The Continuing Wimpification of America

From: Town Hall Magazine

by Daniel J. Mitchell - Mar 18, 2013 

I’ve reached the point where I can’t even get agitated any more.

The anti-gun ideology in government schools has led to so many stupid incidents that all I can do is shake my head and be thankful my kids somehow were spared this nonsense.

Our latest story comes from Michigan, where a third grader brought some cupcakes to school for his birthday. That seems innocuous, but the boy’s mother (gasp!) decorated them with toy army men.

The school decided “to remove the Army soldiers from the cupcakes” and called the boy’s family to inform them that they had committed a thought crime.

Last week, Casey Fountain’s third-grade son had a birthday party at his school in Caro. His wife decided to whip up 30 cupcakes for the boy’s classmates. She topped the treats with plastic army guys like the ones countless boys and girls have played with for decades. Fountain says he never thought his innocent act of party planning would lead to controversy. Fountain says the principal of Schall Elementary School called him personally and told him that dressing the cupcakes with soldiers was, in the principal’s words, “insensitive” considering recent gun-related tragedies.

This definitely belongs in the Hall of Fame for brainless political correctness and hysterical overreaction. Other members of this distinguished Hall of Fame include:

• Bureaucrats suspended a little boy for taking bites out of a pop tart in such a way that it was shaped like a gun.
• Bureaucrats suspended a 7-year boy for pretending to throw a non-existent grenade on the playground.
• Bureaucrats suspended a 6-year old boy in Maryland for making a gun shape with his finger.
• Bureaucrats busted a 5-year old girl in Pennsylvania for having a pink plastic gun that shoots bubbles.
• A teacher in Rhode Island caught an 8-year old boy with some plastic toy army men.
• Bureaucrats evacuated a school because an 11-year old boy made a motion detector for his science experiment.
• Bureaucrats in Florida kicked an 8-year old boy out of school for a year because he had a plastic gun in his backpack.
• A dual award in Virginia, with half the prize for the bureaucrats who suspended a 10-year old boy for a toy gun and half the prize for the cops who then arrested the kid.

At some point, you have to ask whether sending your kids to a government school not only puts them at risk of a substandard education, but also is a form of child abuse.

P.S. Actually, I am getting agitated the more I think about this. For all intents and purposes, the principal was equating soldiers with crazy mass killers. Why hasn’t this person been fired?


God bless,
JohnnyD
 

Jensen: Son of Sequester

From: GOP USA

By Rick Jensen March 15, 2013

We now know President Obama is ordering federal departments to make sure as many Americans as possible suffer from sequester, his across-the-board 2.3 percent spending cut plan.

The Department of Agriculture memo ordering a manager who asked if he could move money around to make sure inspections to prevent the introduction of foreign pests and diseases into U.S. agriculture would continue was told in writing, "...however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be."

President Obama warned you the impact of his sequester would be great calamities. No middle manager shall succeed in avoiding disaster!

This memo was leaked after political appointee Janet Napolitano flailed about on cable news programs declaring long lines at airports due to sequester. Reporters then called officials at each of the airports she mentioned only to hear there were no long lines and no delays. Apparently, she forgot to send a memo. Then came the story that, days before she dutifully announced TSA furloughs, she had ordered $50 Million worth of new TSA uniforms.

Apparently, the cash crunch isn't all they say it is.

Pathetically, President Obama then chose to use 6th graders at the St. Paul's Lutheran School in Waverly, Iowa to compel Republicans to raise taxes by refusing the children their scheduled White House tour, saying, 'gosh, golly gee, we'd love for you to visit the White House, but we just can't afford to pay the Secret Service their $30 an hour to protect us from dangerous 12 year-old Iowa Lutherans. Those darn Republicans!'

Sadly, every cut you now read about is most likely a partisan political choice by President Obama who has the authority and flexibility to make reductions less painful.

On the more serious side of the President's sequester silliness is Secretary of State John Kerry handing out millions of dollars to radical regimes while his boss blames everyone else for being short on funds to pay teachers.

