Even with his own Party, it is all about Obama. He will throw Democrats under the bus in order to enact his legislation and ideologies.
Obama is a clear and present danger to most!
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We have been calling for impeachment of Obama for a long time for myriad reasons. He presents an unprecedented existential threat to the welfare and survival of America as we have known it in the past – founded on principles of liberty, freedom, equality, justice and individuality and with a non-intrusive government.
In fact, the primary motivation and impetus for the creation of this website was the realization of the threats and risks to a free America that Obama presented combined with a far-left radical Democrat juggernaut in the Senate and House of Representatives. Information needs to be disseminated so we can all be informed and aware of what is transpiring and act accordingly. As we have just recently learned regarding the media collusion in the Journolist scandal, such information has been egregiously manipulated, controlled and even suppressed to support a far-left agenda (and candidate in Obama). The “main stream” media has become a de facto political wing and propaganda source for the Democratic Party and hence, the functioning government.
This is an incredibly dangerous situation for us American citizens and for the survival of our Democracy.
In the following trenchant, thorough and convincing editorial written by Tom Tancredo, who was a five term member of Congress, he calls for the impeachment of Obama. He concisely sums up the immense danger that Obama presents to our country by stating that:
For the first time in American history, we have a man in the White House who consciously and brazenly disregards his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. That's why I say the greatest threat to our Constitution, our safety and our liberties, is internal. Our president is an enemy of our Constitution, and, as such, he is a danger to our safety, our security and our personal freedoms.
If we can vote in enough Republicans to take over the House and Senate in November, then we will have what it takes to impeach Obama's - though we may also need to coax our elected officials to pursue this course of action.
The case for impeachment
Obama has violated his oath of office over immigration
Tom Tancredo July 22, 2010
Eleven years ago, like every citizen elected to serve in Congress or any person appointed to any federal position, I swore an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic."
I've always thought it significant that the Founders included domestic enemies in that oath of office. They thought liberty was as much at risk from threats within our borders as from outside, and French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville agreed with that warning.
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the greatest threat to our nation was clear - and foreign. While Islamic terrorism still represents the greatest external threat to America and American lives, the avowed program of the Obama regime has changed the picture in a fundamental way.
For the first time in American history, we have a man in the White House who consciously and brazenly disregards his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. That's why I say the greatest threat to our Constitution, our safety and our liberties, is internal. Our president is an enemy of our Constitution, and, as such, he is a danger to our safety, our security and our personal freedoms.
Barack Obama is one of the most powerful presidents this nation has seen in generations. He is powerful because he is supported by large majorities in Congress, but, more importantly, because he does not feel constrained by the rule of law. Whether he is putting up the weakest possible defense of the Defense of Marriage Act despite the Justice Department's legal obligation to support existing law; disenfranchising Chrysler and GM bondholders in order to transfer billions of investor dollars to his supporters in the United Auto Workers; or implementing yet a third offshore oil-drilling moratorium even after two federal courts have thrown out two previous moratoriums, President Obama is determined to see things done his way regardless of obstacles. To Mr. Obama, the rule of law is a mere inconvenience to be ignored, overcome or "transcended" through international agreements or "norms."
Mr. Obama's paramount goal, as he so memorably put it during his campaign in 2008, is to "fundamentally transform America." He has not proposed improving America - he is intent on changing its most essential character. The words he has chosen to describe his goals are neither the words nor the motivation of just any liberal Democratic politician. This is the utopian, or rather dystopian, reverie of a dedicated Marxist - a dedicated Marxist who lives in the White House.
Because of the power he wields over budgets, the judiciary, national defense and even health care, his regime and his program are not just about changing public policy in the conventional sense. When one considers the combination of his stop-at-nothing attitude, his contempt for limited government, his appointment of judges who want to create law rather than interpret it - all of these make this president today's single greatest threat to the great experiment in freedom that is our republic.
Yes, Mr. Obama is a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda. We know that Osama bin Laden and followers want to kill us, but at least they are an outside force against whom we can offer our best defense. But when a dedicated enemy of the Constitution is working from the inside, we face a far more dangerous threat. Mr. Obama can accomplish with the stroke of his pen what bin Laden cannot accomplish with bombs and insurgents.
Mr. Obama's actions, not just his words, show the threat he poses. A level of government deficit spending unheard of since World War II and trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see represent an unacceptable threat to our economic security and our children's future. Mr. Obama could be the first president to guarantee that the next generation of Americans has a lower standard of living than their parents.
Mr. Obama's most egregious and brazen betrayal of our Constitution was his statement to Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, that the administration will not enforce security on our southern border because that would remove Republicans' desire to negotiate a "comprehensive" immigration bill. That is, to put it plainly, a decision that by any reasonable standard constitutes an impeachable offense against the Constitution. For partisan political advantage, he is willfully disregarding his obligation under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution to protect states from foreign invasion.
There is no higher duty of the federal government and our elected representatives than to protect our nation from invasion. Multiple reports and testimony before Congress by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have stated that a porous border with Mexico is "a path" terrorists will use if they can. Some would-be terrorists, including at least one associated with Hezbollah, already have. Recent reports of contacts between Hezbollah and Mexican drug cartels make it all but certain that terrorists intent on destroying us will come across our southwestern border. Therefore, it is of utmost importance for the administration to do everything in its power to keep Americans safe. Our safety is not a bargaining chip for another amnesty - or for any other political objective whatsoever.
Mr. Obama's refusal to live up to his own oath of office - which includes the duty to defend the United States against foreign invasion - requires senators and representatives to live up to their oaths. Members of Congress must defend our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Today, that means bringing impeachment charges against Mr. Obama.
Tom Tancredo is a former member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and five-term member of Congress from Colorado. He serves as chairman of the Rocky Mountain Foundation.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/22/the-case-for-impeachment/
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The following explosive video exposes and explores the issue of Obama’s Presidential campaign allowing a prominent presence on his web site of the New Black Panthers Party. This was not an accidental coincidence or oversight by the Obama team which ran a very precise and carefully orchestrated campaign. You don’t publicize or honor a person or a group to such an extent if you strongly disagree with them or find them repugnant. This was the featuring of a group that is ideologically similar to Obama.
And we have seen what that ideology is over the last 18 months. Viciously and vehemently:
Anti-American.
Anti-White.
Anti-Capitalism.
Anti-Establishment.
Anti-Semitic. Anti-Christian.
But strongly narcissistic, hedonistic, pro-Islamic and racist (as in black nationalism as in Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan and Van Jones, et al.)
This is what is occupying the White House at present ... and why he needs to be removed.
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The Dept. of Justice, which should be protecting the rights of all Americans and the Constitutionally enumerated equality of all (Fourteenth Amendment), apparently is not fulfilling its mandate. Under Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, a racist bias has suffused the agency. Their ideology is that some people - blacks in particular and Democratically voting Hispanics - are "more equal" than others, specifically Whites. Some of this also stems from Obama's 20 years attending the vitriolic, racist rants of Rev. Wright in church where he preached black nationalism and supremacy. (Then again, Obama "claimed" to have heard nothing controversial. And Bill Clinton "didn't inhale" or "have sex with that woman".)
This sanctioned and enforced racism of blacks over whites is something that all Americans need to be aware of and react and respond to aggressively. If not, our rights will continue to progressively erode and we will find ourselves in a racially very hostile country that may be balkanized.
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We have always vehemently felt that the dismissal by the Obama Administration of voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party was evidence of their racist, double-standard ideology and not because of lack of evidence. The U.S. had all but won the case yet when it was dismissed, black Attorney General Eric Holder stonewalled all who sought an explanation for the action.
Finally, we now have an answer provided by an attorney within the Justice Dept. who was directly involved in the case. This attorney, J. Christian Adams, has provided explicit inside information on this particular case as well as the mindset and ideologies of those within the Justice Dept. What he reveals in an excoriating expose is precisely what we expected and what is at the ideological core of Obama and his Administration: anti-White racism and a double-standard of ignoring minority perpetrated acts of lawlessness while prosecuting those where Whites were the violators.
This should come as no surprise to those who have investigated or paid close attention to even parts of Obama’s past. His 20 years in the Black Nationalist, anti-White, anti-American Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago which was led by Rev. Wright and honored and revered the despicably racist, anti-Semitic and anti-American Nation of Islam leader Louis Farakkhan. (See video as refresher). His associations with many other black racists over much of his life (check the category Reverse Racism for more).
The endemic (reverse) racism in the government fostered, facilitated and condoned by Obama and his appointees MUST NOT BE TOLERATED!
We must widely expose, condemn and attack this corrupt and illegal attitude and behavior which starts at the top: Obama
OBAMA MUST BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE!!
Inside the Black Panther case Anger, ignorance and lies
By J. Christian Adams June 25, 2010
On the day President Obama was elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance to a polling place in Philadelphia. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and poll watchers.
After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs. I and other Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us to dismiss the case.
The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney.
The federal voter-intimidation statutes we used against the New Black Panthers were enacted because America never realized genuine racial equality in elections. Threats of violence characterized elections from the end of the Civil War until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Before the Voting Rights Act, blacks seeking the right to vote, and those aiding them, were victims of violence and intimidation. But unlike the Southern legal system, Southern violence did not discriminate. Black voters were slain, as were the white champions of their cause. Some of the bodies were tossed into bogs and in one case in Philadelphia, Miss., they were buried together in an earthen dam.
Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the dismissal and the DOJ's skewed enforcement priorities. Attorneys who brought the case are under subpoena to testify, but the department ordered us to ignore the subpoena, lawlessly placing us in an unacceptable legal limbo.
The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has testified repeatedly that the "facts and law" did not support this case. That claim is false. If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls. Let's all hope this administration has not invited that outcome through the corrupt dismissal.
Most corrupt of all, the lawyers who ordered the dismissal - Loretta King, the Obama-appointed acting head of the Civil Rights Division, and Steve Rosenbaum - did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation. Just as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. admitted that he did not read the Arizona immigration law before he condemned it, Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that he had not bothered to read the most important department documents detailing the investigative facts and applicable law in the New Black Panther case. Christopher Coates, the former Voting Section chief, was so outraged at this dereliction of responsibility that he actually threw the memos at Mr. Rosenbaum in the meeting where they were discussing the dismissal of the case. The department subsequently removed all of Mr. Coates' responsibilities and sent him to South Carolina.
Mr. Perez also inaccurately testified to the House Judiciary Committee that federal "Rule 11" required the dismissal of the lawsuit. Lawyers know that Rule 11 is an ethical obligation to bring only meritorious claims, and such a charge by Mr. Perez effectively challenges the ethics and professionalism of the five attorneys who commenced the case. Yet the attorneys who brought the case were voting rights experts and would never pursue a frivolous matter. Their experience in election law far surpassed the experience of the officials who ordered the dismissal.
Some have called the actions in Philadelphia an isolated incident, not worthy of federal attention. To the contrary, the Black Panthers in October 2008 announced a nationwide deployment for the election. We had indications that polling-place thugs were deployed elsewhere, not only in November 2008, but also during the Democratic primaries, where they targeted white Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters. In any event, the law clearly prohibits even isolated incidents of voter intimidation.
Others have falsely claimed that no voters were affected. Not only did the evidence rebut this claim, but the law does not require a successful effort to intimidate; it punishes even the attempt.
Most disturbing, the dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.
Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.
Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race. Core American principles of equality before the law and freedom from racial discrimination are at risk. Hopefully, equal enforcement of the law is still a point of bipartisan, if not universal, agreement. However, after my experience with the New Black Panther dismissal and the attitudes held by officials in the Civil Rights Division, I am beginning to fear the era of agreement over these core American principles has passed.
J. Christian Adams is a lawyer based in Virginia who served as a voting rights attorney at the Justice Department until this month. He blogs at electionlawcenter.com.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/25/inside-the-black-panther-case-anger-ignorance-and-/?page=1
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One of the first moves that Obama made when becoming President was to remove a bust of Winston Churchill and send it back to Great Britain. This unwarranted act was politically imprudent and irresponsible and was interpreted as such by one of our greatest longtime allies. It should have also served as a portent for all as to the radical direction that Obama would take and ideology that he subscribes to.
We are seeing all this unfolding as our allies are peeling off and our enemies are becoming more brazen. (See Obama's International Reputation is Deservedly Abysmal.)
Obama White House loved the magazine cover of him walking on water
Andrew Malcolm June 21, 2010
Ever since the Obama White House got rid of that British colonial era bust of Sir Winston Churchill on-loan from Great Britain, they've been on the lookout for new less offensive art.
