Showing posts with label Obamacare 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obamacare 2011. Show all posts

Monday, December 19, 2011

Props to Erick Erickson: Republicans Are Insane

It's not a long post, but a good one:

The Republican Party has gone insane.

For the better part of the last three years the Republican Party has exercised itself into a frenzy over the need to repeal Obamacare. For the two years leading up to November of 2010, mostly middle aged working white people took to the streets in sizes rivaling a NASCAR race to protest the socialization of the American health care system.

The individual mandate and TARP draw the ire of scores of primary voters.

And our two front runners for President? They both support an individual mandate and they both supported TARP.

Not only that, just last year Mitt Romney was saying he’d keep parts of Obamacare. Like supporting amnesty, he has changed his position just in time for an election cycle.

Are we really going to do this?

I just want everyone to make sure they understand this and remind them that Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman, and yes, even Rick Santorum are still in the race.


A movement that doesn't understand what's happened to itself and can't come up with a candidate deserves everything it's going to get . . . in spades.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Ohio Repudiates ObamaCare Nov. 8th, Nov. 15th Obama Punishes Ohio by Stopping Gas Leases

'change we much'
As pointed out by an astute caller to Larry Kudlow's radio program today on WABC.

The Nov. 15 announcement by the USDA here means tens of thousands of jobs lost to Ohio and the loss of cheap natural gas for the country, according to this analysis by The Heritage Foundation.

On Nov. 8 Ohioans resoundingly rejected ObamaCare's mandate that Americans buy health insurance by a 2 to 1 margin, stating “In Ohio, no law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in a health care system.”


Thursday, November 17, 2011

ObamaCare's Truly Amazing and Perverse War on Traditional Families

ObamaCare will require employees to accept single affordable coverage when offered, making their dependents ineligible for federally subsidized coverage;

that in turn will encourage divorce or shacking up so that dependents are, voila!, no longer dependents and thus qualify for federally subsidized coverage;

it will create a perverse incentive for such employees to seek employment in smaller companies with fewer than 50 employees which are not required to provide health coverage in order to qualify for federally subsidized coverage;

that will perversely affect employment growth because some businesses will want to stay lean and mean to avoid coming under ObamaCare's umbrella;

it will create a perverse incentive for employer coverage to be unaffordable in order to qualify employees for federally subsidized coverage;

and that in turn will make pay-cuts acceptable to employees whose employers must pay a fine for offering unaffordable coverage.

Read all about it from Diana Furchtgott-Roth, here.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

With ObamaCare About to Pass, Elena Kagan Wrote to Harvard Plagiarist Laurence Tribe to Exult !!

She should recuse herself from hearing any case involving ObamaCare.

David Harsanyi weighs in here:

Nor, as we learned this week, is it reassuring to find out that while the House was debating passage of Obamacare, Kagan and well-known legal scholar Laurence Tribe, then in the Justice Department, did a little dialoguing regarding the health care vote, and according to documents obtained by Media Research Center, Kagan wrote: "I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing."

Nothing says impartiality like double exclamation points!!

Monday, November 14, 2011

As ObamaCare Goes To The Supremes, Will It Stand Or Fall On Tax Grounds?

The individual mandate which is at the heart of ObamaCare insists that everyone buy health insurance in every state.

Once the mandate was challenged by opponents after passage, however, the Obama regime quickly began defending its penalties as a tax, which it was loathe to do in selling the law to the public for political reasons. While the law contains tax provisions, the penalty associated with not securing coverage is not a tax.

The tax argument raises important constitutional questions of fairness and substance. If the penalties really are taxes, aren't also the premiums, since the penalties take their place? And will everyone in every state pay the same premium tax for coverage? If some pay only the penalty, which is low compared to the premium, doesn't the law enjoin inequity?

Another question is whether anyone can avoid the tax. This in turn touches on the distinction between direct and indirect taxation. If the tax can be avoided, it is an example of indirect taxation which is permissible, but which must still be uniform. If it cannot be avoided, then the tax must be apportioned according to population so that everyone, rich and poor alike, everywhere pays the same tax, which would be easy for the rich, but not for the poor. But presumably under ObamaCare plans will vary from state to state as they do now, with premiums which vary according to coverage, so Americans will be forced to pay, and pay unequally.

Consider the income tax. If you take no ordinary income in the form of salary and wages, you are not liable to pay it. Wealthy individuals regularly take income in the form of capital gains, which is taxed under different rules with lower rates than ordinary income. The same avoidance obtains when taking income from municipal bonds and other tax-free bond investments. In important respects the federal income tax is thus indirect, and therefore does not need to be apportioned according to population.