Impressed with the Islamic Spring that put the Muslim Brotherhood in power, President Obama promised Egypt $1 billion dollars to support the revolution. In keeping with the foreign policy that "reset" Russians to arm Syria and reportedly included gun running through the U.S. "mission" in Benghazi, Kerry is now Obama's bagman to President Mohammed Morsi. The initial $250 million rewards Morsi for keeping an appointment with the International Monetary Fund to discuss possible Egyptian economic reforms. That's the equivalent of 7,352 TSA screeners' annual salaries, all for Morsi's promise that he really, really, really will reach an agreement with the IMF in a year.

It's currently important policy to lay off U.S. school teachers and give millions of dollars to tyrants like Morsi, who explained his anti-Semitic and anti-American televised rant that Israelis were "the descendants of apes and pigs" was actually distorted by the American media, which "is controlled by certain forces and they don't view me favorably," meaning Jews.

To further clear this up and justify a billion dollars to Egyptians, who express their friendship to us by teaching their children to hate us, Fathi Shihab-Eddim, Morsi's confidant responsible for appointing the editors of all state-run Egyptian newspapers, reports there was never a holocaust, adding "that the 6 million Jews all really moved to the United States during the war (and oddly no one noticed) and that the number of Jews killed in the war was about the number who died in traffic accidents," as cited by Daniel Greenfield in Frontpage Magazine.

Glad you cleared that up.

It's Obama who says he has to take money from Head Start to make sure a billion dollars goes to Morsi, who said in 2010, "...we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them. They must be nursed on hatred. The hatred must continue."

Yes, Morsi was talking about you, America.

And Morsi thanks us for the 20 F-16 fighter jets, too, since President Obama apparently can't think of any federal employees who would benefit from the actual 213 million dollars a real sale would bring.

When people ask, "Who's winning the sequester debate," maybe we should answer, "Egypt."


God bless,
JohnnyD

Why Does Obama Need 1.6 Billion Bullets?

From: Town Hall Magazine

by  Diana West - Mar 15, 2013

Dear Mainstream Media,

Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama went off his teleprompter and added a couple of sentences to the text of a speech about expanding the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. Over rolling applause, the soon-to-be president of the United States said: "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

At the time, Joseph Farah of WND.com wrote a column calling on you to help shine a light on what this shocking statement really meant. In a permanent state of vapors over Obama's candidacy, you were of no use when it came to extracting anything but press releases from Team Obama.

Nearly five years later, it hardly matters that candidate Obama's promise to double the Peace Corps and the rest has come to naught. But the president's unscripted determination to empower a civilian national security force is a different story. As far as you're concerned, though, it's also a nonstory.

This complacency or complicity has to stop. During the last 10 months, the Department of Homeland Security has purchased 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition, including millions of hollow-point bullets. The department also has purchased 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles, and it has overseen the retrofitting of more than 2,000 light tanks, which, of course, were originally designed to resist the mines and ambushes of the battlefield. Why does DHS need such offensive and defensive firepower?

Remember, DHS stands for Department of Homeland Security, and "homeland," just to be extremely clear, means the USA. Obama must be asked against which domestic enemy he is arming nonmilitary forces. It sounds incredible, to be sure, but are we watching administration battle plans take shape against American citizens on the streets of Your Town, USA?

That's where you in the mainstream media come in. This story has been burning up the "alternative press" of our Internet age -- Drudge Report, Infowars.com, WND.com -- for months, even years. As noted by Natural News, another "alternative" source, it's only this week that the story is finally showing up in the mainstream media. Leapfrogging off a very thin Associated Press story of Feb. 15, Forbes.com contributor Ralph Benko made quite a splash (664,581 views) this week with a more substantive piece acknowledging these same menacing stockpiles and calling for a "national conversation."

We the People seem ready for such a conversation -- just think of all those story views. (By contrast, the next most popular Forbes.com story garnered 87,384 views.) You, the media, need to make sure the administration doesn't get away with stonewalling.

