Andrew Klavan is a noted Hollywood screen writer and author.
Category Archives: Lies
Andrew Klavan: Politicians Talk Crap (Parts I &II)
Andrew Klavan is a respected author and Hollywood screen writer.
Part I – Campaign Lies –
Part II – Health Care Lies –
The Democrats Were Right
I hate to admit it. My Democrat liberal friends were right. They told me if I voted for McCain, all sorts of bad things would happen. Well, I voted for McCain anyway . . . and they were right.They told me if I voted for McCain, the nation’s hope would deteriorate, and sure enough there has been a 20 point drop in the Consumer Confidence Index since the election, reaching a lower point than any time during the Bush administration.
They told me if I voted for McCain the US would become more deeply embroiled in the Middle East, and sure enough tens of thousands of additional troops are scheduled to be deployed into Afghanistan
They told me if I voted for McCain, that the economy would get worse and sure enough, unemployment is approaching 8.8% and the President’s many gloom and doom announcements and the new stimulus packages have sent the stock market lower than at any time since 9-11.
They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more “crooks” in high ranking positions in Federal government and sure enough, several recent cabinet nominees revealed resumes of bribery, immigration violations and tax fraud or tax evasion.
They told me if I voted for McCain, our relations with foreign countries would be worse, and sure enough China has questioned investing in more US treasuries, France and Germany have rejected our President’s suggestions that they spend more money to save the world economy, Russia has apparently forced us to abandon our defense missile programs in Poland and Czech Republic, we snubbed Great Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he visited Washington (and sent him packing with a bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office), the State Department shuffled the visit of the president of Brazil to avoid a conflict with St. Patrick’s Day (and spelled his name wrong in the official announcement), the President scuttled the pending free trade agreement with Colombia (an important ally next to Chavez’s Venezuela), Mexico imposed tariffs on $2.4 billion of American products in retaliation for our breach of the North America Free Trade Agreement, and Iran is getting ever close to making a nuclear bomb. It’s a good thing we’re chumming up to Syria.
They told me if I voted for McCain, that the moguls of industry would increase their salaries and bonuses at the expense of the little people. And sure enough, companies like Merrill Lynch and AIG and Fannie Mae have used the bailout money to pay record bonuses to the very executives who drove those companies into the ground.
They told me if I voted for McCain that innocent children would die, and sure enough, the President has lifted the ban on federal funding of abortion and the ban on using federal funds for research on embryonic stem cells, so many more innocent children will die.
They told me if I voted for McCain, the civil rights of Americans would be put in jeopardy. And sure enough, the Congress is about to pass the misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” which will deprive workers of the secret ballot in union elections and the President wants to institute a civilian national security force to spy on Americans.
Well, I ignored my Democrat friends, voted for McCain, and they were right . . . all of their predictions have come true.
Author Unknown
Final word on death panels and rationing?
[Editor’s Note – I posted this in March 2010. After repeatedly insisting that ObamaCare would never be able to ration care or ever have death panels and even after the self-proclaimed politifact.com labeled this their “lie of the year”; fast forward to September 2011, now the truth is reported so casually that even Robert Reich and Paul Krugman have admitted that death panel like rationing will be necessary and the ObamaCare “Independent Payment Advisory Board” is common knowledge. Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich were the first to call this what it was and deserve credit for doing so by stating the obvious: that the words “death panel” do not have to appear in the bill because Congress, by passing the ObamaCare law, has handed such overwhelming regulatory authority over to these faceless bureaucrats that they have the ability create law by regulation at the stroke of a pen.]
Bloomberg News reports about one of the ways health care will be rationed, notice it starts after the upcoming presidential election.
So will it become a death panel?
The legislation also creates an Independent Payment Advisory Board to suggest cuts in spending by Medicare, the government health program for the elderly and disabled, that could threaten payments for drug and device-makers. Starting in 2014, the panel’s recommendations would take effect unless federal lawmakers substitute their own reductions.
The president’s own cousin, Dr. Milton Wolf, said that this bill does harm and rations care in multiple ways – LINK:
As one example, consider the implications of Obamacare’s financial penalty aimed at your doctor if he seeks the expert care he has determined you need. If your doctor is in the top 10 percent of primary care physicians who refer patients to specialists most frequently – no matter how valid the reasons – he will face a 5 percent penalty on all their Medicare reimbursements for the entire year. This scheme is specifically designed to deny you the chance to see a specialist. Each year, the insidious nature of that arbitrary 10 percent rule will make things even worse as 100 percent of doctors try to stay off that list. Many doctors will try to avoid the sickest patients, and others will simply refuse to accept Medicare. Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route, and it will get worse. Your mother’s shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.
Obamacare will further diminish access to health care by lowering reimbursements for medical care without regard to the costs of that care. Price controls have failed spectacularly wherever they’ve been tried. They have turned neighborhoods into slums and have caused supply chains to dry up when producers can no longer profit from providing their goods. Remember the Carter-era gas lines? Medical care is not immune from this economic reality. We cannot hope that our best and brightest will pursue a career in medicine, setting aside years of their lives – for me, 13 years of school and training – to enter a field that might not even pay for the student loans it took to get there.
Of course, when the regulations written by bureaucrats get written how will they be interpreted and enforced? Several of Obama’s Czar’s and advisers have said in no uncertain terms that value judgements about who should get care need to be made, and we have reported those statements right here on this web site.
Flashback: Obama vs Obama on ObamaCare
Obama on the transition process to nationalized health care. He says that he opposes national health care , but when in front of a safe audience he says that is what he supports and where he is headed.
Obama saying how he would do health care different form the Clinton’s; notice the transparency and process he is describing was never seriously attempted and the process the Democrats used was so secretive that ‘Easter Eggs” in the bill are still being discovered such as the three multi-billion dollar political slush funds hidden in the bill.
So six months ago we were “nuts” and now some on the left admit that we are right. Of course if one were still in denial over this and believes the video’s and information links above are totally innocent coincidences, at the very least you must admit that Obama gives very different messages when he is in front of different groups, showing that he is just a typical politician willing to tell you anything you want to hear at the time.
This one is just a bonus, definitely worth five minutes of your time. This video is from a union supporting Obama voter who came to the realization that his president just doesn’t tell the truth. The shame is that this guy who is just waking up, doesn’t realize that this ObamaCare bill regulates the insurance industry in such a way that it is designed to blow them up and make health care costs skyrocket. Using the Alinsky model they will blame capitalism and freedom for the problems they created and offer a government take over as the solution. –
Flashback 2009: W.H.O. ‘America is 37th’ Report Refuted. USA vs. Canada vs Britain Health Care Statistics.
NEW – British National Health Service late cancer diagnosis kills 10,000 a year – LINK.
By Deroy Murdock
Imagine that your two best friends are British and Canadian tobacco addicts. The Brit battles lung cancer. The Canadian endures emphysema and wheezes as he walks around with clanging oxygen canisters. You probably would not think: “Maybe I should pick up smoking.”
The fact that America is even considering government medicine is equally wacky. The state guides health care for our two closest allies: Great Britain and Canada. Like us, these are prosperous, industrial, Anglophone democracies. Nevertheless, compared to America, they suffer higher death rates for diseases, their patients experience severe pain, and they ration medical services.
Look what you’re missing in the U.K.:
* Breast cancer kills 25 percent of its American victims. In Great Britain, the Vatican of single-payer medicine, breast cancer extinguishes 46 percent of its targets.
* Prostate cancer is fatal to 19 percent of its American patients. The National Center for Policy Analysis reports that it kills 57 percent of Britons it strikes.
* Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show that the U.K.’s 2005 heart-attack fatality rate was 19.5 percent higher than America’s. This may correspond to angioplasties, which were only 21.3 percent as common there as here.
* The U.K.’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) just announced plans to cut its 60,000 annual steroid injections for severe back-pain sufferers to just 3,000. This should save the government 33 million pounds (about $55 million). “The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients,” Dr. Jonathan Richardson of Bradford Hospitals Trust told London’s Daily Telegraph. “It will mean more people on opiates, which are addictive, and kill 2,000 a year. It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 per cent failure rate.”
* “Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets,” Daniel Martin wrote last year in London’s Daily Mail. “Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour [party] pledge. The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 911 calls. Doctors warned last night that the practice of ‘patient-stacking’ was putting patients’ health at risk.”
Things don’t look much better up north, under Canadian socialized medicine.
