OBAMA DECREES THAT IT'S TIME FOR AN "UP AND DOWN" VOTE!

Note the clowns from central casting in white doctor's coats being used as props, but Obama and Liberals never use political props, right Representative Cantor!?

Obama decrees that it's time for an “up and down” vote on health care reform.  One of the main arguments for the use of the simple majority legislative process, i.e., budget reconciliation, is that it has been used before. For example, Bush’s tax cuts and welfare reform were passed via the reconciliation process. The problem with Obama’s argument is that welfare reform passed with 80% bipartisan support and the tax cuts passed with 60% bipartisan support with even Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein voting for the Bush tax cuts.

Obama argued (read distorted the truth) that the reconciliation process has been used before.

Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a super majority of 60 votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up or down vote that was cast on welfare reform, that was cast on the Children's Health Insurance Program, that was used for COBRA health coverage for the unemployed, and, by the way, for both Bush tax cuts -- all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.

With the so-called health care reform, there is NO Republican support and the Democrat support is shaky at best. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, told ABC's Good Morning America, he will oppose the president unless anti-abortion language is included in a final bill.  Good luck with that one, because the radical pro-abortionist faction of the Democrat party will oppose that. Senator Barbara Boxer has run on that single issue since 1992.  As Rush Limbaugh pointed out today, all that has to be done is for the House to pass the Senate bill and he has legislation to sign without the Republican proposals. Reconcilition is a red herring.  It's getting the Senate bill passed that will be the trick.


The usual suspects have rounded up by Obumbler and flogged politically for their evil ways. It is funny how greedy medical corporations never get called out on their billing practices. A friend of mine went to one of these mega-medical corporations to get treatment for severe bronchitis. She was given four treatments, but the medical corporation billed the insurance company for seven treatments! When she attempted to point this out to the insurance company she was told by the representative, “We don’t question the bills ma’am--we just pay them.”  Obama further argued (read distorted the truth) that:

We're going to eliminate wasteful taxpayer subsidies that currently go to insurance and pharmaceutical companies; set a new fee on insurance companies that stand to gain a lot of money and a lot of profits as millions of Americans are able to buy insurance; and we're going to make sure that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share on Medicare.

My Mother, who’s on that great medical scam also known as Medicare, had a gastric problem. Her bill from the hospital was over $14,000! But they ran multiple tests just “to be sure” that there was no serious illness. After all she is a senior citizen and the government is paying for it. I call this “big yellow truck” syndrome. I drive a yellow ’74 Dodge pick-up, which I hate taking it to mechanics because they see an old truck and figure that the college fund can be started up. Fortunately, I have found an honest mechanic, which is as rare as finding an honest lawyer or a competent doctor.

Recently, my medical insurance company sent several letters indicating that they had not paid my medical bills in full for the services rendered because the lab and the doctor apparently had charged more than the agreed contractual rate. Perhaps this was just a mistake or maybe it’s just that the medical corporations are grabbing as much money as they can. But it is heartening to see that insurance companies are being proactive in holding down costs and not just passing the on the costs to the consumer.

Where’s the outrage over inflated legal fees? There’s never any criticism by Obama of tort lawyers that take the lion’s share of any settlement or law suit against a medical entity. As a former state bar attorney, I ran into countless cases of over billing for simple legal matters. The financial abuse in contingency cases can be almost analogous to highway robbery. The traditional amount for contingency cases has been one third of the final award, but some attorneys now use a sliding scale depending how the case goes. There a tremendous incentive for the lawyer to seek not what is just but what is lucrative. Is it any wonder that the practice of defensive medicine has become standard operating procedure?

Here’s a funny thing about medical costs. I went to an eye doctor with the idea of not going to the ophthalmologist that my insurer would pay for. I wanted choice and was willing to pay for it out of my own pocket. What I found was that I got a complete eye exam for $110 dollars if I paid cash. If I used insurance, the bill would have been $230! What does this tell you? Many people pay that amount every month each for cable and cell phone service. Where are our priorities? An eye exam is something that should be done every one to three years for most people.

