Congressional Budget Office: Nationalized Health Care Will Increase Costs, Not Reduce Them

So, the CBO has finally admitted what we Conservatives have known for many, many years. Nationalized health care will be more expensive, not less expensive as promised by the leftist Dems.

From David Clarke and Edward Epstein of CQ Politics:

The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said Thursday. That is not a message likely to sit well with congressional Democrats or the Obama administration ...

But, for a Democrat-controlled Congress that has engaged in more out-of-control spending than their Republican predecessors, why is this an issue?

Read on:

The Democrats and President Obama have cited two goals in their overhaul proposals — expanding coverage to the estimated 47 million Americans who currently lack it and bringing down long-term costs because the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending threatens to swamp the federal budget in coming years. Under questioning from Chairman Kent Conrad , D-N.D., Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee that the congressional proposals released so far do not meet that second test. “In the legislation that has been reported, we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount and, on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs,” he said

Welcome back to Planet Earth, Democrats.

Does anyone here think that drafting these bills behind closed door (thereby directly breaking the Dem promise of openness and transparancy) was a good idea?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

CBO Chief: Health Bills To Increase Federal Costs
David Clarke and Edward Epstein
CQ Politics
July 16, 2009

Florida The Latest State To Consider Sovereignty

From the Tenth Amendment Center:

State Senator Carey Baker (R-Eustis) has introduced a memorial in the Florida Senate reaffirming the principles of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The memorial, awaiting an official Senate number, urges “Congress to honor the provisions of the Constitution of the United States and United States Supreme Court case law which limit the scope and exercise of federal power.” “Now more than ever, state governments must exercise their Constitutional right to say no to the expansion of the federal government’s reckless deficit spending and abuse of power,” Senator Baker said. “With this resolution, our Legislature can send a message to Washington that our state’s rights must be respected.”

Those who ignore or dismiss such proceedings do so at the peril of the Union.

You can access the complete story on-line here:

Florida Senate To Consider State Sovereignty
Michael Boldin
The Tenth Amendment Center
July 16, 2009

The New 'Web Of Bureaucracy' In Democrats' Socialized Medicine Plan

You won't see this on ABC, NBC, CBS, or CNN. A report from Fox News:

House Democrats' health care reform bill would create a mind-boggling "web of bureaucracy," Republican critics charged Wednesday as they sought to block Democrats from hastily passing a costly and sweeping health package on orders from President Obama. Stressing his point, House Minority Leader John Boehner unveiled a dizzying flow chart that he said would represent how health care coverage would look under the plan being pushed by House Democrats. The chart shows the president and Congress at the top, with dozens of agencies and officials responsible for various slices of the health care program underneath.

"On orders from President Obama." Interesting line. No concern for what the American people want. Just blindly follow the orders of the President. I seem to remember a time just a few years ago when the Dems railed against people who "blindly followed orders."

Here is the chart:



And here is what it means:

"What this is going to do is ration care, limit the choices that patients and doctors have and really decrease the quality of our health care system." Estimates of the House Democrats' plan range from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, with much of the cost offset by a surtax on the wealthy.

If the Dems pass this abomination, then, when health care quality takes a nose dive like it did under the socialized systems of Great Britain and Canada, then the Dems are the ones who will have to take the blame.

You can access the complete story on-line here:

Republicans Warn Of 'Web Of Bureaucracy' In Democrats' Health Care Plan
FoxNews.com
July 15, 2009

Obama Rewrites Cold War History To Appease Our Enemies

Appeasement only works in the fantasy world of leftist minds. Out here in reality, it has never worked and only resulted in more devasting conflicts.

Read the following Liz Cheney column from the Wall Street Journal:

There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week. Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: "The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful." The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism. It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push "reset" -- or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said. Mr. Obama's method for pushing reset around the world is becoming clearer with each foreign trip. He proclaims moral equivalence between the U.S. and our adversaries, he readily accepts a false historical narrative, and he refuses to stand up against anti-American lies. The approach was evident in his speech in Moscow and in his speech in Cairo last month. In Cairo, he asserted there was some sort of equivalence between American support for the 1953 coup in Iran and the evil that the Iranian mullahs have done in the world since 1979. On an earlier trip to Mexico City, the president listened to an extended anti-American screed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and then let the lies stand by responding only with, "I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for the things that occurred when I was 3 months old." Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, "I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, not so much. The Obama administration does seem to believe in another kind of exceptionalism -- Obama exceptionalism. "We have the best brand on Earth: the Obama brand," one Obama handler has said. What they don't seem to realize is that once you're president, your brand is America, and the American people expect you to defend us against lies, not embrace or ignore them. We also expect you to know your history. Mr. Obama has become fond of saying, as he did in Russia again last week, that American nuclear disarmament will encourage the North Koreans and the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Does he really believe that the North Koreans and the Iranians are simply waiting for America to cut funds for missile defense and reduce our strategic nuclear stockpile before they halt their weapons programs? The White House ought to take a lesson from President Harry Truman. In April, 1950, Truman signed National Security Council report 68 (NSC-68). One of the foundational documents of America's Cold War strategy, NSC-68 explains the danger of disarming America in the hope of appeasing our enemies. "No people in history," it reads, "have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies." Perhaps Mr. Obama thinks he is making America inoffensive to our enemies. In reality, he is emboldening them and weakening us. America can be disarmed literally -- by cutting our weapons systems and our defensive capabilities -- as Mr. Obama has agreed to do. We can also be disarmed morally by a president who spreads false narratives about our history or who accepts, even if by his silence, our enemies' lies about us.

