Friday, September 13, 2013
EVERY SINGLE PENNY: The Obamacare Speech a Real Speaker of the House Would Give
The ill-named Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare -- has been a "trainwreck" according to its very architects since day one. From the CLASS Act, to the delay of the Employer Mandate, to exempting Congress from the law, the sheer size and complexity of this partisan bill makes it virtually impossible to implement.
I and my peers, all of us, we took an oath to uphold the Constitution. And today we are going to stand by that oath and defend the Constitution of the United States.
This bill was passed in an unconstitutional fashion -- with bribes and payoffs and other skulduggery -- by a single party that temporarily held power during the 110th Congress. The bill consisted of thousands of pages and not one person was permitted to read the bill before it was voted upon.
This bill fundamentally changes the relationship of the citizen to the government.
This is an unconscionable violation of representative government. Nancy Pelosi famously told us we had to pass the bill to find out what's in it. Now we know, and it's an unconstitutional disaster.
Because a single judge bows to some unknown pressure, and changes his vote at the last minute to rewrite a bill that is clearly unconstitutional... because, unlike every other entitlement program, Democrats had no Republican support for this bill...
Because Democrats used every underhanded tactic -- bribes, payoffs and corporate reacharounds -- possible to pass a bill that not one of them read before voting upon...
Because the IRS, already caught punishing groups based upon their political and religious affiliations, will be the enforcers of Obamacare... because radical, left wing groups like La Raza and ACORN will be hired as "Obamacare Navigators" with access to their political opponents' most sensitive health care data...
Because jobs are being destroyed. Because good jobs are disappearing before our very eyes as small businesses are driven not to hire by the law. Because full-time jobs are turning to part-time jobs. Because employers are slashing benefits for spouses and other family members to adapt to a law no one read.
Because the lies that were told to sell this bill were as awful as they were brazen... Because you can't keep your policy, you can't keep your doctor, you can't keep your plan, you can't keep your insurer, and you will pay far more, not far less...
Because Democrat lobbyists and staffers are raking in million advising companies how to comply with the tens of thousands of pages of regulations that this law has spawned... Because they have built a law so complex that no one can possibly understand its effects without paying off the very people who created it!
Most of all, because the people who want Obamacare most are the very same people who have exempted themselves from the law! Obamacare waivers have been issued for Congress, staffers, unions, special interest groups...
I have a question for President Obama and the Democrats? Aren't the American people the most important special interest group Congress serves? The vast majority of Americans want a waiver from Obamacare, just like the lobbyists and the other Beltway elites.
True to my word, Republicans will not shut down the government. We have passed a continuing resolution that funds every single aspect of the federal government except for Obamacare. Every single penny.
But we are drawing a line in the sand when it comes to the trainwreck of Obamacare. We want at least a year delay in its implementation, just like Congress, just like the unions, just like the employers subject to the mandate, and just like other Democrat special interests got.
So if Democrats want to shut down the government, so be it. The House Continuing Resolution funds the entirety of the government -- every single penny -- just not the trainwreck called Obamacare, which President Obama has already defunded for his pals. The vast majority of the American people have told us over and over again: we want a waiver from Obamacare too, just like Congress got.
Call up your Representative and Senators now and tell them: we want a waiver too. Pass the House Continuing Resolution and delay Obamacare now.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Were VW’s U.S. workers threatened into signing UAW cards?
With its future hinging on unionizing the American factories of foreign automakers, the United Auto Workers has been desperately courting Volkwagen’s 2700 employees Tennessee since 2011.
According to news reports on Wednesday, a majority of Volkswagen AG’s employees in Chattanooga have signed union authorization cards indicating the desire “to join VW’s Global Works Council and supporting cooperative and collaborative relations with the company.”The UAW is claiming that the cards are as valid as the workers having voted in an election.
The question that is not being posed, however, is: Were the majority of VW’s workers’ signatures were gathered based on threats, coercion and fear?
You may recall that, back in June, Stephan Wolf, a high-ranking German union official with Volkswagen AG issued an ultimatum to VW’s American workers in the press:
“We will only agree to an expansion of the [Tennessee] site or any other model contract when it is clear how to proceed with the employees’ representatives in the United States.”
Unlike the U.S., under Germany’s co-determination labor relations model, unions have seats on corporations’ boards of directors and, as such, have a say in how a company is managed.
via Automotive News:
Employee representatives at VW also get a say in new products and investments through the company’s global works council, which includes representatives from all of its organized plants.
That may give labor leaders at VW enough power to follow through on the threat made by Wolf, the deputy chairman on the global works council.
This comment was quickly seized on by the UAW’s president, Bob King, who followed up with:
“If I was a worker, if I was a member of the Chattanooga community, and I wanted to have the best chance of getting new investment and new product, I would want a voice on the world employee council,” King said. “I would want somebody there representing the interests of Chattanooga. I wouldn’t want a decision made where every other plant in the world has representation there, and I don’t have somebody speaking up for me.” [Emphasis added.]
What labor leaders implied was that without representation on VW’s employee council through the UAW, Chattanooga would not receive the hoped-for expansion.
