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POPSFaith in Free-Market Capitalism Is Being Rewarded The biggest source of economic stimulus is not the $800 billion Barack Obama spending package. It's the $4.6 trillion of capital gains thrown off by the stock market over the past three quarters. This is investment money, and it also enhances consumer spending. As a result, jobs are likely to start rising early in 2010. The other source of economic stimulus is the amount of money Michael Moore invests in Dominos Pizza and Krispy Kreme, only later to bemoan those same corporations in which he owns shares. Michael Moore-on's movie in which he capitalistically makes money off of gullible liberals’ hatred of capitalism? Seriously, not only did that movie bomb, but the hippo-like hypocrite became enchanted by the ideals of socialism when he took an economics class while coked out of his mind. Using socialism to help revive a failing economy is like putting angry weasels down your pants because you need some rest.
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POPSWHERE in the Constitution does it say: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) said there is “no place in the Constitution” that grants Congress the authority to require that Americans purchase health insurance, as both the Senate and House health care bills do. She added that the health care bill recently passed by the Senate is a “trampling of individual rights.” Senator Hutchinson said: “There is no place in the Constitution that allows this trampling of individual rights, and I am going to make a point of order that it tramples on the 10th Amendment as well, the rights of states to regulate insurance. And, in my state, we have a self-insurance plan for state employees and teachers, and the federal government now has the right to intrude on that – and it’s not in the Constitution either.”
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POPSEating healthfully can increase your food bill tenfold, says Ag Dept. study More evidence that overhauling the U.S. health insurance system is only a small step towards making Americans healthier. If, as the study's authors conclude, " resh vegetables and fruits are rapidly becoming luxury goods" (since their prices are most strongly influenced by inflation), then we have a structural nutritional problem built into our food system. This piece is from March 2008.
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POPS“A History lesson….Cry for Me, Argentina” 12.9.2009
Among Irigoyen’s changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance, and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy. Simply put, the state assumed economic control of a vast swath of the country’s operations and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts. With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government’s payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers’ contributions. Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the United States Social Security and Medicare programs. The death knell for the Argentine economy, however,came with the election of Juan Perón. Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing ; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation’s rich. This targeted group “swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated.”
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POPSHealth Care Bill Could Face String of Legal Challenges Third, auto insurance regulation occurs at the state level. When the Congressional Budget Office considered the idea of a health insurance mandate back in 1994 under the Clinton administration, it concluded that the mandate would be "an unprecedented form of federal action." The only congressional mandate close to that was the draft, the CBO concluded. Other legal objections are emerging in the wake of a concession that Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., won for his state as a condition for his support of the health care bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to provide for full and permanent federal aid for Nebraska's expanded Medicaid population. It was only one of a slew of hand-crafted sweetheart deals for those senators who agreed to support the bill. Graham said his state could file an equal rights suit under the Constitution. The Constitution calls for "equal protection" of all citizens.
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POPSObama's Critics Are Also in His Administration Those deficits were nothing compared to those provided in Obama's budget. His deficits would last years after the recession is over and in spite of the massive tax increases that promises to accompany them. The Democrats correctly criticized Bush's deficits. Feldstein notes that Obama's deficits, because of its expensive health care agenda will reach $9.3 trillion -- more than twice the amount of the previous administration. In an earlier article in the Washington Post, Feldstein noted that "For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement." Feldstein also notes that the price of the program is enormous and would cost more than $1 trillion and would raise the current maximum tax rate from 35 to 45 percent.
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POPSObama's health insurance is deadly fiasco I don't usually comment on US health care, BUT to be *forced* to pay private profit-making company for inadequate health coverage, with premiums increasing as I age, would make me very riled. And the policy won't do any good for the image of Obama, the Federales, or the health insurance industry. Where is Ralph Nader and a third Party when you need them? Couldn't he get together with Ron Paul -- the ultimate coalition. Howard Dean seems to understand what's going on, but he's an MD. If I were an American, then I would want to try something different. Anything! Why aren't people organising?
