Union boss: We need to force socialism on America!
Well, his buddy B.O. is certainly trying. But you don’t normally see this kind of telegraphing one’s intentions, do you?
From the AFL-CIO blog, violence-promoting labor chief Richard Trumka urged his fellow leftists to seize back power from the Tea Party movement and take back “control of the national conversation.”
With the economy continuing to stagger and job creation not moving quickly, “working people are justifiably angry and frustrated” as they approach the Nov. 2 elections, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
…In the short term, said Trumka, the labor movement has to “recapture the moment and take control of the national conversation.” Building for the future, we need to fundamentally restructure our economy and re-establish popular control over the private corporations which have distorted our economy and hijacked our government. That’s a long-term job, but one we should start now.
Sorry, pal, but we’re taking the trash out in five weeks. And if your portly behind wants to sit in my garbage can, I’ll me more than happy to gorilla press you out to the dumpster, Humpty.
ObamaCare doesn’t suck as bad as we thought. It sucks worse than we thought.
Here is a great rundown (short, to the point) about how everything we were told by the left and the MSM (pardon the redundancy) about ObamaCare was crap. Takeaway line:
If you wonder why so many American voters are angry, and no longer give Obama the benefit of the doubt on a variety of issues, you need look no further than Obamacare, whose birthday gift to America might just be a GOP congressional majority.
Three million seniors losing their prescription drug coverage, thanks to ObamaCare
Didn’t President Kick#ss tell us ad nauseum last year that if you liked your coverage and your doctor, you could keep them? Yeah, that was total bovine feces (but you already knew that). Add this to the growing list of Pelosi’s “Things we’ll find out after passing the bill”:
More than 3 million seniors may have to switch their Medicare prescription plan next year, even if they’re perfectly happy with it, thanks to an attempt by the government to simplify their lives.
The policy change could turn into a hassle for seniors who hadn’t intended to switch plans during Medicare’s open enrollment season this fall.
And it risks undercutting President Barack Obama’s promise that people who like their health care plans can keep them.
A new analysis by a leading private research firm estimates that more than 3 million beneficiaries will see their current drug plan eliminated as Medicare tries to winnow down duplicative and confusing coverage, in order to offer consumers more meaningful choices. Instead of 40 or more plans in each state, beneficiaries would pick from 30 or so.
“As a result of this policy, there are going to be fewer plans offered in 2011,” said Bonnie Washington, a senior analyst with Avalere Health, which produced the study. “There is still going to be robust choice for beneficiaries, but those who have to change plans could experience some disruption and inconvenience.”
That’s a loss of 25% of choices…in the first year of ObamaCare! But hey, I’m sure there won’t be any more of those plans disappearing after that, right?
Parody: “Money for Nothin’, Spread the Wealth”
Dire Straits? How about Dem Strait:
Dems’ new message for midterms: OK, we lied about ObamaCare’s cost savings
But you must re-elect them so that they can…um…fix the takeover of healthcare that they forced down the public’s throat against massive public opposition and of which they seriously (intentionally?) underestimated the cost and never actually read.
Liberals: moving the goalposts when necessary. Excerpt:
Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”
The messaging shift was circulated this afternoon on a conference call and PowerPoint presentation organized by Families USA — one of the central groups in the push for the initial legislation. The call was led by a staffer for the Herndon Alliance, which includes leading labor groups and other health care allies. It was based on polling from three top Democratic pollsters: John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg.
The confidential presentation, available in full here and provided to POLITICO by a source on the call, suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal.
…
The presentation’s final page of “Don’ts” counsels against claiming “the law will reduce costs and deficit.”
The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.
Good luck with that message in November. “Yeah, we know you didn’t want it, and we shamelessly lied about its costs and negative impacts while dismissing your concerns. So how’s about putting us back in charge, huh?”
Next time you hear a leftist try to argue that ObamaCare is going to reduce costs, mention to the little pinko that not even the Democrats are making that argument anymore. They knew it was a lie when they jammed down our pieholes, and they’re now not even going to pretend anymore.
Another ObamaCare consequence: Some insurance companies no longer writing policies to cover kids
Yet another instance in a growing line of examples where Pelosi’s “We have to pass it to see what’s in it” warning was warranted. Details:
Some major health insurance companies will no longer issue certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.
Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said several big insurers in his state will stop issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state are doing likewise.
In Florida, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna, and Golden Rule — a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare — notified the insurance commissioner that they will stop issuing individual policies for children, said Jack McDermott, a spokesman for McCarty.
