Zo's Illegal Immigration Rant

While I'm disappointed in the Judge's ruling, I can't say that she's wrong. Turns out it's only illegal to be here if you are caught in the act of crossing the border without proper documentation. Once you make it over, it drops to a civil issue and is no longer criminal. I can't believe the geniuses that wrote the law in the first place....My suggestion, first secure the border. Then enforce the law AFTER excluding the 14th amendment provision that allows the children of illegals to become citizens, and modernize the pathway to citizenship. Both Republicans and Democrats are at fault for letting it get to this point since the years of Nixon. 

Anyhow, Zo give's his piece:



I will be doing research in the coming days about our Immigration system.  Be on the lookout.

EPA Puts ‘Environmental Justice’ Front and Center in Its Rulemaking Process

Justice is suppose to be blind right? The environment affects everyone does it not? To every color, sexual preference, etc.....except for you social status.  “Achieving environmental justice is an Agency priority and should be factored into every decision,” the 55-page document reads.  From CNS:

The EPA defines environmental justice as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, particularly minority, low-income, and indigenous populations, and tribes, in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

The guide states that from now on -- in the process of developing rules, policy statements, risk assessments, and other regulatory actions -- EPA managers and staffers must first ask themselves, “Does this action involve a topic that is likely to be of particular interest to or have particular impact upon minority, low-income, or indigenous populations, or tribes?”
If the answer is yes, the rule-writers must reach out to the affected minority and/or low-income communities. One section of the guide explains how EPA rule-writers may have to make “special efforts” to connect with people who may be uneducated or non-English-speaking.
“It will likely be necessary to tailor outreach materials to be concise, understandable, and readily accessible to the communities you are trying to reach,” the guide says.

My opinion:  Why even consider this?  The entire notion of "social justice" smacks in the face of your rights as a person.  Worrying about the social ramifications of particular groups only hinders the system with bureaucratic red tape, by always making sure that every individual is just as equally affected as another.  Progression in the name of social justice, must take a back seat to the progression of common sense.

FBI to access our Internet data w/o probable cause?

The new rule wouldn’t reach the content of e-mail messages, but it would let them find out whom you’re e-mailing, when you’re e-mailing, and, er, “possibly” which websites you’re looking at and which Google searches you’re running.

Senior administration officials said the proposal was prompted by a desire to overcome concerns and resistance from Internet and other companies that the existing statute did not allow them to provide such data without a court-approved order. “The statute as written causes confusion and the potential for unnecessary litigation,” Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said. “This clarification will not allow the government to obtain or collect new categories of information, but it seeks to clarify what Congress intended when the statute was amended in 1993.”…

Administration officials noted that the act specifies in one clause that Internet and other companies have a duty to provide electronic communication transactional records to the FBI in response to a national security letter.
But the next clause specifies only four categories of basic subscriber data that the FBI may seek: name, address, length of service and toll billing records. There is no reference to electronic communication transactional records.
The officials said the transactional information at issue, which does not include Internet search queries, is the functional equivalent of telephone toll billing records, which the FBI can obtain without court authorization. Learning the e-mail addresses to which an Internet user sends messages, they said, is no different than obtaining a list of numbers called by a telephone user.

They can be more revealing, of course: A call made to a pay phone won’t identify who’s on the other end of the line whereas an e-mail sent to an address that contains someone’s name tells you right away whom it’s meant for. But of course, the opposite scenario’s also possible: A call made to someone’s home phone or cell phone points to the identity of the recipient whereas a message sent to an e-mail address with no identifying info in the address reveals little at first glance about who owns it. Exit question: Should e-mail identifiers be given greater protection? And if so, is that simply in order to draw a line on the slope before the feds slip any further downward?

Must read from CBO Director's blog: cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=1249

Couple of Links to Check Out

• Chevy Volt...is it worth it?
• By this time last year 64 banks had been taken over by the FDIC...this year so far, it's 103
• After today's ruling for Arizona, you wouldn't expect this.  Feds to enforce a fingerprint database for Mortage Brokers.  Priorities I guess.
• Sign of the times...a teacher in Philly is fired for doing the right thing
• The Securities and Exchange Commission is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act thanks to the Financial Regulation Bill.  So much for transparency]
• Thanks to nature, the oil slick in the Gulf is "disappearing" rapidly.  We can stop the hysterics now.

Sorry for not posting tonight. Will double post tomorrow to make up for this

Paul Ryan explains Economic Plan to Chris Matthews

The GOP has failed to adhere to the conservative points they've preached and we dealing with the results of that. (Why do you think people don't trust them?) Ryan's plan revolves about what the GOP lacked, faith in those very principles and ideas that every individual citizen inherently knows when faced with a personal financial crisis. Ignore the party affiliation and take a look at what he's come up with.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Totally owned Matthews.  I'll give it to him, he's the one member of the GOP that I trust, period and to have the balls to go onto MSNBC and handle their hosts.  Matthew's interested in playing gotcha with the GOP’s fiscal genius to make it look like Ryan lacks the political courage to endorse deep, specific cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security. That’s why he’s quick to scoff when PR touts a way to trim $4.8 trillion from the budget; Matthews hears it initially as $4.8 billion because he’s eager to accuse the Republican of not being serious. Matthews wonders aloud why Ryan isn’t talking about cutting nondiscretionary spending and forgets that he hadn’t asked him about that. 
Apparently MSNBC does a bang up job of reporting on the news.  This isn't an example of it.

How the Government is Funded

The government does not “create” wealth or print money. It takes loans out from its bank. Contrary to popular belief, it’s the Federal Reserve that retains the ability to print money for the United States and is completely separate from the orders of our government. Kind of like how you can’t tell your bank what to do when you are the one asking for a loan. For every dollar printed by the Reserve, our government must pay that back plus interest. When a request is made for more money (printing money) the value of our dollar decreases for every new dollar printed.  (Remember that for later)

Since the government doesn’t make money, how does it pay for the loan? The United States Government obtains its money from 2 sources:

1. Intergovernmental Loans : The following countries own 40% total of our debt through loans (not including interest):
• China (30.7%)
• Japan (20.5%)
• UK (6.2%)
• Foreign Oil (5.8%)
• Brazil (4.6%)
• Russia (3.2%)
2. Public Debt: 60% of our debt is paid for by individual Americans through taxation. Methods of taxation on individuals include:
• Federal Income: the U.S. uses citizenship in addition to residency in determining whether a person's income is subject to U.S. taxation.
• Payroll: taxes taken from every paycheck of every person in the U.S.
• Social Security
• Medicare
• Unemployment
• Corporate Income
• Transfer: Otherwise known as the “death” tax
• Gift: levied on wealth transfers during the transferor's life
• Estate: levied on transfers made after the transferor's death.
• Generation Skipping Transfer: levied on transfers made during life or after death to individuals removed by more than one generation from the transferor, for example, from a grandmother to a grandson
• Excise: Social “sin” tax on items/services like gasoline, tobacco, firearms, airfare and alcohol, tanning, etc

Realistically, the only income that the government does have to pay for the loans through the Federal Reserve and Intergovernmental Loans is through taxation. So the bottom line is that the money comes from us as individual citizens. Hopefully I didn’t lose you.

