OBAMA QUITS

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them...Ronald REAGAN

One of the yet to be answered questions is just how an administration that is lead by a president who never ran a business, much less a candy store, can run USA's Health Care. Our nations health care industry comprises 16% of the USA total economy, and involves thousands of hospitals, hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses and many billions of contacts with the system by patients.

If the Cash for Clunkers is an example that the government can run a large program well. It is proving to be a disaster and an example of exacerbation of a problem that plagues providers of health care services today. Late payment for services rendered!

I know as I was a provider or over thirty years, and many of those involved payments for my services by medicaid, medicare and private insurance. All were guilty of delayed payment, but medicaid was the worst!

Now we have learned that many car dealers are refusing to participate in the CFC program because the government has not paid the $4500 dollars it promised for clunkers, and the customer has his new car in his garage!

Despite this display of federal government inept administration of a plan that involves just 3 billion dollars, Obama wants to get the lawful authority to control 1/6th of our GDP! He even has the perverse guts to quote the Jewish prayer to show he is in unison with religious beliefs in his quest for socialised medicine. This despite the fact that he has consistentantly violated the Fifth Commandment of Gods Ten Commandments by being a vocal advocate of taking the innocent life of the unborn, abortion and partial birth abortion!

He said this after meeting with a group of Liberal Church leaders on Thursday.
"We are God's partners in matters of life and death," Obama said, quoting from the Rosh Hashanah prayer that says that in the holiday period, it is GOD who decides "who shall live and who shall die."

The president ended the call by wishing the rabbis "shanah tovah," or happy new year — in reference to the High Holidays a month from now. This from a man who has not chosen a church to attend on Sundays as yet! That is chutzpah!

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Some New Mexico auto dealers have backed out of the cash-for-clunkers program and more may do so as the federal government takes its time providing cash reimbursements.

Dealers across the state are owed more than $3.6 million, according to a dealers' group which says that so far Uncle Sam has only written three checks totaling about $14,000.

Cash for clunkers--officially its the Car Allowance Rebate System--allows consumers to trade their gas guzzlers for a more fuel-efficient rides while earning up to $4,500 toward the purchase price.

Dealerships put up the cash for the rebates after being told by the Obama administration they would be paid back within 10 days of the sale.

With that much cash in limbo they've called in reinforcements.

"You simply can't ask businesses to front $200,000, $300,000 for any period of time," Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., told KRQE News 13. "These applications are simply not being processed fast enough".

I can only imagine how long it will take to distribute payments for services rendered under a government option plan! And do not delude yourself. As I have said before, if we get a government option it will eventually price out of existence the private health insurance industry. They have to make a profit, but the government has the tax payer well to return to time and time again if they run low on money. Or they can just print it as they are doing now, and run the national debt up even further!

THEY ARE USING SEMANTICS BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!

"Health services should not be guaranteed to] individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."
EZEKIEL EMANUEL

One of the many lies that Obama and his sycophants are telling the uniformed public, is that we need a Government health insurance option, because there is no competition to the health insurance industry.
There are presently 30 different Health Insurance Plans offered through independent insurance agents in the State of Florida.
Among the many are some of the readily identifiable names like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Humana, United Health Care, Pacific Care,
and Assurant. All competing for Floridians health care dollars.

Many States have laws restricting companies domiciled outside that particular state from becoming licensed in the State, or variations of that restricting customer choice.
It would be a simple matter of passing a Bill that would break down any restrictions that inhibit major, licensed Health Insurance companies from competing in all 50 states. We do not need a government option that does not need to make a profit, because it is backed by tax payer funds, as an option to reduce costs! This is just a canard!!

The other lie swirling around Washington DC and the government leaning main stream media is that if the Democrats cannot get enough votes to prevent a Conservative filibuster to block ramming Obamcare down our throats. Is the invoking of the "Reconciliation" option to allow passage of Obamcare with just a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate.

The Congressional Budget Act of 1974, Titles I through IX, includes Title III that allows a budget resolution before the Senate that is being filibustered, to allow invoking what is called the Byrd Rule!

The Byrd Rule was an amendment to the the budget reconciliation acts of 1985,86, and 1990. This allows Senators who object to the use of "reconciliation" to raise points of order that cannot be waved unless there are three-fifth of the Senators who vote to over rule the "point of order".

This is important because the White House has indicated that as they are used to doing in Chicago, they intend to get what they want despite the people's protests, and will "RAM" it through no matter what!!

The Byrd Rule requires any reconciliation that involve "extraneous"
provisions to a budet bill br subject to deffinite requirements.
There are six provision that forbid "reconciliation". If the bill or amendment-----
1.do not produce a change in outlays or revenues
2.produce changes in outlays or revenues which are merely incidental
to the non=budgetary components of the provisions
3.are outside the jurisdiction of the committee that submitted the title or provision for inclusion in the reconciliation measure
4.increase outlays or decrease revenue if the provisions title, as a whole, fails to achieve the Senate reporting committee's reconciliation instructions
5.increase net outlays or decrease revenue during a fiscal year after the years covered by the reconciliation bill unless the provision's title, as a whole, remains budget neutral( no way Obamacare qualifies in this way!)
6.contain recommendations regarding the OASDI(social security) trust funds( what trust funds, there are none!!)

Since reconciliation of the bill for Obamacare will cover as many as ten years and probably more, the fifth provision can have the effect of requiring that any tax spending increase, as incumbent in Obamacare, must be approved by three-fifth(3/5) of the Senate!
You can see that unless they want to violate their own rules, the Democrats cannot invoke reconciliation!

TAX MONEY USED TO PROMOTE CHRONYISM!

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” —Ronald Reagan

WIKAPEDIA DEFINES CHROMYISM AS; "Cronyism is partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy. Cronyism exists when the appointer and the beneficiary are in social contact; often, the appointer is inadequate to hold his or her own job or position of authority, and for this reason the appointer appoints individuals who will not try to weaken him or her, or express views contrary to those of the appointer. Politically, "cronyism" is derogatorily used. The word "crony" first appeared in 18th century London, believed by many to be derived from the Greek word χρόνιος (chronios), meaning "long-term", however, crony appears in the 1811 edition of Grose's Vulgar Tongue with a decidedly non-collegiate definition, placing it firmly in the cant of the underworld.[1] A less likely source is the Irish Language term Comh-Roghna (pron. ko-ronə), which translates to "close pals", or mutual friends".

