A heartwarming story at the end

What’s new Today 

Story #1 is a look at what is at stake in the Obamacare SCOTUS decision.  #2 shows that although the left likes to think they are non-ideological, they are and Keynes is their prophet.  #3 show another Obama promise that has not held up.  #4 gives us a newsflash.  Mitt Romney is rich!  #5 is a wonderful article by George Will about his Down’s Syndrome son on his 40^th birthday. 

Today’s thoughts

Europe has its highest unemployment rate in 15 years (10.9%).  They have tried to tame their deficits, not by cutting spending but by increasing taxes, the same way Obama wants to.

Have you noticed that Obama inherited everything from George Bush except the intelligence network that found bin Laden? 

If you are worried that Barack Obama will win a second term read Paul Krugman.  He seem apoplectic with worry the Ben Bernanke isn’t doing enough to insure Obama’s reelection.  I guess “it is the economy stupid.”

While BHO was spiking the ball on the anniversary of killing OBL, former President Bush was biking with Wounded Warriors without much fanfare. 

1.   Justice Roberts and the Law

In a 2006 interview with PBS, Roberts discussed the most revolutionary aspect of the American Constitution, which is that it is the law over government and not merely a political document melded at will by political leaders. Chief Justice John Marshall's landmark opinion in Marbury v. Madison, Roberts notes, "says, what is the Constitution? It's law. It's law that the people have established to control this new government."

In this regard, the ObamaCare case is very much about more than just ObamaCare. It is about the extent to which the Constitution is binding as law that controls government, and what the Supreme Court will do to enforce that law on government….

…Roberts' task is to articulate how the Constitution is law that binds -- that governs -- government itself. A judicial traditionalist, Roberts understands the importance of how Supreme Court decisions have helped interpret the Constitution as law when there is ambiguity.

Roberts has also stood firm when laws and judicial precedent have gone too far astray from the Constitution's meaning and purpose. In Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission, he wrote, "Enough is enough," finishing with "as is often the case in this Court's First Amendment opinions, we have gotten this far in the analysis without quoting the Amendment itself: 'Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.' The Framers' actual words put these cases in proper perspective."

The public record is clear that those responsible for passing ObamaCare sometimes displayed disregard for -- even an unhealthy ignorance of -- the Constitution as law binding government. Some in government now even display a level of disdain or contempt for the rule of law.

The chief justice assuredly sees the many degradations the Constitution is suffering under the Obama administration. The fate of more than ObamaCare is at stake. We'll see if John Roberts will help restore the rule of law over government.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/chief_justice_roberts_marbury_moment.html#ixzz1tnpa6Jvl

This is a pretty good summation of what the Obamacare case means.  If it stands, effectively there are no limits on government.  If it falls, the left will go crazy about an activist’s court. 

2.  Obama, the Democrats, Keynes and Reality

It's campaign season, and as usual, Democrats are employing their class struggle rhetoric to position a redistributive government agenda as the only way Americans can be saved from themselves and the greedy capitalists who prey upon them.

Accustomed though we may be, this might seem an odd campaign strategy in light of recent polls showing widespread distrust of, and even contempt for, the federal government. But they have no choice but to keep their talking points emotional rather than substantive, you see. The core economic model of the American left is Keynesianism, which is less a viable economic path than it is an unrealistic pipe dream that stirs the collectivist's blood, much like the notions of world peace and Utopia.

Keynesianism is a model based upon how collectivists think the economy should operate, rather than how it actually operates. As Ron Ross puts it, "Keynesianism is definitely not an evidence-based model of how the economy works. So far as I know, Keynes did no empirical studies." He sets Keynes' research, or lack thereof, against that of Reagan economic adviser Milton Friedman, a staunch advocate of free markets and limited government intervention. "Friedman," Ross says, "was a far more diligent researcher than Keynes. Friedman fit the theory to the data, rather than vice versa."

In short, a pleasant hypothesis -- that a central government can stimulate demand and shorten economic downturns for stabilized prosperity -- supports the Keynesian model. Not facts. That is why you don't hear Democrats touting the Obama administration's past successes. The facts surrounding his economic policy are simply not useful for anything but arguing the same policy's ineffectiveness. …

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/keynesianism_and_the_collectivist_dream.html#ixzz1tnrhkgpu

This will come as a shock to Nancy Pelosi who sees unemployment insurance as the best stimulus to the economy.  Now if we could just get everyone to lose their job, “happy days” would be here again. 

