Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.
In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.
Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.
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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
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•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run "exchanges" where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level—that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.
At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this "firewall"—which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on "free" health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington.
Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.
• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.
Even though the House will assume 91% of the "matching rate" for this joint state-federal program—up from today's 57%—governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington's budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.
• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point "surcharge" on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won't have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.
This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn't indexed for inflation. Yet it still won't be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they'll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.
Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don't offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers' premiums, which eat into wages. Such "play or pay" taxes always become "pay or pay" and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.
Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won't buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.
• The insurance takeover. A new "health choices commissioner" will decide what counts as "essential benefits," which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.
The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.
The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as "private" health insurance.
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All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.
As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.
Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of "change," but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.
NYT: White House Attacking Fox Because It Is News, and That's the Problem
The cat is out of the bag at the New York Times. The Times has exposed, albeit passively, the true motivation behind the White House's Fox News attacks. Contrary to the administration's claims, it is deriding Fox not because it doesn't report the news, but rather because it does.
It is news, after all, when an organization potentially receiving billions in federal funds aids and abets what it thinks is a criminal organization. It is news when a high-level White House adviser, responsible for the distribution of $80 billion in federal funds, is outed as a communist and a 'truther' conspiracy theorist. It is news when the president's chief communications officer admits her admiration for a murderous dictator.
... officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration's chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall - namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn...
There followed, beginning in earnest more than two weeks ago, an intensified volley of White House comments describing Fox as "not a news network."
"It was an amalgam of stories covered, and our assessment of how others were dealing with those stories, that caused us to comment," Mr. Axelrod said in describing the administration's thinking...
Mr. Clemente suggested that the fight was part of a larger White House strategy to marginalize critics. He cited a report in Politico about a strategy session in August at which officials discussed plans to move more aggressively against opponents...
"This is a discussion that probably had to be had about their approach to things," Mr. Axelrod said. "Our concern is other media not follow their lead."
There you have it. The administration's attacks are a means to prevent other news organizations from picking up on stories that originate at Fox. The White House knows that without Fox's megaphone, controversies such as that surrounding former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones would have fizzled and died, and would not have created the public uproar that it did.
If these stories were not newsworthy, there would be no pressure on the mainstream media to cover them, and the New York Times certainly would not apologize for delaying its coverage.
The fact that Fox News actually reports news that is important to Americans, thereby forcing other outlets to report the story, is what concerns the White House. As Rich Lowry stated at The Corner, "their problem is not that Fox isn't a real news organization, their problem is that it is."
I am sounding an alarm! For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this is not being discussed on the media or why conservatives are not making their case: IT IS SO IMPORTANT! The following is a condensation of a series from the Investor's Business Daily explaining "What Caused the Loan Crisis":
1977: Pres. Jimmy Carter signs into Law the Community Reinvestment Act the foundation and cornerstone for the impending disaster.. The law pressured financial institutions to extend home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify.
The publicized premise: Home ownership would improve poor and crime-ridden communities and neighborhoods in terms of crime, investment, jobs, etc.
The Results: Statistics bear out that it did not help.
How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?
Answer: Bill Clinton wanted it that way.
1992: Republican representative Jim Leach (IO) warned of the danger that Fannie and Freddie were changing from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the principals and the stock holding few.
1993: Clinton extensively rewrote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's rules turning the quasi-private mortgage-funding firms into semi-nationalized monopolies dispensing cash and loans to large Democratic voting blocks and handing favors, jobs and contributions to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and now the collapse of Freddie and Fannie.
1994: Despite warnings, Clinton unveiled his National Home-Ownership Strategy which broadened the CRA in ways congress never intended.
1995: Congress, about to change from a Democrat majority to Republican, Clinton orders Robert Rubin's Treasury Dept to rewrite the rules. Robert Rubin's Treasury reworked rules, forcing banks to satisfy quotas for sub-prime and minority loans to get a satisfactory CRA rating. The rating was key to expansion or mergers for banks. Loans began to be made on the basis of race and little else.
