Taxes

The Govenment’s Power Grab For Your Health Care

Jul 16th, 2009
by Rick.
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Eliminating private health insurance and converting to government controlled health care is, in fact, what Democrats in Congress have planned for America. IBD Editorials found the shocking details 16 pages into the 1,018 page bill.

Congress: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”

What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.

The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.

With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left’s expansion of the welfare state will be removed.

The public option won’t be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn’t be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans’ lives.

It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.

Blue Dog Dems are becoming wary of this bill and their political futures if this legislation passes. As Michelle Malkin suggests,

Buck up the Blue Dogs with a phone call – Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121:
Reps. John Barrow (D-Ga.)
Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.)
Baron Hill (D-Ind.)
Jim Matheson (D-Utah)
Charlie Melancon (D-La.)
Mike Ross (D-Ark.)
Zack Space (D-Ohio)

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Money For Nothing, NH Stimulus Costs $8.32 Million Per Job

Jul 14th, 2009
by Rick.
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More good news about the Obama Stimulus having its “intended” effect. NH has received $416 million in stimulus funds thus far and has actually created jobs with the money. Unfortunately, the number of jobs created is a mere 50.  Quite an accomplishment by the Granite State considering that since President Obama took office we have been losing jobs at the rate of 16,000 per day.  But, remember President Obama is telling us that the stimulus is having its intended effect, so all is well.  After such a stunning success with taking the money and creating jobs, you’d think NH would be boasting and showing off their magic job machine.  However, as Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has pointed out< mums the word in NH.

More than $400 million in federal stimulus money has come to New Hampshire this year, and more is on the way.

The Office of Legislative Budget Assistant reported last week that $413.6 million made its way to the state under a list of programs that involve education, highways, environmental, health and human services, energy and law enforcement. …

So far, a total of 50 jobs have been created by the funding, 34 of them full time. The OES will be headed by a director whom Gov. John Lynch has not yet appointed. All five OES jobs are described as full-time temporary positions that will go out of existence in September 2011, the end of the federal fiscal year.

Now that’s job creation.  I especially like the part about them being temporary full time posotions in government bureaucracies that will be eliminated when the federal money dries up.
What ever happened to the transparency and accountability promised by President Obama?  Patrick Hynes at Now Hampshire points out the fallacy of transparency.

NowHampshire.com has repeatedly asked the state’s “stimulus czar” Orville “Bud” Fitch for up-to-date tallies of stimulus jobs created in New Hampshire. At the end of May, Fitch did not know. On June 26th, Fitch told Nowhampshire.com, “We are just now rolling out a reporting system to gather information from grant fund recipients.”

Once again, the the Federal Government is proving that the only thing it is efficient at is wasting our tax payers dollars.  At $8.32 million per job they should all be summarily sent to the unemployment line.

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Obama Says The Stimulus Has Done It’s Job

Jul 9th, 2009
by Rick.
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Obama Lied, The Economy Died

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They Had It Figured Out In 1934

Jul 7th, 2009
by Rick.
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From a 1934 Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoon.

via Pat Dollard

SSDD, no one listened then as long as they got their’s, and no one’s listening now as long as they get their’s.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
Alexis de Tocqueville

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Everything Is On The Table…Except Transparency And Accountability

Jun 19th, 2009
by Rick Barton.
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Spend and tax that’s the Obama way to “prosperity”.  But, then there’s those pesky little problems that keep poppng up, the deficit and the national debt we’re leaving to future generations.

Coburn Report Highlights Billions In Wasted Porkulus Spending

Jun 16th, 2009
by Rick Barton.
1 comment

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., today released an oversight report 100 Stimulus Projects: A Second Opinion that discloses 100 of the worst examples of waste in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or stimulus bill. The projects included in the report – worth $5.5 billion – range from Maine to California, and even two from the state of Oklahoma. Click here to read the entire report.

“The American people have a right to know how their stimulus dollars are being spent. In too many cases stimulus projects are wasting money we don’t have on things we don’t need,” Dr. Coburn said.