This statement was likely repeated over and over again by UAW organizers in order to coerce them into signing cards and, if that is the case, it could very well be a violation of the Tennessee employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
AFL-CIO Looks to Turn All of America Into Detroit
One of the major themes to emerge from this week’s national conference of the AFL-CIO in Los Angeles is a push to expand union organizing beyond the traditional collective bargaining agreement and into every workplace.
And after some brief flirting, the AFL-CIO is ready to go steady with “workers centers,” which are popping up around the nation to help organize workers in the service sector. Members of the AFL-CIO, an umbrella group for dozens of labor unions, approved a resolution this week to establish a more formal connection between the union and the workers centers that it has, in many cases, helped to start.The union said it would seek to organize workers who are not in traditional collective bargaining agreements and would “mobilize these new members in electoral and other political efforts and in support of organizing drives and collective bargaining campaigns.”
To achieve that end, the AFL-CIO pledged to work more closely with “workers centers” and with foundations providing seed money to those centers.
In many cases, these workers centers have morphed into front groups for unions by using Occupy-style tactics and threats of lawsuits to make employers comply with their demands, despite the lack of a collective bargaining agreement.
TAEGAN GODDARD: Deluded Kook -- or Lying Crapweasel?
He's a writer for Roll Call, the official periodical of the entrenched Beltway establishment and a dedicated enemy of the American Constitution. If the issue involves promoting big government, no matter how insane, Goddard can be counted on to find a left-wing kook to quote as if that represents a mainstream opinion.However, if the issue involves promoting normal people -- who live outside the Beltway -- or limited government, Goddard will find a way to ignore or diminish the effort.
Obamacare is one of his favorite programs -- no matter the fact that the entire federal government is teetering on bankruptcy, Cloward-Piven style, as unfunded liabilities near $100 trillion and 40 cents of every dollar the government currently spends is borrowed from generations yet unborn.
Arithmetic was never one of Goddard's strong suits, it would seem.
But when it comes to promoting a program like Obamacare, Goddard is willing to market the most egregious of lies. Consider this classic bit of propaganda -- truly one for the history books -- from earlier this week:
Obamacare Did Not Lead to Increase in Part Time Jobs
The Obama administration contends that since the Affordable Care Act became law, more than 9 out of 10 new jobs created have been full-time.
“The Affordable Care Act continues to improve the functioning of labor markets in a range of ways including helping to slow the growth of premiums, creating affordable new options for small businesses, reducing the ‘job lock’ that can keep workers from taking the best job for them, and generally improving health outcomes and reducing absenteeism. We are already seeing tangible changes in affordability, including premium growth at less than one-third the rate of the late 1990s and early 2000s.”
Jared Bernstein: “You want to hate on Obamacare, I can’t stop you… But the fact is that for now, there’s nothing to see here, folks. Move along, please.”
Now, you have to be a very special kind of ignorant -- or quite a liar -- to rewrite White House press releases as fact. Especially after such gems as "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan", "the average family will see health care premiums will go down by $2,500 a year", and "No one will have to stop seeing their doctor".
Yes, Obamacare has really "improve[d] the functioning of labor markets", that is, if you consider imploding the private sector as "improvement". Got Alinsky?
Take the Obama administration's very own Labor Force Participation Rate, which is the percentage of folks who should be working who aren't. It's now at a 34-year low and still dropping.
And a full one-sixth of the U.S. is now on food stamps, another all-time record.
Yea! The economy's doing swell!
And how about about his ludicrous headline, which is as succinct as it untruthful, "Obamacare Did Not Lead to [an] Increase in Part Time Jobs"?
Goddard, seemingly unfamiliar with new technologies like Google News, failed to use the oh-so-difficult search string health care part-time workers. This would have led him to trip over such stories, written in the last 30 days alone, as:
• Obamacare, tepid US growth fuel part-time hiring (CNBC, Reuters)
• With Eye on ObamaCare, Companies Move to Cut Workers’ Hours (Fox Business)
• Local governments cutting hours over Obamacare costs (Washington Post)
• Trader Joe's To Drop Health Coverage For Part-Time Workers Under Obamacare (Huffington Post)
• Mort Zuckerman on PBS: Obamacare to spike part-time work from 25 percent of all jobs to 50 percent (PBS)
• CFOs Lean on Part-Time Workers (WSJ)
• Some employers cutting hours for part-time workers to avoid new insurance mandate (Winston-Salem Journal)
• Health Reform Turning U.S. Into Part-Time Nation (Fox Business)
• SeaWorld to cut workers’ hours (Tampa Tribune)
• Restaurateurs, wary of health care costs, eye workers’ hours (Dallas Morning News)
And those are just the first ten I found.
So you have to be a special kind of stupid -- or a rank propagandist -- to try and foist articles like this on the American public.
It's sick. And I'm sick. I'm literally disgusted with people like Goddard, who are helping destroy the fabric of this country in pursuit of some insane Utopian fantasy that can't work, won't work, and has never worked in all of human history.Goddard believes in the supremacy of a few master planners: some bureaucrats in Washington who will reward his misanthropic behavior with accolades, financial rewards or access to all the right parties. Who knows what his true motivations are?