Similarly with excise taxes. If you choose to drink wine over spirits the tax you pay per bottle will be substantially less for wine. You pay the tax on the wine, but you have avoided the tax on the bourbon. But if you drink neither at all, you avoid the excise taxation altogether. Hence the popularity of stills.

Some of these points get an interesting airing here as they apply to Obamacare:

The legal wrangling over whether a particular tax is direct or indirect, as Willis and Chung discuss, has been complicated and persistent for more than two centuries. In 1794, for example, Congress passed a tax on carriages, which opponents considered a direct tax and thus invalid because it was not apportioned by population. The Supreme Court found it was an indirect tax on the use of carriages, valid so long as it was uniform.

Obamacare imposes an annual penalty of $95 per adult, or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater, in 2014. The annual penalties are the greater of $325 or two percent of income in 2015 and the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016 and subsequent years.

Willis and Chung argue these are not indirect, but instead direct taxes, unconstitutional because they are not apportioned by population. It could also be argued, though, this provision is a mixed bag. The fixed annual penalty portion, for example, could be viewed as indirect and uniform and thus constitutional, while the income percentage amounts could be deemed direct but not apportioned and thus unconstitutional.

The tax could therefore be unconstitutional for those who pay income percentages but constitutional for those who pay a fixed penalty. This may be a ridiculous and unprecedented view, but it does illustrate the complexity of this issue—leaving us with a tangled legal web indeed.

The ruling of the Supreme Court is expected next June after oral arguments in March 2012.

Fireworks are expected.

Friday, November 4, 2011

SPLC Claims 500 Percent Growth in Active Patriot Militias

As reported here, in a story about the recent arrest of members of a so-called militia in Georgia:

“This is only the latest manifestation of the patriot militia movement we have seen grow since 2008,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center in a phone interview. “In 2008 we counted 149 patriot militia groups operating in the United States—by 2010 that number had increased to 824—that’s a 500 percent increase. It’s hard not to notice that this jump coincides with both the rise to power of Barack Obama and the subprime mortgage collapse.”

Actually it's a 453 percent increase, but liberals never were very good at math.

For example, an illegal weapons charge against a Hutaree militia member was recently dropped, evidently because the FBI was using a ruler made in China which was short by an inch. We'll have to wait for defense statements on that one when the case finally comes to trial, two years after the arrests in March 2010 in the wake of the passage of ObamaCare.

The Georgia case is four old coots in what we used to call an old-fashioned conspiracy to commit murder, but in this day and age where everything is exaggerated to the superlative degree (I'm great!), the disgruntled federal employees' plot becomes a TERROR PLOT and their self-description as a MILITIA gets taken as seriously as Barack Obama's claim to be a Christian.

If the FBI could hear the conversation around the family dinner table every night since that Commie bastard got elected president, we'd all be in jail thanks to George Bush's anti-terror legislation now in the hands of a leftist ideologue.

The next thing you know the Southern Poverty Law Center will start counting well-armed husbands, wives and children as militias when all they are is FAMILIES.

Onward Christian soldiers!

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Nancy Pelosi Sandbags Maria Bartiromo: Quibbles About ObamaCare Waivers For Small Companies When Vast Majority Go To Union Members And Employees of Insurers

The video of Rep. Nancy Pelosi protesting that most of the 1,800 ObamaCare waivers have gone to small companies, provoking Maria Bartiromo to complain the waiver for McDonald's wasn't for a small company, is here.

Waivers shown on the official government lists, found here, tell a revealing tale, however, which Nancy Pelosi obviously didn't want to talk about.

The first few lists show a wide variety of businesses and plans, many indeed with relatively few employees, if by few you mean under 1,000 covered employees. But I counted alone 20 firms I recognized by name with over 1,000 employees and up to 50,000. Like Dish Network, Cracker Barrel, Ruby Tuesday, Meijer, Western Growers, Grimmway Enterprises, Adecco, Crate and Barrel, and the NFL! These lists all told account for over 600,000 such employees.

But if you examine the rest of the lists, you'll find about 1.7 million union members given waivers and nearly 1 million employees of the health insurers themselves.

Friday, October 14, 2011

ObamaCare's Long Term Care Insurance Provision Bites The Dust Already

Because its costs were too high to attract participation, as reported here:

Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up.