So let’s break down the different taxes that affect the middle and lower classes, since that’s most of the general public. Side note: currently, 49% of the general public does not pay income tax because they don’t make more than the poverty level. That being said, the average person and business will pay a payroll tax (if they are receiving any paychecks) and excise taxes. What most of the general public doesn’t know (and most politicians and public figures don’t want you to know) is that we are also paying corporate taxes as well. I’ve explained this in my economic model for a business; you can review that at any time.  Businesses are another way for the government to tax the public without directly saying they are taxing the public.

Everytime a politician explains that they will raise the taxes from Corporations, they are in effect, raising taxes on the public as a whole.  Especially if the Company provides a service or product that most of us use, like oil for example.  From the economic business model, we know that a tax is treated like an expense, which means that a business has to compensate for that loss in some way.  Employment, stocks, job benefits and the cost of goods are the choices businesses have to adjust as a result of the added expense. 

Part of the reason why the price of goods go up is because taxes are raised. If any of a companies expenses can't be cut, usually the price of their service does to make up that loss. In addition, when money is printed, the devaluing of the dollar also raises the price of goods since it takes more money to equal the "true" value of a dollar. The consumer, or individual, ends up paying.  Since we make up the majority of the country, its the middle and lower classes paying.

So, in short, our government makes money by taking money from the people they serve.  Businesess are essentially tax collectors by transferring the money they collect from the public to pay the government.  Add the excise taxes and we're footing the bill.  Adding government programs without streamlining or fixing the ones we have, means a new tax.  More funding for broken systems means a new tax.  As the deficit increases, and talk of raising taxes on businesses come up, you now know what that means.

Mind you, I covered the Federal level; remember the State taxes you as well.

Ryan suggests GOP playing politics by not discussing Roadmap

Simply put, the GOP is acting stupidly. A commitment is needed to fix the system for the public and private sectors.  Examples of successful conservative principles working?  Look no further than NJ, VA, Germany, etc. Listen to this guy explain economics:



For more information about Paul Ryan's Roadmap for America, visit the website.  The guy has planned out economic policies for just about everything.....and it makes sense!

Britain's dropping Government Healthcare....while we move forward (UPDATE)

After many opponents in the US have pointed out the problems with burdening taxpayers, complicating the system, and red tape slowing down service and choices.  Or that the IRS announced that they did not have the resources to enforce the Healthcare mandate, or the Government dumping high risk patients due to the limited budget in the healthcare bill who would've seen this coming:

Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.
The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.
In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.” (emphasis mine)

It's been said that the centralization of any private industry results in less choice, bureaucratic red tape and wasteful spending.  The private sector does provide choices and at competitive rates.  The UK seems to realize that very simple thing when their government realizes that it has to make difficult cuts in their budget as a result of the downturn in the economy. 

That's the UK.  The real question is if the Democrats here realize that before we go through another crisis in the future.

(Update) I was a bit premature in my assessment.  via Ed from Hotair

This plan does not transform the NHS into anything else but a single-payer system. English citizens still have to get their health care from the government. However, the plan removes the rationing boards that have clogged the decision-making process and allows GPs and their patients to decide on the best course of treatment.

While that sounds great, it’s a recipe for disaster. In a closed system like single-payer, the resources are necessarily limited. This will increase demand while doing nothing to increase resources, which will create a deficit bomb bigger than anything already at NHS. That’s probably why another shoe dropped yesterday at NHS:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:

* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.
* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.

Dr. Donald Berwick proclaimed NHS a “treasure,” a comment that Republicans in Congress wanted to explore in Berwick’s confirmation hearing. What would Berwick do under the pressures at NHS today, if such a crisis hit Medicare and Medicaid? It’s no secret that both are facing these kinds of cost and resource issues. Simply demanding more money won’t work, as the UK has discovered after sixty years of single-payer health care.

The best way to get pricing and cost equilibrium in the health-care market is to use competition and free-market economics. That doesn’t mean the status quo ante ObamaCare, but an elimination of tax credits that favor third-party payers for routine care and the promotion of HSAs and full retail clinic pricing. Until that happens, the governmental burdens will continue to create artificial shortages, and will mean higher costs, more government intrusion in our lives, and less accountability.

TARP audit on dealer shutdowns: Ethnic, gender issues trumped economics

(via Hotair)
The difference between private-sector decisions on business consolidation and those under government supervision gets exposed in a portion of Neil Barofsky’s audit of the government-driven closures of GM auto dealerships during the $62 billion bailout. There may be a question of whether the automakers needed to consolidate in order to shed poorly performing dealerships at all, but we’ll get back to that. The plan to consolidate dealerships that resulted from the push by the car czar and TARP used rational, objective measures to select the target outlets. In practice, those often got ignored in favor of politics, according to the audit:

GM determined that dealerships with a DPS Score of 100 were average performers; those below 70 were considered poor performers and would not be retained. SIGTARP noted, however, that GM did not uniformly apply the phase one criteria to the entire network. For example, our analysis found that two of the wind-down dealers did not meet either criterion. Furthermore, we found that, of the dealerships that met only one of the two criteria:

GM retained 355 (or approximately 41 percent) of the 858 dealerships that had a DPS score below 70.16
GM retained 9 of the 394 dealerships that sold fewer than 50 new vehicles in 2008.17
An additional 10 dealerships with a DPS score below 70 were in phase two wind-downs.
GM officials attributed these inconsistencies primarily to a desire to maintain coverage in certain rural areas where they have a competitive advantage over import auto companies that are not typically located in rural areas, although ultimately close to half of all of the GM dealerships identified for termination were in rural areas. Other dealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships (emphasis mine).
On June 1, 2009, GM filed for bankruptcy. As indicated earlier in this report, bankruptcy would permit GM to accelerate the process without the restriction of state franchise laws. Bankruptcy laws supersede various state franchise laws, which could have required litigation or arbitration. GM management had also determined that the company would need to wind down more dealerships than those designated in phase one to get close enough to the “ideal network size” of 3,380 dealerships.

A couple of points should be made clear on this. Nothing in the report says that the Obama administration forced GM into these specific decisions, and apparently this didn’t happen with Chrysler’s closures. Nevertheless, it seems certain that GM would have been particularly sensitive to political considerations after begging for an receiving tens of billions of dollars to unwind its collapsing finances. If the point was saving money through the closures, GM didn’t act as if they had so much need for that to trump political considerations.


