(Sherry)
"Is your healthcare socialized? If so what is the general feeling about it? We are complating doing that here and I dont want it."
(Vladimir)
"YES, we do have a national health care system. It is not perfect, but it works. Mind you: this was a democratically taken decision by the people, not rammed through like Nance and Harry are trying in the US Congress. And it is based on a TOTALLY different tradition and political culture than the US has. What is good here could be bad over in your place. My conclusion is that our health system is rather well suited to our needs and culture, and NOT to yours. Solve the real problems in your system according to your traditions and culture. Never copy systems from other places. Like coconut palmtrees dont grow in Central Park."
The following was part of a conversation I had with a gentlemen who lives in Denmark. I found his remarks to be very noteworthy and obtained his permission to quote him on them. I think the man has a very valid point.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Health Reform Is Just Subterfuge; Dream Is Democratic Dictatorship- (well said Sir!)
Health Reform Is Just Subterfuge; Dream Is Democratic Dictatorship
By JOHN F. GASKI | Posted Tuesday, September 22, 2009 4:20 PM PT
By now the realization should be taking hold that the Democrats' health care plan has been exposed as a hoax. And it was the Democrats themselves who discredited and exposed it, but in a very ironic way. Of course, you won't hear this bombshell news reported by Democrat partisans Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and Brian Williams.
As for the substance, remember the Democrats' original rationale for their national health care takeover scheme? They wanted all uninsured Americans to be covered, right? Remember?
But now they concede that their mega-upheaval of a plan would still leave about 15 million without medical insurance. Yet they still advocate the plan! Why?
First, a digression: Don't believe that "47 million uninsured" number. That canard is beyond a hoax. It is a fraud and a lie.
For example, it includes at least 10 million illegal aliens (yes, that is the right term for those who enter our country by violating American law) and an additional five million or so legal foreign residents. Those categories are not "uninsured Americans" because they are not Americans.
The notorious 47 million also includes millions of wealthy people who do not purchase medical insurance — rendering themselves self-insured, not uninsured.
The biggest deceptions of all may be counting a large cohort of the young and vigorous who make the rational cost/benefit decision not to buy medical insurance yet, and several million others who qualify for free insurance and just don't bother to sign up!
Bottom line, subtract out the un-uninsured and other inapplicable categories and the true number of Americans without health insurance is somewhere around 7 million, maybe 10 million conservatively (compared with 15 million after Democrat "reform"?). Google the issue for about 10 minutes to verify.
Another way the Democrats inadvertently reveal their own national health insurance dishonesty is through infidelity to a second objective — cost control.
Remember that one? They are hoping you don't, especially since the Congressional Budget Office has reported that the Obama-Democrat scheme would add $1 trillion to the national health tab over the next decade. Yet the Dems still want their plan. Why?
Why, indeed? It must be something else, therefore. If their own action undermines their stated aims, and still they desperately favor the action, then the Democrats' real purpose must be something different, something they will not reveal. But what? Simple:
Have you noticed how the Washington Democrats like to take control of things, particularly big things in the economy such as the major banks and the auto industry, as well as health care?
(Obama has realized he doesn't have to literally own the banks to control them. He can, instead, achieve control through bank dependence on TARP money and through his own coercion and intimidation. Step out of line, that is, and a bank will be publicly vilified by Barney Frank and other operatives, and maybe even have its executives prosecuted.)
When American business, American jobs and the American people become totally dependent on Obama and the Democrats for money and credit, including student loans for good measure, how much power will that give the Obama Democrats over our country?
The portrait coming into focus is one of either totalitarian socialism or an unholy socialist hybrid with fascism. And when you are dependent on the decision of a Democrat bureaucrat for crucial medical treatment, how much power does that give the Democrats over you?
(Do you suppose party registration or political contributions might enter the bureaucrats' calculus? Recall how, in the GM reorganization, the Dems axed profitable dealers who were known to be Republican.)
When the Democrats achieve literal death-grip power over the lives of all our people, that is when they also achieve their long-cherished dream of absolute power and a Democrat dictatorship.
Dictatorship in a virtual one-party state is the correct forecast because our present rulers can never be voted out of national power after they grant amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens, who would promptly be registered as mostly Democrat voters by Acorn!
Now do you see what the real scheme is? Now does it all make sense? This is not your father's Democrat party. This is also not about health care, ultimately. It's about raw political power and the long-promised socialist takeover of the United States.
No public option, they now suggest? Don't believe it. They'll create a public option, soon to become the only option, by stealth — a kind of Fannie-Freddie co-op, because government control, in this case medical dictatorship, is an article of theology for the lib Dems.
We do not have a health care crisis in this country — because everyone already gets health care. It is just that some rely on the emergency room as their private medical services provider, so the system is inefficient and definitely too expensive overall.
We do have a health insurance problem, and a health care cost crisis, but not a national health care crisis. And both real problems are readily manageable if the Dems would only allow it.
We need to permit and foster interstate insurance competition, medical savings accounts and tort reform to help reduce costs, and tax credits for health insurance purchase to expand coverage — from about 98% of the population, in reality, to closer to 100%. Those numbers also help punctuate, and puncture, the true nature of the liberal Democrats' health hoax.
Incidentally, or not, despite the Democrats' fumbling of this whole issue, the Republicans are succumbing to their opponents' red herring, straw man, jiu-jitsu diversionary misdirection on the "death panels" matter. It is not those prospective end-of-life counseling "services" that are the real death panels, although that is a fair term for them.
The real Democrat death panels would be the thousands of politically appointed bureaucrats wielding life-and-death power over our citizenry through their decisions concerning whether to bestow or withhold lifesaving treatment.
This is it, America. This isn't really about a health policy issue; it is about the survival, or takeover, of our nation. If the Dems succeed in cramming their bitter medicine, actually poison, down your throat, the country is finished. It is the town hall protestors who seem to sense this most clearly. I hope the preceding diagnosis and prognosis help, too.
Gaski, an associate professor at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, has been a registered Democrat for more than 20 years. He is also author of the recently published "Frugal Cool: How to Get Rich — Without Making Very Much Money" (Corby Books, 2009).
____________________________________________________________________
I know that I may very likely take some heat for posting this, but I just don't care anymore. There is too much at stake for me to just keep silent. I feel too passionately about this to be afraid of what people may say any longer.
Our country is at crossroads and what I see coming down the pipe and what is already taken place scares the crap out of me. I can't help but wonder what is happening to my country? Is this all a part of God's plan? It is to be because he has said the faithful will suffer for their beliefs. It's a short leap from persecuting those who oppose Obama (some democrats included), the environmental nuts, and other such things to persecuting on issues of faith which by the way is already happening to some extent. All one has to do is look at groups like the ACLU to see that much.
I digress at any rate. I guess my point is that capitalism seems to be an endangered species, even though it has helped make this country the great nation that it was (and could be again)and freedom something way too many people take for granted.
I don't know if it's too late or not to change the direction the this country is headed in, but I do know a lot of folks are trying and taking a whole of heat for it.(GO Glenn and Hannity LOL)
I hope it's not too late, but if this is all a part of God's divine plan, then I will just have to trust Him and have faith in that plan even though I am scared to death. I know He is in control and that will just have to be enough.
By JOHN F. GASKI | Posted Tuesday, September 22, 2009 4:20 PM PT
By now the realization should be taking hold that the Democrats' health care plan has been exposed as a hoax. And it was the Democrats themselves who discredited and exposed it, but in a very ironic way. Of course, you won't hear this bombshell news reported by Democrat partisans Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and Brian Williams.
As for the substance, remember the Democrats' original rationale for their national health care takeover scheme? They wanted all uninsured Americans to be covered, right? Remember?
But now they concede that their mega-upheaval of a plan would still leave about 15 million without medical insurance. Yet they still advocate the plan! Why?
First, a digression: Don't believe that "47 million uninsured" number. That canard is beyond a hoax. It is a fraud and a lie.
For example, it includes at least 10 million illegal aliens (yes, that is the right term for those who enter our country by violating American law) and an additional five million or so legal foreign residents. Those categories are not "uninsured Americans" because they are not Americans.
The notorious 47 million also includes millions of wealthy people who do not purchase medical insurance — rendering themselves self-insured, not uninsured.
The biggest deceptions of all may be counting a large cohort of the young and vigorous who make the rational cost/benefit decision not to buy medical insurance yet, and several million others who qualify for free insurance and just don't bother to sign up!
Bottom line, subtract out the un-uninsured and other inapplicable categories and the true number of Americans without health insurance is somewhere around 7 million, maybe 10 million conservatively (compared with 15 million after Democrat "reform"?). Google the issue for about 10 minutes to verify.
Another way the Democrats inadvertently reveal their own national health insurance dishonesty is through infidelity to a second objective — cost control.
Remember that one? They are hoping you don't, especially since the Congressional Budget Office has reported that the Obama-Democrat scheme would add $1 trillion to the national health tab over the next decade. Yet the Dems still want their plan. Why?
Why, indeed? It must be something else, therefore. If their own action undermines their stated aims, and still they desperately favor the action, then the Democrats' real purpose must be something different, something they will not reveal. But what? Simple:
Have you noticed how the Washington Democrats like to take control of things, particularly big things in the economy such as the major banks and the auto industry, as well as health care?
(Obama has realized he doesn't have to literally own the banks to control them. He can, instead, achieve control through bank dependence on TARP money and through his own coercion and intimidation. Step out of line, that is, and a bank will be publicly vilified by Barney Frank and other operatives, and maybe even have its executives prosecuted.)
When American business, American jobs and the American people become totally dependent on Obama and the Democrats for money and credit, including student loans for good measure, how much power will that give the Obama Democrats over our country?
The portrait coming into focus is one of either totalitarian socialism or an unholy socialist hybrid with fascism. And when you are dependent on the decision of a Democrat bureaucrat for crucial medical treatment, how much power does that give the Democrats over you?
(Do you suppose party registration or political contributions might enter the bureaucrats' calculus? Recall how, in the GM reorganization, the Dems axed profitable dealers who were known to be Republican.)
When the Democrats achieve literal death-grip power over the lives of all our people, that is when they also achieve their long-cherished dream of absolute power and a Democrat dictatorship.
Dictatorship in a virtual one-party state is the correct forecast because our present rulers can never be voted out of national power after they grant amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens, who would promptly be registered as mostly Democrat voters by Acorn!
Now do you see what the real scheme is? Now does it all make sense? This is not your father's Democrat party. This is also not about health care, ultimately. It's about raw political power and the long-promised socialist takeover of the United States.
No public option, they now suggest? Don't believe it. They'll create a public option, soon to become the only option, by stealth — a kind of Fannie-Freddie co-op, because government control, in this case medical dictatorship, is an article of theology for the lib Dems.
We do not have a health care crisis in this country — because everyone already gets health care. It is just that some rely on the emergency room as their private medical services provider, so the system is inefficient and definitely too expensive overall.
We do have a health insurance problem, and a health care cost crisis, but not a national health care crisis. And both real problems are readily manageable if the Dems would only allow it.
We need to permit and foster interstate insurance competition, medical savings accounts and tort reform to help reduce costs, and tax credits for health insurance purchase to expand coverage — from about 98% of the population, in reality, to closer to 100%. Those numbers also help punctuate, and puncture, the true nature of the liberal Democrats' health hoax.
Incidentally, or not, despite the Democrats' fumbling of this whole issue, the Republicans are succumbing to their opponents' red herring, straw man, jiu-jitsu diversionary misdirection on the "death panels" matter. It is not those prospective end-of-life counseling "services" that are the real death panels, although that is a fair term for them.
The real Democrat death panels would be the thousands of politically appointed bureaucrats wielding life-and-death power over our citizenry through their decisions concerning whether to bestow or withhold lifesaving treatment.
This is it, America. This isn't really about a health policy issue; it is about the survival, or takeover, of our nation. If the Dems succeed in cramming their bitter medicine, actually poison, down your throat, the country is finished. It is the town hall protestors who seem to sense this most clearly. I hope the preceding diagnosis and prognosis help, too.
Gaski, an associate professor at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, has been a registered Democrat for more than 20 years. He is also author of the recently published "Frugal Cool: How to Get Rich — Without Making Very Much Money" (Corby Books, 2009).
____________________________________________________________________
I know that I may very likely take some heat for posting this, but I just don't care anymore. There is too much at stake for me to just keep silent. I feel too passionately about this to be afraid of what people may say any longer.
Our country is at crossroads and what I see coming down the pipe and what is already taken place scares the crap out of me. I can't help but wonder what is happening to my country? Is this all a part of God's plan? It is to be because he has said the faithful will suffer for their beliefs. It's a short leap from persecuting those who oppose Obama (some democrats included), the environmental nuts, and other such things to persecuting on issues of faith which by the way is already happening to some extent. All one has to do is look at groups like the ACLU to see that much.
I digress at any rate. I guess my point is that capitalism seems to be an endangered species, even though it has helped make this country the great nation that it was (and could be again)and freedom something way too many people take for granted.
I don't know if it's too late or not to change the direction the this country is headed in, but I do know a lot of folks are trying and taking a whole of heat for it.(GO Glenn and Hannity LOL)
I hope it's not too late, but if this is all a part of God's divine plan, then I will just have to trust Him and have faith in that plan even though I am scared to death. I know He is in control and that will just have to be enough.