Now we learn, thanks to Howard Kurtz on CNN, that Obama adviser David Axelrod made a call to the editor of the New Yorker magazine requesting a copy of the Feb. 1 cover of the magazine showing No. 44 walking on water. (No, not the newly-resurfaced Gulf of Mexico.)
The only stipulation: The cover art had to be autographed by artist Barry Blitt.
Here's the exchange between Kurtz and magazine editor David Remnick on "Reliable Sources":
REMNICK: Well, they wanted a signed version of the cover. And, you know, there were other covers maybe they didn't like as well. But I think they got over it. In fact, they got over it a lot faster than some other people.
KURTZ: What did Axelrod's office tell you about Obama's personal reaction?
REMNICK: I think Axelrod and Obama were laughing hysterically over this cover. And the fact to their credit, within a matter of weeks, that they reversed the really sinking trend that they were experiencing, and they passed health care. And the White House certainly reversed its downward trend pretty quickly after that cover. I'm not saying the cover was anywhere near responsible for it.
KURTZ: Well, it's a good thing you didn't have him sinking all the way into the water after Scott Brown's victory.
We'll add below one of the other Obama covers that Remnick alludes to, referencing Obama's alleged Muslim ties from the 2008 campaign.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/06/obama-new-yorker-walk-on-water.html
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The following editorial describes the deleterious effects that Obama’s aggressive remarks and rebukes toward Israel have had on that country. These, by themselves, are supremely important. However, if you look at the big picture, the damage that Obama has engendered by his lack of leadership and executive experience, his naiveté and disingenuous ideologies, and ill-advised commentaries, apologies and rebukes is incalculable.
In America, he has unleashed divisiveness and racism (ie. - incendiary comments on Arizona’s illegal immigration legislation with countless cities and organizations now attacking or boycotting Arizona- also pitting one state against another; his countenancing of Helen Thomas’ anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rants setting a poor example; dropping prosecution of the New Black Panther Party in the Philadelphia voter intimidation case; maintaining strong associations with black racists such as Cornel West, Henry Jones, Louis Farrakhan, Jay-Z, etc.)
Internationally, by denigrating America and apologizing for it, insulting and /or decreasing support and protection for our long-time allies (Great Britain, Israel, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Honduras, etc.), remaining silent in the defense of freedom and democracy (ignoring the Iranian people uprising against the theocratic repressive Islamic regime), talking loudly but carrying a very tiny stick (none to useless threats to Iran; loser in nuclear talks to Russia/Putin) and denying Islamic terrorist we are unquestionably witnessing the expected consequences.
Our enemies are emboldened and that spells death and disaster. There has been an explosion of terrorism attempts (fortunately they have thus far failed) in this country since he took office. Iran is progressing unimpeded in its quest for nuclear weapons which it will use – and which will precipitate a conflagration of unparalleled proportions. Turkey and other countries see a green light to be aggressive to Israel. Venezuela is saber rattling even more and upsetting the stability in South America.
And the list goes on.
Obama is not fit to be President. He must be removed from office to protect our country and the world!
Open Season On The Jewish State
Investors Business Daily 06/08/2010
In its latest slight, the White House temporarily withdrew an invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following Israel's killing of nine.
Israel: Of all the ironies of the Obama presidency, the strangest is now unfolding: The election to purge American racism somehow lowered the bar for anti-Semitism.
The 89-year-old Helen Thomas had been roosting in the front row of the White House press briefing room for decades. Yet her ugly feelings that Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and return "home" to Poland or Germany or America — or wherever it is the Jews belong — took this long to bubble up out of the cauldron of her gut in proximity to a camera.
The now ex-doyenne of the White House Press Corps was long known as no friend of the Jewish state, but somehow the intentional chill that the Obama administration has engineered in U.S.-Israeli relations has reduced the caution regarding attacking the state of Israel, and undoubtedly helped set her off.
It's almost like people sensing that the brawny big brother, America, has grown tired of going to the trouble of escorting his persecuted little brother, Israel, through the neighborhood. And all that long-suppressed resentment is beginning to burst out now that the protector is not on hand.
"Israel is finally getting its comeuppance" seems to be the perception of many of the critics of the Middle East's only democracy, save for U.S.-liberated Iraq.
In wondering how someone in public life, who was in her 20s when the Nazis were slaughtering millions of Jews in Germany and Poland, could act like the caricature of a bigot from an earlier era, it's impossible not to consider the disintegration over the past 16 months of our relationship with our staunchest Mideast ally.
The latest slight was the temporary withdrawal of an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to the White House after Israeli forces killed nine aboard a Turkish-backed flotilla trying to break an Israeli blockade of Gaza last week.
It turns out, according to reports, that the administration's rejection of Israeli intelligence reports and consequent refusal to provide advanced weapons led to Netanyahu refusing to authorize the use of tear gas and other anti-riot measures. After Israeli commandos were soon outmatched by Turkish personnel, live fire was ordered by the Israeli naval commander.
The White House demand that Israel "exercise extreme caution and restraint," as a diplomat told WorldTribune.com, apparently ended up costing lives. Would this "Freedom Flotilla" have even attempted to break an Israeli blockade if Israel still had our strong backing? And would Iran be threatening to use its Revolutionary Guards to help smash the blockade with a naval escort?
Would the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency be placing Israel's nuclear weapons power status on its governing board's agenda this month for the first time in nearly two decades if the American-Israeli relationship wasn't deteriorating?
Would the likes of bush-league diplomatic players such as Turkey and Brazil be coming out of the woodwork with a deal to threaten even the tepid sanctions against an Islamofascist regime in Iran that will soon be able to launch a nuclear warhead against Israel?
A good case could be made that little or none of this would be happening if the U.S. had not let it be known, in various ways, that it wasn't going to be supporting Israel the way it used to.
With photos circulating of the president hugging Helen Thomas in the press room, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs scrambled to condemn her remarks as "offensive and reprehensible." And then the president followed with a personal condemnation.
But distancing itself from Thomas' bigotry doesn't allow the president to escape blame. Like former President Jimmy Carter, who used the flotilla incident to accuse Israel of "besieging Gaza" and claim that because of Israel, "the people of Gaza remain isolated and deprived of their basic human rights," this administration believes Israel should be blamed for defending itself from terrorism.
In fact, the Jewish state, surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, should be lauded for its restraint over the decades, not subject to further persecution.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/536739/201006081901/Open-Season-On-The-Jewish-State.aspx
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Obama made clear that he has no intention of visiting Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial day and instead will vacation back home in Chicago so that he can sleep in his own bed. To appear that he has some semblance of concern for those who have died in war, he will visit a nearby cemetery in Illinois.
We say: Don’t even bother, Obama.
The interminable disrespect that you have shown for America and those who have lost their lives fighting for our rights and freedoms as well as those of people worldwide is reprehensible and unforgivable. These dead patriots would turn in their graves knowing your intentional dismantling of our country’s offensive and defensive military capabilities which is in accord with your radical anti-American agenda.
Don’t desecrate by your presence these cemeteries filled with American heroes who were willing to die in defense of their country.
Obama, you are not worthy of that privilege.
The President's Memorial Daze
Investors Business Daily 05/28/2010
Leadership: Our commander in chief was to miss the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to go on vacation. Other presidents have missed it, but never at wartime.
All presidents deserve a vacation, and no president is ever off the clock. But we are at war, and Memorial Day at Arlington has special significance even in peacetime. Those who defend President Obama's decision to take time off were not so understanding whenever President George W. Bush spent time at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.
Obama was to be in his old Chicago-area stomping grounds, and those who attacked Bush for taking his vacations are defending Obama's right to do so. As leftist columnist David Corn so eloquently put it: "Does it matter if Obama throws some leaves on a tomb?" Yes, it matters.
Media Matters, the George Soros-connected house organ of the loony left, points out that George H.W. Bush also missed the Arlington ceremony in 1992 while campaigning. But we were not at war in 1992 when he attended a ceremony in Maine. And he was a bona fide war hero who risked his life for his country and who did not need to prove his commitment to the military.
President George W. Bush also missed Arlington's Memorial Day ceremonies in 2002, when he joined Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi, Secretary of State Colin Powell and a bipartisan congressional delegation for services at the American cemetery in Normandy, France, honoring those who paid the ultimate sacrifice on D-Day.
President Obama was to attend ceremonies and deliver remarks at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill. We hope he was to be there to honor this particular location and those who are buried there, not because of its geographical proximity to his other plans.
And no, we don't think it's sufficient to send as an Obama stand-in at Arlington our silver-tongued vice president, Joe Biden, who thinks Brussels and not Washington, D.C., should be "the capital of the free world."
The Associated Press says Obama "will sleep in his own bed for the first time in more than a year." The White House isn't exactly some roadside campaign motel, and those buried at Arlington will sleep forever.
This is the president whose administration views the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a "man caused disaster" and who says those who died in Iraq and Afghanistan paid the ultimate sacrifice in an "overseas contingency operation." Instead of stirring rhetoric, we get boilerplate bureaucratese read off a teleprompter.
The military has taken a beating under this administration. From the shooting down of the F-22 Raptor to the abandonment of ground-based missile interceptors in Europe, unilateral disarmament is now official policy. We won't test old nukes or build new ones. We tell our enemies what and how many weapons we have and when we'll use them. Our defense budget is at pre-9/11 levels.
Our defense secretary says we don't need billion-dollar destroyers to chase down pirates as the Chinese build aircraft carriers. In December 2009, President Obama journeyed to West Point, or the "enemy camp," as MSNBC's Chris Matthews described it, to attack the premise of the Iraq War and the president who won it.
Then there were the national spectacle and disgrace of watching our commander in chief say and do nothing while three Navy SEALs were put on trial for allegedly punching a captured terrorist who murdered American contractors in Iraq. We'd say a gesture of sympathy and support from this president was in order.
Yes, it's a day of hot dogs, hamburgers and family fun. It's also a day we honor those who died to give us the freedom to enjoy all that.
We hoped President Obama would go to Arlington.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/535834/201005281924/The-Presidents-Memorial-Daze.aspx
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For those who emigrated from authoritarian regimes and came to America, what is transpiring here right now is frighteningly familiar. They have experienced and heard it before in their ex-homelands and don’t want to see the same pernicious transformation occur here.
The catch-phrases, racial propaganda issues and benign sounding social slogans that Obama and other “socialists” deviously insert in their rhetoric are Trojans that have all been insidiously used in the past as a part of a lethal package for revolutionary changes.
Like Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. The U.S.S.R. for decades. China. North Korea. And in those countries based on Marxism like Cuba.
This is not a path down which America must never travel. Millions are being duped including many of the intelligentsia.
Obama and his cronies must be stopped!
Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant (No. 9)
By SVETLANA KUNIN 05/18/2010
In May 2008, Sen. Barack Obama delivered a commencement address at Connecticut's Wesleyan University that called for sacrificing in order to build a fair and socially just society.
"We may disagree on certain issues and positions," he said, "but I believe we can be unified in service to a greater good. I intend to make it a cause of my presidency.
Two years later, at this month's commencement at the University of Michigan, President Obama talked about the role of government as a solution to the problems facing America. He complained about a lack of civility in our public debate.
"Throwing around phrases like 'socialist' and 'Soviet-style takeover' and 'fascist right-wing nut' may grab headlines," he said, "but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian and even murderous regimes."
The president's rhetoric mesmerized the students at Wesleyan and persuaded supporters to join his cause for change. But to me and other immigrants from socialist countries, this rhetoric sounded familiar.
American college students, in awe of their new leader and excited about ideals such as social justice, a fair society, equality and the transformation of greedy capitalist systems in which workers are exploited, do not realize these progressive ideas are identical to what students in socialist countries were taught 40 years ago in required classes such as "political economics" and "Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism."
The pleasant platitudes that make up leftist rhetoric are not new.
The policies and actions of this government are almost identical to what took place in countries moving toward socialism throughout the 20th century.
Government appropriation of banks, other financial institutions, medical care, education, natural resources and regulation of speech is what came of centralized power in young socialist societies, leading to totalitarian regimes such as those in the USSR, China, Cuba and North Korea.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other Democrats in Congress and the media portray critics of this government as racists, right-wing nuts, Nazis or terrorists, it is more than lack of civility; it is a deliberate, Soviet-style authoritarian tactic to impose conformity on people who happen to disagree with the government's definition of the greater good.
