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POPSThe 2010 Elections: Bring ' em on! Some interesting charts and graphs on the what things looked like during and shortly after the Bush years for working Americans, and where things are at now for working Americans
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POPSReid Prepares to Sneak Vote Thru at 1:00 A.M. MONDAY MORNING! Harry Reid has now introduced what is called his managers amendment — the secret deal that will serve as a substitute for the decoy that was the 2,074-page bill the Senate has been debating for the past three weeks. So is this bill any better? NO IT STINKS: The bill slashes hundreds of billions from Medicare to fund a new government program – cuts to hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices that care for our seniors cuts that a pair of Senate Democrats voted repeatedly to reject. The bill includes massive tax increases on American families and businesses at a time of double digit unemployment. The bill includes a massive new entitlement -the CLASS Act – which the Democrat chairman of the Budget Committee described as a Ponzi scheme. A bipartisan majority (including 11 Democrats) voted to strike the CLASS Act — and they should withhold their support.
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POPSAll Great Statists Target the Elderly What's the first thing Mao Tse-tung did? He took out the educated people. He took out people who had a cultural, historical memory of China's past. He killed them, and Stalin did the same. He took out the people who remembered how things work. The left has been busy rewriting, revising the history of Reaganism and the eighties and tax cuts ever since it happened. They have been hell-bent on our population not knowing the truth, particularly the young population that was born during that period of time or ten years prior to it. They want them thinking the exact opposite of the truth, and they have to eliminate the people who know the truth to cement their power. Mao Tse-tung did it, Stalin did it. "Are you comparing Obama to those people?" No. Not in terms of genocide. But they're not invited to the summit. The people that know what to do to fix this are not invited to the summit, folks.
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POPS Obanamomics 101 That stimulus has failed to stimulate, and the administration's claims of jobs it has supposedly created or saved have been discredited and become a national scandal. Obama's excuse: Calculating a jobs number is an "inexact science." Small, targeted tax cuts like the one aimed at small business won't do much for hiring. "This is an anti-risk-taking climate," says Republican representative Paul Ryan. "You have to give them incentives to lower the price of risk." Ryan recommends cutting the business income tax to 25 percent from 35 percent, eliminating the tax on capital gains for two years, and providing a 100 percent tax writeoff for equipment, plant construction, and other expenses the first year. Hiring would follow. Presidents from Calvin Coolidge to John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to George Bush understood that strong incentives are necessary to trigger rapid growth and hiring.
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POPSA Leader You better turn around every once and a while to make sure someone is following you. Oh, and you better rush that cap and tax bill through the senate real quickly, because the world is about to find out what a hoax "climate change" has been.
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POPS Health Bill Hoax ... But that's what Majority Leader Harry Reid, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates, tells us the 2,074-page bill " said to cost only $849 billion over a decade " would do. Like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he seems to be following Vice President Joe Biden's admonition at an AARP town hall meeting that "we've got to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." Part of the "profit" in this bill will be achieved through several hundred billion in Medicare cuts. There are also fees on insurance companies, drugmakers and medical device manufacturers " sure to discourage innovation with costs passed on to health care consumers. "Higher premiums, tax increases and Medicare cuts to pay for more government " the American people know that is not reform," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Let's hope he's right. It's easy to achieve savings when you front-end the taxes and phase in the supposed benefits later. This bill, if passed, will have to be merged .....
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POPSNat'l Debt Now Tops $12 TRILLION!!!!! Deficits and debts that he multiplied...and now he thinks it's time to bring them under control. What a novice!! We have a dumb-bunny for a President and insane people in Congress. To think our own government is destroying us. Who owns us, baby? Everyone. :~(
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POPSHere Are Some Important Passages in the 2,000 Page Legislation.
Eviscerating Medicare: In addition to reducing future Medicare funding by an estimated $500 billion, the bill fundamentally changes how Medicare pays doctors and hospitals, permitting the government to dictate treatment decisions. Sec. 1302 (pp. 672-692) moves Medicare from a fee-for-service payment system, in which patients choose which doctors to see and doctors are paid for each service they provide, toward what's called a "medical home." (The bill specifies that patients may have to settle for a nurse practitioner rather than a physician as the primary-care provider.) Sec. 1114 (pp. 391-393) replaces physicians with physician assistants in overseeing care for hospice patients. • Secs. 1158-1160 (pp. 499-520) initiates programs to reduce payments for patient care to what it costs in the lowest cost regions of the country. Sec. 1161 (pp. 520-545) cuts payments to Medicare Advantage plans (used by 20% of seniors). Advantage plans have warned this will result in . . . .
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POPSPages, Costs, and Agencies Added To The Obama/Pelosi Health Care Behemoth “Additionally, this bill cuts critical Medicare and Medicaid funding by $628 billion, accounts for nearly $1.2 trillion in tax and fee increases and will explode the scope of government by putting the nation’s health care system in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. The $3 trillion price tag defies common sense " we simply cannot add all this new spending to the government rolls and claim to control the deficit. “If we continue to pile more and more debt on the next generation, they will never be able to get out from under it. The health care system needs reform, but this massive expansion of government, financed by our children and grandchildren, is the wrong way to proceed.” And listen…this is what our government believes will be the cost. But look at programs our government has run historically and you find decades of added costs and overruns that our forced onto the taxpayer. Insanity http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/11/07/how-to-go-from-1200-to-2000-pages/
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POPSHow Much Obamacare Costs the Average Family That Obama is charging premiums to those living at or on the border of poverty is absolutely incredible! And this from a candidate who pledged that he would not tax the middle class! If you have insurance, you will get hit by his proposed 40 percent tax on insurance premiums. When the tax -- and the legislation -- takes effect in 2013, all families making about $120,000 or more in combined household income (14 percent of all families or one in seven) will have to pay the tax. By the next year, 2014, the tax will hit every family making more than $100,000 (about 18 percent of all families or one in six). By 2019, 10 years hence, the tax will reach down to affect every family making more than $75,000 a year (31 percent of families or one in three). The tax will take 40 percent of all premiums above $21,000. So if you don’t have insurance, you will be socked with a mandate to buy coverage and pay a hefty proportion of your income to do it; and if you have insurance . . .