Thoughts on proposed Baltimore City budget cuts
I am just outraged honestly. Honestly it's becoming common feeling to me these days, so this is just one more helping on that pile of outrage.
Why is it that it is OK to slash things like firefighter and police services, yet you don't see the da** politicians loosing anything in the way of pay or (perks for that matter)? How do they sleep at night? I am just so ticked I can't even hardly put it into words.
It's disgusting that they want to furlough, freeze hiring, and lay off all these important and necessary people in our society, yet they still maintain there inflated salaries and ridiculous perks.
How about these da** politicians taking a pay cut instead of our teachers or our EMT people? I think they earn it the least of anybody because they don't by and large really give a darn about any of us. They are interested in their own power and control over everyone else within their sphere of influence-esp the white house and it's many radical CZARS.
When is this kind of crap gonna stop? Are priorities are all assbackwards anymore. Teachers, EMT, firefighters, and doctors really are much more important then any politician Republican or Democrat put together.
I am frankly very concerned that as budgets continue to tighten for our states, the policies the White House want to institute are just going to compound these situations immensely. People could end up in serious trouble when due to budget cutbacks from a shrinking economy and revenues, a firefighter couldn't get to them in time or a policeman couldn't arrive in time to stop a man from killing his wife in a domestic dispute because they were understaffed to badly.
I don't know if the White House is purposely trying to collapse the system we know as capitalism as some have suggested or this is just ignorance on their part, but what I do know is that we have got to stop playing games and be serious about really matters. Stop the self serving bullcrap, and remember what really should matter to us as a nation and as citizens of one of the few free societies left in this world.
We need to treat our police,firefighters, teachers, and EMT like the important treasures that they are and not like some expendable budget cut.
Can we do it? YES WE CAN!
Why is it that it is OK to slash things like firefighter and police services, yet you don't see the da** politicians loosing anything in the way of pay or (perks for that matter)? How do they sleep at night? I am just so ticked I can't even hardly put it into words.
It's disgusting that they want to furlough, freeze hiring, and lay off all these important and necessary people in our society, yet they still maintain there inflated salaries and ridiculous perks.
How about these da** politicians taking a pay cut instead of our teachers or our EMT people? I think they earn it the least of anybody because they don't by and large really give a darn about any of us. They are interested in their own power and control over everyone else within their sphere of influence-esp the white house and it's many radical CZARS.
When is this kind of crap gonna stop? Are priorities are all assbackwards anymore. Teachers, EMT, firefighters, and doctors really are much more important then any politician Republican or Democrat put together.
I am frankly very concerned that as budgets continue to tighten for our states, the policies the White House want to institute are just going to compound these situations immensely. People could end up in serious trouble when due to budget cutbacks from a shrinking economy and revenues, a firefighter couldn't get to them in time or a policeman couldn't arrive in time to stop a man from killing his wife in a domestic dispute because they were understaffed to badly.
I don't know if the White House is purposely trying to collapse the system we know as capitalism as some have suggested or this is just ignorance on their part, but what I do know is that we have got to stop playing games and be serious about really matters. Stop the self serving bullcrap, and remember what really should matter to us as a nation and as citizens of one of the few free societies left in this world.
We need to treat our police,firefighters, teachers, and EMT like the important treasures that they are and not like some expendable budget cut.
Can we do it? YES WE CAN!
Monday, September 21, 2009
I knew this all long along to be honest, but nobody would listen
Radicals Wrote Failed Stimulus
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
>Policymaking: If the stimulus isn't working, perhaps it's because it was largely written by a collection of leftist interest groups called the Apollo Alliance that counts among its directors a co-founder of the Weather Underground./
The Labor Department reported Friday that 42 states lost more jobs than they gained in August, and that 14 plus Washington, D.C., reported unemployment rates of 10% or more.
Michigan's rate rose to 15.2%, highest in the nation. Nevada, represented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is second with 13.2%. California, home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is tied for fourth with Oregon at 12.2%.
Clearly, the stimulus bill that no congressman read is not working. As it turns out, no congressman may have written it either. It's largely the creation of a coalition of leftist organizations called the Apollo Alliance, whose primary interests are saving the Earth, environmental justice and redistributing wealth. They are not friends of job-creating capitalism.
On Apollo's Web site, Sen. Reid, whose state also leads in foreclosures, is quoted praising the group of which former green czar Van Jones was a board member.
"We've talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades," Reid is quoted as saying. "The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them."
Jones, the former Oakland, Calif., community organizer and self-avowed communist, was on the board of the Apollo Alliance when he accepted the position in the Obama administration as green jobs czar.
As Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity told Glenn Beck, Jones has "described the Apollo Alliance mission as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes" that would tie elements of organized labor with community organizers and environmental groups into an outfit that would restructure American society.
Wade Rathke, founder of Acorn, was also on the Apollo board, as is Gerald Hudson, vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which provides the shock troops in the movement to pass government-run health care.
John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and now president of the leftist Center for American Progress, also sits on the Apollo board. Each day his group sends out talking points to the left side of the blogosphere. Mark Lloyd, diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission, was a senior fellow at CAP.
According to Kerpen, the Apollo Alliance put together a draft stimulus bill in 2008 that included almost everything in the final $787 billion package. Little did the voters know that the congressmen and senators they would elect would pass a bill written by activist outsiders.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this is that an even more radical Jones (no relation) has a relationship with the Apollo Alliance. Jeff Jones was a domestic terrorist in the '60s and a fugitive from justice throughout the '70s who, with Bill Ayers, helped found the Weather Underground in 1969.Ayers, Jones and the Weathermen participated in the violent Days of Rage riots in Chicago and a nationwide anti-government bombing campaign. Like Ayers, Jeff Jones has no regrets, saying: "To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to do."
Today, Jones finds himself director of the Apollo Alliance's New York affiliate and a consultant to the national group. One of his clients is the Workforce Development Institute, a union-controlled organization.
As a consultant to WDI, Jones helps write the grant proposals for federal stimulus dollars — funds authorized in the bill that Apollo helped write — all to ensure that taxpayer dollars end up in the hands of groups that share Apollo's political agenda.
Welcome to government of the activist, by the activist and for the activist.
(It all about the tree from which the ACORN grew and what grew onto its branches. ITS NOT PRETTY and goes ALL THE WAY UP.)
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© Copyright 2009 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
>Policymaking: If the stimulus isn't working, perhaps it's because it was largely written by a collection of leftist interest groups called the Apollo Alliance that counts among its directors a co-founder of the Weather Underground./
The Labor Department reported Friday that 42 states lost more jobs than they gained in August, and that 14 plus Washington, D.C., reported unemployment rates of 10% or more.
Michigan's rate rose to 15.2%, highest in the nation. Nevada, represented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is second with 13.2%. California, home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is tied for fourth with Oregon at 12.2%.
Clearly, the stimulus bill that no congressman read is not working. As it turns out, no congressman may have written it either. It's largely the creation of a coalition of leftist organizations called the Apollo Alliance, whose primary interests are saving the Earth, environmental justice and redistributing wealth. They are not friends of job-creating capitalism.
On Apollo's Web site, Sen. Reid, whose state also leads in foreclosures, is quoted praising the group of which former green czar Van Jones was a board member.
"We've talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades," Reid is quoted as saying. "The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them."
Jones, the former Oakland, Calif., community organizer and self-avowed communist, was on the board of the Apollo Alliance when he accepted the position in the Obama administration as green jobs czar.
As Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity told Glenn Beck, Jones has "described the Apollo Alliance mission as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes" that would tie elements of organized labor with community organizers and environmental groups into an outfit that would restructure American society.
Wade Rathke, founder of Acorn, was also on the Apollo board, as is Gerald Hudson, vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which provides the shock troops in the movement to pass government-run health care.
John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and now president of the leftist Center for American Progress, also sits on the Apollo board. Each day his group sends out talking points to the left side of the blogosphere. Mark Lloyd, diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission, was a senior fellow at CAP.
According to Kerpen, the Apollo Alliance put together a draft stimulus bill in 2008 that included almost everything in the final $787 billion package. Little did the voters know that the congressmen and senators they would elect would pass a bill written by activist outsiders.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this is that an even more radical Jones (no relation) has a relationship with the Apollo Alliance. Jeff Jones was a domestic terrorist in the '60s and a fugitive from justice throughout the '70s who, with Bill Ayers, helped found the Weather Underground in 1969.Ayers, Jones and the Weathermen participated in the violent Days of Rage riots in Chicago and a nationwide anti-government bombing campaign. Like Ayers, Jeff Jones has no regrets, saying: "To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to do."
Today, Jones finds himself director of the Apollo Alliance's New York affiliate and a consultant to the national group. One of his clients is the Workforce Development Institute, a union-controlled organization.
As a consultant to WDI, Jones helps write the grant proposals for federal stimulus dollars — funds authorized in the bill that Apollo helped write — all to ensure that taxpayer dollars end up in the hands of groups that share Apollo's political agenda.
Welcome to government of the activist, by the activist and for the activist.
(It all about the tree from which the ACORN grew and what grew onto its branches. ITS NOT PRETTY and goes ALL THE WAY UP.)
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© Copyright 2009 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Sweet And Sour
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Taxes: With the federal government claiming the right to buy, manage or regulate virtually everything in the private sector, it's refreshing (excuse the pun) to see Coca-Cola's CEO fight back.Muhtar Kent knows a thing or two about guts. His father was a Turkish diplomat who in 1943 risked his life physically intervening to save 80 Turkish Jews, as cattle cars railroaded them from Marseille to a Nazi concentration camp.
Coke's Kent: No pushover CEO.
So when your father has defied the Gestapo, maybe standing up to Uncle Sam is a piece of cake. With the president considering a tax on sodas and other non-diet soft drinks to fund Congress' designs on the health care system, and to try to reduce obesity, the Coke chairman refused to go flat.
Speaking to the Rotary Club of Atlanta last week, Kent called such a tax "outrageous," according to Bloomberg News. "I have never seen it work where a government tells people what to eat and what to drink," he said. Kent, whose rise through the ranks at Coca-Cola Co. began 30 years ago, also quipped that "if it worked, the Soviet Union would still be around."Perhaps Washington has become so enamored of the idea that capitalism is under siege that it takes someone with multicultural, internationalist credentials to provide a jolt of realism. (I am proud of him. More power to him)
Born of a Muslim family in New York City and educated in Turkey and Britain, Kent headed Coke's East Central Europe Division when Eastern Bloc nations were liberated from the yoke of communism. So when he makes the Russian analogy about the state dictating what the people can eat and drink, he knows what he's talking about.
Government can't be allowed to use its taxation powers for an illegitimate purpose like directing the behavior of the populace. As Mark Levin states in his million-selling book "Liberty and Tyranny," they must be exercised "only to fund those activities that the Constitution authorizes and no others." To let Washington go further is to risk eventual statist servitude, Levin warns.
A penny-per-ounce soft drink tax could make a two-liter bottle of soda or iced tea cost 50% more. So the food and beverage industry is on the offensive, forming the Americans Against Food Taxes group this year and running high-profile ads on cable networks and in major newspapers.
But this is no special-interest issue. We've already let the government criminalize tobacco, fossil fuels and trans fat. Will we now let Washington add sugar to its index of forbidden substances?
Press Advertise Terms of Use Privacy Policy Copyright Notice Contact Site Map Home
© Copyright 2009 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
Taxes: With the federal government claiming the right to buy, manage or regulate virtually everything in the private sector, it's refreshing (excuse the pun) to see Coca-Cola's CEO fight back.Muhtar Kent knows a thing or two about guts. His father was a Turkish diplomat who in 1943 risked his life physically intervening to save 80 Turkish Jews, as cattle cars railroaded them from Marseille to a Nazi concentration camp.
Coke's Kent: No pushover CEO.
So when your father has defied the Gestapo, maybe standing up to Uncle Sam is a piece of cake. With the president considering a tax on sodas and other non-diet soft drinks to fund Congress' designs on the health care system, and to try to reduce obesity, the Coke chairman refused to go flat.
Speaking to the Rotary Club of Atlanta last week, Kent called such a tax "outrageous," according to Bloomberg News. "I have never seen it work where a government tells people what to eat and what to drink," he said. Kent, whose rise through the ranks at Coca-Cola Co. began 30 years ago, also quipped that "if it worked, the Soviet Union would still be around."Perhaps Washington has become so enamored of the idea that capitalism is under siege that it takes someone with multicultural, internationalist credentials to provide a jolt of realism. (I am proud of him. More power to him)
Born of a Muslim family in New York City and educated in Turkey and Britain, Kent headed Coke's East Central Europe Division when Eastern Bloc nations were liberated from the yoke of communism. So when he makes the Russian analogy about the state dictating what the people can eat and drink, he knows what he's talking about.
Government can't be allowed to use its taxation powers for an illegitimate purpose like directing the behavior of the populace. As Mark Levin states in his million-selling book "Liberty and Tyranny," they must be exercised "only to fund those activities that the Constitution authorizes and no others." To let Washington go further is to risk eventual statist servitude, Levin warns.
A penny-per-ounce soft drink tax could make a two-liter bottle of soda or iced tea cost 50% more. So the food and beverage industry is on the offensive, forming the Americans Against Food Taxes group this year and running high-profile ads on cable networks and in major newspapers.