That column hits the nail right on the head.

You can access the orginal column on-line here:

Obama Rewrites The Cold War
Liz Cheney
Wall Street Journal
July 13, 2009

Mario Diaz: Sotomayor Stands Alone

This is a fantastic column by a Latino about Sonia Sotomayor:

“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.” — Judge Sonia Sotomayor, October 26, 2001 speech at the University of California–Berkley. Really? So now judges are supposed to ignore facts because they don’t comport with their heritage? As a Hispanic, I can proudly say Judge Sotomayor’s views do not represent my views or those of the Hispanic community in which I participate. Do you want to know what we believe in? We believe in justice, fairness, freedom, and equality. I have never met a Latino who thinks he is wiser than a white person because he is a Latino. Sotomayor stands alone on that one. Although I proudly join her in celebrating her heritage, I strongly disagree with her judicial philosophy. I believe judges must look away from personal heritage and look to the rule of law. Judge Sotomayor’s own words indicate that she is incapable of doing this. Therefore, senators should not confirm her to the Supreme Court. The idea that personal experience instead of facts and law should determine the outcome of cases runs counter to the underlying premise upon which our judicial system is founded: Equal Justice Under the Law. President Obama and Judge Sotomayor have apparently proposed a new system: Justice According to Race, Gender or Sexual Preference. They propose we rip the blindfold from Lady Justice, destroying the very foundation of the ideals we strive for. One need look no further than the Ricci and Maloney opinions to understand why everyone, including Latinos, should be concerned about Judge Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy. Sotomayor’s opinion in Ricci is just the latest example of her judicial philosophy in which she chooses to ignore facts to advance a cause in which she believes. Apparently discrimination against certain kinds of people is okay with Sotomayor, no matter what the law says. Reversing her decision, the very Supreme Court to which she aspires was clear in its disagreement with such a stance, stating, “[t]he City made its employment decision because of race. [It] rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white. … [A]fter the tests were completed, the raw racial results became the predominant rationale for the City’s refusal to certify the results.” In Maloney, Judge Sotomayor ruled that “[i]t is settled law … the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right.” She based her ruling on a case that dated back to 1886, before the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights applies to the states. In Judge Sotomayor’s view, every amendment in the Bill of Rights, except the Second Amendment, represents a fundamental right. Why? Because she says so. Ironically, while Judge Sotomayor believes that gun ownership is not a fundamental right, she believes that the right to have an abortion is fundamental. No matter your heritage, Americans should be concerned about a judge who believes that the “court of appeals is where policy is made.” The bench is not the place to create, make, or advance personal preferences on public policy and impose them on the American people. An activist ruling by the Supreme Court comes with dire consequences. In examining Judge Sotomayor’s record, senators must look past her Latina heritage and directly at her judicial philosophy. A Justice of the Supreme Court, regardless of his or her heritage, must be able to uphold Constitutional principles for all people, not just the ones that look like me.

Says it all, doesn't it?

You can access the original column on-line here:

Sotomayor Stands Alone
Mario Diaz
TownHall.com
July 13, 2009

Jetliner Fuselage Fails; Could There Be Connection With Mechanics Who Can't Read Or Speak English?

I'm sure everyone is aware of this story:

Passengers Pray As Jetliner Pops A Hole
Shawn Nottingham and Stephanie Gallman
CNN
July 14, 2009

From which we read:

Southwest Flight 2294 made an emergency stop in Charleston, West Virginia, on Monday after a football-sized hole in its fuselage caused the cabin to depressurize, an airline spokeswoman said. There were no injuries aboard the Boeing 737, which was traveling at about 34,000 feet when the problem occurred, Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis told CNN. ... "About 45 minutes into the flight, there was a loud pop. No one really knew what it was," passenger Steve Hall told CNN Radio.