“Rather than growing our economy, the overall impact of stimulus spending may prove to be harmful to our economy. For example, Washington’s efforts to ‘stimulate’ the economy are increasing utility costs, repairing bridges nobody uses, building tunnels for turtles, and renovating extravagant train stations in remote areas while widely-used bridges and roads in poor shape are passed over,” Dr. Coburn said.

“I opposed the stimulus bill because I was concerned that 80 to 90 percent of the spending would not be true stimulus. I hope I am proven wrong. Yet, our initial findings continue to show that taxpayers are not getting the value they deserve and need,” Dr. Coburn said.

Dr. Coburn added that Earl Devaney, head of the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency (RAT) Board, estimates that at least $55 billion of stimulus funds may be lost to waste, fraud and abuse. However, the final number will likely be much higher. If stimulus funds do not promote economic growth history may indicate that the vast majority of stimulate dollars would have been better off staying in taxpayers’ pockets.

Ten examples of wasteful stimulus projects in the report include:

1. $1.5 million in “free” stimulus money for a new wastewater treatment plant results in higher utility costs for residents of Perkins, Oklahoma.
2. $1 billion for FutureGen in Mattoon, Illinois is the “biggest earmark of all time” for a power plant that may never work.
3. $15 million for “shovel-ready” repairs to little-used bridges in rural Wisconsin are given priority over widely used bridges that are structurally deficient.
4. $800,000 for little-used John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pennsylvania airport to repave a back-up runway; the ‘Airport for Nobody’ Has Already Received Tens of Millions in Taxpayer dollars.
5. $3.4 million for a wildlife “eco-passage” in Florida to take animals safely under a busy roadway.
6. Nevada non-profit gets $2 million weatherization contract after recently being fired for same type of work.
7. $1.15 million for installation of a new guard rail for the non-existent Optima Lake in Oklahoma.
8. Nearly $10 million to renovate an abandoned train station that hasn’t been used in 30 years.
9. 10,000 dead people get stimulus checks, but the Social Security Administration blames a tough deadline.
10. Town of Union, New York, encouraged to spend a $578,000 grant it did not request for a homelessness problem it claims it does not have.

The entire Coburn Report is available here.  As Michelle Malkin pointed out, it’s agood thing Obama can’t fire Sen. Coburn like he does  Inspector Generals who do their jobs.  Coburn is one of the few breaths of fresh air still working for the citizens of this nation.  Obama is continuing to push this nation into unrecoverable debt.  Remember that this chart of  Federal Budget deficits was based on Obama’s rosy predictions of the economic future.

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Just how miserably has the stimulus failed?

Jun 10th, 2009
by Rick Barton.
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Fortune Magazine

The next great crisis: America’s debt

At this rate, your share of the load will be $155,000 in a decade. How chronic deficits are putting the country on a path to fiscal collap

Normally Paul Krugman, the liberal pundit and Nobel laureate in economics, and Paul Ryan, a conservative Republican congressman from Wisconsin, share little in common except their first names and a scorching passion for views they champion from opposite political poles. So when the two combatants agree on a fundamental threat to the U.S. economy, Americans should heed this alarm as the real thing. What’s worrying both Krugman and Ryan is the rapid increase in the federal debt – not so much the stimulus-driven rise to mountainous levels in the next few years, but the huge structural deficits that, under all projections, keep building the burden far into the future to unsustainable, ruinous heights. “The long-term outlook remains worrying,” warned Krugman in his New York Times column…

…Ryan flays the administration for piling new spending on top of already enormous deficits. “This isn’t a temporary stimulus but a ramp-up in debt followed by a greater explosion in spending and debt,” he told Fortune, predicting a day when America’s creditors will start viewing the U.S. Treasury as a risky bet. “The bond markets will come after us with a vengeance. We’re playing with fire.” Krugman favors far higher taxes, while Ryan wants to curb spending, but for now what’s so big and so dangerous that it distresses such diverse types as Krugman and Ryan – and should scare all Americans – is the Great Debt Threat.