But this is no special-interest issue. We've already let the government criminalize tobacco, fossil fuels and trans fat. Will we now let Washington add sugar to its index of forbidden substances?
Press Advertise Terms of Use Privacy Policy Copyright Notice Contact Site Map Home
© Copyright 2009 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Is Health Care Reform Constitutional? (Not as it is being proposed right now its not)
Is Health Care Reform Constitutional?
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Federal Powers: Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say the government can force people to buy health insurance? And by what authority does it prohibit the purchasing of insurance across state lines?
A key part of the administration's plan to reform health care is what is called the "individual mandate" — a requirement that everyone must have health insurance either through his or her employer or purchased individually.
A good chunk of the uninsured are that way of their own volition. They are young and healthy and feel they have better things to do with their money at this point in their lives. Forcing them is the only way to get them covered, but it's not clear where the constitutional authority to do that comes from. (This I am not quite sure I believe. Would have to research it a little more)
The Constitution specifically enumerates the powers given to each branch of government and says that any powers not mentioned revert to the states and to the people. Nowhere does it say that the feds can compel you to buy health insurance. But then, this is the administration that claims the right to a de facto nationalization of the banking system and auto industry, to set executive compensation and to fire corporate officers.
With regard to health care reform, the administration seems to be operating under a distorted version of the Commerce Clause that has been grossly misinterpreted over the years as allowing the feds to regulate and control just about everything. Because the sum total of millions of individual health decisions has a collective economic impact, the reasoning goes, government has the authority, even the duty, to regulate those decisions. It does not.
Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano, a constitutional scholar now a Fox News analyst, says the power to "regulate" interstate commerce is just that and only that. He says that when James Madison used the word "regulate," he meant "to keep regular." Madison intended the government to function like a modern-day referee in football — to throw a flag once in a while and moderate disputes, but not call the plays.
The irony here, says Napolitano, is that at the same time the government wants to force people to buy insurance, it forbids them from doing so across state lines. In other words, he says, "Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person's appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce."
David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served in the Justice Department under both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, wrote in the Washington Post that in United States vs. Lopez in 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress can only regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity.
The Commerce Clause allows for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production, distribution or consumption of commodities. The Supreme Court has specifically rejected the idea that Congress can regulate noneconomic activities simply because through a chain of collective events they might have some impact down the road.
The government does not have the power to regulate individual Americans simply because they are there and you think their individual decisions are unwise. There are other concerns, such as whether the mass collection of medical records violates the Fourth Amendment's right of people "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects."
The states are starting to rebel. In July, Texas Gov. Rick Perry indicated that he might join those invoking the 10th Amendment to fight a federal takeover of health care. "I think you'll hear states and and governors standing up and saying 'no' to this type of encroachment on the states with their health care," Perry said.
If passed into law, the House's health care reform plan will be tested. We hope the Supreme Court will once again find that H.R. 3200, and any bill like it that imposes similar mandates, violates the Constitution
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Federal Powers: Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say the government can force people to buy health insurance? And by what authority does it prohibit the purchasing of insurance across state lines?
A key part of the administration's plan to reform health care is what is called the "individual mandate" — a requirement that everyone must have health insurance either through his or her employer or purchased individually.
A good chunk of the uninsured are that way of their own volition. They are young and healthy and feel they have better things to do with their money at this point in their lives. Forcing them is the only way to get them covered, but it's not clear where the constitutional authority to do that comes from. (This I am not quite sure I believe. Would have to research it a little more)
The Constitution specifically enumerates the powers given to each branch of government and says that any powers not mentioned revert to the states and to the people. Nowhere does it say that the feds can compel you to buy health insurance. But then, this is the administration that claims the right to a de facto nationalization of the banking system and auto industry, to set executive compensation and to fire corporate officers.
With regard to health care reform, the administration seems to be operating under a distorted version of the Commerce Clause that has been grossly misinterpreted over the years as allowing the feds to regulate and control just about everything. Because the sum total of millions of individual health decisions has a collective economic impact, the reasoning goes, government has the authority, even the duty, to regulate those decisions. It does not.
Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano, a constitutional scholar now a Fox News analyst, says the power to "regulate" interstate commerce is just that and only that. He says that when James Madison used the word "regulate," he meant "to keep regular." Madison intended the government to function like a modern-day referee in football — to throw a flag once in a while and moderate disputes, but not call the plays.
The irony here, says Napolitano, is that at the same time the government wants to force people to buy insurance, it forbids them from doing so across state lines. In other words, he says, "Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person's appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce."
David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served in the Justice Department under both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, wrote in the Washington Post that in United States vs. Lopez in 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress can only regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity.
The Commerce Clause allows for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production, distribution or consumption of commodities. The Supreme Court has specifically rejected the idea that Congress can regulate noneconomic activities simply because through a chain of collective events they might have some impact down the road.
The government does not have the power to regulate individual Americans simply because they are there and you think their individual decisions are unwise. There are other concerns, such as whether the mass collection of medical records violates the Fourth Amendment's right of people "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects."
The states are starting to rebel. In July, Texas Gov. Rick Perry indicated that he might join those invoking the 10th Amendment to fight a federal takeover of health care. "I think you'll hear states and and governors standing up and saying 'no' to this type of encroachment on the states with their health care," Perry said.
If passed into law, the House's health care reform plan will be tested. We hope the Supreme Court will once again find that H.R. 3200, and any bill like it that imposes similar mandates, violates the Constitution
Part of an article I read-I hope this scarey stuff doesnt pass. I cant afford it.
Americans for Tax Reform catalogued the Baucus proposal's other tax increases:
• An employer mandate tax of $400 per employee that would be an incentive to drop coverage.
• A health savings account distribution penalty of 10% to 20%.
• Expensive IRS reporting requirements that look suspiciously like a prelude to the individual taxation of employer-provided health insurance.
• Big taxes slapped on various sectors of the medical industry: $6 billion a year on private health insurance firms, $4 billion from medical device manufacturers, $2.3 billion from the pharmaceutical industry and $750 million levied on clinical labs.
You can bet whatever remains of your bottom dollar that health care insurance customers will end up paying those added costs.
And for what? A federally mandated requirement to buy health insurance they can't afford, with big deductibles, plus extensive out-of-pocket costs.
As Laszewski explains, a family of four earning $66,000 "would be expected to spend $8,600 for a health insurance plan that would likely have a $2,000 deductible. If they didn't buy it, they would have to pay a fine of $3,800."
Being forced onto the road toward socialized medicine won't just extract a cost in health care consumer freedoms.
It will also, at a time of economic calamity, cost Americans a whole lot in hard-earned cash.
• An employer mandate tax of $400 per employee that would be an incentive to drop coverage.
• A health savings account distribution penalty of 10% to 20%.
• Expensive IRS reporting requirements that look suspiciously like a prelude to the individual taxation of employer-provided health insurance.
• Big taxes slapped on various sectors of the medical industry: $6 billion a year on private health insurance firms, $4 billion from medical device manufacturers, $2.3 billion from the pharmaceutical industry and $750 million levied on clinical labs.
You can bet whatever remains of your bottom dollar that health care insurance customers will end up paying those added costs.
And for what? A federally mandated requirement to buy health insurance they can't afford, with big deductibles, plus extensive out-of-pocket costs.
As Laszewski explains, a family of four earning $66,000 "would be expected to spend $8,600 for a health insurance plan that would likely have a $2,000 deductible. If they didn't buy it, they would have to pay a fine of $3,800."
Being forced onto the road toward socialized medicine won't just extract a cost in health care consumer freedoms.
It will also, at a time of economic calamity, cost Americans a whole lot in hard-earned cash.
45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul
By TERRY JONES
News Analysis by IBD
Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.
The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.
It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration's claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.
The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors' positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.
Major findings included:
• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration's claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul. It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a "majority of physicians want public and private insurance options," and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday's front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline "Doctors Go For Obama's Reform."
Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the "association representing the nation's physicians" and what "many still regard as the country's premier lobbying force" — is "lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama's sweeping plan."
The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA's support of Democrats' proposed health care overhaul.
• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll's finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.
• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered "no" when asked if they believed "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better."
This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time. The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better.
IBD/TIPP's finding that many doctors could leave the business suggests that such rationing could be more severe than even critics believe. Rationing is one of the drawbacks associated with government plans in countries such as Canada and the U.K. Stories about growing waiting lists for badly needed care, horror stories of care gone wrong, babies born on sidewalks, and even people dying as a result of care delayed or denied are rife.
In this country, the number of doctors is already lagging population growth.
From 2003 to 2006, the number of active physicians in the U.S. grew by just 0.8% a year, adding a total of 25,700 doctors.
Recent population growth has been 1% a year. Patients, in short, are already being added faster than physicians, creating a medical bottleneck.
The great concern is that, with increased mandates, lower pay and less freedom to practice, doctors could abandon medicine in droves, as the IBD/TIPP Poll suggests. Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for — an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors. The actual effect could be somewhat less because a significant share of the uninsured already get care.
Even so, the government vows to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care spending to pay for reform, which would encourage a flight from the profession.
The U.S. today has just 2.4 physicians per 1,000 population — below the median of 3.1 for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the official club of wealthy nations.
Adding millions of patients to physicians' caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed.
"It's like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only two buses," Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told the Associated Press.
Hope for a surge in new doctors may be misplaced. A recent study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found steadily declining enrollment in medical schools since 1980.
The study found that, just with current patient demand, the U.S. will have 159,000 fewer doctors than it needs by 2025. Unless corrected, that would make some sort of medical rationing or long waiting lists almost mandatory.
Experiments at the state level show that an overhaul isn't likely to change much.
On Monday came word from the Massachusetts Medical Society — a group representing physicians in a state that has implemented an overhaul similar to that under consideration in Washington — that doctor shortages remain a growing problem.
Its 2009 Physician Workforce Study found that:
• The primary care specialties of family medicine and internal medicine are in short supply for a fourth straight year.
• The percentage of primary care practices closed to new patients is the highest ever recorded.
• Seven of 18 specialties — dermatology, neurology, urology, vascular surgery and (for the first time) obstetrics-gynecology, in addition to family and internal medicine — are in short supply.
• Recruitment and retention of physicians remains difficult, especially at community hospitals and with primary care.
A key reason for the doctor shortages, according to the study, is a "lingering poor practice environment in the state."
In 2006, Massachusetts passed its medical overhaul — minus a public option — similar to what's being proposed on a national scale now. It hasn't worked as expected. Costs are higher, with insurance premiums rising 22% faster than in the U.S. as a whole.
"Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate," according to a recent report from the Urban Institute.
Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.
This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.
In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service."A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland" because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted. (Is this really what we want for us here?? because it will happen)
British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.
Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country's national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.
Tomorrow: Why most doctors oppose the government's plan — in their own words.
News Analysis by IBD
Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.
The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.
It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration's claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.
The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors' positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.
Major findings included:
• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration's claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul. It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a "majority of physicians want public and private insurance options," and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday's front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline "Doctors Go For Obama's Reform."
Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the "association representing the nation's physicians" and what "many still regard as the country's premier lobbying force" — is "lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama's sweeping plan."
The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA's support of Democrats' proposed health care overhaul.
• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll's finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.
• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered "no" when asked if they believed "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better."
This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time. The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better.
IBD/TIPP's finding that many doctors could leave the business suggests that such rationing could be more severe than even critics believe. Rationing is one of the drawbacks associated with government plans in countries such as Canada and the U.K. Stories about growing waiting lists for badly needed care, horror stories of care gone wrong, babies born on sidewalks, and even people dying as a result of care delayed or denied are rife.
In this country, the number of doctors is already lagging population growth.
From 2003 to 2006, the number of active physicians in the U.S. grew by just 0.8% a year, adding a total of 25,700 doctors.
Recent population growth has been 1% a year. Patients, in short, are already being added faster than physicians, creating a medical bottleneck.
The great concern is that, with increased mandates, lower pay and less freedom to practice, doctors could abandon medicine in droves, as the IBD/TIPP Poll suggests. Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for — an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors. The actual effect could be somewhat less because a significant share of the uninsured already get care.
Even so, the government vows to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care spending to pay for reform, which would encourage a flight from the profession.
The U.S. today has just 2.4 physicians per 1,000 population — below the median of 3.1 for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the official club of wealthy nations.
Adding millions of patients to physicians' caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed.
"It's like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only two buses," Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told the Associated Press.
Hope for a surge in new doctors may be misplaced. A recent study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found steadily declining enrollment in medical schools since 1980.
The study found that, just with current patient demand, the U.S. will have 159,000 fewer doctors than it needs by 2025. Unless corrected, that would make some sort of medical rationing or long waiting lists almost mandatory.
Experiments at the state level show that an overhaul isn't likely to change much.
On Monday came word from the Massachusetts Medical Society — a group representing physicians in a state that has implemented an overhaul similar to that under consideration in Washington — that doctor shortages remain a growing problem.
Its 2009 Physician Workforce Study found that:
• The primary care specialties of family medicine and internal medicine are in short supply for a fourth straight year.
• The percentage of primary care practices closed to new patients is the highest ever recorded.
• Seven of 18 specialties — dermatology, neurology, urology, vascular surgery and (for the first time) obstetrics-gynecology, in addition to family and internal medicine — are in short supply.
