Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has ordered that all enrollees in the health-care exchanges will pay a separate monthly surcharge for abortion coverage.
Only a deceitful government busybody do-gooder would actually argue that forcing insurance companies to cover millions more Americans and cover pre-existing conditions would result in lower costs for the average family. I wonder what will happen in 2014 when 30 million more Americans are guaranteed “free” healthcare under Obamacare. The saddest part of this oncoming train wreck is that millions of willfully ignorant people actually believed the blatant lies and false storyline fed to them by sociopathic politicians who desire to control every aspect of their lives. These people believe they know what is best for you. They believe they are smarter than you. They do not care what means are required to achieve their ends of absolute domination over your life. Personal freedom, individual liberty and a critical thinking populace are the antithesis to the desires of the governing elite.
Mr. Obama says he is not waging class warfare against the wealthy in America. He is, of course. His campaign slogan might as well be: ” Vote for Me … I’ll Give You Free Stuff.” This is enticing. Imagine if you pay no federal income taxes and one of the candidates says, “I’ll take money from rich people and give it to you to pay your mortgage – even if you were irresponsible and bought a house you couldn’t afford. Vote for me, I’ll make sure you get unemployment benefits for almost two full years. And, oh yeah, vote for me and I’ll make sure you get birth control pills — free of charge.
The most important, underreported story in America is the one about who we Americans are becoming. As Bill O’Reilly put it: President Obama is “calculating that the American voter has changed into a person who wants free stuff from the government and is willing to sacrifice some freedoms in order to get the free stuff. And you know what? The President might be right.”
In the process, the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor. In its place, they helped establish the Machiavellian principle that underpins modern liberalism – the notion that it is our Christian duty to confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it.
At every turn in American politics since that time, you will find the hierarchy assisting the Democratic Party and promoting the growth of the administrative entitlements state. At no point have its members evidenced any concern for sustaining limited government and protecting the rights of individuals. It did not cross the minds of these prelates that the liberty of conscience which they had grown to cherish is part of a larger package – that the paternalistic state, which recognizes no legitimate limits on its power and scope, that they had embraced would someday turn on the Church and seek to dictate whom it chose to teach its doctrines and how, more generally, it would conduct its affairs.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. -Exodus 20:17
We like tax cuts as much as anyone. But the fact is, we're taking money from a pay-as-you-go retirement system that's already running in the red, and replacing that cash with IOUs. We're burdening future generations so we can spend tax cuts now.
The president cannot require Congress to act on his priorities. To the contrary, Congress acts independently of the president as a check and balance to his power.Precedent is a bitch. If this abomination is not slapped down now, there will be no stopping any future President from using it.
Obama's view that he may decide when the Senate has gone into recess virtually nullifies the Senate's advice and consent role. Under this rationale, what would stop the president from declaring recesses every weekend so that he can make unilateral appointments?
PORTLAND -- Backers of an initiative to tax pop and others sweetened drinks in Multnomah County say it will put people to work and give kids opportunities to exercise.
The initiative calls for a one cent per fluid ounce tax on most sweetened drinks including pop.
In a press release, Sen. Michael B. Enzi, Wyoming Republican, ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee, stated, “The president has ignored the Senate’s confirmation and vetting process” by appointing Ms. Block and Mr. Griffin.
As Mr. Enzi rightly noted, the president’s submission of the nominations at the last minute made it impossible for the Senate even to begin its vetting process. The process includes a background check to see if the nominees’ taxes are paid, if they are facing any pending civil or criminal investigations and to ensure that they face no conflicts of interest.
"Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting."
Yes, some prior recess appointments have been politically unpopular, and a few have even raised legal questions. But never before has a president purported to make a “recess” appointment when the Senate is demonstrably not in recess. That is a constitutional abuse of a high order.
While this type of recess appointment is a common action for presidents, this one is fuelling a lot of argument because the Senate was technically still in session. The GOP senators, fearing Mr. Obama would do this, had been holding pro-forma sessions (pretend sessions where the Senate is called into session but no work is done). Senate Democrats used the same tactic during President Bush's administration.
These "sessions" are held every third day because traditionally Congress has had to be out of session for at least that period of time before a president can make a recess appointment. Cordray's is the first such appointment during a Senate break of fewer than three days since 1949.
But Obama is the first President to make a recess appointment during a pro forma session. And business groups are now threatening legal actions to block the appointment.
Standing Up for Consumers
By John Cordray, Reader Supported News
05 January 12
Today, I was appointed by President Obama to serve as the first Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I am honored by this opportunity to continue my work on behalf of consumers. And I am energized by the responsibilities and challenges facing the Bureau.
More importantly the “recess” appointment of Cordray doesn’t solve the President’s problem. The Dodd-Frank Act is very clear, even a law professor can probably understand this section, that authorities under the Act remain with the Treasury Secretary until the Director is “confirmed by the Senate”. A recess appointment is not a Senate confirmation. Now don’t ask me why Dodd and Frank included such unusual language, they could have just given the Bureau the new authorities, but they didn’t. So even with this appointment, the CFPB won’t be able to go after all those non-banks, like the pay-day lenders and check-cashiers that caused the financial crisis (oh wait, those industries didn’t have anything to do with the crisis).(Emphasis is mine - Syrah)
Activist Leading ‘Occupy the Rose Parade’ Is a Convicted Thief, 9-11 Truther, and Former Democratic Assembly Politician
The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.
