Saturday, October 17, 2009

The Mark Levin Radio Show


I had always been part of the silent majority up until The Messiah was nominated for President by the Democrats. I researched his history and found it terrifying that Americans would back a Marxist Ideologue for President.
I was also stunned at the depth of infatuation the main stream media had with him and how they just out and out lied,ignored and used their power to keep people in the dark about the man.
I have been listening to Rush Limbaugh shine the light of truth for years and am a better person for it but just listening to Rush was not enough. Knowing in my heart what was coming down the road I wanted more education and knowledge. I searched and found Mark Levin. The first time I listened to him I thought he was a maniac, I had tuned in late in the show and he was in the process of ripping up a couple of lib callers. Although I thought it was funny I didn't think he was a serious talk show host.
A couple days later and more research into the man I went back to his show and listened to the whole thing and a small spark was ignited in me.
I found a source of knowledge for the Constitution and conservative values I had been missing for years.
In the last year Mark has had many great shows and last night 10-16-09 was one of them.
You might be asking yourself where this is going? It's just my thought of the day really and I hope anyone who reads it will look up The Mark Levin show and get a real education and enjoy his show.
MGC

Friday, October 16, 2009

The Heritage Foundation

The Morning Bell

FRIDAY, OCT 16, 2009

Obamacare Puts You on Welfare

This Morning Bell is the final installment of a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you.

Lost in all of last weeks headlines on how the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) finally delivered a health care product that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was willing to say would reduce the deficit, was how exactly they achieved it. At a price tag of $829 billion, the SFC ’framework’ will reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 29 million, moving the overall percentage of nonelderly Americans with health insurance from 83% in 2010 to 94% in 2019. But of those 29 million with new insurance coverage, almost half (14 million), will get their coverage through the welfare programs Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). That is equivalent to adding every resident of Ohio and Nevada to the welfare rolls.

In other words, for half of those Americans who are being promised health reform, they are going to be stunned to find themselves in a welfare office applying for Medicaid. Under the current baselines for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), there will be 76 million individuals served by these programs for at least some part of the year in 2019. If the SFC proposal becomes law, the number on Medicaid/SCHIP will top 90 million. So why do Obamacare supporters want to put 90 million Americans on the welfare rolls? It is cheaper than providing them with real quality health care.

Medicaid was originally created to provide access to health care for families on welfare. Medicaid pays providers 20-25 percent less than does the private sector, forcing doctors and hospitals to subsidize Medicaid through lower rates. This deters doctors and hospitals from participating in the program, creating a lack of access that itself is a form of rationing. As Time magazine reported this July: “But there are real questions as to whether the program could handle the strain of that many new clients. Already, it is difficult in some areas to find health-care providers who are willing to accept Medicaid patients.”

Even those who are not pushed into welfare will feel the strain on the health care system. The majority of individuals moved into Medicaid will be young and healthy. Keeping them on welfare rolls will shift even more costs to individuals and families buying private health insurance, as doctors and hospitals recoup their losses from Medicare/SCHIP by charging more to the privately insured. In effect, the congressional policy seems to be to expand dependency by discriminating against individuals based on their income.

And then there is the effect on states. The CBO estimates that the Finance Committee plan will cost states $33 billion over 10 years. But even that may be a low estimate. Governor Phil Bredesen (D-TN) has warned that the costs for his state alone could be as high as $3 billion. Thanks to strings attached to Obama’s failed stimulus, states already are facing an erosion of their authority to manage their Medicaid programs. The true cost to taxpayers in the states will only become apparent as spending for education, child welfare, public health, and investment in transportation systems and infrastructure are crowded out over time.

As Heritage Senior Fellow Dennis Smith reminds us:

In June, President Obama told Senate Democrats, “As we move forward on health care reform, it is not sufficient for us simply to add more people to Medicare or Medicaid.” Unfortunately, that is precisely what Congress is going to do with the Baucus proposal.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Anita Dunn Marxist

She is not the only Marxist in the administration. All you have to do is shake the tree and at least another dozen will fall out.
MGC

The Value Added Tax

Michele Bachman

Glenn Beck

Dingy Harry Spills The Beans

If Dingy Harry is just lousy at math that's ok but I think he screwed up and admitted that Obamacare will cost 2 trillion dollars while he was explaining why TORT Reform will be useless. But why beleive me listen to Harry.

