One glimmer of hope is present and it involves the special election being held in Massachusetts this coming Tuesday, January 19th to determine who will fill the vacant Senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy. The Republican candidate for Senator, Scott Brown, an extremely intelligent, shrewd, articulate and photogenic conservative aided by prodigious grassroots support of angry voters not only from Massachusetts but also from across the country, has incredibly turned this race into a statistical tie in the nation’s most liberal state. This is a manifest indictment and rejection of the policies and attitudes of the Obama Administration and the Congressional Democrats.
We all need to give Scott Brown our firm support – financially and verbally – IMMEDIATELY! Contact everyone that you know in Massachusetts and friends who know voters there. They must be informed of the supreme importance of this election and need to vote for Republican candidate Scott Brown. Financial contributions can be made through the following websites:
Andrew Bostom, the author of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus, 2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (Prometheus, November, 2008), posted the following on his website on September 28, 2008. This is a speech delivered by Geert Wilders who is the chairman of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands regarding the threat to the world that Islam presents. The Netherlands is one of the main European countries at the forefront of this cancerous Islamization invasion that threatens the freedoms and liberties of peaceful peoples of other religions and cultures.
With the dramatic worldwide rise of terrorism almost exclusively perpetrated by Muslims and a multitude of Islamic attacks of various degrees affecting the United States over more than the last decade, this speech is eminently pertinent, insightful, and significant. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that we are dealing with an enemy that is relentlessly intent on destroying non-believers and imposing Sharia law, an enemy that is indoctrinated by a religion founded on violence, hate, intolerance, and total abrogation of human rights and freedoms except for a select few.
Excuses, “politically correct” doctrines, actions and legislation espoused and supported by liberals including their transfer of billions of dollars away from security related issues and intelligence gathering renders us even more vulnerable to attacks, violence and losses of our personal freedoms and rights. Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano and other ideologues of the Democratic party are the main facilitators of this, jeopardizing the security and lives of over three hundred million Americans.
We must understand this metastasizing Islamic enemy and stop it before it obtains world domination.
We must also oust our politicians who are placing this country at far greater risk than necessary.
Geert Wilders: Wisdom and Courage
…liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.
Geert Wilders, chairman Party for Freedom, the Netherlands
Speech at the Four Seasons, New York
September 25, 2008
Dear friends,
Thank you very much for inviting me. Great to be at the Four Seasons. I come from a country that has one season only: a rainy season that starts January 1st and ends December 31st. When we have three sunny days in a row, the government declares a national emergency. So Four Seasons, that’s new to me.
It’s great to be in New York. When I see the skyscrapers and office buildings, I think of what Ayn Rand said: “The sky over New York and the will of man made visible.” Of course. Without the Dutch you would have been nowhere, still figuring out how to buy this island from the Indians. But we are glad we did it for you. And, frankly, you did a far better job than we possibly could have done.
I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe? Patriots from around Europe risk their lives every day to prevent precisely this scenario form becoming a reality.
My short lecture consists of 4 parts.
First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. Thirdly, if you are still here, I will talk a little bit about the movie you just saw. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.
The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome’s ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago.
But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see – and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.
There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.
Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear “whore, whore”. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.
A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.
Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favour of a worldwide caliphate. A Dutch study reported that half of Dutch Muslims admit they “understand” the 9/11 attacks.
Muslims demand what they call ‘respect’. And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up. In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.
Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Muslim intifada. I call the perpetrators “settlers”. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.
Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighbourhoods, their cities, their countries.
Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping sharia. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.
Our many problems with Islam cannot be explained by poverty, repression or the European colonial past, as the Left claims. Nor does it have anything to do with Palestinians or American troops in Iraq. The problem is Islam itself.
Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101. The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book of the Quran. The Quran is Allah’s personal word, revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the prophet. This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Quran is Allah’s word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Muslim and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam. Sure, there are a lot of moderate Muslims. But a moderate Islam is non-existent.
The Quran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Quran calls for Muslims to kill non-Muslims, to terrorize non-Muslims and to fulfil their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Muslim, Islam is to rule the world – by the sword. The Quran is clearly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.
The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves. Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.
Quran as Allah’s own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means ‘submission’. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.
This is what you need to know about Islam, in order to understand what is going on in Europe. For millions of Muslims the Quran and the live of Mohammed are not 14 centuries old, but are an everyday reality, an ideal, that guide every aspect of their lives. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam “the most retrograde force in the world”, and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.
Which brings me to my movie, Fitna.
I am a lawmaker, and not a movie maker. But I felt I had the moral duty to educate about Islam. The duty to make clear that the Quran stands at the heart of what some people call terrorism but is in reality jihad. I wanted to show that the problems of Islam are at the core of Islam, and do not belong to its fringes.
Now, from the day the plan for my movie was made public, it caused quite a stir, in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. First, there was a political storm, with government leaders, across the continent in sheer panic. The Netherlands was put under a heightened terror alert, because of possible attacks or a revolt by our Muslim population. The Dutch branch of the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir declared that the Netherlands was due for an attack. Internationally, there was a series of incidents. The Taliban threatened to organize additional attacks against Dutch troops in Afghanistan, and a website linked to Al Qaeda published the message that I ought to be killed, while various muftis in the Middle East stated that I would be responsible for all the bloodshed after the screening of the movie. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the Dutch flag was burned on several occasions. Dolls representing me were also burned. The Indonesian President announced that I will never be admitted into Indonesia again, while the UN Secretary General and the European Union issued cowardly statements in the same vein as those made by the Dutch Government. I could go on and on. It was an absolute disgrace, a sell-out.
A plethora of legal troubles also followed, and have not ended yet. Currently the state of Jordan is litigating against me. Only last week there were renewed security agency reports about a heightened terror alert for the Netherlands because of Fitna.
Now, I would like to say a few things about Israel. Because, very soon, we will get together in its capitol. The best way for a politician in Europe to loose votes is to say something positive about Israel. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I, however, will continue to speak up for Israel. I see defending Israel as a matter of principle. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel. First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.
Samuel Huntington writes it so aptly: “Islam has bloody borders”. Israel is located precisely on that border. This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam’s territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.
The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.
Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. Therefore, it is not that the West has a stake in Israel. It is Israel.
It is very difficult to be an optimist in the face of the growing Islamization of Europe. All the tides are against us. On all fronts we are losing. Demographically the momentum is with Islam. Muslim immigration is even a source of pride within ruling liberal parties. Academia, the arts, the media, trade unions, the churches, the business world, the entire political establishment have all converted to the suicidal theory of multiculturalism. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a ‘right-wing extremists’ or ‘racists’. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.
This is the most painful thing to see: the betrayal by our elites. At this moment in Europe’s history, our elites are supposed to lead us. To stand up for centuries of civilization. To defend our heritage. To honour our eternal Judeo-Christian values that made Europe what it is today. But there are very few signs of hope to be seen at the governmental level. Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, Berlusconi; in private, they probably know how grave the situation is. But when the little red light goes on, they stare into the camera and tell us that Islam is a religion of peace, and we should all try to get along nicely and sing Kumbaya. They willingly participate in, what President Reagan so aptly called: “the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.”
If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can only come from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.
Over the past years there have been some small, but encouraging, signs of a rebirth of the original European spirit. Maybe the elites turn their backs on freedom, the public does not. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat to our national identity. I don’t think the public opinion in Holland is very different from other European countries.
Patriotic parties that oppose jihad are growing, against all odds. My own party debuted two years ago, with five percent of the vote. Now it stands at ten percent in the polls. The same is true of all smililary-minded parties in Europe. They are fighting the liberal establishment, and are gaining footholds on the political arena, one voter at the time.
Now, for the first time, these patriotic parties will come together and exchange experiences. It may be the start of something big. Something that might change the map of Europe for decades to come. It might also be Europe’s last chance.
This December a conference will take place in Jerusalem. Thanks to Professor Aryeh Eldad, a member of Knesset, we will be able to watch Fitna in the Knesset building and discuss the jihad. We are organizing this event in Israel to emphasize the fact that we are all in the same boat together, and that Israel is part of our common heritage. Those attending will be a select audience. No racist organizations will be allowed. And we will only admit parties that are solidly democratic.
This conference will be the start of an Alliance of European patriots. This Alliance will serve as the backbone for all organizations and political parties that oppose jihad and Islamization. For this Alliance I seek your support.
This endeavor may be crucial to America and to the West. America may hold fast to the dream that, thanks tot its location, it is safe from jihad and shaira. But seven years ago to the day, there was still smoke rising from ground zero, following the attacks that forever shattered that dream. Yet there is a danger even greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America – as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.
Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.
This is not the first time our civilization is under threat. We have seen dangers before. We have been betrayed by our elites before. They have sided with our enemies before. And yet, then, freedom prevailed.
These are not times in which to take lessons from appeasement, capitulation, giving away, giving up or giving in. These are not times in which to draw lessons from Mr. Chamberlain. These are times calling us to draw lessons from Mr. Churchill and the words he spoke in 1942:
“Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy”.
The following editorial appearing in www.humanevents.com scrutinizes Obamacare from a constitutional perspective. No where in our Constitution is the Federal government given the authority to mandate or control healthcare. Furthermore, there are several inherent issues and requirements that are clearly unconstitutional.
Of course, many Democrats and the far left treat these issues in an arrogant, perfunctory manner. “We want this healthcare reform imposed, Constitutionality be damned” are their attitudes.
Our recommended approach: Kill the bill on the basis of Constitutionality issues which are myriad. Then, vote these corrupt imperious elitists out of office.
Obamacare's Fundamental Flaw
by Gary Bauer 01/01/2010
The Left has always had an erratic relationship with the Constitution. Liberal judges are known for discovering constitutional rights that had eluded judges for centuries. That’s because some of those so-called rights, such as the right to privacy, have no basis in the text of the Constitution but rather somewhere in its “emanations” and “penumbras.”
But the alleged right to privacy has its limits even among liberals. The Left’s judges routinely rule that the right protects abortion on demand, but its legislators have no qualms about extinguishing the right of citizens to make other private healthcare decisions free of government coercion.
While much of the healthcare debate has focused on arguments over policy, a more fundamental debate is taking place over whether the Democrats’ healthcare overhaul is even constitutional.
There is nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to be involved in healthcare, and the loud affirmation of this fact may offer conservatives their best chance to pull the plug on Obamacare. It would be ironic if it is in the courts, liberals’ favorite venue for forcing social change, that the rule of law were restored and the personal freedom of the American people affirmed.
The power to regulate each citizen’s health care is not listed in the Constitution among the federal government’s enumerated powers, and the 10th Amendment makes clear that any powers not specifically granted to Congress are reserved to the states.
But among liberals, for whom it is an article of faith that government-run healthcare is a basic human right that no person of goodwill could oppose, any arguments about its constitutionality are irrelevant.
When pressed to address constitutionality, liberals often point to the commerce clause. The Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate “commerce among the several states.” But that does not mean Congress can meddle in anything that affects economic activity. The Supreme Court has rejected the notion that the commerce clause allows Congress to regulate non-economic activities just because, somewhere down the road, they may have an effect on economic activity.
The most egregiously unconstitutional element of the health care legislation concerns the individual mandate, which requires each American to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty of up to $25,000 or one year in prison. The individual mandate is essential to the Left’s plan to impose government-run health care. Without it, because of the left’s insistence on barring insurance companies from denying coverage to people for pre-existing conditions, people would simply obtain insurance only when they have a need for medical care.
The individual mandate is a way to keep costs down, but there is not constitutional authorization for it. As Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has said, “…here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want…and…that’s not constitutionally sound.”
Back in 1994, during the Democrats’ last foray into healthcare reform, the Congressional Budget Office stated that compelling individuals to buy insurance would be “an unprecedented form of federal action” because “the government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the U.S.”
Liberals often liken the health insurance individual mandate to the law requiring all people who own automobiles to have auto insurance. But it’s a flawed argument. Only state governments, not the federal government, can require automobile owners to obtain auto insurance (and two states, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, don’t).
Also, as legal scholars at the Heritage Foundation point out in a recent legal memorandum, “automobile insurance requirements impose a condition on the voluntary activity of driving; a health insurance mandate imposes a condition on life itself.”
The Heritage memo, titled “Why the personal mandate to buy health insurance is unprecedented and unconstitutional,” also notes that states require drivers to maintain auto insurance only to cover injuries to others. “The mandate does not require drivers to insure themselves or their property against injury or damage. Thus the auto insurance requirement covers the dangers and liabilities posed by drivers to third parties only…”
It would be an understatement to say that individual mandate advocates have struggled to defend its inclusion. In a series of interviews conducted by CNSNews.com, Democrat after Democrat failed to give a coherent answer about where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance.
Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka said he was “not aware” of the Constitution giving Congress the authority, while Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) said he’d “have to check the specific sections,” and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) flatly admitted that he did not know.
Senator Blanche Lincoln should have taken the Nelson route but instead opined, “Well, I Just think the Constitution charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.” And Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) dismissed the question, insisting that “nobody” questioned Congress’ authority to require individual mandate.
Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) said Congress authorization to impose an individual mandate could be found in the part of Constitution that authorizes the federal government to “provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.” But, as CNSNews.com pointed out, “health” is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.
Then there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who simply responded “Are you serious? Are you serious?” By which she seemed to be saying, “Do you seriously think we progressives would allow constitutionality to get in the way of our half-century old goal of government-run health care?!”
There are other constitutional problems with Obamacare. For instance, if the public option provides for abortion, many Americans will be compelled to subsidize other people’s abortions, which would infringe upon the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom.
And constitutional concerns exist over exempting some states from Obamacare’s provisions. In Harry Reid’s fire sale for votes, he essentially agreed that some states would bear the brunt of the economic burden of the health care monstrosity but not others. Presently state legal experts are examining whether the constitution can force such a burden upon them.
Other constitutional issues are buried deep in the pages of the bill just now seeing the light of day. For example, in spite of recent Supreme Court decisions raising constitutional questions about racial set asides, Obamacare promises federal financial assistance to medical schools, but only if they have programs that serve “under-represented” groups based on race, sex, religion and sexual orientation.
An unintended consequence of the health care debate may be that legislators on both sides of the isle are dusting off and reading their copies of the U.S. Constitution. Conservative members of Congress should resolve in the New Year to talk more often and more loudly about the constitutional arguments against Obamacare.
If it passes, conservatives should test its constitutionality in the courts. It may well be that the jobs saved or created by the Obama Administration’s health care plan go to lawyers, not doctors.
The following video detailing the perfidy, deception, arrogance, contemptuousness and corruptness of Obama and the Democrats is eminently provocative, both emotionally and intellectually. The dramatic, percussive music redolent of the testosterone suffused "Batman Returns" themes helps deliver a powerful and serious message that should serve to galvanize outraged Americans to take productive actions to depose our imperious Democratic politicians. Maybe some of these same elitists will begin to appreiciate the magnitude of our fury and realize that they are here as our elected representatives to serve us – not rule over us!
The incompetence of the inaction and then the response of the Obama administration regarding the recent failed airline terrorist attack are astounding. Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security chief, gave the most lame, inept excuses imaginable. She engenders no confidence by the American people that we are being even adequately protected from terrorist threats. Her “body of work” to date in the Obama Administration has been abysmally dismal, repeatedly reaffirming that she is not qualified for this job and needs to be fired immediately.
If only we could do the same with Obama…
Napolitano Builds Up Undie Bomber: Terrorists Went To 'Great Lengths'
By Mark Finkelstein NewsBusters.org 12-30-2009
Like a football coach trying to explain away the trouncing his team just took by building up the opponent, Janet Napolitano is seeking to diminish the Obama administration's NWA 253 failure by exaggerating the cunning of the Christmas Day plot.
The hapless Homeland Security head has a 679-word piece in today's USA Today basically promising to do better. She begins with this line [emphasis added]:
Friday's attempted terrorist attack against Northwest Flight 253 near Detroit is a powerful illustration that terrorists will go to great lengths to try to defeat the security measures that have been put in place since September 11, 2001.
"Great lengths?" Really? You buy a plane ticket for a kid, stick a few ounces of explosives in his nappies, then hope he'll make it onboard and remember which end to light.
And far from choosing someone with a good chance of completing his murderous mission, the plotters picked a guy with enough red flags surrounding him to have stocked a May Day parade back in the old Soviet Union. Need we count some of the ways?
• Denied British visa.
• On some kind of US watch list.
• Father warned our embassy and various intel agencies.
• Paid cash.
• One-way ticket.
• No checked luggage.
Napolitano would want us to imagine diabolical masterminds behind a fiendish plot that the Obama admin might be excused for not undoing. But far from demonstrating the "great lengths" to which the terrorists will go, what happened on
December 25th illustrates only the deep incompetence of those responsible for stopping it.
Will the MSM note Napolitano's latest lame excuse? How much longer can she possibly remain in office?
You have to believe that things are abysmally bad with our government when a failed nation like Somalia can better identify and prevent terrorists from boarding an airplane than the United States can. Even with a jackpot of warnings well preceding the recent failed airplane terrorist attack including from the terrorist’s own father, our government still couldn’t protect us. The only thing more the terrorist could have done to alert our security agencies was wear a large sign with flashing lights announcing:
“I am a terrorist and will try to blow-up this plane.”
And Obama and the Democrats think they can do a great job managing the healthcare for over 300 million people what they can’t even manage one bungling terrorist…?
Even Mogadishu Does It Better Than DHS
Investors Business Daily 12/30/2009
For all the billions the U.S. spends on intelligence and homeland security, it's Somalia that has racked up a better record of stopping jet terrorists with explosive-filled underwear. Anyone out there appalled?
Last Nov. 11, sharp-eyed African Union troops, who serve as airport security in the failed state of Somalia, pinpointed a terrorist with a syringe detonator, lethal powder and explosives in his pants trying to board a Dubai-bound jetliner in Mogadishu.
They yanked him out of line and stopped him from getting on.
It's eerily similar in detail to the Christmas Day terror attack on a Northwest Airlines jetliner headed from Amsterdam to Detroit.
The chemicals and detonator were the same. The syringe and underwear were similar. It was consistent with the warning the al-Qaida-associated Nigerian arrested in Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, gave upon his arrest — that many more airline attacks like his were on the way. And by one news account, it happened on 11/11, a date favored by al-Qaida for strikes.
But the difference is in how it ended — in the U.S., with an unscripted passenger leaping onto the terrorist in the act of detonating himself amid burning chemicals, and stopping him.
In Somalia, the rudimentary security apparatus in the nation that ranks rock-bottom on every major development indicator stopped him before he even got on. Incredibly, it means that in this case passengers would have been safer flying out of Mogadishu than depending on elaborate U.S. security measures coming into Detroit.
All the $50.5 billion spent on Homeland Security and the even higher black budgets of the intelligence agencies didn't help. What in the heck is this money for?
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's first statement was that the system worked. What she meant by that was frisking every blue-haired old lady or any other random person authorities can get their hands on. They know these people are not terrorists, but they do it to so that Muslim passengers and the terrorists among them don't feel profiled. All the political correctness boxes got checked off.
For African Union soldiers doing security in a hellhole like Mogadishu, it meant stopping a terror attack at all costs.
Instead of going after the elderly, they zeroed in on a curiously acting young man with a terrorist profile, and gave him the extra pat-down in all the right places. That was all it took to bag a terrorist.
The Africans didn't have any special intelligence from Nigerian relatives on the other end of the continent that could be transmitted securely. They didn't have no-fly lists with expensive computer systems for accessing them. They didn't have clearance to obtain electronic intelligence of al-Qaida chatter from Yemen, which signaled that "a Nigerian" was going to try to take out a U.S. airliner.
But they did have a seriousness of purpose about stopping terror even in a garden spot like Mogadishu. "We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," a Somali police spokesman told the Associated Press. Unlike the White House, he wasn't afraid to use the word "terrorist."
It comes down to the fact that Somalia has seen what terrorists do.
Last Sept. 17, terrorists targeted the African Union in a double-suicide attack on a base in Mogadishu, killing 21 and injuring at least 30 others. Then, on Dec. 3, terrorists struck again in a suicide bombing on a hotel in Mogadishu, killing several government ministers and at least 30 civilians.
But the U.S. government, the intelligence agencies that are currently engaged in turf battles and the foolish leadership of the Department of Homeland Security have yet to show that urgency, given the string of blunders in the wake of the Detroit attack.
Maybe it will take a successful terror strike to re-sensitize them.
But right now, it ought to shame them that Somali airports might be safer to fly than those in the U.S.
The following list formulated by Judicial Watch is one that no politician wants to appear on: the ten most corrupt Washington politicians of 2009. Nine of the ten are Democrats with three being part of the Obama Administration. Fortunately for these latter three (President Obama, Sec. of Treasury Tim Geithner and Atty. General Eric Holder), there is not a list for the ten most incompetent Washington politicians because they would also populate this one as well!
Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2009
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list, in alphabetical order, includes:
1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 “Ten Most Corrupt” list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. Judicial Watch's complaint forced Dodd to amend the forms. However, press reports suggest the property to this day remains undervalued. Judicial Watch also alleges in the complaint that Dodd obtained a sweetheart deal for the property in exchange for his assistance in obtaining a presidential pardon (during the Clinton administration) and other favors for a long-time friend and business associate. The false financial disclosure forms were part of the cover-up. Dodd remains the head the Senate Banking Committee.
2. Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year’s worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from the Nevada Republican in exchange for his silence. According to The New York Times: “The Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are expected to conduct preliminary inquiries into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethics rules as part of an effort to conceal an affair with the wife of an aide…” The former staffer, Douglas Hampton, began to lobby Mr. Ensign's office immediately upon leaving his congressional job, despite the fact that he was subject to a one-year lobbying ban. Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. (These are potentially criminal offenses.) It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans.
3. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use." Rep. Frank admitted he spoke to a "federal regulator," and Treasury granted the funds. (The bank continues to flounder despite Frank’s intervention for federal dollars.) Moreover, Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: "I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury." Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
4. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system. (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?) It wasn’t until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties. In March 2009, Geithner also came under fire for his handling of the AIG bonus scandal, where the company used $165 million of its bailout funds to pay out executive bonuses, resulting in a massive public backlash. Of course as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner helped craft the AIG deal in September 2008. However, when the AIG scandal broke, Geithner claimed he knew nothing of the bonuses until March 10, 2009. The timing is important. According to CNN: “Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders on Tuesday that he learned of AIG's impending $160 million bonus payments to members of its troubled financial-products unit on March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is ten days before Treasury staffers say they first learned ‘full details’ of the bonus plan, and three days before the [Obama] Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG.” Throw in another embarrassing disclosure in 2009 that Geithner employed “household help” ineligible to work in the United States, and it becomes clear why the Treasury Secretary has earned a spot on the “Ten Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington” list.
5. Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won’t be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro’s Cuba. Moreover, there is his soft record on terrorism. Holder bypassed Justice Department procedures to push through Bill Clinton’s scandalous presidential pardons and commutations, including for 16 members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that orchestrated approximately 120 bombings in the United States, killing at least six people and permanently maiming dozens of others, including law enforcement officers. His record in the current administration is no better. As he did during the Clinton administration, Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact his political bosses at the White House. For example, Holder has refused to investigate charges that the Obama political machine traded VIP access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions – a scheme eerily similar to one hatched by Holder’s former boss, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Holder Justice Department also came under fire for dropping a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb threatened voters as they approached polling stations. Holder has also failed to initiate a comprehensive Justice investigation of the notorious organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is closely tied to President Obama. There were allegedly more than 400,000 fraudulent ACORN voter registrations in the 2008 campaign. And then there were the journalist videos catching ACORN Housing workers advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws. Holder’s controversial decisions on new rights for terrorists and his attacks on previous efforts to combat terrorism remind many of the fact that his former law firm has provided and continues to provide pro bono representation to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Holder’s politicization of the Justice Department makes one long for the days of Alberto Gonzales.
6. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama’s then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, emissaries for Jesse Jackson Jr., named "Senate Candidate A" in the Blagojevich indictment, reportedly offered $1.5 million to Blagojevich during a fundraiser if he named Jackson Jr. to Obama's seat. Three days later federal authorities arrested Blagojevich. Burris, for his part, apparently lied about his contacts with Blagojevich, who was arrested in December 2008 for trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat. According to Reuters: “Roland Burris came under fresh scrutiny…after disclosing he tried to raise money for the disgraced former Illinois governor who named him to the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama…In the latest of those admissions, Burris said he looked into mounting a fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich -- later charged with trying to sell Obama's Senate seat -- at the same time he was expressing interest to the then-governor's aides about his desire to be appointed.” Burris changed his story five times regarding his contacts with Blagojevich prior to the Illinois governor appointing him to the U.S. Senate. Three of those changing explanations came under oath.
7. President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration “lowlights” from year one: Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s scheme to sell the President’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder. (Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and slumlord Valerie Jarrett, both from Chicago, are also tangled up in the Blagojevich scandal.) Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability. President Obama boldly proclaimed that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade "artists" to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of "czars" in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President’s bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control -- through fiat and threats -- large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: “The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.” Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors – this is Obama’s “ethics” record -- and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency.
8. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2008 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline. These documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include internal Pentagon email correspondence detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker's 11th hour cancellations and changes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also came under fire in April 2009, when she claimed she was never briefed about the CIA's use of the waterboarding technique during terrorism investigations. The CIA produced a report documenting a briefing with Pelosi on September 4, 2002, that suggests otherwise. Judicial Watch also obtained documents, including a CIA Inspector General report, which further confirmed that Congress was fully briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Aside from her own personal transgressions, Nancy Pelosi has ignored serious incidents of corruption within her own party, including many of the individuals on this list. (See Rangel, Murtha, Jesse Jackson, Jr., etc.)
9. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman's largest campaign contributor. Since 2002, Murtha has raised $1.7 million from PMA and its clients. And what did PMA and its clients receive from Murtha in return for their generosity? Earmarks -- tens of millions of dollars in earmarks. In fact, even with all of the attention surrounding his alleged influence peddling, Murtha kept at it. Following an FBI raid of PMA's offices earlier in 2009, Murtha continued to seek congressional earmarks for PMA clients, while also hitting them up for campaign contributions. According to The Hill, in April, "Murtha reported receiving contributions from three former PMA clients for whom he requested earmarks in the pending appropriations bills." When it comes to the PMA scandal, Murtha is not alone. As many as six other Members of Congress are currently under scrutiny according to The Washington Post. They include: Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA), Norm Dicks (D-WA.), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS.). Of course rather than investigate this serious scandal, according to Roll Call House Democrats circled the wagons, "cobbling together a defense to offer political cover to their rank and file.” The Washington Post also reported in 2009 that Murtha’s nephew received $4 million in Defense Department no-bid contracts: "Newly obtained documents…show Robert Murtha mentioning his influential family connection as leverage in his business dealings and holding unusual power with the military.”
10. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly "forget" to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office to fundraise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding. On top of all that, Rangel recently amended his financial disclosure reports, which doubled his reported wealth. (He somehow “forgot” about $1 million in assets.) And what did he do when the House Ethics Committee started looking into all of this? He apparently resorted to making "campaign contributions" to dig his way out of trouble. According to WCBS TV, a New York CBS affiliate: “The reigning member of Congress' top tax committee is apparently ‘wrangling’ other politicos to get him out of his own financial and tax troubles...Since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him.” Charlie Rangel should not be allowed to remain in Congress, let alone serve as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and he knows it. That’s why he felt the need to disburse campaign contributions to Ethics Committee members and other congressional
The elitist hauteur of liberal politicians, if left unchallenged, will translate into significant loss of many of our remaining rights and freedoms. Several prominent Democratic politicians including Obama have displayed arrogant and wanton disregard for the specifics of the Constitution, perverting its dictates in order to meet their ideological agenda.
One of these involves the current healthcare legislation based on their belief that healthcare is a right that they can fully control, regulate and issue mandates including forcing people to buy health insurance and forcing citizens to subsidize the care of others. Nowhere in the Constitution is the government given such authority.
Health Care Not In Constitution
Investors Business Daily
Self-Evident Truths: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says it comes under the Commerce Clause. Rep. Steny Hoyer says it's mandated by the "general welfare" clause. Despite liberal wishes, health care is not a right.
The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing.
Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever."
He writes glowingly of how President Franklin Roosevelt, unsatisfied with the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote, proposed a Second Bill of Rights in a speech on Jan. 11, 1944.
One of the new "rights" FDR envisioned was "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." If health care were a right under the U.S. Constitution, FDR would not have had to propose it as one to be added.
Yet liberals believe it should be, and some believe it is. Feinstein, the senior senator from California, was asked Tuesday by CNSNews on what constitutional authority the Senate and House bills are authorized. She responded, as others have, "Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That's how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs."
Maybe so, but it's a power that has been grossly abused and distorted beyond all meaning. The Commerce Clause was intended for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production distribution or consumption of commodities. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity.
Mandates including the one to buy health insurance go over the line. "Even if the Supreme Court has expanded the commerce power, there has been one constant," noted Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Congress was always regulating activities in which people chose to engage." He added that "rather than regulate what people have chosen to do," the mandates "would require them to do something they have not chosen to do at all."
When asked the same question, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer pointed to Article 1, Section 8, which gives the Congress the power to raise taxes in order to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Does that give Congress the authority to buy things like health insurance?
We and others have made the point that broccoli is good for our general welfare, but can Congress make us eat it and charge us if we don't? Losing a few pounds would help us all and reduce health care costs, but can Congress mandate health club memberships? Hoyer thinks so.
This clause says nothing about the citizens of the United States, only the United States as a whole. The Constitution provides for the raising of armies to defend the country, not for whether or when women should get mammograms and who should pay for them.
Hoyer is wrong, according to constitutional lawyer David B. Rivkin: "The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly, because if that's true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything."
Does the "general welfare" allow for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make backroom deals that tax other states and other citizens to benefit a single state such as Nebraska and its citizens and to literally bribe senators like Ben Nelson for their vote?
Health care is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the only time the word "care" appears is in Article II, Section 3, which says the president of the United States "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." That includes our highest law, the U.S. Constitution.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that we have become more vulnerable once again to acts of terrorism as evidenced by this near catastrophe on Northwest flight 253. The extreme left Obama Administration has expunged the word “terrorist” from its official vocabulary and in its treatment of security issues. These terrorists have taken note of this weakened position and will relentlessly continue to exploit it. There will not be abatement until we consistently acknowledge their existence and display unwavering resolve to extirpate them. They will only be somewhat dissuaded by a show of unity and power.
In the following video clip from MSNBC, Matt Lauer excoriates Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for the Obama Administration’s ineptness in this incident. Here was a suspicious Muslim who had already been identified two years ago during the Bush Administration as representing a material threat yet was allowed to board a plane with a one-way ticket paid in cash and without a passport.
Napolitano, as evidenced by abysmal past comments and actions/ inactions, comes across as a feckless, out of touch political appointee who is in way over her head and who is endangering the security of the United States.
The following article enumerates 10 immensely important issues related to the healthcare legislation in its present iteration. This is not what America needs or wants but instead, what Congressional Democrats and Obama insist on imposing on us. Meanwhile, Obama and Congress will still have their own gold plated healthcare plan with innumerable choices all subsidized at the taxpayers’ expense.
As we have iterated myriad times, this is not about healthcare. This is about increased government power, control and regulation of our lives and restrictions of our rights and freedoms. If we don’t become more vociferous, passionate and actively fight this legislation in a united fashion, the government will relentless continue to further diminish and suppress our rights, freedoms and choices.
We must do whatever it takes to reclaim our country!
10 Lumps Of Coal In The Health Care Bill
By Betsy McCaughey
For most Americans, the health reform bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing to pass will be worse than coal in their stockings. Herewith, the Top 10 List of Things You Don't Want From Health Care Reform This Christmas — But Will Get Anyway From Congress.
1. Higher premiums: If you pay for your own insurance, your premiums will cost 10% to 13% more than if the bill didn't pass, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Insurance won't be more affordable. Sixty percent of the newly insured are being enrolled in Medicaid, the public program for the poor.
2. A cost you can't afford and can't avoid: Though moderate-income families will get subsidies, buying insurance is mandatory. A family earning $54,000 will be expected to pay $9,000 (17% of pre-tax income) for the premium, co-pays and deductibles, according to the CBO. If you don't enroll, the IRS will find you and penalize you (Senate bill, p. 345).
3. A one-size-fits-all health plan: Your benefit package will be prescribed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Whether you choose basic, silver or gold, and whether you pay for it yourself or qualify for a subsidy, your benefits are the same.
Gold plans simply collect more up front and give you a lower co-pay or deductible. It's unclear how possible it will be to buy supplemental insurance. The goal is to discourage health consumption and differences based on ability to pay.
4. A sin tax on your generous plan at work: This is another equalizer to discourage some people from getting more than others. The Senate bill puts a 40% tax on Cadillac plans (p. 1,980). About one-fifth of employer-provided plans fall into that "luxury" category. The CBO predicts that employers will downgrade your coverage to avoid the tax or reduce your take home pay.
5. Government controls on your doctors' decisions: The Senate bill bars doctors from participating in the private insurance system unless they implement whatever regulations the secretary of health and human services chooses to impose to "improve health care quality" (p. 149). That broad phrase encompasses everything in medicine.
This would be the first time in history that the federal government is given power over how doctors treat privately insured patients
6. Hospitals closed to seniors: The House and Senate bills slash payments to hospitals and other institutions that care for seniors. The chief actuary for Medicare, Richard Foster, warns that cuts in the House bill are so severe that some institutions may face severe losses or end their participation in Medicare (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 11/13/09 report). Some seniors won't know where to go.
7. Bare-bones hospital care: Patients of all ages (and all incomes) will suffer when hospitals are in financial distress. Hospital budget cuts will mean shortages of nurses, equipment and cleaning staff. The president's chief health advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, argues that hospitals in the U.S. offer more privacy and comfort than hospitals in Europe, and this "abundance of amenities" drives up costs (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).
8. Future Medicare cuts: Look out baby boomers, the Senate bill establishes an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission to make automatic spending reductions in future years while insulating Congress from the political fallout. You won't get as much care as people in Medicare currently get.
9. A new social agenda: Money is allocated for adult preparation activities, including lessons on positive self-esteem and relationship dynamics, friendships, dating (and) romantic involvement (Senate bill, p.612). There are also giveaways to immigrants. The Senate bill hands low-income legal immigrants government subsidies as soon as they get here, instead of waiting the five years Medicaid requires (Senate bill, p. 274).
10. A tell-all relationship with every doctor you see: What happens in your doctor's office must be recorded in an electronic data base that can send the information to insurers and other medical offices (Senate bill, p. 62-66). Every doctor you see will have access to your medical history. See a psychiatrist? Your foot doctor will know about it.
These congressional tidings bring no comfort or joy. We must save ourselves from Congress' power now that it has gone astray.
• McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York state and founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.
In the following expose, Michelle Malkin uncovers and delineates some of the more notable examples of corruption perpetrated by the Senate this past year. Such actions are reprehensible and should not be tolerated by us. These entrenched criminals need to be ousted!
Senate Payoffs Top 2009 Tree Of Corruption
By Michelle Malkin
Democrats are right: Sleazy bribes and pork payoffs didn't start with their government health care takeover bill. They've been doling out taxpayer-funded goodies for votes all year. Harry Reid's latest Cash for Cloture deals are the culmination of a shopping spree at our expense.
Go back to January and February. The multitrillion-dollar stimulus bill was the mother of all legislative Christmas trees. The ruling party used the economic downturn to redistribute wealth from struggling Americans to favored congressional districts, phantom districts and special interests from golf-cart makers to beauty salons.
According to a new study from George Mason University, Democratic districts have raked in nearly twice as much porkulus money as GOP districts — without regard to the actual economic suffering and job loss in those districts. In fact, the researchers found that far more stimulus money went to higher-income areas than to lower-income areas.
That includes Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's backyard — where a $54 million no-bid contract was awarded to a firm with little experience to relocate a luxury Bay Area wine train due to flood concerns.
And it includes Barack Obama's home state of Illinois, which reaped the single biggest earmark — $1 billion for the FutureGen near-zero emissions "clean coal" plant earmark championed by disgraced Democrat and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin.
And it includes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's backyard — where he secured billions in high-speed rail stimulus earmarks from which he plans to fund a pie-in-the-sky public transportation line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
When taxpayers objected to business as usual masquerading as economic recovery, New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer sneered: "You lost." He jibed on the Senate floor while wagging a grabby finger, "And let me say this to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little, tiny, yes, porky amendments: The American people really don't care."
The "American people" Schumer was referring to, of course, were the privileged minority of stimulus beneficiaries — not the rest of us "chattering" dissenters stuck with the bill for those billions in "little, tiny, yes, porky amendments."
No legislation has been immune to congressional shakedown.
After the Congressional Black Caucus balked loudly enough, Democratic Rep. Barney Frank — chairman of the House Financial Services Committee — larded up the majority's Wall Street regulatory "reform" bill with $4 billion in payoffs to minority special interests — including former failed Air America radio partner Inner City Broadcasting Corp.
The cash-strapped firm is run by Percy Sutton, a New York City crony of Charlie Rangel's and Al Sharpton's. The money will come out of the ever-morphing TARP bank bailout fund — which went from a toxic assets purchase plan to a capital injection plan, back to a toxic assets purchase plan, then to a life insurance company bailout and on to an auto-supplier bailout.