* Canada has one-third fewer doctors per capita than the OECD average. “The doctor shortage is a direct result of government rationing, since provinces intervened to restrict class sizes in major Canadian medical schools in the 1990s,” Dr. David Gratzer, a Canadian physician and Manhattan Institute scholar, told the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee on June 24. Some towns address the doctor dearth with lotteries in which citizens compete for rare medical appointments.
* “In 2008, the average Canadian waited 17.3 weeks from the time his general practitioner referred him to a specialist until he actually received treatment,” Pacific Research Institute president Sally Pipes, a Canadian native, wrote in the July 2 Investor’s Business Daily. “That’s 86 percent longer than the wait in 1993, when the [Fraser] Institute first started quantifying the problem.”
* Such sloth includes a median 9.7-week wait for an MRI exam, 31.7 weeks to see a neurosurgeon, and 36.7 weeks – nearly nine months – to visit an orthopedic surgeon.
* Thus, Canadian supreme court justice Marie Deschamps wrote in her 2005 majority opinion in Chaoulli v. Quebec, “This case shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care.”
Obamacare proponents might argue that their health reforms are neither British nor Canadian, but just modest adjustments to America’s system. This is false. The public option – for which Democrats lust – would fuel an elephantine $1.5 trillion overhaul of this life-and-death industry. Having Uncle Sam in the room while negotiating drug prices and hospital reimbursement rates will be like sitting beside Warren Buffett at an art auction. Guess who goes home with the goodies?
A public option is just the opening bid for eventual nationalization of American medicine. As House Banking Committee chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) told SinglepayerAction.Org on July 27: “The best way we’re going to get single payer, the only way, is to have a public option to demonstrate its strength and its power.”
Barack Obama seconds that emotion.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately,” Obama told a March 24, 2007 Service Employees International Union health-care forum. “There’s going to be potentially some transition process. I can envision [single payer] a decade out or 15 years out or 20 years out.” As he told the AFL-CIO in 2003: “I happen to be a proponent of single-payer, universal health-care coverage. . . . That’s what I’d like to see.”
And why a public option just for medicine? Wouldn’t government clothing stores be best suited to furnish the garments Americans need to survive each winter? And why not a public option for restaurants? Shouldn’t Americans have universal access to fine dining?
All kidding aside, government medicine has proved an excruciating disaster in the U.K. and Canada. Our allies’ experiences with this dreadful idea should horrify rather than inspire everyday Americans, not to mention seemingly blind Democratic politicians.
Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
UPDATE: Refuting WHO report nonsense.
This post has gone viral on the internet and is posted on thousands of message board around the world and the most common response I have seen are some profoundly ignorant postings from leftists screaming that the WHO Report ranks the United States number 37th in care world wide, therefore we must stink. If said leftists had taken the time to actually read the report they would see that the WHO ranks the United States number one in patient responsiveness and care, but putting the United States as number one offends the WHO’s socialist sensibilities, so they had to find a way to lower America’s ranking. They were at least nice enough in the report to admit what they were doing and how they did it.
The WHO figures into the ranking weather or not the country in question has socialized health care, that means that if health care dollars come from the private sector, charities or the consumer the WHO lowers the ranking. WHO also skews the mortality rates by including people who die from crime and more importantly WAR.
When you look at the breakdown the United States according to WHO is number ONE in patient responsiveness and care – http://www.photius.com/rankings/world_health_systems.html
The WHO divides the report into sections – Here is the section on patient responsiveness and level of care – the United States is ranked number one – http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/annex06_en.pdf
The WHO ranks the United States overall as 37 because we don’t have socialized health care; meaning that doesn’t meet socialists standard of “fairness”.
http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/whr00_en.pdf – look here and do a search for the words “fairness in contributions” to see for yourself.
This means that the ranking of 37 has little to do with the quality of care people receive and it has everything to do with ideology and politics.
UPDATE II – 12- 15- 09 An article coming to the same conclusion that we did above about the WHO report LINK.
Marxist group launches propaganda kids video against the First Amendment
This is the same Marxist group that made “The Story of Stuff“. A slick propaganda video that targets kids with a series of cliche’s the communists use against American freedom and market system – LINK.
Lee Doren takes their latest propaganda film apart.
Story of Citizens United v. FEC, The Critique
FORMER OBAMA ADVISOR VAN JONES IN YOUTH RECRUITMENT: FORGET RESPECTING OLD PEOPLE — YOU ARE GODS, GENIUSES & WALKING SUPERPOWERS!
Via The Blaze.
Folks, this is Hitler Youtharian. That is not a term I use lightly as I oppose frivolous comparisons to WWII.
After you watch the Van Jones video, compare that with the message from “Der Morgige Tag Ist Mein” (Tomorrow Belongs to Me) – English version LINK.
Creeped out yet?
What Jones is doing goes beyond what far left groups were pushing in schools shortly after Obama was elected such as this:
It starts out with a Cuban indoctrination song but then something happens….
and this….
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE,HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. [Note: YouTube has pulled most of the video’s down].
ABC Edits Out Substantive Parts of Sarah Palin’s Answer on What She Reads
This is yet another of many countless examples of why you should always have your own camera taping any interview you do.
[gigya src=”http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=hd6UuzSU2G” width=”518″ height=”419″ quality=”high” wmode=”transparent” allowFullScreen=”true” ]This is why you NEVER do an interview with anyone in the elite media without having your own cameraman take film of the entire interview.
Sarah Palin reads CS Lewis, fine, but serious books about the law, philosophy and the Supreme Court… well we can’t have that as it goes against the narrative ABC wants to propagate so an important substantive fact is left out; namely Palin’s mention of “Liberty and Tyranny” by Mark Levin.
Expectedly MSNBC goes after Palin for mentioning CS Lewis. One of their pundits even said that Lewis is “just a guy who writes kids books”. Of course anyone who is educated knows that C.S. Lewis is considered a great writer on many subjects such as theology, philosophy, government etc. I wonder what other facts ABC edited out this time.
ABC and CBS in the infamous 2008 interviews edited out substantive sections to several of her answers to make it look like she had no substance.
Levin states what he learned in the video below, but I believe that Levin gets it wrong in making it “about him”.
Mark Levin is president of Landmark Legal Foundation. Previously he served as Landmark’s director of legal policy for more than three years. He has worked as an attorney in the private sector and as a top adviser and administrator to several members of President Reagan’s cabinet. Levin served as chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General, Edwin Meese; deputy assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education; and deputy solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior. He holds a B.A. from Temple University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and a J.D. from Temple University School of Law.
Mark is a frequent contributor to, The Corner on National Review Online.
Mark Levin is also the author of the best selling books, Men in Black, Rescuing Sprite and Liberty and Tyranny.
Levin’s book “Men in Black” is the best selling book on the history of the Supreme Court of all time.
Dr. Walter Williams: Washington Cost Estimates Are Lies
PBS’ Tavis Smiley Wins Pinhead of the Year Award: Tells Ayaan Hirsi Ali that Christians in America Blow Up People Every Day
Ayaan Hirsi Ali lives under a death mark. She needs security 24/7 and likely will for the rest of her life. She made a film with Theo van Gogh about the status of women is Islamic countries. Van Gogh was killed out in the open during the day and the knife driven through his chest had a note addressed to Ali essentially saying that she was next. Radicalized Muslim communities that function as a state within a state are popping up around Europe and the Western Europeans do not have the will to stand up to it.
Ali escaped a life of forced marriage and virtual slavery from her Islamic family. She escaped, got educated, and became a Member of the Dutch Parliament. When it became clear that her security needs could not be met she came to the United States.
She writes about her experiences and how the West should stand up to preserve our freedom and our culture. Reflexively the progressive secular left in the elite media, which has been taught in American Universities that Western Culture is “the oppressor” and that Christianity is evil, often attacks her and throws the most outrageous false premises at her in an effort to embarrass her. They end up just embarrassing themselves. Watch the following exchange between PBS Tavis Smiley and Ali.
How can anyone be this deranged, this foolish, this plain stupid? It is not uncommon among the far left folks. I saw this level of idiocy frequently among the campus left. By the way, 162 Muslims have been arrested in the United States in the last two years for plotting against America. How many Christians have been? It happens every day according to Tavis so how about he produce just 100? Anyone care to take that challenge?
With that said, nothing he said is true and anyone with access to a search engine can find that out in pretty short order. Post offices are not blown up every day. In fact, using Google to search only two threats of blowing up post offices in the US appear; one from a homeless man who wanted money and another from a man who was likely mentally disturbed as he false reported about an alleged bomb threat to a post office.