There’s a reason for that, too. The American Thinker points out that Barofsky actually found that closing dealerships wouldn’t save the automakers all that much money, anyway. A Chrysler exec told the Special Inspector General for TARP that at best it each closure would save less than $46,000, although GM put the savings at $1.1 million. But the issue was scalable, as lower performing dealerships ate up less resources anyway. One GM exec said closures weren’t going to make much difference at all:

GM would usually save ‘not one damn cent’ by closing any particular dealership. … Furthermore, a GM official stated that removing a dealership from the network does not save money for GM — it might even cost GM money — and that savings cannot be attributed or assigned to any one dealership.
 
So why close them if doing so would not save any real money? After all, both automakers need a substantial retail network to maintain their sales output. Michelle Malikin explains why politics trumped business concerns:
 
In search of the rationale for Team Obama’s bizarre, job-killing exercise of power over thousands of small car dealerships, the TARP inspector general may have stumbled onto the truth from Bloom. On page 33 of its report, Barofsky writes that “no one from Treasury, the manufacturers or from anywhere else indicated that implementing a smaller or more gradual dealership termination plan would have resulted in the cataclysmic scenario spelled out in Treasury’s response; indeed, when asked explicitly whether the Auto Team could have left the dealerships out of the restructurings, Mr. Bloom, the current head of the Auto Team, confirmed that the Auto Team ‘could have left any one component (of the restructuring plan) alone,’ but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President’s mandate for ‘shared sacrifice.’”
 
In other words,we destroyed tens of thousands of jobs in the private sector for a soundbite about sacrifice. In doing so, we weakened the economy and handicapped the automakers’ ability to push sales through their network of dealerships. A board that made those kinds of decisions in the private sector would get sacked by its shareholders — which is why those decisions should have stayed in the private sector in the first place, and taxpayers shouldn’t have had to shoulder the risk.
 
I swear I'm getting that Ayn Rand "social goodness" vibe.....

Reid to drop cap-and-trade from new energy bill

Really, though? Democrats, who are already terrified of losing Congress, are going to surf into the midterms with an eleventh-hour push for a hugely expensive new bill related to … global warming? With the GOP already armed with ad-ready video of Obama talking about how it’ll make energy prices “skyrocket”?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will bring a limited package of oil spill response and energy measures to the floor next week, delaying action until at least this fall on a broader proposal that would impose greenhouse gas limits on power plants, senior Senate Democratic aides said.

Aides insisted Reid’s decision is a nod to the packed floor schedule the Senate faces before it leaves in two weeks for the August recess, and that he he has not abandoned plans to try and bring up a broader climate and energy plan later in the year…
For now, the limited package expected on the floor this month will likely allow Democrats to push through a response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill — such as tougher rig safety requirements — and perhaps some energy provisions that members of both parties could support.

Mind you this is only a scheduling move until September, how much do you want to bet they push this through a lame-duck session after elections?  I'm pretty game.

Tax Cuts Stimulate Economies...when governments shrink spending

Officials are now concerned about saving the Bush tax cuts after years of saying tax cuts caused this mess.  Despite the evidence contrary to the myth.  Currently, Germany's recovery is attributed to that economic method as well as the sttes of VA and NJ.  But on to the story...

Some Democrats are now arguing forcefully that a delay is a win-win plan that would help the federal budget without hurting the economy.

Wealthy families would not have an incentive to cut back on spending and budget writers could assume an inflow of tax funds in future years, making five- and 10-year budget projections look less scary.
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), a member of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over taxes, said some of his Democratic colleagues have discussed the idea out of fear of impeding the nation’s economic recovery.
“I’ve heard some sentiment about raising the rate but not making it effective until 2012,” he said.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama said he would not extend the Bush-era tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000.
Obama promised that families earning less than $250,000 would not see their taxes increase.
But vulnerable Democrats in Congress are worried about talk of raising taxes, even on the wealthiest families, when the national economic recovery has slowed.
“I think the recovery is sufficiently fragile that we ought to leave tax rates where they are,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly, a freshman Democrat from Virginia.
Connolly said Democrats should not allow the 2001 Bush tax cuts to expire for anybody.

My God.  Ignoring the lie that "families earning less than $250,000 would not see their taxes increase" (current taxes will not increase but the mandate is a NEW tax, and that's one...), let's take a step back.  So there's a limit to taxing the "rich"?  Allowing to tax cuts to expire WOULDN'T increase tax revenue?
I'm being sarcastic......sigh, I'm posting something about how government's work at building revenue, and where the money comes from.  Here's a refresher on how businesses make money in the meantime.

Obama looking to end CRA? Hell is about to freeze over

For most of a decade, the US government manipulated lending markets and pressured banks to get mortgages for lower-income families under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, and with Democratic and Republican Congresses. Now, the Washington Post reports that the Obama administration wants to end the social engineering that created the housing bubble and subsequent collapse as its next target for reform:

Responding to the collapse in home prices and the huge number of foreclosures, the Obama administration is pursuing an overhaul of government policy that could diverge from the emphasis on homeownership embraced by former administrations.

“In previous eras, we haven’t seen people question whether homeownership was the right decision. It was just assumed that’s where you want to go,” said Raphael Bostic, a senior official in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “You’re not going to hear us say that.”
Bostic, who has published leading scholarship on homeownership, added that owning a home has a lot of value, but “what we’ve seen in the last four years is that there really is an underside to homeownership.”
The administration’s narrower view of who should own a home and what the government should to do to support them could have major implications for the economy as well as borrowers. Broadly, the administration may wind down some government backing for home loans, but increase the focus on affordable rentals.
The shift in approach could mean higher down payments and interest rates on loans, more barriers to lower-income people buying houses, and fewer homeowners overall, government officials said. But it could also pave the way for a more stable housing market, one with fewer taxpayer dollars on the line and less of a risk that homeowners will not be able to pay their mortgages. And it could spell changes throughout the financial markets, as investors choose new places to put their money if the government withdraws some incentives for investing in the U.S. mortgage market.

Let’s hope Obama commits to this reform. If he does, it will easily be the most significant economic reform of his tenure, and would represent a significant retreat from the government interventions and social engineering that have ruined the American economy, and could set the stage for even further constraints on federal power. That would show actual leadership and strength.

Something to think about concerning the Illegal Immigration debate

• Arizona passes a law saying that Arizona will codify and enforce the federal immigration laws the federal government doesn't wish to enforce. The federal government sues Arizona.

• San Francisco passes a law saying that San Francisco will NOT enforce the federal immigration laws. The federal government has nothing to say to San Francisco on the issue.

Something's wrong with this picture....

Democrats played Politics with Unemployment...but GOP still to blame?

Ok people, you got caught up in your emotions and the Democrats played on that....for over a month now.  If they were serious about the deficit, this would have been paid for and voted on from the beginning but they gambled on the desperation of millions of Americans out of work in the name of Politics.