In the Soviet Union, those who dared to criticize the government were called vragy naroda, which translates as enemies of the people.
At his commencement address in Michigan, Obama said we have the option to get our information from any number of blogs, Web sites and cable news shows. This of course requires that we all agree on a certain set of facts to debate from, and that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads.
At his next commencement address at Hampton University in Virginia, Obama further aired his concerns about uncontrolled information, which: "becomes a distraction, a diversion. It's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."
It was much easier to manipulate and direct public opinion in the Soviet Union, where the state apparatus had complete control of all sources of information. Centralized government propaganda and draconian suppression of free speech created an enforced conformity no one could escape.
That is why Obama wants to regulate the Internet and cable news shows so they are "neutral" as defined by the government.
The Soviets demonized the opposition as enemies of the people; American leftists simply define any opposition to them as racist or extremist.
"The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses," said Vladimir Lenin. "He who now talks about the freedom of the press goes backward and halts our headlong course toward socialism."
Young, educated graduates, born in the freest society, figure Obama is not a socialist; he is something new and somehow uniquely qualified to enact tired, old ideas that will result in a new, fair and equal society.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, in a recent sermon in Danbury, Conn., summed it up well: "Dr. King's dream was not to put one black president in the White House. The dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house. President Obama is in the White House to help us get there, but we're not there yet."
An old Soviet joke defines socialist equality as follows: If your neighbor has a cow and you do not, kill your neighbor's cow.
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California is a paradigm of where Obama and Congressional Democrats are hijacking the rest of the country to. Massive unsustainable spending, oppressive but still rising taxes, gargantuan debt, bloated but ever enlarging government, strangulating regulations and red tape, business and employment unfriendly environment and intrusive government.
All of these are manifestations of years subjected to the unfettered and irresponsible actions of Progressives/Liberals. It now seems, California is at the edge of the abyss … and looking back at the rapidly approaching country as a whole.
We must not go there!
Sunset In Taxifornia?
Investors Business Daily 05/12/2010
Deficits: We've been hard on Arnold Schwarzenegger in recent months, but we're foursquare behind the California governor in his effort to balance the state's budget without raising taxes.
The Golden State's $18.6 billion budget deficit, the nation's largest, is the result of uncontrolled spending by the state's Democrat-controlled legislature — nothing else. Yet the very same Democratic legislators are pushing for tax increases in the middle of the state's worst downturn since World War II — and only a year after passing a $12.5 billion tax hike to boost revenue.
To call this foolish would be the understatement of the year. So we were glad to hear that Schwarzenegger will include steep spending cuts in the budget plan he'll release this week.
"We don't believe that raising taxes right now is the right thing to do," said the governator's spokesman Aaron McLear.
He's right. California's deficit is not only gargantuan, it's getting worse. In April, the state income tax month, revenue came in 26% below expectations at $3.6 billion — despite last year's tax hikes.
Democrats' answer to this isn't cutting back after years of profligacy. They want a new 10% severance tax on oil production, higher taxes on commercial property and a repeal of corporate tax breaks passed last year to help create jobs.
These are the kinds of policies that have driven California's economy into a ditch. Its jobless rate of 12.6% is among the nation's highest, and it has the lowest credit rating of any state.
Companies are fleeing a business-unfriendly environment created by years of leftist legislation that has taken the state from first to worst in terms of job creation. Recent studies call California's tax policies the worst in the nation. The Pacific Research Institute, a think tank, not-so-tongue-in-cheek calls the state "Taxi-fornia."
Job relocation specialist Joe Vranich counts 112 major companies since June 2009 that have either moved or opened new facilities in other states — costing California thousands of jobs. The most recent emigrant was none other than Northrop Grumman, which is moving its global headquarters to Northern Virginia.
"It's no mystery what causes companies to leave California," said Vranich. "High taxes, undue regulation, workers' comp costs, a legal environment stacked against businesses, and lengthy and costly construction-permitting requirements."
Each week, some 3,000 middle-class workers and entrepreneurs move elsewhere, recent estimates show. Some 1.4 million have left already.
If Schwarzenegger wins this fight, it could mark a defining shift toward fiscal sanity. If not, and taxes and regulations surge anew, California's darkest days will still lie ahead.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=533862
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This is the road Obama is taking America down:
If Obama succeeds in his socialist, bankrupting, reckless spending policies this is where we will be subsequently heading:
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The incessant left wing attacks on Arizona’s new immigration law are ideologically based emotional rants void of substantive facts. If these demagogues and uninformed parroting protestors availed themselves to examine the law they would note that it is essentially identical to the federal law which the federal government has chosen to largely ignore – for political reasons.
Meanwhile, Arizonans are under assault from these illegals and the Mexican drug and smuggling trade and must protect themselves since the federal government has abdicated its Constitutional responsibility.
Cafferty Blasts Obama and the Dems For the Arizona Law
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The Veterans Administration Hospitals, run by the Federal government, are notoriously horrific on myriad accounts and has been so for years. Negligence, poor patient care, disarray, confusion, bureaucracy are just a few adjectives that can begin to describe the “quality” or lack thereof associated with the VA. And this is just a fraction of the size that Obamacare will be.
So Obama and Congressional Democrats really believe that they can used this along with what has been learned from the Medicare program and the Post Office to provide outstanding care that exceeds what we have now, to more individuals and for less?
Wrong!!
As we have reiterated numerous times, Obamacare is not about healthcare. It is all about government control, power and spreading the wealth around.
Obamacare must rescinded or rendered impotent!
VA Claims Office Takes SNAFU to a New Level
Jana Winter FOXNews.com April 19, 2010
Last month, a decorated Gulf War hero received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that said: We are working on your claim for menstrual disorder. He was surprised -- but not as much as one might think.
Last month, a decorated Gulf War hero received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that said: We are working on your claim for menstrual disorder.
There was just one problem: The claim was submitted for fibromyalgia.
Make that two problems: The claim was submitted by Glenn McBride, a 40-year-old man from Roanoke, Va., who most definitely does not get menstrual cramps.
It's a bad sign when your health insurance provider can’t figure out which gender reaches for the Midol. (Hint: it's the one without the prostate.)
The Department of Veterans Affairs is notorious for bungling health care benefits, and its Roanoke regional office, which handled McBride's claim, has long been considered among the worst.
In September 2009 a surprise inspection found the office was collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucratic incompetence. Literally.
Its filing system — floor-to-ceiling stacks of overfilled file cabinets and loose claims folders — weighed twice as much as the building's structure allowed, threatening the lives of everyone inside. Inspectors also found missing and improperly filed, stored and processed claims, among other problems. The regional office was ordered to overhaul the health care processing center completely.
By last month, six months later, there should have been some improvement. Instead, McBride received a letter that included this perplexing request for additional information:
"On the VA Form 21-4138, Statement in Support of Claim you sent on October 8, 2009, you included menstrual disorder. Please specify what you intended to claim for this condition."
McBride, whose 14 years of Army service included a combat tour with one of the most highly decorated units during Desert Storm -- and did not include any complaints about menstrual cramps, so far as he can recall -- insists this was not just a clerical error. He says it's one more example of the VA ignoring or messing up claims in order to avoid paying benefits.
"If the VA does not actually recognize the request, they do not have to give the award," he said. "Sort of like a perverted form of 'See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.' Most people just throw up their hands in frustration and walk away at this point. That is the VA's plan."
The VA, asked to comment about McBride's complaint, issued a statement in which it said:
"The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) mission is to be an advocate for Veterans. VA has a responsibility to assist Veterans during the claims process. Part of that duty is to include all possible issues that a Veteran references in his or her initial claim package. VA regrets any confusion that Mr. McBride's claim may have caused. VA Regional Office employees have reached out to Mr. McBride to clarify the confusion, determine the types of issues he wants to claim, and identify any outstanding concerns that he may have."
Jim Strickland, a veterans advocate who writes a regular health care benefits column on VAWatchdog.org and has his own benefits-related Web site, said he wasn't at all surprised to learn of McBride's "menstrual" letter. "There are 57 regional offices and every one is operating in total chaos and in crisis," he said. "Full frontal mass chaos. Every day."
Contacted in the middle of the week, Strickland said he'd already received two e-mails from veterans who were mailed the records of other veterans. And he provided his most ridiculous example of a nonsensical claims letter, one that managed to try to collect debt and to discuss overpaying the same debt -- at the same time.
For Gulf War veterans who fought during a certain time period, certain health conditions are considered presumptive, meaning that such a high percentage of that group has been diagnosed with the condition it's presumed that it was caused by military service, and coverage is automatically granted. Fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, is a presumptive one for McBride.
Because of his years of experience dealing with the VA, McBride likes to provide as much information as possible when he submits claim forms. (He also gets a signed and time-stamped receipt upon delivery.) When he sent in his claim for fibromyalgia, he typed clearly at the top of the form: "This form is an official request for SERVICE-CONNECTION for FIBROMYALGIA." He included an extract of a VA "fast letter" regarding presumptive conditions — basically providing the VA with its own policy on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. "Menstrual disorder" is included in the VA's list of symptoms.
"The VA just breezed right through the facts and settled on the obscure," McBride said. "The Roanoke office clearly hasn't changed."
Strickland says the problem at the root of letters like McBride's is a bonus structure paid out to VA claims employees.
"The more work, the better the bonus is," he said. "It's strictly volume, not quality driven. There is no accountability whatsoever.
"The art of the Teflon Jacket has been perfected at our VA. They are really totally invulnerable to your criticism."
When the editor of VAWatchdog.org posted an April Fools Day joke -- "VA DOCTOR TRIES TO GIVE PROSTATE EXAM TO WOMAN
VETERAN (April Fool); VA physician: 'Nobody told me the patient was a female. How the hell was I supposed to know that?'" -- McBride sent in his "menstrual" letter.
It was posted on the same site under the heading, "Today's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? award goes to the VA's Roanoke, Virginia Regional Office."
The site's editor describes the award:
"Every now and then we get a story about the VA that just can't be. But, it is! Because, remember, we're not dealing with regular people ... we're dealing with the VA. That's when we throw up our hands and scream at the sky:
"'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?'"
Which is longhand for: WTF.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/04/19/veterans-health-claims-menstrual-disorder/
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The following essay captures so well the essence and dangers of Obama Delusion Syndrome. The damage done if Obama were just another nameless inconsequential loser would be minimal. Unfortunately, he is the President of what was once the greatest country ever. His delusional disorder together with his narcissistic personality disorder, and some outside political help have in a little more than a year wreaked severe and incalculable damages to our rights, freedoms, attitudes, America’s security, economy and future and have poisoned relationships with our long standing allies and have emboldened our sworn enemies to exploit our increased vulnerabilities.
Not a pretty picture! This must not be allowed to continue.
Obama Delusion Syndrome
Kevin McCullough April 18, 2010
Few things are less tasteful than arrogance amongst the empowered. Few things are sillier than believing one's own praise. Few people are more misguided than those who teach false doctrine, and few pose more danger than those who willfully deceive in order to gain power.
On all four points President Obama stands head and shoulders above us all.
It seems, however, that he saves his ugliest bit of guile, disdain, and self-exultation for when he is forced to deal with "We The People." For as much as he would like to believe it to be the case, he is not higher than us, but rather our servant. And though he bristles at the notion that anyone should be allowed to instruct his behavior or review his job performance, in November of this year the voters of America will do both.
Realizing this, if I were one of President Obama's advisors, I would caution him greatly on his continuing smug and arrogant defiance of the voters, especially as they express their thoughts on the greatest domestic crisis we face nationally: the economy.
This week, when addressing Democratic supporters who paid him (at least his party's campaign fund) between $250-$1250 dollars to hear him speak, the President dropped the curtain and let another shade of his true colors show.
Last year, when the tea parties began forming and the first of what would be over 5000 of them took place across the nation, he claimed to have barely been made aware that they were there. He claimed so despite the fact that the most watched cable news company reported live from gatherings that ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousands of attendees. (Attendance at these events was a fact that the White House would directly misguide people concerning throughout the year of 2009.)
But this year, instead of playing dumb, the President took a different tactic: arrogance and marginalization. Speaking to people who paid big money to hear him, he said, "I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you."
Thank you? For what, exactly, Mr President?
Since unemployment, which you pledged to never let grow past 8%, has been near 10% for the better part of your Presidency, should we thank you for the stimulus bill you passed that has made underemployment worse in dozens of states?
You do know Mr. President, don't you, that under President Bush nearly one in twenty families worked but did not have enough to make ends meet, but under you that percentage has, for the duration of your time in office, held fairly steady at one in five families?