That's what we get now, if we get anything. Government spokesmen, when they're not trying to make 1.6 billion bullets sound like a frugal, Costco-style bulk purchase, will tell you it's all about target practice. Really? I hear that U.S. Army newbies soon to deploy to Afghanistan are training with blank cartridges. Why the priority for arming domestic forces, not military ones?

Even the liberal-minded "debunking" site Snopes.com confirms that the Social Security Administration has procured 174,000 hollow-point bullets for 300 special agents. Meanwhile, the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is tasked with "protecting fish stocks from depletion," has procured 46,000 hollow-point bullets. Spokesman Scott Smullen explained, straight-faced, I am guessing, that 63 fisheries service "enforcement agents" will be using the so-called cop-killer bullets for "target qualifications."

And that's nothing. Last month, Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars.com reported that DHS purchased 21.6 million more rounds of ammunition, including 10 million hollow-point bullets. The latter, of course, are prohibited by the rules of war.

Commentators who have done the math tell us the feds' ammo dump includes enough bullets to fight the war in Iraq for 27 years, or enough bullets to shoot every American citizen five times over.

Ridiculous? Conspiracy theory? Sorry to pop that bubble of well-being, but we have only blind faith to convince us that any of this is ridiculous, even that any of this is a conspiracy. The evidence, so far, is in the ammo. The whoppers and the stonewalling come from the government. You, the mainstream media, can restore balance with attention and exposure.

You might start with Watson's coverage last month for Infowars.com of Law Enforcement Targets Inc. (LET), a Minnesota-based manufacturer that has received $2 million in unspecified contracts from DHS in the last three years. Recently, Watson writes, the company began selling cardboard cutout targets designed to "desensitize police" to "nontraditional threat targets," as the online catalog called them. These targets included very pregnant women, children and other civilians in home, playground or other neighborhood settings. All hold guns. Public outrage over Watson's online reports was such that LET apologized on Facebook for the company's "No More Hesitation products" and removed them from its website.

In its apology, LET insisted these heinous civilian targets weren't the company's idea. "This product line was originally requested and designed by the law enforcement community ..."

I asked a friend with a long career in state and local law enforcement if he'd ever seen the like. He replied: "No. Hell, no. The targets I was trained to fire upon depicted people who really looked like armed criminals. No pregnant women. No kids. No old people. ... I could have shot three armed men during my career and been justified. Right or wrong, I didn't shoot them. These no-hesitation targets are disgusting."

What branch of law enforcement requested and designed them? DHS? Fisheries? Social Security? Who exactly is planning for the kind of action that requires all those bullets? Is the government, as some suggest, depleting ammunition stocks as a means of gun control? Then why light tanks, too? We don't know the answers to any of these questions.

That's where you come in. Start asking around. It's been awhile, I know, but you could actually do some good for a change. Maybe even boost your circulation.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Email tells feds to make sequester as painful as promised

From: The Washington Times

By Stephen Dinan - March 5, 2013

The White House announced Tuesday that it is canceling tours of the president’s home for the foreseeable future as the sequester spending cuts begin to bite and the administration makes good on its warnings of painful decisions.

Announcement of the decision — made in an email from the White House Visitors Office — came hours after The Washington Times reported on another administration email that seemed to show at least one agency has been instructed to make sure the cuts are as painful as President Obama promised they would be.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.

Neither Mr. Brown nor the main APHIS office in Washington returned calls seeking comment, but Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack, who oversees the agency, told Congress he is trying to give flexibility where he can.

“If we have flexibility, we’re going to try to use it to make sure we use sequester in the most equitable and least disruptive way,” the secretary told Rep. Kristi L. Noem, a South Dakota Republican who grilled Mr. Vilsack about the email. “There are some circumstances, and we’ve talked a lot about the meat inspection, where we do not have that flexibility because there are so few accounts.”