The bill is far too big for only the rich to pick up. There aren’t enough of them. America will have to lean on citizens far below the $250,000 income threshold: nurses, electricians, secretaries, and factory workers. Within a decade the average household that pays income tax will owe the equivalent of $155,000 in federal debt, about $90,000 more than last year. What the Obama administration isn’t telling Americans is that the only practical solution is a giant tax increase aimed squarely at the middle class. The alternative, big cuts in spending, aren’t part of the President’s agenda. To keep the debt from wrecking the economy, the U.S. would need to raise annual federal income taxes an average of $11,000 in 2019 for all families that pay them, an increase of about 55%…

…It can’t go on forever, and it won’t. What will shock America into action is the prospect of fiscal collapse, which will grow more vivid each year. In 2008 federal borrowing accounted for 41% of GDP, about the postwar average. By 2019 the burden will double to 82% by the CBO’s reckoning, reaching $17.3 trillion, nearly triple last year’s level. By that point $1 of every six the U.S. spends will go to interest, compared with one in 12 last year. The U.S. trajectory points to the area that medieval maps labeled “Here Lie Dragons.” After 2019 the debt rises with no ceiling in sight, according to all major forecasts, driven by the growth of interest and entitlements. The Government Accountability Office estimates that if current policies continue, interest will absorb 30% of all revenues by 2040 and entitlements will consume the rest, leaving nothing for defense, education, or veterans’ benefits…

To understand why a massive tax increase, probably a VAT, is the mostly likely outcome, it’s crucial to look at what’s driving the long-term, widening gap between revenues and spending. Put simply, spending is following a steep upward curve, while revenues are basically fixed as a portion of GDP. Why? Because future spending is driven mostly by entitlements, which are programmed to rise far faster than national income, while revenues depend heavily on the personal income tax, which yields receipts that typically rise or fall with GDP. Under George W. Bush, the U.S. experienced a prelude to the crisis before us: Spending rose rapidly, while revenues remained reasonably flat. Bush created an expensive new entitlement, the Medicare drug benefit (cost this year: $63 billion), and let spending on domestic programs from education to veterans’ benefits run wild. Over seven years the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq added a total of some $900 billion to the budget. All told, Bush raised spending from 18.5% to 21% of GDP, setting in motion a chronic budget gap by piling on new spending without paying for it.

Under Obama the Bush trend keeps going, but this time on steroids. It’s important to see the Obama budget projections as two phases, the crisis period of astronomical spending in 2009 and 2010, and the normal phase, from 2011 to 2019. Most of his stimulus and other big programs are designed to give the economy a jolt in 2009 and 2010 and then largely disappear or be offset by tax increases – at least that’s the plan. Then the surge in outlays comes from two forces that would wreak budget havoc for any President: the relentless rise in entitlements and the surge in debt interest.

Making the challenge far greater: Obama’s budget is packed with a wish list of expensive new programs, led by a giant health-care-reform plan. He promises to pay for them mainly with higher taxes. But if extra revenues don’t materialize – and most that he’s proposed now look unlikely – will he abandon many of his cherished priorities or push them through without full funding, substantially deepening the debt crisis?

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Clueless In Congress

May 22nd, 2009
by Rick Barton.
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Henry Waxman shows just how clueless our Congress has become when dealing with legislation that will have a huge economic impact on our nation.  Openly admitting that he is not familiar on the details of the Waxman-Markey bill, which places Cap and Trade restrictions and penalties on our economy, is a testament to the ideological arrogance of this Congress.  Heritage has determined that this legislation will drain GDP by trillions of dollars.