Or should we thank you for the federal takeover of private industry, and the artificial propping up of some companies, while the indiscriminate failures of others went unheeded?
Perhaps we could thank you for removing the terms "terrorist, war on terror, and islamic radical" from federal usage in any official reference. After all, refusing to label what the terrorists really are, or worse yet their true intentions will create a more peaceful world... right?
Perhaps we can thank you for your repeated attempts through the Health Care Reform bill, your still-not-dead Cap & Trade legislation, and, coming soon, your legislation to normalize illegal aliens to put repeatedly harsh burdens upon the small businesses of America. After all small businesses only creates 2 of every 3 new jobs in the nation.
Mr. President there is also the matter of how you treat our allies. You assumed a posture, from the moment you were sworn into office with our closest ally Great Britain, and most recently our most important ally in the middle east Israel, to treat them with contempt. Yet you smilingly shake the hands of dictators, accept their socialist dogmas as gifts, and even tell them that your own nation is a bad player in world affairs, even though if it were not for your nation--America, most of the freedoms on the planet presently enjoyed would be non-existent.
President Obama, it has become clear to anyone with an ounce of objectivity, that you are engaged in a great delusion.
A delusion that sees your own policies as euphoric, when in reality they are significantly dangerous. It is a delusion that seems to think our allies are bad, and our enemies are good. A delusion that even has given you the "right" to arrogantly mock and marginalize those of us who know the law: that you work for us.
Mr. President how are we supposed to see "hope and change" in your actions that mock our needs, priorities, and desires?
In reality we'd prefer you to focus on attempting to heal the sick economy, restore our standing to one of respect amongst our allies and fear amongst our enemies, and in nearly every other area keep the long reach of government out of our lives. Then we'd have reason to thank you!
Unfortunately for us all, it is doubtful your delusion will allow you to see the need.
Copyright © 2010 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
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The following essay sheds important light on the out of control progressiveness of our tax code and how it threatens our democracy, productivity and attitudes. This is all elucidated in a very cogent fashion and understandable fashion.
Clearly, we must reverse the perversities of the tax code and make sure virtually everyone has some financial responsibility. Our future is depending on it.
Guess Who Didn't Pay Taxes On Tax Day
By Elizabeth Factor and Mallory Factor April 16, 2010 FOXNews.com
Progressive Democrats are using “tax reform” to create a group of Americans who pay no federal income tax at all.
Did you file your federal income taxes on or before April 15? Almost 50% of American households won’t be paying any federal income tax this year, and the reasons why have profound implications for our democracy as well as our economy now.
A series of tax reforms, generous exemptions and tax credits, including last year’s economic stimulus bill, have dropped millions of Americans from the federal tax rolls. Huge numbers of Americans are simply no longer affected by the federal income tax. The Tax Policy Center projects that 47 percent of all U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2009. And, the bottom 40 percent of income earners actually receive a cash payment from the government at tax time. This cash payment is styled as a “refund” but it is actually a net cash transfer from the government--not a refund of taxes actually withheld on income. And for many Americans, this cash transfer from Uncle Sam actually exceeds all federal, state and local taxes that they pay in any form during the year including sales taxes and social security taxes.
Of course, we are accustomed to the idea that high income earners pay more in taxes both in absolute terms and as a percentage of their incomes. But taxing only the top half of a society is not normal progressive taxation. Instead, the recent changes to our tax system are an example of politicians using the tax code for their own political ends. In this case, the so-called progressive Democratic politicians are using “tax reform” to grow their political base by creating a group of Americans that pay no federal income tax.
The people who don’t pay federal income taxes are, as the phrase goes, “rational economic actors” just as much as anyone. Like all people, non-taxpayers respond to economic incentives. Their demand for entitlements and government programs is naturally insatiable because they don’t care at all about the cost. Non-taxpayers don’t have any “skin in the game” and are completely indifferent to the government raising income taxes. So they will always support increasing government programs as a long as they get even a small benefit from them because it does not cost them a cent. It’s also perfectly rational for non-taxpayers to support politicians who favor more spending. Non-taxpayers get something for nothing, at least until the country becomes insolvent.
The so-called progressive Democratic politicians are rational actors too. By taking more and more Americans off the federal tax rolls, they are creating a permanent base of supporters for themselves. These politicians may claim to support increased government spending because of their concern for the less-fortunate but--hey, it also happens to be in their own political self-interest. And these politicians will continue to spend on these programs until our nation goes bust because they want to keep their jobs and grow expensive programs for their political base.
And what about the people paying all the federal taxes? Well, taxpayers respond to incentives too. When faced with increasing tax rates, taxpayers will reduce their income, which is why it is impossible to raise a lot of revenue by increasing taxes above a certain point. As taxes on income rise, taxpayers spend less time on work and more on leisure.
They avoid sales of investments and assets which could trigger income until they can pair them with offsetting losses from other transactions. They spend billions of dollars on tax advice and structuring to reduce their tax burden, which makes economic sense for them but which is a waste of resources for our society. In the aggregate, a tax system that is hostile to investment and growth has a distortive effect which harms U.S. productivity and reduces the standard of living of our whole nation.
Under the Obama administration, many Americans accustomed to paying their share of federal taxes are being taken off the tax rolls. Recent tax law changes mean that for the first time, in 2009, a family of four making $50,000 can pay no federal income tax at all. This family may not change its behavior and outlook immediately from its taxpaying days. But the family’s economic incentives are now to keep America taxing and spending. And a family at this income level has surely suffered in this recession, but should they really pay no federal income tax at all?
Ronald Reagan once said that a taxpayer is “someone who works for the Federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.” Every American should have to work for the federal government at least a little bit. We need to move back to a broad-based tax system so that more Americans understand that there is no such thing as free money—government spending actually has a huge cost for our nation.
The so-called "progressive" politicians have turned John Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country” on its head. And telling so many Americans that they don’t need to make sacrifices for our government, as we are now saying, is dangerous new territory for our nation and for the health of our democracy and economy.
Elizabeth Factor is an international tax lawyer and former investment banker.Mallory Factor is the co-chairman and co-founder of the Monday Meeting, an influential meeting of economic conservatives, journalists and corporate leaders in New York City. Mr. Factor is a well-known merchant banker and speaks and writes frequently on economic and fiscal topics for news stations, leading newspapers and other print and online publications. Mr. Factor writes frequently for the Fox Forum. Mr. Factor can be reached at mallory.factor@malloryfactor.com
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Where has the American work ethic gone? Our nation was founded on the principles of liberty, freedom, hard work and self-reliance but all of these are present in unacceptably low levels today. Thanks to the indoctrination of our children with ubiquitous progressive ideology, motivation and a strong work ethic are sadly lacking … and getting worse.
Not surprisingly, a record high percentage of these “future leaders” of America believe that socialism as opposed to capitalism is the better system. This belief combined with apathy and complacency will mean far less future productivity, a lower standard of living, relatively fewer individuals supporting far more, overall high taxation rates and big government/nanny state.
Such a scenario can and must be averted but it will take a spectacular reversal of political fortunes and the imbuing in the younger generation or the important principles of motivation, responsibility and self-reliance rather than dependency, victimization and “guaranteed economic fairness” leading to wealth redistribution philosophies.
Once Self-Reliant, Now A Nation Of Takers
Scott Hodge 04/07/2010
Are you a giver or a taker? No, that is not a bad pickup line from an Internet dating site — it's a question every American should be asking themselves these days. "Do I take more than I give?"
I'm sure most of us want to be considered givers, not takers. After all, we grew up with the old adage that "it is better to give than receive." But we all know people who are more takers than givers.
We've all seen someone who brings a small salad to the potluck but piles lots of your casserole on his plate. Or, there is always one person in the lunch group who orders the most expensive meal on the menu because she knows you are all splitting the check.
The same thing happens with government. A growing number of Americans are contributing little but taking a lot, and a shrinking number are giving a lot but taking little.
Recent IRS data for 2008 reports that a record 52 million Americans — or 36% of all filers — filed a tax return but had no income tax liability because of the generosity of the credits and deductions that have been enacted over the past 15 years.
The tax code has always had exemptions to protect the poorest Americans from paying income taxes, but the new credits — such as the child tax credit, Making Work Pay credit, and First Time Homebuyer credit — are now exempting middle-class families from the income tax.
Remarkably, a family of four earning up to $52,000 can expect to pay no income taxes because of these various tax credits. That too is a record.
Many more of these taxpayers are now getting checks back from the IRS even though they pay no income taxes. The IRS paid out $70 billion in "refundable" checks to non-payers in 2008. In essence, lawmakers have turned the IRS into an ATM machine for welfare benefits — and ATM now stands for Another Taxpayer's Money.
Sadly, millions of people now see April 15 as payday, not tax day.
President Obama's policies, from health care to taxes, are all intended to increase the number of takers in America while reducing the number of givers. Our analysis of Obama's FY 2011 budget plan shows that it would increase the amount of redistribution from the top 10% of families by nearly $100 billion per year — to a total of $854 billion — while expanding the amount of government benefits targeted to the middle and upper-middle classes.
Economists have identified a phenomenon they call "fiscal illusion." When people perceive the cost of government is less than what it really is, they will demand ever more government. The real danger today is not just that we have so many non-payers, but that the $1.5 trillion deficit is making the cost of government look cheap for all of us. So much spending is raining down on us that it now seems like "free money" in a sense.
Every marketing guru will tell you that people love free stuff and that they will take as much as they can get whether they need it or not. But for a nation, this is a recipe for fiscal disaster.
Once upon a time, Americans took pride in being self-reliant and there was a stigma about taking handouts from government. It is time we renewed that sense of pride and reject the notion that we are entitled to handouts from government.
Repeat after me: "I will no longer be a taker ... ."
• Hodge is president of the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational organization that has monitored fiscal policy at the federal, state and local levels since 1937.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529582
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Few in Hollywood are Conservatives and even rarer are those who are outspoken on these beliefs. One of those individuals is Jon Voight. Given that most people associated with Hollywood are supporters of the far-left and with many zealots among them, opening admitting that one is a Conservative often is a career killer.
Jon Voight was a guest on the Mike Huckabee show on April 10th, 2010. On the show he read an open letter to America and to Barack Obama where he discussed the future of America and the need for us all to get involved in our individual states Tea-Party movement in order to save our nation.
The following is the text of the letter:
“In one year, the American people are witnessing the greatest lie that is cleverly orchestrated by President Obama and his whole administration. The lie is a potent aggression that feeds the needs of people who either have not educated themselves enough to understand the assault upon us all or the very poor and needy who live to be taken care of.
President Obama feeds these people poison, giving them the idea that they are entitled to take from the wealthier who have lived and worked in a democracy that understands that capitalism is the only truth that keeps a nation healthy and fed. Now the lie goes very deep and President Obama has been cleverly trained in the Alinsky method and it would be very important that every American knows what that method is.
It is a socialistic, Marxist teaching and with it, little by little, he rapes this nation, taking down our defenses, making new language for the Islamic extremists. The world looked up to us as a symbol of hope and prosperity now wonders what will become of the entire world if America is losing its power.
The American people who understand exactly what is taking place have come together in the thousands, vowing to try to stay together as a unit of love and freedom for all men and women, from all walks of life, shivering to think that this once great nation will be a third world country.
This will be the first president to ever weaken the United States of America. President Obama uses his aggression and arrogance for his own agenda, against the will of the American people when he should be using his will and aggression against our enemies.
Every loving American for peace and truth and the security of our nation must come out and join the Tea Parties in their states. The opposition will continue their tactics; they will lie and plant their own bullies amongst us. Everyone must pay close attention to who stands next to them. We can weed out the liars and agitators.
Let us all stay in Gods light. Let no man put asunder. We can and we will prevail. God bless us all!”
Jon Voight, April 10th, 2010
http://www.thefoxnation.com/jon-voight/2010/04/11/watch-jon-voight-reads-letter-american-people
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On foreign policy and the recently promulgated nuclear policy, Obama is as inept, misguided and impotent as could be possibly imagined.Our enemies worldwide know it and are exploiting these monumentally abysmal policies.
As for our allies, given Obama's disrespect and arrogance, we have significant problems as well.
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Unfortunately though not unexpected given Obama’s past, his Presidency has increased rather than decreased racial discord. He was anointed as the racial healer by the media and many politicians and even voted for by millions of credulous voters who were deceived by his rhetoric on the issue rather than scrutinizing his unalloyed history of racism.