Robert Reich: Health Reform

This audio was from a 2007 speech at University Of California Berkley.

The Truth Behind Public Option

Robert B. Reich Lies To You.
This person is so far to the left that Bill Clinton put him in a tiny little office with a radio and forgot about him.

The Heritage Foundation

The Morning Bell


THURSDSAY, OCT 15, 2009

Obamacare Forces You to Fund Abortions

This Morning Bell is the third in a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you.

“Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions,” Or so President Barack Obama promised to the American people in his health care address before a Joint Session of Congress on September 9th. But then why did the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops send a letter to Congress on October 8th writing: “No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion. … No current bill meets this test”?

Who is telling the truth? The President or the Bishops? Last Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked this question during his daily press briefing and answered: “Well, I don’t want to get me in trouble at church, but I would mention there’s a law that precludes the use of federal funds for abortion that isn’t going to be changed in these health care bills.” Unsatisfied, the CNS News’ Fred Lucas again pressed on Friday:

The Catholic bishops have repeatedly said that the Hyde amendment would not apply to the health care bill and yesterday in the letter that they sent to Congress they said that if language expressly prohibiting abortion funding is not added to the health care bill, they will vigorously — “vigorously oppose” — that’s a quote — the bill. My question on that, does the President support the bishops on this?

Gibbs replied:
My answer isn’t different than it was on Wednesday. There may be a legal interpretation that has been lost here, but there’s a fairly clear federal law prohibiting the federal use of money for abortion. I think it is — again, it’s exceedingly clear in the law.

How to put this politely … it is safe to say that Gibbs’ above statement is less than true. The next time anyone tries to convince you that the White House is telling the truth ask them where exactly in the Federal Code it says this. The truth is…it doesn’t.

But what about the Hyde amendment mentioned by the White House reporter? Is the Hyde amendment not the law of the land? No, it is not even a statute. First passed in 1976 by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) as a rider to the Health and Human Services appropriations bill, the Hyde amendment must be passed again every year as part of the HHS appropriations bill and even then it only applies to current HHS programs. The Hyde amendment would do nothing to stop Obamacare from funding abortions and all the versions of Obamacare passed by Congressional committees so far do exactly that.

Conservatives introduced amendments in all five committee markups (three in the House and two in the Senate) that would have specifically prohibited federal funds from being used to cover abortion. None of them passed. Worse, the “compromise” the White House has adopted is an amendment sponsored by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) who has a 100% pro-abortion voting record according to the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Not only does the Capps amendment allow for federal money to subsidize abortions in private plans and mandate federal funding for abortions in the public option (this according to FactCheck.org), it also requires that at least one insurance plan cover abortion in every geographical region in the country.

In 2007, then candidate Barack Obama promised Planned Parenthood: “We’re gonna set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services including reproductive services. … We will also subsidize those who choose to stay in the private insurance market, except, the insurers are going to have to abide by the same rules in terms of providing comprehensive care including reproductive care.”

A Rasmussen poll released last month showed that only 13% of Americans want the health-care reform bill to use tax dollars to fund abortions, clearly demonstrating that even most pro-choice believers do not favor taxpayer funded abortions. A Pew Research Center poll two weeks ago showed that support for legalized abortion has dropped to its lowest level in years to 47%, down from 54% last year. Obama can either please NARAL and Planned Parenthood or he can honor the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Americans. He can’t do both.

The Heritage Foundation

The Morning Bell


WEDNESDAY, OCT 14, 2009

It’s All Downhill From Here

This Morning Bell is the third in a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you.

The scariest part about yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee vote passing its version of Obamacare, is not what is in their bill (to the extent that it even exists), but that the Finance Committee bill promises to be the high water mark for “bipartisanship” in health care reform.


Now all of the other bills will be merged together behind the closed doors. All the bills are fundamentally flawed and will only get worse as the leaders in the House and Senate have to commit to actual details.

COST — All the proposals carry a hefty price tag. The Finance bill estimates start at $829 billion. Preliminary estimates of the House Tri-Committee bill put the price tag over $1 Trillion and adding another $245 billion to the deficit. Preliminary estimates of the HELP Committee bill would add $598 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. And the outlook for the following ten years looks far far worse.