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POPSThe Fine Line I love his "tractor trailer" imagery. I wonder if Nelson has trouble sleeping at night over this.
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POPS The Senate Postmortem other Republican moderates or deal-makers who earlier this year were prepared to compromise. Some 18 Senate Republicans voted to more than double the size of the children's health insurance program in 2007 over the opposition of President Bush, and Mrs. Snowe and Messrs. Grassley and Hatch and others have long joined with Democrats for health-care subsidy expansions that most Republicans dislike. The GOP had no choice but to oppose this plan or completely abandon its principles. Read full WSJ post @ http://bit.ly/7lW0QL
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POPSShe needs help She says : If you do turn out to be my match, all I will need is some of the stem cells of your blood to be transferred to my body. This still doesn't require surgery, only a little bit of your blood. These past few months of hardship have caused me to reach the end of my rope. I am unsure how much longer I have to live. But what I do know is that the one thing that can save my life is a matching donor. And with someone like you, I am unwilling to lose hope! I desperately need your help and kind support in finding my match.
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POPSHealth Care Bill Could Face String of Legal Challenges “I don’t believe Congress has the legal or moral authority to force this mandate on its citizens,” Ensign said in a statement, raising what’s known as a “constitutional point of order.” Such procedural challenges are rare and typically lead to a vote. The non-profit Fund for Personal Liberty, as well as a Virginia-based group called the 10th Amendment Foundation, already have threatened to file suit in federal court over this issue if the health care bill passes. The Constitution allows Congress to tax, borrow, spend, declare war, raise an army and regulate commerce, among other things. Proponents of the insurance mandate point to the Commerce Clause in arguing that Congress is within its rights to require health insurance and dismiss such potential legal challenges. But foes say the across-the-board requirement is too broad.
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POPSMI Rep Bart Stupak (D) Being Threatened By The Obama To Shut Up About Abortion Funding He's threatening him. Chicago thug politics courtesy of our community organizer-in-chief. The Michigan Democrat succeeded last month in getting 64 House Democrats to join him in attaching his pro-life amendment to the House version of the health-care bill. The “Stupak amendment,” as the provision is known, would prohibit the federal government from allocating taxpayer money to pay for any part of any health insurance plan that covers abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger. Stupak had contact with the White House last weekend, when the Senate voted 60 to 40 in the wee hours of Monday morning to shut off debate on the Senate version of the bill. The current version of the Senate bill contains so-called “compromise” language crafted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). This language does not bar taxpayer funding of health plans that cover abortion, but does create a firewall to supposedly keep federal money from being used to pay
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POPSWe Can’t Sit Back and Allow the Loss of Our Freedoms By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano The privacy of your communications and medical decision making with your physician will be gone. More of your hard earned dollars will be at the disposal of federal bureaucrats. It was not supposed to be this way. We elect the government. It works for us. How did it get so removed, so unbridled, so arrogant that it can tell us how to live our personal lives? Evil rarely comes upon us all at once, and liberty is rarely lost in one stroke. It happens gradually, over the years and decades and even centuries. A little stretch here, a cave in there, powers are slowly taken from the states and the people and before you know it, we have one big monster government that recognizes no restraint on its ability to tell us how to live. It claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses. The Founders did not give us a government like the one we have today. The government they gave us was strictly limited in its scope,
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POPSPage 148 Of The Health Bill Will Allow Government To Determine The Care You Get ...... after this ridiculous bill has been passed, that will determine what is and what isn’t an acceptable health care choice for you, or your doctor. I’ve spoken about the other side of this before. Both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill create insurance exchanges that all Americans must by their health care through. The government controls what insurance plans are offered on those exchanges. Now, per this part of the bill, your insurance company can only pay out to health care providers who meet the government’s standards for providing care. Meaning, for instance, that if the government should decide to stop covering mammograms for women younger than 50 then you won’t be able to buy a plan which covers that, or go to a hospital which gives such screenings. The same goes for all sorts of treatments, drugs, medical devices, etc. If it isn’t government approved, you won’t get it.