No one was called the N word in front of the Capitol Building. The event was being recorded from many angles by a sea of new media recording devices that captured every moment of the event which demonstrated that nothing of the kind happened. A $100,000 reward for evidence of it happening was offered by Andrew Breitbart with no takers. Of the two Democrat politicians who made the false claim, one back-pedaled and the other is the same politician who compared John McCain to Democrat Governor George Wallace in October 2008.
The only known acts of violence at Tea Party events have been carried out by far left extremists and paid union thugs who showed up to physically attack the participants. All of this has been reported in detail on this site (see our violence category).
So what do you think? Is Smiley mentally challenged, delusional, as ignorant as the day is long, or just a liar? In any case he has won the coveted title of “Pinhead of the Year”.
“It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is ‘really’ inciting it” – Christopher Hitchens writing about how the elite media, in its reflexive defense of Islamic extremism, uses the most outrageously bogus moral equivalences to try and discredit Ayann Hirsi Ali.
Related:
Liberal Talker Alan Colmes: Muslims aren’t the terror problem, white males are…..
Lesson for Journalism Students: Leftist Media Attack Fox News for Memo Reminding Reporters to Always be Skeptical
[Another great piece that I wrote on my old college blog.]
There are two predominant philosophies of journalism taught in this country. The “Walter Lippmann (so called) ‘objective’ model” and what one of my J-School profs called the “Looking out for the folks” model. The former is usually presented as the preferred model at most universities (especially the Ivy’s)
The Lippmann Objective Model is anything but objective. The Lippmann model says that journalists should associate themselves with an elite technical class of people so that these experts via/with the journalists can give the “proper” information to the public so that they can “vote the right way”.
At first, the Orwellian nature of the Lippmann Model is not so pointedly explained, but as time goes on reporters get it and the coverage of the elite media shows it. [If you doubt me I challenge you to follow this LINK and scroll down to the quote from Dr. Rahe and the excerpt from Lippmann’s book – Editor]
For example, the reporter and/or editor has a point of view he wishes to present. So he opens his rolodex and contacts an “expert” he knows will give him the sound-bite he wants and presents him as just an objective expert who they found at random. Or said reporter will have a man on the street section, but the reporter will call a few people he knows to be on that street, complete with the narrative that the reporter knows will present.
Oh? You think I’m kidding? OK just a few examples:
CNN Debates: Unbiased and Undecided Voters Turn Out to be Democrat Operatives (most of whom had appeared on CNN before)
Of course this is a trick commonly used by PR operatives:
Washington Post: Obama Town Hall Questioners Were Campaign Ringers
Obama’s Photo Op with Cheering Troops Staged
BUSTED: Democrats putting campaign ringers in town halls falsely claiming to be doctors!
Of course the Associated Press knows this goes on, but only appreciates it when leftists do it:
The “looking out for the folks” model is often quoted by Bill O’Reilly, but Bill, as he will tell you, is more of a commentator than a straight news man. The spirit of the kind of journalism O’Reilly did when he was a straight news man is closer to this model. The “looking out for the folks” model certainly resembles more of the ethical ideal in what people expect from journalism and is what “Lippmann Objective Model” media outlets claim to be on their face.
Enough with the preliminary goodies and on to the meat.
Oh the horror! Fox bureau chief told reporters to be ‘skeptical’
By Mark Tapscott
You think the most essential purpose of journalism and the reason the Founders included freedom of the press in the First Amendment was to insure independent reporting about government, politicians, and public policy issues, right?
Well, you must be wrong because Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon is getting a raft of garbage from liberal activists masquerading as journalists at Media Matters, some liberal bloggers and a scattering of real journalists who ought to know better.
Why? Politico’s headline captures the controversy perfectly: “Fox editor urged climate skepticism.”
A journalist being skeptical? Who would ever have thought such a thing could be. I don’t know, maybe anybody who has heard this (attributed long ago to a crusty desk editor at the illustrious City News Bureau in Chicago): “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
In other words, we journalists are paid to BE SKEPTICAL.
For the record, here’s what Sammon said in a Dec. 8, 2009, memo to his reporting staff shortly after the Climategate global warming email scandal erupted:
“Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”
Now I am from out of town and all, but Sammon’s injuction sounds to me exactly like what editors are supposed to tell their charges – report what A claims and what B says about what A claims, but keep your personal views about both A and B out of it.
Note that Sammon includes both those who say the planet has warmed – i.e. global warming advocates – and those who claim the opposite, that the planet has cooled – global warming critics. How much more even-handed – dare I say it, fair and balanced? – can the guy be?
There is also the factual nature of Sammon’s statement that critics question data. Critics DO question the data for a warming planet. He doesn’t demand that his reporters agree with the critics about the data or tell viewers that the critics are right and the global warming advocates are wrong.
Yet, Salon’s headline claims the Fox news executive was “again caught demanding conservative spin.” And the lead that follows makes another false statement, claiming Sammon directed his “anchors and reporters to adopt right-wing spin when discussing the news.”
Are these people so arrogant as to think the rest of us are too stupid to see that Salon totally and completely misrepresented Sammon’s comment?
The back story here, of course, is that Media Matters is doing exactly what billionaire radical liberal financier George Soros paid it $1 million to do, which is to trash Fox News at every opportunity no matter what the facts might be in any given situation.
Watching this campaign unfold, it becomes clear that Fox News drives today’s extremist liberals into the same sort of eye-bulging, irrational, spittle-flying, blind rage that we saw back in the 1950s from the far right whack-jobs in the John Birch Society who claimed Ike was either a fool or a card-carrying commie.
Now, just so everybody reading this knows: Sammon is a former White House reporter for The Examiner. I count him as a friend, a respected colleague and a solid journalist. And Fox News puts me in front of a camera as a talking head once in a while.
So how long you think it will be before Sammon’s critics claim my comments here aren’t credible as a result? The reality is that the left-leaning MSNBC folks sit me down in front of their cameras to bloviate far more frequently than Fox does. Go figure.
So here’s something to ponder when the paid Fox detractors at Media Matters tell you Sammon and I are both former Washington Timesmen and are thus Republican mouthpieces:
I was inducted into the First Amendment Center’s Freedom of Information Hall of Fame a few years ago. I mention this not to boast, but because I was among a bunch of very smart people for whom I have great respect – even though they came predominantly from the liberal side of things.
But I don’t recall seeing anybody from Media Matters among the inductees.
NYC Communists: We Prefer to be Called Progressives
Of course they do.
[By the way the reason the media report is so glowing is because RT = Russia Today – Editor]
The first “great” progressive thinker is Walter Lippmann. He is the founder of modern American journalism and advisor to President’s Wilson and FDR. He wrote this:
Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come. They believe in what Mr. Stuart Chase accurately describes as “the overhead planning and control of economic activity.” This is the dogma which all the prevailing dogmas presuppose. This is the mold in which are cast the thought and action of the epoch. No other approach to the regulation of human affairs is seriously considered, or is even conceived as possible. The recently enfranchised masses and the leaders of thought who supply their ideas are almost completely under the spell of this dogma. Only a handful here and there, groups without influence, isolated and disregarded thinkers, continue to challenge it. For the premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive.
So universal is the dominion of this dogma over the minds of contemporary men that no one is taken seriously as a statesman or a theorist who does not come forward with proposals to magnify the power of public officials and to extend and multiply their intervention in human affairs. Unless he is authoritarian and collectivist, he is a mossback, a reactionary, at best an amiable eccentric swimming hopelessly against the tide. It is a strong tide.
The first great thinker of the “progressive movement” openly states that progressivism and American liberalism are simply flavors of communism designed to control men and the economy by ever increasing the role of the state in our lives. This is not extremism folks, or fear mongering, it is simply the objective truth by their own words.
AFL-CIO LEADER ACCEPTS COMMUNIST PARTY AWARD: ‘I STAND WITH THEM’
Those who doubt the connection between the communist party and the unions need only to read accounts of a recent awards ceremony to see how both groups view each other.
On Sunday, December 5, the Communist Party USA gave awards to a pair of labor leaders and a former state legislator and assistant attorney general.* Among the recipients was Connecticut AFL-CIO head John Olsen, who not only gladly accepted the award, but garnered “loud applause” when he said he stands with CPUSA.