Well, I can't say what caused this accident, but I do remember posting the following blog entry back in May:

Airlines Are Hiring Mechanics Who Can’t Speak English Or Even Read The Maintenance Manuals
84rules
May 20, 2009

From which we learned:

Aircraft repair requires even experienced mechanics to frequently consult manuals that are written in English and leave a detailed record of what repairs they have made, according to WFAA-TV. Still, hundreds of mechanics working in the more than 236 FAA-certified aircraft repair stations in Texas were not familiar enough with the English language to even read the manuals that coincide with the kinds of planes they were expected to fix, WFAA reported. “There are people [where I work] who do not know how to read maintenance manuals as they are spelled out, because they don’t have a clue,” one Texas aircraft mechanic told the station. But hiring a certified mechanic in Texas costs upwards of $25 an hour, compared to the less than $10 technicians who can’t speak English will do the work for.

Is the fact that airlines have been hiring illegals who cannot read or speak English to do aircraft maintenance related to the Southwest Airlines accident? I don't know. Can we dismiss the possibility that they may be related? Absolutely not.

What is it going to take, people?

Sotomayor Defends 'Wise Latina' Remark; Wants To Be Held To A Different Standard

Can you imagine if a white, Republican male said, "I can make better decisions than a Latina woman without similar experiences" what the reaction from Old Media and the leftist Democrats would be? Such a man would be run out of town and his political or legal career would be over. Period.

But, when a Latina woman makes the reverse statment, Old Media and the leftist Dems fall in love with her.

Whatever happened to Obama's promise of a "post-racial" America? He broke it when he nominated Sotmayor to the Supreme Court. Of course, the Dems in the Senate will validate the broken promise by rubber-stamping Obama's nomination, but the rest of America has taken note of this.

Here is Sotmayor's attempt at garnering sympathy for her own miscue:

"I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any racial, ethnic or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences," Sotomayor declared.

Except when refering to herself as a "wise Latina." Then she seems to be all about racial identity.

It even showed in her decision against the white firefighters of New Haven, Connecticut. She and two other judges ruled that it was okay to toss out promotion exam results because not enough "non-white" firefighters scored high enough to get promotions. That was clearly a racial decision and thankfully, the Supreme Court overturned her.

Even though the Dems are going to force the confirmation, the Republicans are going to make sure that the public knows as much about her as possible, especially those things that Old Media and the Dems don't want you to know.

[T]he GOP made clear, despite the Democrats' Senate majority that makes her confirmation likely, it would not let Sotomayor's hearings pass without raising questions about her impartiality. By extension, Republicans also are attacking Obama for what they see as a double standard in calling for her quick confirmation after he voted against President George W. Bush's two high-court appointees. The thrust of the Republican case against Sotomayor stems from a variation of a line she used on several occasions between 1994 and 2003 in which she talked about personal experience and judging. "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," Sotomayor said in a speech at 2001 at the University of California, Berkeley, law school.

The Dems are going to hold her to a lower standard but the Republicans will try to hold her to the same standard that the Dems would hold for a white male.

You should also read about Sotomayor's relationship with the vote-fraud organization known as ACORN:

Sotomayor And ACORN Joined At The Hip
Rick Moran
The American Thinker
July 3, 2009

Sotomayor will be confirmed. And I will make the prediction that in her rulings on the Supreme Court, she will inject the racial and prejudicial character of her previous speeches and her left-wing outlook into her decisions. I doubt she will be anything that she is proclaiming before the Senate and everything that the leftist, socialist Obama wants her to be.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Sotomayor Defends 'Wise Latina' Remark
Mark Sherman
TownHall.com
July 14, 2009

For The First Time In History, We Have A $1 Trillion Deficit

For all of you libs out there who are constantly repeating like trained parrots that George W. Bush brought us a $1 trillion deficit, the truth has come out. The honor of the first $1 trillion deficit goes to Barack Obama.

From Martin Crutsinger of the Associated Press:

Nine months into the fiscal year, the federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time. The imbalance is intensifying fears about higher interest rates and inflation, and pressuring the value of the dollar. There’s also concern about trying to reverse the deficit — by reducing government spending or raising taxes — in the midst of a harsh recession. The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit in June was $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to nearly $1.1 trillion.

The Dems and Obama could have prevented this by cutting spending, but they didn't.

The deficit has been propelled by the huge sum the government has spent to combat the recession and financial crisis, combined with a sharp decline in tax revenues.