Another Healthcare Surprise...has nothing to do with your health

You're a business. If you make a payment to someone in the course of conducting your trade or business you are supposed to report that payment to the IRS on a 1099 form, with a copy to the person or business to whom you made the payment. The old law was that you didn't have to report payments to a corporation or payments for such things as merchandise, utilities, shipping or other similar transactions.

Now things are different thanks to a little addition from the Senate Finance Committe into the new Healthcare Bill. Starting in 2012 you'll have to file a 1099 with the IRS for any business, person or entity to whom you make payments in excess of $600 during any taxable year. This, of course, would include anyone you hire to do some minor labor during the year ... but would also include any corporation, no matter how big, to whom you make payments in excess of $600.

The average small business prepares less than 1099 forms a year under the current law. Estimates are that these same businesses will have to prepare more than 100 under the new Healthcare. What's more .. the demand for accuracy, and the punishment for incorrect filings will probably send many of these smaller businesses out there to hire accounting professionals. Just what we need; more tax compliance costs.

There is a move afoot to repeal this hideous 1099 mandate. Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican from California, has introduced legislation that would repeal the new 1099 requirements.


For those of you who want more details on this. This is a good summary of the changes we are facing.

Obama Blames GOP for upholding Congressional Law (UPDATE: 60 Votes Found)

Showing a lack of knowledge about the concept of governance, the Democrats counter the GOP's call to pay for unemployment by comparing the times when the GOP gave tax credits to businesses.  So let's straighten this out now. 

The government gets funded by two sources:  loans from other nations and taxes (people and Corporations).  Printing money is another way of writing an I.O.U. of which will become some sort of tax in the future.
Banks are funded by the people and backed by the Government (funded by the people and loans)
Corporations are funded by the people when you pay for products or services.  (Refresher course)
Small businesses are funded by the people and banks (funded by the people and Government). 
Getting the picture here?  We, through the private sector, fund the economic engine that feeds the government.
Tax credits/cuts is less money being taken from the businesses or corporations and therefore are not a cost. It's a relief on the businesses that will benefit the consumers (people). This is regardless of budget concerns.

Unemployment benefits are cost regardless of the Federal Budget's status.  In this case, we are in a deficit.  The President signed into law PayGo (Feb 2010), where if any costs had to be added to the budget, Congress MUST find a way to pay for it.  It was to show how responsible the Democrats were and the seriousness about tackling the deficit.  The GOP have been willing to vote for the passage of this bill and have found a way to pay for Unemployment benefits, using part of the $400+Billion of unsed Stimulus to pay for it.  The Democrats are playing politics by selling the idea that the GOP hates the people, etc. while people have been cut off from their benefits in the last month.  They've refused paying for the benefits, using the entitlement program to stir political anger.

This seems like a punk move to me.

Update: Republicans Snow and Collins have signed on to pass the measure, and interim Senator of WV, Goodwin will provide the final vote.  Looks like it's going through (finally!!), but it's tainted with political gaming.

The Failure of the Stimulus Falls on the GOP, and Obama Disagrees

VP Joe Biden blamed the GOP today for the democrat’s stimulus failure telling ABC’s Jake Tapper that the record spending bill was not big enough.

Politico reported:

Vice President Joe Biden said that the Recovery Act was undersized because the White House shrunk the economic stimulus package to win Republican votes in Congress to pass it.
"I think it would have been bigger,” he told ABC’s Jake Tapper in an interview airing Sunday. “In fact, what we offered was slightly bigger than that.”
In the end, the administration found three Republican votes to pass the Recovery Act. And, while “a lot” of administration officials believe the emergency spending was too small, Biden said that more than 3 million people are now working because of the federal programs.

And here's the President, Feburary 2009:

There are provisions in the package that need to be left out… But, broadly speaking the package is the right size. It is the right scope. It has the right priorities to create 3-4 million jobs and to do it in a way that lays the groundwork for long term growth.”


Listen for the 4:20 mark:


Definitely a case of "not taking responsibility", "passing the buck" and other terms that were used to fire up voters in 2008.  Joe Biden offered a flat-out, horse-crap lie to Tapper in this interview. The Obama White House got exactly the amount of stimulus they wanted, and more. The stimulus didn’t fail because Congress didn’t spend enough money. It failed because Barack Obama and Joe Biden have no idea what they’re doing, and they’re proving that much every day they’re in office.

Health Insurance Mandate a Tax after all, who knew?!

Not forgetting that people are not guaranteed to keep their health insurance per the President's foolish promise, the New York Times reports that the Obama administration will defend the ObamaCare mandates as part of its power to tax, despite Barack Obama’s contentious debate with George Stephanopoulos when Obama denied it was a tax at all:

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”
And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.
Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Remember when asked about the mandate, President Obama's response:



That is exactly what the mandates do — regulate individual behavior in an area where the federal government has no jurisdiction and punish those who don’t exhibit favored choices, in this case buying comprehensive health insurance regardless of whether it makes sense for anyone. This court will almost certainly take a dim view of the same attempt that the 1922 court struck down as a gross overreach by the government.

Paul Ryan: A Time for Choosing

Young Gun Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is extremely bright and informed. He is also and an excellent communicator.Recently he appeared on CNBC to discuss his Roadmap For America’s Future.


Via GatewayPundit :
Are we going to reclaim the American idea?
An entrepreneurial economy where you make the most of your life, you can maximize your potential; reinvigorate the principles of liberty, freedom, free enterprise – and defend its morality – or – are we going to abandon the American idea, and become a stagnant European-style cradle-to-grave welfare state, where we drain people of their incentive and will to make the most of their lives, and become more dependent on the government? The President and the people that run Congress are dedicated progressives. They believe that we ought to have the government so much more involved in our lives, with the government – not ourselves – as the determining factor of our destiny. The country must answer the question: do we want an entrepreneurial society that gets the prosperity turned back on in the 21st century, where individual merit and entrepreneurial activity defines the American economy – or – are we going to have more and more people dependent on the government for their livelihoods? That is the fork in the road – and the urgency of the time for choosing is being precipitated by the current direction of our government and the looming debt crisis, driven by the explosion in entitlement spending. We must decide what kind of a country we are going to be in the 21st century.

Keeping Up with the Unemployment Rate

Here we go..

The light blue line represents what unemployment would be had nothing been done to stimulate the economy.  Notice, we stay around 9%.
The dark blue line represents what unemployment would be after the stimulus passed. You know the promise that unemployment would be under 8%, yada, yada....
We went past that percentage.  The maroon dots represent the ACTUAL unemployment data, peaking above 10%.  A lot of factors led to this happening. Geithner's prediction (March 2010) to Congress is that unemployment will not drop to 8% until the 4th quarter of 2012.
Just prepare.  Starting next year, a range of tax cuts expire, new taxes begin and government spending increases.  The IRS reported that they do not have the manpower or resources to enforce the mandate for the new Healthcare bill, new tax to pay for that (via Hotair).  The President has now changed his stance on the mandate and is admitting that it's a tax.  A very hostile environment for economic growth and the unemployment situation.  Numbers are my thing, and I'm tired of being right

Wake Up Call of the Day

Via (Ed Morrissey; Hotair)

Ezra Klein calls this “the scariest jobs graph you’ve seen yet,” and for good reason. The center-left Brookings Institute calculated what kind of job growth it would take to reach pre-recession employment levels, and how long it would take. Brookings takes into account population growth and therefore calculates that in this month, the total employment gap has expanded to 11.2 million jobs. According to their analysis, adding jobs at a rate equal to the best average monthly rate for any one year in the past decade will mean we won’t catch up to pre-recession employment until 2022 (via Newsalert):

Looking ahead, there are several challenges to sustained job growth. The boost to economic activity from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is winding down and job losses related to temporary Census workers will continue in July. Further, the four-week moving average of initial claims for unemployment insurance have hit their highest level since March and have remained above 450,000 all year.
The “job gap” underlying these numbers is daunting. In recent months, on this blog, we described the job gap — the number of jobs it would take to return to employment levels from before the Great Recession, while also accounting for the 125,000 people who enter the labor force in a typical month. After today’s employment numbers, the job gap stands at almost 11.3 million jobs.
How long will it take to erase this gap? If future job growth continues at a rate of roughly 208,000 jobs per month, the average monthly job creation for the best year for job creation in the 2000s, it would take 136 months (more than 11 years). In a more optimistic scenario, with 321,000 jobs created per month, the average monthly job creation for the best year in the 1990s, it would take over 57 months (almost 5 years).

If we start in 2009Q4, when Obama argued that Porkulus and his other economic policies started taking effect, the rate of job creation under his policies has been … +39,000. Bear in mind that this includes the massive Census Bureau hires made by the Obama administration in 2010.
 
How about just the private sector? The Brookings calculation isn’t limited to the private sector, so it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but few people doubt that private sector jobs have to return in force to close the jobs gap. The average monthly growth in the private sector during the entire Obama term has been -192,000, and the average growth since the beginning of 2009Q4 has been +14,000. In other words, two-thirds of the growth numbers from Porkulus come from government hiring, not private-sector growth.
 
How long will it take to close the employment gap with a growth rate of +14K in the private sector? It’s flat-out impossible, because we’re digging the hole deeper each month at that rate. Under the failed Keynesian policies of the Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration, 2022 looks like a pipe dream instead of a nightmare.

Guess who pays in the new Financial Regulation Bill

Barack Obama celebrated the passage of the new financial regulation bill yesterday. So did Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. And why not? It’s not as though they’ll have to pay for the new bureaucracies and regulation imposed on the American financial system. For that matter, it won’t be the bankers, either. Who pays? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count:

Big banks facing big drops in revenue are looking to Main Street to make up the difference.
Checking accounts, bank statements, even popping into your local bank branch could carry a hefty cost as the nation’s mega-banks scramble to offset expected damage from the sweeping financial overhaul. The uncertain future has overshadowed otherwise strong second-quarter earnings at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp.
All three companies beat expectations this week with profitable results. Yet their stocks tumbled, helping send the wider market sharply lower Friday.

This is so basic that people inside the Beltway never learn it. Costs imposed on businesses get passed to consumers. It doesn’t matter where those costs originate, whether they come from materials, labor, rent, taxes, or regulation. All of those figure into the price paid by consumers for the product or service provided.
 
How will consumers get hit with these new regulations? Expect more fees on more transactions, including paying premium prices for doing business face to face with bank tellers and other employees. Banks will start demanding higher minimum balances and start charging higher fees on accounts that don’t make the cut. Bank of America will lose between $7 and $10 billion just on charges for debit and credit cards alone, money that will get made up by its customers somewhere.
 
That's the big secret that most of the public fails to realize when Democrats continually issue the battle cry calling for raising taxes and fees on big business. Consumers may not pay the entire price, however, at least not directly. If you like your local branch, better get used to the idea that it may disappear. With billions of dollars in new costs landing with a thud on their balance sheets, we can expect to see branches close up entirely — and the jobs that exist disappear along with them.
 
In short, the bill will erode consumer buying power, harm retirement accounts that rely on the performance of financial institutions, and create more unemployment. What exactly did we get in return for all of this?
 
If you want a refresher course on business, I've done the legwork.  Pay attention!

More from "Recovery Summer".....13 year low in Mortage applications

Thursday, the Associated Press reports that mortgage applications hit a 13-year low last week despite low mortgage rates. Even refinancing applications dropped significantly:

Demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes sank to a 13-year low last week, and refinancing demand also slid despite near record-low mortgage rates, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday.

Requests for loans to buy homes dropped 3.1 percent in the week ended July 9, after adjusting for the Independence Day holiday, to the lowest level since December 1996, the industry group said.
Refinancing applications fell 2.9 percent, and the mortgage market index that reflects total loan demand also fell 2.9 percent.
Average 30-year mortgage rates edged up 0.01 percentage point to 4.69 percent, but were near the record low of 4.61 percent set in March 2009, based on MBA records dating back to 1990.

Now that the artificial stimuli have ended, most of those who intended to buy have already done so in order to take advantage of a useless taxpayer subsidy of the sales. There remains only a historically small demand among those who either didn’t qualify for the tax break or didn’t need it, or perhaps a cadre of buyers who think that Congress will create yet another subsidy for sales and are waiting them out.

Remember when the Obama administration announced its plan to spend billions of dollars to prevent foreclosures? Again, it’s the Associated Press informing people today that there will be more foreclosures in 2010 than there were in 2009, breaking records again:

More than 1 million American households are likely to lose their homes to foreclosure this year, as lenders work their way through a huge backlog of borrowers who have fallen behind on their loans.

Nearly 528,000 homes were taken over by lenders in the first six months of the year, a rate that is on track to eclipse the more than 900,000 homes repossessed in 2009, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service.
“That would be unprecedented,” said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac.
By comparison, lenders have historically taken over about 100,000 homes a year, Sharga said.

None of the stimuli and the rescue plans worked, because none of them addressed the core problem: joblessness. Without jobs, people lose their homes no matter how much the government intervenes to stop it. Until we get people back to work, these programs are simply futile. A homebuyer tax break doesn’t help someone without a job qualify as a buyer, and restructuring plans for existing mortgages can’t help an unemployed person make a mortgage payment. We need to shift gears quickly to reduce the massive uncertainties created by the radical Democratic agenda, reduce taxes and the regulatory burden, and get capital working in the US again so that we have employment at a level where foreclosures return to their normal level. Only then will housing markets stabilize.