Well duh! Healthy people who signed up at age 50 not long ago could get excellent coverage for two people for less than $60 a month through Barack Obama's favorite fascist, Jeff Immelt of GE.

Government does very little well, and never cheaper than the private sector.

Rep. Bachmann Finally Sends Me An Email!

Gee, I signed up sometime in June for campaign updates, and never heard a thing. I complained about the fact, here, later that month.

Suddenly today, four months later, I get an email asking me to fill out a survey and to contribute to the campaign.

Well, we've had PerryCare = ObamaCare since then, which really is unfair to ObamaCare, and now 999 upside down is 666 and such like. Not exactly what I want my president to be saying out loud.

"Sundown, ya better take care . . .."

Sunday, October 9, 2011

For Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Occupy Wall Street Anger Counts, ObamaCare Anger? Not So Much.

As quoted in the LA Times here:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco on ABC’s “This Week,” essentially called [Rep.] Cantor a hypocrite for criticizing the Wall Street protesters while embracing the “tea party” movement.

“I didn’t hear him say anything when the tea party was out demonstrating, actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol, and he and his colleagues were putting signs in the windows encouraging them,’ Pelosi said.

Pelosi said she supported the movement’s “message.”

“I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen,” she said “We cannot continue in a way that does not — that is not relevant to their lives. People are angry.”

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Nearly One Week On Obama Still Can't Find a Democrat to Sponsor His Jobs Bill

Pass this bill! Pass this bill!

But no Democrat has filed the bill in the US House.

Maybe because Democrats went to the mat for ObamaCare in March 2010, and lost big for it in November 2010.

Democrats in the House are obviously letting The One twist in the wind right now because The One did nothing to help them win re-election last autumn. Obama let them twist in the wind while he went on vacation every six weeks during 2010.

To rub the Democrats' noses in it, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert finally has taken advantage of the lack of initiative and co-opted the bill with one of his own by the same name, as reported here:

President Obama repeatedly asked members of Congress to pass the American Jobs Act last week. But when no Democrat filed Obama’s bill after he presented it to Congress, a conservative congressman swiped the name for his own legislation.

The American Jobs Act introduced in the House of Representatives looks quite different from the version President Obama outlined in his speech to Congress. Instead of hiking taxes on working Americans to pay for another stimulus, Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) legislation offers a tax cut.

UPDATE: Gohmert’s bill now has a number. It’s HR 2911.

Democrats can't say Gohmert didn't give them plenty of time, considering the urgency of the matter as put forward by Obama.

The fact of the matter is, when Obama and the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate and the Executive from the beginning of 2009 into early 2010, it was the Senate which stalled almost everything sent to it by Speaker Pelosi and Company. Hundreds of measures passed by the Democrat House never saw the light of day in the Democrat Senate.

The point is that the problem for "legislative progress" is "structural" as the economists want it. The problem is with the US Senate, no matter which party controls it.

Gov. Rick Perry is wise in recognizing that the problem specifically has to do with who elects the Senate, which is no longer the State Legislatures, the way prescribed by the Constitution.

The consequence of the 17th Amendment is that we now have two legislative houses in competition for mere populist sentiment, which is a recipe for inaction, not action, because the legislative cycle distributes populist urgency differently in the two houses of our legislature. In changing the manner of election in the 17th Amendment, they forgot to change the timing.

As it is, only one third of the Senate is up for election/re-election every two years with the House, which still keeps most of the Senate largely behind the schedule of the mere popular whim, just as the Constitution intended, and the popular whim changes so fast these days that it's usually only a Senator (!) who notices it, and he or she bides his or her time, knowing popular whim will be forgotten in two years' time, or four. Better to wait and catch the next wave, which will doubtless be different.

Obama should be so smart.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Sarah Palin's Neurons Are So Cross-Connected She Cannot Produce a Complete Sentence

You may verify the following completely incoherent excerpt for yourself, here:

Michelle Bachmann pointed out that Governor Perry's former chief of staff who then went to work for a drug company who made the drug that would be required of the Texan government to mandate that our young daughters would have to be inoculated against a potential disease from this company that his former chief of staff was lobbying for. That is crony capitalism. 

Here's the translation, in English:

Michele Bachmann pointed out that Governor Perry's former chief of staff went to work for a drug company which made the drug that the Texas government under Rick Perry required our young daughters to receive in order to be inoculated against a potential disease [.]  That is crony capitalism.

Ya got that?