CPUSA’s webzine People’s World reports Olsen was given the award at the Voices for Jobs, Equality & Peace – People’s World Amistad Awards Concert celebrating the 90th anniversary of the CPUSA.
“James Hillhouse High School auditorium was filled with the fabulous jazz sounds of Jeff Fuller & Friends, labor songs by Bill Collins of the Rabble Rousers, and poetry by Baub Bidon and Ken Brown,” the article describes the event. But besides offering a mental picture, it also gives a glimpse of Olsen’s acceptance speech, in which he says he will stand with the Communist Party:
“Anyone who stands with me for workers’ rights, I stand with them,” said John Olsen to loud applause as he acknowledged the Communist Party and took a strong stand against fear mongering and baiting, including the anti-socialist baiting of President Barack Obama.
The article goes on to praise the union for its work, and explains how important the union is in fighting for CPUSA causes:
The AFL CIO and local unions are now developing their legislative agendas. For the first time in 22 years, a Democratic governor was elected in Connecticut. It is widely recognized that union members made the difference in voter turnout.
Related – AFL-CIO Head Calls For Government Takeover of All Business
Conversation with an aspiring elite media journalist
FLASHBACK – Video: Obama’s Halftime Report card
Another great piece from my old college blog…
Commentary:
1 – Eliminate Bush Tax Cuts – Well you already know about this, but what you might not know is that Democrats do not propose really going after the rich at all. After all how will George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry fund the Tides Foundation and all the Democrats 527’s? Instead their tax hike proposals target productive wage earners and small businesses who take in over $250,000 on paper, but in reality most of that is put back into the business so these people are usually not wealthy at all. I will be posting an article soon that will prove to you that Democrats do not and have not had any real intention of taxing the very rich, but instead are very interested in sticking it to the productive. You class envy warriors are going to freak when you see it.
2 – Repeal the Patriot Act – as we said in number eight below, not only was this not repealed, the Democrats doubled down on it. Now we get to ask you if Obama is spying on YOUR library book list!
3 – Cap & Trade – Obama decided to let this die in the Senate without much presidential support. He decided to attempt to legislate on his own by abusing the supposedly highly limited regulation authority given from previous laws (unconstitutional: see Justice Scalia on “junior varsity Congress”).
4 – Illegal Immigrant Amnesty within one year – He had the majority and could have passed it, but knew that he didn’t have the political capital to pull this off and ObamaCare so bye bye.
5 – Close Gitmo – Another dumb idea and when they saw how bad some of the guys there were… well see number 6 below.
6 – Civilian trials for terrorists – A bad idea to begin with. The administration and a few less than sharp legal minds on our current court got a fresh lesson in why JOHNSON V. EISENTRAGER was good case law and should never have been tinkered with.
7 – Sign the Freedom of Choice Act – Umm this bill is no longer a legislative priority…..
8 – Put an end to warrantless wiretapping – Where are the so called “far left privacy advocates” now? The Obama Administration (along with a willing Democratic Leadership in Congress) has consistently (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,) pushed for more domestic spying ability and extended the Patriot Act. More spying includes including wanting more wire taps on the internet and arguing that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in email or cell phones or… well I think you got the point. Of course who was the first TV personality to speak out on these privacy violations. Clue: He’s the new Oprah.
9 – Limit the influence of lobbyists – Wow. Well here is a list of about 20 links to press reports that remind us why under Obama Big Business Loves Big Government.
10 – Cut income tax for seniors – Well actually even though the deduction rate tables were reduced for one year for many people. Come tax time everyone had to pay up. HERE is a list of the new taxes that have been passed by the Democrats under Obama ($670 billion worth).
Priceless: Why I’m a Democrat – College Democrats of America 2011 Summer Conference
In the video they all use slogans except three who mention policy positions. [Editor’s Note: In the video one person mentions NAFTA, which is just too long and complex of an issue to tackle in this post other than to say that here is a video of Bill Clinton’s comments at the signing]
1 – The Civil Rights Act – which Democrats filibustered and Republicans voted for by an 82% margin (eventually Dems caved). Democrats filibustered (successfully stopping the bills) all of the civil rights legislation in the 1950’s all of what was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans. One look at inner cities and inner city schools which are controlled by the Democratic Party show that the party is exploiting black Americans and has no real interest in empowering them.
2 – The Patriot Act – of which internal violations of using the act illegally have gone up exponentially under this administration. Through fast and loose “interpretation” Democrats have expanded the Act and Obama has been the worst administration when it comes to abuse of privacy rights that I am aware of.
Obama promised to put an end to warrantless wiretapping and do something about the Patriot Act. Where are the so called “far left privacy advocates” now? The Obama Administration (along with a willing Democratic Leadership in Congress) has consistently (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,) pushed for more domestic spying ability and extended the Patriot Act. More spying includes including wanting more wire taps on the internet and arguing that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in email or cell phones or… well I think you got the point. Of course who was the first TV personality to speak out on these privacy violations. Clue: He’s the new Oprah.
Now we get to ask you if Obama is spying on YOUR library book list!
Related:
Patriot Act Warrants That Let Agents Enter Homes Without Owner Knowing Triple Under Obama
Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA. Cozy with Administration.
Obama Administration implemented policy to have political appointees review all FOIA requests….
Obama Administration wants more wiretaps on internet
Obama Administration Thinks Chicago’s Cameras Everywhere are Just Dandy
Obama Administration: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in email or cell phones or…
3 – Because more women should be involved in politics – Wow that one is amazing. Shall we go through a list of Democrat misogyny hall of shame? While the first names that come up for sexual attacks, smears, lies, and name calling by Democrats are against Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Nikki Haley – Let us NOT forget how Hillary Clinton was mistreated by her fellow Democrats which resulted in the creation of dozens of PUMA groups and websites such as Hillbuzz. Remember how the Obama thugs used threats and in some cases physically kept Hillary delegates out of some caucuses? Remember how the Democrats “super delegates” stepped in when it looked like Hillary was going to win the nomination?
In fact Hillary Clinton’s own Communications Director Howard Wolfson said that Fox News was the only place where her campaign could get a fair shake because the Democrat Media Complex, also known as the elite media, was so grossly unfair even this web site spoke out against it.
This video is one the GOP can use, as it demonstrates that Democrat activists count on ignorance and mobocratic sloganeering.
Another Broken Promise: Obama uses “Signing Statements” to ignore Congress and the law
Remember this?
President Obama Issues “Signing Statement” Indicating He Won’t Abide by Provision in Budget Bill
n a statement issued Friday night, President Obama took issue with some provisions in the budget bill – and in one case simply says he will not abide by it.
Last week the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans were involved in intense negotiations over not only the size of the budget for the remainder of the FY2011 budget, and spending cuts within that budget, but also several GOP “riders,” or policy provisions attached to the bill.
One rider – Section 2262 — de-funds certain White House adviser positions – or “czars.” The president in his signing statement declares that he will not abide by it.
“The President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority,” he wrote. “The President also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it. Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President’s ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Therefore, the president wrote, “the executive branch will construe section 2262 not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.”
In other words: we know what you wanted that provision to do, but we don’t think it’s constitutional, so we will interpret it differently than the way you meant it.
During his presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama was quite critical of the Bush administration’s uses of signing statements telling the Boston Globe in 2007 that the “problem” with the Bush administration “is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation.”
Then-Sen. Obama said he would “not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.”
The president said that no one “doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president’s constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush Administration has gone much further than that.”
Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: Taxes on ‘Small Business’ Must Rise So Government Doesn’t ‘Shrink’ (video)
Wow, Geithner is spinning hard. 3% of businesses. Most businesses are on paper or are 1-2 man operations. Small businesses used to do almost 80% of the hiring in this country, now it is only 64%. The tax he wants will affect most businesses who actually hire. That is the point he is so desperate to avoid. Congressman Ellmers almost put him away and the following two questions in red text would be the key followups that would have finished him, “Mr. Geithner, how much of that 3% of small businesses you want to tax actually employ five or more people?”
At the same time the Obama Administration is fine with his friends at Google paying 2.4% on $3.1 billion in profits. General Electric, which was ran by Obama’s friend GE CEO Jeffery Immelt who just took a job at the White House, paid no tax on $14.2 billion in income and actually got government subsidies. GE also owned MSNBC until just recently, but I am sure that is just another one of those funny coincidences.