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POPSInsurance Industry Audit Says Insurance Premiums Will Increase Faster with Senate Baucus Bill America's Health Insurance Plans engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to examine the impact of four components of the health reform bill being proposed by the Senate Finance Committee as introduced. These include: # Insurance market reforms and consumer protections that would raise health insurance premiums for individuals and families if the reforms are not coupled with an effective coverage requirement. # An excise tax on employer-sponsored high value health plans (or "Cadillac plans") that in a few years could also raise premiums for some moderate value plans. # Cuts in payment rates in public programs that could increase cost shifting to private sector businesses and consumers. These changes are expected to more than offset the potential reduction in cost shifting resulting from providing coverage to the uninsured. # New taxes on health sector entities that are likely to be passed through to consumers.
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POPSThe Democrat’s War on Oncologists and Cardiologists cardiology and 19% on radiation oncology. They’re targets only because of cost: Two-thirds of morbidity or mortality among Medicare patients owes to cancer or heart disease. … Cancer doctors get hit because the Administration believes specialists order too many MRIs and CT scans. Certain kinds of diagnostic imaging lose 24% under new assumptions that machines are in use 90% of the time, up from 50%. There isn’t a radiologist in America running an MRI 10.8 hours out of 12, unless he’s lining up patients on a conveyor belt. But claiming scanners are used far more often than they really are lets the Administration “score” spending cuts. It’s like doling out healthcare by mimicking progressive income taxation; tax the haves into oblivion so eventually all can go without. And this change is applied to all expensive equipment, not just MRIs and CTs, so payments for antitumor radiation therapy will fall by up to 44%.
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POPSMere Sound and Fury Until Harry and Nancy Do Their Thing in The Dark Half of it will come from massive cuts in Medicare Advantage, while the other half will be generated by new taxes on high-end insurance, higher income taxes, and new levies on drugs and innovative medical devices. We will address these additional yellow flags on this page on Tuesday in Part 2. There is another reason why the CBO's preliminary analysis should be taken with a grain of salt, though this one wasn't mentioned in the report. Whatever the content of the Baucus bill once it is voted out of the finance committee, it will disappear into a legislative black hole as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and their key aides do what they did on the economic stimulus package back in February -- huddle together behind closed doors to write the final bill, which will then be presented as a fait accompli in the form of a conference report. Everything else is mere sound and fury signifying nothing until Harry and Nancy do their thing in the dark.
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POPSChairman Max Baucus' Big "Compromise" Would Make Matters Worse There's more: Baucus' plan was supposed to be the moderate alternative, simply because it doesn't include a government-run insurance plan. But the "co-ops" it calls for instead are almost the same thing. Anyway, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid still insists that the "public option" will be included in any bill voted on by the full Senate. Finally, much of the bill for ObamaCare would be paid for with cuts to Medicare. Seniors will love that. (Not.) As we've said before, Obama and his Democratic pals on Capitol Hill are chasing radical dreams to take over a huge swath of the economy -- a project that would take a heavy toll on jobs, restrict patients' and doctors' choices and leave health care in worse shape. As the plan wends its way through Congress, it sure isn't getting much better.
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POPSTop Percenters - Raise our Taxes Now We would see a minimal tax increase -- from 35% to 39.6%, a rate still far lower than the one under President Reagan -- but the increased revenue would raise an estimated $43 billion per year. The group’s founders include Chuck Collins, who inherited some of the Oscar Mayer meat fortune and who has long been involved in agitating on income-inequality issues. He may be best known for co-authoring the 2003 book "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes" with Bill Gates Sr. The book made the case for retaining the federal estate tax. Wealth for the Common Good on Tuesday sent its request to President Obama and to House and Senate leaders, including a petition with more than 1,000 signatures.
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POPSWhere's GOP Health Plan? They Don't Have One Republicans "are afraid to put anything on the table," he said, "because the American people would see it doesn't address the problem." Van Hollen predicted the Republicans will fail if they think they "can beat something with nothing."
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POPSReform Health care doesn't need to be reformed. The tax code, yes, allow people to purchase their own health insurance. Tort law, yes, reform it so doctors don't have to practice defensive medicine.
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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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POPSWhat next...............Tax on toilet paper. House Democrats are struggling with getting their 10-year, $1 trillion-plus bill down to the $900 billion price tag Obama prefers. Major cuts could be required, but Democrats want to protect the subsidies their plan offers to low-income Americans to help them buy coverage. Those subsidies are the most costly part of the bill.
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POPSVodoo Economics Unfortunately, in practice, the theory had mixed results. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, a combination of laws cut taxes tremendously for those in the highest tax brackets. The intention behind this was to encourage more investing by those who could afford it, but the benefits for lower-income brackets were marginal. Proponents argued that despite tax cuts, tax revenue would actually go up, since employment would increase significantly due to new businesses. This effect never really occurred, and savings rates actually declined
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