Ms. Noem told Mr. Vilsack that the email made it sound like the administration was sacrificing flexibility in order to justify its earlier dire predictions.

“I’m hopeful that isn’t an agenda that’s been put forward,” the congresswoman told Mr. Vilsack.

Late Tuesday evening, the Agriculture Department issued a statement disputing Mr. Brown’s read of the situation. The department said Mr. Brown had suggested dividing his region’s cuts among a number of states but he was told that idea was already part of their sequester plans.

“The APHIS budget officer explained that USDA is already proposing these steps in order to avoid furloughs. USDA is committed to doing all we can to minimize the impact of sequester [for] our employees and the farmers, ranchers, and rural communities we serve,” the department said in its statement.

The $85 billion in automatic spending cuts began Friday, leaving the White House with tough decisions to make — though it argues its hands are tied by the way the cuts were written into law.

That’s left the administration trying to balance dire predictions with good management.

Last week, immigration officials confirmed they were releasing immigrants awaiting deportation from their detention centers in order to save money, and this week top officials said they were already seeing long lines at airports because of cuts in screenings.

But those decisions are being scrutinized as agencies continue to advertise for job openings and spend on other priorities.

The White House had to fend off questions Tuesday about the Homeland Security Department’s decision to sign a $50 million contract for new uniforms for airport screeners, just days before the sequesters.

All sides in Washington agree there should be a way to lessen some of the impacts of the cuts.

The House will take at least a step toward that Wednesday when it votes on a new spending bill for the rest of fiscal year 2013 that would mitigate at least some of the sequester impacts in the Defense Department.

Senate Democrats are looking to write an even broader bill to rearrange money in several accounts.

Mr. Obama is pushing for the broadest possible deal later this year that would raise taxes and cut entitlement spending in order to restore some of the money trimmed in sequestration.

The White House said he made calls to some key members of Congress to sound them out on the prospects for that kind of deal.

“The president is engaging with lawmakers of both parties and will continue to do so,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

For now, though, the cuts remain in place — and that means the end of White House tours.

“Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House Tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013 until further notice. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours,” the White House said in an email to members of Congress.

The decision drew a derisive response from Capitol Hill, where Republicans said the move undercut Mr. Obama’s promises of openness.

Rep.President Lincoln managed to keep the White House open during the darkest days of the Civil War, and wondered why Mr. Obama couldn’t do the same.

“If the president is unable to figure out how to keep the White House open to the American people after an 8.2 percent budget cut, then the American people are entitled to some answers from their chief executive as to why.”

The Capitol is facing its own cuts.

At the Capitol, staffers entering the building’s West Front were told Tuesday that the doorway there would be closed as of next week due to sequestration. That entrance is currently limited to credentialed visitors, so it won’t affect the public.

 

 

God bless,

JohnnyD

Left-wing group urges Obama to shut down campaign apparatus

From: The Daily Caller

by - Neil Munro - 02/26/2013

The president of the United States should close down his new lobbying, advocacy and fund-raising organization, says a left-wing group that has long sought to reduce the role of donations in politics.

“If President Obama is serious about his often-expressed desire to rein in big money in politics, he should shut down Organizing for Action and disavow any plan to schedule regular meetings with its major donors,” said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause, which helped pass the 2002 campaign finance law.

“With its reported promise of quarterly presidential meetings for donors and ‘bundlers’ who raise $500,000, Organizing For Action apparently intends to extend and deepen the pay-to-play Washington culture that Barack Obama came to prominence pledging to end,” Edgar said.

OFA is a novel advocacy operation run by Obama from the White House, via his 2012 campaign staff. It is expected to play a role in the 2014 election, and likely will try to help Democrats gain a majority in the House, and buffer their Senate majority.

The group has caused Obama some embarrassment in recent days, following news reports that OFA’s leaders were offering political access in exchange for cash.

OFA’s leaders say that donations of $50,000 would ensure access to White House officials, while a donation of $500,000 could ensure a quarterly meetings with the president, said a Feb. 14 report in the Los Angeles Times.