• Recruitment and retention of physicians remains difficult, especially at community hospitals and with primary care.
A key reason for the doctor shortages, according to the study, is a "lingering poor practice environment in the state."
In 2006, Massachusetts passed its medical overhaul — minus a public option — similar to what's being proposed on a national scale now. It hasn't worked as expected. Costs are higher, with insurance premiums rising 22% faster than in the U.S. as a whole.
"Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate," according to a recent report from the Urban Institute.
Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.
This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.
In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service."A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland" because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted. (Is this really what we want for us here?? because it will happen)
British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.
Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country's national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.
Tomorrow: Why most doctors oppose the government's plan — in their own words.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Joe Wilson's War- (plus a few comments of my own)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character. In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels.
When Joe Wilson, the decorum-challenged South Carolina Republican, reacted to President Obama's assertion that there was nothing in health care legislation giving coverage to illegal aliens by shouting "You lie!" he knew, as his critics ignore, that there was nothing requiring proof of citizenship either.
A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill at that moment did not restrict illegal immigrants from receiving health care coverage.
"There were two opportunities for House Democrats to make clear that illegal immigrants wouldn't be covered by putting in requirements to show citizenships," House Minority Leader John Boehner said. "Both of those amendments were, in fact, rejected."
When the president mysteriously dropped the number of uninsured from the 47 million he had been insisting on to 30 million, perhaps he had in mind the charge that illegal aliens would be included and that Democrats in Congress were actively working to make that happen.
Congressional Democrats and the White House have been disingenuous in other ways. They talk about cutting $130 billion from Medicare Advantage without affecting services to seniors. They talk of savings from cutting waste from Medicare and Medicaid, even though this could have been done the day after the 2006 election with willing GOP help and as a stand-alone effort.
The president threw the GOP something of a carrot by saying he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level. He ignores that malpractice reform has already been acceptable at the state level, most notably in Texas, and no further study is needed. He knows the Democrats' No. 1 lobby, the trial lawyers, would never permit real reform at the national level.
As we have written, malpractice abuse accounts for between 2% and 10% of all medical costs today. For a $2-trillion-a-year industry, even the low end would mean $40 billion a year in cost savings, and $400 billion over the 10-year period that Obama uses as his scale. Malpractice reform could also be handled as a stand-alone issue to control costs of defensive medicine. Why isn't it?
For his efforts, Joe Wilson has been subject to a barrage of ad hominem attacks. MSNBC's David Shuster, for example, reminded his viewers of "the fact that Joe Wilson is from South Carolina," which raised "the idea that maybe there was some sort of racist or bigoted element there."
Then there was Chris Matthews, also of MSNBC, saying Wilson's opposition to the president is based on "who he is, where he comes from, his background."
MSNBC, of course, is the network that tried to portray town hall protesters as white racists by using a doctored video showing a man "packing heat" outside an event where the president was speaking but edited in such a way as to conceal the fact that the man was actually African-American.
Over a screen banner asking "Motivated By Race?" CNN anchor Don Lemon previewed his 7 p.m. program Saturday night by citing Wilson, "town hallers yelling at lawmakers" and those "refusing to let kids hear the commander in chief. And on and on and on." The sour Lemon ended his tease: "What's behind it? Is it racial?"
Arguably the patron saint of unglued rhetoric, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, wrote in her recent screed: "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it." We accept it, Maureen, and Joe Wilson does too. (Is she serious??????)
What we cannot accept is the hypocrisy of those who cheered when moans and groans were directed at President George W. Bush during his speeches to Congress or when he had to dodge shoes tossed his way.
Politics, as they say, ain't beanbag. Joe Wilson, were he a member of the British Parliament chastising the prime minister face-to-face, would barely get noticed.
___________________________________________________________________________________
I won't sit here and defend what Wilson did, like some have, but neither will I outright condemn him.I will defend what he said to the end because he was RIGHT, but I think he timing was inexcusable. Just because democrats repeatedly booed Bush (in chambers I might add) doesn't mean the Republicans have to sink to that level as well.
I think the overall lack of civility in this country is disgusting. What happened to being able to agree to disagree? Can't we disagree without degenerating into name calling and personal attacks? I vehemently disagree with Obama, but I do try to keep it civil. I don't always succeed, but I try real hard to.
Another thing I want to comment on is the apparent need of the democrats and liberals in Washington to call those who dare to disagree with the president racists. I am so freaking sick of it! Remember all the VICIOUS names that Bush was called and no one ever screamed race. Its ridiculous. I grant there are select FEW who might think that,but the MAJORITY don't agree with him because of his policies, attitude, the things he says and does, and his overall arrogance. That is why most people disagree with him and anybody that wants to keep throwing the race card around is not helping this country any and is in fact doing great harm to race relations in this country. I have said it before and I will say it again. I DON'T CARE THAT HE IS BLACK (half actually but that is besides the point), what I do care about are the horrible things he is trying to get passed in congress. Most of it is just downright socialistic and unconstitutional at worst and at best potentially devastating to our economy. (I dont use these names lightly either. I have heard him and his policies called much worse and for the record I think those folks are way out of line)
I just wonder now that people are slowly starting to wake up, if its just too little too late?
Time will tell.
Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character. In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels.
When Joe Wilson, the decorum-challenged South Carolina Republican, reacted to President Obama's assertion that there was nothing in health care legislation giving coverage to illegal aliens by shouting "You lie!" he knew, as his critics ignore, that there was nothing requiring proof of citizenship either.
A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill at that moment did not restrict illegal immigrants from receiving health care coverage.
"There were two opportunities for House Democrats to make clear that illegal immigrants wouldn't be covered by putting in requirements to show citizenships," House Minority Leader John Boehner said. "Both of those amendments were, in fact, rejected."
When the president mysteriously dropped the number of uninsured from the 47 million he had been insisting on to 30 million, perhaps he had in mind the charge that illegal aliens would be included and that Democrats in Congress were actively working to make that happen.
Congressional Democrats and the White House have been disingenuous in other ways. They talk about cutting $130 billion from Medicare Advantage without affecting services to seniors. They talk of savings from cutting waste from Medicare and Medicaid, even though this could have been done the day after the 2006 election with willing GOP help and as a stand-alone effort.
The president threw the GOP something of a carrot by saying he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level. He ignores that malpractice reform has already been acceptable at the state level, most notably in Texas, and no further study is needed. He knows the Democrats' No. 1 lobby, the trial lawyers, would never permit real reform at the national level.
As we have written, malpractice abuse accounts for between 2% and 10% of all medical costs today. For a $2-trillion-a-year industry, even the low end would mean $40 billion a year in cost savings, and $400 billion over the 10-year period that Obama uses as his scale. Malpractice reform could also be handled as a stand-alone issue to control costs of defensive medicine. Why isn't it?
For his efforts, Joe Wilson has been subject to a barrage of ad hominem attacks. MSNBC's David Shuster, for example, reminded his viewers of "the fact that Joe Wilson is from South Carolina," which raised "the idea that maybe there was some sort of racist or bigoted element there."
Then there was Chris Matthews, also of MSNBC, saying Wilson's opposition to the president is based on "who he is, where he comes from, his background."
MSNBC, of course, is the network that tried to portray town hall protesters as white racists by using a doctored video showing a man "packing heat" outside an event where the president was speaking but edited in such a way as to conceal the fact that the man was actually African-American.
Over a screen banner asking "Motivated By Race?" CNN anchor Don Lemon previewed his 7 p.m. program Saturday night by citing Wilson, "town hallers yelling at lawmakers" and those "refusing to let kids hear the commander in chief. And on and on and on." The sour Lemon ended his tease: "What's behind it? Is it racial?"
Arguably the patron saint of unglued rhetoric, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, wrote in her recent screed: "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it." We accept it, Maureen, and Joe Wilson does too. (Is she serious??????)
What we cannot accept is the hypocrisy of those who cheered when moans and groans were directed at President George W. Bush during his speeches to Congress or when he had to dodge shoes tossed his way.
Politics, as they say, ain't beanbag. Joe Wilson, were he a member of the British Parliament chastising the prime minister face-to-face, would barely get noticed.
___________________________________________________________________________________
I won't sit here and defend what Wilson did, like some have, but neither will I outright condemn him.I will defend what he said to the end because he was RIGHT, but I think he timing was inexcusable. Just because democrats repeatedly booed Bush (in chambers I might add) doesn't mean the Republicans have to sink to that level as well.
I think the overall lack of civility in this country is disgusting. What happened to being able to agree to disagree? Can't we disagree without degenerating into name calling and personal attacks? I vehemently disagree with Obama, but I do try to keep it civil. I don't always succeed, but I try real hard to.
Another thing I want to comment on is the apparent need of the democrats and liberals in Washington to call those who dare to disagree with the president racists. I am so freaking sick of it! Remember all the VICIOUS names that Bush was called and no one ever screamed race. Its ridiculous. I grant there are select FEW who might think that,but the MAJORITY don't agree with him because of his policies, attitude, the things he says and does, and his overall arrogance. That is why most people disagree with him and anybody that wants to keep throwing the race card around is not helping this country any and is in fact doing great harm to race relations in this country. I have said it before and I will say it again. I DON'T CARE THAT HE IS BLACK (half actually but that is besides the point), what I do care about are the horrible things he is trying to get passed in congress. Most of it is just downright socialistic and unconstitutional at worst and at best potentially devastating to our economy. (I dont use these names lightly either. I have heard him and his policies called much worse and for the record I think those folks are way out of line)
I just wonder now that people are slowly starting to wake up, if its just too little too late?
Time will tell.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Speaking Of Misinformation ( Well said )
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Reform: Millions of Americans finally got to hear the Democrats' pitch on health care reform, made by their top salesman. But they heard nothing new — just a lot of discredited myths recycled as the truth.
For the record, we support improving our health care system. As is, it has too many rules, too much government spending and too few market forces to keep costs low and quality high. (I agree)
We spend north of $2 trillion every year on health care — 17% of our GDP, the most of any wealthy nation. If that sounds like a lot, remember this: An estimated 47% of that already is spent by the government. And government's share will grow even without "reform."
Look closely at the plans so far to emerge from Congress. What the Democrats have proposed, in essence, is a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of our nation's economy. When brought up in Congress, this idea has been rejected repeatedly. Yet, somehow, the idea never dies.
That's why the president's speech Wednesday night was a big disappointment.
Rather than a breakthrough that would remove government's stranglehold on a once-healthy market and move us toward true reform, we heard a lot of old bromides and myths — things we just can't let go uncorrected. Too much is at stake.
So following are 15 of the biggest misconceptions — and there are many more, we assure you — that we found in the speech:
• "The uninsured . . . live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare."
Actually, of the 46 million people the census estimates don't have insurance, some 20 million have incomes above average and could afford to buy it, according to a study by former Congressional Budget Office Director June O'Neill.
Of the remaining 26 million uninsured, an estimated 13.7 million are poor. They are eligible for Medicaid — the state health care programs for the poor. But many, too, are illegals — about 8 million.
Though they're eligible, research from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association suggests as many as 14 million uninsured Americans qualify for public coverage, but don't enroll. And as many as 6 million are enrolled, but don't report it to the government, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis.
That leaves about 5 million people with no care.
By the way, according to the Census Bureau, America now has 37 million people in poverty. But Medicaid enrollment covers 55 million people — at a cost of $350 billion a year.
Based on this, no one should be without care. Which leads us to wonder: Is nationalizing our health care system really necessary to take care of people who already have care available to them?
• "Many other Americans . . . are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover."
This statement betrays a profound ignorance of what insurance is. If you can buy insurance after you've gotten sick, it's not really insurance, is it? And why have insurance at all? It's an incentive to simply wait until you get sick, then make someone else pay for it.
To see how absurd this is, let's take the same concept to auto insurance. Why not let people buy insurance after they get in an accident? One reason, of course, is it leads to fiscal and personal recklessness.
• "There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage . . . every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage."
As noted above, the bulk of the 30-plus million uninsured actually can get coverage — and in many cases, qualify for existing government programs. But how about 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day? A little math shows this is just a scare statistic.
Multiply it out, and it comes to 5.1 million people losing coverage in a year. Sound scary? Consider that, according to the census, 46.3 million Americans don't currently have insurance — 600,000 more than last year. That means that, along with 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day, another 12,400 Americans are signing up for it — even in the middle of a brutal recession.
Those who lose insurance do so usually because they've lost a job. Most are without insurance for a couple of months or so. The best way to boost the number of insured — and one that "costs" nothing — is to cut taxes, ease regulations and slash government spending. Those policies are all proven job creators.
• "We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it."
This is a non sequitur. We spend one and a half times more per person, true. But because our health care here is better. That's right — better. True, our life expectancy of 78.1 years — which is up sharply from just a decade ago — ranks us 30th in the world in longevity. But look a little closer at the data.
The U.S. homicide rate is two to three times higher than in other industrial nations. And we drive a lot more than others, so our auto fatality rate of 14.24 deaths per 100,000 people is higher than in Germany (6.19), France (7.4) or Canada (9.25). Add to this, we eat far more than other countries on average, contributing to higher levels of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
When all those factors are figured in, according to a recent study by Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa, Americans actually live longer than people in other countries — thanks mainly to our excellent health care.
• Rising health care premiums are "why American businesses that compete internationally — like our automakers — are at a huge disadvantage."