Geithner talks about the top 2%, but what he didn’t tell you is that the way the tax code works that top 2% excludes much of the very wealthy [see this link for details why]; who such a tax smacks are the genuine wealth creators , upper middle class risk takers and small businesses. A husband and wife with two kids may own and operate three local pizza shops and on paper that small business will bring in $250,000 a year in income (notice I did not say profits, I said income), but most of that money will go to paying employees, buying the pizza delivery man’s gasoline, food, energy for the ovens and freezers, boxes, cleaning supplies, wages, other taxes etc. Everyone must get paid before the owners do and they will be lucky to scrape $50K for themselves, which in turn they will be paying more taxes on.
Then comes the right hook, “Mr. Geithner, how can one be against small businesses that actually hire (pause for effect) and for jobs at the same time?”
I just talked to Addison Scott, who is on Congressman Ellmers’ staff, and I passed those two questions on to them. I can’t wait to see her lay these two questions on Geithner and watch him squirm.
Geithner’s explanation of the administration’s small-business tax plan came in an exchange with first-term Rep. Renee Ellmers (R.-N.C.). Ellmers, a nurse, decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 after she became active in the grass-roots opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposed health-care reform plan in 2009.
“Overwhelmingly, the businesses back home and across the country continue to tell us that regulation, lack of access to capital, taxation, fear of taxation, and just the overwhelming uncertainties that our businesses face is keeping them from hiring,” Ellmers told Geithner. “They just simply cannot.”
She then challenged Geithner on the administration’s tax plan.
“Looking into the future, you are supporting the idea of taxation, increasing taxes on those who make $250,000 or more. Those are our business owners,” said Ellmers.
Geithner initially responded by saying that the administration’s planned tax increase would hit “three percent of your small businesses.”
Ellmers then said: “Sixty-four percent of jobs that are created in this country are for small business.”
Geithner conceded the point, but then suggested the administration’s planned tax increase on small businesses would be “good for growth.”
Good for the growth of government perhaps, not the economy.
The Power of Icons in Ideology.
Bill Whiddle, who is as solid and bright as any communications strategist I have ever seen, in the video below gives us a great refresher in advertising techniques, branding, political messaging, and what he calls “iconography”. The best modern text on this very subject comes from author David Kupellian in his book The Marketing of Evil.
Let me give you an example of what is meant by iconography.
The Nazi Brand:
We all know what the Nazi Swastika is. Today it represents the kind of leviathan state evil that resulted in the murder of millions. It is important to keep in mind that the perception of the Swastika icon or brand was not always so negative. In the 1930’s Hitler was the darling of a large portion of American leftist academia, the media and many leftist political groups. For several years until Hitler took the rest of the Czechoslovakia after being handed the Czech Sudetenlands his brand was largely respected by large groups of people. For years Hitler and Mussolini were treated as brilliant visionaries who had discovered a “third way” as it were.
A brand can have its meaning changed, but the iconography stays virtually forever. Just like…
The GM Brand:
Here is another icon whose brand has changed and is in the process of changing at this moment.
The brand the GM symbol represents also used to be highly respected and in many ways revered. A true American icon. In short the GM brand used to mean this:
Now the GM brand is in the process of becoming a joke. Government Motors it is called. They make cars that are too expensive, do not hold up well, and that people do not want to drive. Ironically those are the qualities of the current status of government today.
Like all iconography, as we will see more of in the video below, the icon can be used against the brand.
The Obama Brand:
One will find that much of the same manipulation of iconography is used by the Obama brand and against it.
[Note: Disclaimer for leftists and idiots – We are NOT saying that Obama is the same thing as Hitler and neither is Bill Whiddle in the video below, so don’t even go there. This is about the iconography ONLY!]
Press Banned from Vice President Biden’s Fund Raiser Gala’s
OK on one hand I am totally in favor of this because I do not have to watch them.
On the other hand they are a violation of the Obama Administration’s repeated promises of openness and transparency.
A little more than a week ago, Vice President Joe Biden traveled to fundraisers in two battleground-state cities, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.
Neither stop included the White House press corps; requests by local media to cover the events were denied by the vice president’s press office. The Democratic National Committee arranged the events for the Obama Victory Fund.
A number of seasoned political reporters and former White House press-office staffers consider that lack of coverage a dangerous precedent.
“It would behoove the Obama administration to keep its promise of transparency even with fundraisers,” agrees Jeff Brauer, a political history professor at Keystone College. “The United States is a democracy, after all.”
Having press coverage of fundraising events that feature the president or vice president matters for at least two reasons, Brauer explains.
“One, large amounts of taxpayer dollars are being used for personal security at such events. As with all tax dollars, they should be spent with accountability.
“Two, it is important for the public to know what the president and vice president are saying to donors. Is it the same message they are saying to the electorate at large?”
Such knowledge helps citizens judge officeholders’ authenticity and integrity.
More
Days before Biden was sworn in as vice president in 2009, he promised to be more open than his predecessor, Dick Cheney.
Yet his official schedule more often than not lists meetings as “closed press” or shows no public events at all.
Sarah Palin: Lies, Damned Lies – Obamacare 6 Months Later
This is a great post by former Governor Sarah Palin. She covers most of the pertinent facts we have been bringing you for a year on my old college blog in our health care round-up posts and our Health Law category, and all in one very well articulated note.
It’s now six months since President Obama took control of one-sixth of the private sector economy with his health care “reform,” and the first changes to our health care system come into effect today. Despite overwhelming public dislike of the bill, we were told that D.C. knows best, and there was nothing to worry about, and we’d be better off swallowing the pill called Obamacare; so, in defiance of the will of the people, the President and his party rammed through this mother of all unfunded mandates. Nancy Pelosi said Congress had to pass the bill so that Americans could “find out what is in it.” We found out that it’s even worse than we feared.
Remember when the president said, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? Not true. In Texas alone a record number of doctors are leaving the Medicare system because of the cuts in reimbursements forced on them by Obamacare! The president of the Texas Medical Association, Dr. Susan Bailey, warns that “the Medicare system is beginning to implode.”
Remember the Obama administration’s promise that Obamacare would cut a typical family’s premium “by up to $2500 a year”? Not true. In fact, fueled by reports that insurers expect premiums to rise by as much as 25 percent as a result of Obamacare, Senate Democrats are contemplating the introduction of price controls.
Remember when the president said in his address to Congress that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions”? That turned out to be yet another one of those “You lie!” moments. We found out that Obamacare-mandated high risk insurance pools set up in states like Pennsylvania and New Mexico will fund abortions after all.
Remember the promise that Obamacare would “strengthen small businesses”? Not true either. The net result of Obamacare is that small businesses will face higher health care costs, new Medicare taxes, and higher regulation compliance costs, while the much-hyped health care tax credit for small businesses turns out to be almost impossible to obtain.
Remember the president’s promise that his bill would ensure “everyone [has] some basic security”? False again. Besides the great uncertainty that Obamacare hampers businesses with, companies now find it is actually cheaper to pay the $2000 per employee fine imposed by Obamacare than to keep insuring their workforce. This leaves millions of American workers at risk of losing their employer-provided health insurance.
And remember when the Obama administration said they would not be “rationing care” in the future? That ol’ “death panels” thing I wrote about last year? That was before Obamacare was passed. Once it passed, they admitted there was going to be rationing after all. There has to be. The reality of Obamacare is that it enshrines what the New York Times called “The Power of No” – the government’s power to say no to your request for treatment of the people you love. The fact that the president used a recess appointment to push through the nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells you all you need to know about this administration’s intentions. After all, Berwick is the man who said, “The decision is not whether we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
By the way, when the administration was talking about that independent board that has the statutory power to decide which categories of treatment are worthy of funding based on efficiency calculations (that, again, sounded to me like a panel of faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions about your loved ones – which, again, is what I referred to as a “death panel”), it was another opportunity for Americans to hear the truth about Obamacare’s intentions.
So, yes, those rationing “death panels” are there, and so are the tax increases that the president also promised were “absolutely not” in his bill. (Aren’t you tiring of the untruths coming from this White House and the liberals in Congress?) When the state of Florida filed a challenge to Obamacare on the basis that the mandates in the bill are unconstitutional, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the suit by citing the Anti-Injunction Act, which blocks courts from interfering with the federal government’s ability to collect taxes. Yes, taxes! Once the bill was passed it was no longer politically inconvenient for the Obama administration to admit that it makes no difference whether the payment is a tax or a penalty because it’s “assessed and collected in the same manner.” The National Taxpayer Advocate has already warnedthat “Congress must provide sufficient funding” to allow the IRS to collect this new tax. Pretty soon we’ll be paying taxes just to make it possible for the IRS to collect all the additional taxes under Obamacare! Seems as if this is another surprise that the public found out about after the bill was rammed through.