3.  Another Obama Promise that turned out to be false

"No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people," Obama said Monday, addressing the American Medical Association. "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what." He didn't let up."If you like what you're getting, keep it," Obama said. "Nobody is forcing you to shift."

The President was correct, the government would not force a change, but of course the bill was structured to encourage employers to make a change. Under Obamacare it is cheaper for a company to pay a fine and drop health coverage for employees than to provide them with health care.

A report issued today by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) uses information by 71 of the Fortune 100 companies to show these companies could save $28.6 billion in 2014 by dumping their health coverage and forcing employees into the exchanges. Between 2014 and 2023, dropping health coverage would collectively save these companies $422.4 billion—and that’s after paying the penalty. Unless you are a member of Congress playing with taxpayer dollars, that's a lot of money.

It's simple math, in 2011, the average per-employee cost of providing health insurance to these companies was $5,197 after taxes and is expected to increase to $6,487 in 2014. The employer mandate in Obamacare costs only $2,000 per full-time employee, which means beginning in 2012 these companies save approximately $4,500 per employee by killing their health coverage….

http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2012/05/proof-another-obamacare-lie-released.html

This is not an unexpected consequence.  This was exactly what the Democrats wanted to happen.  It’s the reason they wrote the law as they did and why Obama lied about it. 

4.  News flash:  The Romneys are Rich!

The fashion house that makes the nearly $1,000 blouse worn by Ann Romney on morning television earlier this week tells ABC News that they had nothing to do with the wardrobe choice, remarking that they’d prefer to stay out of politics.

“We had nothing to do with it,” a rep for designer Reed Krakoff said. “She must have bought it from Saks or Bergdorf’s, we definitely didn’t send it to her.”

“It’s 100 percent a Reed Krakoff shirt, but we 100 percent didn’t send it to her,” the rep added. ”We don’t get involved politically.”

The shirt, an item in the label’s 2012 Spring/Summer collection, retails for $990, and for those shopping, is called the “The Reed Audubon Silk Shirt.”…

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/designer-of-ann-romneys-1k-shirt-its-off-the-rack/

This is what passes for news on ABC.  As you can probably tell this is critical for the voters to know before they go to the polls in NOVEMBER!  In the meantime, what’s happening with the economy?   But to be fair, ABC covers Michelle Obama’s fashions choices religiously, don’t they? 

5.  Jon Will Turns 40

…This era has coincided, not just coincidentally, with the full, garish flowering of the baby boomers’ vast sense of entitlement, which encompasses an entitlement to exemption from nature’s mishaps, and to a perfect baby. So today science enables what the ethos ratifies, the choice of killing children with Down syndrome before birth. That is what happens to 90 percent of those whose parents receive a Down syndrome diagnosis through prenatal testing.

Which is unfortunate, and not just for them. Judging by Jon, the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go. It is said we are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and remain greedy. People with Down syndrome must remain brave in order to navigate society’s complexities. They have no choice but to be trusting because, with limited understanding, and limited abilities to communicate misunderstanding, they, like Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” always depend on the kindness of strangers. Judging by Jon’s experience, they almost always receive it.

Two things that have enhanced Jon’s life are the Washington subway system, which opened in 1976, and the Washington Nationals baseball team, which arrived in 2005. He navigates the subway expertly, riding it to the Nationals ballpark, where he enters the clubhouse a few hours before game time and does a chore or two. The players, who have climbed to the pinnacle of a steep athletic pyramid, know that although hard work got them there, they have extraordinary aptitudes because they are winners of life’s lottery. Major leaguers, all of whom understand what it is to be gifted, have been uniformly and extraordinarily welcoming to Jon, who is not.

Except he is, in a way. He has the gift of serenity, in this sense:

The eldest of four siblings, he has seen two brothers and a sister surpass him in size, and acquire cars and college educations. He, however, with an underdeveloped entitlement mentality, has been equable about life’s sometimes careless allocation of equity. Perhaps this is partly because, given the nature of Down syndrome, neither he nor his parents have any tormenting sense of what might have been. Down syndrome did not alter the trajectory of his life; Jon was Jon from conception on.