…
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida issues about 9,000 to 10,000 new policies a year that only cover children. Vice president Randy Kammer said the company’s experts calculated that guaranteeing coverage for children could raise premiums for other individual policy holders by as much as 20 percent.“We believe that the majority of people who would buy this policy were going to use it immediately, probably for high cost claims,” said Kammer. “Guaranteed issue means you could technically buy it on the way to the hospital.”
Kammer said the company did not make the decision lightly. “We were looking at all our other individual policy holders who pay a lot for coverage, and we didn’t think it was fair to given them that kind of an increase to benefit a small population that receives a greater advantage than they do,” she said.
Turns out that when you make businesses incur signifantly higher costs, businesses always look for ways to avoid getting socked with said skyrocketing costs. Huh. Go figure. Who knew, right?
Exit question: Why do Democrats hate children?
Pelosi’s strategy to retain the House: Hey, let’s run on the super awesome and mega-popular ObamaCare!
From The Hill:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is doubling down on healthcare reform, betting that it will do Democrats more good than harm in November’s elections.
She and her leadership team have seized on new polls that suggest healthcare overhaul’s popularity is rising, and they are urging members of Congress to use this week’s recess to tout the new law.
Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the party leadership have sent lawmakers back to their districts urging them to hold town hall-type meetings to highlight the law’s benefits, in the belief it could help Democrats avoid major losses in November.
Recent polls indicate a slow but steady uptick in the popularity of healthcare reform. (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? – Ed.) Despite Republican hopes that the law’s controversial passage will win them seats this fall, the Democrats’ actions show they still consider the issue a political winner.
If, by “a slow but steady uptick in the popularity of healthcare reform”, they mean “60% of voters favor repeal of ObamaCare”, then yeah…”a slow but steady uptick.”
I mean, we’ve seen over the last several days and weeks stories that (a) businesses are going to drop health care coverage for their employees because paying the fine is cheaper for them; (b) doctors are going to stop taking new Medicare and Medicaid patients, which will swell the size of emergency rooms; (c) taxes on medical supply companies are going up, which will be passed on to consumers; (d) high risk patients not being picked up in the new high risk pool; etc., etc., etc. So yeah, why wouldn’t there be an “uptick in the popularity of health care reform”?
Good luck with that strategy in swing districts, San Fran Nan.
Poll: 63% favor repeal of ObamaCare
The news just keeps getting worse for B.O., n’est-ce pas? From Rasmussen:
Support for repeal of the new national health care plan has jumped to its highest level ever. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 63% of U.S. voters now favor repeal of the plan passed by congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Obama in March.
Prior to today, weekly polling had shown support for repeal ranging from 54% to 58%.
Currently, just 32% oppose repeal.
The new findings include 46% who Strongly Favor repeal of the health care bill and 25% who Strongly Oppose it.
While opposition to the bill has remained as consistent since its passage as it was beforehand, this marks the first time that support for repeal has climbed into the 60s. It will be interesting to see whether this marks a brief bounce or indicates a trend of growing opposition.
Thirty-three percent (33%) of voters now believe the health care plan will be good for the country, down six points from a week ago and the lowest level of confidence in the plan to date. Fifty-five percent (55%) say it will be bad for the nation. Only three percent (3%) think it will have no impact.
This part doesn’t bode well for the Socialist-in-Chief and his Marxist minions in Congress:
Not only has support grown for repeal overall, it has also grown broadly in the electorate. Majorities of both men (65%) and women (62%) want ObamaCare repealed. Majorities in every age demographic want it repealed as well, including a shocking 70% of 18-29YO voters, which normally form the base of Barack Obama’s age-demographic support. That includes a 47% plurality that strongly supports repeal, suggesting that younger voters have finally realized that ObamaCare uses them to subsidize insurance premiums of older Americans.
In other demographics, the news is equally bad. Only the lowest income earners don’t want repeal, and that’s just by eight points, 40/48. Solid majorities support repeal in every other income bracket, and “strongly supports” doesn’t get below 48% in any of them. Seventy-two percent of independents want it repealed, and even 36% of Democrats support repeal — 17% of them strongly.
As Sarah Palin said: “I can see November from my house!” (S##k it, Tina Fey.)
Pelosi redefines “entrepreneur”
I cannot wait until this socialist moonbat wench is no longer Speaker of the House. Quoth Speaker Botox:
We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.
Uh…yeah. Just stop working and be a bum. That’s the message we need to be sending, right? Greece just called to say they think that’s a fine idea.