But perhaps the most ridiculous promise of all was the president’s assurance that Obamacare will lead to “bending the curve” on health care spending. Yes, rationing is a part of the new system, and yes, Obamacare does raise taxes. But because the new government managed system is so incredibly complicated and expensive to run, health care spending will actually rise instead of fall. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the Congressional Budget Office’s admittance that the CBO’s original estimate of the total costs of the bill were off by around $115 billion. Its new estimate is now above $1 trillion, and even that may be way too low. A more realistic figure calculated by the Pacific Research Institute puts the number at $2.5 to $3 trillion over the next 10 years! This is probably what President Obama was referring to when he admitted recently that he had known all along that “at the margins” his proposals were going to drive up costs. Give us a break! Only in this administration would they refer to a $3 trillion spending increase as “marginal.” Next time he comes to us with another one of his harebrained proposals for a budget-busting federal power grab, let’s make sure we remember the president’s admission that he was lying all along when he told us his health care plan was going to cut costs. He is increasing costs. He admits it now. Period.
Higher costs and worse care – is it any wonder why people are overwhelmingly in favor of repealing and replacing Obamacare? Politicians who have vacillated on this issue need to be fired. Candidates who don’t support “repeal and replace” don’t deserve your support. No amount of money spent on Washington’s “government-wide apolitical public information campaign” (otherwise known as “propaganda”) will convince Americans that this awful legislation is anything other than a debt-driven big government train wreck. We need to repeal and replace it, and that can only happen if we elect a new Congress that will make scrapping Obamacare one of its top priorities. We can replace it with pro-private sector, patient-oriented reform that the GOP has proposed.
On March 23, when Obamacare was signed into law, I launched my “Take back the 20” campaign, focusing on 20 congressional districts that John McCain and I carried in 2008 which are or were represented by members of Congress who voted in favor of Obamacare. They need to be held accountable for those votes. They voted for Obamacare. Now we can vote against them. We need to replace them with representatives who will respect the will of the people.
That’s why today I’m launching a new Take Back the 20 website atwww.takebackthe20.com!
TakeBackthe20.com provides information about the candidates in these 20 districts who are committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare. It has links to their personal websites and their donation pages. It allows you to read up on them, and then support them in their race to defeat those who gave us this terrible bill.
We have to send Washington a message that it’s not acceptable to disregard the will of the people. We have to tell them enough is enough. No more defying the Constitution. No more driving us off a financial cliff. We must repeal and replace Obamacare with patient-centered, results-driven, free market reform that provides solutions to people of all income levels without bankrupting our country.
It’s time to make a stand! Let’s take back the 20!
– Sarah Palin
Obama’s Cousin, Dr. Milton Wolf: ObamaCare does harm, rations care.
A not on the elite media, the only one who would publish Dr. Wolf’s editorial was The Washington Times…. This is a big story.
Being Obama’s cousin this means that Dr. Wolf is 12.5% pure hope!
“Primum nil nocere.” First, do no harm. This guiding principle is a bedrock of medical care. Sadly, those politicians who would rewrite our health care laws do not live in the same universe as do the doctors and health care professionals who must practice it.
Imagine if, like physicians, politicians were personally held to the incredibly high level of scrutiny that includes civil and financial liability for any unintended consequence of their decisions. Imagine if they were forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on malpractice insurance and still faced the threat of multimillion-dollar lawsuits with every single decision they made. If so, a government takeover of health care would be the furthest thing from their minds.
Obamacare proponents would have us believe that we will add 30 million patients to the system without adding providers, we will see no decline in the quality of care for the millions of Americans currently happy with the system, and – if you act now! – we will save money in the process. But why stop there? Why not promise it will no longer rain on weekends and every day will be a great hair day?
America has the finest health care delivery system in the world. Let’s not forget that and put it at risk in the name of reform. Desperate souls across the globe flock to our shores and cross our borders every day to seek our care. Why? Our system provides cures while the government-run systems from which they flee do not. Compare Europe’s common cancer mortality rates to America’s: breast cancer – 52 percent higher in Germany and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom; prostate cancer – a staggering 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway; colon cancer – 40 percent higher in the United Kingdom.
Look closer at the United Kingdom. Britain’s higher cancer mortality rate results in 25,000 more cancer deaths per year compared to a similar population size in the United States. But because the U.S. population is roughly five times larger than the United Kingdom’s, that would translate into 125,000 unnecessary American cancer deaths every year. This is more than all the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and children in Topeka, Kan. And keep in mind, these numbers are for cancer alone. America also has better survival rates for other major killers, such as heart attacks and strokes. Whatever we do, let us not surrender the great gains we have made. First, do no harm. Lives are at stake.
Obamacare: Fixing price at any cost
The justification for Obamacare has been to control costs, but the problem is there is little in Obamacare that will do that. Instead, there are provisions that will ration care and artificially set price. This is a confusion of costs and price.
As one example, consider the implications of Obamacare’s financial penalty aimed at your doctor if he seeks the expert care he has determined you need. If your doctor is in the top 10 percent of primary care physicians who refer patients to specialists most frequently – no matter how valid the reasons – he will face a 5 percent penalty on all their Medicare reimbursements for the entire year. This scheme is specifically designed to deny you the chance to see a specialist. Each year, the insidious nature of that arbitrary 10 percent rule will make things even worse as 100 percent of doctors try to stay off that list. Many doctors will try to avoid the sickest patients, and others will simply refuse to accept Medicare. Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route, and it will get worse. Your mother’s shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.
Obamacare will further diminish access to health care by lowering reimbursements for medical care without regard to the costs of that care. Price controls have failed spectacularly wherever they’ve been tried. They have turned neighborhoods into slums and have caused supply chains to dry up when producers can no longer profit from providing their goods. Remember the Carter-era gas lines? Medical care is not immune from this economic reality. We cannot hope that our best and brightest will pursue a career in medicine, setting aside years of their lives – for me, 13 years of school and training – to enter a field that might not even pay for the student loans it took to get there.
Giving power back to people
I believe there is a better way. The problems in the American health care system are not caused by a shortage of government intrusion. They will not be solved by more government intrusion. In fact, our current problems were precisely, though unintentionally, created by government.
World War II-era wage-control measures – a form of price controls – ushered in a perverted system in which we turn to our employers for insurance and the government penalizes us if we choose to purchase insurance for ourselves. You are not given the opportunity to be a wise consumer of health care and compare prices as well as quality in any meaningful way. Worse still, your insurance company is not answerable to you because you are not its customer. It is answerable to your employer, whose interests differ from your own.
Insurance companies have been vilified for following the perverse rules that government has created for them. But it gets worse. The government, always knowing best, deploys insurance commissioners across the land to dictate what the insurance companies must provide, whether you want it or not, and each time, your premiums increase. Obamacare will make all of this worse, not better.
One of America’s founding principles is our trust in the people and their economic freedom to rule their own lives. We should decouple health insurance from employers and empower patients to be consumers once again. Allow them to determine the insurance plan that best meets their families’ needs and which company will provide it. This will unleash a wave of competition that will drive costs down in a way that price controls never have. Eliminate the artificial state boundary rules that protect insurance companies from true competition and watch as voters demand that their state insurance commissioners get the heck out of the way. Innovative companies will drive down costs similar to how Geico and Progressive have worked for automobile insurance. And it won’t cost taxpayers a trillion dollars in the process.
This free-market approach has worked for everything from high-definition TVs to breakfast cereals, but will it work for medicine? It already is. Take Lasik eye surgery, for example. Because patients are allowed to be informed consumers and can shop anywhere, doctors work hard for their business. Services, availability and expertise have all increased, and costs have decreased. Should consumers demand it, insurance companies – now answerable to you rather than your employer – would cover it.
Between Barack and a hard place
I have personally trained and practiced in both the government-run and free-market segments of American medicine. The difference is vast. Patients see this for themselves, and this may be why, according to a recent CNN poll, they oppose Obamacare nearly 3 to 1. I am with them. It is difficult for me to speak publicly against the president on his central issue, but too much is at stake.