Governments are particularly susceptible to accusations of cronyism, as they spend public money. Many democratic governments are encouraged to practice administrative transparency in accounting and contracting, however, there often is no clear delineation of when an appointment to government office is "cronyism". It is not unusual for a politician to surround him- or herself with highly-qualified subordinates, and to develop social, business, or political friendships leading to the appointment to office of friends, likewise in granting government contracts. In fact, the counsel of such friends is why the officeholder successfully obtained his or her powerful position — therefore, cronyism usually is easier to perceive than to demonstrate and prove.

The Obama administration is a present day example of the resources of our society(tax dollars) being used to promote cronyism. A look at the cabinet appointments and the Czars appointed by Obama shows cronyism at it's worst. As do the way Obama and his past car czar handled the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcy debacles. There you have a definite bias toward one of the strongest supporters of Obama and the Democrats, the auto workers union!

Another prime example is the Bail Out money and to whom it has been distributed.
The scandal some are calling “Bonusgate” has extended beyond AIG and Bank of America into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bringing to light the relationship between Wall Street contributions and their connection to Democratic negligence in the handling of Wall Street excesses. Two key figures top the list in campaign contributions from the entities involved as they did for AIG, Senator Chris Dodd (D-RI) and President Barack Obama. Many Americans are now learning that for some time the Democratic leadership in return for heavy campaign contributions has show undo favoritism to Wall Street resulting in the wasting of billions of taxpayer dollars.

According to the non-partisan research organization, employees of security and investment firms donated nearly $10 million to Barack Obama in 2008. And during the presidential election campaign, Barack Obama, strongly benefited from employees of Lehman Brothers.The Illinois senator raised approximately $370,000 from Lehman employees that year, more than three times what McCain raised from employees of the failing firm! source:CNNPolitical Ticker

In March of 2008 Politico.com revealed the following amounts of contributions that were given to Obama during his presidential campaign.
- Obama has taken $1,180,103 from the top issuers of subprime loans. [cq.com]
- Obama received $266,907 from Lehman. [cq.com]
- Obama received $5395 from GMAC. [cq.com]
- Obama received $150,850 from Credit Suisse First Boston. [cq.com]
- Obama received $11,250 from Countrywide. [cq.com]
- Obama received $9052 from Washington Mutual. [cq.com]
- Obama received $161,850 from Citigroup. [cq.com]
- Obama received $4600 from CBASS. [cq.com]
- Obama received $170,050 from Morgan Stanley. [cq.com]
- Obama received $1150 from Centex. [cq.com]
- Obama received $351,900 from Goldman Sachs. [cq.com]
None of these gifts were even close to the near 50 million dollars that labor unions contributed to elect Obama!

And Open Secrets.com lists the following Obama contributors:
University of California $1,591,395
Goldman Sachs $994,795
Harvard University $854,747
Microsoft Corp $833,617
Google Inc $803,436
Citigroup Inc $701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co $695,132
Time Warner $590,084
Sidley Austin LLP $588,598
Stanford University $586,557
National Amusements Inc $551,683
UBS AG $543,219
Wilmerhale Llp $542,618
Skadden, Arps et al $530,839
IBM Corp $528,822
Columbia University $528,302
Morgan Stanley $514,881
General Electric $499,130
US Government $494,820 ?????
Latham & Watkins $493,835

And the SEIU, whose officers now meet with Obama every week, endorsed Obama, that union has 1.9 million members and has a rank-and-file that is far more politically active than most other unions’. Its political action committee spent more than $75 million for Obama's campaign. They expect and are receiving special attention from the Obama administration. And to show their appreciation they are some of the "thugs" who attack and intimidate anti-Obmacare attendees at Town Hall meetings!
Ms. Burger of SEIU said the service employees would make a big push to press the president and Congress to enact universal health coverage and the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for workers to join unions.

She said the S.E.I.U.’s members would make 10 million phone calls to members of Congress as part of that legislative effort!

And although this issue was dropped there is the issue of illegal foreign contributions that the Federal Elections Commission was contemplating investigation, that could be connected to the fact that some of the TARP funds have found their way to foreign divisions of American banks and investment corporations.

The FEC analyst says that Obama’s filings indicate he received large, bundled sums of donations from overseas, sometimes exceeding a quarter millions dollars. “It’s suspicious, but it’s the small donations made by credit card that need to be examined. We’ve raised red flags on many of these and the Obama campaign just ignored them.

Then there is the issue that Secretary of Treasury Geithner had a hand in the $30 billion Bear Stearns bailout and the multilevel AIG bailouts ($85 billion and $38 billion under President Bush and another $30 billion in March 2009 under Obama). Massive sums of that taxpayer money went to major financial institutions that had employed Obama's money men and their closest confidants. Goldman Sachs, for example, raked in nearly $13 billion in December 2009 from AIG in federal TARP funds -- and reported record profits this quarter with a bonus pool of more than $11 billion.

President Obama’s optimism that big government will help the economy is unwarranted and dangerous. The American taxpayer has seen billions of dollars wasted in the TARP program which has to date been of no real significance in benefit. Despite good intentions government is never efficient at replacing private commercial enterprise with public ones. Thousands of pages of law have been written of which apparently not a single member of Congress has read according to statements made by California Congressional Representative Maxine Waters on MSNBC. She admitted they rely on unelected staff to write and read the law the affect the pocket book of everyday Americans.
They are too busy campaigning for re-election and attending parties and taking "junkets" to be bothered with reading a bill before voting on it!

CHICAGO POLITICS IN ACTION REVIEWED

First IT WAS THE NEWS THAT THE WHITE HOUSE WAS SOLICITING NEGATIVE EMAILS ABOUT OBAMACARE BE SENT TO THEM,at the electronic "tip" box labeled flag@whitehouse.gov, and now we have the news that an organization founded by the self proclaimed Communist Czar of Green Jobs is putting pressure on sponsors of the Glenn Beck TV show to withdraw their sponsorship.

Barack Obama's "Green Jobs" czar (one of 42 extra-legal czars), and the leader of the attempted boycott against Glenn Beck, is a self-described "black nationalist" and "Communist", who has ties to a former terrorist. Van Jones, founder of "Color of Change", a black militant political activist group, worked as a co-founder and director of the Apollo Alliance, which Glenn Beck recently exposed for its subversive ties with radical left-wing groups. Van Jones worked at Apollo with Jeff Jones. Jeff Jones was a leading co-founder (along with Bill Ayers) of the terrorist group Weather Underground , who spent time on the run from law enforcement agencies while his group carried out a series of bombings of U.S. government buildings. Van Jones' group "Color of Change" began the boycott against Glenn Beck after Beck exposed Apollo Group and Van Jones' militant past.

