Views on the News
December 26, 2009
Views
on the News*
Obama has broken his campaign pledges to be a different
kind of leader from the beginning of his Presidency, revealing himself as just
another in a long line of Chicago partisan politicians. He
pledged to be a leader who listened to those who elected him. He even pledged on the night he won the vote
to listen to those who opposed him. Yet here
we are and he is listening to no one, and doing so at our great peril. The
recent Survey USA poll shows that 58% of Americans believe that decisions by
the Obama administration have been “bad for America.” Voices
from the center, left and right have barraged their Senators offices indicating
their displeasure with the lack of transparency on the process (meeting in
closed room sessions) and substance (the bill has not yet even been fully
written and the Senators know "enough"
to vote on it) of the health care legislation.
President Obama was willing to play games with America's safety in
threatening Nebraska's Ben Nelson that a strategic and vital military base, one
that is responsible for heavy lifting on America's continental security, would
be shut down if Nelson did not vote with him. President Obama was going to put a bullet in
the operations of our national security simply to score a point, serve a little
vengeance, and punish with a little payback.
Congressional Democrats stepped forward this week confessing that if
they had not voted with the President's legislation, that the administration
had threatened them, it would be watching, and that the administration was
"keeping score." There is no majority of American people that
believe this bill is sound. There is no
majority of American people that believe this bill is helpful. There is no majority of American people that believe
it will bring down costs. Rasmussen
poll found that 57% of Americans say it's better to pass no health care bill at
all than to pass the current bills. And we've learned from the Congressional
Budget office that earliest estimates indicate they will go up significantly. Presently, even with all the problems of the
uninsured walking into emergency rooms America provides health services to
everyone within its borders. The cost of
how we do it now is roughly 1.3 trillion dollars. The cost of ObamaCare
is conservatively estimated at tipping 4 trillion dollars... to cover the exact
same number of people. Now, when poll
after poll across America demonstrate that two-thirds of the American people
are solidly against ObamaCare, the President is ready
to jam it down American's throats. On
virtually every single issue polled, the Obama administration appears to be
completely out of step with the prevailing views of the American people. The Survey USA poll further showed that 64%
of voters think the government is too big and that 62% think that bigger
government leads to more corruption. Rasmussen
reports that 66% of Americans favor smaller government with fewer services and
only 22% favor more services and higher taxes.
Threatening his
friends, shutting out his opponents, and getting laughed at on the world stage
(for the third time in his first year), has to take a toll on a real man
eventually.
(“Hope & Change, Gangsta
Style” by Kevin McCullough dated December 20, 2009 published by Town Hall
at http://townhall.com/columnists/KevinMcCullough/2009/12/20/hope__change,_gangsta_style
“Nearly 60 percent Say President Obama’s
Decisions ‘Bad for America’” by Fred Lucas dated December 21, 2009
published by Cybercast News Service at http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/58787
“When Liberal Dreams Collide with Public
Opinion” by Michael Barone dated December 21,
2009 published by Real Clear Politics at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/21/when_liberal_dreams_collide_with_public_opinion__99625.html
)
With all 60 Democrats voting YES, and all 40 Republicans
voting NO, the simplistic homily that there is no difference between the
parties has now proven to be a very costly fallacy. When
campaigning for office in 2008, candidate Obama promised the American people a
new era of post-partisanship, where he would bring Democrats and Republicans
together to solve the nation's problems. There was nothing in Obama's ultraliberal
background to suggest he would be remotely capable of this. President Obama's first initiative, the almost
$1 trillion supposed "stimulus" bill, was passed on a virtual party-line vote, with
almost all of the Democrats and almost none of the Republicans. Obama refused to make any significant
concession to any Republican ideas for restoring economic growth. A couple of weeks later, Congressional
Democrats passed a $400 billion Omnibus spending
bill on another party-line vote, pumping up federal spending even more. A couple of weeks after that, Congress passed
President Obama's budget on a party-line vote, again with no concessions to
Republicans to gain bipartisan support, again in violation of his campaign
promise to voters. A few weeks after
that, the same thing, as the House passed the President's cap and trade tax
bill on a virtual party line vote. Then
the House did the same with its health bill, and now we have the completely
partisan Senate vote as well. The
health care bills prove the Republicans accurate in their argument that the
Democrats are the party of Big Government bureaucracy and runaway government
spending. The health care bills would
create over 100 new bureaucracies and government programs, and spend $2.5 to $3 trillion over the first 10 years of full
implementation. The central promise of
President Obama's campaign last year was that he wouldn't increase taxes "in any form" on those making less
than $250,000 per year. The health bill
includes increased taxes on health insurance, drugs, and medical devices that
will be paid by consumers. It also
imposes a mandate that individuals must buy insurance and pay the soaring
costs, or else pay income tax penalties. If President Obama signs this bill violating
his central campaign pledge, wouldn't it be reasonable to ask him to resign
now, instead of waiting another 3 years to vote him out of office? Only the American
people can fix this, and they can start by demanding resignations from those
who have not been honest with them, then to vote out those who don’t leave
voluntarily.