1997 - 1999: Clinton, bypassing Republicans in Congress, enlisted Andrew Cuomo, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Dev elopement, allowing Freddie and Fannie to get into the sub-prime market in a BIG way. Led by Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, congress doubled down on the risk by easing capital limits and allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments vs. 10% for banks. Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks their enterprises boomed.
With incentives in place, banks poured billions in loans into poor communities, often "no doc", "no income", requiring no money down and no verification of income. Worse still was the cronyism: Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of work-politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. 384 politicians got big campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie. Over $200 million had been spent on lobbying and political activities. During the 1990's Fannie and Freddie enjoyed a subsidy of as much as $182 Billion, most of it going to principals and shareholders, not poor borrowers as claimed.
Did it work? Minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners but many of those loans have gone bad and the minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.
1999: New Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, became alarmed at Fannie and Freddie's excesses. Congress held hearings the ensuing year but nothing was done because Fannie and Freddie had donated millions to key congressmen and radical groups, ensuring no meaningful changes would take place. "We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manage our credit and interest rate risks," Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, a former Clinton official and current Barack Obama advisor, bragged to investors in 1999.
2000: Secretary Summers sent Undersecretary Gary Gensler to Congress seeking an end to the "special status". Democrats raised a ruckus as did Fannie and Freddie, headed by politically connected CEO's who knew how to reward and punish. "We think that the statements evidence a contempt for the nation's housing and mortgage markets" Freddie spokesperson Sharon McHale said. It was the last chance during the Clinton era for reform.
2001: Republicans try repeatedly to bring fiscal sanity to Fannie and Freddie but Democrats blocked any attempt at reform; especially Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd who now run key banking committees and were huge beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the mortgage giants.
2003: Bush proposes what the NY Times called "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago". Even after discovering a scheme by Fannie and Freddie to overstate earnings by $10.6 billion to boost their bonuses, the Democrats killed reform.
2005: Then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warns Congress: "We are placing the total financial system at substantial risk". Sen. McCain, with two others, sponsored a Fannie/Freddie reform bill and said, "If congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole". Sen. Harry Reid accused the GOP of trying to "cripple the ability of Fannie and Freddie to carry out their mission of expanding home ownership" The bill went nowhere.
2007: By now Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee over HALF of the $12 trillion US mortgage market. The mortgage giants, whose executive suites were top-heavy with former Democratic officials, had been working with Wall St. to repackage the bad loans and sell them to investors. As the housing market fell in '07, sub-prime mortgage portfolios suffered major losses. The crisis was on, though it was 15 years in the making.
2008: McCain has repeatedly called for reforming the behemoths, Bush urged reform 17 times. Still the media have repeated Democrats' talking points about this being a "Republican" disaster. A few Republicans are complicit but Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats, regulated by Democrats, largely run by Democrats and protected by Democrats. That's why taxpayers are now being asked for $700 billion!
If you doubt any of this, just click the links below and listen to your lawmakers own words. They are condemning!
Postscript: ACORN is one of the principle beneficiaries of Fannie/ Freddie's slush funds. They are currently under indictment or investigation in many states. Barack Obama served as their legal counsel, defending their activities for several years.
An avalanche of misleading advertisement has hit the television air waves accusing the proposed legislation of legalizing the euthanasia of old people. Articles are being published by conservative politicians like Pat Buchanan, with titles like, “Say Goodbye to Grandpa.” Blog comments are spreading across the Internet like cancer, including the one posted by Sarah Palin on her Twitter page, suggesting the proposed health care reform opens the door to kill autistic children, like her son, and that old people would have to face Obama’s “death squad.”
The ignorant, misinformed, flawed, twisted, and blatantly erroneous message being distributed in this manner—is simply stupefying.
The king of hype and hypocrisy, Rush Limbaugh, used his radio program to spew more misinformation, and vocalized ridiculous characterizations of President Obama and his proposed health care reform, with this astonishing statement:
“Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook,” Rush Limbaugh said.