I wish my cousin Barack the greatest of success in office. But I feel duty-bound to rise in opposition to Obamacare. I must take a stand for my patients, my profession and, ultimately, my country. The problems caused by government will not be solved by growing government. Now that this new era of big-government takeovers has spread to our health care system, it’s not just our freedoms or our wallets that are at stake. It’s our lives.
Senator Durbin: Of course premiums will still go up with ObamaCare
But they are still lying…
Via Ed Morrissey at Hotair:
Not exactly a shocker, but Dick Durbin gives the nuanced explanation that they’re looking to slow down the rate of increases, not stop increases altogether. Unfortunately, that misrepresents what the CBO has already said about premiums under ObamaCare — and ignores what has already happened to premiums without it:
The truth is that premiums have gone up in part because of government intervention, not despite of it. Further government intervention will make the problem worse — and the CBO agreed in November.
On my old college blog we also told you of this HERE and HERE.
George Will Takes Robert Reich to School on Insurance Companies and Progressivism
We love Robert Reich, one of the worst economists ever. He will say anything for political reasons and claim that it is economic science. The truth is that one has to forget a great deal of macro-economics to come up with the obvious nonsense he does. But why do we love him, because sometimes he just lets the truth slip like he did HERE and HERE. These two linked comments and the one below have a common theme, you the American people, are idiots who cannot get along in life without the direction of Robert Reich.
Via RadioVoice and NewsBusters:
ROBERT REICH: The health insurers are not, George, you said they’re popular and everybody likes their health insurer. They like their doctor. They hate their health insurer. And health insurance is going up in terms of rates 20, 30, 40, 50 percent in many states. In fact, Goldman Sachs just this past week has said to its many of its investors, “Invest in some insurance companies because they don’t have competition, and they have, are exhibiting huge profits.” That is money directly out of the pockets of Americans.
GEORGE WILL: You say they have huge profits. As you know, confiscate all the profits of all the health insurance companies, with those profits you could finance our healthcare for 48 hours. What you do for the next 363 days I don’t know. Second, you say there’s not enough competition? Fine, let them compete in a national market across state lines.
REICH: Yes, let them compete across state lines, fine. But not a race to the bottom. Set minimum federal standards because we’ve seen over and over again that the recipients of health insurance don’t know what they are buying very often. Until there are common standards, minimal standards, then people are going to be taken. And that is what’s happened over and over again.
WILL: There you have the premise of this legislation and the core of today’s liberalism: the American people are such dopes they can’t be counted upon to buy their own insurance.
For the record, as NewsBusters has previously reported, health insurance companies are amongst the least profitable of all America’s industries. Here are 2008’s rankings done by Fortune magazine:
2008 Industry Rank as % of Revenues
1 Network and Other Communications Equipment 20.4
2 Internet Services and Retailing 19.4
3 Pharmaceuticals 19.3
4 Medical Products and Equipment 16.3
5 Railroads 12.6
6 Financial Data Services 11.7
7 Mining, Crude-Oil production 11.5
8 Securities 10.7
9 Oil and Gas Equipment, Services 10.2
10 Scientific, Photographic, and Control Equipment 9.9
11 Household and Personal Products 8.7
12 Utilities: Gas and Electric 8.7
13 Aerospace and Defense 7.6
14 Food Services 7.1
15 Industrial Machinery 6.9
16 Food Consumer Products 6.7
17 Electronics, Electrical Equipment 6.5
18 Commercial Banks 5.2
19 Telecommunications 5.1
20 Chemicals 5.0
21 Construction and Farm Machinery 5.0
22 Insurance: Life, Health (stock) 4.6
23 Information Technology Services 4.5
24 Computers, Office Equipment 4.3
25 Metals 3.9
26 Wholesalers: Diversified 3.5
27 Insurance: Property and Casualty (stock) 3.3
28 Specialty Retailers 3.2
29 General Merchandisers 3.2
30 Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services 3.0
31 Packaging, Containers 3.0
32 Beverages 2.9
33 Engineering, Construction 2.7
34 Health Care: Medical Facilities 2.4
35 Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care 2.2
36 Petroleum Refining 2.1
37 Food and Drug Stores 1.5
38 Pipelines 1.5
39 Wholesalers: Health Care 1.3
40 Semiconductors and Other Electronic Components 1.0
41 Energy 0.9
42 Home Equipment, Furnishings 0.7
43 Food Production 0.6
44 Wholesalers: Electronics and Office Equipment -0.3
45 Diversified Financials -0.6
46 Motor Vehicles and Parts -0.7
47 Insurance: Life, Health (mutual) -3.0
48 Hotels, Casinos, Resorts -4.5
49 Automotive Retailing, Services -7.9
50 Forest and Paper Products -9.6
51 Entertainment -10.0
52 Real Estate -13.4
53 Airlines -13.5
So, in 2008, health insurers ranked 35th in profitability returning a meager 2.2 percent on revenues. What this means is that for every dollar health insurers brought in, they made 2.2 cents.
Sadly, for liberal media members like Reich, that’s considered TOO MUCH! Nice job of Will to point out his inanity.
Of course, he’ll probably be the next liberal economist in the media to win a Nobel Prize.
But for now, Reich was just the second media darling in eight days to go head to head with Will and lose.
For those that have forgotten, George smacked around New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on last Sunday’s “This Week.”
Who’s next?
700,000 Seniors Forced out of Medicare Advantage Plans – Cavuto: Was this the plan all along?
It is just like I said back in my college blog days:
Seniors enrolling in private Medicare policies starting this week are finding fewer options, as health insurers close down certain types of plans due to legislative changes and looming cuts to federal funding.
Cigna Corp., Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, several Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and others aren’t renewing hundreds of Medicare Advantage plans, which are Medicare policies administered by private insurers. The moves will displace some 700,000 beneficiaries who must find new policies, according to Humana Inc., a large seller of Advantage plans.
For 2011, the Kaiser Family Foundation said there will be a 13% decline in the number of Medicare Advantage plans.
The pullback is largely due to a 2008 law that required the plans to have networks of preferred doctors, with the idea that managed care could be less costly and aggressive marketing could be curbed. Some providers of traditional fee-for-service policies decided to close the plans rather than invest in networks. But some insurers say the federal health-care overhaul, which includes $140 billion in cuts to reimbursements for Advantage plans over 10 years, is a factor as well.
Nancy Pelosi used IUSB Vision Editor Chuck Norton’s exact words “make them cry out for a public option” on C-Span. Video at bottom of post HERE.
AARP and Many Others Hiking Premiums or Dumping Coverage Because of ObamaCare
WASHINGTON – AARP’s endorsement helped secure passage of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Now the seniors’ lobby is telling its employees their insurance costs will rise partly as a result of the law.
In an e-mail to employees, AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8 percent to 13 percent next year because of rapidly rising medical costs.
And AARP adds that it’s changing copayments and deductibles to avoid a 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law. Aerospace giant Boeing also has cited the tax in asking its workers to pay more. Shifting costs to employees lowers the value of a health care plan and acts like an escape hatch from the tax.
AARP raising premiums, citing ObamaCare, but said when they were pushing it that this wouldn’t happen…
White House on Health Care: ‘Nothing’ From Election Suggests People Want Repeal –
IBD – 3M cites ObamaCare – Forced to drop care for 23,000 retirees:
Here’s a Post-it note for ObamaCare supporters and opponents: Over the weekend 3M (MMM), the maker of the ubiquitous sticky message pads, along with electronics, optics and more, decided to end its retirees’ access to its health care plan beginning in 2013. According to the Wall Street Journal:
“health care reform has made it more difficult for employers like 3M to provide a plan that will remain competitive,” (3M said in a) memo. The White House says retiree-only plans are largely exempt from new health insurance regulations under the law.
The company didn’t specify how many workers would be impacted. It currently has 23,000 U.S. retirees.
Americans become eligible for the Medicare insurance program at age 65. Starting in 2015, 3M retirees too young to qualify for Medicare will receive financial support through what the company called a “health reimbursement arrangement” and won’t be able to enroll in the company’s group insurance plan. The company described that as an account retirees can use to purchase individual insurance through exchanges that the health law will create in 2014. 3M didn’t provide details on the financial contributions. [Grats that taxpayer subsidized so WE pay for it – Editor]
Or, as opponents of ObamaCare predicted, they’re finding it cheaper to dump their retirees onto the exchange.
That comes on the heels of a report Thursday that McDonald’s was considering dropping its “mini-med” plan for its employees because those plans may run afoul of the forthcoming medical-loss ratio regulations.