(“Too Many Democrats in Washington” by
Peter Ferrara dated December 23, 2009 published by The American Spectator at http://spectator.org/archives/2009/12/23/too-many-democrats-in-washingt )
There has been a lot written recently about state and
local budget shortfalls, much of which has been blamed on the recession but
ignoring the real economic problems. Governments have responded by issuing
furloughs and, in some cases, cutting back days of operation. Yet they’re not even close to facing the
central challenge, and, as a result, budget problems will continue into
perpetuity unless serious changes are made. When revenues started falling, states
predominantly took half measures to temporarily control their costs. Cutting back work days proved to be a stopgap
answer. More importantly, they went
crying to Congress and pleaded for money to keep state and local operations
going. The feds responded by doing
exactly the wrong thing - they included money in the federal “stimulus” bill to cover the shortfalls,
reinforcing their bad behavior. Because
it is actually illegal for most states to run deficits – a limitation that
obviously doesn’t apply to Washington – the budget problem just continued up
the food chain. The states need to face
reality as their revenues keep falling by setting their highest priority to be
a reassessment of the breadth and operations of governmental services. Though there is certainly a constituency for
each and every “vital” function, they
cannot all be funded by a shrinking revenue base. Choices need to be made, with priorities
placed on public safety, transportation and education. Legislatures have to act as grownups and slash
programs that don’t meet the essential mandate. It amazes me that individuals and families
make these hard decisions every day, but our government appears to be incapable
of demonstrated this same fiscal responsibility. The only
solution to state government overspending is for voters to put a stop to this
by first living with less government and then by electing officials to fulfill
that mission.
(“They Have No Interest in Balanced Budgets”
by Bruce Bialosky dated December 21, 2009 published
by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/BruceBialosky/2009/12/21/they_have_no_interest_in_balanced_budgets
)
The
ugly truth is that “universal health care
coverage,” Obama-style, is a burdensome “individual mandate” that will hit low-wage workers the hardest. The federal government is handing down
a punitive tax on anyone who dares to allocate their limited resources to
things other than one-size-fits-all health insurance. “Universal
coverage” in the real world would be another unfunded mandate handed down
by the federal government. The Democrats
like to tout the expansive new subsidies they would offer to make insurance “affordable,”
but the truth is that the vast majority of workers would get no such help. They work for employers who would be forced to
offer them insurance, and they will have no choice but to take it. Although the employers would pay much of the
premiums, it’s really the employees who would shoulder the burden in the form
of lower take-home pay. The Lewin Group, a consulting firm, examined the impact of the Senate
bill and not surprisingly, they found that the individual mandate would be very
costly for the middle class. Households
with at least one uninsured resident would see an average increase in their
costs of $1,205 per year, assuming full implementation. For uninsured households with incomes between
$40,000 and $50,000 per year, costs would jump $1,841 annually, on average. Those with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000
would pay $2,100 more each year. That’s
not the kind of change the public believes in. They were promised painless reforms that would
weed out inefficient care and direct the savings to more coverage. Instead, what they would get is onerous new
federal requirements, taxes, fines, and fees, all to pay for a program that
promises fewer choices, more bureaucracy, and lower-quality care. It’s no secret why the public has turned
decisively against the congressional plans, because they would deliver less for
more. “A New
Tax on the Uninsured” is not exactly a catchy slogan, but it is an
accurate description of what ObamaCare’s individual
mandate would deliver.