This year Jon will spend his birthday where every year he spends 81 spring, summer and autumn days and evenings, at Nationals Park, in his seat behind the home team’s dugout. The Phillies will be in town, and Jon will be wishing them ruination, just another man, beer in hand, among equals in the republic of baseball.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jon-will-40-years-and-going-with-down-syndrome/2012/05/02/gIQAdGiNxT_story.html

This is a wonderful column speaking of the joys that come from that “unwanted” and “defective” child.  To the troglodytes who condemned and taunted Sarah Palin for her “choice” to not abort her son Trig, all I can say is shame on you. 

It's Romney and its on

What’s new Today 

Story #1tells of Tuesday’s victory by Mitt Romney.   #2 is an article by Hugh Hewett and his assessment of Romney.  #3 speculates on who a President Romney might put on the Supreme Court.  #4 looks at the parallels between the rise of Fascism and today.  #5 reveals an attack on the family farm by the Obama Labor Department.  #6 is about Jon Corzine while #7 reveals the hypocrisy in the Obama’s current attacks on the Republicans.

Today’s thoughts

Watching Romney’s speech last night I was struck at how upbeat it was.  Contrasting that to the negative messages of the Democrats tells me the Dems are in for a thumping in November.

There are rules of thumb you can often use to see what is happening.  Here’s one for this election.  With more than six months to go, the rhetoric on the left is shrill as sure sign of big trouble for them.  From Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s the Republicans want to take away women healthcare, to David Axelrod’s Republicans campaign of terror we are seeing the left realize how much trouble they are in and are reacting exactly the wrong way.  Six months of negativity will drive down their numbers, not the Republicans. 

Now that the war on terror is over, does that mean we can privatize TSA again?

Bob Kerrey has just released a video condemning going to war with Iran.  A good move except no one is proposing we go to war with Iran.  It appears 2012 will have the Democrats condemning things the Republicans aren’t proposing (ie. banning contraception, poisoning the air and water, etc.)

1.  Romney wins: A Better America Begins Tonight

Mitt Romney, whose first run for the White House ended in failure and disappointment, prepared to lay claim to the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night and turn his full focus to what will likely be a competitive and intensely fought general election contest with President Obama….

“To all of the thousands of good and decent Americans I’ve met who want nothing more than a better chance, a fighting chance, to all of you, I have a simple message,” Romney said, according to excerpts of the speech released early by the campaign. “Hold on a little longer. A better America begins tonight.”

Arguing that Obama has failed in office, he added, “Because he has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions and distortions. That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time — but not here and not now.” Then, in a twist on former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign message, he added, “It’s still about the economy, and we’re not stupid…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-says-better-america-begins-tonight/2012/04/24/gIQAnTpbfT_story.html

The contrast between Romney’s message and the Democrats is stark.  Today he showed he was the candidate of hope and change and that change isn’t to fundamentally change America, but to become a better America. 

2.  Hugh Hewitt:  A very strong candidate

The zombie narrative of a brokered convention is dead, and Politico is having to lay off the brokered convention team.

Romney is the GOP nominee and a very strong one who has emerged from the primary process focused on the economy and in a dead heat with the president.

Romney's speech last night was the best he has given, and it must reflect the investment of time available to such efforts when the nominee can focus and practice.

When former McCain Campaign manager Steve Schmidt appeared on my program on April 27, 2009 to discuss the 2008 campaign, he made a memorable comment about Romney.

"I thought he was a very scary opponent looking from the other side of the table in that he was almost like a learning organism at the end," Schmidt said about the former Massachusetts governor. "He just kept getting better week by week by week, and kept becoming stronger."

That capacity to grow in the role was on display last night and it must have opened some eyes even wider in Chicago and inside the Beltway. And a hat tip to whomever helped the candidate polish the draft, as it was a very good speech…

http://townhall.com/columnists/hughhewitt/2012/04/25/a_strong_nominee_in_a_strong_position_romney_turns_on_the_engine

As you read this blog you will see how delighted I am by having Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee.   He is smart, smooth and will be just what the country needs after four years of Barack Obama.  He will actually focus on the economy and things will get better.  I don’t expect him to do much regarding social issues, but this election shouldn’t be about social issues. 