Perhaps he'll offer us his perspective in the comments.
Or perhaps not, since he seems only able to regurgitate the agitprop of a few far Left Marxists controlling the Democrat Party.
Roll Call should be ashamed for publishing these naked lies, Leni Riefenstahl-style, as if Americans are as dumb as Goddard thinks we are.
But then again, based upon its Alexa traffic ranking this year, the market is offering its own solution to Roll Call's Goddard problem.
Related: Roll Call Embarrassment Taegan Goddard Still Shilling for Obamacare While Unions, Congress and Special Interests Bail.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Hey, Old Media Clowns: If We're Really In a "Recovery", Why Is One-Sixth of the U.S. on Food Stamps?
Really? How so?
The Labor Force Participation Rate just hit a 34-year low.
And food stamp usage continues to explode, the product of rampant fraud, Obamacare's destruction of full-time employment, and the fact that welfare pays better than work.
Food-stamp use grew 2.3% in June from a year earlier, with nearly one-sixth of the U.S. population receiving benefits.
Illinois showed the largest enrollment increase from last year with a 14.7% gain, according to Agriculture Department data released Friday. Wyoming was in second place, with rolls up 11.1% since the same time last year. Utah experienced the largest annual decline in food-stamp use, dropping 11.2%, among a dozen states to post a decrease. (Enrollment also decreased in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington.)
One of the largest social safety net programs in the United States, food stamps – formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP – expanded substantially during and after the recession, with enrollment rising about 70% from 2007 to 2011. At the same time, the government also temporarily increased benefits and allowed users in the hardest-hit areas to receive aid for longer-than-usual periods of time. The average monthly benefit was $133 last year.
Critics clamor against what they see as a disturbing rise in government dependency. But new economic research suggests the program’s expansion isn’t alarming and can, in fact, be explained by business cycles.
Yo, antique media clowns: it's called The Cloward-Piven Strategy. Look it up. That is, if you want to stop retyping press releases from the White House and doing actual reporting for a change.
I know, I'm a dreamer.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Warning - Obamacare May Be Hazardous to Your Health: Heritage Unveils Massive Times Square Billboard
We’ve talked a lot about Obamacare’s costs—how it will hurt the economy, kill jobs, and cost you and your family more when you pay for health care.
But there’s an even more important cost: your health.
Obamacare will affect the quality of care in this country. It will limit the choices we have in doctors, hospitals, and treatments. People are already learning that their trusted doctors aren’t going to be available to them in the new insurance plans Obamacare is forcing them into.
And disrupting your relationship with your doctor is not how health care reform should be.
...Our new billboard in the heart of New York City will be installed this week to get people thinking and to raise awareness about the need to stop Obamacare.
Why? Because we don’t want to see people lose their health coverage—and the doctors they trust.
We don’t want to see access to treatments and procedures determined by government boards, putting bureaucrats between doctors and patients.
We don’t want to see seniors’ care suffer because of Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare.
We don’t want to see millions of Americans dumped into Medicaid—because it is not quality health care... We can’t stand by and watch these threats to our health and our families’ health go unchallenged. We must stop Obamacare.
We need to defund Obamacare so that we can start over on health care reform, with a blank slate, with solutions that leave health care decisions firmly in the hands of individuals and their doctors.
Contract your House Representative now and demand they de-fund Obamacare. The Framers gave the House the power of the purse for a reason: to check and balance an out-of-control Executive Branch.
And that's precisely what we have today. Call your representative now. The clock is ticking on our health care system and lives hang -- quite literally -- in the balance.
Related: HEALTH CARE INSIDER: Obamacare Has Two Fatal Flaws Designed to Kill Health Insurers, Bring About Single-Payer.
Monday, September 09, 2013
"TASTES LIKE VOMIT": Michelle Obama Says Her Anti-Obesity Program is Wildly Successful, But Schools Nationwide Have Kicked It to the Curb
Michelle Obama credited her anti-obesity program with bringing about a “cultural shift” in the way Americans eat.
“Make no mistake about it. We are changing the conversation in this country. We are creating a cultural shift on how we live and eat. And our efforts are having an impact on our children’s lives.”
The first lady touted the success of her Let’s Move anti-obesity program during a visit on Friday to Orr Elementary School in Washington, D.C.
Yet even CBS News reports that school districts throughout the country -- including California -- have abandoned Michelle's "healthy eating" program.
The Laguna Beach Unified School District, in Southern California, is the latest district to rebel against the federal healthy lunch program -- a cornerstone of first lady Michelle Obama's campaign against childhood obesity. The school district announced Tuesday night that it will revise its lunch menus.
The USDA (which administers the program) says growing pains are to be expected, but the complaints from school officials are getting louder; they say kids aren't eating the vegetables and low-fat choices and end up too hungry to learn. And they're saying they're losing money from throwing out all the uneaten food.
The new lunch rules, some districts say, are just unpalatable. Grumblings came from school boards in California to Illinois, Indiana and New York.