EMPLOYER MANDATE - More spending means more taxes. All the proposals include new taxes on employers. Taxes on employers will ultimately result in lower wages, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth. According to The Heritage Foundation, the mandates, like those in the House bill, could cost businesses up to $49 billion a year, 10.2 million workers will be at risk of slower wage growth and cuts in other benefits, and as many as 9 million low-wage and part-time workers will lose their employer-based health insurance.

PUBLIC PLAN - All the proposals include the creation of a new government health plan. The Finance proposal calls it a co-op while the House Tri-Committee bill and the Senate HELP Committee all call it a new public plan. Despite what activists on the left claim, a government run health insurance “option” will not be on a level playing field with other private options. The playing field will be skewed to push millions of Americans out of their current private health insurance and into the government run plan.

INDIVIDUAL MANDATE - All the proposals force every Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, some even threatening jail time if they do not comply. Such a mandate is a massive tax increase on individuals and families whose health insurance does not meet the new federally determined standards. This means that Congress will, for the first time in U.S. history, force Americans to buy federally designed packages of health benefits, even if they do not want or need those benefits.

MEDICAID EXPANSION - Hidden in all the proposals is a massive expansion of the Medicaid program. The result is millions more Americans would be dependent on this growing entitlement program. This means more costs to taxpayers, less flexibility for the states, and worsening markets for the privately insured.

MEDICARE CUTS - All the proposals depend heavily on billions in Medicare cuts to pay for their versions of Obamacare. Traditionally, such cuts rarely come to fruition. Special interests lobby to stop any real cuts from occurring after the bill is passed. And some so-called fraud, waste and abuse cuts, like those to the Medicare Advantage, will put millions of seniors’ benefits at risk.

Do high costs, government expansion, huge tax increases, major unfunded expansions in Medicaid and major cuts to Medicare sound like a recipe for success? It’s all downhill from here

Cap And Trade Calamities

CBO Director: There are Costs Involved with Cap and Trade
Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf testified on October 14 before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to discuss the economic effects of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the effects – most notably the effects of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation. Although Elmendorf felt that Waxman-Markey could greatly reduce the long-term risks of climate change, he acknowledged that “such legislation would also reduce economic activity through a number of different channels.”

Note: Director Elmendorf’s expertise is budgets and economics, not climate science.

Some of the channels mentioned the CBO director’s testimony include: shifting production, investment, and employment away from lower cost carbon-based energy industries and carbon energy-intensive goods and services towards higher cost alternatives; reducing productivity of existing capital and labor, reducing household income, discouraging investment both domestically and from international sources, and reducing employment and workers’ real wages.

Elmendorf made a commonly held assertion that because the economy in 2050 will be twice the size it is today, foregoing 3% of our potential GDP is modest. This ignores the fact that part of the reason the economy continues to grow is because the population continues to grow. For example, better health and medical techniques allows both birth rates to be higher and older adults to live longer. Thus the economy may be twice the size it is today but it also must support a much larger population of people. Second, foregoing potential GDP means lost income opportunities. Income builds wealth because it can be invested in profitable activities. The foregone income could have been re-invested in new technology that could have found a low cost way to reduce emissions rather than higher cost alternative fuel use.

Our economy is enormous and vastly complex and this is one bill. Table 1 on page 13 of Elmendorf’s testimony shows the reduction ranges in lost economic activity because of cap and trade for select years based on the CBO’s review of other studies. In 2030, gross domestic product loss will be between .4 and 1.1 percent. For the year 2040, the range is .7 to 2.0 percent lost and for 2050 GDP loss would be between 1.1 and 3.4 percent.

The numbers that the CBO director attests to are in line with estimates done by The Heritage Foundation. Our economic analysis of the Waxman-Markey, which covered the years 2012-2035, found a GDP loss range of .78 percent ($148 billion) for the year 2019 to a high of 2.79 percent ($712 billion) for the year 2031. Single-year GDP losses reach $400 billion by 2025 and will ultimately exceed $700 billion.

Cumulative GDP losses are $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035. And since the emission reduction targets become more stringent – reaching 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, the news is only likely to get worse. All because of one very bad bill. Director Elmendorf is right in that the economy will continue to grow, but it will be growing well under its potential.

CBO’s acknowledgement that Waxman-Markey could reduce economic activity is a warning and something Members of Congress should heed. Mitigating the costs, protecting households and protecting those who lose their jobs will be close to impossible as just about everything we do and use relies on fossil-fuel based energy. A 1 to 3.5 percent drop in GDP compared to a baseline may seem insignificant, but when it happens year after year to such a large economy, it adds up quickly.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A-HOLE OF THE WEEK



Olympia Snowe gets the A-Hole of the week for voting for The Baucus Healthcare Bill. She voted for something the majority of  the American people did not want claiming that she was voting for what the country needed and wanted. This woman goes under the guise of a Republican but her voting record shows she is a full blown STATIST. If the people of Main can get half a brain amongst themselves they will vote this person out of office next chance they get.
MGC

Cap And Trade Calamities

Understanding Climate Change

Cap and trade proposes a new national tax of historic proportions
Section 451 of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation includes funding to research the effects of “human-induced or natural changes in the global environment (including alterations in climate, land productivity, oceans or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, biodiversity, and ecological systems) that may alter the capacity of the Earth to sustain life.” The government will pay for five-year reports on scientific knowledge regarding climate change and how various resource capacities are affected by it (Sec. 451).

The bill also establishes a National Climate Service to “advance understanding of climate variability and change at the global, national, regional and local levels,” among other climate change-related functions (Sec. 452, b1). Provisions for a report that will identify “specific needs for new climate products to be delivered by each Federal agency and its partner organizations,” as well as “potential user groups and stakeholders that may be served by expanding climate products and services” (Sec. 452, d2B(iii-iv)). It also creates a “Natural Resource Climate Change Adaptation Panel,” composed of the heads of various related government agencies, to serve as a forum for interagency consultation on the national resource climate change adaptation strategy.

A few things are certain. The verdict on climate change is quite uncertain. A recent BBC News article notes that “for the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.” The long-term trend of increasing temperatures is something to study, as is climate change in its entirety. If climate change is going to cause dramatic sea level rises or a new ice age, whether it’s human-induced or not, a changing climate could be a major problem. But it’s not right now and there’s no near-term imminent danger that would justify an expensive response, which most Americans seem to understand according to recent polling.

Indeed, it seems that they are seeing right through the façade of global warming alarmism. The American public requires more than overplayed claims by Vice President Gore that global warming not only caused Hurricane Katrina but that Katrina was itself evidence that we were entering a new era of deadly hurricanes. Despite these assertions, the hurricane seasons in 2006-09 have, by most measures, been quite normal. As Heritage energy and environment expert Ben Lieberman often states, everything that you hear about global warming that sounds terrifying is not true, and what is true is not particularly terrifying. The public gets this, which is why global warming ranks low as a priority when it comes to issues Congress should address.

Studying the climate is worthwhile and Waxman-Markey would be an acceptable bill if it solely included these provisions for the world to better understand climate change. But pairing it with a costly cap and trade system, along with countless other problematic provisions, as the world recognizes that the scientific debate over global warming is far from over is not the solution to the nation’s dwindling climate concerns.

The Heritage Foundation

The Morning Bell
TUESDAY, OCT 13, 2009
Obamacare Sends Deficits Off Cliff

This Morning Bell is the second in a five-part week-long series (read Monday’s on out-of-pocket costs) on how Obamacare will affect you.

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period.” President Barack Obama promised this to the American people in his health care address before a Joint Session of Congress on September 9th. Problem is, no one believes him.

The Congressional Budget Office has issued reports on the Senate Health Committee bill (HELP), the House Tri-Committee Bill (HR 3200), and the Senate Finance Committee bill (Baucus bill). According to the CBO, the HELP bill would add $600 billion to the deficit in just the first ten years, HR 3200 would add $239 billion to the deficit in just the first ten years, and the Baucus bill claims to reduce the deficit by $81 billion.

But nobody believes that the Baucus bill will accomplish what it claims to do. As the Washington Post reported:

The cost difference stems from the fact that the House measure is honest enough to include the full 10-year cost of the so-called “doc fix” — $245 billion to reverse scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to physicians — although not fiscally responsible enough to pay for it. The Senate just patches the problem for one year and pretends that doctors take a 25 percent cut in reimbursements the following year and then stay at that low level forever. No one believes that will happen, so the money is going to have to be scrounged up later or else add more to the deficit.