(“The Ugly Truth about the Insurance Mandate”
dated December 18, 2009 published by National Review Online at http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGEzYmI0NmM4NjkxY2ZjNjBhZmVlNmY3Y2RiMzk5Mzg= )
The Senate health care bill was passed on a party-line
vote and will make major changes in payments to doctors, hospitals, and medical
professionals in Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs; establish new federal
agencies, bureaus, and commissions to oversee various aspects of the health
care system, including how physicians and other medical professionals deliver
care; and alter the relationship between the federal government and the states,
transferring massive regulatory power to the federal government while reducing
the flexibility of state officials to manage Medicaid and limiting their
capacity to initiate health insurance reforms within their own states. The 2,074 page Senate bill with its 383 page amendment was read totally by
no one and is being passed to meet an arbitrary White House deadline, and would
impose over a dozen new taxes totaling $406.2 billion. The new taxes range from a tax on branded
drugs to a tax on medical devices. The
bill uses budget gimmicks, unrealistic assumptions, and highly unreliable
projected savings to stay under President Obama’s $900 billion threshold and to
appear “deficit neutral.” The spending cuts and taxes used for this
calculation, all over the 10 years of 2010-2019:
·
"Spending changes" (e.g., Medicare,
Medicaid, S-CHIP cuts): $483 billion.
·
Excise
tax on high-premium plans: $149 billion.
·
Savings
from "other sources" (like
penalties for being uninsured): $108 billion.
·
Other
"revenues" (e.g.
taxes on drugs, medical devices and health insurance providers and a hospital
insurance tax): $264 billion.
More transparent accounting indicates that
the bill will cost $2.5 trillion over the first
10 years, but the truth is that no one really knows how much ObamaCare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so
unrealistic. Senate Democrat arm twisting secured the
votes for this bill by politically prostituting (“Cash for Corruptocrats”)
deals for each vote (current cost: $100 million per
vote), that other states must in turn shoulder, further driving up the
overall costs. Senator Schumer admitted
that every state was bribed with special treatment in the final bill. Many of the special deals expire after a few
years, but Senators expect voters to have short memories. After the first 10 years, as costs escalated,
Congress would need to impose additional major tax increases and impose major
cuts in benefits to pay for this health care agenda. To make matters worse both bills
include institutionalizing discrimination provisions with “priority” given only
to “preferential” treatment for “underrepresented minorities” (liberal code for
“Asians need not apply.”) with racist
and sexist quotas sanctioned by the federal government. Instead
of protecting patients, the bill would stifle patient choice by transferring
most decision-making authority to a collection of federal agencies, bureaus,
and commissions. The Senate bill would
produce the greatest concentration of political and economic power over a
sector of the U.S. economy in the nation’s history. 85% of Americans are happy with their current
health care and 57% think no reform is better than the bill in Congress. A Quinnipiac University poll found 53%
of respondents opposed to healthcare overhaul and only 36% in favor. This bill is also opposed by a margin of
almost 2 to 1 in the latest CNN poll. The
latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll put its support at
freezing, 32%. The American people want and need health reform, but the
Senate bill is clearly not what they have in mind, and a widening majority of
Americans oppose the proposed legislation.
(“An Analysis of the Senate Democrats’ Health
Care Bill” dated December 18, 2009 published by The Heritage Foundation at http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/bg2353.cfm
“Payoffs for states seal Senate deal” by
Chris Frates dated December 19, 2009 published by
Politico at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30815.html
“Merry Christmas, from Harry” by Randall Hoven dated December 20, 2009 published by American Thinker
at http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/merry_christmas_from_harry.html
“Change Nobody Believes In” dated
December 20, 2009 published by The Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598130440164954.html
“Legislating
Discrimination” by Hans A. von Spakovsky dated
December 22, 2009 published by National Review Online at http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmM2YTFmOGQ1MzVhODNjNGRiM2JlYzc1YmY1NjA0M2Y=
“Schumer Says Every State Got Special
Treatment in Health Bill” by Jonathan D. Salant
dated December 23, 2009 published by Bloomberg at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a_et4JAdyG4g
)
In the spirit of the season, the Senate has given us lumps of coal for our Christmas stockings. Here are the “Top 10 List of Things You Don't Want From Health Care Reform This Christmas - But Will Get Anyway From Congress:”
1. Higher
premiums: If you pay for
your own insurance, your premiums will cost 10% to 13% more than if the bill
didn't pass. 60% of the newly insured are being enrolled in Medicaid, the
public program for the poor.