Well, right and wrong. Soaring health care premiums are a problem for some. But who's to blame for this? Government health care programs, which make up 47% of all health care spending, are the biggest drivers of rising insurance premiums.
For example, Medicare forces doctors and hospitals to give patients 20% to 30% discounts on their care and drugs. Sounds great. But who pays for the "discount"? Private insurers, that's who. And they pass it on to businesses. This is yet another case of government causing a problem, then blaming the victim.
Even so, in some industries health care premiums are an enormous problem and competitive liability. This is certainly true of the auto and steel industries. But they have no one to blame but themselves.
They gave gold-plated benefit packages to their unions during the fat times, and now that times are lean, want us — taxpayers — to make good on their extravagant promises.
This is why so many big businesses support nationalized health care. It bails them out of their own bad decisions — and by those imposed by government. Just last week a congressional oversight panel announced that taxpayers were unlikely to recoup much of the $81 billion they spent to bail out GM and Chrysler. That's another indirect health care tax your children and grandchildren will have to pay.
• "Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. . . . If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined."
Are we supposed to believe that adding more government will bring down government costs?
Medicare is already spending more than it is taking in through payroll taxes. Medicare trustees expect the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund part of the program to be insolvent by 2019. From now through 2017, it will need $342 billion of taxpayers' money in order to keep paying hospital insurance benefits alone. Over the next 50 years or so, Medicare's shortfall is expected to hit $37 trillion — an almost unbelievable deficit nearly three times our current GDP.
If Medicare has done one thing, it's proved that government programs always cost more than their original projections. Citing the runaway costs of Medicare is an argument against, not for, further government intervention.
• "On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own. . . . I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch."
Discouraging employer-based coverage and encouraging individuals to buy their own insurance would help. But only if lawmakers make two real reforms, neither requiring a "new system from scratch."
First, Washington must give tax credits for premiums paid on individual policies. That would make them more affordable for more people. Second, Washington has to make it easier for Americans to have health savings accounts. HSAs hold costs down because account holders self-ration treatment. They also give people more control over their health care.
• "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."
Shawn Tully, Fortune editor at large, dug into the legislation and found that for "Americans in large corporations, 'keeping your own plan' has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange," a government program in which heavily regulated private companies sell insurance policies.
Workers who buy their own insurance or begin coverage through small businesses will also be forced into the exchange if their plans change in any way, because it's then considered a new plan. Since plans generally change policies every year, Tully says, "it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months."
According to a July study by the Lewin Group and the Heritage Foundation, health reform could cause as many as 88 million Americans to lose their private, employer-based coverage.
• "If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange."
The president says this is "a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices." But it won't be a real marketplace. Participating insurers will be saddled with a host of mandates. Those that don't like the regulations will be left out. There'll be little room for competition.
The Cato Institute's Michael Tanner has said that "in practice, at least as demonstrated in Massachusetts," an exchange "can quickly devolve into a regulatory body."
• "Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims . . . The best example is . . . that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. . . . It is a lie, plain and simple."
As far as we know, there is no provision for a death panel buried in the 1,018-page bill. But we do know how Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the administration's health care czar, feels about treating those who need the most help.
"When the worse-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating (treatment) to the better-off is often justifiable."So the federal government won't be actively killing the old and the sick. It will just let them die by denying them the care that will supposedly be available to every American.
• "There are those who also claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false — the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."
Tough words are one thing, enforcement is another. As IBD's Sean Higgins reported last week: "Some independent analysis indicates — contrary to Obama's claim — that the House health bill could result in coverage being extended to illegal immigrants."
It starts with the mandate for everyone to buy insurance, including illegals. Their choices will be presumably through the "exchange," and they won't be eligible for subsidies to buy. But the non-partisan Congressional Research Service warns there's no verification mechanism. An amendment by GOP Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada, to use electronic immigration records to verify eligibility for subsidies, was shot down by Democrats.
Enforcement woes are nothing new. The U.K.'s nationalized system treats as many as a million illegal immigrants a year because eligibility verification at the point of service is nearly impossible. It's now giving up the ghost of trying because illegals have won the right to be treated at taxpayer expense as a "human right." That's brought new waves of "health tourism" as word spreads.
Cabinet officials, such as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, support union demands to give amnesty to 12 million illegals. If so, they will get public health care. And hospitals that continue to treat illegals through emergency rooms, are reimbursed through Medicaid.
• "My health care proposal has also been attacked by some who oppose reform as a 'government takeover' of the entire health care system . . . Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. . . Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down."
Obama is right about limited numbers of insurers in states. They're the last ones able to survive the layers of bureaucratic mandates and regulations without going bankrupt.
The fastest way to create choice for consumers isn't by adding a government option, but by breaking down trade barriers across state lines. By letting citizens buy insurance from any state, a truly competitive market can develop, with choices in coverage, service and price. It would be far better if each American could buy health insurance from any of the nation's 1,300 insurers, not just a handful in their own states.
• "Despite all this, some . . . argue that these private (insurance) companies can't fairly compete with the government. And they'd be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public option. But they won't be. . . . (The public option) would . . . keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better . . ."
When the government acts as both producer and regulator of its own and everyone else's products, the playing field is tilted because there's a basic conflict of interest. It's also a recipe for cronyism and corruption. Witness Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
We looked at the after-tax margins of some big health insurers over the last 12 months. Here's what we found: Among HMOs, Humana, 3.1%. Cigna, 4%. Wellpoint, 5%. United Health Group, 4.4%. Broader health insurers, like Unum (8.6% after-tax margin) and AFLAC (12.3%), do a bit better.
The point is, these are not outrageous profits. And the health care industry's $13 billion in 2008 profits pale in comparison to the $65 billion in annual fraud in Medicare alone.
• "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."
From the folks who brought us a $10 trillion deficit over the next decade, that's hard to swallow. The White House has assured us the public option would be funded by premiums. So, it's hard to know what he means by savings or spending cuts.
Although Medicare and Medicaid, are slated for $313 billion in cuts, the government has yet to eliminate the $65 billion or so that goes to waste and fraud. They don't need health reform to do that, they can do it now.
• "The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies — subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care."
Speaking of waste and fraud, as we said, why can't it be done today instead of waiting for some health care reform bill to pass? The president proposes $313 billion in Medicaid and Medicare cuts, saying $110 billion would come from reducing scheduled increases in Medicare payments.
"That would encourage health care providers to increase productivity," White House budget director Peter Orszag told reporters. $110 billion would come from ending payments to hospitals to treat uninsured patients. But much of that comes from treating illegals, who aren't supposed to be eligible for the public option.
Another $75 billion would come from "better pricing of Medicare drugs," Orszag said.
What he doesn't get is that some $10 billion of Medicare funding goes to dubious expenditures like hospitals padding bills because they are paid too little and must make up lost revenue in volume.
Cutting payments more means more padding, as the Mayo Clinic has warned. That means rationing. The Democrats' plan may not be explicitly mean to ration, but not paying a fair and market-determined price for services will ensure less of it for patients.
President Obama began his speech by noting it's "been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health reform" and that "nearly every president and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way."
"A bill for comprehensive care reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943," he also pointed out. "Sixty-five years later, his son (Rep. John Dingell, Michigan Democrat now in his 28th term) continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session."
Could it be, we wonder, that the reason why health reform of the kind the Dingells and Democrats have been pushing for 100 years has gone nowhere is that Americans want nothing to do with it? What is it about "No!" that they don't understand?
_____________________________________________________________________________
There are other alternative ideas to Obamas plan out there, if only he would really truly listen. Instead he is letting the rest of his radical buddies like pelosi and reed run the show. Its sad and we will all end up suffering for it.
Reform: Millions of Americans finally got to hear the Democrats' pitch on health care reform, made by their top salesman. But they heard nothing new — just a lot of discredited myths recycled as the truth.
For the record, we support improving our health care system. As is, it has too many rules, too much government spending and too few market forces to keep costs low and quality high. (I agree)
We spend north of $2 trillion every year on health care — 17% of our GDP, the most of any wealthy nation. If that sounds like a lot, remember this: An estimated 47% of that already is spent by the government. And government's share will grow even without "reform."
Look closely at the plans so far to emerge from Congress. What the Democrats have proposed, in essence, is a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of our nation's economy. When brought up in Congress, this idea has been rejected repeatedly. Yet, somehow, the idea never dies.
That's why the president's speech Wednesday night was a big disappointment.
Rather than a breakthrough that would remove government's stranglehold on a once-healthy market and move us toward true reform, we heard a lot of old bromides and myths — things we just can't let go uncorrected. Too much is at stake.
So following are 15 of the biggest misconceptions — and there are many more, we assure you — that we found in the speech:
• "The uninsured . . . live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare."
Actually, of the 46 million people the census estimates don't have insurance, some 20 million have incomes above average and could afford to buy it, according to a study by former Congressional Budget Office Director June O'Neill.
Of the remaining 26 million uninsured, an estimated 13.7 million are poor. They are eligible for Medicaid — the state health care programs for the poor. But many, too, are illegals — about 8 million.
Though they're eligible, research from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association suggests as many as 14 million uninsured Americans qualify for public coverage, but don't enroll. And as many as 6 million are enrolled, but don't report it to the government, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis.
That leaves about 5 million people with no care.
By the way, according to the Census Bureau, America now has 37 million people in poverty. But Medicaid enrollment covers 55 million people — at a cost of $350 billion a year.
Based on this, no one should be without care. Which leads us to wonder: Is nationalizing our health care system really necessary to take care of people who already have care available to them?
• "Many other Americans . . . are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover."
This statement betrays a profound ignorance of what insurance is. If you can buy insurance after you've gotten sick, it's not really insurance, is it? And why have insurance at all? It's an incentive to simply wait until you get sick, then make someone else pay for it.
To see how absurd this is, let's take the same concept to auto insurance. Why not let people buy insurance after they get in an accident? One reason, of course, is it leads to fiscal and personal recklessness.
• "There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage . . . every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage."
As noted above, the bulk of the 30-plus million uninsured actually can get coverage — and in many cases, qualify for existing government programs. But how about 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day? A little math shows this is just a scare statistic.
Multiply it out, and it comes to 5.1 million people losing coverage in a year. Sound scary? Consider that, according to the census, 46.3 million Americans don't currently have insurance — 600,000 more than last year. That means that, along with 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day, another 12,400 Americans are signing up for it — even in the middle of a brutal recession.
Those who lose insurance do so usually because they've lost a job. Most are without insurance for a couple of months or so. The best way to boost the number of insured — and one that "costs" nothing — is to cut taxes, ease regulations and slash government spending. Those policies are all proven job creators.
• "We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it."
This is a non sequitur. We spend one and a half times more per person, true. But because our health care here is better. That's right — better. True, our life expectancy of 78.1 years — which is up sharply from just a decade ago — ranks us 30th in the world in longevity. But look a little closer at the data.
The U.S. homicide rate is two to three times higher than in other industrial nations. And we drive a lot more than others, so our auto fatality rate of 14.24 deaths per 100,000 people is higher than in Germany (6.19), France (7.4) or Canada (9.25). Add to this, we eat far more than other countries on average, contributing to higher levels of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
When all those factors are figured in, according to a recent study by Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa, Americans actually live longer than people in other countries — thanks mainly to our excellent health care.
• Rising health care premiums are "why American businesses that compete internationally — like our automakers — are at a huge disadvantage."
Well, right and wrong. Soaring health care premiums are a problem for some. But who's to blame for this? Government health care programs, which make up 47% of all health care spending, are the biggest drivers of rising insurance premiums.
For example, Medicare forces doctors and hospitals to give patients 20% to 30% discounts on their care and drugs. Sounds great. But who pays for the "discount"? Private insurers, that's who. And they pass it on to businesses. This is yet another case of government causing a problem, then blaming the victim.
Even so, in some industries health care premiums are an enormous problem and competitive liability. This is certainly true of the auto and steel industries. But they have no one to blame but themselves.
They gave gold-plated benefit packages to their unions during the fat times, and now that times are lean, want us — taxpayers — to make good on their extravagant promises.
This is why so many big businesses support nationalized health care. It bails them out of their own bad decisions — and by those imposed by government. Just last week a congressional oversight panel announced that taxpayers were unlikely to recoup much of the $81 billion they spent to bail out GM and Chrysler. That's another indirect health care tax your children and grandchildren will have to pay.
• "Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. . . . If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined."
Are we supposed to believe that adding more government will bring down government costs?
Medicare is already spending more than it is taking in through payroll taxes. Medicare trustees expect the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund part of the program to be insolvent by 2019. From now through 2017, it will need $342 billion of taxpayers' money in order to keep paying hospital insurance benefits alone. Over the next 50 years or so, Medicare's shortfall is expected to hit $37 trillion — an almost unbelievable deficit nearly three times our current GDP.
If Medicare has done one thing, it's proved that government programs always cost more than their original projections. Citing the runaway costs of Medicare is an argument against, not for, further government intervention.
• "On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own. . . . I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch."
Discouraging employer-based coverage and encouraging individuals to buy their own insurance would help. But only if lawmakers make two real reforms, neither requiring a "new system from scratch."
First, Washington must give tax credits for premiums paid on individual policies. That would make them more affordable for more people. Second, Washington has to make it easier for Americans to have health savings accounts. HSAs hold costs down because account holders self-ration treatment. They also give people more control over their health care.