Leading the charge for the Cash for Cronies of Color drive: California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, who had already extracted $12 million in TARP funds for OneUnited, a minority-owned bank that is one of her key campaign donors and a company in which both Waters and her husband own massive amounts of stock.
Which brings us to the wealth redistribution scheme disguised as health reform.
In addition to the infamous $300 million "Louisiana Purchase" for Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu and the (at least) $45 million "Cornhusker Kickback" for sellout Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Reid threw around other, less-publicized gobs of cash for cloture votes to cut off debate and ram the bill through.
He tossed in a Hospital Helper of $100 million to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., whose re-election bid is in hot water. There are bennies for insurance companies and hospitals in Michigan, and "frontier freebies" for hospitals in Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming.
Combined with Nebraska's tab, the exclusive clique's payoffs will cost taxpayers at least $1.2 billion over 10 years.
There's also an Acorn/community organizer-friendly provision for minority health bureaucracies that was sought by Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill. And there's a $10 billion socialized medicine sop to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for "community health clinics" serving in essence as universal health care satellite offices.
"We are talking about a revolution," Sanders enthused during the Senate's sneaky Sunday session.
No, revolution will come when taxpayers have a chance to kick these reverse Santa Clauses posing as saviors out of office.
The magnitude of corruption, bribery with our tax dollars and complete contempt and disregard for the wishes of the American people that occurred in the process of trying to legislate healthcare reform is essentially unprecedented in national politics. Congress’ responses to questions of Constitutionality of some of the mandates and clauses are dismissive. Obama and these Democrats are telling us: We don’t give a damn about what you want or don’t want and we will do as we please.
As we have been warming for a long time, this has become a dictatorial government that will trample over our rights and freedoms, steal and deal our tax dollars, and impose at will whatever legislation they deem important in order to satisfy their ideological goals.
We must do whatever it takes to reclaim our country!
Forever Gone
Investors Business Daily 12/22/2009
DeMint: Is health care reform even constitutional? AP Photo
Any law can be repealed, but the Democrats' radical health bill contains unprecedented language that could wreck the U.S. health system permanently. It's one of the dirtiest tricks yet.
'Page 1,020" — it may soon be a mantra for one of the most disturbing abuses of legislative power in history. In setting up an Independent Medicare Advisory Board, that page of the Senate health overhaul bill passed in the dead of night early Monday says, "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."
This enters the realm of "hyperlaw" or "laws on steroids."
As Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., pointed out on the Senate floor, it isn't lawmaking, but rather "creating a Senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law."
DeMint is "not even sure that it's constitutional," since it affects "the fundamental purpose of Senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future Congresses."
Clearly liberal Democratic leaders will stoop to record depths to expand the federal government's powers.
Public support plummets well down into the 30s? They don't bat an eyelash.
Mandating an individual's purchase of a private service like insurance tramples the Constitution? Just watch them do it.
Bribe Senators Tom, Dick and Ben? Here's the cash.
As John Steele Gordon noted in Commentary, the Medicaid bribe that bought the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is so unprecedented it may not withstand constitutional muster.
According to Gordon, "one could argue that Nebraskans will be getting what amounts to a rebate on federal taxes through the backdoor of lower state taxes," which might violate Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution requiring government collections to be "uniform throughout the United States."
As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admits, "I don't know that there's a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that isn't important to them," adding that "if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them."
That is the arrogance of the mind-set dominating the legislative and executive branches: Your money is really theirs, to be handed out like a Mob-backed union boss toting a bag of cash on the waterfront.
When you put together Medicare and Medicaid recipients, government employees and contractors, and active and former military members and their dependents, over 40% of Americans receive government-subsidized health care. The Democrats' health care revolution would up that to a solid majority of our citizens.
American history shows that once an entitlement is enacted, it's next to impossible to erase. Catastrophic health care for seniors, passed 20 years ago, is the only such program ever repealed; the 1996 welfare reform severely limited that socially destructive entitlement.
The statists may now finally have bitten off more than they will be able to chew politically. If Republicans act like Republicans and convince the populist Tea Party movement not to go the suicidal third-party route, the coming public backlash will see to it that the greatest health care system in the world is not gone for good.
Look for demonstrators to start burning copies of Page 1,020 the way '60s radicals used to burn their draft cards.
The ever increasing magnitude of anger that is being generated by American citizens in response to what we see as an imperious, arrogant, dictatorial government is nothing short of remarkable. We are being treated contemptuously by a Government that disregards the will of the people, seeks to tax us to oblivion and “legally” redistribute the fruits of our labors, and aims to insinuate itself in every activity of our daily lives, restricting our freedoms and rights. Our present political and socioeconomic milieu is far more dire and repressive than what the Colonists contended with under King George just before the American Revolution.
Unfortunately, we are in the midst of a political perfect storm which threatens the whole underpinnings of our culture, rights, freedoms, and economic system. Our government has been hijacked by the extreme far left which has malevolent intentions for America. It has a super-majority that is essentially unstoppable legislatively but is also willing to employ corrupt, heavy handed tactics if warranted. Complicit in this and facilitating the situation is the vast majority of the press whose role in the past had always been to serve as a watchdog to protect the average American and keep the government more honest and in check.
Millions of Americans are not only concerned by our present situation but also by the perceived malignant intentions of our government starting with Obama on down. The rhetoric of these politicians is indisputably incongruous with their legislative actions whether it pertains to healthcare reform, the national debt or even our rights. These Democrats and radicals are actively and aggressively seeking to destroy the free America we knew and instead, transform it into a pseudo-dictatorship with the likes of Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Frank and Schumer at the helm.
It is imperative that we all understand the gravity of our present circumstances and then aggressively and pertinaciously act in whatever manner necessary to oppose and reverse this course. Unfortunately, with the Government’s relentless consolidation of power by means of unfettered legislative actions, a political solution may be difficult if not impossible to obtain.
We must do whatever it takes to reclaim our country!
The following article brilliantly, insightful and thoroughly explains why what we see as illogical actions by Obama and other “representatives of the people” are instead intentional, calculated, rational but malignant moves that can and may destroy America. This is a must read!
Cloward-Piven Government
By James Simpson
It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact.
In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then, the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck television show, Bill O'Reilly, and now Mark Levin.
The methodology is known as the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and we can all be grateful to David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks for originally exposing and explaining it to us. He describes it as:
The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were two lifelong members of Democratic Socialists of America who taught sociology at Columbia University (Piven later went on to City University of New York). In a May 1966 Nation magazine article titled "The Weight of the Poor," they outlined their strategy, proposing to use grassroots radical organizations to push ever more strident demands for public services at all levels of government.
The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces ... for major economic reform at the national level."
They implemented the strategy by creating a succession of radical organizations, most notable among them the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), with the help of veteran organizer Wade Rathke. Their crowning achievement was the "Motor Voter" act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993 with Cloward and Piven standing behind him.
As we now know, ACORN was one of the chief drivers of high-risk mortgage lending that eventually led to the financial crisis. But the Motor Voter law was another component of the strategy. It created vast vulnerabilities in our electoral system, which ACORN then exploited.
ACORN's vote registration scandals throughout the U.S. are predictable fallout.
The Motor Voter law has also been used to open another vulnerability in the system: the registration of vast numbers of illegal aliens, who then reliably vote Democrat. Herein lies the real reason Democrats are so anxious for open borders, security be damned.
It should be clear to anyone with a mind and two eyes that this president and this Congress do not have our interests at heart. They are implementing this strategy on an unprecedented scale by flooding America with a tidal wave of poisonous initiatives, orders, regulations, and laws. As Rahm Emmanuel said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."
The real goal of "health care" legislation, the real goal of "cap-and-trade," and the real goal of the "stimulus" is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control. Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves except in their ability to deliver power. They and will make matters much worse, for that is their design.
This time, in addition to overwhelming the government with demands for services, Obama and the Democrats are overwhelming political opposition to their plans with a flood of apocalyptic legislation. Their ultimate goal is to leave us so discouraged, demoralized, and exhausted that we throw our hands up in defeat. As Barney Frank said, "the middle class will be too distracted to fight."
These people are our enemies. They don't use guns, yet, but they are just as dangerous, determined, and duplicitous as the communists we faced in the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and bush wars across the globe, and the Nazis we faced in World War II.
It is time we fully internalized and digested this fact, with all its ugly ramifications. These people have violated countless laws and could be prosecuted, had we the political power. Not only are their policies unconstitutional, but deliberately so -- the goal being to make the Constitution irrelevant. Their spending is off the charts and will drive us into hyperinflation, but it could be rescinded, had we the political power. These policies are toxic, but they could be stopped and reversed, had we the political power. Their ideologies are poisonous, but they could be exposed for what they are, with long jail sentences as an object lesson, had we the political power.
Every single citizen who cares about this country should be spending every minute of his or her spare time lobbying, organizing, writing, and planning. Fight every initiative they launch. It is all destructive. If we are to root out this evil, it is critical that in 2010 we elect competent, principled leaders willing to defend our Constitution and our country. Otherwise, the malevolent cabal that occupies the government today will become too entrenched.
After that, all bets are off.
Businessman and Examiner.com columnist Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst.
With audacious dishonesty and or abysmal comprehension of economic factors, Obama claimed in an interview that the Federal Government will go bankrupt if his healthcare reform isn’t passed. He is so suffused with arrogance and narcissism that he stated this with believable conviction. All reputable studies indicate the opposite is indisputably true – we would all be better off if Obamanocare succumbed before it is implemented. Furthermore, they also revealed that health insurance premiums would be much higher under the government plan versus if nothing were done at all.
Congress with its most optimistic assessment has front loaded the fees and taxes to “pay” for the plan – collecting four years before any care (and therefore costs expended) is delivered. They attempt to show fiscal balance (and responsibility) in the first ten years by collecting 10 years of taxes and fees but just six years of care. This is just brazen but typical Congressional legerdemain. After this period even their data reveals that costs will exceed the collections. To make matters worse, experience has shown us repeatedly that the government estimates are always off a factor of three to ten or more – so the claimed $1 trillion cost becomes $3 to $10 trillion. Not chump change!
Congressional Democrats have arrogantly and unequivocally indicated in no uncertain terms that they know what’s better for the America than its citizens do and want to pass Obamacare come hell or high water and do it soon. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is seeking an immediate vote on the recently changed legislation despite the fact that no Senators have had the opportunity to read what they will be voting on. This is all in the face of strong and vociferous opposition by the majority of voters who don’t want the government running their healthcare.
The following editorial by Larry Elder clarifies some of the general issues in a straightforward manner.
Is Imbecility Covered Under Obama Plan?
By Larry Elder
Americans overwhelmingly like their health care and insurance. While they reject ObamaCare, the president and Congress insist on driving it through.
Up to 85% of us already have health insurance and are satisfied with it. Lacking health insurance is different from lacking health care — which, by law, emergency rooms must supply. Millions go without health insurance by choice.
Deduct from the number without insurance those who have access to it via entitlement programs, those temporarily without it while between jobs, those here illegally and those who could go on their parents' insurance plans by paying affordable amounts — and you're down to 10 million to 15 million people without insurance for longer than a year. This is 5% of Americans.
To address this, the president and the Democrats are this close to a complete government takeover of health care. And a takeover it is. Assuming some kind of plan reaches the president's desk, it will — at minimum — force all Americans to purchase health insurance or pay fines or worse.
It will force nearly all employers to provide health insurance or pay fines. It will tell health insurers that they must accept applicants with pre-existing illnesses and restrict their ability to "discriminate" based on factors like sex and age.
Incredibly, the president and Congress tell us that our economic recovery hinges on "health care reform" and that they can achieve it — providing millions of people with health insurance estimated to cost a trillion dollars in the first decade — while simultaneously reducing the deficit.
The plan anticipates cutting hundreds of billions from the popular Medicare programs, whose beneficiaries vote in numbers greater than any other age group. Doctors and hospitals already complain that Medicare reimbursements fall short of costs, let alone profits. Good luck with that.
"Health care reform" achieves its deficit-reducing magic by collecting taxes in the early years — building up money — while paying out very little. Only after the first four years does money go out. It also forces states to pick up part of the tab. So, voila, it actually reduces the deficit — at least in the first decade. Then what?
The Congressional Budget Office — in cost estimates full of caveats, conditions and on-the-one-hands — says that it could/might/may reduce the deficit in the second and third decades, too. Again, this assumes continued cuts in doctor and hospital reimbursements.