For over 49 years Jesse Jackson was the model of how to bring pressure to industries for profit and purpose.
Jackson's is an all-American success story, of the robber-baron type. In his book,Timmerman demonstrates that Jackson has always been a self-promoting egotist with boundless chutzpah, little regard for the rules, and an uncanny ability to manipulate the market -- in his case, the market in white guilt -- for immense personal gain. The only thing that's changed for him in four decades are the stakes. The difference between Jackson and the robber barons is that the latter left behind museums, libraries, and other facilities to enhance the commonweal. Jackson's legacy to anyone outside his family and inner circle of friends and supporters is nil.

The Jackson myth apparently begins with a lie conjured and perpetuated by Jackson himself: that he consoled the dying Martin Luther King Jr., holding King's head as he lay stricken by an assassin's bullet. It is generally well known that King's associates, including the late Ralph Abernathy, have bitterly denounced Jackson for trying to steal the martyred King's mantle with a blatant falsehood. But that didn't stop Jackson, nor did it much matter to his legions of admirers. After King's death, Jackson returned to Chicago, where he resumed work with Operation Breadbasket (later renamed PUSH), an organization set up by King to encourage businesses in the black community to hire more blacks.

Jackson used the organization to threaten businesses with boycotts unless owners met his demands. Law-enforcement officials and press accounts quoted by Timmerman reveal that Jackson's enforcers were sometimes members of a notorious black street gang, El Rukn, whose leaders would eventually be jailed for murder, narcotics dealing, extortion, and other offenses. Jackson's half-brother, Noah Robinson Jr., was thick with the thugs. A black Chicago minister tells Timmerman: "There was one very powerful reason why none of us spoke out more loudly against Jesse for all those years. It was fear of the long arm of the black mafia that Jesse's half-brother controlled."

And now it appears that within the "inner circle" of the Obama "mafia" is another activist trying to intimidate sponsors of a Conservative cable TV show. Glenn Beck is an author who currently has a best selling book in print and at the last survey, has 2.4 million viewers of his TV show. That makes him number three in audience behind Bill O'Reilly and Shaun Hannity. No Liberal TV show comes even close to that large an audience, so it is only good business practice to advertise products on his show unless you are intimidated by the power of Black activists or the power of a person who has direct access to the presidents ear!
It doesn't matter if they told bald-faced lies, or if their actions harm black businesses and cost jobs to black workers. They are playing race politics and are out to get what the white TV personality who exposed the truth about Van Jones, co-founder of ColorofChange.org.
ColorChange.org is an activist organization that has led a furious campaign against Beck culminating in major companies such as Geico and Lawyers.com pulling their spots from the Fox News star's daily show.

Just like Jessie Jackson, "Czar" Van Jones apparently It doesn't care if Beck told the facts about ColorChange, they call him a racist!
This from a man who was the subject of multiple segments that were based in part on WND's(World News Daily) reporting that Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader.

It apparently has nothing to do with racism. In fact the only purpose of their campaign is to silence a voice of truth with their intimidation and political influence. There is no respect for first amendment rights here, just the attempt to shut off the light of truth and return to the darkness of lies and deceit!

QUESTION: As the "Green Jobs Czar" and thus a government employee, would Van Jones be violating any laws or ethics regulations if he were encouraging and/or coercing corporate entities that he may be in a position to help or punish through his government office?

If they can do this to Glenn Beck, the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers "The Christmas Sweater" and "An Inconvenient Book". He is also the author of "The Real America" and publisher of "Fusion" magazine. He is the host of a tv show on FoxNews and also the nationally syndicated radio show The Glenn Beck Program, which is the third most listened to talk show in America.Who will they go after they destoy Beck!

ANALYSIS OF SECTION 1401 OF HB3200

Despite the theatrical denial by president Obama that the government "would not pull the plug on grandma". The issue of assisted suicide still looms it's immoral and demonic head in HR3200
Obama could say that the govt. will not pull the plug, because provisions in the plan would not allow grandma to be put on a respirator to begin with, as the following studies will reveal!

Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, has had his organization analyze the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES BILL 3200.He confirmed it contains health care rationing, a national health ID card complete with government access to personal bank accounts, government decisions on what health care benefits are available and mandatory taxpayer support for abortion.

Staver condemned the health plan as worse than China's mandatory one-child policy
The Liberty Counsel analysis said that under Section 1308, the government will dictate marriage and family therapy as well as mental health services, including the definitions of those treatments. Under Section 1401, a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research would be set up, creating a bureaucracy through which federal employees could determine whether any treatment is "comparatively effective" for any individual based on the cost, likely success and probably the years left in life.

It also, "covers abortions, transsexual surgeries, encourages counseling as to how many children you should have, whether you should increase the interval between children."

The Liberty Counsel analysis also pointed out the government would be allowed to ration health care procedures, prevent "judicial review" of its decision, tell doctors what income they can have, impose new taxes for anyone not having an "acceptable" coverage, regulate whether seniors can have wheelchairs, penalize hospitals or doctors whose patients require "readmission," prevent the expansion of hospitals and set up procedures for home visits by health care analysts.

Under Section 440, Liberty Counsel said, the government "will design and implement Home Visitation Program for families with young kids and families that expect children." And Section 194 provides for a program that has the government "coming into your house and teaching/telling you how to parent," Liberty Counsel said.

As he has in the first 120 days of his presidency, Obama carefully parses his words when he is not outright lying! And not unlike any other politician, he talks around any question he does not want to answer. He launches into a soliloquy of mixed messages intended to confuse and confound the questioner.
That is if the question he receives is not one from one of the Democrats "plants" with a prepared question. The 11 year old daughter of a Massachusetts Obama campaign manager, at the New Hampshire Town Hall meeting,or the woman who introduced herself as a doctor, but was in fact a student, are excellent examples.

And the Obamphiles are not happy to only call the protesters names, like Nazis, un-American and paid mobs for the insurance industry. They have called out the same people who intimidate voters at the polls during the past election.
The new Democratic National Committee (DNC) video claims the protests are being staged by "desperate Republicans and their well funded allies [who are] organizing angry mobs -- just like they did during the election."

But the reality is that when it comes to organizing angry mobs, the real professionals work at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This union has organizing resources and experience that ordinary citizens can only dream about. Their goon squads have heckled, harassed and even assaulted concerned citizens who favor less-costly private options to government-run health care, and they are bused to he Town Hall meetings to do their intimidation!

SEIU has a long history of partnering to generate angry mobs. The union helped fund the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) Muscle for Money program that was set up to pressure corporations in shakedown campaigns, including demonstrations at the homes of corporate executives. Labor Department disclosure forms show more than $600,000 has changed hands between SEIU locals and ACORN affiliates under the Muscle for Money initiative. It is not an exercise in subtlety. How's that for coordination?

