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Is human history all wrong and Obama right?A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that a demonstration program created by the Obama Administration in Medicare Advantage (MA) is primarily designed to "demonstrate" how to hide politically unpopular parts of Obamacare.
...Obamacare’s cuts to MA would severely reduce the quality of the program and force enrollees back into traditional Medicare... "Phased in between 2012 and 2017, the MA cuts will substantially restrict the ability of Medicare beneficiaries to choose the health plans that best meet their needs and will result in substantial reductions in coverage for many millions of seniors and disabled Americans." Medicare’s Office of the Actuary predicts a 50 percent drop in enrollment by 2017.
...The GAO’s review of the [bogus] demonstration’s budgetary impact shows that it is “at least seven times larger than that of any other Medicare demonstration conducted since 1995.” The estimated cost of the program is a whopping $8.35 billion... The GAO recommended that the White House “should cancel the MA Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration and allow the MA quality bonus payment system established by [Obamacare] to take effect.”
QOTD: "Gotta hand it to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hard to come up with a more apt image of the Arab Spring than an aroused Islamist rogering a corpse." --Mark Steyn
Freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Wednesday evening likened President Obama's preference for higher tax rates to "tax weapons of mass destruction" that Obama is aiming straight at Middle Americans.
"Although he has never served our country in uniform, or risked his life to defend its freedoms and liberties on distant shores, it seems President Obama understands a thing or two about weaponry," West said on the House floor. "But in the president's case … the current weapon of choice is tax policy, and the enemies are small businesses, investors, entrepreneurs and corporations, who seemingly are deemed undesirable.
"President Obama seems determined to punish and wipe out economic success in this country, leveling tax weapons of mass destruction on all taxpayers."
West said Obama favors the expiration of tax cuts on marginal rates, as well as reducing estate tax exemptions and increasing taxes on capital gains and dividends.
"Next year, unless changes are made to the tax code, America will be bombarded with the heavy artillery of the largest tax increase in the nation's history, causing massive economic injury and destruction," West said.
West also criticized Obama's understanding of tax policy, arguing that increased taxes would do little to reduce the deficit, which he said is caused by overspending. He also said people facing higher taxes would react to these taxes, leading to less new revenue than the Obama administration anticipates.
"The American people … want a constitutional republic, not a socialist, egalitarian welfare nanny state," he concluded. "The American people want an economic future so bright that they will have to wear sunglasses."
The President has been jetting around the country demanding that “millionaires and billionaires” pay their “fair share” of income taxes. Apparently, he didn’t get the memo. As the above graph, based on data from the Heritage Foundation, shows, the 1 percent-ers are already paying a lot more than they should be, 2.18 times as much to be exact. The same goes for the 2-5% (1.47x) and the 5-10% (1.09x). Also notable, the 10-25% group rakes in about 35% more income than the top 1%, but pays less than half as much in taxes.
Put another way, relative to the bottom 50%, the top 1% currently pays over 14 times as much in income taxes for each dollar earned. The president’s solution to this glaring inequity: raise taxes on the top. I may not be a mathematician, but I’m pretty sure that would make the tax inequality gap bigger, not smaller.
Aside from demonstrating the canyon-like tax disparity, the graph also highlights another economic point generally lost on liberals: the 1% may control a vast amount of income, but they still can’t match the income earned by the rest of the country. As rich as the “millionaires and billionaires” may be, the 99% can still outspend them.
QOTD: "It seems to me the federal government just doesn’t want to know who’s here illegally." --Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., listening to oral arguments in the matter of Arizona attempting to enforce federal immigration law
I thought EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus telling Congress that his agency doesn't look at jobs losses when doing its economic analysis was something, but that's nothing compared to this video of an EPA administrator comparing what he does to ancient Romans soldiers conquering a village. The Washington Examiner's Joel Gehrke reports [emphasis mine]:
Al Armendariz, a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, explained in 2010 that he understands the EPA policy to be to "crucify" a few oil and gas companies to get the rest of the industry to comply with the laws.
"I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement," Armendariz said during a meeting in 2010. "It's kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean: they’d go into little Turkish towns somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they’d run into, and they’d crucify them and then, you know, that town was really easy to manage over the next few years."
...Armendariz went on to say he believes in hitting oil and gas companies "as hard as you can" to "make examples out of them."
Runaway spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will drive federal debt to unsustainable levels over the next few decades. Total national debt consists of publicly held debt and intergovernmental debt. Intergovernmental debt is the amount that the government owes to specific programs or agencies, such as the Social Security Trust Fund. Publicly held debt is more relevant to credit markets.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), convening his Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security, vowed to have a legislative response of his own should the justices uphold the state law that allows police to require proof of residency with probable cause... “It is simply too damaging to our economy and too dangerous to our democracy to have 50 different states be permitted to take their own direction when it comes to immigration policy,” Schumer said. “The Supreme Court should find the Arizona law unconstitutional, but if it doesn’t, Congress will be ready.”
“Our founding fathers gave Congress plenary power over immigration law,” Schumer said. “The Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the naturalization language in Article I to mean that the establishment of the immigration laws and the manner of their execution are committed solely to the federal government.”
...[Former Arizona legislator] Pearce countered that “illegal is a crime, not a race,” and that the majority of illegal immigrants just happen to come across the southern border... “It’s simply the rule of law,” he said. “Laws without consequences are not laws at all,” and SB 1070 forbids racial profiling, he added.
Supreme Court justices took a dim view of the Obama administration’s claim that it can stop Arizona from enforcing immigration laws, telling government lawyers during oral argument Wednesday that the state appears to want to push federal officials, not conflict with them...
...“It seems to me the federal government just doesn’t want to know who’s here illegally,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said at one point [and] even Democratic-appointed justices were uncertain of [the Obama administration's argument].
“I’m terribly confused by your answer,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who went on to say that the federal government can always decline to pick up illegal immigrants when Arizona officials call.
The norming of evil. As the depraved left tightens its chokehold on the culture, the media, arts, and popular culture in general reveal to us their true face -- monsters. This is how Hitler and his lovers overtook a country...... incrementally, step by step, mainstreaming hate, dehumanization and genocide via the culture. This is the MBO of the left/Islamic coalition in America. The banality of evil.
American clothing company Urban Outfitters is selling a holocaust T-shirt bearing the Jewish star that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis in death camps. This Urban Outfitters T-shirt is labeled "Auschwitz chic" and retails for $100. The “patchwork Star of David on the left breast pocket goes back to 1930s and 40s Europe.” The “vintage yellow color” of the shirt is Nazi yellow -- obvious to students of Nazi Germany. This is just another in a long line from the antisemitic Urban Outfitters of Jew-hating clothing pieces using monstrous iconography. The latest Jew-hatred fashion follows on the heels of Arafat's war scarf (the keffiyeh) is this Auschwitz tee shirt. The store also generated anger in 2004 with a shirt bearing the words “Everybody Loves a Jewish Girl,” surrounded by dollar signs and shopping bags.
QOTD: "...how is everyone adjusting to the knowledge that Romney is our nominee? It could be worse. He’s well-spoken, he has economic knowledge, and he’s never eaten a dog. We could win this." --Frank J.