Despite the White House photo-op of docs in their white frocks, most physicians oppose ObamaCare. They resent further government supervision and control over their practice. An IBD poll found that 65% "oppose" ObamaCare and that 45% would consider taking early retirement or leaving their practice if the bill went through.
Given the broad opposition — most Americans, most doctors and seniors in fear of cuts in Medicare — why do it?
First, the Democrats — now in control of all three branches of government — have convinced themselves that they face a political price if they fail.
ObamaCare supporters, based on bogus assumptions and inflated numbers, argue that many, if not most, bankruptcy filings are due to health care bills. If, as President Obama asserts, "reforming" health care and economic prosperity go hand in hand, how can they abandon it?
Second, while a large majority of Republicans and most independents oppose these "reforms," Democrats overwhelming support them. They consider health care and health insurance a right — never mind the Constitution or the price tag — and think "the rich" should bear the costs.
Congressmen fear an electorate upset at a failure "to deliver" a victory over the evil, money-grubbing insurance companies.
Third, many believe in good faith that this is the "right thing to do."
This ignores the mountain of evidence that government command-and-control health care reduces quality, reduces innovation and inevitably leads to rationing. The president of the Canadian Medical Association says Canada's system — a single-payer kind, favored by President Obama — is "imploding." She calls for more competition.
Critics of our health care system say citizens in other countries enjoy longer life expectancies. But after adjusting for homicides, infant mortality due to teen pregnancies and low birth weights, obesity and other factors, the discrepancy disappears.
Our system produces the world's best results for cancer patients who go into medical care at the same time similarly situated patients enter their countries' care. Our drug companies lead the world in coming up with new life-extending and -enhancing drugs, a record at risk given new controls and taxes under the guise of "reform."
When the ObamaCare bill comes due — when the deficit explodes and the costs are "controlled" through government-directed rationing — supporters, including Obama, will long have departed Washington, leaving others to deal with the mess.
Sen. Harry Reid despicably called those who opposed his healthcare plan on par with slave owners and supportive of slavery. We feel that he has it all backwards. It is Congress that is acting like the slave owner, imposing crushing and intrusive mandates, massive increases of taxes, limitation of choices and rationing of healthcare on the American public.
We have stated many times in previous posts that Obama and the Democrats in Congress want to impose a healthcare system on an unwilling American public that is the polar opposite of what these politicians speciously claim it to be. There will be severe restrictions on choices and availability of care with governmental rationing. Waiting times will be longer while the quality of care will plummet yet the total cost borne by each individual will significantly increase both through more expensive premiums and usurious taxation.
Congressional Democrats and Obama claim that their healthcare legislation establishes a great system for the American people. If it really is so fantastic then why are they refusing to agree to amendments that would force them to use the same healthcare system as they want to impose on us? The answer is because they know this system will be disastrous – limiting choice, rationing and restricting care, creating prolonged waiting times before receiving care and being far more costly for significantly inferior quality. Why should they have to give up their privileged premium care that is subsidized by the American taxpayer and provides them with myriad choices?
This whole healthcare reform is all about government control and nothing more. As Investors Business Daily put it:
“… health reform's purposes were advertised as cost containment and near-universal coverage. But what Democrats are set to enact will spend trillions dramatically increasing insurance premiums, and leave millions still without insurance.
In other words, their push for health reform has been based on lies. The real purpose: to gain control of America's health system.
And on top of the lies is the hypocrisy the American people have come to expect from their politicians: continuation of the nearly 50-year-old loophole providing senators and House members with a wide choice of private health plans.”
We need to continue fighting to stop this legislation as well as vigorously work at ousting these arrogant, imperious members of Congress who are ruling us rather than representing us!
Reform For You, But Not Congress
Investors Business Daily 12/04/2009
Hypocrisy: If the $2-trillion-plus government health care plan that Congress has come up with is so great, why do lawmakers refuse to live under it themselves? Their designs have been based on lies from the start.
The left thinks Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and David Vitter, R-La., have shot themselves in their feet. After unveiling last week their amendment that would force Senate and House members to cover themselves with any government health plan that passes into law, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a champion of the public option, proceeded to ask if he could sign on as a co-sponsor. Liberal Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he might want to, as well.
"Coburn and Vitter weren't counting on that kind of support," gloated Nation magazine Washington correspondent John Nichols. "If they're smart, the rest of the Democratic caucus will follow Brown's lead and sign on for the public option."
Well, when it comes to feathering their own nests, congressional Democrats are smart. And they're not about to subject themselves to anything less than the taxpayer-subsidized, gold-plated array of private coverage choices they've enjoyed for nearly a half century in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
Coburn and Vitter's idea of politicians living under a government plan "was opposed unanimously by Democrats during interviews on Thursday," the Hill newspaper reports. The paper also noted opposition from senior Republican senators such as National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas and Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, who asked: "Why would I want to put my family in that, let alone anybody else's family?"
Senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle know how good they have it under the FEHBP, the world's largest group health program. The reason Congress' own health care works so well is that it's based on consumer choice and market competition — the opposite of what it's trying to impose on everybody else.
Members of Congress and millions of federal workers may choose from hundreds of private fee-for-service plans, HMOs or preferred provider organizations, with no federal worker living anywhere enjoying fewer than a dozen options.
FEHBP members can easily switch plans if they become dissatisfied; that puts competitive pressure on insurers to provide quality and value. Surveys show that members love their coverage, which is why almost all federal employees join the program.
The FEHBP is shielded from state regulation and Uncle Sam subsidizes premiums by more than 70%. Canadian physician and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Dr. David Gratzer, whose opposition to government-run health care comes from first-hand experience, observes that "the federal government's role in the FEHBP is to pay the bills," unlike the fiscally doomed Medicare program, of which "Washington is the designer of benefits."
Today, instead of the federal takeover Democrats are rushing to enact, lawmakers could give Americans the kind of high-quality health care choices they enjoy. A simple system of vouchers would allow recipients to choose any health plan on the market. The system could be means-tested, with Medicare giving "larger vouchers to poorer and sicker seniors and smaller vouchers to healthy and wealthy seniors, using current health-risk-adjustment mechanisms and Social Security data on lifetime earnings," says Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Vouchers "would contain Medicare spending, and are the only way to protect seniors from government rationing," according to Cannon.
"The FEHBP is an excellent model for designing a system based on broad personal choice," argues Robert Moffit, the Heritage Foundation's director of health policy studies. "There is no reason," he adds, "why a reform of Medicare could not establish a similar structure for national plan options," including integrating private retiree health insurance into the system.
But instead of such common-sense reform, Americans are staring at thousands of pages of new regulations on their personal medical treatment, including a government-run option that will devastate the private coverage most Americans have and like. The inevitable result, as independent studies warn, is thousands of dollars more to pay in health premiums.
In last year's presidential campaign, health reform's purposes were advertised as cost containment and near-universal coverage. But what Democrats are set to enact will spend trillions dramatically increasing insurance premiums, and leave millions still without insurance.
In other words, their push for health reform has been based on lies. The real purpose: to gain control of America's health system.
And on top of the lies is the hypocrisy the American people have come to expect from their politicians: continuation of the nearly 50-year-old loophole providing senators and House members with a wide choice of private health plans.
The global warming debate has been coopted by zealots, power hungry politicians and venal, corrupt individuals. Science should be about seeking the truth not repressing it or thwarting those who want to discover it.
A corollary of this is that our government's pervasive manipulation of scientific information in order to pursue its agenda, whether it regards global warming or even healthcare (recent changed mammogram recommendations), has resulted in many Americans being extremely skeptical of anything that the government is stating - and that is not a good thing.
On Monday, Dec. 7th, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repugnantly, contemptuously and irresponsibly compared Republican opponents of the healthcare reform with those individuals who supported slavery in the 1800’s before the Civil War. This racist and destructive vituperation should not be uttered by any member of Congress but having the Senate Majority Leader perpetrating such an offense is intolerable. He should be censured immediately and mandated to make an official retraction.
Unfortunately, the vitriol and intolerance by the Democrats of opposing points of view has become the norm with the most egregious offenders being the “leaders” of the Democratic Party including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Charles Schumer and, of course, Barack Obama . These individuals have been corrupted by power and seek to acquire absolute power over the American people. They are not legislating as in a benign democracy but rather as in an oppressive totalitarian government.
We must relentlessly work to remove these corrupt politicians from office. Vigorously support the Tea Parties and alternative candidates before we reach the point of no return which we are fast approaching
and IMPEACH OBAMA!
Reid Compares Opponents of Health Care Reform to Supporters of Slavery
FOXNews.com December 07, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.
The Nevada Democrat, in a sweeping set of accusations on the Senate floor, also compared health care foes to those who opposed women's suffrage and the civil rights movement -- even though it was Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat, who unsuccessfully tried to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and it was Republicans who led the charge against slavery.
Senate Republicans on Monday called Reid's comments "offensive" and "unbelievable."
But Reid argued that Republicans are using the same stalling tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era.
"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said Monday.
"When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"
He continued: "When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right.
"When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."
That seemed to be a reference to Thurmond's famous 1957 filibuster -- the late senator switched parties several years later.
Reid's office stood by the remarks, with spokesman Jim Manley saying Republicans have "done nothing but obstruct health care" in the Senate.
"Today's feigned outrage is nothing but a ploy to distract from the fact they have no plan to lower the cost of health care, stop insurance company abuses or protect Medicare," Manley said.
But Republicans said they were genuinely appalled. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Reid's remarks were over the top.
"That is extremely offensive," he told Fox News. "It's language that should never be used, never be used. ... Those days are not here now."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who on the Senate floor read from this FoxNews.com article and asked that it be placed in the record, called on Reid to return to the floor and, if not apologize, at least explain what he meant.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., suggested Reid was starting to "crack" under the pressure of the health care reform debate.
"I think it's beneath the dignity of the majority leader," Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said. "I personally am insulted."
A real repugnant scammer who has immorally stolen more than $100 million using his political connections, deceptions of the public, manipulations of data and corrupt colluding scientists. Now with passage of Cap and Trade a possibility, possible mandates from a Copenhagen Treaty, Americans may be on the hook for trillions of dollars.
The great British statesman and philosopher once said that “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” A close corollary to it is that “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. Unfortunately, we have this precise situation at many levels with Obama and the Congressional Democrats. In our Dec. 1st post , we compared the parallels of history regarding the British car industry and the government takeover there to our present situation with GM. Obama’s actions are mirroring the failed policies of the 1930’s that painfully prolonged the depression far beyond what would have otherwise occurred. Of course, there are many other examples.
The following describes a hauntingly similar situation to ours that transpired in Argentina and what happened when the government there did exactly what Obama and the Democrats are pursuing. The results: DISASTER!
Michael Cembalest from J.P. Morgan researched the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials selected by Presidents since 1900 who would be expected to deal with employment related issues. These are the individuals that the president might seek advice from regarding economic issues as they would have real world experience. This includes the secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security. There are a total of 432 cabinet members that were assessed.
The chart (below) shockingly though not unexpectedly shows one of the reasons why many Americans have been critical of Obama's cabinet selections and provides a strong explanation for the economic failures of Obama’s policies: he has surrounded himself with virtually no individuals with private sector experience. Obama's percentage at around seven percent is essentially off the chart and is miniscule compared to all the other Presidents.
This visually shows that Obama has, at best, made extremely poor choices for key positions which then leads to questions about his judgment and motivations. Another question that these findings raise is whether these individuals were selected specifically because of general ideology versus specialized experience with a positive track record. (Rhetorical question - just consider Tim "turbo tax cheat" Geithner and Lawrence "I lost $1.8 billion dollars of endowment funds at Harvard" Summers!)
Any way we look at it, Obama has surrounded himself with many corrupt, incompetent and/or ideologically liberal or radical individuals. We, the American people, unfortunately are paying a colossal price.
The following is the third editorial posted here that was written by Svetlana Kunin, a Russian immigrant who lived in the communist Soviet Union. It offers her unique insights into the parallels of life and rhetoric in Russia and what is occurring here in the United States under Obama, Pelosi and Co. We must be vigilant, aggressive, proactive and vocal and do whatever is necessary to thwart these changes or this will be another example of history repeating itself to our severe detriment.
Perspective Of A Russian Immigrant (No. 3)
By Svetlana Kunin
Whenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States.
They don't understand why I am repulsed when I hear the president talk about "sacrificing for the collective good," which sounds so compassionate, as opposed to greedy capitalism.
"Sacrifice for the collective good" is one of the founding principles of socialism, where the collective, not the individual, is the basis of society.
Revolutionaries in Russia did not go around boasting about destruction; they made inspiring speeches about fairness, equality, justice and the greater good. After securing power and their own access to material goods, government officials decided what to give and take from the masses, according to their definition of what is good.