 When people used to speak about having medical insurance, they usually meant catastrophic medical insurance for high cost illnesses costing thousands of dollars. Richard Nixon proposed such coverage back in 1974, but as you may recall, he was mired in Watergate and the proposal withered on the vine.  In Nixon’s words:

Every American participating in the program would be insured for catastrophic illnesses that can eat away savings and plunge individuals and families into hopeless debt for years. No family would ever have annual out-of-pocket expenses for covered health services in excess of $1,500, and low-income families would face substantially smaller expenses.

Surprisingly, Nixon’s plan sounds eerily like many aspects of Obama’s plan. The government ends up footing much of the bill.  But that was a different time and place. America was relatively prosperous and the population was much smaller. With the arrival of illegal aliens to this country, we run risk of bankrupting the nation taking on other nations’ responsibilities.

There are other far better ways to handle health care costs such as health savings accounts or high deductible insurance policies.  But the best way to lower costs is to maintain your health by taking charge of your life and making better health choices. This may be the hardest aspect of health care reform. But we have to start somewhere.

ED SCHULTZ--A BLITHERING, BLOVIATING LUMMOX

Can you believe this guy? Is there a bigger human anus walking the face of the Earth than Ed "Sergeant" Schultz?   After watching and listening to this blithering, bloviating, lummox of a turncoat Liberal-Fascist windbag, it would be a reasonable inference that most Liberal-Fascists are mentally ill, untalented, and just plain stupid.  And I don't give a damn if they have degrees from an Ivy League school.  The grading systems at most Ivy League schools are a joke anyway. Gradeflation is a way of life at Ivy League schools.
 

Ed Schultz however, went to Morehead State University on a football scholarship.  Lyndon "Useless" Baines Johnson once said of Gerald Ford, "He's a nice fellow but he spent too much time playing football without a helmet."    This  might explain the irrational turn of phrase by the Good Sergeant Schultz concerning Dick Cheney. 

 

Here's an interesting factoid about Mr. Schultz courtesy of the Notable Names Data Base (NNDB):

By the early 1990s he was hosting a conservative radio talk show. [NN: Do tell.]  As recently as 2000, Schultz was still cheerleading on the air for far right candidates and causes, but he now describes himself as a "gun-toting, meat-eating, drug-free liberal from America's heartland." He says he had a change of heart, abandoning his conservative outlook after his girlfriend (now his wife), who worked in a Salvation Army soup kitchen, challenged him to stop by and actually meet some of "the bums" he had routinely castigated on his radio show.  [NN: I guess he was "whipped," so to speak, into getting his mind right or left, as it were.]

A political pundit or talker who switches sides is a rarity, and as such Schultz is despised by some right-tilting listeners who see him as a traitor, and viewed with distrust by some left-leaners who doubt his sincerity. [NN: You could add failed conservative pundit Arianna Huffington to the list of opportunistic political pundit turncoats. According to the NNDB "...the former Mrs Huffington went to work for Republican Newt Gingrich, and wrote a conservative newspaper column that was syndicated, but with minimal success. Readers and editors were perplexed when, instead of being utterly predictable in her views, Huffington's columns began inching bit-by-bit to the left. By the turn of the millennium, she had reinvented herself as a liberal columnist."] Despite the "liberal" tag, Schultz's opinions are mostly middle-of-the-road, and his radio program is owned by Randy Michaels and Stu Krane, two conservative former syndication executives for The Rush Limbaugh Show. [NN:  NNDB needs to seriously update its profile on Schultz.  If his views are middle of the road then I'm a 6' 6" blond Swede.]

After Sgt. Schultz's little outburst on PMSNBC, can we really describe him as middle of the road?  Here's another nugget from NNDB about Sgt. Schultz's tendency to blow-up:

Schultz later worked as a sportscaster for a TV station in Fargo, North Dakota, where he married and divorced the station's news co-anchor. In 1988, he was briefly suspended from on-air duties after screaming obscenities and coming out of the broadcast booth at a football game, to confront several fans he believed had thrown an empty whiskey bottle into the booth.

What is it about sportscasting that drives people like Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann to become radical, irrational Liberal-Fascists? 

Now if I were to descend to the irrational shrill level of Sgt. Schultz I would probably say that I would like to kick Ed Schultz's ass up between his shoulder blades.  But not being a Liberal-Fascist mental case I would instead say what a crude boorish moron Ed Schultz is.  I'm truly glad that he went over to the dark side.  We don't need such heartless cruel jerks on our side.

WANTED: A NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Back in the mid-1990s, an old boss of mine and I had a lively discussion about the economy.  I argued that a service economy is a loser economy and that we needed to build and make things.  He told me that information technology was the wave of the future and that we didn't need an industrial base anymore.  Information was the key to everything.

Everytime a Super Bowl game has come to my city, the city fathers and mothers extoll the virtues of the jobs being created.  Nevermind that these jobs are temporary and that the vast majority of the profits will go to the big shots.  The small fry will end up with just enough to stave off wolf at the door for one more month or two.  The politicians do enough to bring temporary jobs to the city, but not so much as to disrupt the finest Tourist Plantation that is San Diego as depicted in the controversial public piece displayed on the back of San Diego Transit buses 1n 1988. 

We see this same "do just enough to fill their bellies" attitude in the so-called "shovel ready jobs" for public works that the Obama Administration is pushing.  In reality a fraction of this money has been spent in anticipation of the later purchase of votes in the fall elections in key states. The big contractors will get the lion's share of the monies while workers will get just enough to keep up a few more payments on their houses or a maxed-out credit cards.  Once the project is done, the politician has his or her legacy (by using other people's money) and there is another monument to governmental ineptitude.

What is needed right now, to paraphase the munificent Obama, is a "laser beam" focus on creating a new industrial base in this country.  But that won't be easy because we've outsourced manufacturing to the third world, India, and China.  We cannot do it by legislative fiat and order businesess to return to the United States.   All that's left is the make work public sector jobs.

The  public sector labor union AFSME says that we must invest more in public sector services to create a robust private sector!  According to AFSME:

“President Obama addresses the nation tonight [NN: i.e., The State of Confusion address!] after pulling the American economy back from the brink of a second Depression. Unfortunately, we have learned in the past year that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was not big enough to stimulate a full-scale recovery. Unless we act now, more Americans –- including nearly a million public employees –- could lose their jobs as current federal investments run out and the vital services Americans need during tough times are cut to the bone. There simply won’t be an economic recovery if Washington turns its back on Main Street USA. [NN: Investments? WTF!?]

“Economists from all sides of the political spectrum agree that one of the best ways to save and create American jobs is through vigorous investments in public services. For example, respected economist Mark Zandi, a former advisor to Sen. John McCain, estimates that every dollar invested in public services yields $1.38 in economic growth.  [NN: Did you ask supply-side or Libertarian economists about this assertion?

“Investing in public sector jobs creates jobs in the private sector. Federal funding is needed to keep our streets safe, our children educated and our families in good health. As living, breathing engines of economic development, AFSCME members urge President Obama and members of Congress to focus like a laser beam on saving and creating American jobs by including robust investments in public services in any upcoming jobs legislation.” [NN: Here's the payoff to the public employee unions.]

Talk about a self-serving and an infinitely stupid approach to the economy.  Spending money that you don't have to make money.  This is like borrowing money to bet on blackjack.  Keynesian economics has never worked anywhere, anytime, or anyplace.  The last time it was used on a broad scale was in the 1970s during the Carter malaise.  For those not educated in the public school system since 1970, we all know the result of Carter's deficit spending.  It's seems that we don't learn the lessons of history very well. 

Obama's stimulus package is the same tired "solution" but on a far grander scale.  Just as in the 1970s when I worked as a student intern the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs for a California county, the only permanent jobs that I saw created were in the public sector.  This time the job creation is more insidious because the government jobs that are being created by Obama's stimulus package is nothing more than a political payoff to the SEIU public employee union.

So what do we do?  The tax code must be oriented toward rebuilding America's industrial base and retiring the Federal debt.

1. Exempt the first $10,000 of Gross Income from taxation that is placed in a designated liquid tax savings account. The final figure for purposes of determing the tax exemption would be determined by the same method used to determine the average daily balance for your credit card balance. The difference is that the figure would be determined on an annualized basis. Because the account would be liquid, it would available without the penalties associated with withdrawals from other time deposit accounts. The only penalty to the taxpayer would be a self-imposed one that would reduce the size of the tax exemption if any funds are withdrawn prior to January 1st of the succeeding tax year.  The net effect of this proposal would be to provide real funds to financial institutions and not loaned Federal fiat money. The banks in turn could loan these real monetary funds to the real job creators--small businesses. This expands the money supply in the purest capitalistic way without any government bailouts or loans.   You can almost hear the class warfare stooges saying that the exemption favors the rich.  So what if some "wealthy" people get a $10,000 exemption? Isn't their money just as good if used to benefit the entire nation? This proposed investment tax treatment also makes any tax savings savings bank account an attractive investment for every economic level. More importantly everyone, poor, comfortable, and rich alike would have the incentive to save and provide their own tax cuts.  Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have sheltered their fortunes through charitable foundations. So why not have a shelter for the the rest of us? Of course this would take a lot of power away from the Federal Reserve Bank, but quite frankly they've done a lousy job of managing the money supply and the economy.

2. Provide for generous capital gains treatment and accelerated depreciation for all domestic AND foreign companies that construct or significantly improve factories located or constructed within the United States.

3. Provide for a sur-deduction of ten percent of the average monthly salary plus the monthly base salary of non-management employees. The caveat to this deduction would be that the (1) employee must have worked for a minimum of 180 days in tax/calendar year and have not been terminated for cause or laid off, (2) Have the absolute legal right to work in the United States, and (3) have actually worked a minimum of 90% of the employment period. There will be no exceptions to requirment (3), including illness. Temporary and seasonal help would be excluded from eligibility for the sur-deduction.

4. Place a 12-month moritorium on NEW applications for immigration visas and citizenship. Those already in process may continue. Hardship and refugee cases may be considered on a case by case basis.

5. Under no circumstances shall unconditional amnesty to illegal immigrants be granted.

6. All costs for expenses incurred because of illegal immigration shall be collected from the country of origin and not the Federal government. Jurisdiction for a new Federal cause of action for state, local governments, and other entities that have provided uncompensated services and goods to illegal immigrants shall be in the Federal Court system in the Court of Claims.

7. American English shall become the official business language of the Federal government. This means that all official Federal documents and voting materials involving any Federal election shall be published in American English only. States and local governments may continue to use multi-lingual ballots, but only for local and state elections.  The purpose of this measure is to prevent the balkanization of the United States and to provide a unifying factor that will assist in economic growth.

8. Immediately end all bans on offshore drilling and nuclear power construction. We have denied ourselves a plentiful energy source because of a stupid movie, The China Syndrome and one oil spill. The Liberal-Fascists are Luddites when they talk about the illusory green economy and its windmill retro-technology.

9. Immediately commence an investigation into the accounting procedures and practices of Freddie Mac and, in particular, Fannie Mae that resulted in former head Franklin Raines to reap $93 million in bonuses. This money be recovered and paid back to the American taxpayer.  This would go a long toward restoring confidence in the stability and integrity of the American economy.

10. Term limits for every Federal office.  No one should ever have a lifetime office or job. This results in the decline of innovation if the same tired approaches are allowed to entrench themselves. Two four-year terms for the President, two six year terms for Senators, four two-year terms for House members, and 16 years with a right of reconfirmation for all Federal judges. The reason for 16 years is because Americans voted in 1944 to give the First American Fascist Dictator, Franklin D. Roosevelt a fourth term as President.  That was the last time that Americans spoke on the issue of term limits on the Federal level.  For too long, we had plutocrat Liberal-Fascists like Obama, Kennedy, Soros, Buffett, and Rockefeller deconstructing selected aspects of the American economy.  It is time end this economic tyranny.

If you think that you've seen this before, you have.  It's a part of a new Contract with America that I wrote about some time ago.  Maybe if I say the truth long enough it will be believed.