His twenty year close association with the vitriolic, racist, anti-white Reverend Jeremiah Wright and membership in a church that preached black nationalism philosophy, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism (“Goddamn America”) as well as revered and formally honored Louis Farrakhan, should have served as more than fair warning of his sentiments.
Obama’s verbatim assessment of his church which was that “"I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial", should have further substantiated his racist philosophy. Of course, there are numerous other examples which came to light both before and after he was elected President.
After becoming President, he has continued to engender racial polarity such as by imprudently insinuating himself in the Henry Jones (Professor of Black Studies) and Cambridge, Mass. police incident in July of last year (About Obama’s Racially Inflammatory and Irresponsible Comments and More Unfortunate Consequences of Obama’s Racially Charged Statement). He also has appointed several radical and racist blacks to his Administration such as Eric Holder and Van Jones whose actions, history and rhetoric exude these sentiments.
By “promoting” racism in his discourse and overtly inappropriate selections, Obama is feeding black racism against whites (and others) and even against other blacks – those that don’t toe the black victimization and dependency agenda. If an Afro-American speaks out for conservative issues or is against demagogue preached policies (such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, etc.) then they are labeled “Uncle Toms” or “traitors”. This is abhorrent. No ethnic or racial group is or should be considered to be monolithic in its beliefs, morals, likes, etc. By demanding this of all blacks, they are being intra-racially racist and intolerant.
Exacerbating the problem, Obama could rein in this destructive behavior from his bully pulpit as the President but he won’t (because he clearly agrees). This is recklessly irresponsible and contributes to the political racist slandering by Democrats, especially by the politicians, news media and black demagogues against "non-compliant" blacks, conservatives and the Tea Parties.
Black Tea Party Activists Called 'Traitors'
Black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement — and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation's first black president.
Feb. 10: Angela McGlowan announces at the Tupelo, Miss., City Hall, that she is running for the 1st Congressional District as a Republican.
ALBANY, N.Y. – They've been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement — and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation's first black president.
"I've been told I hate myself. I've been called an Uncle Tom. I've been told I'm a spook at the door," said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government.
"Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks," he said.
Johnson and other black conservatives say they were drawn to the tea party movement because of what they consider its commonsense fiscal values of controlled spending, less taxes and smaller government. The fact that they're black — or that most tea partyers are white — should have nothing to do with it, they say.
"You have to be honest and true to yourself. What am I supposed to do, vote Democratic just to be popular? Just to fit in?" asked Clifton Bazar, a 45-year-old New Jersey freelance photographer and conservative blogger.
Opponents have branded the tea party as a group of racists hiding behind economic concerns — and reports that some tea partyers were lobbing racist slurs at black congressmen during last month's heated health care vote give them ammunition.
But these black conservatives don't consider racism representative of the movement as a whole — or race a reason to support it.
Angela McGlowan, a black congressional candidate from Mississippi, said her tea party involvement is "not about a black or white issue."
"It's not even about Republican or Democrat, from my standpoint," she told The Associated Press. "All of us are taxed too much."
Still, she's in the minority. As a nascent grassroots movement with no registration or formal structure, there are no racial demographics available for the tea party movement; it's believed to include only a small number of blacks and Hispanics.
Some black conservatives credit President Barack Obama's election — and their distaste for his policies — with inspiring them and motivating dozens of black Republicans to plan political runs in November.
For black candidates like McGlowan, tea party events are a way to reach out to voters of all races with her conservative message.
"I'm so proud to be a part of this movement! I want to tell you that a lot of people underestimate you guys," the former national political commentator for Fox News told the cheering crowd at a tea party rally in Nashville, Tenn., in February.
Tea party voters represent a new model for these black conservatives — away from the black, liberal Democratic base located primarily in cities, and toward a black and white conservative base that extends into the suburbs.
Black voters have overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates, support that has only grown in recent years. In 2004, presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry won 88 percent of the black vote; four years later, 95 percent of black voters cast ballots for Obama.
Black conservatives don't want to have to apologize for their divergent views.
"I've gotten the statement, 'How can you not support the brother?'" said David Webb, an organizer of New York City's Tea Party 365, Inc. movement and a conservative radio personality.
Since Obama's election, Webb said some black conservatives have even resorted to hiding their political views.
"I know of people who would play the (liberal) role publicly, but have their private opinions," he said. "They don't agree with the policy but they have to work, live and exist in the community ... Why can't we speak openly and honestly if we disagree?"
Among the 37 black Republicans running for U.S. House and Senate seats in November is Charles Lollar of Maryland's 5th District.
A tea party supporter running against House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Lollar says he's finding support in unexpected places.
The 38-year-old U.S. Marine Corps reservist recently walked into a bar in southern Maryland decorated with a Confederate flag. It gave his wife Rosha pause.
"I said, 'You know what, honey? Many, many of our Southern citizens came together under that flag for the purpose of keeping their family and their state together,'" Lollar recalled. "The flag is not what you're to fear. It's the stupidity behind the flag that is a problem. I don't think we'll find that in here. Let's go ahead in."
Once inside, they were treated to a pig roast, a motorcycle rally — and presented with $5,000 in contributions for his campaign.
McGlowan, one of three GOP candidates in north Mississippi's 1st District primary, seeks a seat held since 2008 by The National Republican Congressional Committee has supported Alan Nunnelee, chairman of the state Senate Appropriations Committee, who is also pursuing tea party voters.
McGlowan believes the tea party movement has been unfairly portrayed as monolithically white, male and middle-aged, though she acknowledged blacks and Hispanics are a minority at most events.
Racist protest signs at some tea party rallies and recent reports by U.S. Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Barney Frank, D-Mass., that tea partyers shouted racial and anti-gay slurs at them have raised allegations of racism in the tea party movement.
Black members of the movement say it is not inherently racist, and some question the reported slurs. "You would think — something that offensive — you would think someone got video of it," Bazar, the conservative blogger, said.
"Just because you have one nut case, it doesn't automatically equate that you've got an organization that espouses (racism) as a sane belief," Johnson said.
Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, suggested a bit of caution.
"I'm sure the reason that (black conservatives) are involved is that from an ideological perspective, they agree," said Shelton. "But when those kinds of things happen, it is very important to be careful of the company that you keep."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/06/black-tea-party-activists-called-traitors/?test=latestnews
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The following essay on Obama was written by Alan Caruba in January, just before completeing his first year in office and before the passage of the pernicious healthcare reform legislation. It has gone viral on the internet but was incorrectly attributed to another individual and claimed to have been published in the Wall Street Journal.
It eloquently and concisely captures the essence of Obama’s “charmed” and choreographed life where he exploited advantages uniquely available to him along with serendipity to become President. He has a track record of zero significant accomplishments and little practical worldly experience but does serve as a paragon of narcissim. In many ways, he is the Paris Hilton of politics.
Unfortunately, he is now the President of the United States.
Obama's Make-Believe Life
By Alan Caruba January 2, 2010
I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he’s led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.
In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? “Dreams of My Father” was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The “Audacity of Hope” followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a “communist with a small ‘c’” was the real author.
His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley’s formidable political machine at his disposal.
He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?
He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed “cool” in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.
And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska. It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984’s Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.
The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.
Now, nearly a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.
Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to “wish away” some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain.
The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign “world tour” were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.
Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party’s hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.
Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an “obstreperous” Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against “jumping to conclusions” about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted “Allahu Akbar.” The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber “an isolated extremist” only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.
He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America. He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.
The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.
Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual’s life.
When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.
We laugh at the ventriloquist’s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America?
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/01/obamas-make-believe-life.html
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Politicians and most of the news media had no complaints when President Bush was the object of interminable vile hate and epithets that were publically spewed. Back then, they considered it to be people exercising their Constitutional rights of free speech and protest.
Now that the tables are turned, the Progressives are crying foul at anything that is less than reverential about Obama. It seems that such rights are only acceptible to them when they support their purposes and ideologies only.
Hypocrisy Watch: Left-Wing Hate and Violence
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An ideological war has been fought out in this country over the last century between the Founders and the Progressives. There have been ebbs and flows but recently the level of conflict has reached a painful, impressive and vitriolic high.
The magnitude of importance of the ensuing outcome can’t be overstated as regards our future as a “free” country. American citizens are now fighting to preserve and regain their rights, freedoms and hard earned money from a rapidly expanding, over-reaching and oppressive government (to its productive citizens) that sees itself as the wise, privileged ruling class.
Not unlike pre-Revolutionary war times …
Tea Party Finds Its Motivation In Constitution
By Michael Barone 03/31/2010
Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.
It's an argument that's been going on for a century but was largely dormant over the quarter-century of low-inflation economic growth after the Ronald Reagan tax cuts. It's been raised again by the expand-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.
Those policies, thoroughly in line with the Progressive tradition, have been advanced by liberal elites in government, media, think tanks and academia.
The opposition, roughly in line with the Founders tradition, has been led by the non-elites who spontaneously flocked to Tea Parties and town halls. Republican politicians have been scrambling to lead these protesters.
The conservative rebellions of the late 1970s and middle 1990s were focused on taxes. The Tea Partyers are focusing on the expansion of government — and its threat to the independence of citizens.
The first mention of tea parties came in February 2009 from CNBC's Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, when he asked "if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages. How many of you people want to pay your neighbor's mortgage, that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?"
Then he called for a Chicago tea party.
This struck a chord. Tea Partyers began to dress in 18th-century costumes — political re-enactors — and brandished the "Don't tread on me" flag. They declared their independence by opposing Progressive policies that encourage dependence on government.
The Progressives have always assumed that people needed safety nets and would welcome dependence on government. The public's clear rejection of the Democratic health care bills has shown that this assumption was unwarranted.
Americans today prefer independence to dependence on government, just as they did 200 years ago.
All this was supposed to have been consigned to the past long ago.
The Progressives of the early 1900s — Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, New Republic founder Herbert Croly — argued that in an industrial era of mass production and giant businesses, ordinary people were helpless and needed government's guiding hand.
It would be more efficient, they argued, for centralized, disinterested experts to administer national institutions than to let chaotic markets operate freely and to observe the Constitution's horse-and-buggy limits on government power.
The Founders were out of date.
The Progressives had their way for much of the 20th century.
But it became apparent that centralized experts weren't disinterested, but always sought to expand their power. And it became clear that central planners can never have the kind of information that is transmitted instantly, as Friedrich von Hayek observed, by price signals in free markets.
It turned out that centralized experts are not as wise and ordinary Americans are not as helpless as the Progressives thought.
By passing the stimulus package and the health care bills, the Democrats produced expansion of government. But voters seem to prefer expansion of liberty.
The Progressives' scorn for the Founders has not been shared by the people. First-rate books about the Founders have been best-sellers. And efforts to dismiss the Founders as slaveholders, misogynists or homophobes have been outweighed by the resonance of their words and deeds.
The Declaration of Independence's proclamation that "all men are created equal" with "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has proved to be happily elastic.
It still sings to us today, thanks to the struggles and sacrifices of many Americans who gave blacks and women the equality denied to them in 1776.
In contrast, the early Progressives' talk of an "industrial age" and an outmoded Constitution sounds like the language of an age now long past. Their faith in centralized planning seems naive in a time when one unpredicted innovation after another has changed lives for the better.
Polls and recent election results tell us that racial minorities and the so-called "educated class" — the people who expect their kind will administer centralized institutions — still take the side of the Progressives.
Most Americans, however, are rejecting the path of dependence and are intent on declaring their independence once again.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529000
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America under Obama is devolving into the Russia of the early 1980’s as most recently evidenced by the audacious and manifestly corrupt passage of the Obamacare legislation which also excludes Obama, members of Congress and their staffs from having to use it. They will continue to have available to them a gold-plated plan with freedom of choice.
The rest of America won’t – we will either have to wait for it or die waiting.
And Obama doesn’t intend to end his pursuit of increasing control and domination by the Federal Government over the lives of us Americans.
America's New Nomenklatura
Investors Business Daily 03/29/2010
Government: With the passage of health care reform and the ongoing boom in federal hiring, it's becoming increasingly clear that America is now run by a new, privileged class of bureaucrats.
For those who remember the old Soviet Union, it was a grim place — at least for average citizens. But not so for those in government. Contrary to the official ideals of equality and a classless society that the ruling communist regime espoused, the USSR created a privileged class of party members inside government — the nomenklatura.