In Kentucky, one official said students thought the healthy fare "tastes like vomit."
In fact, things are going so great for Michelle's health eating program that schools in 19 states are measuring kids' BMI for obesity:
...schools in 19 states have started to conduct annual weigh-ins of students that test for their body mass index, the primary measurement used to determine if someone is overweight or obese, and then sending students home with reports – or “fat letters” – of the results.
“We look at growth charts and percentiles. And when a child is at 95 percent of their…we can look at weight for age or weight for height…that child would be considered obese,” Lauren Schmitt, a registered dietitian in California who measures the weight of hundreds of preschoolers in the San Fernando Valley, told CBS Los Angeles.
She added that out of the 900 pre-schoolers she looks at annually, roughly 200 are considered obese.
Success! Only one in four kids are obese!
Oh, and I forgot: the economy is so great a whopping one-sixth of the nation is on food stamps, and we know those are all used for the healthiest food choices imaginable.
Were they not in power, these Leftists would be employable only as comic relief.
Hat tip: BadBlue News Service.
HEALTH CARE INSIDER: Obamacare Has Two Fatal Flaws Designed to Kill Health Insurers, Bring About Single-Payer
I was fortunate enough to have a conversation today with one of the country's foremost insurance product experts. She is responsible for the actuarial analysis and design of life and health care products.
She was commiserating about the difficulty of working with state exchanges: in her opinion, it is virtually impossible to find out which companies are going to offer products in the state exchanges.
Remember, enrollment starts on October 1st, so this is a crucial problem for the exchanges. The vast majority of states won't disclose which carriers will participate or, crucially, whether any carriers have even elected to join.
And which consumers are supposed to participate in the state-run exchanges? The intent is to provide affordable coverage for those who are uninsured or for employees who don't receive health insurance through their employer.
Fatal Flaw 1 - When Underwriters are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Underwriting
The first fatal problem with the exchanges, according to this expert, is that the population entering the exchanges is likely to have increased morbidity (higher risk for disease). Her contention is that due to the economic strata of those who use the state exchanges, many health insurers will avoid entering those risk pools.
In other words, since the insurers are forbidden from underwriting (i.e., the backbone of insurance), they will avoid the state exchanges to decrease their risks.
It is therefore likely that the exchanges in many states will be stillborn, with very few insurers participating.
Fatal Flaw 2 - Health Insurance Is Not the Same as Getting Treated
The other problem with the state exchanges, she said, is that people will assume that health insurance is the same as getting treated for health problems.
What if, she asked, you buy a Bronze policy from a small insurer in your state, and find out their network of providers is exceptionally small? You want to see a specialist for a bad knee and you're told you'll need to wait six months?
This is precisely what happens in Canada and the U.K. The expert says that those health care systems do a fine job with the easy, basic tasks of medical care, but specialties must be rationed because central planning can never work as efficiently as a market-based system.
She believes a significant percentage of the population will be outraged when they see firsthand how little treatment they are able to get from the exchanges.
Executive Summary: Obamacare is an Untenable Ruse Designed to Lead to Single-Payer
By removing competition, by designing products for insurers, by prohibiting underwriting, by instituting price controls (e.g., mandated medical loss ratios), she believes that the health care industry as it stands today is doomed.
Obamacare isn't going to collapse, in her opinion, it's going to destroy the health insurance industry and transfer even more control to the federal leviathan. Obamacare is a ruse designed to collapse private insurance.
Scared yet? You should be.
Contract your House Representative now and demand they de-fund Obamacare. The Framers gave the House the power of the purse for a reason: to check and balance an out-of-control Executive Branch.
And that's precisely what we have today. Call your representative now. The clock is ticking on our health care system and lives hang -- literally -- in the balance.
Cartoon: A.F. Branco at CDN.
Sunday, September 08, 2013
The Curse of Liberalism
“Liberalism has become an ugly blend of sanctimony, self-interest, and social connections,” writes Fred Seigel whose credentials include being a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He has written “The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class”, but you won’t be able to read it until it is published in January. As a reviewer, I received an advance copy from Encounter Books.
It hardly needs to be said that today’s liberals and conservatives loathe one another, nor that the nation is as sharply divided politically as in the days before the Civil War. Politically, America has swung back and forth between liberal and conservative administrations as evidenced by the elections of the previous century and this new one.
Moreover, many have noticed that there is often scant distance between Democrat and Republican administrations. Both have been led by patricians, often the graduates of Harvard and Yale. Seigel refers to them as the “clerisy” defined as educated people being a class unto themselves.
Liberalism has been a very expensive failure
“Liberalism has been a very expensive failure,” says Seigel and points to the Obama administration as an example of “the apparent disdain for the copybook maxims of faith, family, and hard work.” When liberals go to court to force schools to remove a daily prayer or a pledge of allegiance to start the day, support abortion on demand and gay marriage, seek to expand so-called “entitlement programs” and put as many people as possible on some form of government dole, this should be obvious to anyone.