The Obama Message To The World Continues, "We Suck"

Apr 17th, 2009
by Rick Barton.
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President Barack Obama continued his “Blame America First” world tour continued in an Op-Ed which was published today in 15 Caribbean, Latin American and United States newspapers.  Here is the English translation which appears in the Washington Post: (emphasis mine)

Choosing a Better Future in the Americas
By President Barack Obama

As we approach the Summit of the Americas, our hemisphere is faced with a clear choice. We can overcome our shared challenges with a sense of common purpose, or we can stay mired in the old debates of the past. For the sake of all our people, we must choose the future.

Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas. My Administration is committed to the promise of a new day. We will renew and sustain a broader partnership between the United States and the hemisphere on behalf of our common prosperity and our common security.

In advance of the Summit, we have begun to move in a new direction. This week, we amended a Cuba policy that has failed for decades to advance liberty or opportunity for the Cuban people. In particular, the refusal to allow Cuban Americans to visit or provide resources to their families on the island made no sense – particularly after years of economic hardship in Cuba, and the devastating hurricanes that took place last year. Now, that policy has changed.

The U.S.-Cuba relationship is one example of a debate in the Americas that is too often dragged back to the 20th century. To confront our economic crisis, we don’t need a debate about whether to have a rigid, state-run economy or unbridled and unregulated capitalism – we need pragmatic and responsible action that advances our common prosperity. To combat lawlessness and violence, we don’t need a debate about whether to blame right-wing paramilitaries or left-wing insurgents – we need practical cooperation to expand our common security.

We must choose the future over the past, because we know that the future holds enormous opportunities if we work together. That is why leaders from Santiago to Brasilia to Mexico City are focused on a renewed partnership of the Americas that makes progress on fundamental issues like economic recovery, energy, and security.

There is no time to lose. The global economic crisis has hit the Americas hard, particularly our most vulnerable populations. Years of progress in combating poverty and inequality hangs in the balance. The United States is working to advance prosperity in the hemisphere by jumpstarting our own recovery. In doing so, we will help spur trade, investment, remittances, and tourism that provides a broader base for prosperity in the hemisphere.

We also need collective action. At the recent G-20 Summit, the United States pledged to seek nearly half a billion dollars in immediate assistance for vulnerable populations, while working with our G-20 partners to set aside substantial resources to help countries through difficult times. We have called upon the Inter-American Development Bank to maximize lending to restart the flow of credit, and stand ready to examine the needs and capacity of the IDB going forward. And we are working to put in place tough, clear 21st century rules of the road to prevent the abuses that caused the current crisis.

While we confront this crisis, we must build a new foundation for long-term prosperity. One area that holds out enormous promise is energy. Our hemisphere has bountiful natural resources that could make renewable energy plentiful and sustainable, while creating jobs for our people. In the process, we can confront climate change that threatens rising sea levels in the Caribbean, diminishing glaciers in the Andes, and powerful storms on the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Together, we have both the responsibility to act, and the opportunity to leave behind a legacy of greater prosperity and security. That is why I look forward to pursuing a new Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas that will help us learn from one another, share technologies, leverage investment, and maximize our comparative advantage.
Just as we advance our common prosperity, we must advance our common security. Too many in our hemisphere are forced to live in fear. That is why the United States will strongly support respect for the rule of law, better law enforcement, and stronger judicial institutions.

Security for our citizens must be advanced through our commitment to partner with those who are courageously battling drug cartels, gangs and other criminal networks throughout the Americas. Our efforts start at home. By reducing demand for drugs and curtailing the illegal flow of weapons and bulk cash south across our border, we can advance security in the United States and beyond. And going forward, we will sustain a lasting dialogue in the hemisphere to ensure that we are building on best practices, adapting to new threats, and coordinating our efforts.

Finally, the Summit gives every democratically-elected leader in the Americas the opportunity to reaffirm our shared values. Each of our countries has pursued its own democratic journey, but we must be joined together in our commitment to liberty, equality, and human rights. That is why I look forward to the day when every country in the hemisphere can take its seat at the table consistent with the Inter-American Democratic Charter. And just as the United States seeks that goal in reaching out to the Cuban people, we expect all of our friends in the hemisphere to join together in supporting liberty, equality, and human rights for all Cubans.