I thought an entrepreneur was someone who assumes a great deal of risk in order to launch a business. Apparently, the economic illiterates in the Democrap Party see losers who sit around and strum a guitar so poorly that no one will pay to hear their pablum, all while freeloading off of society’s producers, as the real entrepreneurs. Such ignorance goes a long way towards explaining their antipathy to real entrepreneurs in this country.
Exit question: Since the Dems already have the lazy good-for-nothing vote locked up, is Pelosi simply rallying the base here?
Euros: Hey, guess what? Socialism just MIGHT be a failure!
Looks like the Euros caught a clue bat upside their noggins. Sure, it’s a half-century in the making, but better late than never, n’est-ce pas? Details:
Analysts warned, however, that the emergency bailout fund would do nothing to reverse Europe’s soaring public debt — and could even worsen it.
“The last thing you give a drunk is another drink,” said Jeremy Batstone-Carr of Charles Stanley stockbrokers.
…
Even EU president Van Rompuy warned that the bloc risks irrelevance and the end of its expensive welfare programs if it can’t speed up economic growth, forecast to expand by just 1 percent this year.“With 1 percent growth we can’t finance our social model any more. With 1 percent structural growth we can’t play a role in the world,” he told the World Economic Forum in Brussels. “We need to double the economic growth potential that we now have.”
Many are skeptical that can be achieved.
So as the Euros are figuring out that it takes real money to run a bloated welfare state, and that pilfering the fruits of the producers to hand over to the non-producers doesn’t work has put them into a real craphole, American liberals are determined to emulate that failure here. Friggin’ wonderful.
Shocker: MA medical device companies laying off workers to pay for ObamaCare tax
You mean businesses won’t eat costs imposed on them by Big Government? Huh. Who knew? I mean, aside from me and everyone who isn’t a functional economic illiterate, who could have seen this coming?
Massachusetts medical-device companies say they’ll cut back on operational costs – and jobs – after a planned 2.3 percent tax on their products is implemented in 2013, according to a new survey.
The Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, which held its annual meeting yesterday in Boston, said about 90 percent of the 100 medical-device firms said they would reduce costs due to the new tax tucked into the recently passed health-care reform bill.
The tax – imposed to help pay for the massive health-care industry overhaul and expansion – is “of the greatest concern” to a majority of its members, the survey found.
About 70 percent of the survey respondents said future innovation will be hurt by a new federal “physician sunshine bill.” The bill will require medical-device firms to report their marketing expenditures on physicians, and a recently passed gift-ban law in Massachusetts.
About 41 percent of the council’s members said the new health-care bill will help the industry by expanding the number of people getting health-care insurance.
But 42 percent said the new health-care reform bill won’t increase their business, the survey found.
Awesome. Nothing encourages innovation in medical technology quite like taxing the companies that produce said innovation.
Communist-in-chief: In Obama’s America, there is a such thing as “making too much money”
Spread the wealth, redux. Quoth The Won (video link):
We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.
Sorry, ObaMao, but you do NOT get to be the final arbiter of how much money is “enough”!
Karl Marx may have been unavailable for comment, but his understudy sure did weigh in.
HHS actuaries’ report showing ObamaCare’s crippling costs was sat on until AFTER the vote was held!
Boy, it sure is a good thing we’ve got a media in this country that is entrusted to shine the light of truth on this kind of thing, as opposed to being the dog washers of the Democrats and the administration!
The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.
“The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,” says an HHS source. “Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.” (Yeah, that kind of IS the point of such a report. – Ed.)
The analysis, performed by Medicare’s Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a “nonpolitical” office, set off alarm bells when submitted. “We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff,” says the HHS staffer, “and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary’s office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report.”
Link to the report here (PDF file).
Liberals are impervious to facts, of course, so they didn’t need such a report giving them grief. A handful of Lap Dog Dems supported the bill under the bovine feces guise that the bill reduced costs and the deficit (parroting Oprompter’s talking points), and had this report seen the light of day before the vote, they would have had to look for a different excuse. Sure, they would have settled on a new excuse anyway, but they would have had a devil of a time explaining to their constituents why making health care and health insurance more expensive was a good thing. Why, it’s as if they had their minds made up in advance or something!
NYT tells us more bad stuff that will result from ObamaCare
As a follow-up to my previous post, the NYT is reporting even more negative fallout from the passage of ObamaCare. Excerpt:
William Mann of Pittsburgh earns just enough to get by. He is 46, doesn’t own a car, hasn’t taken a vacation in three years and hasn’t had health insurance for most of his adult life.