3.  Who would Romney put on the Supreme Court?

Now that Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, the names of people he might appoint to SCOTUS are starting to roll off the tongues of conservative activists, lawyers and former Republican administration aides.

While conservatives caution that talk is mere guesswork, an examination of Romney's record as Massachusetts governor and statements he made on the presidential campaign trail can help shape an early list of frontrunners should he defeat President Barack Obama in the November 6 election, and should he be given the chance to fill a vacancy on the nine-member bench…

CLEMENT A FAVORITE

Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general under President George W. Bush and is now a lawyer in private practice, is the favorite of many conservatives. Clement argued last month for the Supreme Court to strike down Obama's 2010 healthcare law, and he is defending laws that ban same-sex marriage and that target illegal immigrants. Clement, 45, would be "at the top of any short list right now," said Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a group that advocates for conservative nominees….

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/04/20/10-Top-Court-Candidates-If-Romney-Wins.aspx#page1

It’s early to talk about this, but interesting nonetheless. 

4.   Vigilante President, Liberal Fascist

On the heels of such paeans to vigilante governance as this and this, and various cris de coeur that democracy is standing in the way of what was indeed sold, in the closing days of the 2008 campaign, as “fundamental transformation” of said democracy, I was struck by a passage while reading a book last night otherwise unrelated in any way to current politics. But it led to a very disturbing conclusion.

The book is Tobruk by Peter Fitzsimons. Explaining the rise of fascism, Fitzsimons wrote, “there was a growing belief that ordinary democracy could not work anymore — because no one could achieve a majority of popular support.” This was startling. It sounded so…familiar.

From Thomas Friedman and Barack Obama we hear the same thing: those other people voted into office in an historic sweep, on a campaign promising to obstruct our plans, why, they’re obstructing our plans! We can’t get a majority for anything (…that we want and the majority don’t). Time to tinker with the system, test its limits, legislate through rules and bully citizens and of course judges deciding cases where people are calling us on it all dared sue.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/04/25/vigilante-president-liberal-fascist/

Obama and the Democrats are certainly doing this.  From recess appointments when the Senate wasn’t in recess, to EPA regulations that are passed based on studies that don’t pass the EPA’s guidelines, the Democrats are stretching the rules to the limits. 

5.  Obama’s Labor Department Attacks Family Farms

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district member of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”

The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course….

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural-kids-parents-angry-about-labor-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t34rFQnF

Why liberals tell you that the Republicans want to poison the air because they talk about reducing government regulations, remember this.  This government seem intent on destroying the small family farm.

6.  Obama’s Tainted Bundler

…Under Corzine, MF Global lost well over $1 billion, and I don’t mean in the profit/loss sense. I mean it was physically misplaced and Corzine cannot account for where it went. The Justice Department is investigating, and news-media accounts suggest a criminal prosecution is likely. Somewhat better late than never, Gensler recused himself after MF Global went bankrupt.So, why the trip down memory lane? Because the Obama campaign just announced that Corzine is still on the list of top-tier bundlers for the Obama reelection campaign. Corzine has raised more than half a million dollars for Obama.

Obama is constantly denouncing “millionaires and billionaires” for playing by their own rules. It’s true that the campaign told one reporter in February that it wouldn’t take more money from Corzine himself, but it’s been happy to let the man solicit donations for Obama even as Corzine is under investigation by Obama’s own Justice Department. How cozy. Tell me, what’s the point of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and its countless sympathizers in the Democratic party and the media, if that’s good enough? Whatever happened to changing how Washington works?

We’re about to enter a very long campaign in which an apparently squeaky-clean Mitt Romney is going to be demonized for his success and dragged through the gutter. Meanwhile, Obama took cash from a true denizen of the gutter.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/04/25/corzine_obamas_tainted_bundler_113951.html

How do you spell Democrat?  H-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y.

7.  And some more Hypocrisy regarding campaign tactics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKdc6oUdBKE&feature=player_embedded

Watch what Obama said last year and compare it to what appears to be the democrats’ tactics for this campaign (the president’s remarks begins at 1 minute 26 seconds).

Can we trust anything?