• "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."
Shawn Tully, Fortune editor at large, dug into the legislation and found that for "Americans in large corporations, 'keeping your own plan' has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange," a government program in which heavily regulated private companies sell insurance policies.
Workers who buy their own insurance or begin coverage through small businesses will also be forced into the exchange if their plans change in any way, because it's then considered a new plan. Since plans generally change policies every year, Tully says, "it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months."
According to a July study by the Lewin Group and the Heritage Foundation, health reform could cause as many as 88 million Americans to lose their private, employer-based coverage.
• "If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange."
The president says this is "a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices." But it won't be a real marketplace. Participating insurers will be saddled with a host of mandates. Those that don't like the regulations will be left out. There'll be little room for competition.
The Cato Institute's Michael Tanner has said that "in practice, at least as demonstrated in Massachusetts," an exchange "can quickly devolve into a regulatory body."
• "Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims . . . The best example is . . . that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. . . . It is a lie, plain and simple."
As far as we know, there is no provision for a death panel buried in the 1,018-page bill. But we do know how Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the administration's health care czar, feels about treating those who need the most help.
"When the worse-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating (treatment) to the better-off is often justifiable."So the federal government won't be actively killing the old and the sick. It will just let them die by denying them the care that will supposedly be available to every American.
• "There are those who also claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false — the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."
Tough words are one thing, enforcement is another. As IBD's Sean Higgins reported last week: "Some independent analysis indicates — contrary to Obama's claim — that the House health bill could result in coverage being extended to illegal immigrants."
It starts with the mandate for everyone to buy insurance, including illegals. Their choices will be presumably through the "exchange," and they won't be eligible for subsidies to buy. But the non-partisan Congressional Research Service warns there's no verification mechanism. An amendment by GOP Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada, to use electronic immigration records to verify eligibility for subsidies, was shot down by Democrats.
Enforcement woes are nothing new. The U.K.'s nationalized system treats as many as a million illegal immigrants a year because eligibility verification at the point of service is nearly impossible. It's now giving up the ghost of trying because illegals have won the right to be treated at taxpayer expense as a "human right." That's brought new waves of "health tourism" as word spreads.
Cabinet officials, such as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, support union demands to give amnesty to 12 million illegals. If so, they will get public health care. And hospitals that continue to treat illegals through emergency rooms, are reimbursed through Medicaid.
• "My health care proposal has also been attacked by some who oppose reform as a 'government takeover' of the entire health care system . . . Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. . . Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down."
Obama is right about limited numbers of insurers in states. They're the last ones able to survive the layers of bureaucratic mandates and regulations without going bankrupt.
The fastest way to create choice for consumers isn't by adding a government option, but by breaking down trade barriers across state lines. By letting citizens buy insurance from any state, a truly competitive market can develop, with choices in coverage, service and price. It would be far better if each American could buy health insurance from any of the nation's 1,300 insurers, not just a handful in their own states.
• "Despite all this, some . . . argue that these private (insurance) companies can't fairly compete with the government. And they'd be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public option. But they won't be. . . . (The public option) would . . . keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better . . ."
When the government acts as both producer and regulator of its own and everyone else's products, the playing field is tilted because there's a basic conflict of interest. It's also a recipe for cronyism and corruption. Witness Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
We looked at the after-tax margins of some big health insurers over the last 12 months. Here's what we found: Among HMOs, Humana, 3.1%. Cigna, 4%. Wellpoint, 5%. United Health Group, 4.4%. Broader health insurers, like Unum (8.6% after-tax margin) and AFLAC (12.3%), do a bit better.
The point is, these are not outrageous profits. And the health care industry's $13 billion in 2008 profits pale in comparison to the $65 billion in annual fraud in Medicare alone.
• "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."
From the folks who brought us a $10 trillion deficit over the next decade, that's hard to swallow. The White House has assured us the public option would be funded by premiums. So, it's hard to know what he means by savings or spending cuts.
Although Medicare and Medicaid, are slated for $313 billion in cuts, the government has yet to eliminate the $65 billion or so that goes to waste and fraud. They don't need health reform to do that, they can do it now.
• "The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies — subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care."
Speaking of waste and fraud, as we said, why can't it be done today instead of waiting for some health care reform bill to pass? The president proposes $313 billion in Medicaid and Medicare cuts, saying $110 billion would come from reducing scheduled increases in Medicare payments.
"That would encourage health care providers to increase productivity," White House budget director Peter Orszag told reporters. $110 billion would come from ending payments to hospitals to treat uninsured patients. But much of that comes from treating illegals, who aren't supposed to be eligible for the public option.
Another $75 billion would come from "better pricing of Medicare drugs," Orszag said.
What he doesn't get is that some $10 billion of Medicare funding goes to dubious expenditures like hospitals padding bills because they are paid too little and must make up lost revenue in volume.
Cutting payments more means more padding, as the Mayo Clinic has warned. That means rationing. The Democrats' plan may not be explicitly mean to ration, but not paying a fair and market-determined price for services will ensure less of it for patients.
President Obama began his speech by noting it's "been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health reform" and that "nearly every president and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way."
"A bill for comprehensive care reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943," he also pointed out. "Sixty-five years later, his son (Rep. John Dingell, Michigan Democrat now in his 28th term) continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session."
Could it be, we wonder, that the reason why health reform of the kind the Dingells and Democrats have been pushing for 100 years has gone nowhere is that Americans want nothing to do with it? What is it about "No!" that they don't understand?
_____________________________________________________________________________
There are other alternative ideas to Obamas plan out there, if only he would really truly listen. Instead he is letting the rest of his radical buddies like pelosi and reed run the show. Its sad and we will all end up suffering for it.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
British Death Panel
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Single Payer: In Britain, where the public option is about all most patients get, a newborn has died because national guidelines recommend that the baby not be treated. Yet again, government care produces tragedy.
The mother, Sarah Capewell, reportedly begged doctors to save the baby, who was born 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy. But guidelines used by Britain's National Health Service say that babies born fewer than 22 weeks into a pregnancy should not be treated.
The doctors told her to consider her early labor a miscarriage, not a birth, even though, according to Capewell, the boy, whom she named Jayden, was breathing, had a heartbeat and lived for nearly two hours without medical support.
Denial of treatment is not mandatory. But this part of Britain's government health care system proved to be deadly. The don't-treat guidelines were created by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which, in this case, served as a death panel.
Across the Atlantic, this country is embroiled in a bitter debate over the future of health care. Will Washington force the nation toward a state-run system like the one found in Britain? Or will nothing change?
But those are not the right questions. The only question that should be asked is: How fast can Washington move to give Americans full control over their health care decisions?
Victims of the British system, such as Capewell and Jayden, have little say-so over their health care. Britons can buy private insurance, and they can be treated at private hospitals. But having paid for government care through their taxes, few choose to pay again for the private options. Only about 11% purchase supplemental coverage, and private clinics and hospitals are not common.
This leaves most of the country under the care of the NHS. And that, too often, is not a safe or healthy place to be. That's not to say that treatment is dispensed by medieval barbers. But care in Britain is marked by cruel waiting lists, lethal bureaucratic interference and Third World conditions.
If a government takes over individuals' duty to care for themselves, it had better provide top-flight treatment. The record, though, shows in a deeply painful way that the state can't deliver.
____________________________________________________________________________
If you folks really believe that Obamacare (even a co-op) isn't going to ultimately lead to this kind of stuff than they really are delusional and probably drank the kool-aide.
The mother, Sarah Capewell, reportedly begged doctors to save the baby, who was born 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy. But guidelines used by Britain's National Health Service say that babies born fewer than 22 weeks into a pregnancy should not be treated.
The doctors told her to consider her early labor a miscarriage, not a birth, even though, according to Capewell, the boy, whom she named Jayden, was breathing, had a heartbeat and lived for nearly two hours without medical support.
Denial of treatment is not mandatory. But this part of Britain's government health care system proved to be deadly. The don't-treat guidelines were created by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which, in this case, served as a death panel.
Across the Atlantic, this country is embroiled in a bitter debate over the future of health care. Will Washington force the nation toward a state-run system like the one found in Britain? Or will nothing change?
But those are not the right questions. The only question that should be asked is: How fast can Washington move to give Americans full control over their health care decisions?
Victims of the British system, such as Capewell and Jayden, have little say-so over their health care. Britons can buy private insurance, and they can be treated at private hospitals. But having paid for government care through their taxes, few choose to pay again for the private options. Only about 11% purchase supplemental coverage, and private clinics and hospitals are not common.
This leaves most of the country under the care of the NHS. And that, too often, is not a safe or healthy place to be. That's not to say that treatment is dispensed by medieval barbers. But care in Britain is marked by cruel waiting lists, lethal bureaucratic interference and Third World conditions.
If a government takes over individuals' duty to care for themselves, it had better provide top-flight treatment. The record, though, shows in a deeply painful way that the state can't deliver.
____________________________________________________________________________
If you folks really believe that Obamacare (even a co-op) isn't going to ultimately lead to this kind of stuff than they really are delusional and probably drank the kool-aide.
Regarding Republican Joe Wilson's outburst
I am so mad at him, I could spit nails. THAT MORON! Right or not,and he probably is,it doesn't matter. He may have very well ruined everything by that one careless act.
I have learned some of the details of what the Bacus plan has in it and from what I can see, it would have a devasting impact on the private sector. It would repeal all kinds of tax credits and institute many more taxes. I don't understand why Democrats have such a hard time understanding that the more you tax us the less money you will have coming in. It's just basic economics and sound capitalism.
I hope Mr. Wilson is proud of himself because he may have just cost us everything.
I have learned some of the details of what the Bacus plan has in it and from what I can see, it would have a devasting impact on the private sector. It would repeal all kinds of tax credits and institute many more taxes. I don't understand why Democrats have such a hard time understanding that the more you tax us the less money you will have coming in. It's just basic economics and sound capitalism.
I hope Mr. Wilson is proud of himself because he may have just cost us everything.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Rubber-Stamping Of Radicals ( How many more to go?)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, September 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Appointments: In a reprise of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, President Obama acts like he didn't know his special adviser, Van Jones, was radical. But video says otherwise.
The White House let Jones go after conservative Web sites and Fox News revealed his radical past, including signing a petition circulated by far-left conspiracists suggesting the government was behind 9/11.
But soon after hiring Jones, top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett celebrated his appointment, along with his radical activism, before an audience of liberal Democrats.
"We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House," she gushed in a C-Span video. "We've been watching him for as long as he's been active."
Jarrett, a senior White House official and close Chicago friend of the Obamas, added that they were impressed with "all the creative ideas that he has."
Those creative ideas include using the green movement as a Trojan horse to socialize the entire economy.
"The green economy will start off as a small subset" of a "complete revolution" away from "gray capitalism" and toward "redistribution of all the wealth," Jones said during a 2008 interview on leftist Uprising Radio in Los Angeles. "And we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society."
"Transforming" society from capitalism to communism, is what he means. In fact, Jones is a self-avowed "communist," something the Oakland street agitator confessed to the East Bay Express in 2005. He even named his son after a Marxist revolutionary leader. This was no secret.
Jones founded a communist group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. Storm worked with Bay-area communist Elizabeth Martinez, who sits on the board of the Movement for a Democratic Society with Weathermen terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the radical couple who launched Obama's political career from their Chicago townhouse.
Jones, 40, later folded Storm into the Ella Baker Human Rights Center. The White House even credited him with co-founding the center in a March press release announcing his appointment as special adviser to the president. "We look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the president's agenda."
Did Jones slip through the cracks of the White House's vetting process, as defenders say? Not likely. His radicalism was clear just days before his appointment.
As WorldNetDaily first reported, Jones spoke in February to young green activists attending Power Shift '09 in Washington, spewing more revolutionary agitprop: "This movement is deeper than a solar panel! Deeper than a solar panel! Don't stop there! Don't stop there! No, we're gonna change the whole system! We're gonna change the whole thing! . . . We want a new system!"
Jones' anti-police activism and advocacy on behalf of cop killer and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal were also well known.
His idea to use government funding to build "a pipeline from the prison economy to the green economy" — including hiring parolees to weatherize homes and offices — dovetails with Obama's proposal, cited in his 2006 memoir, to create government-subsidized green jobs "to hire and train ex-felons on projects" such as "insulating homes and offices to make them energy-efficient."
Both Jones and Obama claim the justice system is biased, due to the disproportionate share of blacks in prisons.
In 2006, as head of the same Ella Baker Center praised by the White House, Jones argued that Marxists must seek ways to emancipate black criminals from prison.
"Two million locked up, one million black, most of them young men, smoking the same dope you smoke, doing the same drugs that white folks do, but treated like animals and brutalized. It's the right deed for this movement to take now: to stand in solidarity with those people living on the slave ships on dry land called prisons," Jones wrote in the leftist Tikkun magazine.
"The powerful are trafficking in human flesh today," he continued. "They're trafficking in human bodies. The correctional corporations of America are traded on the stock exchange, turning the Dow Jones into a high-tech slave auction in American (sic) today. Let my people go."
"We need a new theology of resistance," he went on. "We need a new theology of liberation."
All this leads us to wonder: How many more people of such radical ideology now have jobs in the White House?
How many of the unvetted cadre of White House czars — who don't have to be approved by the Senate, yet in some cases may have sweeping powers — likewise hate the very system they're supposed to serve?