He is just the kind of person who should benefit from the health care overhaul, and he is, in fact, eligible for heavily subsidized insurance that will cost him an estimated $1,845 a year, while the government contributes about $2,756.
But Mr. Mann says he still can’t afford it. He lives too close to the edge, and won’t be buying insurance, even though he will face a fine under a provision called the individual mandate, which penalizes most Americans who don’t buy coverage starting in 2014. The requirement is one of the most controversial aspects of the overhaul.
“I just can’t put that kind of money out for a ‘maybe’ — maybe I’ll get sick and use it,” said Mr. Mann, who makes just over $25,000 a year as an administrative assistant at a small wine distribution company. “That’s a lot of money.”
What? I thought this was supposed to be a panacea for lower-income Americans? You mean it’s not “free”? Dude never gets sick, and yet he’s about to get penalized for having the temerity to…um…not get sick.
Boy, it sure is a good thing we’ve got the watchdogs in the media to tell us the ramifications of passing horrendous laws after said laws are passed. You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that the MSM was more interested in giving that miserable failure of a president any kind of signature policy win, and less interested in doing their d#mned jobs!
Nope…no liberal media bias!
NYT: Now that ObamaCare is law, how about we tell you the bad side effects?
Would’ve been nice for the Old Gray Hag to inform her remaining readers of this stuff before they cheerleaded the bill to passage, no? Excerpts:
New York’s insurance system has been a working laboratory for the core provision of the new federal health care law — insurance even for those who are already sick and facing huge medical bills — and an expensive lesson in unplanned consequences. Premiums for individual and small group policies have risen so high that state officials and patients’ advocates say that New York’s extensive insurance safety net for people like Ms. Welles is falling apart.
The problem stems in part from the state’s high medical costs and in part from its stringent requirements for insurance companies in the individual and small group market. In 1993, motivated by stories of suffering AIDS patients, the state became one of the first to require insurers to extend individual or small group coverage to anyone with pre-existing illnesses.
New York also became one of the few states that require insurers within each region of the state to charge the same rates for the same benefits, regardless of whether people are old or young, male or female, smokers or nonsmokers, high risk or low risk.
You mean charging everyone the exact same rates for different health needs, and requiring insurance companies to endure the heavy cost of covering someone with a pre-existing condition, results in staggeringly high rate increases? Go figure.
Healthy people, in effect, began to subsidize people who needed more health care. The healthier customers soon discovered that the high premiums were not worth it and dropped out of the plans. The pool of insured people shrank to the point where many of them had high health care needs. Without healthier people to spread the risk, their premiums skyrocketed, a phenomenon known in the trade as the “adverse selection death spiral.”
…
The new federal health care law tries to avoid the death spiral (yeah, right! – Ed.) by requiring everyone to have insurance and penalizing those who do not, as well as offering subsidies to low-income customers. But analysts say that provision could prove meaningless if the government does not vigorously enforce the penalties, as insurance companies fear, or if too many people decide it is cheaper to pay the penalty and opt out.Under the federal law, those who refuse coverage will have to pay an annual penalty of $695 per person, up to $2,085 per family, or 2.5 percent of their household income, whichever is greater. The penalty will be phased in from 2014 to 2016.
We’ve been saying that since the beginning. I am rarely sick, averaging a trip to see the doctor for anything other than an annual physical exam about once every 3 – 4 years. If my premiums get jacked up, I’m going to drop my health insurance. I’ll pay any penalties, which would necessarily be lower than my premiums, until I get really sick…at which point I’ll go buy insurance and the companies can’t tell me “No”, thus raising everyone’s rates. Once everyone else’s rates increase, then many of them will begin dropping their coverage, too, leaving fewer people in the pool and thus raising the rates on the saps who are still paying for their coverage.
This “premium increases – customer losses – premium increases” cycle will ultimately result in insurance companies going belly-up, i.e. the “death spiral.” That is the goal of the left, despite their assertions to the contrary. Once insurance companies all go out of business, then the feds will step in and fill the void with a single-payer government-run health insurance program. Get ready for health care with the efficiency of the DMV and the compassion of the IRS.
The NYT could have educated folks before ObamaCare passed, but obviously, they were too busy trying to get B.O. a signature win on his otherwise worthless presidency. Nope…no liberal media bias!