What’s new Today 

Story #1 relates that bigotry, or at least “approved” bigotry is still with us, but it has changed its targets.  #2 gives a new example of chutzpa as practiced by the Obama Administration.  #3 should be unsettling for Obama supporters.  It seems that SCOTUS’s approval rating rose after Obama attacked the Court.  #4 shows while Eric Holder should be in support of voter ID laws.  #5 tells that neo-nazis have gone to Sanford Florida.  #6 relates that Obamacare adds to the deficit.  It doesn’t subtract from it as its proponents claimed it would.  And finally #7 demonstrates who the settled science of nutrition blaming fats for obesity and heart disease was wrong and it’s actually sugar.  Next thing you know they’ll tell us that the sun is the cause of global warming.

1.  Bigotry: They’ve only changed the targets

…But have we done away with approved bigotries ?  Hardly. We just keep changing the targets.

Recall the attitudes of feminists in the '60s and '70s toward housewives.

As an experiment, you might today try bringing a big-haired woman -- perhaps a Dallas socialite -- to a Manhattan cocktail party or gallery opening.

Go ahead. I dare you.

And may God have mercy on those who live in a trailer park.

These thoughts were all prompted by three recent events when someone I had just met, and with whom I was having a friendly drink, launched into a jeremiad against "Christians."

They are awful, I was told. Rank hypocrites. Hateful people.

This isn't an altogether rare phenomenon, of course. In fact, it is epidemic.

I suppose I should have felt complimented. The unspoken assumption is that I am smart enough and sophisticated enough to share these attitudes.

Unfortunately, I'm not. I continue to find bigotries of every description pathologically indistinguishable.

I have found one highly effective way to force these bigots to stand eye-to-eye with their bigotry.

Simply ask them to substitute another minority for Christians and repeat the statement. Blacks are rank hypocrites? Muslims are hateful people?

No?

Then why do you feel so comfortable saying these things about Christians?

I like to think this is a quiet and loving way to teach a good moral lesson, but the response so far indicates that it will always result in anger….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/bigotrys_permanent_appeal.html#ixzz1rRxzKlkc

The left has always been bigots.  They just change who they are bigoted against.

2.  It Takes A Lot Of Nerve…

…to criticize Mitt Romney’s support for the House Republicans’ budget when Senate Democrats won’t even write one, in violation of the law, and President Obama’s budgets can’t garner a single vote. But that is nevertheless what Obama did:

When President Barack Obama criticized Mitt Romney by name this week for embracing a controversial Republican budget proposal, he worded his attack carefully and with bite.

“(Romney) said that he’s ‘very supportive’ of this new budget, and he even called it ‘marvelous’ — which is a word you don’t often hear when it comes to describing a budget,” Obama said during a speech on Tuesday, before adding: “It’s a word you don’t often hear generally.”

You certainly don’t hear it said about Obama’s budget. His FY 2012 budget was voted down 97-0 in the Senate, and his FY 2013 budget was voted down 414-0 in the House. The Senate’s Democratic leadership is trying to prevent it from coming up for a vote in that body, lest it be skunked again. But Obama has no intention of offering a serious budget proposal; he is 100% politics, 0% policy.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/lt-takes-a-lot-of-nerve.php

I remember when the left complained because Bush didn’t put the Iraq war on the budget.  For the past three years the Democrats refuse to put anything on the budget.   Obama has proposed budget that have been defeated 511-0 during that time.  No one in the Democratic Party appear to be serious about the budget, the deficit, or the country’s fiscal problems. 

3.  SCOTUS Popularity Up after Obama attack

Just before the highly publicized hearing on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law, ratings for the U.S. Supreme Court had fallen to the lowest level ever measured by Rasmussen Reports. Now, following the hearings, approval of the court is way up.

Forty-one percent (41%) of Likely U.S. Voters now rate the Supreme Court’s performance as good or excellent, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That’s up 13 points from 28% in mid-March and is the court’s highest ratings in two-and-a-half years.

Nineteen percent (19%) still rate the court’s work record as poor, unchanged from last month.

It is impossible to know if the improved perceptions of the court came from the hearings themselves, President Obama’s comments cautioning the court about overturning a law passed by Congress, or from other factors. Approval of the court had fallen in three consecutive quarterly surveys prior to the health care hearings….

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/supreme_court_update

Obama has a magic touch.  Everything he’s against turns to gold. 