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT OBAMACARE IS A SMOKESCREEN FOR CAP AND TRADE

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” —Ronald Reagan

I like any other amateur political analyst. have allowed the media fight over Obamacare to occlude my view of what is the big picture of what I think is the plan that the Obama administration has to tax and spend our once strong country into bankruptcy. This while impeding any attempt to make our country independent from OPEC countries who supply the major portion of our present source of energy. Thus slowing if not stopping our country's military ability to defend us, and the ability of the manufacturing industry, that we still have, to provide work for our labor force and keep the USA as the best country to live in.

The Waxman/Markey Cap and Trade bill that is pending in congress could be just the burden that breaks our economic back!

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454, commonly known as Waxman-Markey after its two main sponsors) seeks to limit how much gasoline and other fossil fuels Americans can use. The aim is to cut America's emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use, which proponents of the bill claim is warming the planet to dangerous levels. As with electricity rates, gasoline prices would have to rise high enough so the public would be forced to use less and meet the bill's ever-tightening energy rationing targets. It is literally a deliberate effort by the U.S. government to make gasoline less affordable.

According to a Heritage Foundation analysis,[1] the bill would boost the price at the pump by 20 cents per gallon when the provisions first take effect in 2012. The targets get tougher each year, and by 2035 the increase would be an inflation-adjusted $1.38 per gallon--and that is on top of any other price increases that might occur.

2. Regulation of hydraulic fracturing. Bills have been introduced authorizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act.[2] This could greatly reduce future onshore drilling for oil (and even more so for natural gas), thus lowering domestic supplies and adversely impacting gasoline prices.[3]

Hydraulic fracturing is a process by which pressurized water and other substances are injected into wells to facilitate the flow of oil and natural gas. It has been widely used for decades and is necessary for the majority of new wells in the U.S. It is currently regulated at the state level, and its environmental and public safety track record is nearly spotless.[4]

Nonetheless, proposed legislation seeks new federal regulation by the EPA based on concerns about contamination of drinking water supplies, even though such water contamination has never occurred and is highly unlikely.

3. Increased red tape and costs on domestic drilling. A draft bill from the House Natural Resources Committee seeks to discourage domestic oil production by adding a host of new regulatory requirements on top of those already in place.[5] The result would be more paperwork, delays, and litigation, but lower domestic supplies of oil.

The bill also creates new regional councils (above and beyond the many existing opportunities for state and local participation) with control over offshore oil and gas leasing. Though couched in terms of allowing public input, these councils would be susceptible to dominance by anti-energy activists not in step with the pro-domestic energy sentiment of the American people.

The proposal would restore unnecessary and redundant environmental reviews that had been eliminated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This policy change has proven very helpful for new domestic energy production since 2005, and its reversal would be a serious blow to future oil and natural gas drilling.

The bill also raises many fees on oil production in areas with existing leases. These increases would be particularly burdensome for the smaller energy companies that account for most of the domestic oil and gas activity. In some cases, these provisions would be enough to make oil leases too costly to pursue. While discouraging existing oil activities, the bill does nothing to open up currently off-limits areas to new production.

4. Raising energy taxes. Although President Obama has spoken frequently about the need to reduce imports of oil, his first budget proposed a host of punitive taxes aimed at domestic oil and natural gas production. For example, the budget eliminates several deductions against income for energy producers, most notably the manufacturer's deduction under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. Under the budget proposal, this deduction, which applies to all domestic industries, would specifically exclude domestic exploration and production of oil and natural gas.

Overall, the budget uses the domestic oil and natural gas industry as a source of $31 billion over 10 years in additional revenues. It should be noted that this industry already faces effective tax rates that are higher than the manufacturing sector as a whole.[6]

These energy tax hikes, which of course do not apply to foreign sources of oil, also put domestic production at a comparative disadvantage. For example, the 1980 windfall profits tax on oil companies (an excise tax that kicks in when the price of oil exceeds a certain amount) was found by the Congressional Research Service to have "reduced domestic oil production from between 3 and 6 percent, and increased oil imports from between 8 and 16 percent."[7] The newly proposed tax changes would have the same effect.

5. Administrative delays on drilling. Last year, in the wake of public outrage over $4 gas, President Bush and Congress repealed the restrictions on leasing in 85 percent of America's territorial waters. However, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has already reversed the pro-energy momentum from last year, stalling on opening any new areas to leasing and even cancelling some existing leases. He has also blocked the leasing program for oil shale, a promising source of oil trapped in massive deposits of rock under parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. If progress can be made on technologies to efficiently extract the oil from the rock, oil shale could single-handedly supply America's oil needs for many decades and possibly a century or more.[8]

What to Do Instead

Instead of clamping down on domestic energy supplies, American energy policy should embrace these ideas:

Expand offshore and onshore oil production into previously restricted areas, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil--16 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia--lie beneath a few thousand acres that can be accessed with minimal environmental impact;
Reduce the regulatory and legal delays that can slow and sometimes stop production;
Allow further progress on oil shale; and
Prevent costly new anti-energy regulations from being imposed in the name of addressing global warming.
These principles are contained in bills such as the American Energy Innovation Act (H.R. 2828), the No Cost Stimulus Act (S. 570 and H.R. 1431), and the American Energy Act (H.R. 2846).

Meanwhile,China, India, and other developing countries have sidestepped demands to limit their own emissions by arguing for years that the U.S. was still on the sidelines. Obviously that’s not the case anymore. In that sense, any U.S. domestic agreement on climate change should improve the chances of getting the world’s fastest-growing emitters to cooperate later this year at the big climate-change confabs.

And It is one of the paradoxes of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change that companies in Russia and other Eastern European countries, which are among the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases, are poised to earn hundreds of millions of dollars through trading their rights to release carbon dioxide into the air.

The Kyoto treaty, negotiated in 1997 and adopted by 36 industrial nations, established a mechanism aimed at finding the cheapest way to curb emissions of gases that contribute to global warming. The idea was that countries that produced more than their treaty-imposed limits could reach their goals by buying rights from producers in other countries where controlling output is easier and less expensive.

It is not clear how successful that approach will turn out to be. But because Russia's companies operate such outdated and inefficient equipment, they can easily and cheaply upgrade. As a result, the Kyoto process has already emerged as a potential source of earnings for the country's big energy and manufacturing companies, according to company executives and analysts. They have hired consultants, inventoried pollution sources to earn credits, and opened carbon-trading divisions.