This semipermanent bureaucracy earned higher incomes, got better health care, ate better food and had greater job security than average Russians, the much-despised proletarians. Today, our bloated federal government seems, in significant ways, to be creating this same dynamic.
Take the just-passed health care bill that carefully excluded the White House, congressional leaders and their staffs from having to live under the reforms' restrictions.
"President Obama will not have to live under the Obama health care reforms, and neither will the congressional staff who helped to write the overhaul," said Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. "The message to the people at the grass roots is that it's good enough for you, but not for us."
The hypocrisy of these officials and the contempt they show for average Americans is bad enough. But Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public can also go to jail or be fined up to $250,000 for not buying insurance. And the government is spending $10 billion to hire 16,500 new IRS agents to make sure they don't escape the new system.
Under current budget plans, this won't end soon. With $45 trillion in new government spending planned over the next decade, this new privileged governing class can only grow.
Today, as we witness a massive shift of resources from the private to the public sector, the only place adding jobs is government. Since the start of last year, the federal government has added 81,000 jobs. By contrast, private-sector payrolls have shed 4.71 million.
Big government is the place to be these days. Federal workers are some of the country's best-paid, earning far in excess of their counterparts in the private sector. A recent report in Politico.com, for example, noted that 2,000 congressional staffers now have incomes in excess of $100,000, and that 43 make the $172,500 maximum.
But the bureaucrats — that silent, permanent government that now exceeds 2.8 million in number — make out just as well.
USA Today recently looked at federal pay vs. private pay in 2008 for specific occupations ranging from airline pilot and cook to computer manager and registered nurse. What they found was more than a little disquieting for those in the private sector.
The average federal worker that year took home on average $67,691 in salary, compared with $60,046 in the private sector — a difference of $7,645. Not that much, you say? Well, that was before benefits are factored.
The average government worker gets a whopping $40,785 a year in health care, pension and other benefits compared to $9,882 for a private worker. The difference in total compensation widens to $38,548 a year — for the same job with the same duties.
Anyone who has visited the slow-moving Post Office, talked to the surly and often hostile IRS agent or even gone to the local DMV to spend time in waiting-room hell can tell you that pay gap doesn't represent productivity, training or ability.
What it does represent is the new Nomenklatura — the privileged apparatchiks who now run our government and with it, sadly, much of our lives. This is very much a result of years of "progressive" thinking that has pushed the Democratic Party sharply leftward across the political spectrum.
Since the Civil War, the so-called Progressive Movement's dream has been to exalt bureaucratic expertise and control over free-market efficiency. With the new administration, their dream has become our nightmare.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=528809
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Anyone who doesn’t think that Obama is at minimum a socialist President has not been paying attention to his words and actions starting even before his run for the Presidency. His mantra ”spread the wealth around”, repeated thousands of times, reinforces this position. The ideological underpinnings of Obamacare follow this as does his position for expansion of welfare as delineated in the following editorial.
Tax the rich! All Americans should have …! His attitude is that it is unfair for people not to have houses, college educations, iPods (with his speeches on them) even when they don’t make any attempts to work or make sacrifices in order to better themselves. So… SPREAD THE WEALTH!
Obama’s attitude punishes and denigrates hard work and dedication which are basic tenets of the American way and why we have been the greatest country. It penalizes hard working Americans and disincentivizes those who could and should be productive and contributing members of our society.
This will lead to the indolence and complacency so characteristic of Socialism – that will drive our country into the abyss of mediocrity and excessively high taxes.
We must all vigorously oppose this course.
Welfare Un-Reform
Investors Business Daily 03/23/2010
The Dole: In urging Congress to extend jobless benefits again, the White House warned that unemployment could remain high through the year. Benefits may be part of the problem.
In a joint statement to Congress, the president's top economic advisers hedged against expectations of lower unemployment this year, saying the jobless rate — still hovering around 10% — will "remain elevated for an extended period."
"We do not expect further declines in unemployment this year," the White House budget director, top economist and Treasury secretary testified.
What's got them so pessimistic? Possibly an abnormally high job vacancy rate.
Normally the job vacancy rate goes down after a recession, as the job market stabilizes. But January, the latest reported month, showed an 11% spike in unfilled jobs. Vacancies are now at 2.1% — the highest since February 2009, the Labor Department says.
That means people are not taking jobs as expected at this point in the recovery. Why? Because many don't have to — thanks in part to 99 weeks and counting of unemployment benefits.
Add to that record food stamp payments and other welfare, and the unemployed have been perversely incentivized to keep holding out for better jobs, rather than take less-than-desirable or lower-paying ones. Forty percent of jobless Americans have been out of work for at least 27 weeks — the highest level since the government began keeping records in the 1940s.
"Those programs subsidize unemployment," University of Chicago economist Robert Shimer says. "There could be good reasons to do it, but we should be clear on the cost. It has a pretty substantial impact."
Generous jobless benefits alone account for as much as 1.5 points of the nation's 9.7% jobless rate, Shimer reckons.
There are also new incentives for Americans to go on the dole permanently, thanks to a provision in the stimulus package that includes a $5 billion emergency fund for states to meet demand for more welfare assistance.
The administration is expanding that supposedly temporary fund an additional $2.5 billion. The fund matches states 80 cents on the dollar for each new welfare case, making it more generous than the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) system.
In effect, Obama is paying states a bonus to sign up new welfare recipients.
This reverses the historic 1996 welfare reform, which took more than 2.7 million families off the dole by making welfare truly temporary under the new Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. TANF lowered the poverty rate for black children as a record number of single mothers learned skills and took jobs. Fixed block grants to states ended Washington paying states on a per-capita basis for every person who entered the welfare rolls.
New succor doesn't stop there. Socialized medicine threatens to add 15 million uninsured to the Medicaid rolls, which are already bloated from the recession. Working Americans with household income well above the poverty line will be eligible for a program once reserved only for the poor.
Overall, ObamaCare represents the biggest federal entitlement since Medicare and Medicaid were passed in the '60s.
Obama is overturning the welfare reform signed by his Democrat predecessor and is rapidly rebuilding the welfare state.
If more and more go on the dole instead of filling jobs that are starting to open up, it will only stall the recovery and widen the deficit.
If unemployment "remains elevated for an extended period," it's because Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue extended unemployment and welfare benefits while refusing to incentivize small businesses — the job engine of the economy — to take risks and staff up.
If Democrats lose Congress in November over chronic unemployment and record deficits, they have only themselves — and the head of their party — to blame.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=528201
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It seems that wherever one looks at in the Obama Administration, there are quixotic ideologues and corrupt, arrogant, contemptuous, radical and inept individuals. Rather than serving the public, they are elitists that see the American public as their servants. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are quintessential examples but unbelievably, may not be the worst offenders. This dubious distinction goes to Attorney General Eric Holder. Not enumerated in the following editorial was his galling and indefensible dropping of voter intimidation charges by the Dept. of Justice against two individuals of the New Black Panther Party who were already prepared to plead guilty. His racism appears to be the only motivation behind this action which he refuses to elaborate on.
The Self-Righteous Haplessness Of Eric Holder
By Michael Gerson 03/18/2010
Attorney General Eric Holder is controversial on the left for preserving much of the Bush administration's legal structure for conducting the war on terror. He is controversial on the right for overturning portions of that structure in ways that seem both clueless and reckless.
But Holder is the most endangered member of the Obama Cabinet for a different reason: Just about everything he has touched has backfired. The list is oddly impressive.
First, there was the decision to release Bush-era interrogation memos and reopen the investigation of CIA interrogators after they already had been cleared by career prosecutors. Holder assumed that these actions would rally public outrage. Instead, he started a national security debate he has pretty much lost.
Seven former CIA directors — serving under Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43 — sent Holder a letter warning that his actions could "help al-Qaida elude U.S. intelligence and plan future operations." Holder opened a serious, ongoing rift between the Department of Justice and the intelligence community.
Trial Of The Century
Second, there was Holder's repudiation in the matter of John Yoo and Jay Bybee — the Bush administration lawyers who provided the legal justification for enhanced interrogations. Holder appointees had determined the two lawyers guilty of professional misconduct. But the Justice Department's senior career attorney cleared Yoo and Bybee of the charge, embarrassing Holder in the process.
Third, there was the handling of the underwear bomber case. It is fortunate that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab eventually resumed cooperation. It is also evident that Holder's decision to Mirandize him after 50 minutes was hasty and based on minimal consultation with intelligence officials. Holder treated a national security judgment as a purely legal one.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair later told Congress: "That unit (the High Value Interrogation Group) was created exactly for this purpose — to make a decision on whether a certain person who's detained should be treated as a case for federal prosecution or for some of the other means. We did not invoke the HIG in this case; we should have."
In fact, Blair was unaware that the High Value Interrogation Group did not yet exist.
Fourth, there is the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 conspirators in Manhattan. Under Holder's direction, this process has collapsed.
There is no serious plan to close Guantanamo. Holder has been unable to articulate reasons why some terrorism cases are referred to civilian courts while others are tried in military tribunals. And his groundwork for a "trial of the century" was botched in almost every respect.
The White House, having lost faith in Holder's ability to manage terrorism trials, has assumed direct control of the process. Civilian trials for the 9/11 terrorists now seem unlikely anywhere in the U.S.
But backing down on that commitment will have a cost. "If this stunning reversal comes to pass," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, "President Obama will deal a death blow to his own Justice Department, not to mention American values."
While a military trial for KSM would hardly be a mortal blow to American ideals, Holder's initial announcement has created a political expectation on the left that may be impossible to fulfill.
Finally, there are the Supreme Court briefs filed by Holder that he failed to disclose to Congress during his confirmation — likely to be the focus of a congressional oversight hearing in which Holder will testify on Tuesday.
Public Blunders
Holder's spokesman says this omission was inadvertent. But one of those briefs opposed the detention of Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, leading Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., to wonder, "Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder, with only a handful of Supreme Court briefs to his name, forgot about his role in one of this country's most publicized terrorism cases?"
Holder's briefs preview his later decisions on the underwear bomber and KSM. Few in Congress or the White House have leapt to defend Holder's convenient omission.
Add to all of this a series of public gaffes. America is a "nation of cowards." The possibility of capturing Osama bin Laden alive "simply does not exist."
Sometimes haplessness can provoke sympathy. But Holder mixes ineptness with self-righteousness. Critics of his questionable choices, he says, "cower." They lack "confidence in the American system of justice."
But there is another possibility. Perhaps Holder's critics — in Congress, in the country and even within the White House — just lack confidence in his judgment.
• Gerson, a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, was head speechwriter and a policy adviser for George W. Bush from 1999 to 2006.
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The following outrageous comment by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) just confirms the mind set of many of the far-left Democrats (Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et. al.) and not just regarding healthcare and why we need to be ever vigilant in protecting and fighting for our rights and freedoms. This is an ideology that will relentlessly seek to abrogate our rights, creating an omnipotent, intrusive, and authoritarian Central Government not unlike the Soviet Union or China.
What can and should we do? Fight back. Resist. Remove these Democrats from office in November. Provide support for organizations, agencies, individuals and even states that are trying to rein in and reduce the ever increasing power of the Federal government.
Rep. Dingell: It's Taken a Long Time to 'Control the People'
From American Thinker: Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the Dean of the House of Representatives for being the longest serving member of the body (he was first elected in 1955, succeeding his father, Rep. John Dingell, Sr.), made an amazing admission during a live telephone interview with Detroit WJR News/Talk 760 radio talk show host Paul W. Smith on Smith's show Monday morning, March 22, 2010. The night before, Dingell had been a featured speaker at the Democrat Congressional leadership victory press conference after Obamacare passed the House. In response to a question posed by Smith, Dingell said:
Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.
http://www.thefoxnation.com/rep-john-dingell/2010/03/24/rep-dingell-its-taken-long-time-control-people?page=7
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'Patriots, What Has Happened Today Is Intolerable
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Unfortunately, the degree of adherence to baseless ideology by Obama is only exceeded in magnitude by his ignoble narcissism that passage of healthcare reform will cement a deified legacy. As a consequence and facilitated by other far-left, corrupt, like minded elitist individuals like Pelosi and Reid, America’s economy in addition to its healthcare will suffer irreparably. We will all pay the immense price in freedom, rights, choices and ability to advance from our individual efforts.
We need to fight to overturn or annul this legislation.
Let the second revolution by the American people begin …
Health Overhaul's Assault On Business
Investors Business Daily 03/19/2010
Taxes: If ObamaCare becomes permanent, no one will suffer more than U.S. businesses. They'll face higher taxes, more regulations and a higher cost of capital. But don't take our word for it. Go ask Caterpillar.