2. A cost you can't afford and can't avoid: Though moderate-income families will get
subsidies, buying insurance is mandatory. A family earning $54,000 will be
expected to pay $9,000 (17% of pre-tax income) for the premium, co-pays and
deductibles. If you don't enroll, the IRS will find you and penalize you.
3. A
one-size-fits-all health plan:
Your benefit package will be prescribed by the Secretary of Health and Human
Services. Whether you choose basic, silver or gold, and whether you pay for it
yourself or qualify for a subsidy, your benefits are the same.
4. A
sin tax on your generous plan at work: The Senate bill puts a 40% tax on Cadillac plans, (about one-fifth of
employer-provided plans fall into that "luxury" category). The CBO predicts that employers will downgrade
your coverage to avoid the tax or reduce your take home pay.
5. Government
controls on your doctors' decisions: The Senate bill bars doctors from participating in the private
insurance system unless they implement whatever regulations the secretary of health
and human services chooses to impose to "improve health care quality."
6. Hospitals closed to seniors: The House and Senate bills slash payments
to hospitals and other institutions that care for seniors.
7. Bare-bones hospital care: Patients will suffer when hospitals are in
financial distress. Hospital budget cuts will mean shortages of nurses,
equipment and cleaning staff.
8. Future
Medicare cuts: The Senate
bill establishes an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission to make automatic
spending reductions in future years while insulating Congress from the
political fallout.
9. A
new social agenda: Money is
allocated for adult preparation activities, including lessons on positive
self-esteem and relationship dynamics, friendships, dating (and) romantic involvement.
The Senate bill hands low-income legal
immigrants government subsidies as soon as they get here, instead of waiting
the five years Medicaid requires.
10.
A
tell-all relationship with every doctor you see: What happens in your doctor's office must
be recorded in an electronic data base that can send the information to
insurers and other medical offices. Every doctor you see will have access to
your medical history.
I hope you like these changes,
because this is the health care system that Congress has envisioned to placate
and control the American public.
Remember that Congress has exempted itself from any of these changes. The “Ghost of Christmas Future” has shown us
congressional tidings that bring no comfort or joy, so we must save ourselves
from Congress' power now that it has gone astray.
(“10
Lumps of Coal in the Health Care Bill” by Betsy McCaughey dated December 23,
2009 published by Investor’s Business Daily at http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/ArticlePrint.aspx?id=516146
)
President
Obama heralded a last-minute, largely toothless UN global-warming summit deal
just so he could say he accomplished “something,”
that drew fast fire from all sides as a political sham. Despite President Obama’s desperate last-minute
attempts to transform the UN’s climate change conference into “Hopenhagen,”
even this administration’s talented pool of spin-doctors will find it difficult
to convince global warming alarmists that the two-week event was anything other
than what is now being called: an ”abject failure.” When the
data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever
more phony, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has
become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep
increasing and multiplying -- what do you do?" Constrained by
partisan politics at home, and quarrels between rich and poor nations abroad,
he was determined to come home with a victory, no matter how imperfect. For the most part, even the most
primitive of "third world"
dictators saw through the “Copenhaggling” immediately,
and joined in only as a way to board the latest gravy train of western guilt
money. Almost no one was happy with the
outcome of the two-week confab and even the President admitted that the pact
doesn't legally commit any of the nations involved - the point of the summit in
the first place. The Copenhagen agreements are "merely the repackaging of old and toothless promises." It’s a sad commentary on world affairs
when the redistribution of $30 billion in wealth from industrialized nations to
tin-pot dictators can be called a “victory,” but in an age of government
bailouts and $787 billion stimulus packages, the latest climate accord is an
absolute bargain. The agreements will give billions of dollars in climate aid
to poor nations, but they do not require the world's major polluters to make
deeper cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. The
English-language China Daily newspaper called Obama's Copenhagen
speech "grandstanding," and said it left non-governmental
organizations at the summit disappointed.
Years of planning, two weeks of effort, over 35,000 delegates,
193 countries represented, a carbon footprint equal to that of the state of
Texas, and the result is a whimper that ends the AGW story. The best summation of the U.N. climate circus in Denmark comes
from Andrew Bolt of Australia’s Herald Sun: “Nothing is real in Copenhagen — not the
temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the ‘solution.’”