“People are not doing this to get their third or sixth photo with the president. … Everybody is in because they are in,” a donor told the Times.

On Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney evaded questions about the pay-to-play offer.

“OFA, which you are asking about, is an independent organization that, as reported in the press, will engage in advocacy and grassroots mobilization activities around public policy issues,” he said, while reading a prepared statement.

“It will not be engaged in political campaign-related activities … [but] has been organized to rally support for the president’s policy agenda,” he claimed.

“White House and administration officials will not be raising money for Organizing for Action … [although] they may appear at appropriate OFA events in their official capacities,” Carney said.

“The fact of the matter is this is an independent organization that is supporting an agenda,” Carney insisted.

“The White House’s suggestion this week that this group will somehow be independent is laughable,” said Edgar at Common Cause.

of Obama’s top campaign staff, and it issues tweets under Obama’s name.

Previously, presidents worked with their political party’s campaign apparatus, and with candidates.

“At a minimum, any outside advocacy organization tied to the President should live by the ground rules the President has adopted for his Administration and the anti-corruption laws that apply to political parties,” Edgar said.

“That means any group associated with the President should refuse all donations from lobbyists, corporations and unions, provide complete and prompt disclosure of all its donors and the amounts they contribute, and impose an annual limit of $32,400 on the amount of money it will accept from any individual or political action committee.”

God bless,

JohnnyD

The Affordable Care Act Nobody Can Afford

Welcome to the destruction of our stellar healthcare and patient/doctor confidentiality, compliments of Obamacare

From: Canada Free Press

by - Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh - Thursday, February 21, 2013

I was just handed the Phreesia computer tablet by the receptionist under the guise of updating my medical and insurance information. I had seen this orange notebook in another doctor’s office and I became suspicious. Is this really meant to verify, as the website claims, my insurance eligibility automatically and help doctors collect on their insurance while easing the load of paperwork? Or is it forced electronic data compliance to Obamacare?

As soon as I started reading each screen, I realized that it was asking me to consent to third parties to obtain my medication prescription history from my pharmacy and to my entire medical history.

I had the right to request and restrict as to how my protected health information was used or disclosed. However, when I declined to sign, the computer stopped, and prompted me to talk to the receptionist. She informed me that diagnosis and/or treatment “may be conditioned upon my consent.”

The electronic screen and the paper copy the receptionist gave me said, “The [name withheld] is not required to agree to the restrictions that I may request and may refuse treatment based on my restriction as permitted by Section 164.506 of the Code of Federal Regulations.”

Suddenly, because I refused the IRS and HHS meddling in my personal health affairs, I had become persona-non-grata (unwanted person) to my doctor who had sworn a Hippocratic Oath to care for me and any patient who comes across his/her path.

In other words, I would not be treated if I did not sign yes. I had the right to say no, don’t give my medical information and history to anyone else but the doctor is not required to honor my request and may refuse treatment to me as permitted by Section 164.506 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

What if I said no, do not release my medical history to a third unapproved party and I paid cash? The doctor would not see me. Welcome to the destruction of our stellar healthcare and patient/doctor confidentiality, compliments of Obamacare.

How affordable is this Obamacare, the unfortunately named, the Affordable Care Act? The Democrats and the President said that costs would be so much lower; it would save the typical family $2,500 per year.

The cheapest category of Obamacare is the Bronze Plan which costs $20,000 per year for a family of two adults and three children and it pays only 60% of medical costs after the deductibles for the year have been met. And the deductibles are high per person and per family. The following tiers are Silver (70%), Gold (80%), and Platinum (90%).

During my 30-year teaching career, I seldom had to pay more than $3,600 a year premium for private insurance for my family. Even a retirement private plan did not cost more than $8,000 per year with 80% reimbursement as opposed to only 60% reimbursement under the Obamacare Bronze Plan. Is Obamacare really affordable? The answer is a resounding no.