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POPSHealth Bill Creates A Massive Cash Crunch, Then Bankrupts Many Insurers Insurers are not allowed to take into account differential risks based on pre-existing conditions. And the premium differentials based on such matters as age and tobacco use are smaller than the market spreads. If too many customers demand coverage from a given insurer to insure efficiently, it's the government that will decide how many they have to keep and who they are. Next, it's the government that requires extensive coverage including "ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance abuse disorder services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, laboratory services, preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, pediatric services, including oral and vision care." The price squeeze gets even tighter because in every required area of care a collection of government standards will help set the minimum level of required services.
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POPSA simple health care solution that Congress won't consider. This is a cool blog. Rick Toone certainly does not look like a conservative, Bible-thumping, birther, but he sure does not like the idea of government-mandated and government-run health care. I had not even heard of Ron Paul's proposal. Makes too much sense for Congress to seriously consider it.
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POPS Trial Lawyers Buy Democrats in Congress (98% of total "contributions"!) Since Jan. 3, 2009, 581 contributions worth $1,261,023 have been made by donors identifying themselves as employees of the 15 firms (contributions by employees who did not identify their employer are not reflected in this data). Democratic candidates and committees received $1,241,978, or 98 percent of the total. The most generous of these lucrative sources of Democratic campaign cash was the Dallas-based Baron & Budd, best known for the late Fred Baron, who was finance chairman for former Sen. John Edwards' 2008 presidential run. Thus far in 2009, Baron & Budd employees have contributed $212,958 to 21 Democrats, and not a cent to Republicans. Second on the list is the New York-based Grant Eisenhofer firm, with employees contributing $184,078 to seven Democrats and no Republicans. Of the 138 total recipients from employees of all 15 of the firms, 122 were Democrats and just 16 were Republicans. The Democrats received contributions averaging more than $4,700,
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POPS Cash for Cloture: Demcare Bribe List, Pt. II 1. The Hill reports that while Nelson credited Nebraska’s governor for giving him the idea to lobby for the government preference, Nebraska’s governor assailed the payoff: “Nebraskans did not ask for a special deal, only a fair deal,” Heineman said in a statement Sunday. In response, Nelson fired off a letter Sunday to Heineman saying he’s prepared to ask that the provision covering Nebraska’s Medicaid share “be removed from the amendment in conference, if it is your desire.” 2, Vermont and Massachusetts will get similar (though less generous) special treatment by the feds in covering Medicaid expansion costs. Combined with Nebraska’s tab, the exclusive clique’s payoffs will cost taxpayers $1.2 billion over 10 years. At least. 3, He’s plunging in the polls and in need of a little bacon to bring home. A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn ......
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POPSSign the National Petition Opposing State-Run Healthcare LAST HAND-DELIVERY TO BEGIN MONDAY 12/21. Petitions for our LAST DELIVERY BEFORE THE OBAMACARE VOTE must be signed by MIDNIGHT SUNDAY NIGHT to be included. Your petition will be HAND-DELIVERED to your two U.S. Senators’ D.C. Offices. Hand-delivery process for this volume of petitions takes app. 2-3 business days. You will be notified when this hand-delivery is completed. White House pressure to pass the government-run healthcare plan has never been more intense as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid uses whatever political tricks he can to capture enough votes to pass a bill that no one has actually seen and is expected to cost Americans more than $2.5 trillion through steep tax increases. Under the plan even if you enjoy your coverage, you may not be able to keep it. In fact, government bureaucrats will have the power to dictate the kind of health coverage Americans must purchase and what benefits they can receive.