Satire alert: Communist Party USA sues Democrats for platform theft
Absolutely hilarious satire from The People’s Cube! Intro:
In a surprise move, the CPUSA (Communist Party USA) has announced a lawsuit against the Democratic Party and its leadership for the alleged theft of intellectual property. The plaintiffs claim that the entire so-called “new” Democratic agenda is, in fact, the product of a decades-long, painstaking campaign by CPUSA theorists, agitators, and underground subversive cells – which makes it the intellectual property of the Communist Party USA, protected by American copyright laws.”They stole our entire platform, rebranded it ‘progressive’, and claimed it as their own,” declared a CPUSA spokesperson at a press conference in San Francisco. “And we communists say, not so fast! Not in this country anyway, where we still have property rights and the rule of law, thank God! Actually, let me rephrase that…”
Read the rest while hilarity ensues! 
Congressional rocket scientists stripped themselves of their health insurance when they passed ObamaCare
Remember when San Fran Nan said they needed to pass the bill in order to find out what was in it?
Hey, Peloco: how does Obama’s @$$ taste now? Details:
The law apparently bars members of Congress from the federal employees health program, on the assumption that lawmakers should join many of their constituents in getting coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges.
But the research service found that this provision was written in an imprecise, confusing way, so it is not clear when it takes effect.
The new exchanges do not have to be in operation until 2014. But because of a possible “drafting error,” the report says, Congress did not specify an effective date for the section excluding lawmakers from the existing program.
Under well-established canons of statutory interpretation, the report said, “a law takes effect on the date of its enactment” unless Congress clearly specifies otherwise. And Congress did not specify any other effective date for this part of the health care law. The law was enacted when President Obama signed it three weeks ago.
In other words, Congress loses their health coverage until the law requires them to join the health insurance exchanges…that don’t exist until 2014. Hey, whatever happened to “If you like your plan, you get to keep your plan?” Congress apparently applied as much due diligence vetting this bill as Dan Rather applied to that memo in 2004.
A rhetorical question asked by the author:
The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?
You know what’s the most stunning aspect of this story? Not that the functional morons in Congress didn’t read the bill and thus missed nuggets like this. No, it’s the fact that the NYT ran this story! What, was Bill Keller on vacation this week or something?
They missed the loophole that allowed kids with pre-existing conditions to be excluded. Then they forgot to include the provision to allow loser adult children to continue mooching off Mom and Dad’s insurance. It seems like each day, the feds are discovering their oversights and incompetence in the bill. But hey, what could possibly go wrong(er)?
Doctor shortage is coming…or is it already here?
From WSJ:
The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.
Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.
The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.
So what happens when ObamaCare kicks in?
A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.
In other words: Welcome to Canada! For those of you on the left, that’s not a good thing.
Exit question: How long until Waxman calls the doctors onto the floor of Congress to browbeat them for pointing this out?
Chris “Tingles” Matthews: Hey, why doesn’t Obama sell America on how awesome socialism really is?
Well, Tingles is finally being honest about who liberals really are. Shame it had to come after President Manchurian Candidate was elected. Quoth the Leg Thrill guy on the little-watched MSDNC MSNBC network:
The problem is that we don’t think in terms of what would the country be like if we didn’t have Medicare for our parents as they get very old — in their eighties, for example, when they’re still alive, and they need health care, a lot of it. And they don’t have any source of income. They’re not working every morning. They’re not making a paycheck. What would it be like in this country? Calcutta? Poor people all over the place? Old people lying in the streets? I mean, we don’t think about what it would be if we didn’t have health care, if we didn’t have SocSecurity for people at the age of 65, if we didn’t have unemployment compensation, if we didn’t have a progressive income tax. There’s a lot of things we don’t think about. And the right-wing just pounds and pounds away at this idealistic notion of a cowboy country, everybody self-reliant (gasp! People self-reliant? Perish the thought! – Ed.). I think the progressives, for all their power on the blogosphere, have not done a positive case for the advantages of some kind of a social state.
That’s because there are no advantages for a socialist state! Seriously, one has to wonder, when listening to Tingles and his ilk, how the country ever survived before FDR pre-socialized our country. We were not Calcutta or some Third World nation, you leftist buffoon! While they weren’t necessarily the golden years, those days certainly didn’t drive this country to the precipice of bankruptcy the way that socialism has.
As to “they haven’t done a good job explaining the virtues of socialism” statement, there’s a reason for that, Chris: if they tried to be as open as you are about it, they’d win in San Fransicko, Berserkeley, and nearly nowhere else. Normal America rejects socialism, and that’s why you pustules have to force it on us incrementally.