The heavy-equipment giant reckons its insurance costs will go up 20%, or $100 million, the first year after the health care system is overhauled, and may go even higher. Multiply that by literally tens of thousands of companies nationwide, large and small, and you can see how costs will soar.
"We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors," said Greg Folley, a Caterpillar vice president. "We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we've raised throughout the year."
If you don't care how this affects businesses, you should. Some 15 million people in this country don't have jobs — and another 12 million work part-time but want full-time positions.
If America's major employers are hit with huge, government-mandated cost increases during an economic downturn, do you really think they'll hire more when the economy starts growing on its own again? Of course not.
Despite this, the White House predicts its plan will "cut costs" for businesses. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even makes the bizarre prediction that passage of health reform will lead to 400,000 new jobs "immediately," and millions more down the road.
Such claims don't hold water because health reform includes $569.2 billion in new taxes, at last count 160 new bureaucracies and regulations, and 16,500 new IRS agents to collect all those taxes. Tax hits on businesses and industries include:
• $52 billion on companies that do not provide what the government deems "acceptable" or "affordable" insurance for workers.
• $60.1 billion on health insurers.
• $27 billion on drugmakers and importers.
• $20 billion on makers and importers of medical devices.
• $2.7 billion on the tanning industry.
And of course the companies themselves don't pay. You do — both as a consumer, through higher prices, and as an employee, through lower wages.
As the Tax Policy Center, a center-liberal think tank, noted recently, "Economists generally believe that the burden of payroll taxes is borne by workers in the form of lower wages, regardless of whether the tax is levied on the employer or employee."
But that's not the end of it.
A new Medicare tax on capital gains, dividends and other investment income has been raised from 2.9% to 3.8%. Supposedly, this is a tax on the "wealthy," those with $200,000 or more in income. It's really a tax on small business, entrepreneurs and investors.
This provision will push the top cap-gains rate from 15% to almost 24%, while the dividend rate will rise from 35% to 43.4%.
This amounts a big new tax on the very people who are most likely to own or start a new business and hire workers. Health reform will tax large numbers of job creators out of business — and no one in the White House seems to know, or even care.
But it will have an enormous impact. As a result of the Obama-Care taxes on successful individuals and companies, investment in new companies will slow, and old companies will face a higher cost of capital. New jobs will be created offshore in places such India and China.
Economist Steve Entin of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation estimated the Medicare tax would reduce GDP by 1.3%, capital formation by 3.4% and after-tax incomes of those who don't pay the tax directly by 1.2%.
And those estimates came when the tax was "only" 2.9% — not the 3.8% it is in the current bill. So the economic losses would in fact be even larger than Entin estimated.
Because of these taxes and other faults in the plan, a group of 130 economists last Thursday sent President Obama a letter imploring him not to sign the bill, saying that it would be a job-killer.
"In our view," the economists wrote, "the health care bill contains a number of provisions that will eliminate jobs, reduce hours and wages, and limit future job creation."
Health reform's taxes and huge new costs will lead to semi-permanent stagnation in the U.S. economy, marked by higher unemployment and lower standards of living.
Is this how Americans see their future? Based on the Tea Party movement and growing anger at the government for seizing control of the economy's high ground, we doubt it.
The only real question is, are the White House and Congress listening?
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Obamacare is an inherently and hopelessly flawed, corrupt, complex bill that is constructed on lies and deceptions and threatens to bankrupt our country and usurp our inalienable rights. It is also vigorously opposed by Americans by nearly a 3:1 margin but Obama and the Democrats don’t care.
We must do everything in our power to make sure that it is not passed. If it is, Congressional leaders will have succeeded by using chicanery, ad hominem attacks, dishonesty and other tactics that would make Hugo Chavez proud.
Our next move then? Mount a formidable Constitutional challenge.
Can Forcing Purchase Of Insurance Survive Constitutional Challenge?
Thomas M. Boyd 03/10/2010
“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
Congressional Budget Office (1994)
During the recent summit on health care reform, Republican leader John Boehner told President Obama that he and his colleagues believe the central funding mechanism underlying the president's latest reform proposal — the individual mandate — is unconstitutional.
This language would require every American to purchase a product — health insurance. It also has appeared in every serious proposal since ClintonCare in 1993, including the proposals now pending before Congress. If it eventually becomes law, it's sure to be challenged before the ink on the president's signature is dry.
The president's response was that Rep. Boehner was resorting to "talking points" rather than substance. It would have been far more instructive if the president, a former lecturer at Chicago Law School who as a candidate opposed the mandate, had given Boehner and the Republicans — not to mention the American public watching on C-Span — his own analysis in support of his current belief that this unprecedented requirement is constitutionally permissible.
The underlying question is as simple as it is fundamental: Can federal law mandate that an individual must purchase a good or service, whether he or she wants it or not, in order to fund a massive social program perceived to be for the larger public good?
If the American people can be forced to purchase health insurance, then can the Congress also require Americans to purchase American cars to salvage the domestic automobile industry?
The most obvious legal basis for this requirement lies in the Constitution's commerce clause. One of the "enumerated" powers granted the Congress, this language allows the Congress broad freedom to "regulate Commerce ... among the several States."
From Chief Justice John Marshall's use of the commerce clause to validate federal regulation of river traffic in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) to the New Deal's application of federally imposed restraints on wheat grown for purely local consumption (Wickard v. Filburn, 1942), to the more recent affirmation of federal regulatory superiority over otherwise permissible local cultivation of marijuana for medicinal use (Gonzales v. Raich, 2005), the Supreme Court has consistently interpreted its language to expand the role of the federal government, at the expense of the states, in regulating the conduct of people engaged in otherwise intrastate economic transactions.
But every constitutional power has its limits, and it's likely the same policymakers who now endorse the legality of the individual mandate were equally convinced that the Campaign Reform Act's ban on political advertising by corporations or unions within 30 days of an election was sacrosanct.
But on Jan. 21, when the Court rendered its 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, the nation discovered that the First Amendment trumped the exercise of congressional authority. Similarly, in this instance the freedom to exercise free will may trump the authority of the federal government to dictate choice.
If nothing else, whether the Congress has the power to require every American to purchase health insurance will be, as the CBO noted in 1994, a case of first impression for the court. And the result is certainly not preordained.
While it's always difficult to predict how justices might rule on a different set of facts, their prior opinions on the breadth of the commerce clause suggest that at least four of the majority in Citizens United v. FEC (Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas) may hesitate to embrace the kind of expansive view of the Commerce Clause that would be required to uphold the individual mandate.
That leaves Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in Citizens as the inevitable swing vote. And his views on the application of the commerce clause in a case like this are anything but clear.
Now that the president has announced his intention to proceed toward a vote on his version of health care reform, the issues are joined. And however the legality of the individual mandate is finally resolved, questions surrounding its constitutionality and the legitimate reach of the Constitution's commerce clause demand serious legal scrutiny and intense public debate in advance of any final congressional vote.
It's worth knowing, for example, where the money will come from if, when the court ultimately rules, the president and his political allies are proven wrong in their belief that the federal government has virtually limitless power to require its citizens to, in effect, go shopping.
Where will the money come from to fund a health care entitlement which, by that time, will have already become law? These questions deserve answers before, not after, Congress votes.
• Boyd, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of DLA Piper LLP, is a former assistant attorney general under President Reagan.
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We are now seeing some more sensible politicians speaking out against the Federal government's illegal tactics of attempting to impose legislation on Americans and against their will. This is essentially a clarion call to action in order to prevent the government from abrogating our rights and freedoms.
We all must act. Call, write and e-mail your Representatives and Senators again, again and again...
Steve King Calls For Revolution In The Streets Of Washington To Stop Health Care Bill
Eric Kleefeld March 16, 2010
Rep. Steve King (R-IA)
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is calling for a new procedural solution to stop the health care bill: Have an angry mob of citizens storm Washington and prevent Congress from acting, in imitation of the Velvet Revolution that overthrew communist rule in Czechoslovakia!
The Huffington Post interviewed King after his speech at today's "Code Red" anti-health care bill rally, a speech in which he called upon the crowd to "Storm this city, fill up Washington D.C., jam this capital so they can't move."
Speaking to the Huffington Post shortly after his speech, King declared that a peaceful uprising, a la the successful overthrowing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on the streets of Prague in 1989 "would be fine with me."
"Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can't get in, they can't get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people," he said.
"So this is just like Prague under communist rule?" the Huffington Post asked.
"Oh yeah, it is very, very close," King replied. "It is the nationalization of our liberty and the federal government taking our liberty over. So there are a lot of similarities there."
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The ideology of Republicans and Conservatives regarding taxes is that this is money that the Government has taken from the private sector, from the labor of private citizens and businesses, and uses for its purposes which should be to the benefit of Americans. Tax cuts are returning money directly back to those who worked hard to earn it.
Democrats and liberals see tax cuts as the Government taking ITS money and unnecessarily and unwisely paying individuals who should not be entitled to it.
These are diametrically opposite assessments of taxes based on fundamental ideological differences and why Republicans are strong proponents of tax cuts and why Democrats almost always oppose them. Interestingly, when you look at the data, tax cuts ultimately benefit everyone including those who did not receive their money back directly.
The Dems' Deafening Silence On Tax Cuts
Cesar Conda and J.T. Young 03/09/2010
Who killed the economy? Those on the left want to frame the previous administration, with George Bush fronting every lineup and most scenarios implicating the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.
This gives us the chance to play detective and prove not just the innocence of the tax cuts, but also their efficacy.
Liberal leaders want us to believe Bush's tax cuts weakened the economy and created a climate of avarice. This fostered the speculative bubble that eventually burst, bringing down the financial sector and triggering the latest recession.
But just the opposite is true. The 2001 tax cuts quickly ended the downturn that took hold at the end of 2000. The economy began the first quarter of 2001 in decline. Yet during those three months, it was plain that tax relief was on the way, and by the second quarter bipartisan tax relief had arrived.
Negative growth did not return until Sept. 11, 2001. But despite the lack of momentum coming out of 2000, and the terrorist attacks that ushered in the third quarter of 2001, the economy still never registered two straight quarters of negative growth.
The failure to match that recessionary rule of thumb, and the short and shallow downturn that ensued, made that dip unique among post-World War II slowdowns.
Data from the end of 2001 to the latest recession bear this out. The economy started expanding again in the fourth quarter of 2001 and grew for 25 consecutive quarters. After enactment of the 2003 tax cut, which lowered the marginal effective tax rate on new investment, gross domestic product surged 7.5% in the third quarter, the fastest pace since 1984. And for 26 straight months unemployment stayed below 5%.
The Bush tax cuts also led to increases in tax revenues, and after 2004 the revenues grew faster than the economy. The ratio of tax receipts to GDP rose to 18.8% in 2007, above the 40-year average, and the deficit was just 1.2% of GDP.
From 2004 to 2008, capital gains realizations grew by 60%; from 2004 to 2007, corporate tax receipts nearly doubled, adding a full point to the revenues-to-GDP ratio.
As for the first charge in liberals' "frame-up" — that the economy would have been better off with a higher tax burden after 2000 — it's hard to accept such a premise.
The economy crested in 2000's fourth quarter under the highest federal tax burden (20.6% of GDP) since WWII. It's hard to see how sustaining such a burden would have aided economic recovery prior to 9/11, let alone after it.
The charge that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts triggered the latest recession is even more outlandish.
As noted, the economy was weak in the first three months of 2001. If the tax cuts were as poisonous as the liberals believe, wouldn't the economy have gone into a full, unmistakable and far deeper recession at that point — instead of seven years later?
In searching for suspects to blame for the recession, critics would do better to investigate those that had a bearing on the financial sector — money supply, failure to properly price risk and zeal by all parties — especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — to extend credit to those who could not afford their loans.
Yet the clearest clue to the tax cuts' innocence comes from the greatest of detectives — Sherlock Holmes. It was in tracking down the missing racehorse Silver Blaze in Conan Doyle's story of the same name that the super sleuth found it "curious" that "the dog in the nighttime did nothing." This led him to conclude the person who took the horse was no stranger.
In the current mystery, the dog that isn't barking — at least for repeal of the Bush tax cuts — is the liberal elite.
If the cuts were as bad as they think, wouldn't they have tried to roll them back by now? Such a course would have increased taxes and paid for the redistributive policies they so love.
How curious they remain so silent.