When party leaders talk about the "collective good," what they are really talking about is their right to determine what is good for the collective. Government bureaucrats decide what level of sacrifice is needed and who needs to sacrifice. They replace voluntary charity with the forceful redistribution of other people's private property.
Why do people born into a free society accept a failed 100-year-old ideology? It seems Americans are simply unaware of modern history. They don't know the theory behind slogans such as "fairness and equality" and "sacrifice for the collective good," much less how it works when implemented. They buy into old utopian slogans masquerading as new progressive ideals for "Hope and Change."
In the USA, people move up and down the economic ladder all the time. In Western Europe, a milder form of a socialist-democratic political system resulted in higher unemployment, less innovation and less social mobility compared with the U.S. European youth face a continuing decline in their standard of living, as they are burdened with an unsustainable welfare state.
In the USSR, China, North Korea and Cuba, a much harsher form of socialism led to mass murder and mass misery under the banner of "sacrificing for the collective good," "fairness and equality" and service to the state.
The USSR provides numerous examples of what an oppressive centralized government can lead to:
Millions of talented artists, writers and scientists were sent to prison because they did not conform to government standards. Government control of agriculture led to constant shortages of food in one of the largest and most resource-rich lands in the world.
Americans think they are protected. The Constitution is a uniquely American document that specifically limits the power of the government and protects individual liberties. But if all branches of government will ignore this unique document, and people will allow them to do so, there will be nothing different about America.
Americans are not different from people in Russia, Germany, China, Korea or anywhere else. It is human nature to seek power and control, just as it is human nature to seek profit. Deny profit and you destroy any incentive for people to produce and innovate. Give up enough of your liberty to any centralized power and the result is entirely predictable.
Compare North Korea to South Korea, East Germany to West Germany before the fall of the wall — these are examples of the same people living under two different systems: socialism vs. capitalism.
Laws are necessary in a civil society, and this includes laws that regulate the free market. But a government takeover of the economy will result in the transformation of the land of opportunity into a land of apathy and stagnation, a land in which individuals become cogs moving and turning according to government regulations.
In the USSR, they taught us in school that socialism is good and capitalism is bad. That they now teach the same in American schools I find strange.
Obama and Congressional Democrats are disingenuously and dishonestly attempting to impose a bill of goods on healthcare that is rotten to the core on myriad fronts. Let’s focus just on the costs here. They claim that Obamacare (Pelosicare) is fiscally responsible and will not “add a dime” to the deficit. Even with the imposition of massive tax increases, unconstitutional mandates that force people to “purchase” health insurance, and front-end loaded receipts, this is an intentional audacious lie.
Using financial legerdemain, Congress and Obama have removed real costs from within the bill and simply applied them elsewhere. They still exist and are real but they don’t appear in the Obamacare bill so the costs ostensibly appear not as large. Of course, there are other tricks as well.
Furthermore, their assessment of patients’ usage of the system far underestimates reality. Add to that the government’s notorious inaccuracies of underestimating program costs by a factor of 3 to a factor of 10. Dealing now with trillions of dollars, we have the recipe for irreversible financial collapse if Obamanocare is implemented.
In a way, the liberal politicians of today can learn quite a lot from the real life experiences of the Pilgrims when they first landed at Plymouth in 1620. The Democratic Congress and radical Obama Administration want to effectively eviscerate capitalism and impose socialism on us which will be disastrous.
We, the American people know that. So did the Pilgrims, but they had to find out the hard way.
The following article effectively outlines this historical perspective in an insightful way that is most applicable to our predicament today.
Thankful For Plenty
Investors Business Daily 11/24/2009
Blessings: Thanksgiving, as we all learned in school, was about Native Americans and Pilgrims feasting together in friendship to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. The truth, as is often the case, is quite different.
We've all heard about how the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth after a perilous overseas trip — and how they nearly starved until Native Americans, including the English-speaking Squanto and Wampanoag Chief Massasoit, helped them to survive by teaching them about native foods and cultivation.
There's some truth to that. The Indians did help out. But a bigger reason for why they survived to give thanks — and one that gets short shrift today — can be summed up in one word: capitalism.
After reaching land in 1620, the Pilgrims — led by Gov. William Bradford — set about organizing their society along communal lines. Each would give according to his ability, and each would receive according to his needs — a kind of primitive communism.
Profiteering would not be allowed. All land and production would be publicly owned. It was an ugly disaster from the start.
Strong men ceased working hard when it became clear others weren't pulling their weight. Frustrated at being unable to better their own lot in life, some even resorted to theft.
Within months, people were starving. Literally. Nearly half the colony of 106 died in the first awful winter of 1621. The winter of 1622 was little better. Paradise had turned into a death camp.
Gov. Bradford later wrote that the colony was beset by "confusion and discontent." Something had to change. But what?
Desperate, Bradford and the other elders abandoned the colony's cherished communalism, instead allowing settlers to "set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land."
Basic agrarian capitalism, in short.
As Bradford wrote in his "History of Plymouth Plantation," "This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been ... . (I)nstead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many."
By 1623, the bounty produced by the colony's privately owned farm parcels was substantial. Famine no longer stalked the people, and survival was no longer in doubt. That year, the first real Thanksgiving was held.
Today, in an era of bailouts and massive government spending, capitalism has come under sustained and withering criticism. Perhaps some of that criticism is deserved.
Yet we'd do well to remember it's the one system that reliably produces plenty. It lets us realize our true potential and rise above the circumstances of our birth. And it unleashes humankind's awesome creativity, making possible the material blessings we have.
Like the Pilgrims, we should be thankful for all this.
There has been a tremendous and increasing amount of suspicion regarding the validity of the global warming data and related theory. The vitriol, threats, power maneuvering by proponents of global warming and their heavy handed suppression of opposing views strongly intimated that something was amiss in all this. The predicted climactic manifestations of this warming theory have been no shows. Instead, record temperature lows are being set around the globe and we have had the quietest hurricane season in years. (See The Lies, Deceptions and Suppression of Information in Order to Facilitate Passage of the Cap and Trade Fraud)
Governments, some businesses and selected individuals (Al Gore) combined stand to make trillions of dollars and further aggrandize their power by perpetuating this green movement fraud. If the Cap and Trade were to pass and be implemented, we would be paying thousands of dollars more per year in taxes and have countless restrictions in rights, freedoms, choices and activities of daily life. Our standard of living would plummet.
Through perseverance and ingenuity, possibly by hacking into critical computers containing climate “data” and correspondences, this whole fervent (self-serving) global warming movement has been exposed as a massive fraud, a scientific corruption of unparalleled magnitude.
The following article outlines this major discovery of the “smoking gun” evidence of fraud and cover-ups regarding global warming.
The Great British Climate Fraud
by James Delingpole
It has been described as the "greatest scientific scandal of the modern age." The story broke last Thursday when a person unknown -- some say it was a hacker, others an inside-leak job -- broke into the servers at Britain's Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and published at least 61megabytes of confidential data on a Russian website.
Despite efforts in liberal quarters to play the story down as a criminal issue of no great consequence, the blogosophere almost instantly recognized it as political dynamite: perhaps even the final nail in the coffin of Al Gore's increasingly expensive theory that the world is rapidly overheating due to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).
Why? Because the Climate Research Unit in the windswept fenlands of Eastern England -- together with its sister unit in the West of England, the Hadley Centre in Exeter, Devon -- is one of the primary information sources used by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Not only have its resident scientists, computer modelers and statisticians been heavily involved in drafting the IPCC's three reports; but its global temperature records (known as HadCrut) are one of the IPCC's four official sources of data.
If the CRU's data and scientific staff were shown to be unreliable, it would call into question the very basis of the IPCC's doom-laden predictions of rising sea levels and inexorably-rising temperatures due to man-made CO2.
And to judge by the leaked data -- over a decade's worth of documents and emails -- "unreliable" may be a rather polite way of putting it. As Australian blogger Andrew Bolt puts it, the CRU may well be guilty of "conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organized resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more."
The emails reveal a variety of dubious practices, quite contrary to what might reasonably be expected of a world-renowned climate research institution lavishly funded by the UK government. These include:
1.) Manipulation of evidence. In one email, the CRU's director, Professor Phil Jones apparently confesses to having played with data – most unscientifically – in order to achieve his desired end. "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline." (Professor Jones has defended himself, somewhat disingenuously you might think, by saying that "trick" – in the world of science – has no negative connotations).
2.) Concealing private doubts about whether the world is really heating up. One scientist expresses his frustration that the global temperatures are not behaving as he feels they ought to behave: "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."
3.) Destruction of evidence (following a Freedom of Information request – almost certainly an illegal activity): "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."
4.) Fantasizing violence against prominent climate sceptic scientists: "Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.'
5.) Gloating over news of the death of a prominent climate-change skeptic, Australian John L Daly, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site: “In an odd way this is cheering news.”
6.) Attempting to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (ie the period from about 900 to about 1200 when global mean temperatures were considerably warmer than they are now): "……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back…."
7.) And, perhaps, most damningly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority: “I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”
Climate change "skeptics" have long had their suspicions about the reliability of CRU. Among the first to voice these was Steve McIntyre, the statistician who exposed the “Hockey Stick” curve – the now utterly discredited graph initially used by the IPCC (and Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth) to suggest that global temperatures had risen more sharply at the end of the 20th century than at any time in the previous thousand years. (This meant ignoring the Medieval Warm Period – hence the email quoted above).
Over a period of several years, McIntyre sought to acquire from the CRU the raw data used to fuel its computer models of climate Armageddon but was constantly rebuffed. (At one stage, CRU told him that the data had been "lost"). When finally he did get hold of it, he discovered the samples used to have been flawed; just as years earlier, he had showed that the Hockey Stick computer model had been programmed with an algorithm so that whatever information you put into it, it would always come up with the same scary-looking Hockey Stick shape.
But the "Climategate" scandal is a step beyond this. Where before it was only possible to accuse the CRU of being foolish, what these emails prove beyond reasonable doubt is that it has been guilty of conspiracy too. And it is a conspiracy which implicates a good many of the world's leading AGW-promoting scientists, not just in Britain but in the US and beyond.
Besides Professor Jones, the director of the CRU (and a doughty defender in several papers of the Hockey Stick curve) the emails implicate many more of those scientists most deeply involved in drafting the IPCC's reports. They include Dr Keith Briffa, a 'lead author' on the IPCC's 2007 report; Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; Ben Santer, a pro-AGW scientist at the US government's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – and the man responsible for the notorious claim in the IPCC's second report that "the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on climate change"; and Dr Michael Mann, the physicist-turned-climate-scientist at the University of Massachusetts who created the infamous 'Hockey Stick' graph.
What is commonly misunderstood amid the IPCC's vaunted claims that its reports are approved by "2,500 scientists" is that only a tiny number – perhaps 53 in all – were actually responsible for drafting the sections predicting global eco-disaster due to AGW. These 53 scientists are a close knit circle, peer-approving one another's pro-AGW papers, banding together to shut out any dissenting voices. Almost all of them are close to the CRU; many are implicated in the offending emails.
This is what makes Climategate so significant. It is the smoking gun that climate "skeptics" have long been searching for. Or indeed, as one retired US climatologist Dr Tim Ball puts it, a "whole battery of machine guns".
Congress has not demonstrated any evidence that its worsening addiction to spending our tax dollars will be sated. Exacerbating this problem is its constant search for ways to further increase taxes to feed its inimical habit. We the hard-working sacrificing taxpayers are always the losers.
Pelosi and other Democrats in Congress are now considering VAT as a mother lode of more tax receipts. This stealth tax would be severely oppressive and non-transparent to the taxpayer and prone to political and ideological abuse. What VAT is, why it is dangerous and why it must never be implemented here are discussed in the following article.
VAT Would Be One Big Tub Of Trouble
By Wayne Crews and Ryan Young
Ask a man on the street what VAT means. After giving you a strange look, he'll probably give an answer along the lines of "a large tub." In a way, he'd be right: America's on-again, off-again move towards a Value Added Tax (VAT) is a metaphorical large tub, into which huge but nearly untraceable amounts of money will disappear.
A VAT is a tax on each stage of production, calculated according to how much value each producer adds to its products.
In the search for ways to reduce the record $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit, the VAT has occasionally popped up. In May a spokesman for President Barack Obama's budget director, Peter Orszag, expressed openness to the idea. Just last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on "Charlie Rose" that a VAT was "on the table."
It should be taken off. The root cause of the deficit is too much spending, not too little taxing. Putting a new tax on top of what we already pay is the wrong approach.