4.  Why We Need Voter ID Laws Now

Attorney General Eric Holder is a staunch opponent of laws requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls to improve ballot security. He calls them “unnecessary” and has blocked their implementation in Texas and South Carolina, citing the fear they would discriminate against minorities.

I wonder what Holder will think when he learns just how easy it was for someone to be offered his ballot just by mentioning his name in a Washington, D.C., polling place in Tuesday’s primaries

Holder’s opposition to ID laws comes in spite of the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in 2008, authored by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, that upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s tough ID requirement. When groups sue to block photo-ID laws in court, they can’t seem to produce real-world examples of people who have actually been denied the right to vote. According to opinion polls, over 75 percent of Americans — including majorities of Hispanics and African-Americans — routinely support such laws….

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295431/why-we-need-voter-id-laws-now-john-fund

O’Keefe is at it again, but this time his undercover person could have voted in place of AG Holder. 

5.   White Supremists patrolling Sanford Florida

Neo-Nazis are currently conducting heavily armed patrols in and around Sanford, Florida and are "prepared" for violence in the case of a race riot. The patrols are to protect "white citizens in the area who are concerned for their safety" in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting last month, says Commander Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement. "We are not advocating any type of violence or attacks on anybody, but we are prepared for it," he says. "We are not the type of white people who are going to be walked all over."

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2012/04/heavily_armed_neo-nazis_patrol.php

Law enforcement needs to get hold of the situation.  Let the investigation continue, but right now between the escalation by black groups such as the New Black Panthers and celebrities chiming in and now this with Neo-Nazis patrolling Sanford, we have a tinderbox ready to go up in flames.

6.   New Study:  Obamacare to add $340 billion to the deficit

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a Republican member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

The study is set to be released Tuesday by Charles Blahous, a conservative policy analyst whom Obama approved in 2010 as the GOP trustee for Medicare and Social Security. His analysis challenges the conventional wisdom that the health-care law,  which calls for an expensive expansion of coverage for the uninsured beginning in 2014, will nonetheless reduce deficits by raising taxes and cutting payments to Medicare providers…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/health-care-law-will-add-340-billion-to-deficit-new-study-finds/2012/04/09/gIQAti1o6S_story.html

The financing of Obamacare has always been done with smoke and mirrors.  But as Nancy Pelosi said, “We need to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” and evidently how much it is going to cost. 

7.  At Last Settled Science that everyone agree on

Once upon a time, there was a medical “consensus” that fats and cholesterol in the blood were major causes of heart disease. Armed with this “settled science,” the public health establishment moved in the 1970s to expunge the offending substances, beyond a basic minimum deemed to be necessary, from Americans’ diets. Food bureaucrats established dietary guidelines. Physicians ordered billions of dollars of blood tests. Pharmaceutical companies made tens of billions of dollars on drugs that suppressed cholesterol levels. Food companies, castigated in some quarters as soulless merchants of dietary corruption, were compelled to report the nutritional breakdown of their packaged products. Badgered by public officialdom and the media over the decades, Americans slowly, grudgingly changed their eating habits.

What good did it do them? Americans are more overweight, more prone to diabetes and more at risk of heart disease than ever before. Now, it transpires, the public health consensus and settled science might not have gotten it right. A new wave of scientific research finds that the worst culprit of all is sugar. CBS‘ “60 Minutes” hit the highlights of that research in a show broadcast April 1, “Is Sugar Toxic?”

In that segment, Dr. Gupta interviewed Dr. Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist who was the proverbial voice in the wilderness for years.

Gupta: “What are all these diseases that you say are linked to sugar?”

Lustig: “Obesity, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart disease itself.”

Gupta: “So, with the best of intentions, they said, it’s time to reduce fat in the American diet.”

Lustig: “And we did. And guess what? Heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and death are skyrocketing.”

Gupta: “Dr. Lustig believes that’s primarily because we replaced a lot of that fat with added sugars.”

Lustig: “When you take the fat out of the food, it tastes like cardboard. The food industry knew that. So they replaced it with sugar.”