A year from now, the Bush tax cuts will expire — unless Washington acts to keep them. All but the most liberal among us agree the lower rates need to be retained. President Obama's new budget proposes extending them, except for upper-income taxpayers.
It's hard to see into a crystal ball, but it's relatively easy to look in the rearview mirror. Bush's tax cuts have proved themselves to the satisfaction of all but the ultraliberal, preventing a much worse recession post-9/11 and helping ease the impact of the l
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The Democratic leadership has not ruled any tactics off limits in its quest to obtain enough votes necessary to pass their healthcare reform legislation. They have resorted to ad hominem attacks even on fellow Democrats, slander, threats, bribes, illegal or questionable parliamentary maneuvers and other corrupt deals.
All of this is being perpetrated despite a furious and rejecting American public who oppose Obamacare by nearly a 3:1 margin. The contemptuousness, elitism and arrogance of Obama, Pelosi, Reid and others is essentially unparalleled in American History.
These individuals must be stopped and Obamacare should never see the light of day. What these politicians are doing is facilitating a legislative theft of our rights, freedoms and wealth that may be permanent. It is a heinous scheme that is leading us closer to an ideological totalitarian regime under the guise of a “representative” government.
House Democrat Takes On Party Leaders
Lee Ross March 13, 2010
In a surprising and fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes negotiations of proposed health care legislation on Capitol Hill, a prominent Democrat says the actions of his party's leaders in recent days represents a "pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party."
If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding out hope that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) will replicate his "yes" vote on health care reform she can probably forget it. In a wide-ranging swipe at his party's leaders, Stupak told an interviewer that he is a definite "no" vote on a health care bill that is expected to reach the House floor next week.
A single vote could make the difference in the fate of the legislation but Stupak says other pro-life Democrats who had been part of his coalition fighting for specific language on abortion funding have given up the fight. "It's almost like some right-to-life members don't want to be bothered. They just want this over," Stupak told National Review's Robert Costa in an article [1]published on-line Friday. If that's the case, Democratic leaders may be able to prevail without Stupak's support.
The Michigan Democrat's vitriol for House leaders shines a bright light on the normally secret negotiations. "They're ignoring me," Stupak asserts while concluding that the final bill will not have the stronger abortion-related language that he's long supported and was able to force in the first bill the House passed late last year.
"[E]ven if they don't have the votes, it's been made clear to us that they won't insert our language on the abortion issue," Stupak says. "I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance. Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered."
Stupak offers an interesting take on why party leaders don't want his effort to succeed. "If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That's one of the arguments I've been hearing," Stupak says. "Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue - come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we're talking about."
Stupak believes that if a final health care bill passes without strong language on abortion funding, it will effectively freeze out pro-life Democrats in the future. He says he will remain a Democrat but predicts that any effort to change the abortion language would have to wait "until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this." You read that right, a Democrat looking forward to a Republican take-over of Congress!
Stupak's prominence and apparent resolve on this issue has increased the political heat on the nine-term Democrat. "This has really reached an unhealthy stage," Stupak says. "People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they're really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No."
A Friday posting on Daily Kos has this headline: "Women ROAR BACK against Stupak/Pitts!" It targets Stupak and Congressman Joe Pitts (R-PA) and is a fundraising appeal for Stupak's primary challenger. "If you were pissed when Joe Wilson shouted YOU LIE at President Obama I want you to channel that same sort of anger and aim it in support of Connie Saltonstall..."
Earlier this week, MSNBC's Maddow took direct aim at Stupak saying his efforts were designed to do nothing more than get him on television. "Abortion rights only for rich ladies. That's Bart Stupak's principled crusade," Maddow said.
Stupak does not name names in his attack on party leaders but in a radio interview Thursday, Stupak recounted a conversation he had with House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), a central figure in the health care debate. Stupak said Waxman told him that Democratic leaders "want to pay for abortions." In a statement to Fox News, Waxman said “My position has been clear and consistent. I do not believe health reform should be used to change current law, which prohibits federal funds from paying for abortion.”
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Over the last year, we have expressed our resolute opposition to Government controlled healthcare reform independent of the various iterations that have been promulgated. The present behemoth legislation, in excess of 2700 pages, will destroy the best healthcare system in the world and ultimately bankrupt this country with uncontrollable and unsustainable costs.
There are countless reasons to oppose this legislation, many of which have received little exposure in the press or by analysts (privacy issues). Regardless, this bill must be vehemently fought and opposed by all Americans if we want to preserve the world’s best healthcare as well as our rights and freedoms.
Below, is an abbreviated list assembled by Investors Business Daily of some of the reasons why Obamacare should not be implemented.
Why Health Bill Makes No Sense
Investors Business Daily 03/12/2010
Health Reform: So it's come down to this — desperate Democratic leaders strong-arming members on the worst bill ever before they go home to explain to constituents why they decided to commit political suicide.
We've said just about all we've had to say on this issue — actually dating back to 1993-94, when we wrote nearly 100 editorials in opposition to HillaryCare. Since January of last year, we've weighed in 150 more times against the latest version of socialized medicine.
But to review, here are just 15 reasons why a government takeover of the finest medical system in the world makes no sense at all:
1. The people don't want it! This, we would think, should have some bearing on decision-making. Yet the Democrats forge ahead without consent of the governed. In the latest Rasmussen poll, 53% opposed the Democrats' reform while 42% were in favor. More than four in 10 "strongly" opposed; just two in 10 "strongly" favored. This jibes with other surveys, including our own IBD/TIPP Poll, taken since last year.
2. Doctors don't want it! A survey we took last summer of 1,376 practicing physicians found that 45% would consider leaving their practices or taking early retirements if the Democrats' reform became law. In December, the results were validated by a Medicus poll in which 25% of doctors said they'd retire early if a public option is implemented and another 21% would stop practicing even though they were far from their retirement years. Even if the bill doesn't have a "public option," nearly 30% said they'd quit the profession under the plans being considered.
3. Half the Congress doesn't want it! Not a single Republican backed the health care bill that cleared the Senate on Christmas Eve 60-39. House passage was by a slim 220 to 215, and the lone Republican "aye" has since switched to "no."
Columnist Michael Barone says other changes would put the House vote today at 216-215 in favor, and he has doubts Democrats can even muster 216.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her job of securing yes votes even more difficult last week when she told a meeting of county officials that "we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it." Members of Congress aren't waiting: They've already exempted themselves from whatever they inflict on us.
4. People are happy with the health care they've got! Polls show that 84% of Americans have health insurance and that few are displeased with what they've got. Last month, the St. Petersburg Times looked at eight polls and reported that satisfaction rates averaged 87%.
5. It doesn't even cover the people they set out to cover! Supporters of government-run health care say there are as many as 47 million Americans — 9 million to 10 million of them illegal aliens — without medical insurance. The Democrats' plans, however, will put only 31 million of the uninsured under coverage.
6. Costs will go up, not down! Democrats say their plans will cost less than $1 trillion over the first decade. But analyst Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute puts the cost at $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years. Even if we go with the government's lower estimates, the cost is already on the rise. A new estimate by the Congressional Budget Office puts the cost of the Senate bill at $875 billion over 10 years, $4 billion more than its original projection. Imagine how fast costs would soar if one of the bills became public policy.
7. Real cost controls are nowhere to be found! The Democrats are offering no meaningful tort reform that will help push down the high malpractice insurance premiums that are a burden to doctors and their patients. Nor are they considering any other cost-saving provisions, such as allowing the sale of individual health plans across state lines or easing health insurance mandates.
8. Insurance premiums will rise, not fall! One goal of nationalizing health care is to lower costs, to bend the spending curve downward. Yet, as Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin acknowledged Wednesday, that won't be the case.
"Anyone who would stand before you and say, 'Well, if you pass health care reform, next year's health care premiums are going down,' I don't think is telling the truth," he said from the Senate floor. "I think it is likely they would go up."
An analysis completed by the CBO at the request of Sen. Evan Bayh confirms Durbin's suspicions. Insurance coverage in the individual market will "be about 10% to 13% higher in 2016 than the average premium for nongroup coverage in that same year under current law," it concluded.
9. Medicare is already bankrupting us! The Medicare trust fund, which has unfunded obligations of $37.8 trillion, will be insolvent in 2017. How can lawmakers justify another entitlement that will cost trillions when they can't pay for existing liabilities?
10. There aren't enough doctors now! Last month, 26% of physicians responding to a Web poll on Sermo.com, which calls itself "the largest online physician community," said they had been forced to close, or were considering closing, their solo practices. Providing coverage for an additional 31 million Americans when the number of doctors is shrinking won't improve our health care.
11. The doctor-patient relationship will be wrecked! The latest IBD/TIPP Poll, taken just last week, found that Americans, by a wide 48%-26% margin, believe the doctor-patient relationship will decline if the Democrats' plan is passed.
12. Medical care will also deteriorate! IBD/TIPP has also found that 51% of Americans believe care would get worse under government control. Only 10.5% said they felt it would improve. In our doctor poll, 72% disagreed with administration claims that the government could cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.
13. Rationing of care is inevitable! Health care is not an unlimited resource and must be rationed, either by the individual, providers or government. In Britain and Canada, where the government does the rationing, medical treatment waiting lists are sometimes deadly and quite often excessively long.
For instance, late cancer diagnoses in an overcrowded public health care system cause up to 10,000 needless deaths a year in Britain. The reasons cited for the late diagnoses include doctor delay, delay in primary care, system delay and delay in secondary care.
14. Private health insurers will be destroyed! Added mandates and price controls will force many insurers to simply get out of the health plan business because it will no longer be profitable.
15. It's probably unconstitutional! One way to help bring down the number of uninsured is to demand that those without coverage buy health plans. But the government has never passed a law requiring Americans to buy any good or service.
Constitutional scholars say any such mandate would likely draw a legal challenge.
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Obama and the Congressional Democrats are trying to seize control of and transform healthcare in America which parallels their Marxist doctrine. By doing so, they will ultimately dismantle the best healthcare system in the world, precipitate a mass exodus of physicians from the practice of medicine and drive our country to bankruptcy in shorter order.
There already is a physician shortage in this country partially based on rational personal decisions made by those who might have contemplated careers in medicine. With implementation of Obamacare, there will be many reasons for doctors to either work less or flee medical practice altogether. This combined with an inevitable precipitous increase in consumption of medical care by previously “uninsured” Americans and illegal aliens will result in a supply and demand imbalance, fostered by unwise government intervention.
The result: healthcare rationing, poor quality care and long waits to receive care.
The Doctor Shortage
Investors Business Daily 03/04/2010
Health Reform: Democrats promise their plan will improve care at lower cost while thinning the ranks of the uninsured. How will they do this with fewer doctors?
America's population is 305 million. If the Democrats are correct about the number of uninsured, roughly 260 million are covered by a health care plan. When the insured — and the uninsured who use the traditional method of paying out of pocket — are sick, they are treated by 800,000 physicians.
It would be foolish to believe that today's already stretched doctor-patient ratio will remain stable. In the near future we will have fewer doctors treating a growing population.
Physician search firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates estimates that by 2020 we'll need 90,000 to 200,000 more doctors than we'll have then. As alarming as that estimate is, it could be low.
Last August, our IBD/TIPP Poll found that 45% of doctors would consider leaving their practices or taking early retirement if the Democrats' version of reform were to become law.
Last month, 26% of physicians responding to a Web poll on Sermo.com, which calls itself "the largest online physician community," said they had been forced to close, or were considering closing, their solo practices.
Reasons include "low and delayed reimbursements, problems with management companies, and a lack of business/practice management education," as well as high malpractice insurance costs.
Not every doctor who told these polls that he or she would consider leaving the field will do so. Some will go into group practices and others move on to positions at hospitals and in the military. Another group will change nothing.
Even if half followed through with their threats, our care will suffer. If the Democrats' plans become law, fewer than 700,000 physicians would be available to treat a patient population growing in size, aging in years, shunning medical education and receiving "free" health care or insurance coverage from the government in increasing numbers.
The result will be longer wait times to see a doctor and a decline in the high quality of care Americans are accustomed to as overworked physicians try to keep up.
To see how this works in reality, look at the Canadian and British government health systems that encourage unnecessary doctor visits with the illusion of free care. Both have long, and sometimes deadly, wait times. Neither provides treatment as high in quality as what's found in the U.S, where the system is supposedly broken.
With demand for doctors already outstripping supply, the last thing we need is to aggravate the situation with poorly thought-out public policy.
Washington has meddled in health care too much already.
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