In my belated opinion this could do more harm to our National defense and our way of life than any legislation proposed or passed by Congress since we became a Republic!
And I still believe we should oppose Obamacare!!
Source: The Heritage Foundation, Andrew E.Kramer of New York Times

OBAMA IS GOOD AT CALLING AMERICANS NAMES

In 2006 when Obama was still in the Senate he made a trip to Africa, and had these words to say: “When the heavy hand of the state is imposed on the press, all of us lose,” He told a group of Kenyan journalists during an August 2006 trip to Africa. “The media does not have a formal role in the government, but it serves a critical function in providing information to the public so that they can hold the government accountable,” he said.Somebody should point out to the main stream media that Obama does not want them to be a propaganda arm of his government, or do his words only apply to foreign countries?

Mr. Obama’s remarks implied he supports the First Amendment. His comment that “Democracy can’t function properly without a free press,” suggested he understood the importance of robust scrutiny of elected officials. Yet, when given the opportunity, Mr. Obama’s recent actions have contradicted his own statements.

The Obama campaign launched a multipronged assault on the First Amendment when it threatened television and radio stations airing content critical of Mr. Obama. The first targets were TV stations running an advertisement that has proven embarrassing to the presidential candidate. The ad focuses on Mr. Obama’s 13-year relationship with Bill Ayers, a key member of the 1970s domestic terrorist group, the Weather Underground. The Weathermen bombed at least 12 locations, including the U.S. Capitol in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972 and the State Department in 1975. A 1970 San Francisco bombing killed one police officer and blinded another. The same year, three Weathermen perished in a Greenwich Village townhouse explosion. Unrepentant, Mr. Ayers told a New York Times reporter in remarks published on Sept. 11, 2001: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

And when people opposed his health care proposal, he called them a "mob" controlled by the Insurance Industry. President Obama took direct aim at the vocal opponents who’ve been filling congressional town halls on health care last Tuesday, saying despite all the “yelling and the shouting and the noise,” health reform will improve the lives of Americans with and without insurance now.Never mentioned the cost in increased taxes did he!

Obama said special interests who oppose health reform always “try to scare the heck out of folks, and they’ll create boogeymen out there that just aren’t real” to prevent change. He even sought to rebut directly one of the most widespread rumors — that the bills in Congress include so-called death panels to decide how much coverage people can receive. It is rather strange that the Senate has said they will remove that provision from their proposed bill! Who is lying here, you be the judge!!

And even if there is not a provision in the over 1000 page bill the house passed that refers to a government panel that will decide when end of life occurs. Where in the Constitution is the federal government granted the authority to implement a national public health care system? Where, in our founding document that all other freedoms, restraints, and rights are written out, does it give Washington the power to steal from me to fund health care for you? If you can just tell me that, then we can start to discuss the specifics of the actual bill.

Obama said “Where we disagree, let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to what’s been proposed.” Maybe somebody should remind Obama that it is not the Conservative"mob" that is running adds on the Internet to solicit people who can disrupt town hall meetings.

So who are the contrived activists showing up at town hall meetings looking for confrontations? Is it the "whacked out" conservatives who want congress and President Obama to legislate according to the U.S. Constitution or is it the union thugs(SEIU) and community organizers(ACORN) with pre-printed signs. We've not heard of any conservative groups running ads for "rent-a-mobs", but not so with the Obama leftists. Apparently they are running ads at craigslist thus, " Wanted: Obama health care reform volunteers willing to be paid $15 an hour".

And to add insult to the injurious statements Obama has made to citizens who fear for their lives and freedoms if Obamacare is passed. Our president at a joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Guadalajara, Mexico on Monday, President Barack Obama referred to American opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens as
“demagogues.”
There are going to be demagogues out there who try to suggest that any form of pathway for legalization for those who are already in the United States is unacceptable. And those are fights that I'd have to have if my poll numbers are at 70 or if my poll numbers are at 40. That's just the nature of the U.S. immigration debate.

Why doesn't somebody remind the president that rewarding people who entered the USA illegally are felons and do not deserve to be rewarded with amnesty!? But then there has never ben a president that appointed a Communist to a cbinet level position as Obama has with his appointment to the position of Czar!

The media gave virtually no attention to the political beliefs of Van Jones, the man President Obama has named “Green Jobs Czar”?

Jones is William Ayers without the bombs. Here’s how the East Bay Express described the “Green Jobs Czar’s” background:

Jones had planned to move to Washington, DC, and had already landed a job and an apartment there. But in jail, he said, “I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’” Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. “I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.” In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.”

Network television news? Hello? Hello? Hello? Anybody out there?

PAY FOR QUALITY NOT QUANTITY?

Obama misleads us by denying that bureaucrats would "meddle" in our health care decisions or with the doctor-patient relationship. Yet in almost the same breath, he boasts that he would bundle payments to doctors based on the quality, not the quantity, of the services they provide -- such quality to be determined by his bureaucratic boards. The House bill is replete with provisions conferring such decisions on government bureaucrats.

Obama misleads us when he and his minions cavalierly dismiss the public's genuine concern about the government, under his plan, insinuating itself into end-of-life decisions. Instead of responding to provisions of the bill legitimately generating such concerns, he puts words into our mouths, saying we claim that the bill would require "euthanasia." Even some of Obama's state-run media fact checkers suggested that Reps. Thaddeus McCotter and John Boehner made that claim. In fact, they said provisions of the bill "could create ... a more permissive environment for euthanasia ... and physician-assisted suicide." Someone needs to check the fact checkers.

Of course there are legitimate concerns here, and it insults our intelligence to suggest otherwise. The bill would immediately impose a monumental conflict of interest on government bureaucrats by tasking them to cut costs drastically while simultaneously empowering them to "counsel" people about their end-of-life (and other) medical care. Such a conflict of interest -- over life and death itself -- is unconscionable and unthinkable in the United States of America.

According to a recent analysis by the Lewin Group, the nation's most prominent health policy econometrics firm, assuming full implementation of the House bill, 103.9 million Americans would be covered under the public plan, and 83.4 million people would no longer be covered by private health insurance.Moreover, a federally designed health insurance exchange would consolidate federal control over the financing and delivery of Americans' medical services.

Initially, Americans may respond positively to the idea of a national health insurance exchange, but they are almost certainly unclear about its functions, how it would affect them, or which health policy problems it would solve. The legalese double talk language used in the health care debate can conceal as much as convey the true meaning of proposals embodied in the complex provisions of the mammoth House and Senate health care bills.

And it is obvious to anyone who watches closely the reaction of the media and the Obamanites, to the conservative protests to Obamacare at the Town Hall meetings. That what those who want to push the socialisation of our national health care system is to confuse the issue by calling those who are afraid of Obamacare, Nazis,unamerican and mobs paid by the Insurance industry. Thus attempting to deflect attention of a uninformed public from the myriad of problems with Obamacare, that they refuse to answer, to issues of peoples actions not the facts!

A perfect example of the double talk that Obama is using in his scripted Town Hall meetings is his statement in New Hampshire that the health insurance we now have is broken, immoral and must be fixed. Then he said if you have health insurance and are happy with it you will be able to keep it! Why would he allow people to keep a plan that he says is immoral?

And if that isn't bad enough it was learned that the young girl(11 years old) who asked a question of Obama at his last Town Hall meeting was not just an inquisitive young lady. She was the daughter of a women who has been a big supporter and contributor of Obama. In fact she ran an Obama for president office in Mass. And the really dishonest part of an Obama session was the woman who misrepresented herself as a pediatrician who was not even a doctor!
Is this the Change we can believe in?

A panicked President Obama has resorted to Chicago-style politics of intimidation by essentially declaring war on those who refuse to go along with his "plan". First, he publicly smeared and insulted them like he did Sergeant Crowley on TV when the police man arrested a surly Harvard professor. He called them “angry mobs” and their protests “manufactured.” At a political rally in Virginia last Friday, he referred to those who opposed his plans as the “folks who created the mess” and said that they shouldn’t “do a lot of talking.”

Then, in an act of blatant hypocrisy, he ordered up his own organized army of union members and Democrats to combat those citizens who were doing nothing more than legally expressing their views about the health care bills. Obama gave his troops their marching orders: “punch back twice as hard” at their opponents. Presumably that language was meant to be metaphorical, but it is indicative of a hostility on the part of the White House toward fellow Americans that is wholly unacceptable and unbecoming in their chief executive.

It seems, though, that some of Obama’s supporters in Service Employees International Union (SEIU) took that order literally when they physically assaulted a peaceful Black protester in St. Louis and put him in the hospital. What is especially disturbing is that the day after the attack, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a conference call with members of SEIU. She called them her “brothers and sisters,” praised their actions, and told them to “keep doing what you’re doing.” But perhaps Obama’s greatest indignity is his insidious snitch program that encourages his supporters to report their neighbors, family members, and friends when they publicly, whether through blog posts, emails, or in casual conversation, dare to dissent from the Obama party line on health care.And they call the people who are opposed to Obamacre, Nazis!!

Sources: The Heritage Foundation and Pajamas Media.com

OBAMACARE MAY BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH!!

There are too many reasons why I think Obamacare is a bad deal for Americans, but there is one thing hidden in the House bill that we refer to as Obamacare that really should scare anyone who is over 55 years of age.
The language in the House bill establishes a panel that has the authority to decide what treatments will be included in The Government "option" health plan.And there is the implication that they can forbid certain expensive treatments to senior citizens.
Every country that has National health care has rationing of care for seniors and the "infirmed" people who are not considered "productive" citizems!

It is a fact of basic economics that you cannot increase the number of people covered by health care without increasing the cost of operating the program.
The present medicare and medicaid programs are in effect bankrupt. So how can we add more people to the government health care programs without limiting access to care or raising taxes prohibitively.

An example of what rationing might do is seen in the case of one of President Obama's Medal of Freedom recipients.
If Stephen Hawking, an Honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, had been treated in a country that rationed care to the infirmed, he would not have survived to be awarded his Presidential Medal of Freedom yesterday.
They would have said in his youth that the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, was essentially worthless!. That was the thundering verdict of the Investor's Business Daily on our National Health Service and Mr Obama's plans to introduce what Republicans term "socialised" medicine.

Professor Hawking, who is completely paralysed by motor neurone disease, has been treated by the NHS throughout his 67 years, and points out indignantly that he would not have lived without its care.Stephen Hawking,is a astro-physicist and professor at the University of Cambridge.

In England, government health officials have decided that "$22,750 is how much six months of life is worth. Under their socialised system, if a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck. That's wrong for America."Apparently they have excepts for outstanding academics and politicians much like our U.S> Congress that has thei own health plan and refuses to give it up and participate in the plan they propose for US!

The figure comes from Britain's National Institute for Clinical Evidence, which evaluates treatments in terms of the average increase in life expectancy. If the cost of prolonging someone's life for a year exceeds more than £30,000, then the NHS will not pay for that treatment. In other words, although there are no "death panels", the fundamental point is correct. The NHS does decide that some treatments are too expensive. And if that means you die? Our condolences, says the Government. Dr.Hawkins apparently was a special case!

Despite the myths from the Left, and Obama, about the American system,that you have to take your credit card to the emergency room, and if you can't pay you won't be treated. This is a blatant lie and he knows it because federal law forbids emergency rooms from denying treatment!

It is beyond dispute that treatment in the US is better than in any country that has socialised medicine. Diagnosed with prostate cancer and want to survive for the next five years? In Britain you have a 74 per cent chance. In the US, it is 98 per cent. For leukaemia, the American survival rate is close to half, while in Europe it is a third.

Ability to pay, of course, is central to the American system. If you have good insurance, you will get the very best treatment in the world – and the money spent by Americans ensures that the boundaries of medicine are constantly being expanded.This country developed statins, most high blood pressure medicines and the twentieth century saw a remarkable upsurge of research on drugs, with major advances in the treatment of bacterial and viral infections, heart disease, stomach ulcers, cancer, and mental illnesses. These, along with the introduction of the oral contraceptive, have altered all of our lives.

On Monday, Mr Obama promised: "You will not be waiting in any lines." That statement will prompt a wry smile for anyone who has used the NHS. He also said that his proposals had the support of the American Association for Retired People, and that he had never been a supporter of the British-style "single payers" system – both things demonstrably not true. His campaign vow not to raise middle-class taxes to pay for health care reform is already being quietly put to one side.SOURCE:TELEGTAPH.CO.UK

And that is why I oppose the passage of Obamacare!

DISINFORMATION IN THE CONGO AND IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

While Secretary of State Hillary was telling an audience in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that government should own business, the president was spreading his disinformation to a partisan crowd in New Hampshire.

His pack of disinformation is too long for this blog, so I will include just the fist two falsehoods that the president spun for not only the crowd in the school but a National Television audience. After all, that is the purpose of these type meetings. Not to convince an adoring audience of Democrats , but to get more propaganda out to the nation watching the "show" on TV!!