Prediction 1: Often wrong but never in doubt, the progressives and do-gooders will develop amnesia about the past 40 years of regulatory activism. The old “settled science” will go down the memory hole, to be replaced with a new “settled science.” With new demons to castigate and a new cause to justify meddling in peoples’ lives on the grounds that they are too ignorant, slothful or obstinate to do what’s good for them, progressives will embark joyfully upon a new crusade. Soon we’ll be hearing how sugar is as addictive as cocaine. (Oh, wait, Dr. Gupta quoted a different scientist saying exactly that.) Sugar companies will replace the fat peddlers at McDonald’s as the new villains du jour. (Dr. Gupta also interviewed a sugar-industry lobbyist.)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/6/sugar-shock/

Wait until they find out that global warming has been caused by the sun!  Of course most any 5 year old could tell you that (I picked 5 since that would be before the child would have started school and been brain washed by the AGW crowd). 

Obamacare, the Mandate and Freedom

SCOTUS starts its three day hearing on Obamacare Monday at 10 AM ET.  The importance of this cannot be overstated.  To Liberals this is vital to who they think they are.  Fairness demands that we give healthcare to everyone.  To Conservative this is vital to what the country is.  If congress can pass a law forcing everyone to buy a product, individual freedom is gone. 





Obamacare, the White House, and SCOTUS

Few legal cases in the modern era are as consequential, or as defining, as the challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that the Supreme Court hears beginning Monday. The powers that the Obama Administration is claiming change the structure of the American government as it has existed for 225 years. Thus has the health-care law provoked an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional showdown that endangers individual liberty.

It is a remarkable moment. The High Court has scheduled the longest oral arguments in nearly a half-century: five and a half hours, spread over three days. Yet Democrats, the liberal legal establishment and the press corps spent most of 2010 and 2011 deriding the government of limited and enumerated powers of Article I as a quaint artifact of the 18th century. Now even President Obama and his staff seem to grasp their constitutional gamble.

Consider a White House strategy memo that leaked this month, revealing that senior Administration officials are coordinating with liberal advocacy groups to pressure the Court. "Frame the Supreme Court oral arguments in terms of real people and real benefits that would be lost if the law were overturned," the memo notes, rather than "the individual responsibility piece of the law and the legal precedence [sic]." Those nonpolitical details are merely what "lawyers will be talking about."

The White House is even organizing demonstrations during the proceedings, including a "'prayerful witness' encircling the Supreme Court." The executive branch is supposed to speak to the Court through the Solicitor General, not agitprop and crowds in the streets

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577291762007718228.html

The political tactics the White House is trying to use reminded me of this quote by Ann Coulter:  “liberals don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘fact’ or ‘truth.’  Everything is a struggle for power between rival doctrines.”  Apparently the rule of law isn’t too high on their list either. 







Obamacare: The reckoning



…Coerciveness.

….Serendipitously, the recently issued regulation on contraceptive coverage has allowed us to see exactly how this new power works. All institutions — excepting only churches, but not excepting church-run charities, hospitals, etc. — will be required to offer health care that must include free contraception, sterilization and drugs that cause abortion.

Consider the cascade of arbitrary bureaucratic decisions that resulted in this edict:

(1) Contraception, sterilization and abortion pills are classified as medical prevention. On whose authority? The secretary of health and human services, invoking the Institute of Medicine. But surely categorizing pregnancy as a disease equivalent IS A VALUE DECISION DISGUISED AS SCIENCE. If contraception is prevention, what are fertility clinics? Disease inducers? And if contraception is prevention because it lessens morbidity and saves money, by that logic, mass sterilization would be the greatest boon to public health since the pasteurization of milk.

(2) This type of prevention is free — no co-pay. Why? Is contraception morally superior to or more socially vital than — and thus more of a “right” than — penicillin for a child with pneumonia?

(3) “Religious” exemptions to this edict extend only to churches, places where the faithful worship God, and not to church-run hospitals and charities, places where the faithful do God’s work. Who promulgated this definition, so stunningly ignorant of the very idea of religious vocation? The almighty HHS secretary.

Today, it’s the Catholic Church whose free-exercise powers are under assault from this cascade of diktats sanctioned by — indeed required by — Obamacare. Tomorrow it will be the turn of other institutions of civil society that dare stand between unfettered state and atomized citizen.

Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. He’d rather talk about other things.