As far as taxes go, the VAT is especially destructive. If Congress is going to increase taxes, installing a VAT is one of the worst options.
For one, it would require roughly doubling the size of the IRS. Fifteen years ago, CBO estimated compliance and administrative costs for a VAT at $8.5 billion annually. That figure can safely be placed at more than $10 billion by now. The IRS' entire budget is currently $11.4 billion.
VATs are also untransparent. When traditional sales taxes are added to the goods we buy, we know the amount simply by looking at our receipts.
But VATs are hidden. Since manufacturers pay them in advance, they are factored into the prices consumers pay. VATs do not show up on receipts.
Knowing how much we are taxed is a fundamental right that preserves our ability to challenge excess government in a constitutional republic. A VAT would take that away.
Americans work more than one-third of the year for federal, state, and local governments before keeping a dime for themselves. We can still know, to the penny, how much we pay by looking at our pay stubs and old 1040 and state income-tax returns.
This transparency is one of the few checks that citizens have against runaway tax increases. Because a VAT is so easily hidden, consumers can shoulder a massive tax burden and not know it. VATs are fundamentally unfair.
They are also needlessly complex. The U.S. tax code is already over 100,000 pages. The last thing taxpayers need is another layer of complexity. They need simplification. International experience with VATs shows that, even if they are simple at first, they quickly grow into Hydra-headed monsters.
Not too long ago, France was roiled with controversy over whether dandruff shampoo constitutes a medicine taxable at 5.5%, or a cosmetic taxable at 18.6%. There are more pressing issues that deserve our attention.
Most countries with VATs have at least three different rates. Politically incorrect products are hit with punitive rates. Danish car buyers, for example, pay the standard 25% VAT, plus a special 105% VAT on the first $11,000 of the car's value, plus a third VAT of 180% on any remaining value.
All in all, Danes pay roughly triple retail price for their cars. An American VAT would make it easier for environmental activists to give U.S. car buyers similar treatment.
VAT rates also tend to go up over time, not down. Twenty-nine OECD countries currently have a VAT; 20 of them have increased their VAT rate over time. The average rate for newly introduced VAT rates in Europe was 5%. Now the average European VAT is more than triple that — 17.7%.
Taxpayers are overburdened as it is. The best way to reduce budget deficits is to cut spending. VATs should be avoided at all costs. They are complex. They are untransparent. They are hidden. They are vulnerable to special-interest tinkering. They are prone to increases. They should be rejected.
Despite inexorable denials by Obama, Pelosi and Congressional Democrats, the basic fiscal tenet of Obamanocare is rationing of healthcare. Plain and simple. Ignore the prevarications about rationing, cost savings, compassionate care, keeping your own doctor who will make the healthcare decisions along with you, etc. These are all part of the nefarious scheming intended to deceive the public about their ultimate goal of government control of healthcare, transfer of wealth and further aggrandizement of government power.
The following editorial from The Wall Street Journal, delineates some of the inimical dictates of the legislation.
The Rationing Commission
Meet the unelected body that will dictate future medical decisions.
As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren't receiving the scrutiny they deserve—and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending. Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a "global budget" on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine.
Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for. White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission "critical to our fiscal future" and "one of the most potent reforms."
On that last score, he's right. Prominent health economist Alain Enthoven has likened a global budget to "bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don't see the faces of the people you kill."
As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission—all 15 members appointed by the President—would have to meet certain budget targets each year. Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation. After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.
The theory is to let technocrats set Medicare payments free from political pressure, as with the military base closing commissions. But that process presented recommendations to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Here, the commission's decisions would go into effect automatically if Congress couldn't agree within six months on different cuts that met the same target. The board's decisions would not be subject to ordinary notice-and-comment rule-making, or even judicial review.
Yet if the goal really is political insulation, then the Medicare Commission is off to a bad start. To avoid a senior revolt, Finance Chairman Max Baucus decided to bar his creation from reducing benefits or raising the eligibility age, which meant that it could only cut costs by tightening Medicare price controls on doctors and hospitals. Doctors and hospitals, naturally, were furious.
So the Montana Democrat bowed and carved out exemptions for such providers, along with hospices and suppliers of medical equipment. Until 2019 the commission will thus only be allowed to attack Medicare Advantage, the program that gives 10 million seniors private insurance choices, and to raise premiums for Medicare prescription drug coverage, which is run by private contractors. Notice a political pattern?
But a decade from now, such limits are off—which also happens to be roughly the time when ObamaCare's spending explodes. The hard budget cap means there is only so much money to be divvied up for care, with no account for demographic changes, such as longer life spans, or for the increasing incidence of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.
Worse, it makes little room for medical innovations. The commission is mandated to go after "sources of excess cost growth," meaning treatments that are too expensive or whose coverage will boost spending. If researchers find a pricey treatment for Alzheimer's in 2020, that might be banned because it would add new costs and bust the global budget. Or it might decide that "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller," as President Obama put it in June.
In other words, the Medicare commission would come to function much like the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which rations care in England. Or a similar Washington state board created in 2003 to control costs. Its handiwork isn't pretty.
The Washington commission, called the Health Technology Assessment, is manned by 11 bureaucrats, including a chiropractor and a "naturopath" who focuses on alternative, er, remedies like herbs and massage therapy. They consider the clinical effectiveness but above all the cost of medical procedures and technologies. If they decide something isn't worth the money, then Olympia won't cover it for some 750,000 Medicaid patients, public employees and prisoners.
So far, the commission has banned knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis, discography for chronic back pain, and implantable infusion pumps for pain not related to cancer. This year, it is targeting such frivolous luxuries as knee replacements, spinal cord stimulation, a specialized autism therapy and MRIs of the abdomen, pelvis or breasts for cancer. It will also rule on routine ultrasounds for pregnancy, which have a "high" efficacy but also a "high" cost.
Currently, the commission is pushing through the most restrictive payment policy in the nation for drug-eluting cardiac stents—simply because bare metal stents are cheaper, even as they result in worse outcomes. If a patient is wheeled into the operating room with chest pains in an emergency, doctors will first have to determine if he's covered by a state plan, then the diameter of his blood vessels and his diabetic condition to decide on the appropriate stent. If they don't, Washington will not reimburse them for "inappropriate care."
If Democrats impose such a commission nationwide, it would constitute a radical change in U.S. health care. The reason that physician discretion—not Washington's cost-minded judgments—is at the core of medicine is that usually there are no "right" answers. The data from large clinical trials produce generic conclusions that rarely apply to individual patients, who have vastly different biologies, response rates to treatments, and often multiple conditions. A breakthrough drug like Herceptin, which is designed for a certain genetic subset of breast-cancer patients, might well be ruled out under such a standardized approach.
It's possible this global budget could become an accounting fiction, like the automatic Medicare cuts Congress currently pretends it will impose on doctors. But health care's fiscal pressures will be even stronger than they are today if ObamaCare passes in anything like its current form. And that is when politicians will want this remote, impersonal and unaccountable central committee to do the inevitable dirty work of denying care.
The only way to take the politics out of health care is to give individuals more power to control medical dollars. And the first step should be not to create even more government spending commitments. The core problem with government-run health care is that it doesn't make decisions in the best interests of patients, but in the best interests of government.
Video: Pelosi Asserts That it's 'Fair' to Jail People Without Health Insurance
The arrogance, haughtiness and condescension displayed by Pelosi and her cronies to the citizens of this country as exemplified in this video are unparalleled. Why? Because they know that they have full and effectively unopposed power in the government and the unwavering near unanimous support of the news media. They can pretty much do whatever they want with little consequence or so they think.
As Thomas Jefferson sagely noted over 200 years ago:
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny
When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Who is going to stop them?
If we want to save our country from fascism and tyranny and protect our rights and freedoms, we must immediately, persistently, effectively and aggressively oppose these corrupt, power-crazed, contemptuous politicians.
The tea parties were a good start… but Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et.al. need to start fearing us a lot more!
The following is among the most thorough but concise, cogent and eloquent articles detailing Obama’s hatred of America. It leaves no doubt as to his attitude and ideology – as if we really needed any convincing.
Of course, this all begs the question: What are we to do with a President who hates America and is dismantling it to fit the socialist/communist country that he envisions?
Impeachment?
The Man Who Despises America
By Mark Hyman
The very next paragraph is going to make the nut jobs on the far left excitable beyond belief. I am not referring to all Democrats or even a majority of liberals. I am singling out the "they've-lost-all-touch-with-reality" crowd. This includes Media Matters for America led by the admitted hit-and-run, drunk-driving serial liar. The group includes the unshaven, bathrobe-clad unemployed who live in their mother's basement and are devout followers of MoveOn.Org. It is also the bitter, aging spinster working at the New York Times, the morbidly obese documentary film maker, and cable TV news' resident drama queen who hosts MSNBC's Countdown. They are about to simultaneously suffer from brain aneurisms. So without further delay, I'll say it.
Barack Obama despises America.
When people who voted for Obama in 2008 -- including registered Democrats -- start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it "in for America," then it's clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.
The central conviction of Obama's ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world's ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.
The 30-years of Obama's post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.
Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.
Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable life's accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.
Joining Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright in organizing attendance at Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's 1995 march on Washington is beyond imaginable. Especially after Farrakhan demonstrated public support for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi during the Libyan Leader's most bellicose years against the U.S., which included Libyan complicity in numerous terrorist attacks.
Obama's view of America in national security and foreign affairs is profoundly disappointing to say the least.
Americans overwhelmingly view the men and women who saved Europe and the Far East during World War II as comprising the Greatest Generation. By his comments and actions, President Obama obviously thinks otherwise.
Obama did not honor American greatness on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift while on his first European trip. Instead, he accused "America [of having] shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward its European allies.
He also denigrated the accomplishments of the American G.I. during World War II in the Pacific theater when he offered a thinly veiled apology for the U.S. having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those acts brought the war to a swift conclusion, perhaps saving hundreds of thousands of lives when it appeared Japan was prepared to wage an island-by-island battle to the last man.
Obama ordered the release of the so-called CIA "torture memos," seriously damaging delicate intelligence relations with allied nations and placing at grave risk the safety of U.S. intelligence officers working overseas. The impact of his action handcuffs the ability of U.S. intelligence officials to protect the U.S. and American interests from acts of terrorism.
In a matter of weeks last spring, Obama gave deference to a variety of belligerent leaders while stiff-arming longtime American allies. First, he called for closer relations with Cuba while ignoring that nation's long list of continuing human rights abuses. Then he warmly welcomed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at an Organization of American States summit.
Next, he failed to respond and set the record straight after Nicaragua's Communist leader Daniel Ortega listed alleged U.S. crimes and atrocities during a nearly one-hour rant at the OAS meeting. It is unsettling that in his own remarks Obama incorrectly claimed the OAS has 36 members rather than the actual 34. Ortega and the hemisphere's other Socialist leaders claim the OAS would include 36 members if Cuba and an independent Puerto Rico were allowed to join. Mere coincidence or Freudian slip?
Immediately following the OAS embarrassments, Obama ignored a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet. Obama would repeat this snub six months later before agreeing at the last moment to meet Netanyahu after the Israeli leader was en route the U.S.
In his speech before the Muslim world, Obama made the patently absurd claim of equivalency between the status of displaced Palestinians and the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His claim that 7 million Muslims live in the U.S. is a figure inflated by as much as 700%.
In an earlier speech, Obama claimed that the U.S. is not a Christian nation, which is at odds with the fact that 79% of Americans self-identify as Christians and the nation's founders were devout Christians.
In less than six months in office, Obama apologized for Guantanamo Bay; for alleged mistakes committed by the CIA; for U.S. policy in the Americas; for America's history of slavery; for "sacrificing [American] values;" for "hasty decisions" in the war on terror; for "America's standing in the world;" for American errors in foreign policy; and for U.S. relations with the Muslim world.
He pronounced Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology acceptable and he warned Netanyahu against targeting Iran's nuclear facilities. Obama's approach to Iran is eerily similar to that of Jimmy Carter, whose actions contributed to the fall of that nation into the control of Islamic radicals.
This summer, the door to greater individual freedoms in Iran was firmly closed shut when Obama announced the U.S would not meddle in Iran's election and he offered no encouragement to democracy activists who protested the obviously stolen elections. His silence was deafening when regime security agents savagely attacked and killed countless Iranians who took to the streets.
In contrast to his deference to anti-American leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, Obama strong-armed Netanyahu on key Israeli matters. In addition to snubbing the Israeli Prime Minister's requests to meet, Obama demanded an end to Israeli settlements and insisted on the creation of a two-state Palestine solution.