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter.” This is directly contradicted by candidate Barack Obama’s own website which quotes Obama at a rally in Ames, Iowa form 2008: “If I were designing a system from scratch I would probably set up a single-payer system. … So what I believe is we should set up a series of choices….Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system.” So there you have in one paragraph the true purpose of Obama’s public option: a vehicle to slowly transition all Americans out of private coverage and into a government-run single payer health care system. This Trojan Horse view of the public option has been reaffirmed by Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

“Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” This statement is also plainly false. Again, as demonstrated above, the true purpose of Obama’s public option is to move Americans out of their private coverage and into government run health care. Independent, non-partisan analysis from the Lewin Group has confirmed the House bill, H.R. 3200, will do exactly that: About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

And because I am a senior citizen chronologically, I have to include this: "“We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.” This is just plain false. The AARP released a statement late yesterday directly contradicting the President: “While the President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”

“I just want to be clear, again: Seniors who are listening here, this does not affect your benefits. This is not money going to you to pay for your benefits; this is money that is subsidizing folks who don’t need it.” Under the current system, more and more seniors are discovering that it is becoming harder and harder to find and keep doctors who will accept Medicare patients.

A 2008 survey found that 29% of the Medicare beneficiaries it surveyed who were looking for a primary care doctor had a problem finding one to treat them. Obamacare will only make this problem worse by cutting $313 billion in Medicare reimbursements to health care providers over the next 10 years. This will only force more doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients. Obama also mentioned yesterday that he wants to pay for subsidized health care by killing the Medicare Advantage program. Medicare Advantage plans cover all of the traditional Medicare benefits and much more, including co or?dinated care and care-management programs for enrollees with chronic conditions as well as additional hospitalization and skilled nursing facility stays. 22% of all Medicare patients, which translates to 10.5 million seniors, are currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans.

Apparently Obama does not know how to sell his health Care dismantling plan, so he must resort to the one thing he is good at "spin"! Some would call it lying!!
But the fact remains that the four facts that are listed above are just some of the falsehoods and misinformation peddled by President Obama yesterday. It doesn’t even include his choice to sell Obamacare as The “Post Office” of Health Care Plans. No wonder so many Americans are skeptical.

According to a new Gallup poll, 66% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they would tell their member of Congress to vote against Obamacare, while only 59% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would do the same.
Source: Conn Carroll of the Heritage Foundation

WITH ACCESS TO NSA COMPUTERS, WHY THE REQUEST FOR ANTI-OBAMACARE EMAILS??

There has been a lot of "barn yard droppings" coming out of the White House and their spokesperson Gibbs, but probably the "topper" was uttered by Gibbs yesterday.
When asked by a White House press corps member why the White House was asking for anyone who received an email that was against Obamacare, to send it to their website.

Gibbs answered that they were just trying to correct any erroneous information about the health Care plan that Congress is trying to pass, because there is a lot of erroneous information out there!

The words are not a direct quote, but essentially illustrate the point that Gibbs was making. They were not gathering a list of opponents of Obama Care.OH,NO!!
And to reinforce that position the new director of media for the White House said this: "There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care,” wrote Macon Phillips, director of New Media for the White House in a blog posting.

“These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

The big lie is that they even need these emails, the NSA, Secret Service and numerous other government agencies controlled by the president are gathering information 24/7 with the intent of locating any email or printed material that is threatening to the president.NSA spying programs track personal phone and Internet communications daily!There is no need for this snitch plan except to make a list to hand over to some government agency like the IRS to stop dissent!!

At least one member of the U.S. Senate was not satisfied with the answers coming from Gibbs and the White House, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote a letter to the president expressing that the White House request for flagging opposition to the health care plan was alarming to him. His letter asked Obama to “cease this program immediately.”

“By requesting that citizens send ‘fishy’ e-mails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, e-mail addresses, IP addresses and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House,” Cornyn’s letter said. “You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.”

Comments by Obama have circulated through the Internet. In a 2003 speech posted on the Internet, Obama said, “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan.”

“But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately, because first we've got to take back the White House, and we've got take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House,” Obama said.

Cornyn wanted to know how restating what the president said six years ago, when he was an Illinois state legislator, was disinformation. He also asked the White House to explain how they “intend to use the names, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, and identities of citizens reported to have engaged in ‘fishy’ speech?”

Cornyn also wanted to know if the White House would notify citizens who were reported for “fishy” speech, and, “What action do you intend to take against citizens who have been reported for engaging in ‘fishy’ speech?”

One can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had president Bush asked Americans to forward e-mails critical of his policies to the White House.
The media and ACLU would be screaming "totalitarian tactics" in condemning such a program.

To illustrate the hypocracy of what has been put in place by the White House. I am including an article from the ACLU web site that illustrates how the Left reacts to any attempt to monitor suspected terrorists.

"HELENA, MT – The American Civil Liberties Union of Montana today filed a Freedom of Information Act request on behalf of eight Montana grassroots organizations that fear they may have been monitored because they have questioned federal policies including the war in Iraq.

“These Montana organizations have real concerns that their civil liberties are being violated by sweeping and overbroad government eavesdropping on their legitimate political activities,” said ACLU of Montana Executive Director Scott Crichton. “We want to help them determine whether their meetings have been monitored and their members targeted for surveillance by one of several agencies of the government.”

The request was filed simultaneously with the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense seeking records collected by the surveillance and monitoring of legitimate grassroots organizations exercising their constitutional rights to meet, associate, and organize.

The groups, including the Montana ACLU, are the Helena Peace Seekers; the Billings Peace Seekers; the Butte-based TAPS (Taking Action for Peaceful Solutions); the Helena-based “Just Don’t Go”; the Missoula-based University of Montana Students for Peace and Justice and the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center; and the Hamilton-based environmental group Friends of the Bitterroot.

“NSA spying programs tracking personal phone and Internet communications are deeply troubling, but they are only the tip of the iceberg,” Crichton said. “We are inquiring of multiple agencies because we know, for example, that the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) has been keeping tabs on organizations speaking against the pre-emptive war in Iraq, with complete disregard for human rights and the rule of law.”
Apparently what is going on in the Obama White House is O.K. ,but when Bush was in the White House everyone on the Left was appalled!

THE BIG LIE ABOUT OBAMACARE

It is a fact that president Obama said in 2003, when he was campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate, that he desires/wants a single payer health care system.
He said: "I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's going to be, potentially, some transition process: I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out."

Despite the president's statement, the lying Democrats keep telling the people that their plan will allow all people who have health insurance to keep it. What they do not tell you is that no insurance company can compete with a program that is priced so low that employers and individuals will be forced by economics to switch to the government plan.

Why can the government run a health plan that is actuarially unsound? Because they do not pay for the losses, the tax payer does! This has been happening for decades with the Social Security System and the Medicare and Medicaid plans. Not one of the three is actuarially sound or solvent!!
Looking at the costs of Medicare, Medicare is not controlling costs. Rather, it is allowing costs to grow faster than costs for private insurance, but balancing this by shifting an increasing share of those costs onto other payers, including the (seniors)beneficiaries themselves!