(“Obama raced clock, chaos, comedy for climate
deal” by Charles Babington and Jennifer Loven
dated December 19, 2009 published by Breitbart at http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9CMLVD00&show_article=1
“What Copenhagen Exposed” by David Warren
dated December 20, 2009 published by Real Clear Politics at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/20/what_copenhagen_exposed_99626.html
“Hopenhagen Goes Bust” by Rich Trzupek
dated December 21, 2009 published by Front Page Magazine at http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/21/hopenhagen-goes-bust-by-rich-trzupek/
)
Never
before in our history has an American president, deliberately and by design,
risked our very survival to a maniacal enemy power sworn to remove America from
the world. Obama’s determination to make the United
States subservient to an international body of nations is now driving him to
systematically reduce our nation to a mere shadow of its former power and
influence. Obama is weakening
rather than strengthening our missile defenses, dramatically weakening our military, leaving Iraq on its own, denying us
the ability to win in Afghanistan and relinquishing our unpopular but
all-important role as world policeman. The
practical consequences of Obama’s extreme radical left agenda can only be to
put our nation at the mercy of a new world order dominated by ruthless tyrants,
thugs and spineless states who sell their souls for commercial gain. His first allegiance is to such an
international order – not to the United States. Obama is not only unfit to serve as a war time
commander-in-chief, he is a menace to our national
security. Obama has an agenda
that in my view is un-American, for it is absolutely contrary to the most
fundamental and essential interests of our nation. No president has had a higher constitutional
duty than to protect our nation against foreign attack, but by almost any
standard, Obama is flagrantly guilty of dereliction of duty. Unless we demand a
total reversal of our nation’s suicidal course, we could experience the
apocalyptic end of the America we love and all western civilization paving the
way for a nuclear doomsday.
(“America’s Survival Is At Stake” by Roger
Chapin dated December 21, 2009 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/RogerChapin/2009/12/21/americas_survival_is_at_stake
)
Sarah
Palin is, clearly, carving out a national presence right now, and may be a
power to reckon with in the future. She
taps into a current of populist unhappiness in the country with Washington
insiders, Big Money, and condescending elites in the media and popular culture.
The Wasilla mom of five, married to the
snow-mobile champ, is simply the antithesis of all that. She senses the general disgust with an insider
class that has nearly bankrupted the country through insane federal spending
and equally insane financial speculation. She resonates in this regard mostly through an
authentic middle-class upbringing, the real-world living of Alaska, natural
intelligence, spunk and drive that sent one from the Wasilla city-council to
the governorship of Alaska - and common sense answers like less government,
lower taxes, more self-reliance, and national confidence. Palin feels at ease with Middle America, and
in a strange way is the antithesis to Barack Obama. Both are young, and charismatic, and appeal to
populist constituencies. But whereas
Obama came out of a Honolulu prep school and elite Ivy League hot-house,
and had to acquire, quite artificially, his street credentials at the foot of
Reverend Wright and in the Chicago scratch-back world of Valerie Jarrett and
Mayor Daley, Palin was a true product of the working class and took on rather
than swam into the status quo political structure. For 2008 and much of 2009 the left and the
media successfully caricatured her as a creationist,
white-supremacist, Christianist nut, but that
demonization is wearing off. An NBC poll
found that the Tea Party movement, who have been
rallying against spending last spring and ObamaCare
in the summer town halls, are viewed more favorably than the Democratic Party. The tea party movement has become a
much-needed pressure valve for the frustrations over our federal government's unconstitutional
acts and potential treason. Conservatives
have to change the political system to (once again) reflect values of
individualism, small government, and respect for the federal limitations in the
Constitution. Sarah Palin represents these
values of conservatism and may be the salvation of the, all but invisible,
Republican Party. Quite simply, the more the public sees the real woman, the
more it likes Sarah Palin as a leader.
(“The
Palin Wonder” by Jamie Glazov dated December 18,
2009 published by Front Page Magazine at http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/18/the-palin-wonder-by-jamie-glazov/
“America’s Party” by Pat Buchanan dated
December 22, 2009 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/PatBuchanan/2009/12/22/americas_party
“A Republican’s Airing of Grievances” by Andie Brownlow dated December 23, 2009 published by
American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/a_republicans_airing_of_grieva.html
)
* There is so much published each week that unless you search for it, you will miss important breaking news. I try to package the best of this information into my “Views on the News” each Saturday morning. Individual issue updates this week include:
· Legal at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/legal.php
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY