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POPS Advance To The Rear!
(Well, in fairness, even if the president did declare back in 2008 this war was a vital national security interest, and he did signal last spring he was on board with counterinsurgency, and even if he did appoint Gen. Stanley McChrystal to get the job done in May, the general’s recommendations only arrived in August, and the president didn’t look at them until, what, late September, and he’s been really busy this whole time letting Congress bollix his health-care initiative, throwing Eastern Europe under the bus and flying to Copenhagen, that kind of thing, so he’s only been able to squeeze in seven high-level national security meetings, or is it eight? Is it so unreasonable to ask for new options on top of the new options that he asked for on top of the new options that McChrystal gave him? Meanwhile, China’s ass wants kissing and then we’re into the holidays … ) OK, I get that the political piece is vitally important, and for Eikenberry, up to his armpits in scheming
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POPSJim DeMint Proposes Term Limits For Congress Rarely, he gets voted out--and Senator DeMint points out that 90% of all incumbents who seek re-election, win re-election. Tom Coburn offers greater detail on why incumbents win re-election 90% of the time: The power of incumbency has created an almost insurmountable advantage for Washington politicians. Incumbency allows politicians to raise millions of dollars in campaign funds in exchange for earmarks. Incumbency gives Congress the power to raise money for itself " Congress just approved itself an increase of nearly $250 million from the U.S. Treasury that members will spend to promote themselves. Senator Coburn also points out that with redistricting (except for the unlucky Representative who gets drawn out of the House if his State loses one or more seats), a Representative, having good connections with his State legislature, can "choose his voters." The effect of this amendment would be very simple. Senators would be limited to two terms or fifteen years ....
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POPSObamaCare: A Bad Deal for Young Adults Massachusetts benefits from another type of subsidy that props up its regime of mandates and price controls: large subsidies from the federal government. In contrast, the United States as a whole has no external party it can exploit to subsidize a nationwide Massachusetts-style health care overhaul"unless Congress finances that overhaul through additional deficit spending, which is really just another way of taxing the young to subsidize the old. by Aaron Yelowitz Aaron Yelowitz is an associate professor of economics at the University of Kentucky and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. This paper is based on a lecture delivered to the Undergraduate Economics Society at the University of Kentucky on October 1, 2009.
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POPSObama and The Democrats Want You to Know They Had a Good Week During his campaign, in effect, Mr Obama promised to be the constraint: to oversee Congress and guide it with a moderating hand. That was the difference he promised to make. There were always going to be limits to what he could do, but his failure so far even to try has been total. He has let nearly every agenda be set by the Democrats’ left-leaning congressional leadership. This comes in a country in which 40 per cent of voters call themselves conservatives, 36 per cent moderates and 20 per cent liberals. Voters are confused and concerned about the policies coming forward " above all by their mounting cost " but he has made little effort to explain or reassure, let alone influence. He has chosen to act as cheerleader for whatever congressional Democrats cook up. On healthcare, Mr Obama stood aside during months of chaotic haggling in Congress. By the summer, unsurprisingly, voters opposed to reform outnumbered voters in favour " again, above all, expressing worries . . .
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POPS Washington and the Jobs Market The larger measure of joblessness that includes marginal and part-time workers jumped 0.5% to 17.5%. And the average hours worked in a week stayed the same at 33.0, which means that millions of Americans working part-time will have to become full-time before employers start hiring new workers. If Democrats really want to create jobs and save themselves from a debacle in 2010, their best policy option is to stop creating so much investment uncertainty and additional barriers to business hiring. Stop trying to raise business costs by making it easier to unionize via "card check." Stop trying to raise energy costs with a cap-and-tax bill. Stop adding to the deficit and future tax burden with a 12% increase in domestic spending for 2010. Above all, stop trying to ram through Congress on a partisan vote a health-care bill that imposes a 5.4-percentage-point income tax "surcharge" on anyone making more than $500,000 a year......
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POPSEnumerated Powers Act: Interview with Walter E. Williams who has introduced it every Congress since 1995, it does not allow them to get away with the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause. They have to specifically point in the Constitution where they get the authority. And as a matter of fact the reason the Enumerated Powers Act’s maximum number of co-sponsors in the House has been 31, or it could be a bit higher than that (and it has never had a co-sponsor in the Senate until this year) is that the Congressmen can read the writing on the wall. If Congress were forced to obey the United States Constitution, then I would say that two-thirds to three-quarters of all the spending Congress does would be found to be unconstitutional. ALL RIGHT MAGAZINE: You’re probably right about that. Article 1, Section 8 has a very short list of things government is able to do according to the word of the law. WALTER E. WILLIAMS: That’s right, and if you read the Founders’ statements, they say that Congress can only do those things....
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POPS Uncle Sam’s Collections Continue Their Steep Drop It is ironic to say the least that Congress and the Obama administration are glorifying the idea of a “public option” that would ultimately lead to government-run health care while Treasury receipts continue to shrink. If the private health insurance market disappears, so will its taxes. To name just one example, Aetna’s recorded income tax expense on its financial statements for 2005-2008 (including state and local taxes) averaged roughly $900 million per year. Put the company’s health insurance segment out of business, and a large portion of those taxes would stop coming in, digging the country’s and various states’ debt holes that much deeper. The establishment press has paid very little attention to fiscal 2009’s drop of 19.5% in receipts from economic activity, so I expect similar treatment of October’s continuation of the trend. It would appear that they don’t want any unsettling news getting in the way of the statist agenda.
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POPSMark Levin (Rally Video)It’s On and IT’S MASSIVE– “Kill the Bill Rally” In DC! … As a crowd of protesters shouted “kill the bill,” House Republicans on Thursday rallied opposition against the Democrats’ health care legislation, decrying the bill on the steps of Congress in a last-ditch bid to derail or at least delay the legislation heading toward a possible vote Saturday. Thousands of protesters arrived by bus for the rally, which the GOP is calling an emergency “House Call.” The event drew the conservative “tea party” activists but unlike past rallies was officially sanctioned by House Republicans. Republicans want those who attend to track down their elected representatives in Congress and put pressure on them to think twice about voting for the more than $1 trillion health care overhaul pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “They’re going to listen,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who originally called for the rally. “The biggest voice in the United States is your voice.”
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POPSApproved by White House ~ Reform Media.Transform Democracy Is Dissent ‘Legitimate’? Not According to Campaign Finance Laws by Bert Gall and Robert Frommer -- Pajamas Media After the administration decreed that Fox is not a “legitimate news organization” and that people shouldn’t watch it, more people than ever are tuning in to see Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly fight back. Fundamentally, it’s because the administration’s media war against Fox is but a minor display of the tremendous power the government has to stifle speech it views as illegitimate. Much of this power is the result of long-standing “campaign finance” laws. These laws impose all sorts of restrictions on political speech, and it’s no coincidence that the most draconian of these restrictions are targeted at those who can speak the most effectively against a politician’s reelection. The most effective speakers tend to be those who can spend the most money. Corporations, many of which have lots of money, receive particularly harsh treatment under
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POPSParanormal Taxivity READ THE BILL Americans are fed up with Congress, and one of the things they’re most fed up with is the practice of rushing massive bills to a vote without reading them or giving the American people time to read them. H.Res.554, authored by Reps. John Culberson (R-TX) and Brian Baird (D-WA), would require all bills to be posted online for at least 72 hours before they are brought to a vote on the House floor. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHICH MEMBERS HAVE SIGNED THE DISCHARGE PETITION TO FORCE A VOTE ON H. RES. 554. http://clerk.house.gov/111/lrc/pd/petitions/Dis6.htm THE HOUSE GOP CONGRESSIONAL TRANSPARENCY INITIATIVE http://gopleader.gov/readthebill/legislation.aspx
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POPSCongress Must Pass Republican Leader Boehner’s Defund ACORN Act or any other form of agreement to this criminal organization. ACORN ally Representative Jerrold Nadler has lead the charge against the Defund ACORN Act. He has claimed that it is an unconstitutional *" Bill of Attainder " an argument that has been thoroughly rebutted by former FEC Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky. Nadler had no such reservations when he co-sponsered legislation to punish AIG employees who had been awarded bonuses. *A legislative act pronouncing a person guilty of a crime, usually treason, without trial and subjecting that person to capital punishment and attainder. Such acts are prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. Congress moving to cut off funds to ACORN for the next 50 days is a merely a first step. An organization with ACORN’s history of voter registration fraud, tax evasion, and criminal activity should never again be eligible to receive any federal funds. Stopping payment to this criminal enterprise is not enough.
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POPSReport: Dozens in Congress Under Ethics Scrutiny The inquiry involves lawmakers who steered appropriations to clients of a now-defunct lobbying firm and received campaign contributions from the firm and its clients. The names included three lawmakers previously identified in the inquiry: the chairman of the defense subcommittee, Murtha; and Reps. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., and James Moran, D-Va. The Post said others whose names were in the report included Reps. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., and Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan. The committee, however, has not announced an investigation of any of these lawmakers. A committee statement said its security was breached through "peer to peer file sharing software" by a junior employee who was working from home. The staff member was fired. The committee said it is investigating whether Rep. Maxine Waters used her influence to help a bank in which her husband owned stock, and whether the couple benefited as a result.
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POPS ResponsibleHealthReform.org The red balloon expands and eventually explodes. Washington's health reform? $1 Trillion Health Plan Government-run "public option" Tax increases Even on Health Benefits Congressional Budget Office: $239 Billion in Deficits Inflated Taxes Swelling Deficits Government Control Tell Congress slow down. Reform health care the right way.
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POPSSecret Obamacare Negotiations Behind Closed Doors Democracy does not begin and end on Election Day for the American people. Whether you are for or against Obamacare, we the people deserve an opportunity to read, digest and understand the most important health care legislation to be debated in the United States Senate in our lifetime. The American people relied upon the promise of the Obama Administration and the leadership in Congress to be open and transparent, therefore it is time to stop the closed door negotiations and allow the American people to participate in the democratic process. Author: Brian Darling http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/19/secret-obamacare-negotiations-enter-day-6/
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POPSChairman of Senate Judiciary Committee Flunks Question on Constitution Sen. Leahy: "No. The federal government does that on federal highways." Prior to 1995, the federal government mandated a speed limit of 55 miles an hour on all four-lane highways. The limit was repealed in 1995 and the authority to set speed limits reverted back to the states. Technically, the law that established the 55 mile-an-hour limit--the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act of 1974--withheld federal highway funds from states that did not comply with it. The law rested on the Commerce Clause, which give Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce, and Congress’ authority to dole out federal tax revenue. Someone who does not buy health insurance, critics have argued, is not by that ommission engaged in interstate commerce and thus there is no act of interstate commerce for Congress to regulate in this situation. Watch Eyeblast.tv video http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=GdSU2GqGSU
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POPSThe Chicago Way: Bribe Seniors With $250 To Pass Obamacare That said, there is a quote often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville; “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” But, that is actually a variant of Alexander Francis Tytler misattributed to de Tocqueville: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship , then a monarchy There are many folks in modern America that will testify to the lax fiscal policy of the last 20 years, and the unbounded fiscal policy of Obama.
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POPSThe Baucus Bill Is A TAX BILL which is much faster than the growth rate of the economy or tax revenues. This is the same growth rate as the House bill that Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) deep-sixed by asking the CBO to tell the truth about its impact on health-care costs. To avoid the fate of the House bill and achieve a veneer of fiscal sensibility, the Senate did three things: It omitted inconvenient truths, it promised that future Congresses will make tough choices to slow entitlement spending, and it dropped the hammer on the middle class. One inconvenient truth is the fact that Congress will not allow doctors to suffer a 24% cut in their Medicare reimbursements. Senate Democrats chose to ignore this reality and rely on the promise of a cut to make their bill add up. Taking note of this fact pushes the total cost of the bill well over $1 trillion and destroys any pretense of budget balance. It is beyond fantastic to promise that future Congresses, for 10 straight years, will allow planned
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POPS "None Of Our Business" … CNSnews.com has confirmed that “the actual final text of the legislation will be determined by Reid himself , who will consolidate the legislation approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the still-unapproved legislation from the Senate Finance Committee. Reid will be able to draft and insert textual language that was not expressly approved by either committee.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will write the final version of Obamacare to be considered in the Senate with no input from the American people.. Then the House rubber stamps the Senate bill and rushes it into the President’s hands: The final step in this plan is for the House to take up Obama care, without amending the legislation, and then sending that bill directly to the President for his signature.
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POPSHealth Bills In Congress Won't Fix Doctor Shortage Add More Residents? 'Dead on Arrival' Almost everyone agrees on how to build up the supply of primary care physicians: create more residency positions at teaching hospitals for family doctors and internists to complete their training and significantly increase how much primary care doctors get paid by Medicare and other insurers. But there’s resistance to these steps because of their costs. A proposal backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the teaching hospital lobby to add 15,000 Medicare-funded medical residency positions -- a 15 percent increase that would favor more primary care training -- was considered dead on arrival because of its $10 billion price tag over a decade. Proponents said it was a small price to pay, in legislation that could run as high as $1 trillion, to ensure that patients have access to doctors. Instead, the House and Senate overhaul bills would redistribute about 1,000 unfilled residency positions . . .
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POPSMedicare Waste Goes Unchecked: Thanks to Pete Stark (D-Calif) and Dave Camp (R-Mich) From wheelchairs and walkers to orthopedic shoes and needles, Medicare buys tens of thousands of products every day for elderly Americans. "There were products that we had as much as 75 percent savings. The average was 29 percent," said Mike Leavitt, the former HHS secretary who oversaw the program. "It would have saved billions if we could've actually implemented it, but Congress deferred it. In Washington speak, that means we put it off forever," he said. Leavitt blames Congressmen Pete Stark (D-Calif.) and Dave Camp (R-Mich.) for introducing legislation that terminated the contracts and postponed the program for 18 months. Leavitt says the congressional intervention helps explain why many are suspicious of claims that Washington can cut enough waste to actually pay for health care reform, as President Obama told a joint session of Congress last month . "Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan,"
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POPSMitch McConnell Pwn's John Kerry's Block on Honduran Trip McConnell gets around Kerry block of DeMint Honduras trip Washington Post: ... Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) denounced Kerry's move on the Senate floor and sought the intervention of the minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The Republican leader appealed to the Defense Department to provide an aircraft for DeMint's trip and the Pentagon agreed to do so, according to the South Carolina senator's office. PrairiePundit >>>
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POPSGet Informed, Get Involved, Congress.org Take a survey on our redesign! We want to know what you think of our new look and what else you'd like to see on Congress.org. The climate change bill cometh The Senate is now taking on a bill that would set limits on greenhouse gases, but the details are still to come. Public option trips on first hurdle A Senate committee rejected a public health plan, suggesting the idea wouldn't survive a floor vote. 05:27 pm September 29, 2009 Get Your Representatives' Votes by email weekly http://www.congress.org/congressorg/megavote/
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POPSWith No Fanfare, Senate Hits ACORN, Again Amazing: NY Times Still Almost Totally Ignores ACORN Scandals One may have thought it impossible for the nation's largest and most influential newspaper to virtually ignore the scandals involving the left-wing housing activist group The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, more notoriously known as ACORN. One would be wrong. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/clay-waters/2009/09/15/amazing-ny-times-still-almost-totally-ignores-acorn-scandals
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POPSIf You Can't Read It, You Can't Pass It: readtovote.org About ReadtoVote.org: Co-founders of the highly acclaimed Tappening movement Mark DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum aim to create momentum and inspire all elected officials, as well as the general public, to actually read the bills being debated in our nation. ReadtoVote.org asks for a pledge to read these bills, and provides a link that allows visitors to easily download the major bills currently before Congress. DiMassimo and Yaverbaum plan to continue to invest in bold, brazen, educational marketing campaigns that focus on issues that are profoundly impacting the future of our country. http://readtovote.org/site/?page_id=2 http://twitter.com/readtovote
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POPS Podesta Says Value-Added Tax ‘More Plausible’ as Deficits Grow a Washington-based public policy group, is convening a meeting of economic policy experts Sept. 30 to discuss the long- term fiscal deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in August that the budget deficit will be 11.2 percent of gross domestic product, the highest since World War II. Clinton, facing a deficit of 4.2 percent of GDP, pushed Congress to raise taxes on the wealthy to help trim the shortfall. “He passed it without a single Republican vote,” Podesta said. “It led to the longest period of growth in the United States history.” Ending Tax Cuts Podesta said Obama will begin by ending the upper-income tax cuts enacted under his predecessor, President George W. Bush. “Then you have to look at whether that gets you far enough of the way,” he said. On health care, Podesta expressed optimism that Congress will pass a health-care bill in the next couple of months even though so far none of the measures has won Republican support and Democrats . .
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POPSBeware The Stalin in Progressive Hearts Consider: Nowhere does the Constitution grant Congress authority to require every American to buy a particular private service or product on pain of forfeiture of a significant portion of their wealth. Yet, every version of Obamacare currently being discussed in Congress requires just that. Forcing all of us to buy officially approved health insurance is essential to a functioning government-run system. As Obama told Congress, "many of insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - cannot be achieved" without the individual mandate. Why? Because the politicians and bureaucrats who will manage the government-run health care program know that, without the force of government behind them, they won't be able to make the rest of us do what they tell us to do. But that is what government always does as it becomes more costly, intrusive and intolerant of dissent. As if to drive the point home,
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POPSMedia Dozes While Social Security Is On The Verge of Negative Cash Flow Morrissey points out that the report lays bare the fundamental incompetence and/or dishonesty earlier this year of Peter Orszag, President Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget: …. Democrats wanted analysis that allowed them to ignore the problems in Social Security, and Orszag was happy to supply them. Douglas Elmendorf has had to right the ship at CBO while Orszag continues to blow his predictions at OMB, most notably in overall deficit projections, which Orszag had to admit were off by more than 40% and $2.2 trillion over the next ten years. Of course, they were helped along by a complacent media unwilling to do math, and a host of apologists for the Left. …. The situation at Social Security is much worse than this administration and Democrats in Congress want to admit. They want to continue busting the deficit and creating new entitlements while the existing ones careen towards collapse.
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POPSA Letter to Congress: With All Due Respect, Are You Crazy? It took good dependable cars (that were the best some people could afford) and replaced them with high-priced and less-affordable cars, mostly Japanese. A good percentage of the profits went out of the country. And the American taxpayers take the hit for Congress' generosity in burning three billion more of our dollars on failed experiments. So with a perfect 100 percent failure rate and a record that proves that "services" you shove down our throats are failing faster and faster, you want Americans to believe you can be trusted with a government-run health care system? 20 percent of our entire economy? With all due respect: Are you crazy? Brought to you by the editors and research staff of FamilySecurityMatters.org. Editor’s note: We don’t know who wrote this – it’s making the rounds on the Internet – but we agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.
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POPSJob-Killing Policies Could Doom Democrat Hopes: By Michael Barone There was something to these arguments. But it's also true that job creation accelerated in 2004 and kept going for another three years. Perhaps, although Democrats would not like to admit it, the Bush economic policies had something to do with that. And perhaps the rather different policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress may help Summers' gloomy predictions come true. Tax policy is one example. The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire next year, and the Democratic Congress will surely allow income tax rates on high earners to go up to 39.6 percent again, or even more if it enacts the administration's proposed policy of limiting high earners' charitable deductions. These increases will produce revenue that the government needs to reduce the enormous budget deficit, though surely not as much revenue as static economic models indicate. But they will also depress economic growth to some non-trivial extent, and thereby depress job creation.
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POPSObama Heads For Foreign Policy Disaster The U.S. is applying pressure to Israel, because Israel is susceptible to U.S. pressure, in hopes of gaining concessions from the Palestinians, who are not. The process is the diplomatic equivalent of a drunk searching for his key under the streetlamp"because it's brighter there. The approach has never worked before, but repeated failure does not seem to have discouraged Obama from trying yet again. Not everything that goes wrong in the world is the president's fault, of course. Vladimir Putin's Russia would behave aggressively no matter who was president, just as any president would confront the same unappealing range of options in Pakistan. But the very intractability of such problems makes it more important to do right what can be done right. Despite the domestic focus of these early months of his presidency, Barack Obama thinks of himself as a foreign policy thinker above all, according to those who know him best. His confidence is undiminished by his lack . . .
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POPS45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul 45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul From IBDeditorials.com Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found. The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby " the powerful American Medical Association " both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul. It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration’s claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost. Pfft " What the bleep do they know? (/sarc) The willingness of a professional organization to betray its own members’ interests is the real story here.
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POPS Listening to a Liar by Thomas Sowell If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election? If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death? If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it. Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.
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POPSMarch on Washington Regardless, the timing of last night’s hastily arranged speech before a joint session of Congress was weird. Such special sessions are themselves weird, exceedingly rare forums usually reserved for dramatic effect, like when Presidents declare war. The glaring exception, it seems, was Bill Clinton’s ill-fated, pen-wagging veto threat to Congress if they failed to pass his (Hillary’s) health care plan. So why did Obama do it? Why now? According to USA Today before his speech, “the ever more noisy opposition to his health care objectives has had one result: It prompted Obama’s decision to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday in an effort to regain momentum on the issue.” So the President wants to have another argument with the voters. He already has ridiculed publicly citizens who have the audacity to disagree, like the lady who asked him to keep government out of her Medicare. (Maybe she was referring to his proposed $500 billion . . .
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POPSWhite House Setting Stage to Rahm Through Obamacare That will set up a Democratic argument that Senate leaders have been forced to use a partisan budget tool known as reconciliation to pass a health bill through the Senate by a simple majority, instead of 60 votes. Under the budget plan they passed earlier this year, Democrats could invoke the reconciliation process on Oct. 15. Republicans contend that the use of reconciliation would be at odds with Obama’s call for bipartisanship during his 2008 presidential campaign. But Obama has countered that argument in recent days by forcefully resurrecting the anti-Washington rhetoric that got him elected. Posted by Gateway Pundit
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POPSCongress Are You Listening? Stop Giving ACORN Our Money! of all accusations with facts backing up the statements. From the opening summary: “Since 1994, more than $53 million in federal funds have been pumped into ACORN, and under the Obama administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds. Operationally, ACORN is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators. Structurally, ACORN is a chess game in which senior management is shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act.” This is not the first time ACORN has been investigated. The Consumers Rights League, a non-partisan organization, did an extensive in-depth investigation into ACORN Housing and their mortgage practices in 2008 which they . . .
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POPSA Masterpiece Of Charlatanry For The Naive By Thomas Sowell should ask themselves where he is going to conjure up the additional doctors, nurses and hospitals needed to take care of millions more patients. If he can't pull off that miracle, then government-run medical care in the United States can be expected to produce what government-run medical care in Canada, Britain and other countries has produced " delays of weeks or months to get many treatments, not to mention arbitrary rationing decisions by bureaucrats. Obama can deny it in words, but what matter are deeds " and no one's words have been more repeatedly the direct opposite of his deeds " whether talking about how his election campaign would be financed, how he would not rush legislation through Congress, or how his administration was not going to go after CIA agents for their past efforts to extract information from captured terrorists. President Obama has also declared emphatically that he will not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations "
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POPSHow Obama Can Make Healthcare Better Without Congress This is the same sort of silliness that President Bush suggested when he was pushing immigration reform "If Congress passes my immigration reform bill, I will start enforcing existing laws regarding immigration." In both these examples, the duty of the president is to execute the laws and run the executive departments faithfully. That includes stopping fraud, criminality, and waste -- regardless of what Congress does. Without waiting for congressional approval, which he does not need to end fraud in Medicaid, push our schools to bring back physical education, or streamline the process of FDA approval of drugs, President Obama could begin to make healthcare in America better and less costly right now. But that assumes that President Obama actually wants to improve healthcare in America. In fact, all the countless speeches, all the vastly complex congressional bills, all the relentless insistence that America is in crisis, are all intended to accomplish just one thing:
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POPSAnd You Thought This Was All About Health Care… by Doug O'Brien and to begin to collect on its political debt. Hot on the heels of the inauguration labor sought to cash its first big check and push the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) through Congress to eliminate the secret ballot for union organizing elections and allow strong arm tactics to “recruit” new members by putting a card in front of them and politely asking them to sign it. Poll numbers consistently showed strong opposition among the public to this idea and the administration quickly realized they couldn’t cover this check. But there are always new ways to achieve your objectives when the President is your loyal supplicant. The Service Employees International Union provided an estimated $160 million to the Obama campaign and related political advocacy groups and put thousands of its paid organizers on the streets to stump for Democrats. SEIU’s top recruiting priority is unionizing hundreds of thousands of health care workers across the nation. What better way to get .
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