The Homeless Man and Michelle Obama

1. Cost of a bowl of soup at a homeless shelter: $ 0

2. Cost of staying overnight in a homeless shelter: $ 0

3. Cost of catching a "homeless" man taking a picture of Michelle Obama with his $300 Blackberry (I don't even have one sigh) (+ 100 a month service) WHILE receiving his FREE GOVERNMENT provided meal: PRICLESS !

VOTE THEM OUT AS SOON AS YOU CAN !

The Abandoment of Israel

I think it is despicable the way Obama has treated Israel since deceiving his way into his office. I don't for the life of me, understand why or how he can treat the one true ally we have over there the way he has. There is no justification or excuse. Time and time again he has sided with the Palestinians when he should have stood by Israel.
Israel is absolutely JUSTIFIED in its current blockade and according to international law equally as legal. When Israel has bombs constantly lobbed into them they have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary.
We should standing behind them, not chastising them as Obama has done repeatedly. Even some congressional Democrats are beginning to balk and become quick to step up to the mike in support of Israels right to stand up for themselves-finally. They are seeing the potential political fallout coming perhaps belatedly trying to do the right thing.
Of all the countries in the part of the world, Israel is the most like us. They respect a persons right to practice other religions, women work and drive, even be a respected part of the military. Name ANY other country over there that treats its women so well or respects other faiths as they do. You cant because there aren't any.
Israel also is the only true democracy in the Middle East. Why would we not stand up for the one and only capitalist ally we have in that region? We side with countries that not only in some cases support terrorism-outright or subtly, but we take every opportunity to defend them. We are isolating ourselves and allying ourselves with our and their enemies. This cannot be allowed to stand, because when Israel goes down to the Palestinian terrorists we will be truly isolated and the whole Middle East region will be in dire danger of falling.

IBD editorial describing exactly why I think Obama is a socialist

Obama's Salary Cap

Posted 04/29/2010 07:05 PM ET


Freedom: In voicing his feelings Wednesday about earned wealth, President Obama shone a bright light into the thought recesses of the far left. And what a dark and ugly place it can be.

During a two-day swing through Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, the president went off teleprompter and blundered into another Joe the Plumber moment, that unguarded instant during the 2008 campaign in which he told a potential small-business owner that he planned to spread the wealth around.

"Now, what we're doing, I want to be clear, we're not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that's fairly earned," Obama said in Quincy, Ill. "I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
Remarks prepared for the occasion reportedly don't include the president's thoughts about how much money he'd let Americans make. But without the help of a teleprompter to carefully steer him away from his gut feelings, he wandered into a Marxist bramble.

It takes a certain kind of person to think he or she has — or should have — the moral authority to cap other people's incomes. Especially when that person and his wife somehow made $5.5 million in the first year of his presidency, a job that pays $400,000 a year.

In a free society, it's not the president or any other government official or branch that decides when someone has "made enough money," even if liberties are being lost in that free society. Incomes, with the exception of labor contracts won through coercion and union-favorable federal law, are decided by voluntary agreements between employer and employee. To limit what someone can legally earn is morally corrupt and economically foolish.

Envy, the urge to exercise authority over others and pandering to both of those baser instincts are staples of the political left and drive its agenda. Unfortunately, emotions tend to have consequences, and these feelings blind democratic-socialist eyes to the value of economic incentives.

What the left doesn't understand is that capping salaries through government policy destroys the motivation for Americans to develop products and services that enrich lives and expand our economy.
If the president is eager to regulate salaries, he might begin — and end — with the federal work force. Commerce Department data show that average federal worker compensation of $119,982 in 2008 was twice that of average private-sector pay ($59,909).

If he can't bring himself to spread federal workers' wealth around, he and the rest of Washington need to stay away from everyone else's income.

This is the land of liberty and opportunity, where state interference in private affairs is supposed to be intolerable.

Response to an AP article that says Majority lacks trust in government

I love how "nonpartisian" this story is.It's pathetic. Yes the republican party has made mistakes, no denying that, however at the present time we are the only ones trying to say hey the federal gov is getting to big and too powerful. So if saying that makes them the party of No then SO BE IT ! I say no and H** NO to Obama and his czars, his crazy a** speaker of the house, and his notion that we are all too stupid to know whats good for us so he is going to shove it down our throats. Really in the end he is going to A) destroy this country B) possibly get us all killed. Say what you want about Bush (and yes he wasnt perfect), but you could never accuse him of (and be thinking str8) some of the things Obama is clearly guilty of. Clearly the country is falling into three catagories of people: those that want to be taken care of and expect the federal gov to do so hence their fanatical and irrational support of Obama. Those who prefer to take care of themselves with limited government interference and control and those who for whatever reason, simply dont give a rats behind and have their heads buried in the sand like the perverbial Ostrich.
I want a government that supports LESS government control . Less taxes and more incentives for people to acutally work and not fear being punished for it by the IRS. I want a government that doesnt do everything in it's power to destroy the private sector like this one seems h** bent on doing and to some extent even the one before it( much ,much smaller extent however). I want a government that respect the Constitution and its founding fathers not scorn them and their crazy Freemarket capitalist ideas. I want a government that truly hears the voices of its people and not just the unions and special interest groups (of all kinds). I want politicans thats actually give a d*** about doing the right thing and not just paying back their donors and saving their own hides. I want a leader who inspires the same kind of respect as Regean did from the world.And those that didnt respect him feared him because he backed up his words with his actions. Where is that leader now? It sure as H** isn't Obama. I think I probably just want too much though. One can always dream I guess

Tea Parties Vs. Hard-Left Protests

By L. BRENT BOZELL



This article seemed worth passing on becaue it says in words exactly how I feel the extreme fustration I feel with the media as a whole and with the idiots that believe them.