Actually, the logo, which combines Obama’s campaign logo with the Ancient Greek symbol for medicine looks nothing like Hitler’s Nazi party symbol. It would have to take a person hell-bent on creating fear and intolerance, like Rush Limbaugh--to see it that way. It has inspired some fans to carry posters of Obama with a Hitler mustache.
Limbaugh then proceeded to rant on about how the Democrats are like Nazis and rattled off an absurd list of offenses that included being against animal cruelty, smoking, and pollution.
In 1961, Ronald Reagan gave a speech that opposed health care legislation that was being proposed by congress. In his persuasive speech, he claimed the passing of such a bill would take away the freedom of Americans to make choices in their health care decisions and would saddle future generations with socialism. Never the less, in 1965, that legislation was passed by the house and the senate.
It is called Medicare, which is a very successful government sponsored medical program. Some time later came Medicaid, another popular policy that has helped millions of elderly Americans get medical care.
No Americans lost their freedom. The country did not transition into socialism. The sky did not fall!
Therefore, when someone yells out at a town hall meeting: “keep your government hands off my Medicare”, they are revealing an intrinsic misunderstanding of our government system, because Medicare IS a government program, but the current health care reform under way--is not.
Here are some other misguided things that have been vocalized and paraded on signs at these meetings, which are being increasing disrupted by organized conservative groups:
*We, the people say “No” to socialized health care--(even if it’s not)
*This bill will mandate that old people be lined up for euthanasia--(which it doesn’t)
*It would mandate abortions--(absurd)
*Politicians will make your medical decisions, not your doctors--(ridiculous)
*It is a secret plot for a government take over—(paranoia run amuck)
*Old people, disabled children, and other undesirables will have to face Obama’s “death squad”--(seriously?)
*private health care will be outlawed—(total fabrication)
*I like my current healthcare and this would mandate that I have to change—(only if you want to)
Fox News posted a list of town hall meetings scheduled across the country. There are web sites, like recessrally.com, popping up every where with instructions on the best way to interrupt a meeting with belligerent questioning and ranting, to the point that legitimate speakers and participants can’t be heard.
Small groups of white hate mongers have essentially been stoked-up, fueled by conservative rancor, and sent out to intimidate and disrupt the democratic process, under the guise of being every day Americans just trying to have a voice. These people deny being a part of the conservative mob movement, even though they may have rode a bus to the event, which may have been paid for by an insurance company. For example, one man didn’t bother to change his shirt for the town hall meeting, because it had the “Blue Shield” emblem on the sleeve.
The goal of these groups is to mainstream and legitimize their fears and accusations. They believe if they shout it loud enough, for long enough, with as much conviction as possible--it will become true. At the same time, they resent being referred to as “angry mobs”.
In fact, the part of the health care legislation that deals with “living wills” was introduced by Republicans and has been encouraged legislatively for over 20 years. So, how did something as basic as paying for coverage of consultation with a physician to discuss end-of-life decisions, like having a Power of Attorney or do not resuscitate—get twisted into such an unrecognizable pack of blatant lies?
Answer? Christian conservative dogma: The willingness of people to believe the rhetoric of their leaders; blindly, without question, in a homogenous, cohesive way. There is an expression: religion is the opiate of the masses. The self-righteousness of this mind-set is only surpassed by the underlying danger of some nut-job picking up a gun to “defend” against “perceived” threats to their freedom—resulting in the loss of innocent lives--and people like Rush Limbaugh would be culpable.
Republicans should remember that President Obama is also half white. America is a country of immigrants. It is the thing that makes it a great Nation. But there is a segment of the population that hates change or anything that is different from what they perceive as acceptable.
Not all Republicans share this sentiment, because they realize that it hurts what credibility the party has left. Most of the ones who have jumped onto the train-of-conservative-insanity call themselves “patriots” and believe their actions are justified as “God-fearing Christians.”
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Well, we've seen plenty of recent evidence that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the nativist law-enforcement chief of Maricopa County, Arizona, attracts genuine extremists in support of his cause.