The Feds are Pushing Risky Lending.....again?!

Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal journal posted this article.  Just two years after the implosion of easy credit nearly cratered the entire Western financial structure, the same people who caused it are returning to their old habits. Fannie Mae has embarked on a new program to offer easy credit to people who may not be able to pay it back in a desperate attempt to ignite the economy:

Fannie Mae, seized by the U.S. government in 2008 to avert the mortgage company’s failure, launched an initiative in January that allows some first-time home buyers to get a loan with a down payment of as little as $1,000. Securities firm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, a brokerage operation jointly owned by Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., is offering some clients home-equity credit lines of as much as $2.5 million.

Credit-card issuers mailed 84.8 million offers of plastic to U.S. subprime borrowers in the first six months of this year, up from 43.7 million a year earlier, estimates research firm Synovate. Nearly 8% of loans for new cars in the latest quarter went to borrowers with the lowest range of credit scores, up from 6.2% in 2009’s fourth quarter, according to J.D. Power & Associates and Fair Isaac Corp. …
Shirley Davis, a 66-year-old retired phone-company administrator who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., is more than $33,000 in debt, earns just $2,414 a month and filed for bankruptcy in June. Shortly before that, she ripped open an envelope from Capital One Financial Corp., which pitched her a credit card even though it sued her in 2006 to recover $4,470 she owed on a different card from the bank.
“At some point we lost you as a customer and we’d like to have you back,” the letter said. Ms. Davis said she was stunned. “Even I wouldn’t give me a credit card at this point,” she said.

Did we not learn anything the first time?  Take into account that the Financial Regulation Bill passed yesterday has no restrictions.....NO REGULATION (I mean not to the extent that private lenders will get)....on the entities that played essential roles in the financial collapse in 2007.  Of course, I mean Federally run, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the FHA.
Making high risk loans to unqualified borrowers is part of the reason why we got us into this mess.  Lenders aren't lending because we want them to be more responsible (and they have no idea what's going to happen next year when taxes jump), so the fix is to promote high risk lending? Why make the same mistakes again?
Surely that doesn't sound responsible

We're In Good Hands....

Debt Commissioner Bowles, of our official Deficit Commission, comes to the great conclusion of cutting spending and increasing revenues to save the economy. We needed a commisson for that?!
Seriously, any economist could tell you that!  Every Republican was saying that!  How about you cut spending by disbanding this group of idiots and save us taxpayers from paying your salaries!

Obama falls back to the same conclusion as Bush when it comes to Iran

Wow, the Administration's realized that Iran wants nukes more than it wants peace, after wasting three years of watching then build a nuclear arsenal. Nice!

In late 2006, George W. Bush met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon and asked if military action against Iran’s nuclear program was feasible. The unanimous answer was no. Air strikes could take out some of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but there was no way to eliminate all of them. Some of the nuclear labs were located in heavily populated areas; others were deep underground. And Iran’s ability to strike back by unconventional means, especially through its Hizballah terrorist network, was formidable. The military option was never officially taken off the table. At least, that’s what U.S. officials always said. But the emphasis was on the implausibility of a military strike. “Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in 2008. It would be “disastrous on a number of levels.”

Gates is sounding more belligerent these days. “I don’t think we’re prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran,” he told Fox News on June 20. “We do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons.” In fact, Gates was reflecting a new reality in the military and intelligence communities. Diplomacy and economic pressure remain the preferred means to force Iran to negotiate a nuclear deal, but there isn’t much hope that’s going to happen. “Will [sanctions] deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability?” CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC News on June 27. “Probably not.” So the military option is very much back on the table.
What has changed? “I started to rethink this last November,” a recently retired U.S. official with extensive knowledge of the issue told me. “We offered the Iranians a really generous deal, which their negotiators accepted,” he went on, referring to the offer to exchange Iran’s 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium (3.5% pure) for higher-enriched (20%) uranium for medical research and use. “When the leadership shot that down, I began to think, Well, we made the good-faith effort to engage. What do we do now?”

Now that the Obama administration has wasted more than a year on the same kind of fruitless diplomacy that had already been tried over and over, they have suddenly reached the conclusion that Iran doesn’t want peace; it wants nukes. And if it wants nukes more than it wants peace, they’re likely to want the nukes for a specific target. All of this was blindingly apparent in 2007, but Obama somehow figured that starting over from scratch would work, since he was the change that the world wanted and needed.
A military strike will be an act of desperation, which the Bush Administration surmised, but the only option worse is an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. We’ve wasted three years getting back to that same realization, but you can bet that the Iranians haven’t wasted a day of it.

Examining Black Loyalty to Democrats

I've got to hand it to Zo, he hits most of the points.  I would go even further and say that the socio-economic policies of the Democratic Party, in it's current form, results in economic slavery by creating a class of dependent citizens.  These citizens will support the hands that feed them, while never noticing that their other freedoms were given away in exchange for relief from the burden of personal responsibility and comfort.  Quite similar to the physical slavery by the Democrats of the past.  Only this time, blacks aren't the only ones enlaved.  It's the middle and lower classes of all races and genders.
Watch...

"Al Qaeda is a racist organization" says......President Obama?!

No worries about being politically correct any longer. It's on.

Speaking about the Uganda bombings, the president said, “What you’ve seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself. They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains.”…
Explaining the president’s comment, an administration official said Mr. Obama “references the fact that both U.S. intelligence and past al Qaeda actions make clear that al Qaeda — and the groups like al Shabaab that they inspire — do not value African life. The actions of al Qaeda and the groups that it has inspired show a willingness to sacrifice innocent African life to reach their targets.”…
“Additionally, U.S. intelligence has indicated that al Qaeda leadership specifically targets and recruits black Africans to become suicide bombers because they believe that poor economic and social conditions make them more susceptible to recruitment than Arabs,” the official said. “Al Qaeda recruits have said that al Qaeda is racist against black members from West Africa because they are only used in lower level operations.”
“In short,” the official said, “al Qaeda is a racist organization that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life.”

I question the timing, given today's low support numbers from CBS and WaPo on the President.  It seems like a ploy to cater to the center-right who were tired of the refusals to label terrorist organizations from the Middle East as "radical muslim" factions.  Easiest way to demonize them (as it has been for any opposition)?  Play the race card.  It stirs emotion and support pretty quickly. 
At the same time, it seems uneccessary, given that Al Qaeda has been seen as a terrorist group (bad guys) by the American public as a whole.....so why go there?