In the mind's eye of the conservative movement, the Tea Party phenomenon right now is maybe the crucial factor in slowing socialism in Washington, on everything from the federal health care takeover to the hidden taxes of cap-and-trade legislation.

It's also a fascinating visual. When was the last time you saw such a spontaneous eruption of conservative grassroots anger, coast to coast? On both counts, the Tea Party movement should be cause for massive television coverage. Except for one thing. It's a conservative uprising, so it gets different treatment.
It's ignored as long as possible, and when it's no longer possible to be ignored, it's savaged.

The movement was launched in February 2009, when CNBC's Rick Santelli suggested throwing a "tea party" to protest government takeovers. A new study by Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center found only 19 news stories on the Tea Party movement for the entire year on ABC, CBS and NBC. The Obama family dog received more attention.

How anemic is this? Compare those 19 stories in all of 2009 with 41 stories the networks gave the "Million Mom March" against gun rights in 2000 -- and all before the math-challenged protest even happened. Consider racist and anti-Semitic Rev. Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March." On Oct. 16, 1995, ABC, CBS and NBC together aired 21 stories just on one night.

The difference in tone was just as dramatic. Amazingly, the Tea Parties were assumed to be racist, but Farrakhan's event was not. ABC anchor Peter Jennings devoted all but 75 seconds of his newscast to promotional goo for the Nation of Islam.

Jennings sanitized the gathering. "For most of the hundreds of thousands who came here today, the event far overshadowed the man who organized it," Jennings claimed. He concluded the show on Farrakhan's behalf, that "it would be a terrible mistake not to recognize that here today he inspired many people, and in a broader sense, as one participant here after another has reaffirmed, this day, at this time and at this place, really did mean unity over division."

Jennings defied logic, and his own ears. The event meant "unity over division" even as speakers angrily attacked whites for "rolling toxic waste" into black communities, and screamed about the "growing racism and incipient fascism of white America." A young poet called blacks "God's divine race." (and that isnt hateful or racist? my words)

Compare that to the Tea Party stories. The victory of Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts spurred heavier network TV attention, another 42 stories in 2010. But now that they had to cover the Tea Party, the tone turned negative: Overall, 27 of 61 stories (44%) openly suggested the movement was fringy or extremist.
Contrast ABC's Peter Jennings then with ABC's Dan Harris now. Farrakhan was somehow a uniter, not a divider. But Harris warned Tea Party protesters "waved signs likening Obama to Hitler and the devil. ... Some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black president." (which for the majority of us is a stinking pile of crap- my words) And with that, everyone associated with the Tea Party movement, and everyone in sympathy with the Tea Party movement, had just been neatly tarred with the racism brush. What dramatic selectivity of "news judgment"! At left-wing rallies, reporters consistently and easily ignored hateful and extremist podium speeches from protest organizers. They paid no attention to objectionable signs. "Bush Lied, Thousands Died!" Big deal! But at a conservative event, they go searching high and low for the kookiest, fringiest protester in a crowd of tens of thousands, so they can smear the entire crowd as a racist gathering.
The sanitize-the-left pattern happened at antiwar marches before the Iraq war in 2003. Signs at one January protest included "Bush Is a Terrorist," "USA Is #1 Terrorist" and "The NYPD Are Terrorists Too." Hateful? Objectionable? Not on your life!
ABC's Bill Blakemore ignored them, lauding the diversity of the marchers, "Democrats and Republicans, many middle-aged, from all walks of life." As one ABC producer admitted during the George H.W. Bush years, "We were looking for mainstream demonstrators."

The other networks echoed that approach. Take the issue of violence. On Feb. 15, 2003, "peace" demonstrators in New York injured eight police officers, and several protesters were arrested. But CBS reporter Jim Acosta still referred to the event as peaceful: "Despite some arrests and clashes with police, it was, for the most part, a peaceful reminder to the powerful that there is a divide over whether the nation should go to war." (So we have NOONE arrested and we are violent? REALLY?)
Just weeks ago, when the Tea Party crowd came to Capitol Hill against ObamaCare, no one was arrested. But network anchors like NBC's Brian Williams were still lamenting that the health care debate had "veered into threats of violence."

This isn't "news" coverage. It's carpet-bombing.

Union thug president of SEIU "retires"

Purple People upheaval: What’s behind SEIU thug-in-chief Andy Stern’s resignation?; Update: The shadow of Richard Trumka; SEIU issues statement
By Michelle Malkin • April 12, 2010 10:28 PM Scroll for updates…SEIU issues statement…Stern to address rumors on Friday…



Will he declare “Mission Accomplished?” The news tonight of SEIU thug-in-chief Andy Stern’s resignation is quite a shocker given how much he reveled in his power and intimacy with the White House as its most frequent visitor. ( This should tell you something folks. The unions by and large are your friends-don't believe the lie that they are)Indeed, here he is on Twitter just a few weeks ago bragging about an ego-inflating profile of himself in Washingtonian magazine — which describes Stern as the “new face of Labor” and the Big Labor boss who “helped elect President Obama” while “wired to the White House.”
Hardly sounds like someone “tired of the daily grind.”