According to the IRS, the penalty for not buying insurance is capped for now at either the annual Bronze premium, 2.5% of taxable income, or $2,085 per family in 2016.

President Obama said, “If you are one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your insurance.” Heritage’s Amy Payne estimated that “more than 11 million people will no longer have their employer-sponsored health coverage once Obamacare is fully implemented.” (Businesses Cutting Hours, Bracing for Costs of Obamacare, December 6, 2012)

The Obamacare employer mandate is killing jobs

The Obamacare employer mandate is killing jobs. An employer with 50 employees must provide coverage or pay a $2,000 penalty for each employee after the first 30 workers. It is easy to see how an employer would have to cut back employees to 30, replacing full-time employees with part-time ones, in order to avoid the penalty or the skyrocketing premiums for private coverage.  These private insurance premiums rose significantly because Obamacare mandates insurance for all children up to 26 years old and for those insured with pre-existing conditions whose treatment can be costly.

Breitbart News reported that Pennsylvania Community College of Allegheny County had already cut the hours of 400 adjunct professors, staff, and part-time teachers, saving $6 million in potential Obamacare fees. (Wynton Hall, Obamacare Layoffs, Hiring Freezes Begin, January 5, 2013)

Because of the Obamacare medical device 2.3 percent excise tax, Stryker medical supply cut 1,170 employees (5%). Boston Scientific, Welch Allyn, Medtronic, Kinetic Concepts, and Smith & Nephew are also contemplating cuts in their work force. Zimmer Holdings, makers of hip replacement implants, laid off 450 workers in expectation of a $60 million tax bill in 2013. (Bob Unruh, Democrats in Congress ‘want out’ of Obamacare)

Everybody’s private insurance has been disrupted and private premiums have escalated, in addition to adding the “Cadillac tax” to plans that are judged too generous. According to Jonathan Gruber of MIT and the actuarial firm Milliman, non-group premiums rose 19-30% in some states and 55-85% in others.

The federal government has built a data hub to be used only for Obamacare without saying how it will be run. The HHS has released 13,000 pages of regulations with only 30 days for public comment while attempting to re-engineer 17% of the economy. (WSJ, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Obamacare, December 13, 2012)

On the deadline of December 14, 2012 states had to declare health insurance exchanges. At that time, only six states (Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington) received conditional approval from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to operate their own exchanges. Twenty-six states stated that they will not set up exchanges.

If a state operates its own exchange, it must come up in 2015 with its own source of revenue to run the exchange, making a state a vendor to HHS. The state running an exchange must also expand Medicaid to “able-bodied, low-income, childless adults” in spite of the fact that the Supreme Court ruled the Medicaid expansion voluntary. The federal government was not planning on covering the full cost of such Medicaid expansion. “Half of the reduction in the number of uninsured promised under Obamacare was based on mandating that states expand Medicaid.” (Heritage’s Morning Bell, December 13, 2012)

Several states asked Kathleen Sibelius, the HHS Secretary, if they could expand Medicaid less. The answer was that only full compliance with the law will garner 90% reimbursement from the federal government. Nine states have refused to expand Medicaid to cover new populations. The feds will set up their own exchanges in those states but final regulations and specifics for the federal exchanges are not made public yet. Oklahoma and Maine have sued over Medicaid expansion and over statutory language and Medicaid expansion, respectively.

Three deadline extensions of implementing health exchanges have passed. Most states will share responsibilities with the federal government or default to a federal-run exchange. Only a minority of states have agreed to run their own exchanges.

A 3.5 percent administrative fee on coverage sold through federally-run exchanges will be levied. An additional $63 fee per employee must be paid in federal fees to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

Government funds will be set aside to promote/advertise [on primetime] Obamacare. Critics of the unaffordable health care law call such advertising “political advocacy.”

Practicing medicine will become more and less a government-run monopoly instead of the current monopolistic competition where patients are free to choose what doctors they go to, based on preference, doctor qualifications, specialty, reputation, insurance types, and premiums they choose to pay.

