Pelosi's Health Bill

This analysis of Pelosi's new health bill is so accurate it will make you cry. Read it and weep. A sample is given below:

It's going to take some time to deconstruct this lengthy masterpiece, but as you flip through the pages of the House bill, you will notice the word "regulation" appears 181 times. "Tax" is there 214 times. "Fees," 103 times. As we all know, nothing says "affordability" like higher taxes and fees.

The word "shall" - as in "must" or "required to" - appears over 3,000 times. The word, alas, is never preceded by the patriotic phrase "mind our own freaking business." Not once.

To vote for the bill, a legislator must believe a $1 trillion price tag is "revenue neutral," or that it alleviates any of the pain higher costs bring to the average American. This would require alcohol.

A Prediction

The machine will steal the election for Corzine in New Jersey. He has way too much money to lose this election.

Change you can believe in

The following is a pretty good read. A sample:

The Obama administration has gone after both Rush Limbaugh and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- showing an inability to distinguish between the burning of heretics and the burning of bridges. It has courted insurance companies, then publicly demonized them for showing independence. Obama has tended to define all opposition, particularly on health care, as resulting from fear, cowardice and selfishness -- instead of admitting genuine disagreement. At a recent fundraiser, he mocked Republicans as robots who "do what they're told." He has engaged in consistent, classless, self-excusing criticism of his predecessor. Other presidents have been known for a war on totalitarianism or a war on terror. Obama is known for a war on Fox News.

Republican vs. Democrat

This poll shows an interesting awareness gap between republicans and dems.

Getting Smart in New York

Between 2000 and 2008, the Empire State had a net domestic outflow of more than 1.5 million, the biggest exodus of any state, with most hailing from New York City. The departures also have perilous budget consequences, since they tend to include residents who are better off than those arriving. Statewide, departing families have income levels 13% higher than those moving in, while in New York County (home of Manhattan) the differential was even more severe. Those moving elsewhere had an average income of $93,264, some 28% higher than the $72,726 earned by those coming in.

In 2006 alone, that swap meant the state lost $4.3 billion in taxpayer income. Add that up from 2001 through 2008, and it translates into annual net income losses somewhere near $30 billion. That trend is part of a larger march for New York: In 1950 the state accounted for 19% of all Americans, but by 2000 that number had fallen to 7%. The city's main saving grace has been its welcome mat for foreign immigrants, who have helped to replace some of those who flee.

The intelligence of those who saw the light and fled New York is handsomely exceeded by those who would never live there in the first place.

Kill the cows

Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change. This idiot is described in the article as a leading authority on global warming.

Read the entire article here.

Stimulus?

From Betsy:
Congress passed a law that made it possible to have the IRS mail you a check for $8,000 if you claimed you were a first-time homebuyer. That’s all you had to do -- assert that you deserved the credit. The IRS didn’t require you to provide proof that your claim was genuine before your check was put in the mail. Sound like a recipe for fraud?

The tax fraud was so widespread and egregious that it almost makes you laugh.

Did you forget to buy a house before claiming the credit? Not a problem. “We identified more than 19,300 electronically filed 2008 tax returns on which taxpayers claimed the First-Time Homebuyer Credit for a home which had not yet been purchased,” reported J. Russell George, the U.S. Treasury inspector general for tax administration, who testified about his department’s investigation.

Prior Home Ownership

Did you claim the credit even though you owned a home previously? Not a problem. George said his office found almost 74,000 claims “by taxpayers who had indications of prior home ownership within the preceding three years.”

Were you unable to purchase a home because you haven’t finished preschool and don’t know how to read the forms? Not a problem. George cited the “more than 580 taxpayers younger than 18 years of age who claimed almost $4 million in First-Time Homebuyer Credits. The youngest taxpayers receiving the credit were 4-years-old.”

The shocking facts go on and on. About 3,200 claims were filed with individual taxpayer identification numbers, rather than Social Security numbers, suggesting that alien residents joined American citizens in partaking in this rip-off.

This makes you wonder if Congress knew what was in the Stimulus Bill if this would have been part of the legislation. BestView cynically thinks it probably would not have made any difference.

Take this to the bank

Pres. Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder contend that America’s civilian federal prisons are secure. Our “supermaxes,” they insist, are up to the task of confining the most lethal terrorists. Even if that were true (and history shows it is not), the argument is the most hollow of strawmen. These terrorists are not going to escape — they are going to walk right out the prison gates. They are going to be freed by a perverse new legal system, an ad hoc creation of progressive federal judges, assisted mightily by an Obama Justice Department rife with lawyers whose former firms and institutions spent the last eight years representing America’s enemies.