The seizure of one-sixth of the nation’s economy in the form of Obamacare is yet another example and the failure of this program, passed near midnight by a straight party vote by Democratic legislators who had no idea what was in the bill, demonstrates the liberal preference for a massive central government.
“Liberalism has been dedicated to preserving the problems for which it presents itself as the solution.”
Seigel traces the beginnings of liberalism in America. “American liberals don’t like to compare themselves with other twentieth-century ideologues. But, like all ideologies that emerged in the early twentieth century—from communism and fascism to socialism, social democracy, and its first cousin, British Fabianism—liberalism was created by intellectuals and writers who were rebelling against the failings of the rising middle class.”
Among the intellectuals who advanced liberalism was Herbert Croly, the editor and co-founder of The New Republic whose 1909 book, “The Promise of American Life”, was the first manifesto of modern American liberalism. Croly “rejected American tradition with its faith in the Constitution and its politics of parties and courts.” This reeks of the intellectual snobbery that has dominated liberal thinking for more than a century at this point.
Saturday, September 07, 2013
A Letter from a Republican to Hispanics
I am writing to you as a concerned and sympathetic American who is a Republican. My sentiments do not represent every American -- that would be impossible. But I believe the following represent most Americans.
First, a message to those of you here illegally:
You may be very surprised to hear this, but in your position, millions of Americans, including me, would have done what you did.
If I lived in a poor country with a largely corrupt government, a country in which I had little or no prospect of hope for an improved life for me or my children, and I could not legally get into the world's freest, most affluent country, the country with the most opportunities for people of any and every background, I would do whatever I could do to get into that country illegally.
Mexico and many other Central and South American countries are largely hopeless places for most of their people. America offers hope to everyone willing to work hard. Who could not understand why any individual, let alone a father or mother of a family, would try to get into the United States -- legally preferably, illegally if necessary?
Now that I have made it clear that millions of us understand what motivates you and do not morally condemn you for entering America illegally, I have to ask you to try to understand what motivates us.
No country in the world can allow unlimited immigration. If America opened its borders to all those who wish to live here, hundreds of millions of people would come here. That would, of course, mean the end of the United States economically and culturally.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Barack Obama and Eric Holder Bar the Schoolhouse Door, Blocking Minority Children From a Quality Education
Pro-Choice: The Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts in Louisiana from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools, just like the president's daughters.
He didn't say it on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech," but President Obama, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, also has a dream — one of leaving every black child in the Pelican State behind, trapped in schools that cannot educate them.
Almost simultaneously with the president's speech, Holder's Department of Justice filed suit in federal court to stop Louisiana's statewide voucher program.
Passed in 2012, the program guarantees a voucher to students from families with incomes below 250% of poverty and who attend schools graded "C" or below.
Liberals are all for choice when it comes to having children, but not when it comes to educating them. The irony of Obama's speech is that he pretended to honor a man who fought to have black children attend schools they were barred from as his administration fought to keep them in schools they can't escape from, a form of educational apartheid that's both separate and unequal.
White liberal hypocrite Matt Damon is typical of the elitists who don't practice what they preach.
PLEASE REMEMBER TO THANK A DEMOCRAT: Labor Force Participation Rate Hits a 34-Year Low
The results have been, in a word, catastrophic.
Here's an open question for any liberal reading along (and by that I mean you, Carlito, among others): how many more failed experiments in central planning, including the $1 trillion "Stimulus", Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, nationalization of the student loan business, "Cash for Clunkers", open borders, etc. will you tolerate before you finally declare that this regime's Marxist agenda will only end in misery?
How many more failures will you accept before you put your children above your religion of Statism?
Please consider Exhibit 4,806 in a series I call "Legacy of Failure - The Results of Barack Obama's Marxist Agenda":
President Obama’s policies have devastated all age groups, but the most heartbreaking impact is on the young:
Gallup reports that, “The lack of new hiring over the past several years…seems to have disproportionately reduced younger Americans’ ability to obtain full-time jobs.” ... According to Gallup’s “Payroll to Population” measure, fewer Millennials were working full time in June of 2013 than in June of 2012, 2011, or 2010... A recent 2012 Pew Research Center study found that 36 percent of the nation’s Millennials were still living with their parents.
Millions of older Americans have responded to the lack of job opportunities under Obamanomics by becoming “disabled.” Based on disability statistics, you would think that Americans have suddenly gotten sickly, or perhaps that we have been fighting a war:
A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco also attributes the drop in [labor force participation] in part to the “increased use of some social benefit programs, notably disability insurance.” ... Fourteen million Americans, including roughly 8.5 million former workers receive disability. In 2011, that included 4.6 percent of the population between the ages of 18 and 64. These Americans are not included among the “unemployed.”
Fourteen million Americans on disability–that is more than the populations of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, Montana, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho and West Virginia, combined: every man, woman and child in 13 states. The exploding ranks of the “disabled” are due to the absence of jobs in Barack Obama’s economy. The human cost of this tragedy is incalculable.
The CEO of Express Employment Professionals, a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, says: “All indicators suggest this shift [out of the labor force] is not sustainable.” That’s putting it mildly.