Doctors will either merge with hospitals, insurance companies, and specialty management firms or become “concierge” doctors, serving a reduced number of patients for a set fee. Consolidation will have a negative effect on patient access, price, and competition. Mergers in the 1980s and 1990s had negative effects in terms of patients being restricted or blocked from access to specialists and procedures.

More than $719 billion will be taken from Medicare over the next ten years to pay for Obamacare. According to Rep. Wally Herger, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, the Independent Payment Advisory Board established by Obamacare is authorized to unilaterally impose price controls and de facto rationing of medical care.

Medicare is already in trouble. Taking $719 billion over ten years from Medicare to fund Obamacare will exacerbate financial problems. Medicare benefits are not a return on taxes paid into the system over time because Medicare is run as “pay as you go” - today’s wage earners pay taxes to fund benefits for today’s retirees. Since people live longer, “Medicare payroll taxes cover only 38 percent of current benefits.” (Rep. Wally Herger)

Obamacare depends on bringing young, healthy people into insurance markets to help offset the costs of insuring the old and the sick. If young people do not participate in the program and elect to pay the fine instead, Obamacare will not be able to make coverage affordable for the uninsured.

Most young Americans do not have insurance. Young people who do have insurance purchase less coverage. Under Obamcare, young Americans must get more coverage and pay more whether they want the added coverage or not. Private insurers have increased their premiums because the law prohibits them from rejecting the sick, and are no longer allowed to charge higher premiums to older customers. Premiums for a young, healthy male could go up as much as three times. Young adults could then opt out of private coverage, causing the market to implode. (Washington Post, Insurers Warn of Health Law ‘Rate Shock,’ N.C. Aizenman, February 16, 2013)

To make matters worse, government officials announced on February 15, 2013 that state-based “high-risk pools” under Obamacare will be closed to new applicants on February 16 through March 2, depending on the state, because funding is running low. The existing 100,000 enrollees will not be affected. If the funding is running low now, what will happen by the time Obamacare is fully in force?

There is a glitch in Obamacare that could leave more than 500,000 children uninsured. Congress defined “affordable” in the Affordable Care Act as coverage not exceeding 9.5 % of family income. If people have coverage that fall under this 9.5% affordable, they cannot get subsidies to go into new insurance markets. This restriction was put into place to prevent people from switching from employer coverage to exchanges in droves. “Affordable” was calculated based on self-only, individual worker, with an average market cost of $5,600. But the current market family coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, is $15,700 per year. IRS announced on January 30, 2013, that employers are not required to pay for dependents, leaving the employee to pay the family premium since he/she will be locked out of subsidies in the federal exchanges.

Betsey McCaughey wrote that Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prediction that Obamacare would leave only 30 million people uninsured in 2016 was predicated on the assumption that kids would be covered by employees. If a parent is covered at work, no subsidies will be provided for the child in the health exchange.

Millions of people will remain uninsured because their states are choosing [wisely] not to expand Medicaid. The states do not have the money to expand Medicaid.

By the time the uninsured will be counted, almost as many Americans (40 million plus) will be left without insurance as the number of uninsured before the Democrats passed their signature monstrosity, the Affordable Care Act. Having sat in a drawer for decades, the bill was dusted off, repackaged, and polished. Nobody took the time to publicly debate or read the bill that passed after some arm-twisting.  The Democrats, who had promised free health care for all, feverishly proceeded to spend trillions of dollars we did not have to re-engineer our health care system in the name of social justice.

The states that refuse to set up health exchanges are expected to sell the government-mandated plans and to give out taxpayer-funded subsidies to those who enroll. Betsey McCaughey identifies the glitch:

“The law says that in states that refuse, the federal government can set up an exchange. But the law empowers only state exchanges, not federal ones, to hand out subsidies. The Obama administration says it will disregard the law and offer subsidies in all 50 states anyway, but the case will likely go to the Supreme Court.”