I learned back in the 4th grade that one cannot spend more money than one makes. Companies go bankrupt, families lose homes and businesses close when that type of money mismanagement occurs. But the danger here is that the dollar might very well collapse and cause our entire economy to crash down around us.

You have to wonder if the Dems realize this, or do they live in a fantasy world where they believe that spending like drunken sailors is a good thing?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Budget Deficit Tops $1 Trillion For First Time
Martin Crutsinger
Associated Press via KansasCity.com
July 13, 2009

Holy War In Virginia: Islamic School Wants To Expand

Right in our backyard in Fairfax County. A Saudi-owned Islamic school is trying to expand its campus and a group of local residents are trying to stop it.

From Fox News:

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors held a public hearing Monday night to consider a proposal to expand the campus of the Islamic Saudi Academy, a Saudi-owned college preparatory school. Critics of the plan point to former students of the school who have been convicted in a plot to assassinate former President Bush, and more recently, arrested for trying to board an airplane with a seven-inch kitchen knife.

That is the end result of Wahabbism: young terrorists. And this is a Wahabbi school.

But, there are other issues here as well:

"We're opposed to the operation of the Islamic Saudi Academy because it teaches and practices Shariah law," said James Lafferty, chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force (VAST). ... Lafferty said his organization is a coalition with roughly 10 other groups that oppose the land-use expansion. By teaching Shariah law, Lafferty says, the school replaces the U.S. Constitution with a "very backward and barbaric" rule of law. "Shariah law advocates rights via gender and religion," Lafferty told FOXNews.com. "They allocate rights by gender and religion. If you are a male who is Islamic, you have rights. If you're not, you have no rights."

That alone is reason enough for this school to lose any accreditation at the very least.

But, I wonder how the government would respond if this were a Catholic School, or a Protestant Christian Academy, or a Jewish School. Would there even have been a debate? Or would the government simply have told the school "No" and be done with it?

You can access the complete story on-line here:

Coalition Fights Expansion Of Islamic Saudi Academy In Virginia
Joshua Rhett Miller
Fox News
July 13, 2009

As The Cap And Trade Energy Tax Heads To The Senate, We Must Look At Who Will Profit From It

One of the principles of ethics that should govern politicians and their dealings with the private sector is that politicians should not be voting on legislation that directly involves their own personal investments. Ideally, politicians shouldn't be investing in the market at all since they can vote to influence the market in their favor. If they do have investments in the private sector, then they should recuse themsleves from voting on any legislation that would influence the profitability of those investments.

The Cap and Trace Energy Tax recently passed by the House of Representatives is a good case in point. Several lawmakers will enjoy direct financial benefits from the legislation should it become law. Among these are Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

From Mark Tapscott at the Washington Examiner:

How much money will Pelosi make if the measure (Obama-Waxman-Markey (OWM)) becomes law, as seems quite likely? Pelosi, of course, is not the only member of Congress to own significant shares of energy companies. Senators and representatives from all over the country do, not just the "oilies" from energy states like Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. But as House Speaker, Pelosi's ownership of an unknown number of shares in the Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) valued at between $15,000 and $50,000, may deserve particular attention. ... Pelosi will profit because OWM will boost the price of natural gas on the market. This is because natural gas burns with significantly less carbon emissions than other fossil fuels. For companies trying to get under OWM limits for greenhouse gases emissions, burning more natural gas instead of, say coal, will be a no-brainer. That will drive up demand for natural gas, which in turn will create upward price pressures.

Pelosi claims that her husband handles the stocks and that she has no knowledge of what stocks he is purchasing. This is an irrelevent cop-out. Mr. Pelosi knows very well what legislation his wife is working on and whether or not it is likely to be passed. He further knows what effect such legislation would have on the stocks he will be purchasing. That is the same thing as insider trading and that makes it every bit as unethical as it would be if Speaker Pelosi purchased the stocks herself.

Rather than fulfill her 2006 promise of ridding D.C. of the culture of corruption, Pelosi and her fellow Dems simply claimed the cess pool as their own, jumped in and began splashing around.

You can access this story on on-line here:

Pelosi Will Profit From Obama-Waxman-Markey Cap-And-Trade Energy Bill
Mark Tapscott
Washington Examiner
June 24, 2009

And who else stands to make bank from this legislation? Al Gore and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) for two. Markey holds between $51,000 and $115,000 in investments in Firsthand Technology Value Fund (solar-evergy manufacturers) and Al Gore has $6 million in the Venture Capital Group (CO₂ emmissions tracking software), both of which will make very nice profits under the cap-and-trade tax. Profits that will come from fleecing the American people through higher taxes.

Before this gets voted on in the Senate, we should seriously look into which members of Congress will make a profit off of it and how they voted or intend to vote.