Via Politico, the resignation deets:

Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern, one of America’s most prominent labor leaders, is set to resign, according to a member of the union’s board and another SEIU official.

The President of an SEIU local based in Seattle, Diane Sosne, broke the news to her staffers at 11:35 this morning, local time.

“Last night I received confirmation that Andy Stern is resigning as President of SEIU. He has not yet made a public announcement; we will share the details as we become aware of them,” Sosne wrote in an email obtained by POLITICO.

Sosne offered no explanation for the move, but another SEIU official speculated that Stern had finally tired of the draining job.

“Health care getting done is a good culmination,” the official said.
HuffPo lefties also confirm the rumors.

Behind the scenes and under the radar screen, as I’ve reported over the last year, Stern has installed a cadre of labor management stooges embroiled in financial scandals across the country and rankled rank-and-file watchdogs within the Big Labor organization. Obama paid no heed – appointing Stern to the federal joke of a “fiscal responsibility” panel.

And while fatcat union bosses toss hundreds of millions of dues into Democrat coffers, low-wage SEIU members’ pension funds are eroding and the organization’s debt is piling up. The union also remains under investigation by federal prosecutors for potential illegal lobbying activities at the White House.
A nasty fight in San Francisco with a rival union, UNITE HERE, has caused Stern major headaches and litigation costs.

As I reported in December, health care workers in Washington state also revolted against SEIU pressure.

And the Blago scandal, in which Stern plays a central role, still looms.

Union heavies don’t just relinquish their control and throw themselves under the bus for the standard bogus Beltway excuses (the need to “spend more time with family,” etc.).

This smells. Stay tuned.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is Stern bowing to the ascendancy of AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka? Trumka has ratcheted up the class warfare rhetoric, scored far Left accolades for his corporate-bashing speech at Harvard, and is planning to lead a march on Wall Street on April 29. An interesting passage buried in the Washingtonian piece Stern bragged about:

Stern has played a prominent role in the mood of factionalism, engineering SEIU’s departure from the AFL-CIO in 2005 to found Change to Win with a clutch of other growth-minded labor organizations such as the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Change to Win’s agenda was essentially to elevate the SEIU model of organizing—recruiting members and pressuring employers via corporate-accountability campaigns that targeted the public image of management—to serve as the industry standard for labor organizing. A no-less-prominent goal of Change to Win was Stern’s vision of a reorganized national leadership for labor—a federation that would streamline smaller, traditional craft-affiliated union locals into bigger operations able to organize across an economic sector. The textbook model of the corporate campaign was SEIU’s Justice for Janitors initiative in the 1990s, which proved influential in shoring up the International union’s power base.

But on balance, the Change to Win experiment has proved disappointing—and the federation may well be on the verge of being folded into a new accord to bring Stern and his allies back into strategic alliance with Richard Trumka, the former United Mine Workers head who last September was elected to succeed retiring AFL-CIO head John Sweeney. Negotiations with the former mother union are delicate, Stern says, but are moving gingerly forward—thanks in large part to the efforts of former Michigan representative David Bonior, an ardent labor advocate who once served as House Democratic whip, to bring both federations to the bargaining table this summer.

“You now have the first chance for every major labor union in the country to be in the same organization,” Stern says. The challenge, he stresses, will be to redress the schism that triggered the Change to Win camp’s defection in the first place—the mandate to keep growing versus focusing on politics and politicians.

“It’s a political-will question,” Stern says. “I’d say John Sweeney was still concerned about people having left the AFL, and his idea was everyone should rejoin it. I think the answer to this is really building something new that takes the best ideas from everybody, building something that works for the 21st century.”

He won’t project a timeline for an AFL agreement but says, “We’re extraordinarily close to solving this issue in a couple-of-stages process.
Gulp: Are we about to see a re-merger of SEIU and AFL-CIO into a new 21st-century Big Labor Frankenstein?

Question: Are we looking at the death throes of forced unionism — or its resurrection
(stay tuned-my words)

The Other Tax Shoes begin to drop

Health Care Reform: The Senate parliamentarian dims GOP hopes on a reconciliation bill that contains even more onerous taxes and even a financial incentive to lay people off. No wonder Speaker Pelosi is laughing.

We'll acknowledge that the signing of ObamaCare into law is a historic event, but we think the Weather Channel broadcasting the signing ceremony was a bit much. On the other hand, stormy political weather and more dark clouds lay ahead.

The cries of "repeal" and "remember in November" are rising, and state attorneys general are taking the feds to court over the unconstitutional mandates and usurpation of rights contained in reform's first incarnation. The bad news is that things are going to get worse before they get better.

On Monday, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a good laugh celebrating her coup d'etat, Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin, who gets paid out of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office, issued informal guidance to Republicans that on at least one issue their plans to use the reconciliation process as a last stand had hit a snag.