But there’s no escaping it now. Oral arguments begin Monday at 10 a.m…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamacare-the-reckoning/2012/03/22/gIQALF1QUS_story.html

A powerful piece by Charles Krauthammer regarding the issues with Obamacare.  I highlighted this one but there is more to read and I recommend you do so. 







Obamacare:  Business Concerns

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday will begin three days of hearings over the fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,  better known as Obamacare. The court has a variety of choices it can make with this 2,000-page behemoth of a law: It can strike it down entirely, it can excise the individual mandate as an unconstitutional intrusion on individual rights, or it can leave it intact.

For employers, none of the above will offer complete relief from the law’s many intended and unintended effects. For a few of the biggest headaches employers need to think about I spoke with Chantel Speaks, principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox unit that advises employers on human resources and healthcare insurance issues.

Obamacare doesn’t really go into effect until 2014 but employers are already wrestling with its rules — such as the requirement they cover children up to age 26 on employer policies — and there myriad more effects that are either unknown or can only be guessed at. Here are some Sheaks says every employer should be concerned about:

• Should I Continue To Offer Coverage? The law encourages states to set up “insurance exchanges” where anybody can buy health insurance as part of a large group, ostensibly at a lower cost. The premiums will even come with a subsidy for households earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or over $88,000 for a family of four.   So why not just drop coverage and let the government pick up the cost? “Everyone says, `I don’t want to be the first, but I don’t mind being the second,’ to drop coverage” Sheaks says….

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/03/23/obamacare-supreme-court-what-employers-are-watching/

It’s a lot more complicated that Washington would care to admit and in that complexity is the question, “did Obama lie when he said, ‘if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance.’”

The Mother of all Death Panels

…Seven House Democrats crossed the aisle to vote for the GOP-majority rollback. Analysts on both sides of the political aisle have decried IPAB’s complete lack of accountability and insulation from judicial review. Critical decisions about public and private health-insurance payment rates would be freed from the normal administrative-rules process — public notice, public comment, public review — that governs every other federal commission in existence. Rep. Todd Akin (R., Mo.) summed up bipartisan opposition: “IPAB embodies the very thing Americans fear most about Obamacare — unaccountable Washington bureaucrats meeting behind closed doors to make unilateral decisions that should be made by patients and their doctors.”

The problem with piecemeal repeal is that for every old IPAB, there’s a new, multibillion-dollar bureaucracy waiting in the Obamacare wings. Senate Republicans and fellow medical doctors Tom Coburn and John Barrasso point to a $10 billion entity called the “Innovation Center” that “would test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures under Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program” (S-CHIP).

According to a new Congressional Research Service analysis of this little-known office to be operated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, there would be “no administrative or judicial review” of the director’s payment experiments. Coburn and Barrasso explain that “this means that the administrator of CMS is the sole individual in the entire federal government with the power to decide whether or not models tested negatively impact seniors’ quality of care and meet the financial requirements spelled out in law.”

This “innovation” super-czar would be allowed to tinker behind closed doors — and then impose whatever experiments the “Innovation Center” chose, without any checks or balances on the methods or results. Moreover, at least two other sub-offices within CMS (subject to normal open-meetings and open-records rules) have already been tasked with researching payment and delivery models. At National Review Online’s health-care blog, Critical Condition, Tevi Troy warns: “The ‘innovation’ center appears to be one more way in which the health-care law is going to interfere with the practice of medicine, and one that physicians should start paying more attention to.”…

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/03/23/the-obamacare-hydra/

Obamacare is anti-democratic, anti-freedom, and anti-accountability.  In short it is the perfect dream for progressive “experts.”

Comprehensive List of Tax Hikes in Obamacare

Next week, the U.S. House of Representatives will be voting on an historic repeal of the Obamacare law. While there are many reasons to oppose this flawed government health insurance law, it is important to remember that Obamacare is also one of the largest tax increases in American history. Below is a comprehensive list of the two dozen new or higher taxes that pay for Obamcare’s expansion of government spending and interference between doctors and patients.

Individual Mandate Excise Tax(Jan 2014): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following…

http://www.atr.org/comprehensive-list-tax-hikes-obamacare-a5758#ixzz1py5tGexe

This is an eye opening list of new taxes that go along with Obamacare.  Guess who will be paying for these?