How much suffering do you want, liberals? How much more misery are you willing to impart on the next generation before you finally reject central planning? On a scale of Spain to North Korea, how far are you willing to go?
Hat tip: BadBlue Financial News.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Historian Predicted America's Financial Collapse... in 1857
The Great British historian, Lord Macaulay, predicted the future unraveling of the United States economy in a letter written in May 1857. Macaulay’s prediction was based on his analysis of American institutions. Discussing the life of Thomas Jefferson with an American author, Macaulay wrote, “You are surprised to learn that I have not a high opinion of Mr. Jefferson, and I am surprised at your surprise. I am certain that I never wrote a line, and … uttered a word indicating an opinion that the supreme authority in a state ought to be entrusted to the majority of citizens [counted] by the head; in other words, to the poorest and most ignorant part of society.”
According to Macaulay the United States was becoming increasingly democratic throughout the nineteenth century. And this tendency, he argued, was dangerous to liberty and to the country’s economic well-being. As Macaulay explained, “I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.”Macaulay pointed to the French Revolution and to the tendency of democratic movements to despoil the rich. “You may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils,” Macaulay wrote to his American correspondent. “I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion. Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World, and, while that is the case, the Jefferson politics may continue to exist without causing any fatal calamity.”
Eventually, of course, the United States must fill up with people. It must lose its economic advantages. “[T]he time will come, noted Macaulay, “when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us.” America will then be urbanized, with a large population of “artisans.” Then it will happen that large numbers of these artisans will sometimes find themselves out of work. “Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test,” wrote Macaulay. “Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million, while another cannot get a full meal.”
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Obamacare's Creators Reap Millions as D.C. Lobbyists
Obamacare is the lynchpin of the progressives' century-long march to dismantle the Constitution. A 15-person politburo known as IPAB will decide who lives and who dies. The IRS will enforce the law while left-wing radical groups are paid as "navigators" and will have access to the citizens' most sensitive personal data.
And as this monstrously complex law lurches to life, its architects are reaping millions helping companies cope with the spasmodic changes that will wrack the entire health care supply chain.
ObamaCare has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside.
More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010.
...The voracious need for lobbying help in dealing with ObamaCare has created a price premium for lobbyists who had first-hand experience in crafting or debating the law... Experts say that those able to fetch the highest salaries have come from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or committees with oversight power over healthcare.
Demand for ObamaCare insiders is even higher now that major pieces of the law, including the healthcare exchanges and individual insurance mandate, are being set up through a slew of complicated federal regulations.
...Watchdogs say the rise of the ObamaCare lobbyist is another example of the “revolving door” that turns public service into private enrichment... “After passage of major legislation, those who have networks on Capitol Hill take exceedingly lucrative jobs with the same industries subject to the legislation,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen. “It raises questions about the [bill's] integrity.”
...The firm Avenue Solutions, for instance, recently hired Yvette Fontenot, a former staffer for both the Senate Finance Committee, which wrote ObamaCare’s tax-related provisions, and HHS's Office of Health Reform, which is assisting the implementation. .. Since her hire in April, the four-woman firm has picked up Health Care Service Corp. as a client, and Fontenot is now lobbying for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association as well... The Democratic firm banks about $3 million in revenue per year, records show, but is on pace for growth in 2013, earning $1.8 million through the first half of the year...
It’s not just ex-staffers who are becoming trusted ObamaCare guides — former members of Congress are lobbying on the law as well... Former Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) joined Alston & Bird in 2011 after dealing with healthcare and tax issues as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee... Now Pomeroy and his one-time chief of staff, Bob Siggins, are lobbying on ObamaCare for clients such as clients such as Vision Service Plan, the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans and Medicare — a health insurance provider...
The fact that the so-called opposition party leaders refuse to rally the public against this monstrosity, refuse to leverage its unpopularity, and refuse to de-fund the bill make them just as culpable as Obama, Pelosi and Reid.
Which is why I suggest we call it O'Boehnercare.
Hat tip: Mark Levin.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo
When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn't believe it.
The Treasury official playing the bankers' secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama's leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world's central bank. If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn't be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.
The memo is authentic.
To get that confirmation, I would have to fly to Geneva and wangle a meeting with the Secretary General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy. I did. Lamy, the Generalissimo of Globalization, told me,
"The WTO was not created as some dark cabal of multinationals secretly cooking plots against the people…. We don't have cigar-smoking, rich, crazy bankers negotiating."
Then I showed him the memo.
It begins with Summers’ flunky, Timothy Geithner, reminding his boss to call the then most powerful CEOs on the planet and get them to order their lobbyist armies to march:
"As we enter the end-game of the WTO financial services negotiations, I believe it would be a good idea for you to touch base with the CEOs…."
To avoid Summers having to call his office to get the phone numbers (which, under US law, would have to appear on public logs), Geithner listed their private lines. And here they are:
A Most Dangerous Lie
“We don’t have an urgent deficit crisis,” Obama said Friday at a town hall meeting on the campus of Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. “The only crisis we have is the one that is manufactured in Washington and it’s ideological and the basic notion is that we shouldn’t be helping people get health care and we shouldn’t be helping kids who can’t help themselves and whose parents are under resourced, we shouldn’t be helping them get a leg up.”