To safeguard from disaster, take care of your body, eat right, exercise if you can, and pray very hard that you will not get sick. There is a good chance that there will not be enough highly qualified doctors to deliver care when needed even if you do have insurance. Should you need specialists, expensive drugs or surgery, you are out of luck. Rationing will tell you, “no, you can’t have it.” The emergency rooms will be filled to capacity with confused, desperate, sick people, and new illegal alien arrivals.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Obama: Marxist Revolutionary

The Democrat Party is dominated by leftist radicals who are abetted by the Republican Establishment

From: Canada Free Press

by - Michael Oberndorf, RPA - Saturday, February 23, 2013

As most real conservatives know, Obama, by his own admissions, appointments, associates, and actions, is a hard-core, 21st century, Marxist revolutionary. This means that while he has no real plan for what his utopian, pie-in-the-sky collectivist state would look like, or how it would survive as an economic entity, he is dedicated to destroying our existing free, constitutional, capitalist republic to start the process. It also means that like all Marxists, archaic and modern, his primary enemy is what Marx called the bourgeoisie – the Middle Class.

As those who went to school while actual history was still being taught know, it was the rise of a Middle Class that made capitalism possible in the first place. It was the possibility of bettering one’s situation in life, economically, socially, and politically that motivated people to invent new products and the devices to make them, to create systems for the distribution of the products, to constantly improve on all these things to make them more and more available to more and more people. The ability to own property, create personal wealth, and maintain the individual’s power to control how both were used, motivated the colonists in America to become independent and to create a nation, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “…conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The Founders original statement was, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The equality was of opportunity, not, as the Marxists claim, outcome. But long ago, the Marxists realized that they could sell the myth of equality of outcome to a whole lot of people. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need” sounds really wonderful. But the reality was always that a large proportion of the people saw no point in working hard to benefit others who did not want to work at all. Participation had to be forced, in every single instance – there is not now, nor has there ever been, a Marxist country in the entire world that is/was not kept in place entirely by the threat of the use of arms. They are/were ALL totalitarian police states. And this is the “fundamental change” that Obama dreams of for America.

Under Obama,we have seen the Constitution violated on an almost daily basis. Laws that the public overwhelmingly disapproves of are passed regulary by a renegade Congress that consistently violates its own rules in the process. Huge bills are amassed, so big and introduced and voted on so quickly, that no one has time to read them, to know what they will require from us, and what the consequences of these radical rules will be. ObozoCare is a great example, but there are others like the highway and farm bills, and the upcoming 2013 Omnibus Federal Lands Bill. All are filled with laws that take more and more of our constitutional freedoms, the liberty that Americans have fought and died to protect and defend for over 200 years, that defined us and made possible the rise of our great Middle Class, and made us different from the rest of the world.

By now most people, even the “low-information voters,” know that Obama is a habitual, unabashed liar. What they need to grasp, however, is that his biggest and most dangerous lie is that he is out to help the Middle Class. As noted above, the Middle Class, aka We, the People, is his greatest, most hated enemy, and everything he has done since he usurped the office he occupies has been aimed at our destruction as a viable economic, social, and political entity. Everything. Period.

Obviously, too, Obama is not doing this on his own. The Democrat Party is dominated by leftist radicals who are abetted by the Republican Establishment. Obama himself is just a puppet, put in place by hugely wealthy, and therefore powerful, neo-fascist globalists, for whom George Soros is the public face.

The election process has been seriously corrupted by illegal money and massive voter fraud by the left. It is doubtful that fair ones will ever be held again, with the Marxists controlling the mechanism as they do. We, the People, are about to be slammed by an avalanche of unconstitutional laws, taxes, and administrative regulations that will cause the collapse of what is left of American capitalism. With it will go our jobs, our homes, our freedom, and our future. If we do not take action soon, it will be too late. Sadly, the options facing us all are difficult and will require sacrifice and commitment on a level our generations are totally unaccustomed to, and probably unprepared for. Someone wise once said, “We have no problems. We just have solutions we don’t like.” Oh, well.


God bless,
JohnnyD