This recently released YouTube by Humanleague makes the case even more starkly. Its centerpiece is the opening comments by an avid supporter of the Minutemen and Sheriff Arpaio named Brandi Baron, who opines thus:
Baron: I say, give orders to shoot to kill, and kill any man, woman or child who comes across the border illegally. I'll bet you, you kill enough of them, right off the bat, people will stop coming over that way.
[Questioner]
That's what I just said. Personally, I think a minefield would be good. Why build a fence when you can plant some mines?
Q: You just said that you would kill kids.
Baron: If they're being drug across the border, hell yes. The difference between those people and us -- Our country is No. 1. Theirs? Pffft!
This sort of inhuman callousness and disregard for human life is part and parcel of why nativist movements like the Minutemen -- and the mainstream embrace of such factions by public figures like Arpaio -- inevitably spawn violent offspring like Shawna Forde and her gang of killer Minutemen, who gunned down a family in cold blood because they mistakenly believed the father was a big-time drug dealer with cash on the premises. There's a powerful continuum between gangs like Forde's and "mainstream" nativists like Arpaio and his supporters.
As Jill Garvey at Imagine 2050 observes:
This is exactly why Shawna Forde felt justified in breaking into a Latino family’s home and murdering a little girl and her father.
While some of the individuals featured on this video may be unstable or exhibit strange behavior, they are not crazy. These are functioning adults who are perfectly capable of behaving in a reasonable manner. They choose not to. They choose hate over tolerance. They choose to advocate violence over rational dialogue. Violence against immigrants occurs because bigots in positions of power (Sheriff Joe) set the stage and provide an atmosphere that make it acceptable.
Incidentally, sentiments such as these are nothing new to the Minutemen. In the video below -- featuring Minuteman leader Chris Simcox -- you can watch one of his Minuteman cohorts opine similarly:
No, we ought to be able to shoot the Mexicans on sight, and that would end the problem. After two or three Mexicans are shot, they'll stop crossing the border and they'll take their cows home, too.
This is what I'm talking about when I talk about eliminationism.
Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.
Inouye's office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.
"The defense contractors have been storming his office," said a source with knowledge of the situation. "Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR's (or other contractors') own terms -- with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely."
A Democratic aide on the Hill, also with knowledge of the situation, confirmed the account, as did a source who works on defense contracting matters outside of Congress. "The contractors are putting on a full-court press on this amendment... they are all doing it," said the latter source.
A spokesman for the Senate Committee on Appropriations said that "the committee does not comment on ongoing conference negotiations." But another source with knowledge of the situation stressed that it was premature to say that any decision has been made. Indeed, even the Hill source said that the situation is fluid and could change before the bill is sent out of committee -- likely in the next few days.
The decision on what to do with Franken's amendment is being made in conference committee with the House of Representatives, which severely limits the number of lawmakers who can weigh in on the matter.
The second-longest-serving member of the United States Senate, Inouye is a veteran of WWII. The chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, he has received $294,900 in donations from the defense and aerospace industries over the course of his career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Franken's amendment passed the Senate on October 21, 2009 by a voting margin of 68 to 30. The 30 Republicans who opposed the provision were widely pilloried in the press. But they were actually joined in some of their concerns by the Obama administration's Department of Defense, which worried that "enforcement would be problematic, especially in cases where privity of contract does not exist between parties within the supply chain that supports a contract."
The White House, for its part, told HuffPost it supports the intent of the amendment and it is "working with the conferees to make sure that it is enforceable," said spokesman Tommy Vietor.
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The Hawaiian Senator is joining a long list of mainland greedy racist chronic underachieving frauds.
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And he co-sponsored the Freedom of Choice Act. Advocates claim it would simply codify Roe v. Wade. But Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) admitted, “FOCA [will] supersede all other laws,” including laws that the Supreme Court has upheld as constitutional.
FOCA would outlaw any “interference” with providing abortion, elevating abortion to a “fundamental right” on par with the right to free speech (which, unlike abortion, is in the Constitution). It would strip away the right of women to receive information on possible complications of abortion, the right of parents to protect their minor daughters, the right of taxpayers not to be forced to pay for abortions, and the right of states to pass modest regulations such as health and safety codes on abortion clinics. And that’s just the beginning.