According to a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Frumin sent word that he feels that the so-called "Cadillac tax," a proposed tax on high-end health insurance plans from which union members would be exempt, does not have an impact on the Social Security trust fund and therefore does not violate reconciliation rules under the 1974 budget act by changing contributions to the trust fund.

Republicans had hoped Frumin would be some profile in courage, but the Senate parliamentarian is one of the spoils of victory. The courts hold some hope, but in the end the only way to stop this promised fundamental transformation of America will be at the ballot box starting in November.

Meantime, put down your wallet and back away slowly, especially those of you who put people to work. An analysis of the House Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HR 4872) by the Heritage Foundation shows it to be as much of a job-killer (except for those 17,000 new IRS agents) as the Senate bill President Obama signed into law.

HR 4872, Heritage reports, would "force companies to pay a tax penalty if that business employs 50 or more workers as soon as one worker qualifies for, and opts to accept, a health insurance premium subsidy."
That $3,000 penalty is on top of the $2,000-per-worker penalty for all workers beyond the first 30 for such companies not offering a "qualified" health plan or paying 60% of employee health premiums. Such companies would be faced with a $3,000 penalty for hiring a single parent, the very kind of person desperately in need of employment.
Here's where it gets even more bizarre. According to Heritage, under the reconciliation bill, if Company A lays off an employee with a working spouse, this could generate a $3,000 tax penalty for the other spouse's employer, unless Company B also lays off the other spouse.
We're not making this up. This byzantine legislation is a job-killer that will destroy small business, the major creator of new jobs. Some 77,000 businesses in the U.S. have 50 to 200 workers that could face the $2,000-per-employee tax penalty. An additional 116,000 businesses have 35 to 49 workers.

This nonsense will stunt economic growth and worsen the economic downturn by actually providing financial incentives to not hire people. It's not worth the trouble. Businesses that might have expanded will stop at 49 employees. Those already considered a "large" business will face a minefield of taxes and penalties due in some cases to events beyond their control.
The power to tax is indeed the power to destroy. As we have said, this is not about health care. This is about power and the redistribution of wealth. And the IRS will be making a list and checking it twice to see who's being naughty and who's being nice

Enacting A Lie -(really really scarey stuff)

Enacting A Lie
Posted 03/22/2010 06:53 PM ET


Health Overhaul: Sunday's vote exposed the ugly truth that ObamaCare is not really about health care at all. It's all about who pays for it and who controls it — in effect a massive wealth-redistribution scheme.
Those who believe this will lead to some medical nirvana will likely be disappointed. Fact is, this poorly designed monstrosity will lead to lower-quality care, higher costs, fewer practicing physicians, higher taxes and fewer jobs.

We've done more than 150 editorials in the past year or so documenting these problems. Democrats surely understand them. Yet, despite a recent CNN poll showing that 59% of Americans oppose ObamaCare, Congress approved it anyway.

Why? Because it's not really about health care. It's the largest wealth grab in American history, masquerading as health care "reform," another step in the socialization of Americans' income in the name of "fairness" and "spread(ing) the wealth around," as Obama himself has put it.
That's why we call the program a lie.

The idea behind all this, simply put, is control. This is a vast expansion of government that will require as much as $3 trillion in added spending over a decade. All claims of deficit neutrality are a joke.

This is socialization through the tax code. That $3 trillion has to be paid for. As we showed last week, the health care bill levies $569.2 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years alone.

At the same time, as noted by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office, it will increase U.S. budget deficits by $562 billion.

Who'll pay all these taxes? Those deemed "rich" by Democrats, and businesses. Specifically, the bulk of the money comes from a special 3.8% Medicare tax on 5 million people earning more than $200,000 a year. That tax is imposed on capital gains, dividends, rents, royalties and interest — that is, investment income.

Obama already has proposed boosting these taxes in his budget. So the top tax take on dividends and cap gains will rise to 23.8% from 15%, an increase of nearly 59%, while top rates on interest and rents will soar from 15% to nearly 44%, a 193% jump.

About 50% of this higher-taxed group reports small business or partnership income. So don't be fooled: These aren't taxes on the "rich," but on small businesses and jobs.
In ObamaCare, the taxes will be ruinous. Unlike real insurance, where individuals pay to cover their risks, this program covers everyone — including 32 million uninsured — and pays for it by a "mandate" ( read: "tax" ) and by taking money from other people to subsidize those who can't pay. And this just scratches the surface of the new taxes — we literally don't have room to list them here.
Hmm. Taking money from one group, and giving it to another. That's called welfare — or, perhaps, health-fare. It's not insurance.

Once the new program is finished wrecking what remains of the private health insurance industry — as it ultimately will — we'll be stuck with the government declaring that "the market doesn't work" and forcing all of us into a single-payer government plan.

That's what those Democrats who back "Medicare for all" want — to kill what's left of the private market for health care, which has created the best medical system on earth, and use "reform" to expand an already-bankrupt Medicare system.

The math behind this is ugly. Medicare's long-term liabilities now total $89 trillion, according to the Government Accountability Office. Based on projected deficits, the just-passed health reform will take that to $136 trillion.

It will take a lot more than the "rich," as defined today, to make up such unfathomable tax shortfalls. That's when they'll come for the rest of us — poor, middle-class and rich alike — and we all will be paying vastly higher taxes for vastly inferior medical care.