NAACP makes themselves even more irrelevant

After the embarassment over the Hallmark cards, Today, the NAACP has passed a resolution condemning racism within the Tea Parties. At least they didn't generalize the entire movement!
Other important resolutions by the relevant group:

1. a resolution “supporting Native Americans” (which one member objected to because Native Americans were “slaveholders”)
2. a resolution enshrining “DIVERSITY” as the NAACP’s top educational goal (not education?!)
3. a resolution banning the use of Tasers by police (which one member, a black female police officer, objected to because it would result in a blanket ban that takes away law enforcement alternatives…but whose objection was met with dead silence)

My take on this, if you call fire when there isn't one, you end up in trouble. The same applies to calling racism. The overall message of the Tea Party has always been a smaller and more responsible government, responsible spending, and safeguarding the pillars of our Constitution. If opponents can only restort to namecalling instead of rebutting my philosophical ideology, then I'm more than likely winning the argument.
So look out for these signs to know you're winning a debate.  If your opponent:

• resorts to  making it personal or namecalling (racism, physical appearance, etc)
• changes the subject
• curses
• will no longer listen after you've presented legitimate data (facts)

Then, there's no reason to continue debate.  The NAACP has just shut themselves out.

Recap

For a few years (since November or 2007) I've grown to be interested in politics; So for the next few postings, I'll re-post some of the topics I've covered since then. Kind of leads you on a journey through my thought process and showing how I came to my present way of thinking about everything. Bear with me, and leave comments!

My Version of Social Security Reform (January 2009)

Social Security is a legalized pyramid/ponzi scheme, similar to what Madoff pulled off for so many years in that new investors are promised a return at a later date as long as they pay into the promised return for the earlier investors. The only difference is that it’s transparent (meaning we know where our money is going), but that doesn’t change the fact that it is what it is. You are unwillingly MADE to invest into the system as soon as you get your first paycheck. (Got to love freedom of choice, huh?) The reason why it shouldn’t fail is because the supply of new investors should always exceed the number of investors before them (following the birth rate models, more born every generation). The problem is that the Government can take from this fund when they see fit, which depletes the amount that is supposed to be supplied to future retirees. Like Madoff, some of the investors are being paid back, but the Government is using that same money ($5 trillion) to fund its own endeavors. Notice the hypocrisy?

I’m putting a suggestion out there, further explaining/expanding how to wean us off of the current system in place.

For right now, we’ll call this program the Personal Retirement Account (PRA). Similar to the Social Security system, the PRA will take a percentage of your paycheck and hold it into a holding account of your choice (IRA, IRA Roth, savings account, etc). The idea is that the money would be “locked” until one’s retirement. One could also designate beneficiaries to this account in case of incident through a personal will or by power of attorney. 100% of your account would be able to be distributed at your discretion instead of being absorbed back into Government.

Key points:

1. The percentage transferred into your PRA is adjustable. As long as you do not go below the pre-determined minimum contribution (more research and discussion needed), you can deposit as much as you’d like into the account
2. Beneficiaries would be designated at your initial introduction into the PRA. This can be changed at anytime (as wills can be adjusted)
3. Government intervention is taken out of the equation. That’s less tax dollars used on enforcing the current system, thus putting the needed tax dollars on more important affairs
4. Distribution among multiple PRA accounts is open for discussion

Those from ages 16 to 25 would take part in a new system where the minimum amount that would normally be taken and placed into the Social Security system, would go into the PRA. Additionally, this age group will no longer contribute into the Social Security system as it’s now fixed.

Age 26 - 39 would get a portion of both the old and new programs (based upon age of course): a portion of the Social Security fund and the PRA program. The Social Security fund would be distributed based upon age in that, the closer you are to retirement, the more of the fund is set aside for your retirement. In addition, you will have your PRA just as the younger age group. Conversely, the further you are from retirement, the more you will have saved in your PRA. There would no longer be any contribution into the Social Security system.

Over time, the current Social Security system would dry up and everyone (after a generation or two) PRAs would have replaced it. It’s Social Security within your personal control.

This takes care of a few things:

1. The government can no longer dip into the Social Security funds that should be set aside for us because there would no longer be a fund to steal from
2. Politics would no longer use this as a means to use fear to obtain the elderly vote
3. The individual citizen can actually see that they have a retirement secured for their future. In addition, there is more of an incentive to work when a citizen can actually see how much one can set aside for the future. (The more you work, the more is set aside for retirement). This may aid in decreasing unemployment and increasing self-drive/motivation
   
4. This may inadvertently replace the burden of life insurance for those that can’t afford it. For those that can afford life insurance, it may become an additional security blanket to go towards beneficiaries

I probably missed something here. Any suggestions, needed additions, questions? I’ll open the floor to you.

My Rant about the Healtcare Debate (August 2009)

I'm all for reform but based on the crap they've tried to pass thus far, they may end up making things worse rather than better. By no means am I advocating that healthcare is a human right. I believe that everyone, who is able, should be responsible for the choices they’ve made especially regarding their well-being. That being said I’m going to attempt to explain how health insurance works before tackling the Public and Private solutions (Took me all day to write this up. Missing quite a bit so far, but its worth a look/discussion. It is a bit long, so bear with me….):


We know the basics of what insurance is. Whether it is for your car/home/health/etc. it is coverage “in case” something bad happens. Obtaining coverage, you must go through a screening in order for the insurance investor (lets be real, they are investing that nothing will happen to you while you are paying them, that’s how businesses make money). Your rate is determined by “pre-existing” factors. For cars: your driving history, tickets, accidents, etc. For homes: environmental factors (flood, earthquakes, etc), condition of home, etc. For health: lifestyle habits (smoking, eating, drinking), family history, etc. Let’s be clear, you can be denied access to coverage for any type of insurance if you present that you will cost the investor. You can be denied auto insurance. You can be denied home insurance. You can be denied life insurance. You can be denied health insurance. That being said if you ARE covered, you are essentially in a pool with other individuals being covered. The cost you pay for covered is based on the information you’ve given plus the cost of the goods and services required for keeping you healthy. When someone in your pool becomes sick, the cost for covering that person is spread amongst the other members of the pool. There are ways to drive costs down, and all it takes is volunteering to adjust your lifestyle by living healthier. That means: exercise, eating habits, smoking, drinking, sexual habits, etc would have to lean towards improving your personal health. If we each take a little more care in how we take care of OURSELVES and instill those habits into our children, prices are more than likely to drop. There are other factors (prescription costs, inflation, etc), but I’ll try to cover them ahead.