Jones was an extremist. Unfortunately, rather than being an aberration in this White House, he just might be the tip of a very large iceberg.
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© Copyright 2009 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a scarey day when it becomes clear we have communists or at least communist sympathizers running the white house. We who still love capitalism need to stand up and speak up, before we loose the right to.
Appointments: In a reprise of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, President Obama acts like he didn't know his special adviser, Van Jones, was radical. But video says otherwise.
The White House let Jones go after conservative Web sites and Fox News revealed his radical past, including signing a petition circulated by far-left conspiracists suggesting the government was behind 9/11.
But soon after hiring Jones, top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett celebrated his appointment, along with his radical activism, before an audience of liberal Democrats.
"We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House," she gushed in a C-Span video. "We've been watching him for as long as he's been active."
Jarrett, a senior White House official and close Chicago friend of the Obamas, added that they were impressed with "all the creative ideas that he has."
Those creative ideas include using the green movement as a Trojan horse to socialize the entire economy.
"The green economy will start off as a small subset" of a "complete revolution" away from "gray capitalism" and toward "redistribution of all the wealth," Jones said during a 2008 interview on leftist Uprising Radio in Los Angeles. "And we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society."
"Transforming" society from capitalism to communism, is what he means. In fact, Jones is a self-avowed "communist," something the Oakland street agitator confessed to the East Bay Express in 2005. He even named his son after a Marxist revolutionary leader. This was no secret.
Jones founded a communist group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. Storm worked with Bay-area communist Elizabeth Martinez, who sits on the board of the Movement for a Democratic Society with Weathermen terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the radical couple who launched Obama's political career from their Chicago townhouse.
Jones, 40, later folded Storm into the Ella Baker Human Rights Center. The White House even credited him with co-founding the center in a March press release announcing his appointment as special adviser to the president. "We look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the president's agenda."
Did Jones slip through the cracks of the White House's vetting process, as defenders say? Not likely. His radicalism was clear just days before his appointment.
As WorldNetDaily first reported, Jones spoke in February to young green activists attending Power Shift '09 in Washington, spewing more revolutionary agitprop: "This movement is deeper than a solar panel! Deeper than a solar panel! Don't stop there! Don't stop there! No, we're gonna change the whole system! We're gonna change the whole thing! . . . We want a new system!"
Jones' anti-police activism and advocacy on behalf of cop killer and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal were also well known.
His idea to use government funding to build "a pipeline from the prison economy to the green economy" — including hiring parolees to weatherize homes and offices — dovetails with Obama's proposal, cited in his 2006 memoir, to create government-subsidized green jobs "to hire and train ex-felons on projects" such as "insulating homes and offices to make them energy-efficient."
Both Jones and Obama claim the justice system is biased, due to the disproportionate share of blacks in prisons.
In 2006, as head of the same Ella Baker Center praised by the White House, Jones argued that Marxists must seek ways to emancipate black criminals from prison.
"Two million locked up, one million black, most of them young men, smoking the same dope you smoke, doing the same drugs that white folks do, but treated like animals and brutalized. It's the right deed for this movement to take now: to stand in solidarity with those people living on the slave ships on dry land called prisons," Jones wrote in the leftist Tikkun magazine.
"The powerful are trafficking in human flesh today," he continued. "They're trafficking in human bodies. The correctional corporations of America are traded on the stock exchange, turning the Dow Jones into a high-tech slave auction in American (sic) today. Let my people go."
"We need a new theology of resistance," he went on. "We need a new theology of liberation."
All this leads us to wonder: How many more people of such radical ideology now have jobs in the White House?
How many of the unvetted cadre of White House czars — who don't have to be approved by the Senate, yet in some cases may have sweeping powers — likewise hate the very system they're supposed to serve?
Jones was an extremist. Unfortunately, rather than being an aberration in this White House, he just might be the tip of a very large iceberg.
Press Advertise Terms of Use Privacy Policy Copyright Notice Contact Site Map Home
© Copyright 2009 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a scarey day when it becomes clear we have communists or at least communist sympathizers running the white house. We who still love capitalism need to stand up and speak up, before we loose the right to.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Why Parents Don't Trust Educator-In-Chief- by Michelle Malkin ( me included, this is scarey stuff)
Why Parents Don't Trust Educator-In-Chief
They think we're crazy. "They" are the sneering defenders of Barack Obama who can't fathom the backlash against the president's nationwide speech to schoolchildren next Tuesday. "We" are parents with eyes wide open to the potential for politicized abuse in America's classrooms.
Ask moms and dads in Farmington, Utah, who discovered this week that their children sat through a Hollywood propaganda video promoting the cult of Obama.
In the clip, a parade of entertainers vow to flush their toilets less, buy hybrid vehicles, end poverty and world hunger, and commit to "service" for "change."
Actress Demi Moore leads the glitterati in a collective promise "to be a servant to our president." Musician Anthony Kiedis pledges "to be of service to Barack Obama."
The campaign commercial crescendos with the stars and starlets asking their audience: "What's your pledge?"
This same "Do Something" ethos infected the U.S. Department of Education teachers guides accompanying the announcement of Obama's speech — until late Wednesday, that is, when the White House removed some of the activist language exhorting students to come up with ways to "help the president."
Education Secretary Arne Duncan had disseminated the material directly to principals across the country — circumventing elected school board members and superintendents now facing neighborhood revolts.
Obama's bureaucrats can whitewash offending language from the Sept. 8 speech-related documents, but they can't remove the taint of left-wing radicalism that informs Obama and his education mentors.
History Lesson
A spokesman maintained that the speech is "about the value of education and the importance of staying in school as part of his effort to dramatically cut the dropout rate." But the historical subtext is far less innocent.
Obama served with Weather Underground terrorist and neighbor Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge education initiative.
Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism in the public schools is rooted in Ayers' pedagogical philosophy. Obama served as the program's first chairman of the board, while Ayers steered its curricular policy.The two oversaw grants to welfare rights enterprise Acorn and to avowed communist Michael Klonsky — a close pal of Ayers and member of the militant Students for a Democratic Society. SDS served as a precursor to the violent Weather Underground organization.
As investigative journalist Stanley Kurtz reported, Klonsky and Ayers teamed up on the so-called "small schools movement" to steer schoolchildren away from core academics to left-wing politicking on issues of "inequity, war and violence."
A cadre of like-minded educators and national service administrators across the country share the same core commitment to transforming themselves from imparters of knowledge to transformers of society.
The "change" agenda trains students to think only about what they should do for Obama—and rarely to contemplate how his powers and ambitions should be limited and restrained.
From Venezuela, With Love
Ayers preached his education-as- "social justice" agenda to his "comrades" at the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, three years ago:
"This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President (Hugo) Chavez.
"We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I've come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle — I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane."
'Education Is Revolution'
Ayers continued: "I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position — and from that day until this I've thought of myself as a teacher, but I've also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice.
After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: You can change your life — whoever you are, wherever you've been, whatever you've done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous:
"We must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!"
This is why informed parents do not trust the Educator-in-Chief and his "comrades." You can take Obama from the radicals in Chicago. But you can't take the Chicago radicalism out of Obama
______________________________________________________________________________
This is plain frightening stuff. Our children are being brainwashed by people that are supposed to be educating them on the ABC's not how to serve our communist,socialistic president. Parents better start close attention to whats going on in their children's classrooms. I know I will a little bit more than usual from this point forward. I want my child taught how read and write not be indoctrinated on how to a good litle radical.
They think we're crazy. "They" are the sneering defenders of Barack Obama who can't fathom the backlash against the president's nationwide speech to schoolchildren next Tuesday. "We" are parents with eyes wide open to the potential for politicized abuse in America's classrooms.
Ask moms and dads in Farmington, Utah, who discovered this week that their children sat through a Hollywood propaganda video promoting the cult of Obama.
In the clip, a parade of entertainers vow to flush their toilets less, buy hybrid vehicles, end poverty and world hunger, and commit to "service" for "change."
Actress Demi Moore leads the glitterati in a collective promise "to be a servant to our president." Musician Anthony Kiedis pledges "to be of service to Barack Obama."
The campaign commercial crescendos with the stars and starlets asking their audience: "What's your pledge?"
This same "Do Something" ethos infected the U.S. Department of Education teachers guides accompanying the announcement of Obama's speech — until late Wednesday, that is, when the White House removed some of the activist language exhorting students to come up with ways to "help the president."
Education Secretary Arne Duncan had disseminated the material directly to principals across the country — circumventing elected school board members and superintendents now facing neighborhood revolts.
Obama's bureaucrats can whitewash offending language from the Sept. 8 speech-related documents, but they can't remove the taint of left-wing radicalism that informs Obama and his education mentors.
History Lesson
A spokesman maintained that the speech is "about the value of education and the importance of staying in school as part of his effort to dramatically cut the dropout rate." But the historical subtext is far less innocent.
Obama served with Weather Underground terrorist and neighbor Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge education initiative.
Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism in the public schools is rooted in Ayers' pedagogical philosophy. Obama served as the program's first chairman of the board, while Ayers steered its curricular policy.The two oversaw grants to welfare rights enterprise Acorn and to avowed communist Michael Klonsky — a close pal of Ayers and member of the militant Students for a Democratic Society. SDS served as a precursor to the violent Weather Underground organization.
As investigative journalist Stanley Kurtz reported, Klonsky and Ayers teamed up on the so-called "small schools movement" to steer schoolchildren away from core academics to left-wing politicking on issues of "inequity, war and violence."
A cadre of like-minded educators and national service administrators across the country share the same core commitment to transforming themselves from imparters of knowledge to transformers of society.
The "change" agenda trains students to think only about what they should do for Obama—and rarely to contemplate how his powers and ambitions should be limited and restrained.
From Venezuela, With Love
Ayers preached his education-as- "social justice" agenda to his "comrades" at the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, three years ago:
"This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President (Hugo) Chavez.
"We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I've come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle — I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane."
'Education Is Revolution'
Ayers continued: "I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position — and from that day until this I've thought of myself as a teacher, but I've also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice.
After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: You can change your life — whoever you are, wherever you've been, whatever you've done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous:
"We must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!"
This is why informed parents do not trust the Educator-in-Chief and his "comrades." You can take Obama from the radicals in Chicago. But you can't take the Chicago radicalism out of Obama
______________________________________________________________________________
This is plain frightening stuff. Our children are being brainwashed by people that are supposed to be educating them on the ABC's not how to serve our communist,socialistic president. Parents better start close attention to whats going on in their children's classrooms. I know I will a little bit more than usual from this point forward. I want my child taught how read and write not be indoctrinated on how to a good litle radical.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Could The Feds Seize The Internet?
By IMB editorials
Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?
We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.
Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have the power to define and declare.
Wait a minute. Didn't the left recently weep and gnash its teeth over President George W. Bush's wireless surveillance of communications between real, live terrorists who want to kill us and their American contacts? Would Congress have given Bush such a sweeping power?
Have we already forgotten the administration wanting Americans to spy on their neighbors and report "fishy" communications opposing health care to flag@whitehouse.gov? Didn't oodles of our e-mail addresses wind up in the White House from which then came unsolicited e-mails supporting ObamaCare?
A working draft of the legislation, which is in its second incarnation, obtained by an Internet privacy group, would grant the secretary of commerce access to all privately owned information networks deemed critical to the nation's infrastructure "without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access." Where's the ACLU?
Sen. Rockefeller says he wants to prevent a "digital Pearl Harbor," and so do we. We have written extensively about the threat posed by foreign hackers and governments such as Russia and China to our power grids and the like. Chinese hackers have even penetrated Pentagon computer networks. We are also mindful of sacrificing a little liberty in the name of security and winding up with neither.
"The cybersecurity threat is real," said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, which obtained the draft of S. 773, "but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy."
Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Mother Jones the bill was "contrary to what the Constitution promises us." According to Granick, granting the Commerce Department oversight of "critical" networks such as banking systems would grant the government access to potentially incriminating information without cause or warrant, a violation of the Constitution's prohibition against unlawful search and seizure.
Like the health care bill, there are several versions of S. 773; what people have seen is vaguely written. The bill does not clearly define what a cyberemergency or critical network is. Nor does it explicitly define the powers of the president in such an emergency or what he is prevented from doing. That is left up to the administration in power.
Section 201 of the bill permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks, and these companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government.
The federal government would be empowered to access any information on the Internet and find "choke points" where hackers and governments, including our own, might be able to control, or stop, the flow of data and information. Your Internet service provider would be required by law to supply federal bureaucrats with whatever network, account, usage and history information they deem appropriate.
To further keep an eye on things, the bill establishes a federal training and certification program for cybersecurity professionals and requires that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been properly trained by the government and awarded that government license. The private sector can't be trusted to do the job. But don't be afraid. It's for your own good. Big Brother will watch over you.
_______________________________________________________________________________
BE AFRAID BE VERY AFRAID !
Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?
We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.
Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have the power to define and declare.
Wait a minute. Didn't the left recently weep and gnash its teeth over President George W. Bush's wireless surveillance of communications between real, live terrorists who want to kill us and their American contacts? Would Congress have given Bush such a sweeping power?
Have we already forgotten the administration wanting Americans to spy on their neighbors and report "fishy" communications opposing health care to flag@whitehouse.gov? Didn't oodles of our e-mail addresses wind up in the White House from which then came unsolicited e-mails supporting ObamaCare?