Now either this president is lying or he has yet to read his own government's reports.
• The Government Accountability Office said earlier this year that "...absent policy changes...the federal government continues to face an unsustainable fiscal path."
• The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warns that we have less than a decade to rectify the federal spending addiciton: "[a] growing imbalance between revenues and noninterest spending, combined with the spiraling cost of net interest, would swiftly push debt upward in an unsustainable way... The explosive path of federal debt ... underscores the need for major changes in current policies to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course..."
• The public trustees of Medicare and Social Security continue to sound the alarm that the massive entitlement programs are headed for collapse: "Under current law, both of these vitally important programs are on unsustainable paths."
• Furthermore, government economists in the several states warn that the federal debt "circumstances are dire enough after four consecutive years of trillion-dollar deficits that politicians on each side of the aisle are beginning to realize serious budget repairs are necessary."
• Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker, one of the most respected investment analysts in America, reports that the United States federal government "is on a parallel course to GM before its bankruptcy... [and if entitlement programs are not reformed, the U.S. balance sheet will go from bad to worse... The turning point: within 15 years, entitlements plus net interest expenses will absorb all -- yes, all -- of [federal] annual revenue."
This is just a random sampling. There are many, many more. There are hundreds of similar analyses from the government itself as well as the private sector.
Are the federal government's own actuaries all wrong and Obama right?
Are the federal government's own accountants all wrong and Obama right?
Are generally accepted accounting principles all wrong and Obama right?
Are centuries of mathematics all wrong and Obama right?
Are facts, logic, history and reason all wrong and Obama right?
Whether his actions are, as some have proposed, intentional or whether they are the product of a radical and blinkered ideology, the endgame will be the same.
We are headed rapidly for an economic whirlpool, a hydraulic that will -- like chaotic events that have occurred before throughout history -- catch most off-guard and send the country rapidly into desperately dangerous, uncharted waters.
And which segments of the population will be hardest hit by such an economic catastrophe? Will it be the super-rich, the Beltway elites, or former Presidents of the U.S.? Or will it be the poor, seniors living on fixed incomes, and young people trying to get their careers started?
Of all his countless fabrications, the lies the President tells the American people about spending and deficits are the most dangerous.
Hat tips: Mark Levin and BadBlue News Service.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
33 Horrifying Facts Illustrating the Collapse of the U.S. Economy Under Barack Obama
Barack Obama has been running around the country taking credit for an "economic recovery", but the truth is that things have not gotten better under Obama. Compared to when he first took office, a smaller percentage of the working age population is employed, the quality of our jobs has declined substantially and the middle class has been absolutely shredded. If we are really in the middle of an "economic recovery", why is the homeownership rate the lowest that it has been in 18 years? Why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by nearly 50 percent while Obama has been in the White House? Why has the national debt gotten more than 6 trillion dollars larger during the Obama era? Obama should not be "taking credit" for anything when it comes to the economy. In fact, he should be deeply apologizing to the American people.
And of course Obama is being delusional if he thinks that he is actually "running the economy". The Federal Reserve has far more power over the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system than he does. But the mainstream media loves to fixate on the presidency, so presidents always get far too much credit or far too much blame for economic conditions.
But if you do want to focus on "the change" that has taken place since Barack Obama entered the White House, there is no way in the world that you can claim that things have actually gotten better during that time frame. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for over a decade, and this decline has continued while Obama has been living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is getting very tiring listening to Obama supporters try to claim that Obama has improved the economy. That is a false claim that is not even remotely close to reality. The following are 33 shocking facts which show how badly the U.S. economy has tanked since Obama became president...
#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.
#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been "created" in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs.
#3 The number of full-time workers in the United States is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Tactician Extraordinaire John Boehner Lays Out Secret Game-plan for Losing Both the House and His Speakership
1 Even though 80 House Republican have signed a letter urging Boehner to defund Obamacare, Boehner refuses to use the power of the purse to kill the most unpopular law since prohibition.
Boehner told the House Republican membership in a [confidential] telephone meeting a short while ago that the Republican leadership will NOT pursue defunding Obamacare, that they will only pursue saving from the sequestration
Mark Levin suggests calling the Unaffordable Care Act "BoehnerCare". I don't think that's fair, since Barack Obama gave birth to it. Instead, I suggest we use "O'BoehnerCare".
2 Despite an overwhelming majority of Americans who believe the border must be secured before any Amnesty or immigration reform is contemplated, John Boehner is secretly pressuring House Republicans to pass the Senate Amnesty bill, even though he publicly claims he's against it.
Senior GOP aides of a super PAC linked to Speaker John Boehner are lobbying House Republicans to pass the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, legislation that Boehner has said he will not bring to the House floor.
The lobbying effort is coming under the umbrella of the American Action Network, a nonprofit 501(c)(4) “action tank” led by former senator Norm Coleman, which is touting the “major positive economic impact” of the Senate bill in e-mails sent to individual House Republican offices.