We do have a public (Government) plan in place. Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid and Medicare have its shortcomings. There are cases of the government rationing benefits in order to save money but at the cost of your health. It should not be that way. Imagine cases like this on a national scale and you can see why the opponents to the Healthcare Bill are worried. (Hint: it isn’t about color of the skin of our President) For this government system to work, EVERYONE who works and collects a paycheck has to pay into the system (which you already do for Medicaid, Medicare & Social Security by the way and are set to increase for everyone for the program to work. No taxes on the middle class my ass…). Similar to how the insurance system works, everyone is a part of the pool. This program should work as a “safety net” for the public. It should cover those people who could not be covered by the private system, which it does, but it LIMITS COVERAGE to keep costs down. The more people in the pool needing coverage, the more costly it is to cover them, which means the more money will be needed to cover the people needing help. A board looks at your case and determines if you should have that operation. They don’t care if you pay them back, but they care if this operation will affect the national deficit. Another credible reason why opposition to the Government plan fears it: increasing the deficit. Ways to keep the costs down are similar to the private option. Changing your personal lifestyle is the first step. The difference is, the Government can “force” you to change your habits by influencing you. The cigarette and sugar taxes aren’t just for revenue people. It is just the beginning of controlling lifestyle habits through taxation. Also, it is one of the ways that the middle and poor classes will be affected. The second, of which we covered earlier, is by limiting coverage. (You should wonder why some hospitals don’t accept Medicaid as a form of coverage: it doesn’t cover costly procedures)

The private plans are your “evil” insurance companies. Let’s get this straight; businesses are in it for making profit. Similar to the Government plan, the private companies are trying to save money anyway they can by rationing coverage (yes, we already have a system where coverage is rationed…lets be real Republicans). A board looks at your case and determines if you should have that operation. They look at the type of career you have and determine if you have the ability to pay them back if the procedure has been approved. (I’m going to get chewed out for this next one) The business has a right to deny coverage because they are investing in you NOT to get sick. The empathic part of me understands the anger towards the private market because a lot of the problems stem from greed, plain and simple. The bad kind. (There is such thing as good greed) This is where decisions are made to make the company profit, but at the cost the service it supplies to its customers. Companies should follow suit as we should as individuals, stated in our Bill of Rights and our Constitution: you have the freedom to do whatever you like, with the exception that it does not infringe upon the welfare of others.

Another negative aspect of the private system falls upon private practices run by doctors whose duty it is to help their patients, have been clouded by "bad greed". There are cases in which certain doctors will authorize unnecessary procedures/test because of the finacial gain it brings to the practice. The motives could range from personal debts, cost of supplies, malpractice insurance rates, etc. So how do we control this? The options are being floated around: lowering the inflated cost of the supplies, doing away with the no-limit malpractice suits, subsidizing/lowering the costs for medical school, etc. (Quick way: FairTax baby...) Of course there will be some that will seek to take advantage, even if these problems didn't exist, but we shouldn't need the Government to step in to find a solution on how to deal with criminals, or do we?

Washington has recently pulled the public option from their draft of the Healthcare Bill. The Democrats control all three branches of government and have removed the public option the day before our President said he’d sign what ever they bring him a week ago. The Republicans were not responsible for the defeat of the Healthcare Bill back in 1994, despite what the President said last night. The people in this country read the bill the Democrats (they ran ALL three branches of Government in 1994) attempted to pass during that time and called their representatives to demand that it doesn’t pass. the people then knew the danger and so should you here in 2009. Democratic Senators have said in the last few weeks that they don’t even know what’s in this bill because it’s too confusing. Do you feel safe that they AREN'T READING/COMPREHENDING THE BILLS THEY PASS?! You think this is about helping you? You aren’t worried of the future implications?

We need real discussion before passage of ANY bill of this magnitude. Plowing forward and making “bold” moves can shackle future generations to a possible mistake that we know NOTHING about because our leaders know less about it than we do.

Alternative Healthcare Plan (The One You Don't Hear About) (April 2009)

Took some time to write this one out, bear with me. Feel free to add your opinions.

Health Care should be readily available to everyone
Health Insurance should not be available to everyone. It is Unconstitutional to force others to pay for the choices one makes in life concerning their life and health.It's important that you review how a business works. Here's a refresher course on the subject


The Baucus Health Plan

• Mandated coverage across the board
  
  • Unconstitutional as it forces individuals to be responsible for the life decisions of others
• Tax on Medical Items/Procedures beginning in 2011
  
  • On Class II and above Items/Procedures (priced at $100+) Link here
  • Tax will be applied for each time used
  • Results in higher Employer Contributions on Insurance Premiums
    
    1. Has negative impact on wages and employment
    2. May cause employer to drop private insurance for an affordable plan with less benefits (or pay the government fines if less expensive)
  • Results in higher Consumer Insurance Premiums
    
    1. Has negative impact on Middle Class buying power
    2. Less buying power results in slower moving economy
• Should the Public Option be Included
  
  • Due to tax, Employers and Consumers will drop Private Insurance to either pay the fines for lack of coverage, or join the public option in 2013
  • Private Insurers go under if they can’t force premiums down to compete against government subsidies in 2013
  • Public option becomes the only option unless it’s found that the fines cost less than paying the public option fees. We now have a single-payer system.

Alternative Health Plan

• Allow Tax Credits for Consumers
  
  • Consumers may deduct the annual cost of their insurance from their taxes just as their employers do now
  • This removes the disparity for cost of coverage as an individual compared to being covered through the Employer
  • Resulting with employers no longer needing to provide coverage, freeing up capital to go towards increasing wages, hiring more employees, improving the business
• Remove State Mandates
  
  • Will avoid confusion due to state differences in coverage eligibility
  • Will push Private Insurers to compete with others in states that have better coverage and lower premiums
• Consumers may shop for nationwide options
  
  • Will force competitiveness among insurers, drive down costs and improve benefits as a result
  • Gives the individual authority over what plan they are looking for and the price they are willing to pay for it, no bureaucracy
• TORT Reform
  
  • Will lower the number of frivolous malpractice claims once claims are capped
  • Will lower Malpractice Insurance Premiums for doctors, which will drive down fees for service especially with private practices
  • Lower service fees results in lower medical costs, which results in lower Insurance Premiums across the board
• Create pool for the un-insurable
  
  • Fix Medicare first and foremost
  • Subsidize the uninsurable through the government and allow them access to Medicare
  • Should Private Insurers be forced to lower their standards in order to cover high risk cases, the system will be unsustainable. (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Federal Housing authority are prime examples of the predictable result, a bubble system)
• Consumer access to health history
  
  • Companies like Keas, Inc. (run by Adam Bosworth) are working on a system built to store medical data/history of patients which is inputted on a voluntary basis
  • Doctors will have access to medical records from anywhere in the nation, quicker response due to readily available information on patient
  • Individuals will have unlimited access to their own records, which allows them to make decisions to improve their health
  • Long term effect: Consumers make better health decisions, which will drive down health costs

The result of the Alternative Health Plan:

• The average individual will have the freedom to choose their own health plan and not be limited by employer choice, state/federal limitations and lack of competition.
• The ultimate goal of healthcare for a majority of the population, with little to no impact on the federal deficit due to a minor government presence
• Lower competitive rates based upon economic principles as the system reaches equilibrium
• Will not require a tax increase on any citizen to pay for it, besides the current tax on Medicare and Medicade