Also on Thursday, the Principal Financial Group (PFG) announced it would stop selling health insurance, which means 840,000 employees who receive Principal coverage through their employers will have to look elsewhere. Just the day before, President Obama said, “So there’s nothing in the bill that says you have to change the health insurance that you’ve got right now.” And he’s right: the bill doesn’t say it; it just causes it.
Indeed, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care was giving the lie to Obama’s statement as he was making it. Harvard Pilgrim announced that it would end its Medicare Advantage plans at the end of the year, leaving its 22,000 Advantage customers scrambling for coverage.
A week before that, a number of health plans including Anthem (WLP), Aetna (AET), Cigna (CI), Humana (HUM), CoventryOne (CVH) and some Blue Cross Blue Shield companies decided that they would stop selling coverage in the child-only market. It makes sense, given that under the new ObamaCare regulations, no child can be denied health insurance for a pre-existing condition and insurers can no longer vary premiums based on health status. Thus, the cagey parent will now wait until his or her child is sick before getting insurance. This is known as adverse selection: The healthy drop out, and those remaining in the insurance pool tend to be sicker. As insurers found out when a number of states tried this in early 1990s, it doesn’t make for a very viable business plan.
Of course, the evidence of what happened when these reforms were tried on the state level was available in a short, easy-to-read format for all of the so-called reformers. But, as IBD has noted before, since when has health care reform been about evidence? It has always been about power — the power politicians have over insurance companies, doctors, hospitals and, ultimately, patients.
Remember we were told the bill would lower premiums?
The Promises –
August 6, 2008
OBAMA: A system where we’re gonna work with your employers to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
October 4, 2008
OBAMA: We will start by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family.
September 6, 2008
OBAMA: Here’s what change is saying to people who already have health insurance and the employers who are providing it: We’ll work to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
May 3, 2008
OBAMA: I also have a health care plan that would save the average family $2,500 on their premiums.
January 3, 2008
OBAMA: And if you already have health care, then we’re gonna reduce costs an average of $2,500 per family on premiums.
October 7, 2008
OBAMA: We’re gonna work with your employer to lower the costs of your premiums by up to $2,500 a year.
Campaign Ad
OBAMA: And we’ll cut the costs of a typical family’s health care by up to $2,500 per year.
March 14, 2008
OBAMA: And if you’ve got health care, we’re gonna work with your employer to lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year.
February 23, 2008
OBAMA: And we will lower premiums for the typical family by $2,500 a year.
June 17, 2007
OBAMA: And cut the cost of health care by up to $2,500 per family.
August 17, 2008
OBAMA: And if you already have health care, then we’re gonna work with your employer to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
Campaign Ad
EVAN BAYH: Barack’s policies will provide health care cost reductions of about $2,500 for the typical family.
June 27, 2008
OBAMA: It’s time to bring down the typical family’s premium by about $2,500. And it’s time to bring down the costs for the entire country.
February 19, 2008
OBAMA: And if you already have health insurance, we will lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year.
April 22, 2008
OBAMA: We’re gonna work with your employer through a catastrophic reinsurance plan to lower premiums by $2,500 per family per year.
October 15, 2008
OBAMA: The only thing we’re gonna try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed on to you. And we estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 a year.
March 1, 2008
OBAMA: We’ll work with your employer to lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year.
Campaign Ad
NARRATOR: Barack Obama will provide rural America with affordable health care, and save the typical American family $2,500 a year.
May 30, 2008
OBAMA: And reduces every family’s premiums by as much as $2,500.
April 20, 2008
OBAMA: If your employer does offer you health care, then we’re gonna work with your employer to lower premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
March 13, 2008
OBAMA: And cut the cost of a typical family’s premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
BROKEN PROMISES: CBO AND CMS CONFIRM HIGHER COSTS AND HIGHER TAXES FOR OBAMACARE!
It has been happening for a long time, I wrote this post in April 2010 on my old college blog…
And after the New York Times and the Dept of HHS confirmed that we conservatives were right all along…
Via Paul Ryan:
WASHINGTON – House Budget Committee Ranking Republican Paul Ryan (WI) highlighted the latest evidence that the recently enacted health care overhaul exacerbates the problems in health care and violates the President’s central promises.
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] released an analysis that estimates large tax increases will hit millions of Americans making well below $200,000. The CBO findings stand in stark contrast to President Obama’s promise not to tax any individual making less than $200,000 a year. According an analysis analysis by the House Ways and Means Committee Minority Staff, the President has already signed into law 14 separate violations of his tax pledge.
Adding insult to injury, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] issued another damaging blow to the President’s central case for health care reform: the need to get a grip on sky-rocketing costs. In a detailed analysis, the CMS Chief Actuary made clear that the new health care law will further drive costs upward, increasing national health expenditures by an additional $311 billion above projected costs. The new law would adversely impact Medicare providers and reduce Medicare Advantage enrollees by 50%, according the government report.
Following the release of the CMS and CBO reports, Ranking Member Ryan issued the following statement:
“As Washington is moving fast to takeover other sectors of our economy, we are learning more about the costly consequences of their most recent overreach on health care. President Obama reiterated a number of false promises throughout the partisan health care campaign, including a pledge that his overhaul would lower health care costs and would not increase taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 a year. This week’s double-whammy from CMS and CBO exposes the emptiness of the President’s rhetoric, confirming what Americans feared throughout the debate.”
“Rather than fix what’s broken in health care, this deeply flawed law will exacerbate the problems in health care. Two independent, nonpartisan analyses make clear that the onslaught of mandates, controls, taxes, and entitlement spending will impose a heavier burden on American families, including those already struggling to make ends meet. We must begin anew to mitigate the disaster from this health care debacle: let’s repeal this costly misstep and replace it with patient-centered, fiscally-responsible reform.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky on ObamaCare: ‘You will see a massive flight of physicians from the field’
Dr. Pinsky of course is the famed radio doctor.
Special thanks to our friends at The Daily Caller.
Gallup: Number of people insured by their employer down 5.2%. Number insured by taxpayers up 3.5%
They told us that we would not lose our health insurance and that the cost of insurance is going down. We know as we have covered in our ObamaCare Round-Up posts of elite media coverage that neither is the case. Premiums are rising, companies are dumping their insurance plans, insurers are getting out of some markets and prices have gone up quickly with those who had to do so stating clearly that the new legislation is to blame.
Now we are seeing the effects of big government economics in the aggregate. Prices up and wealth being destroyed so employers and people cannot afford it. Unemployment, uncertainty, debt crisis, monetizing, the cap & trade threat, and ObamaCare all add up. The damage is even worse now as these numbers came out in December 2010.
In U.S., New Low of 44.8% Get Healthcare From Employer
Government healthcare up, employer-based care down in 2010 vs. 2009
by Elizabeth Mendes
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new low of 44.8% of American adults report getting their health insurance through an employer in November, down from 50% in January 2008, when Gallup began tracking it. The percentage of Americans with government-based healthcare remains elevated, with the 26% who report having it last month similar to the high of 26.3% found in September.
mm
DNC Talking Point that 95% of Americans Got a “Tax Cut” is Bogus
The latest talking point from the left is that 95% of Americans got a tax cut. No they didn’t; what they got was a temporary reduction in the tax withholding tables but the rate didn’t change, so come tax time you have to make up for it with a check to the IRS or a smaller return. Don’t believe me? Check HERE and then look right at the IRS web site HERE. I love this part:
If you wind up owing tax because too little was taken out of your paychecks during 2009, you may qualify for special relief on a penalty that sometimes applies.
This “Obama tax credit” is actually a tax increase for some. Why? Because more people will end up not having enough withholding taken out and will have to pay the penalty.
Charles Krauthammer responds to the latest deceptive DNC talking point:
Obama claims that he is the great tax cutter, but the Republican Staff of the House Ways & Means Committee reminded us of the record so far:
Of course there are also the hidden taxes which we pay in the form of higher prices:
Here come the new taxes with ObamaCare – UPDATED!
IBD: 20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms
Norton’s First Law in Action: How Philip Morris benefits from new tobacco regulation & taxes.
Cap & Trade broadbased energy tax is next on the agenda.
Previous Congress’ tax cuts to expire next year raising tax rates.
“Ask not for whom the tax bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
Of course there is also the matter of the economic consequences of the government eating up credit – Just how out of control is government spending?
A New York Times/CBS Poll shows that Tea Party participants are wealthier and more educated than the general public:
Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Political Arena 