While leftists like Tingles can freely tell both of his viewers how socialism rocks, elected officials have to be dishonest and clandestine about it.
Quote of the day, “IL Dem says he ‘doesn’t care’ what Constitution says” edition
This is merely Example #4,125,562 on how the left doesn’t think too highly of our Constitution:
“I don’t worry about the Constitution.”
…and…
“I believe that it says we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Um…no, it doesn’t. As anyone who has gone beyond 5th grade in social studies can tell you, those words appear in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.
Then again, when you’re a member of the party that routinely uses the Constitution as Charmin, it’s easy to see how you wouldn’t know what is in it. After all, how can you read a document when you’re wiping your backside with it?
Dems to American business: Hey, could you please shut up about how ObamaCare is costing you a fortune
Caterpillar. John Deere. Verizon. Valero. 3M. The list of companies who will be socked with $100+ million tax bills grows every day, thanks to the passage of ObamaCare. These businesses are letting everyone know about the tax hits.
How are the Dems reacting? Why, by trotting these companies before Congress, of course! Details:
Here’s the story: one of the provisions in the new health care law forces companies to treat the current subsidies for retiree health benefits as taxable income. This strikes me as dumb policy; there’s not much point in giving someone a subsidy, and then taxing it back, unless you just like doing extra paperwork. And since the total cost of the subsidy, and any implied tax subsidy, is still less than we pay for an average Medicare Part D beneficiary, we may simply be encouraging companies to dump their retiree benefits and put everyone into Part D, costing us taxpayers extra money.But this is neither here nor there, because Congress already did it. And now a bunch of companies with generous retiree drug benefits have announced that they are taking large charges to reflect the cost of the change in the tax law.Henry Waxman thinks that’s mean, and he’s summoning the heads of those companies to Washington to explain themselves. It’s not clear what they’re supposed to explain. What they did is required by GAAP. And I’ve watched congressional hearings. There’s no chance that four CEO’s are going to explain the accounting code to the fine folks in Congress; explaining how to boil water would challenge the format.…Obviously, Waxman is incensed because this seems to put the lie to the promise that if you like your current plan, nothing will change. But this was never true. Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are basically going to see their generous benefits slashed, retiree drug benefits suddenly cost more and may now be discontinued, and ultimately, more than a few employers will almost certainly find it cheaper to shut down their plans. If Congress didn’t want those things to happen, it should have passed a different law.If Congress thinks that it made the right tradeoffs–or at least, justiiable choices–then our Congressmen should step up and accept responsibility for what they’ve done. At the very least, I think we can ask that they refrain from trying to force companies to join them in denying reality by threatening congressional investigation of any company who dares to notify investors that this thing is going to cost them money.
“Shut up”, he explained.
Los Grandes Nostrils has a lot of gall. American businesses have to use real-world accounting practices, whereas Congress does not. When these businesses inform us as to the actual results of socialized medicine, they are told to keep their cakeholes shut.
Ace thinks the same way I do:
In fact, Waxman doesn’t want an answer to that; what he wants is for companies to hide these new, embarrassing costs illegally, so that Democrats don’t have to answer questions about them. And he figures harassment and the threat of punitive legislative action should be enough to give other companies the hint.
Memo to the Dems: No! They do not have to keep the bad news to themselves! And come November, there are two things that the Dems can do about this: jack and squat.
An amazing analogy regarding ObamaCare
Doctor Zero absolutely nails this one out of the park. Here’s an excerpt, but do yourself a favor (unless you want to suck) and read it all:
Imagine a large condominium complex is meeting to consider a package deal with a cable TV company. Over eighty percent of the condo owners have their own satellite dishes, and are quite happy with the service. Some of them don’t bother to watch television at all, preferring to rent movies from Blockbuster or Netflix for entertainment. However, the condominium Board of Directors says they’re getting a lot of complaints from the residents who don’t have satellite dishes, demanding the condo association purchase a cable TV package, and fold its cost into the monthly homeowner dues.
The homeowners already pay extremely high dues, and they’re not happy with the quality of service they receive. They also notice that most of the people clamoring for cable television aren’t even homeowners – they’re renters, so they don’t pay the association fees directly. The condo owners already host regular movie nights at the clubhouse, which also has a well-stocked library, so no one is truly starved for entertainment. Still, the owners feel guilty that anyone has to make do without TV service in their home, so they invite a cable company to give them a sales pitch.