At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.
The suggestion that the postal service is losing money to Email is difficult to accept, especially looking at the great heaping gobs of junk mail that are stuffed into my mailbox every day. There is so much crap (Snail-Mail Spam) that is sent to me in the mail that I have at times tossed out mail that was important to keep because it was lost in the great wads of ads and "dear occupant" mail. Is there really anyone out there that is getting "less" mail sent to them they have received in years past?
The US Postal Service is being bled to death by the parasitic Public Sector Unions that have put the service on the brink of bankruptcy. The parasitic Public Sector Unions are negotiating with elected politicians and or government bureaucrats that are beholding to elected politicians for a piece of the the public treasury. These elected politicians are also beholden to the parasitic Public Sector Unions for campaign contributions and for votes. It is base political corruption pure and simple.
The end result is inevitable. The public treasury runs out of money and the parasitic Public Sector Unions scream for more and more and . . . But there is no more money left for them to loot.
The US Postal Service can only be saved by reducing it's Labor cost to something in the range of what its main competitors, UPS and FedEx, have to work with. The only way that will happen is to eliminate the parasitic Public Sector Unions entirely. They must be done away with. They are incompatible with Democracy.
The sad truth is that the president wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today. That is just not going to happen.
You see, there is no stalemate in Congress. The House has passed a bill to raise the debt limit with bipartisan support. And this week, while the Senate is struggling to pass a bill filled with phony accounting and Washington gimmicks, we will pass another bill - one that was developed with the support of the bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Senate.
Obviously, I expect that bill can and will pass the Senate, and be sent to the President for his signature. If the President signs it, the 'crisis' atmosphere he has created will simply disappear. The debt limit will be raised. Spending will be cut by more than one trillion dollars, and a serious, bipartisan committee of the Congress will begin the hard but necessary work of dealing with the tough challenges our nation faces.
"KNOW YOUR ENEMY” is a well-known maxim, but one that is difficult to observe in practice. Nor is the reason for this hard to fathom: If you are my enemy, it is unlikely that I will go very much out of my way to learn to see things from your point of view. And if this is true even in those cases where the conflict is between groups that share a common culture, how much more true will it be when there is a profound cultural and psychological chasm between the antagonists?
But Obama’s tax obsession becomes understandable when you realize the long game he’s playing: Big Taxes to fund Big Government. Decade after decade. See, it’s an almost universal belief among left-of-center journalists, economists, policymakers and politicians that Americans must pay higher taxes in coming years to cover the medical expenses of its aging population – not to mention all sorts of brand new social spending and green “investment.” Dramatically higher taxes. On everybody. And if we have a debt crisis, maybe those tax increases come sooner rather than later.
This week’s fight over raising the federal debt limit exposes a key weakness in the warfare-welfare state that has bestowed power onto the Democratic Party: Without an ever-growing share of the economy, it dies. Every vital element of the Democrats’ coalition — unions, government workers, government contractors, “entitlement” consumers — requires constant increases in payments, grants and consulting contracts. Without those payments, they don’t sign checks to re-elect Democrats.
But wait, things get worse. As Milton Friedman taught decades ago, the true burden on taxpayers today is government spending; government borrowing requires future interest payments out of future taxes. To cover the Congressional Budget Office projection of Mr. Obama's $841 billion deficit in 2016 requires a 31.7% increase in all income tax rates (and that's assuming the Social Security income cap is removed). This raises the top rate to 52.2% and brings the total combined marginal tax rate to 68.8%. Government, in short, would take over two-thirds of any incremental earnings.
1. SPEED THE APPROVALS
Harry Hopkins had nowhere near the rules and regulations we have now. (In 1933, Hopkins’s Civil Works Administration put 4 million to work in a month.) I don’t blame the people in the White House for problems in getting shovel-ready projects off the ground; sometimes it takes three years or more for the approval process. We should try to change this: keep the full review process when there are real environmental concerns, but when there aren’t, the federal government should be able to give a waiver to the states to speed up start times on construction projects. We gave states waivers to do welfare reform, so by the time I signed the bill, 43 of the 50 states had already implemented their own approaches. We need to look at that.
The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.
2) Please provide records of how the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) of Chicago, Illinois, won a federally competitive bid to carry out this work.
Yesterday was a beautiful day for freedom of speech in the Netherlands. An Amsterdam court acquitted me of all charges of hate speech after a legal ordeal that lasted almost two years. Yesterday, the Dutch people learned that political debate has not been stifled in their country. They learned that they are still allowed to speak critically about Islam and that resistance against Islamization is not a crime.
Ties Prakken, a lawyer who represented immigrant and antiracist complainants, agreed that “there is no appeal possible in the Netherlands,” and said she would instead bring the case to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, accusing the Dutch government of failing to protect people from incitement to discrimination or violence.
“We have a reasonable case,” Ms. Prakken said, adding, “there is some case law in our favor there.”