Despite the claims of "public plan" proponents, the available evidence from the nation's largest and oldest public plan does not indicate that a new or expanded public plan modeled on Medicare could provide Americans with health care that is comparable to that offered by existing private plans, much less at a lower cost.

The rationale for creating a new public program modeled on Medicare is based on four erroneous beliefs: 1. that Medicare, compared to private-sector health plans, provides comparable access to health care at costs that grow more slowly than those of the private sector; 2. that Medicare has lower administrative costs than private insurance; 3. that Medicare uses superior bargaining power to reduce health care costs without harm to patients; and 4. that public health plans are more innovative, whereas private health plans only follow the government's lead.

All of these assertions are verifiable false. Contrary to the claims of public plan advocates, and the president!

Total per-beneficiary health care costs are growing faster for Medicare patients than for private insurance patients. Medicare's per-beneficiary patient care costs appear to grow more slowly than costs in the private sector only if one ignores the fact that Medicare is paying a rapidly shrinking share of its beneficiaries' total health care costs. Total per-beneficiary patient care costs for Medicare patients are growing faster than total costs for patients with private insurance. However, spending by the Medicare program is growing more slowly than private insurance because much of the growth in health care costs for Medicare beneficiaries is offset by increased out-of-pocket spending by beneficiaries and other sources of private-sector funding.

Medicare's per-beneficiary administrative costs are substantially higher than the administrative costs of private health plans. The illusion that Medicare's administrative costs are lower comes from expressing administrative costs as a percentage of total costs, including patient care. Medicare's average patient care costs are naturally higher because its beneficiaries are by definition elderly, disabled, or end-stage renal disease patients, so its per-person administrative costs are spread over a larger base of health care costs.

Medicare has no "bargaining power." To the extent that the prices that Medicare pays health care providers are lower than prices paid by private health plans, it is because of the government's regulatory power, not because it reduces the actual costs of providing care or has superior bargaining power. Furthermore, lobbyists for physicians have persuaded Congress in each of the past seven years to intervene to block scheduled reductions in the prices that Medicare pays for physician services--and in six of those seven years to replace the reduction with an increase. This experience suggests that Medicare does not in fact have any bargaining power that would enable it to lower prices further, or even to maintain prices at current levels.

Historically, public plans have more often been followers, not leaders, in health care delivery innovation. It is private-sector organizations that have introduced new quality-improvement methods and new customer services, as well as disease management and coverage of preventive care.

A public health care plan would not improve the current health care situation and would likely make matters worse. Far from saving enough to cover the uninsured, it would increase the cost of covering even the presently insured at the current standard of care. A public plan could reduce overall spending only at the cost of substantial harm to patients by rationing or denial of care.

Why do the Democrats and their sycophants like AARP not want these facts known to the "mob" that is attending their propaganda sessions that they call Town Hall meetings?
As the Heritage Foundation's Robert A. Book states in his recent article: "by its nature, any public plan would be driven by congressional interventions, bureaucratic processes, and lobbying rather than by incentives to innovate in the financing and delivery of quality, efficient health care. This same phenomenon was evident with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, "public plan" mortgage companies that were established to compete with private lenders to "keep them honest" and increase levels of home ownership. Driven by congressional interventions, an implicit government guarantee, and lending policies at odds with economic reality, these public mortgage companies collapsed and threw the entire financial system into chaos. A "Freddie Doc" would eventually produce similarly disastrous results".Source:Heritage Foundation

There is a good reason why the "goons" of SEIU and ACORN have shown up at meetings about health Care reform. The Union movement has invested heavily in the passage of Obama Care.
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi received union contributions that totaled the second-largest amount of labor PAC cash, getting $144,000. The California Democrat was followed by another, Rep. George Miller, the Education and Labor chairman, who received $119,540. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was next. His campaign committee collected $115,500.
Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and a former FEC chairman, said it is not surprising that labor leads the pack in giving this year.

“The unions have an agenda in this Congress, and they are trying to move legislation,” Potter said. He added that unions, which give overwhelmingly to Democrats, also may be trying early in the election cycle to shore up the majority party in Congress, particularly its vulnerable members.

Speaking out for what you believe and then you are called a Nazi or a stooge for the Insurance Industry, and be threatened and possibly assaulted by union bullies is something out of the history of tyrants!

Democrats apparently only believe in freedom of speech when you agree with them. They are as intolerant as the Bolshevist thugs who ruled Russia for over 60 years.

Silence is acceptance! Speak out loudly and often. We want our country back! Stop National Health care! Stop Cap and Trade!
Or live with the dire consequences!!

HILLARY CLINTON IS THREE YEARS TOO LATE!!

The news Sunday is about Secretary of State Clinton talking to the leaders of Angola regarding an oil deal.The problem is she is three years too late!
China has already been there and invested heavily in the exploration and production of crude oil. They made the big investment in June of 2006 as this article in the BBC news will illustrate.

"As Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visits Angola, the BBC's Piers Scholfield examines what links the two nations.

One of the worst of the countless conflicts that has blighted Africa in recent times is that of Angola.


Most Angolans haven't seen the benefits of the oil billions

But a peace deal signed four years ago - and huge oil reserves - are now giving the Angolans hope as the country tries to rebuild its devastated infrastructure.

Recently China, scouring the globe for raw materials to feed its booming economy, has been drawn to Africa as an abundant source of minerals, and has started investing heavily in countries like Angola.

Africa, however, has been here before - and ended up as the victim.

Ever since its first contacts with western powers, the continent been plundered for its manpower and resources.

And until now it has had little to show for it, except phenomenal debts and rampant poverty.

But now there is a tangible air of optimism about the future.

Chinese revolution

An oil boom, set to see Angola overtake Nigeria as the continent's biggest oil supplier, is pouring billions into the government's coffers.

The Afro-China relation is a win-win one. China is more pragmatic than the Western world

China and Africa: Who benefits?

The country's national budget has recently almost doubled - from $13bn (£7bn) to $25bn.

China is at the forefront of this revolution.
In the rush for resources, China has no qualms about dealing with countries that the west has criticised or shunned, such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.

China says it has a strict policy of non-interference in other nations' affairs.

It won't tell the countries it deals with what to do and vigorously defends its policy in Africa.

"Sudan is a sovereign country and I'm sorry that we do not develop relations according to US or UK or any other country's instruction," said Zhou Yuxiao, chargé d'affaires at the Chinese embassy in South Africa.

"Developing normal relations with a country does not mean that we approve every policy of that nation."


Angola's colonial legacy lives on in some of its buildings

He went on to say that China was doing a great deal to help African countries such as Angola.

"We are cancelling debt owed by the least developed countries, building more schools and hospitals.

"We have brought and will continue to bring great opportunities to all parts of the world including Africa."