The cable company, BFD Communications, produces an incredibly complicated plan for providing cable television service to the community. The plan is thousands of pages long, and no one even claims to have read the whole thing. They spend the weeks leading up to the big board meeting pestering all of the residents with relentless advertising for their services, covering doorknobs and windshields with brochures. Their presentation at the board meeting is several hours long.
BFD Communications explains that purchasing their service will require a lifetime contract, which can never be broken. The condo residents will be required to deal exclusively with BFD for their entertainment needs – all satellite dishes must go, and even the library will fall under their control. The contract will include funding for a large corporate security force, which will ensure compliance by issuing fines for illegal satellite dishes, or attempts to smuggle rented movies into the development. As this feature of the contract is being explained to the homeowners, a large screen behind the BFD representatives is flashing slogans like “BFD Enhances Competition!” and “BFD Saves You Money!”
The cable TV contract will be fantastically expensive. Curiously, while it is a lifetime contract, the company refuses to discuss the fee schedule beyond the first ten years. An intrepid homeowner studies the contract and discovers the costs double after ten years… and this assessment was prepared by CBO Auditing, a firm which has underestimated the cost of every contract it has ever reviewed. The condo Board rules that only the ten-year projections matter, and the intrepid homeowner is asked to leave the meeting. …
Brilliant! Read it all.
Quote of the day, “Dem Senator admits ObamaCare is meant to enforce socialism” edition
When he’s not busy trying to get his mistress a job as a U.S. Attorney or getting drunk on the Senate floor, Max Baucus likes to pass the time waxing eloquent about ObamaCare (video link):
Too often, much of late, the last couple three years the mal-distribution of income in America is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America.
“Mal-distribution”? My spellcheck just exploded on that word. Is that a Bushism or something?
But hey, where would you get the crazy idea that Democrats are socialists or anything?
Castro luvs ObamaCare
If you want real proof that ObamaCare sucks and is nothing more than socialized medicine, look no further:
Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Thursday declared passage of American health care reform “a miracle” and a major victory for Obama’s presidency, but couldn’t help chide the United States for taking so long to enact what communist Cuba achieved decades ago.
“We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of his (Obama’s) government,” Castro wrote in an essay published in state media, adding that it would strengthen the president’s hand against lobbyists and “mercenaries.”
But hey, where would you get the crazy idea that Obama is a Marxist or anything?
So, you think “health care reform” is all about health care, huh?
Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) lets it slip what those of us on the right have been saying for years: socialized medicine is all about empowering government and controlling people, nothing more.
Dingell-berry was being interviewed by a Detroit talk radio show host about ObamaCare. He says this about his elation of the bill’s passage:
Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.
Dick Durbin (D-IL) took time out from comparing our troops to Pol Pot and Stalin in order to weigh in, too. Joe Scarborough asked him if taxing employers and small businesses in the middle of a recession with double-digit unemployment was a good idea.
Yes, if you’re making over $200,000 a year, you’re going to pay slightly more in taxes. It’s the cost, I think, of having the kind of America we want to have.
The kind of America who wants to have? Big government statist authoritarians, naturally.
So the next time you hear what you think are wingnut paranoid conspiracy theories about how the feds want to control you via your health care, just remember the words of Dingell and Durbin, two Democrats who ushered in this monstrosity. Be sure to thank your local Blue Lap Dog Democrat who voted for it, too, and tell him/her that Dingell has let the mask slip off.
Quote of the day, “Conyers’ constitutional ignorance” edition
Too bad it was his wife that went to prison. After all, she’s not the one wreaking havoc on the entire nation. Quoth the Detroit dolt:
During an interview Capitol Hill Friday, CNSNews.com asked Rep. Conyers, “The individual mandate in the bill requires individuals to purchase health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has said that never before in the history of the United States has the federal government required any one to purchase any good or service. What part of the Constitution do you think gives Congress the authority to mandate individuals to purchase health insurance?”
Conyers said: “Under several clauses, the good and welfare clause and a couple others. All the scholars, the constitutional scholars that I know — I’m chairman of the Judiciary committee, as you know — they all say that there’s nothing unconstitutional in this bill and if there were, I would have tried to correct it if I thought there were.”
There’s just one small problem with conyers’ explanation:
The word “good” only appears once in the Constitution, in Article 3, Section 1, which deals with the Judicial Branch, not the powers of Congress. Article 3, Section 1 says in part: “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.”
As far as “nothing unconstitutional”?
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), however, the federal government has never before mandated that Americans buy any good or service. In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan formulated by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, the CBO studied the plan’s provision that would have forced individuals to buy health insurance and determined it was an unprecedented act.