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POPSNebraska Rally opposing Senate Healthcare Bill and Reid's Pay-Off To Ben Nelson and put the rest of America on the hook to fund Nebraska’s Medicaid expenses in perpetuity. In this case, Senator Nelson “reserved the right” to vote against the final version of the bill should the agreement he reached with Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Chuck Schumer change in a “material way”. In other words, Senator Nelson can claim he “I voted for it, before I voted against it”. I do NOT think Nebraskans will be as easily fooled as Senator Nelson hopes. 67% OPPOSE the Health Care Bill. A vote “YES” for cloture (to move the bill forward) is a “YES” vote for government run health care. Click Here to hear 1110 KFAB's exclusive interview PodCast (26:35) on Saturday, Dec. 19th, with Sen. Nelson http://bit.ly/4vdewo
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POPSStatement by the National Right to Life Committee On The New Reid "manager's amendment" to H.R. 3590 This seems to envision a system under which the OPM director would administer multi-state plans that cover elective abortions, and perhaps even possess authority to require such plans to cover elective abortions, as long as the director also ensured that there was one plan that did not cover abortions (except types of abortions also funded by the federal Medicaid program). This would be a sharp break from the policy that has long governed the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, which is also a program administered by OPM, under which private plans are completely prohibited from covering elective abortions if they wish to participate in the program. The Reid manager's amendment contains a new section providing that a state "may elect to prohibit abortion coverage in qualified health plans offered through an Exchange in such State if such State enacts a law to provide for such prohibition.
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POPSDirty Harry Reid’s "ABORTION FIX" IS NOT FIXED ~ “Manager’s Amendment" that cover elective abortions. The new language does include a “state opt-out” provision if a state passes a law to prohibit insurance coverage of abortion, but it’s a sham because it does nothing to prevent one state’s tax dollars from paying for elective abortions in other states. A majority of Americans believe that health care plans should not be mandated to provide elective abortion coverage, and a majority of Americans do not believe government health care plans should include abortion coverage. Currently, federal appropriations bills include language known as the Hyde Amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, while another provision, known as the Smith Amendment, prohibits federal funding of abortion under the federal employees’ health benefits plan .
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POPSThe Unconstitutional Gambit And it is equally disheartening to watch the overwhelming bulk of the mass media trumpet this agenda as something to be proud of or that, somehow, patriotism is exemplified by supporting a muzzling of the common man's will in all of this. Guest post by Victor the Contractor Doug Ross more at http://bit.ly/50Wqqb
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POPSPass The Bill "First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance. That’s an immense change from where we were just a few years ago: remember, not long ago the Bush administration and its allies in Congress successfully blocked even a modest expansion of health care for children. Look, I understand the anger here: supporting this weakened bill feels like giving in to blackmail — because it is. The question, then, is whether to pay the ransom by giving in to the demands of those senators, accepting a flawed bill, or hang tough and let the hostage — that is, health reform — die."
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POPSSen. Nelson to announce support for health-care bill He caved. While I'm trying to help raise 3 little ones, my tax dollars will go to killing them. And look at that...every American "required" to obtain coverage. I listened to a young family man explain that as a laborer all his money went to rent, food, utilities, transportation and occasional doctor bills. He asked, "where am I going to find the money to buy health insurance especially when my company will have to raise the rates?" Why, from the Government of course!!! More Americans on the Government tit. (sorry, but that's how I feel)
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POPSCancer From The Kitchen "I asked these doctors what they do in their own homes to reduce risks. They said that they avoid microwaving food in plastic or putting plastics in the dishwasher, because heat may cause chemicals to leach out. And the symposium handed out a reminder card listing “safer plastics” as those marked (usually at the bottom of a container) 1, 2, 4 or 5. It suggests that the “plastics to avoid” are those numbered 3, 6 and 7 (unless they are also marked “BPA-free”). Yes, the evidence is uncertain, but my weekend project is to go through containers in our house and toss out 3’s, 6’s and 7’s. "
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