AAN is housed in the same office as the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC associated with Boehner, and the two organizations share senior aides, including Brian O. Walsh, the president of both organizations, and Dan Conston, the spokesman for both... Boehner spoke at a fundraiser for CLN earlier this summer and also headlined the organization’s inaugural event. The group’s website has posted links to numerous news stories that refer to the group as “Boehner’s” super PAC.
In other words, John Boehner is lying to the Republican base and is lying to the American people.
Let me put this in words simple enough for even Boehner to understand: you pass this job-destroying Amnesty bill, you will have sealed the fate of the GOP for decades.
You will lose your Speakership -- guaranteed -- and you will then return to the back-bench of the House, having been booted back to minority status. Then you will watch Nancy Pelosi -- or whatever Marxist the Democrats elect -- take the gavel from your nicotine-stained fingers while you cry like a baby that needs a diaper change.
Guaranteed.
Hat tip: Mark Levin.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
MARK LEVIN TRANSCRIPT: Just How Desperate is the New Obamacare Sales Pitch?
JOINING ME NOW, THE AUTHOR OF, NUMBER ONE ON AMAZON FOR OVER A WEEK, "THE LIBERTY AMENDMENTS," MARK LEVIN FROM HIS BUNKER.
SIR, HOW ARE YOU?
>> I'M GOOD, HOW ARE YOU, SEAN?
>> I GUESS NEXT THEY'LL BE SINGING SONGS TO CASTRO AFTER THIS, MARK.
>> YEAH, WHY NOT? I MEAN, WE'RE ADOPTING THE CASTRO AGENDA, AREN'T WE? OBAMA CARE IS A -- NOT ONLY IS IT A COMPLETE DISASTER, BUT I'M AFRAID, SEAN, WE'RE NEVER GOING TO GET RID OF IT.BECAUSE THE REPUBLICANS DON'T WANT TO GET RID OF IT.
AND INSTEAD OF TAKING ON OBAMA AND TAKING ON THE LEFT, THEY'RE TAKING ON THE CONSERVATIVES AND THE CONSTITUTIONALISTS AND ATTACKING THEM, TELLING US TO WAIT UNTIL TOMORROW AND THE NEXT DAY.
THESE FRENCH REPUBLICANS, THEY ARE ALWAYS SURRENDERING.
AND THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS, IF THEY'RE NOT GOING TO ALEAST ATTACK THE DISCRETIONARY FUNDING OR USE THE POWER OF THE PURSE IN THE HOUSE TO PASS A CONTINUING RESOLUTION THAT FUNDS PART OF THE GOVERNMENT, BUT NOT THIS PART OF THE GOVERNMENT, WHAT'S LEFT? ONCE THIS THING IS INSTITUTED, IT'S NOT GOING TO IMPLODE.
I HEAR THIS, OH, THE LAW IS GOING TO IMPLODE.
HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF AN IMPLODING LAW?
>> NO, NEVER.
>> YOU HAVE TO REPEAL A LAW.
YOU HAVE TO DEFUND A LAW.
LAWS DON'T IMPLODE.
GUEST POST: Chicago so desperate for scratch it's towing citizens' cars for no reason
When you park your car in Chicago these days, be extra wary. Do a 360° examination of the premises - any poorly marked crosswalks? Or perhaps a singular construction cone nearby? Maybe, if you're really ignorant, you have a current parking sticker placed a little too close to an expired one on your dash?
Any of these will have you headed in a cab or the 151 Michigan Avenue bus to 400 Lower East Wacker, where the "Dark Knight" car chase scenes were filmed and your poor, innocent sedan now resides. It seems that the city has upped the ante on non-sensical tows and outrageous parking tickets. Look up the evidence for your parking ticket online and you'll usually see a photograph of your license plate. This type of evidence holds up hard in Chi-raq traffic court.
Better yet, citizens heading to work in the morning could have the unique rush of believing one's car was stolen. That, or just some good, old-fashioned Chicago city employee collusion.
"On the morning of August 12th, I came out to a wonderful surprise - my car was gone! I was parked on the corner of Sedgwick and Blackhawk (Right by the Purple/Brown line stop) in a public, free spot that I had parked in on two different occasions. At first, I thought my car was stolen, but I then asked a woman who was parked near my spot if she had seen a white Nissan Sentra get towed. She said that yes, she had seen my car get towed away. She stated that at first I was simply getting a ticket, but then a tow truck happened to be driving by at that exact time, so they decided to tow my car for being parked in the middle of a pedestrian crosswalk.
What turned out to be a $60 ticket ended up costing me another $200 after a fun trip to the depths of LEW. Now, let's be clear: this wasn't hindering anyone's ability to cross the street, and not once on three occasions of parking in this spot had I ever noticed a "crosswalk." There was absolutely no reason for my car to be towed, just another way for the city of Chicago to turn a minor traffic violation into major revenue. Love this city!"
In Chicago, stories like this are less and less unusual. But hey, shouldn't we support any methods that prevent Chi-raq from becoming the next Detroit?



