The CBO stated: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
This dude is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and he doesn’t even know the law of the land? Wonderful.
Stupak trades in pro-life credentials, proves beyond doubt that there is no such thing as a “pro-life Democrat”
Bart Stupid is has thrown a 30-year “pro-life” record down the health care crapper. Excerpt from FNC story:
The National Right to Life Committee argued that seven objectionable pro-abortion provisions in the Senate bill are unchanged.
“The executive order promised by President Obama was issued for political effect. It changes nothing. It does not correct any of the serious pro-abortion provisions in the bill. The president cannot amend a bill by issuing an order, and the federal courts will enforce what the law says,” the group said.
Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund President Marjorie Dannenfelser said the group was revoking its “Defender of Life” award to Stupak, which was to be awarded at its Wednesday night gala.
“We were planning to honor Congressman Stupak for his efforts to keep abortion-funding out of health care reform. We will no longer be doing so,” Dannenfelser said. “Let me be clear: any representative, including Rep. Stupak, who votes for this health care bill can no longer call themselves ‘pro-life.’”
And for what? For assurances from the Senate and from B.O. that his anti-abortion language will appear at a later time, yet to be determined?
Here’s the thing, though: Stupak intended on making sure ObamaCare would pass, even if his abortion concerns weren’t settled. Video proof is here, from a town hall last year with Stupunk. He says he wants abortion funding prohibited, but he won’t stop the bill from passing. So if he winds up voting “No”, it’s only because Queen Nancy released him to vote that way, since she browbeat enough Dems into submitting and supporting their pyrrhic bill.
There is no such thing as a principled pro-life Democrat. Stupuke just proved it. When push comes to shove, these people are Democrats first, and everything else second.
Quote of the day, “Pelosi doubles down on passing bill FIRST and THEN addressing it” edition
Not content with having made a buffoon of herself the first time, San Fran Nan decides to double down on her idea to pass first, ask questions later. Details:
In a particularly Alice-in-Wonderland moment, Pelosi argued that the debate over health care reform can begin after the bill is passed. “Pelosi said passing the bill would allow Dems to undertake a ‘debate’ with Republicans over ‘what is the balanced role that government should have,’” writes another pro-reform blogger at the Post, Greg Sargent. According to Sargent, Pelosi explained, “We have to take it to the American people, to say, this is the choice that you have. This is the vision that they have for your health and well being, and this is the vision that we have.” Again, in Pelosi’s scenario, that debate would occur after the bill is passed.
Un. Friggin’. Believable.
ObamaCare’s suicide bombers (metaphorically speaking)
Here’s hoping that the Bu$hitler McRummyburton moonbats get their hemp boxers in a bunch over this political cartoon by Michael Ramirez:
Obama’s economic ignorance is profound when it comes to health care
Dude’s a buffoon, and we all know it. Here’s B.O.’s quote demonizing the health insurance industry:
“Every year, they raise premiums higher and higher,” Obama said “They will keep doing this for as long as they can get away with it.”
By the way, while President Training Wheels slams the industry for having the audacity to profit, the ObamaCare plan basically writes a $330+ billion check to the health insurance companies. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? “You guys make too much money and ought to be ashamed of yourself! So, to teach you a lesson, I’m giving you a 1/3-trillion dollar check. Guess you’ll be more careful in the future, now won’t you?”
But John at Powerline breaks it down beautifully:
Obama says insurers will raise premiums “as long as they can get away with it.” You could say the same about a lot of people, of course. We lawyers have tended to raise our rates as long as we could “get away with it.” Obama’s labor union supporters negotiate to raise their wages “as long as they can get away with it.” The newspapers that made Obama a national figure raise their advertising rates “as long as they can get away with it.” Any manufacturer will raise the price of its goods “as long as they can get away with it.” To do otherwise could expose management to legal liability to shareholders. What stops all of us from raising our prices indefinitely? Why, at some point, can’t we “get away with it?”
The answer is competition. Any company will–and should–raise the prices of its goods or services until they reach the point where they are constrained by competition. Our government has followed a perverse policy with regard to health care, by limiting the extent to which health insurers can compete against each other and thereby constrain each others’ prices. The obvious solution, if we want to rein in health insurance costs, is to 1) broaden competition in the industry to the maximum amount possible, and 2) repeal all mandates that require insurance companies to charge for coverages that many people don’t want.
Exactly. But the goal isn’t quality, affordable healthcare. The goal is statist control over the lives of every American. When they own your health, they own you.
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