20 ways Obamacare will take away our freedoms

I thought this article was well worth reposting as I know not too many people get Investors Business Daily in their inbox.

By David Hogberg

Sun., March 21, '10 3:24 PM ET


With House Democrats poised to pass the Senate health care bill with some reconciliation changes later today, it is worthwhile to take a comprehensive look at the freedoms we will lose.

Of course, the overhaul is supposed to provide us with security. But it will result in skyrocketing insurance costs and physicians leaving the field in droves, making it harder to afford and find medical care. We may be about to live Benjamin Franklin’s adage, “People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.”

The sections described below are taken from HR 3590 as agreed to by the Senate and from the reconciliation bill as displayed by the Rules Committee.

1. You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the “privilege.” (Section 1501)

2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).

3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).

4. Think you’d like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that’s what the customer wants. (Section 2712).

5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employers’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).( This is only one I would disagree with in that my daughter is a struggling college student and is very much dependent on our medical insurance not because she is a slacker however, but because government is killing all the private sector jobs.)
6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.

You’re a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You’re a woman who can’t have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You’re a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).7. Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a “Bronze plan,” which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d) (1) (A))

8. You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you’d like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).

9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).

10. You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can’t do that. (Section 9005 (i)).

11. If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))

12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a “Medicare provider agreement” by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn’t have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A))
13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a country where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed “unreasonable” by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)

15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).
16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)).(This particularly scares me)

The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).
17. The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)

18. If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014).

19. You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015).

That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).

20. If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017).

Truth Is A Casualty Of The Final Pus

Posted 03/19/2010 07:07 PM ET


Health Reform: Not since the heyday of Bill Clinton have we had a leader play so fast and loose with the facts as President Obama. And as the health care debate reaches a crescendo, he's been especially reckless.

Tired of waiting for the major media to take note, here's a small sampling of whoppers we took from the president's speeches last week in Ohio and Virginia, plus his interview with Fox News' Bret Baier:

• "We have incorporated the best ideas from Democrats and from Republicans." Far from it. Some of the biggest omissions include tort reform, health savings accounts, portable insurance, expanding consumer access to plans across state lines and posting provider prices for services so patients can shop around.Republicans were almost completely shut out from the process and at the early stages last summer, were not even permitted to read the bill. In an atmosphere like this, it's little wonder the bill isn't drawing a single vote of support from Republicans of either house. It's fully a creature of the Democratic Party.

• ("This is not a) government takeover of health care." How is it that government can dictate to private insurance companies what they can offer, to whom, under what circumstances and at what prices, and yet still not own it? Every basic business decision a private company can make has effectively been expropriated.
Even as Obama denied his health care plan was a government takeover, his vice president, Joe Biden, laid out the real deal: "You know we're going to control the insurance companies." We'll take him at his word.
• "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." That's if your doctor chooses to remain in the profession. Unfortunately, our own IBD/TIPP Poll found that up to 45% would consider quitting if they're going to be dictated to by unaccountable bureaucrats who couldn't get into medical school.
Price controls will slash doctor salaries and raise workloads, mandating that doctors make up for losses with volume. Bureaucrats will crack the whip on costs by lowering payments and penalizing doctors who refer patients to specialists. All this, and zero tort reform relief, will drive many doctors out of the profession just as 32 million new patients enter the market.• "Our proposal is paid for ... our cost-cutting measures would reduce most people's premiums and bring down our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades." Government programs always cost more than projected. Medicare, which has $86 trillion in unfunded liabilities, was supposed to cost $10 billion within 25 years of its implementation. It actually cost $107 billion.
The real cost of the Democrats' reform plan, according to the Cato Institute, which isn't handcuffed in its estimates like the Congressional Budget Office, is $2.5 trillion over the first decade.

• "If this vote fails, then insurance companies will continue to run amok." They're not exactly wildcatting as it is. Health plan providers boast a profit margin of 3.4% — placing them 88th of 215 industries in Morningstar rankings. More than 2,000 state mandates dictate what coverages they provide.

• "By the time the vote has taken place ... you'll know what's in it because it's going to be posted and everybody's going to be able to evaluate it on the merits." The final bill wouldn't available to the public until Saturday morning, the day before the vote, congressional sources told us Friday. So in fact, nobody would have time to digest the 2,500-page leviathan.
• "We're not transforming one-sixth of the economy in one fell swoop." Yes, Obama wants to take over the health care sector, but in pieces. In 2007, he said that "economically it is better for us to start getting a system in place, a universal health care system, signed into law by the end of my first term as president." Canada, he noted, "did not start off immediately with a single-payer system, they had a similar transition step." He's been on record since at least 2003 as a "proponent of single-payer, universal health care."

• "(This will be) the largest middle-class tax cut in the history of the country." Tax cut? New taxes on prescription drug sales, medical devices, tanning services and an annual tax on health insurers for being health insurers will all end up on middle-class shoulders.
Then for families earning $250,000 there are taxes of 0.9% for hospital insurance, 2.9% on "unearned income," plus a tax on high-premium policies. The "middle-class tax cut," in the president's misleading words, amounts to "tax credits to help you afford" the more expensive insurance of the new (also misleadingly named) "competitive marketplace."

• "$3,000 your employer doesn't have to pay ... maybe she can afford to give you a raise." Premiums will not go down, but way, way up. The Associated Press last week found that $3,000 to misrepresent a Business Roundtable analysis last year that "didn't consider specific legislation."
Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation told the AP "it would be miraculous" if premiums went down under the legislation set to be passed. Using the HIS/Global Insight U.S. Macroeconomic model, a Heritage Foundation analysis found that with the new government-regulated exchanges "crowding out the employer-sponsored market," there will be "an overall increase in the absolute amount of health spending on premiums."

• "Small business owners ... can purchase more affordable coverage in a competitive marketplace." In fact, small businesses will be slapped with new taxes — including a penalty if they don't provide the level of health coverage Washington dictates. As owners of modest-sized firms cope with the new burdens, their employees may find themselves with substantially reduced coverage — or with pink slips.
As to the promised financial assistance for new employer mandates, it remains unknown what "small business" will mean under ObamaCare. Will the definition apply only to micro-businesses of a couple dozen workers?

• (The reform legislation is) "about the character of our country." Let's hope not. Never in American history have politicians sunk to lower depths than in the push to thrust this massive expansion of government down an unwilling America's throat.

From the unconstitutional "Slaughter solution" that would pass it without a vote of the people's representatives, to the taxpayer-funded bribery of the "Cornhusker kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase," to the pretense of passing it as a budget item bypassing Senate filibusters, Democratic leaders have shown they will stop at nothing to set us on the road to European socialized medicine.

Why Health Bill Makes No Sense

This article lays it better than I ever could.
Posted 03/12/2010 07:12 PM ET
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." (ARE YOU KIDDING ME? REALLY) 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. (I can hope so)

Health Care A Right? More Like A Wish

By WALTER WILLIAMS
Posted 03/08/2010 05:53 PM ET


Most politicians, and probably most Americans, see health care as a right. Thus, whether a person has the means to pay for medical services or not, he is nonetheless entitled to them. Let's ask ourselves a few questions about this vision.

Say a person, let's call him Harry, suffers from diabetes and he has no means to pay a laboratory for blood work, a doctor for treatment and a pharmacy for medication. Does Harry have a right to XYZ lab's and Dr. Jones' services and a prescription from a pharmacist? And, if those services are not provided without charge, should Harry be able to call for criminal sanctions against those persons for violating his rights to health care?

You say, "Williams, that would come very close to slavery if one person had the right to force someone to serve him without pay." You're right.

Suppose instead of Harry being able to force a lab, doctor and pharmacy to provide services without pay, Congress uses its taxing power to take a couple of hundred dollars out of the paycheck of some American to give to Harry so that he could pay the lab, doctor and pharmacist. Would there be any difference in principle, namely forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another?

There would be one important strategic difference, that of concealment. Most Americans, I would hope, would be offended by the notion of directly and visibly forcing one person to serve the purposes of another. Congress' use of the tax system to invisibly accomplish the same end is more palatable to the average American.

True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another. In other words, my rights to speech or travel impose no obligations on another except those of noninterference.

If we apply ideas behind rights to health care to my rights to speech or travel, my free speech rights would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with an auditorium, television studio or radio station. My right to travel freely would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with airfare and hotel accommodations.

For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, or any other good or service, whether a person can afford it or not, it must diminish someone else's rights, namely their rights to their earnings. The reason is that Congress has no resources of its very own.But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California's. But its test scores — and with a demographically similar school population — are higher. California's once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the meantime, Texas' economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs.

And Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad. That inflow has continued in 2008-09, in which 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state, at the same time as 98,000 were moving out of California.

Texas is on the way to gaining four additional House seats and electoral votes in the 2010 reapportionment.

This was not always so. In the two decades after World War II, California, with its pleasant weather, was the Golden State, a promised land for most Americans, while Texas seemed a provincial rural backwater. Many saw postwar California's expansion of universities, freeways and water systems as a model for the nation. Few experts praised Texas' low-tax, low-services government.

Now it is California's ruinously expensive and increasingly incompetent government that seems dysfunctional, while Texas' approach has generated more creativity and opportunity. So it's not surprising that Texas voters preferred Perry over an opponent who has spent 16 years in Washington.

What's surprising is that Democrats in Washington are still trying to impose policies like those that have ravaged California rather than those which have proved so successful in Texas.

The Raw Hypocrisy Of Reconciliation

The Raw Hypocrisy Of Reconciliation
Posted 02/24/2010 07:06 PM ET




Democracy: Republicans are being warned they must help pass the Democrats' health reform or face the "nuclear option" preventing filibusters. But when in the minority, Democrats called such threats undemocratic.
As a powerful senior Democratic senator in 2005, Vice President Joseph Biden condemned bending Senate rules to prevent the minority from filibustering President Bush's judicial nominations.

"I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the field right now," Biden said on the Senate floor in the gravest of tones. "But you won't own it forever, and I pray God when the Democrats take back control we don't make the kind of naked power grab you are doing."
(power grab really? You're a fine one to be talking about power grabs)
The vice president's prayers have apparently gone unheard. The White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are mulling their chances of ramming through a big-government health reform through abuse of the budget reconciliation process.

Thanks to the election last month of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., Democrats lost their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the upper house. But using reconciliation would require only a simple majority in the Senate.

The Biden comment is just one of a series of samples of televised statements of leading Democrats, mostly from Senate floor speeches, gathered together by Naked Emperor News and featured on the Breitbart.tv Web site.

Nothing so far in the yearlong debate on health reform has exposed the Democrats' rank hypocrisy as much as the viewing of these past statements condemning as an unconstitutional power grab what they now propose to do.
Reid this week jeered that Republicans should "stop crying about reconciliation." But during the Bush administration, today's most prominent Democrats were singing an entirely different tune:

• "This is the way democracy ends," now-Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., warned his colleagues on May 19, 2005, "not with a bomb, but with a gavel."

In sharp variance to that, the Associated Press reported last year that if a bipartisan deal on health reform "falls apart, Democrats will have to turn to the 'nuclear option' — forcing through an inferior bill through a process that only requires 51 votes instead of 60, Baucus said."

• Then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois on April 25, 2005, said that bypassing the filibuster through the nuclear option "really I think would change the character of the Senate forever." Back then, Obama claimed "you would essentially have still two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply majoritarian, absolute power on either side, and that's just not what the Founders intended."
• Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York on May 23, 2005, from the Senate floor blasted that "this president has come to the majority here in the Senate and basically said, 'Change the rules! Do it the way I want it done!'

"And I guess there just weren't very many voices on the other side of the aisle that acted the way previous generations of senators have acted and said, 'Mr. President, we're with you, we support you, but that's a bridge too far. We can't go there. You have to restrain yourself, Mr. President.'"

The Senate, Clinton argued, "is being asked to turn itself inside out, to ignore the precedent, to ignore the way our system has worked, the delicate balance that we have obtained, that has kept this constitutional system going — for immediate gratification of the present president."

• On March 18, 2005, from the floor, New York Sen. Charles Schumer declared that the nation was "on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis."

He asserted that "the checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing. It's almost a temper tantrum," Schumer said of what he and other Democrats are trying to do now.

"They want their way every single time, and they will change the rules, break the rules, misread the Constitution so that they will get their way," he added.
(sounds like whats been going on for the last year)
• Reid on May 18, 2005, from the Senate floor said the "right to extended debate is never more important than when one party controls Congress and the White House" — exactly the situation now in 2010. He added that "in these cases a filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves our limited government."

• According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, taking to the floor on May 18, 2005, "the nuclear option, if successful, will turn the Senate into a body that could have its rules broken at any time by a majority of senators unhappy with any position taken by the minority."

She went on to warn that "it begins with judicial nominations. Next will be executive appointments. And then legislation." It would mean "the Senate becomes ipso facto the House of Representatives, where the majority rules supreme, and the party in power can dominate and control the agenda with absolute power."
Today, it is indeed legislation, in the form of their health care bill, to which Feinstein and other Democrats want to apply the nuclear option.

• Then-Sen Biden's floor speech was May 23, 2005, and he called the nuclear option "ultimately an example of the arrogance of power" and "a fundamental power grab."

• "I don't know of a single piece of legislation that's ever been adopted here," an angry Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut said on the floor on May 18, 2005, "that didn't have a Republican and a Democrat in the lead. That's because we need to sit down and work with each other.

"The rules of this institution have required that. That's why we exist. Why have a bicameral legislative body? Why have two chambers? What were the Framers thinking about 218 years ago?" According to Dodd, the Constitution's authors "understood that there is a tyranny of the majority."

Strange how now that they are the majority, Democrats no longer see it as tyranny.

Joke sent to me by a friend thought it was worth passing on

This is a joke a friend sent me. Thought it was worth passing on.
After a President has been in office for one year it is customary for the last President to send a note of congratulations to the new one.
So when the note came from Bush to Obama, the President was somewhat troubled because it was written in code and all it said was: 370H-SSV-0773HThis troubled him as he had always heard from his peers how former president Bush was perceived to have been scholarly challenged.
So he took the note to his wife. She was unable to decipher it. They called in the VP, and he was unable to decode the message. They called in the chief of staff and the head of Secret Service detail and they were unable to determine the meaning of the note.
Next he called in the head of the Senate and Speaker of the House.They both were mystified by the meaning of the coded message. Now there was complete panic in the Oval Office.
They called all of their contacts in the media and sent copies of the note to all of them, and not one was able to come up with an answer. A special emergency meeting was called by the staff.
All branches of the military, counter intelligence, CIA, FBI,were called in, and the best minds were unable crack the code.
After a sleepless night, a now humbled President Obama picked up the phone and called the former president, and asked him the meaning of the note.
George Bush chuckled and replied: 'Bud .... you're holding it upside down!'

Making the case for leaving the scripture on the guns

I recently read an article forwarded to me regarding a manufacture putting scripture on the guns and found it to be definite food for thought.
This is the scripture referenced:
Markings included "JN8:12", a reference to John 8:12: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, 'I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life,'" according to the King James version of the Bible. Reference is a recent AP story regarding NZ throwing a hissy over the scripture being on the guns.
I would venture to say that there is nothing wrong with it.
My reasons are as follows:
One reason why I think it's OK is these people are putting their lives on the line for their country and if a couple of scripture references can possibly give at least some of them a degree of comfort then what is the harm?
Some have said it would raise tensions,are you kidding me? First of all, I seriously can't imagine any Muslim terrorist getting close enough to any of these soldiers guns to even notice that without attempting to shoot the solider first. Secondly, I doubt 9/10Th's of them are even familiar enough with scripture to even know the scripture that is being referenced. So the whole bit about it raising tensions is just a lot of hot empty air.