A working draft of the legislation, which is in its second incarnation, obtained by an Internet privacy group, would grant the secretary of commerce access to all privately owned information networks deemed critical to the nation's infrastructure "without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access." Where's the ACLU?
Sen. Rockefeller says he wants to prevent a "digital Pearl Harbor," and so do we. We have written extensively about the threat posed by foreign hackers and governments such as Russia and China to our power grids and the like. Chinese hackers have even penetrated Pentagon computer networks. We are also mindful of sacrificing a little liberty in the name of security and winding up with neither.
"The cybersecurity threat is real," said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, which obtained the draft of S. 773, "but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy."
Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Mother Jones the bill was "contrary to what the Constitution promises us." According to Granick, granting the Commerce Department oversight of "critical" networks such as banking systems would grant the government access to potentially incriminating information without cause or warrant, a violation of the Constitution's prohibition against unlawful search and seizure.
Like the health care bill, there are several versions of S. 773; what people have seen is vaguely written. The bill does not clearly define what a cyberemergency or critical network is. Nor does it explicitly define the powers of the president in such an emergency or what he is prevented from doing. That is left up to the administration in power.
Section 201 of the bill permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks, and these companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government.
The federal government would be empowered to access any information on the Internet and find "choke points" where hackers and governments, including our own, might be able to control, or stop, the flow of data and information. Your Internet service provider would be required by law to supply federal bureaucrats with whatever network, account, usage and history information they deem appropriate.
To further keep an eye on things, the bill establishes a federal training and certification program for cybersecurity professionals and requires that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been properly trained by the government and awarded that government license. The private sector can't be trusted to do the job. But don't be afraid. It's for your own good. Big Brother will watch over you.
_______________________________________________________________________________
BE AFRAID BE VERY AFRAID !
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
A Tax Too Far- Food for thought
A Tax Too Far
Taxes: With so many bad ideas rolling around Washington these days, what's one more? Democrats and their union allies think slapping a tax on investment trades is a good idea. In fact, it's a recipe for a meltdown.
Given the turmoil in the financial markets in recent years, you'd think mature adults would realize that destabilizing tax hikes would be out of the question. Yet the AFL-CIO and congressional Democrats are proposing a one-tenth of 1% tax on all stock trades as a way to pay for things like infrastructure.
This so-called Tobin Tax — named for Nobel prize winner James Tobin, who came up with the idea to lower volatility in the financial markets — would raise as much as $100 billion from investors.
But it's really nothing more than radical redistribution of wealth masquerading as fiscal rectitude.
Nor is this just an American idea. Britain is in the middle of a national quarrel over a Tobin Tax on its most successful industry, the financial business. Government bureaucrats and left-leaning politicians want to take The City — London's mighty financial district — down a peg or two.
And when the U.S., Britain and other members of the G-20 meet later this month, they are being encouraged by "activists" — that is, wealth-hating leftists — to consider an international Tobin Tax on all financial transactions as a kind of social leveling device.
This is the dream of all the global social engineers — a massive tax on wealth that could be used by unaccountable international bureaucrats for their grand schemes to make a better world.
What will come of it is what has come from all international organizations of governance — incompetence, corruption, malfeasance and endless misery for those whom they supposedly want to help.
But, you ask, why not tax the financial industry? Aren't banks and investment houses and rich people still making out like bandits? Every time you read of a Wall Street executive pocketing a multimillion dollar bonus, you have to wonder. And the inclination is to say, "Let's get even and tax them." It feels good, so why not?
Because envy is a bad basis for policy, and it'll only come back to haunt us. Whatever else you might think of Wall Street, it's been enormously successful at getting lots of capital to fast-growing, wealth-building, product-innovating, job-creating companies.
Put a tax on stock transactions, and you tax creation of new businesses and new jobs. It's that simple. There's an old rule in economics: Anything you tax, you get less of. Tax investments, you'll get less investment. And that's the last thing we need.
As for the argument that the tax would be "only" 0.1%, any tax that raises $100 billion isn't small. It will reduce the present value of the stocks and bonds you own in your 401(k) or personal account, not to mention those your retirement fund owns.
In short, it'll prolong the recession, and you'll be poorer now and in the future as a result. So will the rest of the world, by the way.
Eight years ago, a U.N. panel pushed for an International Tax Organization to "harmonize" taxes to end "harmful" tax competition. It too wanted a Tobin Tax to help pay for "global public goods."
Consider this: From $1.2 trillion in 2007, private investment flow to the less-developed world is expected to plunge 70% this year to $363 billion. Anything that raises the cost of transactions will further impede the flow of capital, making the world poorer. Is this what we really want?
A global Tobin Tax would punish private investment and reward statist failures. Instead of an idea whose time should never come, it seems to be one that just won't go away.
_________________________________________________________________________________
When will you liberals and a fair of democrats get it? The more you tax something the less you will have it, like the article says. It is just common sense. This is partly why business are going under so bad, they are over regulated and and over taxed. They want to do more of that? STUPID STUPID STUPID ! Give people more of their money, including businesses, and you will get more back. WAKE UP FOLKS! It's not rocket science.
Taxes: With so many bad ideas rolling around Washington these days, what's one more? Democrats and their union allies think slapping a tax on investment trades is a good idea. In fact, it's a recipe for a meltdown.
Given the turmoil in the financial markets in recent years, you'd think mature adults would realize that destabilizing tax hikes would be out of the question. Yet the AFL-CIO and congressional Democrats are proposing a one-tenth of 1% tax on all stock trades as a way to pay for things like infrastructure.
This so-called Tobin Tax — named for Nobel prize winner James Tobin, who came up with the idea to lower volatility in the financial markets — would raise as much as $100 billion from investors.
But it's really nothing more than radical redistribution of wealth masquerading as fiscal rectitude.
Nor is this just an American idea. Britain is in the middle of a national quarrel over a Tobin Tax on its most successful industry, the financial business. Government bureaucrats and left-leaning politicians want to take The City — London's mighty financial district — down a peg or two.
And when the U.S., Britain and other members of the G-20 meet later this month, they are being encouraged by "activists" — that is, wealth-hating leftists — to consider an international Tobin Tax on all financial transactions as a kind of social leveling device.
This is the dream of all the global social engineers — a massive tax on wealth that could be used by unaccountable international bureaucrats for their grand schemes to make a better world.
What will come of it is what has come from all international organizations of governance — incompetence, corruption, malfeasance and endless misery for those whom they supposedly want to help.
But, you ask, why not tax the financial industry? Aren't banks and investment houses and rich people still making out like bandits? Every time you read of a Wall Street executive pocketing a multimillion dollar bonus, you have to wonder. And the inclination is to say, "Let's get even and tax them." It feels good, so why not?
Because envy is a bad basis for policy, and it'll only come back to haunt us. Whatever else you might think of Wall Street, it's been enormously successful at getting lots of capital to fast-growing, wealth-building, product-innovating, job-creating companies.
Put a tax on stock transactions, and you tax creation of new businesses and new jobs. It's that simple. There's an old rule in economics: Anything you tax, you get less of. Tax investments, you'll get less investment. And that's the last thing we need.
As for the argument that the tax would be "only" 0.1%, any tax that raises $100 billion isn't small. It will reduce the present value of the stocks and bonds you own in your 401(k) or personal account, not to mention those your retirement fund owns.
In short, it'll prolong the recession, and you'll be poorer now and in the future as a result. So will the rest of the world, by the way.
Eight years ago, a U.N. panel pushed for an International Tax Organization to "harmonize" taxes to end "harmful" tax competition. It too wanted a Tobin Tax to help pay for "global public goods."
Consider this: From $1.2 trillion in 2007, private investment flow to the less-developed world is expected to plunge 70% this year to $363 billion. Anything that raises the cost of transactions will further impede the flow of capital, making the world poorer. Is this what we really want?
A global Tobin Tax would punish private investment and reward statist failures. Instead of an idea whose time should never come, it seems to be one that just won't go away.
_________________________________________________________________________________
When will you liberals and a fair of democrats get it? The more you tax something the less you will have it, like the article says. It is just common sense. This is partly why business are going under so bad, they are over regulated and and over taxed. They want to do more of that? STUPID STUPID STUPID ! Give people more of their money, including businesses, and you will get more back. WAKE UP FOLKS! It's not rocket science.
Diversity Czar Threatens Free Speech ( this should scare any free thinking person)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
1st Amendment: Mark Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and fan of Hugo Chavez, wants to destroy talk radio and says free speech is a distraction. The new FCC diversity "czar" says Venezuela is an example we should follow.
When Mark Lloyd was appointed July 29 as the chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, a nation focused on ObamaCare and a deteriorating economy took little notice. But as angry constituents flood town hall meetings and call in to talk radio, a man dedicated to silencing them sits at the right hand of the president.
They share a common hero — Saul Alinsky — who wrote the community organizer's bible, "Rules for Radicals." It speaks of confrontation or, as candidate Obama put it, of "getting in their faces" as a way to obtain power, not from the people or for the people, but over the people.
Lloyd has written that we make too much of the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and the press — for "the purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."
We thought we were democratically governed. We thought we could vote as we choose after a vigorous and open debate. Once the major networks served as information gatekeepers controlling what we saw and heard. Now talk radio, the Internet and cable news have enhanced democracy by promoting the free flow of information and discourse. Lloyd wants to stop all that.
Fox News host Glenn Beck has done yeoman work in exposing this threat posed by Mr. Lloyd. He points out that in his 2006 book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America," Lloyd wrote: "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. . . . This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."
Lloyd wants to restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations and ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing. The kicker is he would also require owners who refuse to give up profitable air time in the name of "localism" to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.
He proposes using the existing FCC "localism" requirement, which can mean anything from running more public service announcements to putting Janeane Garofalo on after Rush Limbaugh. Local community organizers would be encouraged to harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC.
He essentially proposes extorting money from broadcasters who have the audacity to air the likes of Beck, Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, all of whom have competed in the marketplace of ideas and won in the ratings, and use it to fund those outfits nobody wants to listen to — like NPR and Air America.
As Lloyd writes, the "part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (Rush Limbaugh fans) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay." Or worse.
The FCC could then say they had enough justification to revoke a station's license if they didn't comply or pay a fee. In true Alinsky style, shut them up by shutting them down.
Lloyd praises Hugo Chavez's "incredible revolution" in Venezuela and the way "Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country" by imposing restraints on cable TV and revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations" that insufficiently toed the Chavez party line.
Lloyd long ago declared war on unbridled talk radio and cable news. He wrote that "our work was not simply convincing policy makers of the logic and morality of our arguments. We understood that we were in a struggle for power against an opponent, the commercial broadcasters."
When Mark Lloyd talks about diversity, it is not diversity of opinion. As in the '60s sci-fi series, "Outer Limits," his advice is to "sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear."
1st Amendment: Mark Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and fan of Hugo Chavez, wants to destroy talk radio and says free speech is a distraction. The new FCC diversity "czar" says Venezuela is an example we should follow.
When Mark Lloyd was appointed July 29 as the chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, a nation focused on ObamaCare and a deteriorating economy took little notice. But as angry constituents flood town hall meetings and call in to talk radio, a man dedicated to silencing them sits at the right hand of the president.
They share a common hero — Saul Alinsky — who wrote the community organizer's bible, "Rules for Radicals." It speaks of confrontation or, as candidate Obama put it, of "getting in their faces" as a way to obtain power, not from the people or for the people, but over the people.
Lloyd has written that we make too much of the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and the press — for "the purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."
We thought we were democratically governed. We thought we could vote as we choose after a vigorous and open debate. Once the major networks served as information gatekeepers controlling what we saw and heard. Now talk radio, the Internet and cable news have enhanced democracy by promoting the free flow of information and discourse. Lloyd wants to stop all that.
Fox News host Glenn Beck has done yeoman work in exposing this threat posed by Mr. Lloyd. He points out that in his 2006 book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America," Lloyd wrote: "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. . . . This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."
Lloyd wants to restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations and ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing. The kicker is he would also require owners who refuse to give up profitable air time in the name of "localism" to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.
He proposes using the existing FCC "localism" requirement, which can mean anything from running more public service announcements to putting Janeane Garofalo on after Rush Limbaugh. Local community organizers would be encouraged to harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC.
He essentially proposes extorting money from broadcasters who have the audacity to air the likes of Beck, Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, all of whom have competed in the marketplace of ideas and won in the ratings, and use it to fund those outfits nobody wants to listen to — like NPR and Air America.
As Lloyd writes, the "part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (Rush Limbaugh fans) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay." Or worse.
The FCC could then say they had enough justification to revoke a station's license if they didn't comply or pay a fee. In true Alinsky style, shut them up by shutting them down.
Lloyd praises Hugo Chavez's "incredible revolution" in Venezuela and the way "Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country" by imposing restraints on cable TV and revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations" that insufficiently toed the Chavez party line.
Lloyd long ago declared war on unbridled talk radio and cable news. He wrote that "our work was not simply convincing policy makers of the logic and morality of our arguments. We understood that we were in a struggle for power against an opponent, the commercial broadcasters."
When Mark Lloyd talks about diversity, it is not diversity of opinion. As in the '60s sci-fi series, "Outer Limits," his advice is to "sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear."
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