This Summit offers the opportunity of a new beginning. Advancing prosperity, security and liberty for the people of the Americas depends upon 21st century partnerships, freed from the posturing of the past. That is the leadership and partnership that the United States stands ready to provide.

So if I understand his message, the U.S. is to blame for putting U.S. interests first, no need to debate the merits of free markets vs. communism, we’d better hurry (just like with “Porkulus”, we must act “collectively” (isn’t that the model for Soviet era agriculture), we going to leave a legacy of prosperity (by running up a $14 trillion debt), we’re going to reduce the demand for drugs (the President has sworn off the blow), we will curtail the flow of cash and weapons across our southern border (we’ll keep raising taxes and sorry law abiding citizen, we don’t believe in the Second Amendment), and Hugo Chavez “you da’ man”!

This graphic, courtesy of Red State pretty much sums up the Obama Game plan thus far:

Throughout the campaign and on into January of this year:
February’s phase II:
March and April “World Apology Tour” theme:
Soon to be followed by:

No Media Bias Here; CNN Reporter Berates Tea Partyers

Apr 16th, 2009
by Rick Barton.
2 comments

Obama groupie and CNN “reporter” Susan Roesgen, holds nothing back in her assessment of Tax Day Tea Party participants during her coverage of the Chcago Tea Party. While CNN attempted to slant the image of the people who took part in yesterday’s activities, other cameras were working also.   Take a look for yourself at the exclusive video shot by Founding Bloggers yesterday.

No chance in the world that the expressions of the average man or woman on the streets were going to make it onto the CNN airwaves.  Now, thanks to Gateway Pundit, we have a comparison of Ms. Roesgen’s bias towards both former President Bush and President Obama.

Michelle Malkin’s response to Roesgen,

She called today’s events “anti-CNN.”

No, just anti-stupid.

CNN earns the Tax Day Tea Party Big Loser Award:

Biased. Busted. Beclowned.

And, could this be the final straw that kills the MSM?  Ed Driscoll ponders that very thought.

At the start of 2005, Howard Fineman warned his colleagues at Newsweek:

A political party is dying before our eyes — and I don’t mean the Democrats. I’m talking about the “mainstream media,” which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush’s Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox’s canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards.

The destruction was complete enough within four years that last month, Victor Davis Hanson wrote, “We have no media—at least as we once knew it:”

Somewhere in late 2007, it disappeared entirely, and became something akin to the old Pravda, or the livelier Baghdad Bob’s broadcasts, or the rants of Lord Haw-Haw. (We got everything from Judith Warner about the dreams of women having sex with Obama to “I felt this thrill going up my leg” Chris Matthews).

For the short-term thrill of ensuring the coronation of Barack Obama, it gave up all hard-won standards of journalistic objectivity—so much so that it is hard to adjudicate whether the rise of the Internet alone, or the clear bias of the print media, has nearly destroyed the newspaper industry.

Few any longer connect with a Newsweek editorial, a Time essay, a riff from NPR, or commentary on PBS. The front pages of the New York Times or Washington Post are op-eds in thin disguise. The faculty of the Columbia School of Journalism is not objective. We live in an age of affluent, rather inbred ironists who punch in at the Ministry of Truth, and the result is that about half of the population still wakes up every morning and sighs when they turn on the television, listen to the radio news, or read the newspaper, “He’s lying” or “She’s biased”.  The utopian ends of social egalitarianism for the new media lords justified the tawdry means of distorting reality.

The Tea Party coverage today allows viewers a perfect textbook comparison of how the legacy media covers political protests. Throughout the decade, leftwing protests against President Bush and the liberation of Iraq were reported as the salt of the earth; democracy in action; everyday Americans expressing their voice.  A quick scroll through the archives at Zombietime will quickly prove that those descriptions are simplisme at best.

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