Obama abandoned NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling the central Europe missile defense plan just as rogue nations North Korea and Iran make advances in nuclear and ballistic missile production. The cancellation was demanded by Moscow authorities who have adopted a more confrontational posture toward the west.
Solidarity with freedom-loving East Germans has been a staple of the American presidency for nearly 50 years. John Kennedy pronounced himself a Berliner. Ronald Reagan demanded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "Tear down this wall!" Yet, this bricks and mortar icon of first, Soviet totalitarianism, and then, second, the end of Soviet domination did not make the cut as Obama chose not to attend the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. In the summer of 2008, Obama altogether skipped mentioning the role of the U.S. -- or even the West, for that matter -- in bringing down the wall, instead crediting "a world that stands as one."
Obama's disagreement with American values and institutions is evident in domestic issues. He has stocked his administration with wild-eyed radicals who believe foreign law trumps the U.S. Constitution (Harold Koh); include an avowed Marxist and "truther" who believes George Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack and is also an ardent supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (Van Jones); and include a devoted admirer of Mao Tse-tung who slaughtered as many as 75 million people (Anita Dunn). (In contrast, George W. Bush's Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft was savaged by the news media for being an Evangelical Christian.)
Three weeks after America's first black president was sworn in, the nation's first black Attorney-General who was hand-picked by Obama, called America "a nation of cowards" for some perceived race relations shortfall. The understood meaning of Eric Holder's comments is that white people are still racists. However, the reality is the people most preoccupied with fomenting the racial divide are those who populate the ranks of the Obama Administration.
Obama's Homeland Secretary designated military veterans as terrorists-in-waiting to be equally as dangerous as other domestic terrorists including pro-lifers and citizens opposed to the flood of illegal aliens.
One of Obama's very few suggestions to cut into his $1.4 trillion budget deficit was to have servicemen and women pay for their own war injuries. He's all for providing free health care to illegal aliens but believes wounded warriors should foot their own hospital bills. In fact, the Defense Department is about the only sector of government in which Obama has proposed slashing spending.
Hours after a belligerent "African-American Studies" Harvard professor engaged in behavior unbefitting anyone let alone a professional man, Obama accused the exceedingly tolerant Cambridge police officers as having "acted stupidly" and then digressed into how people of color have been unfairly treated by white America.
Bush was prolific in quietly and privately visiting the military wounded and family of the fallen. In contrast, Obama attempted to make political capital of his one visit to Dover Air Force Base. Obama's motives were so transparent that families of 17 of the 18 fallen denied permission for Obama to engage in a photo-op alongside the returning caskets.
In May, Obama immediately issued a statement that he was "shocked and outraged by the murder" of a Kansas doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions. He called it a "heinous act of violence." Attorney-General Holder mobilized U.S. Marshals nationwide to provide protection to abortion clinics.
But Obama remained silent the very next day when two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by a Muslim extremist outside a Little Rock recruiting station. After repeated prodding for a presidential comment, the White House faxed an after-hours statement to select media outlets two days later offering a tepid remark that Obama was "saddened" without even mentioning the soldiers were murdered.
Five months later, another Muslim fanatic gunned down nearly four dozen Americans, killing 13, at the Ft. Hood army base. It was an act that demanded the most serious demeanor of the military's Commander-in-Chief. Yet, Obama referenced the massacre in the most insincere fashion just seconds after a jocular shout-out to an audience member during a public speaking engagement. It was the equivalent of attending a funeral in swimwear while en route to the beach.
The odd inadvertent comment or occasional verbal faux pas can be explained away as just that. However, Obama has a lifetime of comments and actions including 10 months as president that belie his real attitude toward the U.S. The difference between Obama and his immediate predecessors such as Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes and Bill Clinton who actually revere and honor the greatness of America and its citizens and institutions cannot be overstated.
In an article in the Los Angeles Times, they noted that: “At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.”
According to the report, the strategist stated that he was told by a White House official that “We better not see you on again.”
Although Anita Dunn, the White House Communications Director, denied the allegation, this threat is quite compatible with the modus operandi of the Obama Administration. It is just another in a litany of actions, threats and rhetoric to aggrandize power and silence its critics and opponents by any means necessary. Even more perversely, Obama will "let" you talk with the ruthless dictators Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro or even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - just don't be caught talking with Fox News!
The healthcare reform legislation, AKA Obamanocare or Pelosicare, is disastrous no matter which way it is assessed – cost, quality, delivery, rationing, disorganization, corruption, effects on medical research, etc. The ultimate reality based astronomical price tag will bankrupt our country and obliterate the standard of living for years to come as a consequence. The massive and oppressive tax hikes that Congressional Democrats disingenuously claims will pay for the government takeover of healthcare will not cover the costs but will most assuredly crush and destroy our economy.
“Congress has barely finished blowing the ink dry on its bill, but already its central fiscal premise is being convincingly challenged.
While Democrats have claimed the overhaul will cost $900 billion, the Congressional Budget Office puts the real cost at $1.1 trillion. The Associated Press, citing unnamed Democratic sources, comes up with $1.2 trillion; Republicans say it'll cost $1.3 trillion or more; others say it's more like $1.8 trillion.”
The following insightful editorial written by Sen. Tom Coburn (R. – OK) and Representative Paul Ryan (R. – WI.) exposes the fallacies of the Democrats’ rhetoric and numbers as well as the multitude of dangers that the healthcare reform legislation poses to the average American. They write:
“The current reform product does not meet the test of either real reform or fiscal responsibility. Nor does it represent the best of both parties. It represents the frustrated ideological ambitions of one party that believes the way to pull the welfare state back from bankruptcy is by expanding it.”
Addressing just the financial aspects of the bill and the liabilities that it engenders, they note that:
“What is at stake in this process is not merely a lower standard of living for future generations, but a decline of freedom at home and abroad. We are risking our own national economic stability and security if we continue — through excessive borrowing — to hand potential adversaries leverage over our foreign and domestic policy.”
We have mentioned numerous times that while the Democrats aver that the Obamanocare/Pelosicare legislation is just about healthcare reform, it unequivocally isn’t. This is an indisputable unconstitutional theft of Americans’ healthcare rights and choices as well as their hard earned income. It is a government confiscation of another 17% of our GDP as well as a payback for political support of the Democrats to labor unions and trial attorneys in particular.
Buried within an even more bloated 1900 page document is a proviso in Section 2531 which rewards trial attorneys by creating disincentives for states that are attempting or have already implemented laws aimed at reducing extortionist medical-legal settlements.
"A state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys' fees or imposes caps on damages."
Characterizing this, IBD note that “… states that have the “nerve” to rein in frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits — and that's 85% of them, according to a Harvard study — would be punished if they also established medical courts where health care experts, rather than untrained juries, settle injury disputes based on actual medical science.”
Once again, the Democrats are legislating what is in their best interest and not what is best for all Americans.
The House Republican Conference has compiled a list of all the new boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs created in H.R. 3962 which is Pelosi's legislation for the government takeover of health care and the abrogation of the rights, freedoms and pillaging of the hard earned incomes of American citizens. Specifically identified in the article New Federal Bureaucracies Created in Pelosi Health Care Bill on the GOP.gov website, these include:
Retiree Reserve Trust Fund (Section 111(d), p. 61)
Grant program for wellness programs to small employers (Section 112, p. 62)
Grant program for State health access programs (Section 114, p. 72)
Program of administrative simplification (Section 115, p. 76)
Health Benefits Advisory Committee (Section 223, p. 111)
Health Choices Administration (Section 241, p. 131)
Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman (Section 244, p. 138)
Health Insurance Exchange (Section 201, p. 155)
Program for technical assistance to employees of small businesses buying Exchange coverage (Section 305(h), p. 191)
Mechanism for insurance risk pooling to be established by Health Choices Commissioner (Section 306(b), p. 194)
Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund (Section 307, p. 195)
State-based Health Insurance Exchanges (Section 308, p. 197)
Grant program for health insurance cooperatives (Section 310, p. 206)
"Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 321, p. 211)
Ombudsman for "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 321(d), p. 213)
Account for receipts and disbursements for "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 322(b), p. 215)
Telehealth Advisory Committee (Section 1191 (b), p. 589)
Demonstration program providing reimbursement for "culturally and linguistically appropriate services" (Section 1222, p. 617)
Demonstration program for shared decision making using patient decision aids (Section 1236, p. 648)
Accountable Care Organization pilot program under Medicare (Section 1301, p. 653)
Independent patient-centered medical home pilot program under Medicare (Section 1302, p. 672)
Community-based medical home pilot program under Medicare (Section 1302(d), p. 681)
Independence at home demonstration program (Section 1312, p. 718)
Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research (Section 1401(a), p. 734)
Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission (Section 1401(a), p. 738)
Patient ombudsman for comparative effectiveness research (Section 1401(a), p. 753)
Quality assurance and performance improvement program for skilled nursing facilities (Section 1412(b)(1), p. 784)
Quality assurance and performance improvement program for nursing facilities (Section 1412 (b)(2), p. 786)
Special focus facility program for skilled nursing facilities (Section 1413(a)(3), p. 796)
Special focus facility program for nursing facilities (Section 1413(b)(3), p. 804)
National independent monitor pilot program for skilled nursing facilities and nursing facilities (Section 1422, p. 859)
Demonstration program for approved teaching health centers with respect to Medicare GME (Section 1502(d), p. 933)
Pilot program to develop anti-fraud compliance systems for Medicare providers (Section 1635, p. 978)
Special Inspector General for the Health Insurance Exchange (Section 1647, p. 1000)
Medical home pilot program under Medicaid (Section 1722, p. 1058)
Accountable Care Organization pilot program under Medicaid (Section 1730A, p. 1073)
Nursing facility supplemental payment program (Section 1745, p. 1106)
Demonstration program for Medicaid coverage to stabilize emergency medical conditions in institutions for mental diseases (Section 1787, p. 1149)
Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund (Section 1802, p. 1162)
"Identifiable office or program" within CMS to "provide for improved coordination between Medicare and Medicaid in the case of dual eligibles" (Section 1905, p. 1191)
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Section 1907, p. 1198)
Public Health Investment Fund (Section 2002, p. 1214)
Scholarships for service in health professional needs areas (Section 2211, p. 1224)
Program for training medical residents in community-based settings (Section 2214, p. 1236)
Grant program for training in dentistry programs (Section 2215, p. 1240)
Public Health Workforce Corps (Section 2231, p. 1253)
Public health workforce scholarship program (Section 2231, p. 1254)
Public health workforce loan forgiveness program (Section 2231, p. 1258)
Grant program for innovations in interdisciplinary care (Section 2252, p. 1272)
Advisory Committee on Health Workforce Evaluation and Assessment (Section 2261, p. 1275)
Prevention and Wellness Trust (Section 2301, p. 1286)
Clinical Prevention Stakeholders Board (Section 2301, p. 1295)
Community Prevention Stakeholders Board (Section 2301, p. 1301)
Grant program for community prevention and wellness research (Section 2301, p. 1305)
Grant program for research and demonstration projects related to wellness incentives (Section 2301, p. 1305)
Grant program for community prevention and wellness services (Section 2301, p. 1308)
Grant program for public health infrastructure (Section 2301, p. 1313)
Center for Quality Improvement (Section 2401, p. 1322)
Assistant Secretary for Health Information (Section 2402, p. 1330)
Grant program to support the operation of school-based health clinics (Section 2511, p. 1352)
Grant program for nurse-managed health centers (Section 2512, p. 1361)
Grants for labor-management programs for nursing training (Section 2521, p. 1372)
Grant program for interdisciplinary mental and behavioral health training (Section 2522, p. 1382)
"No Child Left Unimmunized Against Influenza" demonstration grant program (Section 2524, p. 1391)
Healthy Teen Initiative grant program regarding teen pregnancy (Section 2526, p. 1398)
Grant program for interdisciplinary training, education, and services for individuals with autism (Section 2527(a), p. 1402)
University centers for excellence in developmental disabilities education (Section 2527(b), p. 1410)
Grant program to implement medication therapy management services (Section 2528, p. 1412)
Grant program to promote positive health behaviors in underserved communities (Section 2530, p. 1422)
Grant program for State alternative medical liability laws (Section 2531, p. 1431)
Grant program to develop infant mortality programs (Section 2532, p. 1433)
Grant program to prepare secondary school students for careers in health professions (Section 2533, p. 1437)
Grant program for community-based collaborative care (Section 2534, p. 1440)
Grant program for community-based overweight and obesity prevention (Section 2535, p. 1457)
Grant program for reducing the student-to-school nurse ratio in primary and secondary schools (Section
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