The civilian criminal-justice system is neither designed for nor capable of handling wartime detention cases. The basic presumptions of the civilian system — innocence, privacy, the preference that the prosecution lose any case in which there is the slightest doubt about guilt — have no bearing on the detention of enemy operatives in wartime. Yet, international terrorists present challenges that traditional enemy combatants do not: They do not wear uniforms, they do not carry their weapons openly, they conduct their operations in secret, and they blend into the general population, intentionally creating ambiguity about whether they are combatants or civilians.

Read it all here.

Post-partisan Obama

In the first nine months in office President Obama and/or members of his administration have accused doctors of performing unnecessary medical procedures for profit; demonized bond holders as "speculators;" produced a report suggesting military veterans are prone to becoming right wing extremists; attacked insurance companies and threatened them with legislative retribution; ridiculed talk show hosts and political commentators by name from the White House podium; dismissed and demeaned protesters and town hall attendees as either unauthentic or fringe characters; maligned a white police officer for arresting a black man without knowing the facts of the case; launched an orchestrated campaign to marginalize the country's biggest pro-business group; and publicly declared war on a news organization.

Read it all here.

Beware Liberal Attack on the Constitution

BestView has long been convinced that the congressional mandate to buy health insurance and the tax which is imposed if the law is not followed is unconstiutional. The following editorial in the Investor Business Daily supports this view and explains the situation pretty well. It is scary. Read it all here.

Pig in a poke?

There are some very interesting data being circulated on previous health program estimates and the actual costs...for those who may be tempted to accept the current budget estimates being advanced by the liberals in Congress. For example, we are told that the Baucus version of health insurance reform will reduce red ink by $81 billion in 10 years. Let's look at other estimates such as medicaid.The Ways and Means Committee estimated that the first year cost of that program would be $238 million. It actually cost over $1 billion and the costs have kept going up from there. Its current cost is $251 billion and it went up $50 billion in 2009 alone. Medicare has a similar record. In 1965 Congress said it would cost $12 billion in 1990. It cost $90 billion in fact. The hospitalization program alone was supposed to cost $9 billion and was instead $67 billion and was up 9.8% in 2009 alone. The medicare home-care benefit was supposed to cost $4 billion by 1993, but the cost was actually $10 billion.

About the only thing we know for sure about the current estimates about costs of Obama's health insurance revisions is they are about as reliable as all the other promises he espoused during the campaign.

Change vs. Class

Zero Tolerance

Why do school boards have a zero tolerance policy on first graders bringing weapons like cub scout tools to school? Studies have shown that when school officials are given discretion over such cases, African-American students are disciplined at a disproportionately high rate. Hard for them to avoid controversy it seems.

Prediction

Obama is the early favorite in the next Miss Universe contest.

If it moves, tax it

WSJ reports taxing financial transactions on Wall Street is gathering support in high places. With federal budget deficits soaring, policy makers and other advocates are eyeing the huge sums that could be raised as a way to cover the costs of new initiatives. Labor unions, in particular the AFL-CIO, have proposed a financial-transactions tax as a way to defray costs of a health-care overhaul. Lawmakers have discussed a similar fee as a way to cover the cost of future financial oversight. Liberal advocates are pushing the tax to pay for new stimulus spending. This week, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute floated the idea of a national transaction tax that would raise $100 billion to $150 billion a year. The tax, at a rate of 0.1% to 0.25% of the value of the trade, would be levied on all financial transactions such as stock trades, but not on consumer transactions such as with credit cards. The money would be used initially to pay for temporary aid to states, hiring incentives for public- and private-sector employers and school construction money.

Inconvenient truth?

Medical malpractice reform would reduce the annual federal deficit, saving the government $54 billion over 10 years, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

The finding bolsters one of Republicans' top health care reform proposals, and provides them with momentum to press for tort reform to be included President Obama's sweeping health care legislation.

Ouch

The following is a portion of an essay on the Obama peace prize. Read it all here.

In this respect, Obama is the perfect successor to the last American president to win the Nobel: Jimmy Carter. Consider the legacy of Carter's term in office.

Carter withdrew American support for the shah in Iran, then failed to mount any effectual response to the seizure of the US embassy and its staff-all of which allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to establish a brutal Islamist regime which has been the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, a supporter of Palestinian terrorism, civil war in Lebanon, and insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a regime that has repeatedly murdered and tortured its own citizens.

By allowing a Communist takeover in Nicaragua, Carter encouraged a legacy of socialist strongmen that is still riling Latin America to this day.