According to Americans United for Life, FOCA would nullify over 550 laws including:
• Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003
• Hyde Amendment and other limits on forcing taxpayer funding of elective abortions
• Restrictions on abortions in military hospitals
• Informed consent laws
• Waiting periods
• Parental consent and notification laws
• Health and safety regulations on abortion clinics
• Requirements that licensed doctors perform abortions
• Bans on abortion after the baby is viable. (Under FOCA, post-viability abortions are permitted for the woman’s “health,” which has been defined to mean almost anything.)
• Legal protections for health care providers and hospitals that decline to commit abortions
Studies show that states that pass regulations on abortion have fewer abortions. States that enact FOCA-type laws experience an increase in abortions.
Since FOCA is garnering negative attention, Obama and his allies in Congress may instead implement it piece by piece.
Their first actions will likely be funding international abortion groups (through an executive order) and subsidizing abortions in the U.S. (through government-funded health care programs and overturning abortion-funding bans).
What the government funds, we get more of. If Obama is sincere about reducing abortions, the least he could do is support the valuable work of pregnancy resource centers.
Pregnancy centers provide free help to women with unexpected pregnancies. Women no longer need to feel alone and with only one choice -- abortion -- with the thousands of gracious volunteers dedicated to helping during and after (through parenting classes and other services) their time of need.
But Obama is no fan of pregnancy centers (though he won’t say why). He was asked by RH Reality Check, “Does Sen. Obama support continuing federal funding for crisis pregnancy centers? Why or why not?”
His one word answer: “No.”
Obama’s agenda -- individually or wrapped up in one neat FOCA package -- would push policies that increase abortions and put abortionists back to work at Planned Parenthood. Is this the change he hopes for?
If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive
and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a
thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod
containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this
embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?
If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would
you have approved?
If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the
non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a
minor slip?
If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers
with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would
you have approved?
If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to
Cinco de Cuatro in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the
fourth of May (Cuatro de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried
again, would you have winced in embarrassment?
If George W. Bush had mis-spelled the word advice would you have
hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoe as proof of
what a dunce he is?
If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go
plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a
hypocrite?
If George W. Bush's administration had okayed Air Force One
flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown
Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they
actually get what happened on 9-11?
If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a
teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference,
would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on
his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?
If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims
throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in
New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue
with claims of racism and incompetence?
If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major
corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so,
would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt,
which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year,
would you have approved?
If George W.. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again
within 10 years, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plans holdings of
GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you
have approved?
If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to
take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?
So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so
brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's
done all this in 9 months - so you'll have three years and three months
to come up with an answer.
No-common-sense, naive, incompetent, uninformed voters did this
to themselves. Insanity is wide-spread.
I did not vote for Obama because I saw a RADICAL person with EXTREME VIEWS...it reminded me of my old country dictatorship, I thought I was reliving my past...with the unions backing up the president and his insane ideas to take from groups that have,to give to the ones that are on welfare or do not want to work...I DO NOT SHARE THESE VALUES!
yeah the people that want health care are then onces already on goverment benifits
*****first off, it's THEM ones, Not THEN onces, second, they are not the ones who will benefit from healthcare reform the most. Small business and people paying way too high insurance rates, we'll pay less and get more, now how can any clear thinking person not go for this.******
such as the ebt cards ! food stamps people that are on unemployment .
+++++++SO, WHAT IS ASSWIPE IS SAYING IS IF YOU LOSE YOUR JOB
FOR ANY REASON, AND COLLECT UNEMPLOYMENT YOUR A "LAZY (this turkey can't spell for shit) homeless people"********
other wordsbroke laisy homeless people ! thats about a third of american population ~! but hey go
ahead and screw up the best health care system in the world for a small group of americans !
****** THE BEST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD OR AROUND THE 18TH BEST, CANADA IS 6TH WITH THEIR "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE" , they also out live us********