The Washington Post is right: claims that the Baucus bill reduces the deficit are a complete fraud since there is simply no way Congress is going to cut doctor pay by 25% in one year. But all of these bills are deeply dishonest about their true costs in a more fundamental way.

Look at these charts on spending levels in the HR 3200 and the Baucus bill over time. Notice how in both bills the increased revenues (a.k.a. tax hikes) take place immediately but the increased spending doesn’t really ramp up until 2013. In other words, in order to game the CBO scoring system (explained by former CBO Director Donald Marron here), Democrats have packed ten years of taxing, but only six years of spending, into the CBO’s ten-year budgeting window.

So what happens to the deficit in those years after the CBO budget window? Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA), a member of the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition explains: “Every year, you lose ground. It’s likely after 10 years, we fall off a cliff.”

Falling off a cliff. That is the verdict from members of his own party on what Obamacare will actually do to the federal deficit.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Audit Slams Health Care Bill

From Fox News. CNN as of this post is not even talking about it. Although they let everyone know that there is a new Michael Jackson song out.
MGC

Insurers Mount Attack Against Health Reform


Insurance industry sharply escalates its criticism of the Senate health care bill, charging that the legislation would shift costs to privately insured people, raising the price of policies

A spokesman for Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., whose 10-year, $829 billion overhaul plan faces a final Finance Committee vote Tuesday, was quick to react Sunday, questioning the credibility of the industry's late-in-coming cost estimate.

"It's a health insurance company hatchet job, plain and simple," said the spokesman, Scott Mulhauser.

The health insurance industry has been working until recently to help draft legislation, while publicly endorsing President Barack Obama's goal of affordable coverage for all Americans. The alliance has grown strained as legislation advances toward votes in Congress.

Late Sunday, the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans sent its member companies a new accounting firm study that projects the legislation would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013, when most of the major provisions in the bill would be in effect.

Premiums for a single person would go up by $600 more than would be the case without the legislation, the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis concluded in the study commissioned by the insurance group.

"Several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system," Karen Ignagni, the top industry lobbyist in Washington, wrote in a memo to insurance company CEOs.

The study projected that in 2019, family premiums could be $4,000 higher and individual premiums could be $1,500 higher.

Baucus spokesman Mulhauser said the study is "seriously flawed" because it doesn't take into account provisions in the legislation that would lower the cost of coverage, such as tax credits to help people buy private insurance, protections for current policies and administrative savings from a revamped marketplace.

White House health care spokeswoman Linda Douglass concurred. "This is an insurance industry analysis that is designed to reach a conclusion which benefits the industry, and does not represent what the bill does," she said.

The Baucus plan faces a final committee vote on Tuesday. It got a boost last week when the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cover 94 percent of eligible Americans while reducing the federal deficit.

But the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis attempted to get at a different issue -- costs for privately insured individuals.

It concluded that a combination of factors in the bill -- and decisions by lawmakers as they amended it -- would raise costs.

The chief reason, said the report, is a decision by lawmakers to weaken proposed penalties for failing to get health insurance. The bill would require insurers to take all applicants, doing away with denials for pre-existing health problems. In return, all Americans would be required to carry coverage, either through an employer or a government program, or by buying it themselves.

But the CBO estimated that even with new federal subsidies, some 17 million Americans would still be unable to afford health insurance. Faced with that affordability problem, senators opted to ease the fines for going without coverage from the levels Baucus originally proposed. The industry says that will only let people postpone getting coverage until they get sick.
Other factors leading to higher costs include a new tax on high-cost health insurance plans, cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors, and a series of new taxes on insurers and other health care industries, the report said.
"Health reform could have a significant impact on the cost of private health insurance coverage," it concluded.
Insurers played a major role in defeating then-President Bill Clinton's health care plan in the 1990s. Sunday, the industry stopped short of signaling all-out opposition. "We will continue to work with policymakers in support of workable bipartisan reform," Ignagni said in her memo.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

White House Cry Babies.....Again

They really can not help themselves. In a perfect Socialist world all news would be in their favor with no critical analysis of the screw ups because of course it would be a perfect world with no screw ups.