Carter's weakness in Latin America and Iran also emboldened the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, inaugurating three decades of bloody civil war and providing the proving ground for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

So Carter's legacy is three decades of chaos and killing-and the growth of three of today's biggest threats to world peace. Yet Carter is infamous for his haughty, priggish sense of moral superiority.

This is what the Nobel Peace Prize really stands for: irresponsible moral posturing in the service of the leftist delusion that appeasement will bring peace, when all it really brings is more war.

Come to think of it, that makes Barack Obama the perfect recipient.

Tax increases come first

Under the Democratic bills, federal tax credits to help make health insurance affordable for millions of low- and middle-income households won't start flowing until 2013 -- after the next presidential election. But Medicare cuts and a sizable chunk of the tax increases to pay for the overhaul kick in immediately. No wonder liberals love this.

Saddest news of the week

Director Roman Polanski is feeling depressed two weeks after his arrest in Switzerland to face U.S. extradition for a 1977 case involving the rape of a 13-year-old girl, his lawyer was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Go Joe

All last week the people of Phoenix witnessed public outbursts by their sheriff, Joe Arpaio, as he railed against the Department of Homeland Security for supposedly trying to limit his ability to enforce federal immigration laws. He vowed to keep scouring Maricopa County for people whose clothing, accents and behavior betrayed them as likely illegal immigrants. He said he had already nabbed more than 32,000 people that way, and announced his next immigrant sweep for Oct. 16.

This is the lead paragraph of an editorial in the New York Times which opposes the enforcement of the law by the sheriff out in Arizona. The entire editorial can be read here, but if there was any doubt about whether Sheriff Joe was doing the right thing, this should tip your conclusion to the affirmative.

Getting Close

Peace Prize

When Al Gore and Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Prize for Peace I didn't think it could become more laughable, but I was wrong.

Put me down as dubious

A compromise health care proposal widely seen as having the best chance to win Democratic and Republican support would cost $829 billion over the next 10 years, nonpartisan budget analysts concluded Wednesday.

It also would reduce the federal deficit by more than $80 billion, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.

So Congress is going to reduce the deficit by increasing spending $829,000,000,000.00?

Travel Rewards

Hilarious T-shirt idea from a caller to yesterday's Dennis Miller Show:

My President went to Copenhagen and All I got was this Crummy T-Shirt!"

Random thoughts from Thomas Sowell

Surely he is not a racist. Read all his random thoughts here.

Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Muammar Qaddafi and Vladimir Putin have all praised Barack Obama. When enemies of freedom and democracy praise your president, what are you to think? When you add to this Barack Obama's many previous years of associations and alliances with people who hate America-- Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, etc.-- at what point do you stop denying the obvious and start to connect the dots?

Baucus bill a trap

The Baucus bill includes an "individual mandate" that requires everyone to buy health insurance. This is not some inexpensive, high-deductible catastrophic health insurance. Instead, it imposes a requirement for pricier comprehensive coverage that pays for routine costs like annual checkups. The bill then requires that insurance companies provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and that they charge customers at high risk of medical problems the same rates as those with lower risks-which means that these extra expenses will have to be paid for by raising everyone else's premiums.

And then the Baucus bill delivers the knock-out punch: after forcing us into expensive comprehensive insurance plans and driving up the cost of those plans, the bill would impose a massive 40% tax on "gold-plated" plans-which turn out to include the health-insurance plans of many in the middle class. So that drives up the cost of insurance even higher.

You can see why it doesn't much matter whether or not we have a "public option" in the original bill. Everything else in the bill is designed to make private health insurance unaffordable-so that in a few years, people will clamor for a government-subsidized "public option," and the same politicians who destroyed private health insurance can make a big show of coming to the rescue of their victims.
From Betsy.

IOC Decision

Now that the IOC has rudely rejected the impassioned pleas to give the 2014 Olympics to Chicago, ---despite pleas by Barack, Michelle, and Oprah, it is perfectly clear they are a bunch of racist.

The only downside is now President Palin won't get to preside over the festivities.

Say it again, Joe.

Senate Finance Committee Democrats rejected a proposed a requirement that immigrants prove their identity with photo identification when signing up for federal healthcare programs.

Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that current law and the healthcare bill under consideration are too lax and leave the door open to illegal immigrants defrauding the government using false or stolen identities to obtain benefits.

Grassley's amendment was beaten back 10-13 on a party-line vote.


So, you have to show an ID to buy booze, but get free health care without a valid ID. Yes, Joe Wilson, he lied.