Yes, it might indeed be crony capitalism, if only we understood what the hell you are trying to say, except that even if we did it pales in comparison to the way the Federal Reserve, and the Executive and Legislative branches of our government have conspired to bail out the bankers and big business at the expense of trillions to the electorate. Thanks Newt. Thanks Phil Gramm. Thanks Bill Clinton.


If only any of you had the brains to talk about that, or its twin problem ObamaCare. But no, you decide to criticize someone who's on your side just to score a few miserable points.


While I fully understand how a person of such limited intellectual ability can be awarded a college degree in our culture of decrepitude, what I cannot understand is the enthusiasm which a certain part of the electorate has for this woman. Being able to supply (!) and string together correctly a subject, verb and object should be the last thing on our list of presidential qualifications, but alas, it appears to be first.

The electorate which backs Sarah Palin should know better, and that a substantial part of it does not is the real cause for alarm.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Of Course It's Class Warfare!

And of course he's an ideologue, and of course Obamacare is a Bolshevik plot.

And of course whatever he says is not something, is that, and of course whatever he says something is, is not that.

Here's the video.

YOU LIE!

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Black Indiana Democrat Calls The Kettle Pot




















Rep. Andre Carson (D, IN-7), quoted here:

"We have seen change in Congress. … The Tea Party is stopping that change."

"This is the beyond symbolic change. This is the effort that we are seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress would love to see us as second class citizens. Some of them in Congress of this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me … hanging on a tree."

You mean like this, Andre?

The Rep. from Indiana just won't let go of his animus, made famous by his baseless charges about racial epithets hurled at him in the wake of the passing of ObamaCare.

He was the very guy who was strutting in defiance with Speaker Pelosi through the crowd of protestors after passage of the legislation in March 2010. It got hot, but no one ever proved such epithets were directed at him or any other black member of Congress that day.




Saturday, August 13, 2011

Stinging Blow to ObamaCare Delivered by 11th Circuit Court of Appeals

As reported here:

A divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that Congress overstepped its authority when lawmakers passed the so-called individual mandate, the first such decision by a federal appeals court. It's a stinging blow to Obama's signature legislative achievement, as many experts agree the requirement that Americans carry health insurance — or face tax penalties — is the foundation for other parts of the law and key to paying for it.

The case will go next before either the full 11th Circuit or the US Supreme Court.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Democrats Still Play The Dictator, Commit Crime Against Democracy: Attack Tea Party Over Credit Downgrade

Pat Caddell last September, referring to ramming ObamaCare down our throats:

"The Democrats had a chance to do this right — most people supported aspects of reform — but because of the way it was passed, as a crime against democracy, the country has simply not accepted it. The lies, the browbeating, the ‘deem and pass’ — all of it was a suicide mission. ...

“Democrats used to be the voice of the common man in America, not his dictator.”

The whole interview, here, is as applicable now as it was then.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Republicans Should Have Demanded Far More Than Reid's Cuts Because They're the Last

(Have you noticed that just like with ObamaCare, it's the Senate calling the shots on everything?)

Senator Reid's cuts are the last spending cuts anyone's going to be seeing for the foreseeable future.

From TheHill.com here:

“The numbers relative to the problem are minimal, but the directional change is huge,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), the chairman of the House Republican Conference.

Yeah, right.

The opposite is more like it. The next fight will be over the 2012 fiscal year budget, and Republicans will die on that hill, after which it's a long way to the election.

Democrats will dig in, having compromised on the Bush tax rates extension, new revenues in the debt ceiling debate, and spending cuts. Their attitude will be that it's time for Republicans to give in on something.

More spending cuts before the election aren't going to happen.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Bush Appointee to 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals Tilts Ruling in Favor of ObamaCare

Thanks George you mushy headed liberal.

The ruling was by a three judge panel. The Reagan appointee voted against the healthcare mandate, while a Bush appointee and a Carter appointee voted for it, proving once again that W, who aimed to redefine conservatism in his own image, was no friend of the right.

Plaintiffs can appeal to the full, currently 15 member, 6th circuit court, or to the Supreme Court.

The story is here.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

States of Disaster Depended on $316 Billion of Federal Stimulus in Last Fiscal Year

And that help for current operations is coming to an abrupt end as the new fiscal year begins on July 1.

The Associated Press reports, adding these staggering numbers on top of the current budget data:

The 50 states have a combined $689.5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and $418 billion in retiree health care obligations.

Read the complete details here.

ObamaCare, Medicare, and Social Security aren't the only back-breakers out there. The individual states have plenty of their own which they can't pay for, either. The whole country is stuck on stupid spending.