Another reason is it's just tradition. It's like having the words "In God We Trust" on our money or the Ten Commandments in a courthouse. Even if you aren't a Christian, how does it really hurt you to let these things stand? Are you in personal way injured? Not likely.
Some would say "Oh it violates the separation of church and state." REALLY? First of all to those people who would say that I would say to them in return that this is not what was originally meant by this statement. This statement was made to protect the religious people in this country and keep the government out of the church. It was not designed as a means to eradicate God from our society or any public reference to him. I don't believe this is our founding fathers intentions here.

So I hope I have made the case for letting the scripture stay, at with our soldiers. Can't speak for NZ, but for us can't the anti Christian establishment just let it go? and stop persecuting us Christians and even those who reference Him in some way. Just let it go. Move on with your life and grow up. I am saying you have to believe the way I do, but what I am saying is that is doesn't hurt to let the decades long traditions stand and just ignore these things if you are that sensitive.

Anyhow, that's my two cents worth.

God Bless all of you and God Bless America
Sherry

My two cents worth on Wal-Mart

I conducted a little experiment while I was at my nearby wal-mart recently. I wanted to see if I could take a random sample of clothing labels and find just one that was made in America.
I took a random sample of 4 items in the women's department. One item was from Bangladesh (jeans), another from Indonesia (a shirt in the plus size section), and two from China (big surprise there, NOT).
I need help understanding somethings regarding the way they do business.
First of all I want to know why it is with all the billions of dollars in profit you make, which you are perfectly entitled to make in what is left of our capitalist system, you can't suck up spending just a little more money to put some of our American manufacturers to work? I think you make enough extra profit that you could do this and still hold your costs to a competitive level. It angers me that it is more profitable to put someone else in a foreign country to work than it is here. I don't blame Wal-Mart for that by the way. They are just trying to make a profit by keeping their costs down. I blame the unions who drive up costs by their frequently unreasonable demands, the government for over taxing and over regulating the businesses that are left-to the point where it is cheaper to do business overseas just to survive, and a large portion of the American public for not holding our elected officials accountable for the things they do which very often have a negative impact on business in this country- both small and large.
Secondly, why are so many of your workers in certain areas possessing of such poor English skills? I would think it would be kind of obvious that if you are going to be in the public sector you would need to posses good English skills, but maybe not when it comes to Wal-mart (and a few others for that matter). I find it HUGELY annoying to go into a store, ask a question of a worker and a get this blank stare clearly indicating that they either don't understand me or can't speak sufficient English to respond.
The last thing I want to know is why you have these life insurance policies out on a lot of your employees? Set up in such a way that if they die you get all the money and the family gets nothing. How do you sleep at night doing something like that? I know they aren't the only business to do this, but regardless this is completely immoral and Wal-Mart should set an example by banning the practice.
One more side note what is up with the hideous jackets you make your workers wear? Those things are an abomination and need some serious rethinking.

Thoughts on the "healthcare reform"

Over the months I have been paying close attention to how Washington is handling the "healthcare reform" issue and I must say I am deeply disturbed and more than a little frightened.

There are several items that are of particularly great concern to me.

The first of which is the fact that they somehow think that our youth and the "rich" will magically pay for all of it. Who do they think they are kidding? I can't speak for the rest of the population in this country who give a hoot, but I don't believe it for a minute.
The healthcare reform is going to be paid for by our young and healthy youth right? Well as far as I understand it most healthy young people have at best part time jobs usually with few benefits. So if they force these young people to buy insurance
( most likely at higher rates) to help pay for this debacle and these young adults in turn require subsidies (paid for by my higher premiums and most every one's higher taxes) how then will anything have gotten better?
Jobs will be lost by employers trying to meet the new federal bureaucratic standards, quality of care will suffer, as they do in every country with such kinds of medical care, and doctors will flee or retire in droves-especially primary care doctors.
The other thing is if they continue to tax the "rich" as they are and increase that taxation, there wont be enough "rich" people left to bear enough of the burden. As it stands the segment of the population that even pay federal taxes is shrinking at an alarming rate. This deterioration will only increase, thereby neccesating the lowering of the levels at which they heavily tax a group. Also have you every heard of a poor person starting a business or highering multiple groups of people? Not last time I checked, esp in today's climate of anti-private business, over-taxation, over-regulation, and out of control political correctness. The environmental nuts aren't helping either.

The second point of concern is even deeper than this. The greed and corruption of our politicians is just disgusting. They don't listen to the people who they are supposed to be representing. Instead they are listening radical organizations such as Acorn and SEIU, the Unions, and the corrupt special interest groups. We have lost our voice and our way.
Its disheartening when thousands of people say hey hold on a minute we don't like the direction you are going with this and they push ahead anyway as if to say we are too stupid to know whats really good for us. Who died and made them God?

I wonder if we as a nation will wake up in time to turn things around and save this nation or if it isn't too late and this is just God's will. Time will only tell.