It is the government’s mandate to protect private property and the fruits of ones labor. Excessive taxation and abuse of property rights were some of the main reasons that Americans participated in the revolution.
It is well known among historians that the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson and edited largely by Ben Franklin was a near plagiarism of the writings of philosopher John Lock who expressed that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries, which was a popular reading at the time, has a similar message.
The first article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights written by George Mason and adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention in 1776:
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
This is why Kelo v. New London, the worst Supreme Court decision since Korematsu, has been condemned by states, scholars and citizens alike. In Kelo the Supreme Court redefined the “public use” clause in the Constitution to “government benefit”.
When we were all in grade school we were taught that the government could take your property only with just compensation and only for projects like military bases and roads that must be built. In Kelo the court ruled that the government can take your home and give it to another private citizen or private company that is willing to pay more property taxes to use the property. In short the court said that you are one bribe away from having the government confiscate yours or anyone else’s property. Almost immediately most states passed laws banning just such a practice.
The City of New London spent $60 million taking their homes so that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer was interested in building on the site. Now Pfizer has abandoned the whole idea of building anything in the state leaving the city with the bill. It served them right. So much for the brilliance of central control over freedom and people’s basic rights.
And government policy as well as Federal Reserve Policy is encouraging it.
The world is screaming at us to stop the furious pace of printing and burrowing, foreign banks want out of the dollar, the oil producing nations are soon to abandon the dollar for oil swaps. They are behaving as if they believe that we are trying to exercise political control over our banks and blow up our own currency to either pay off the debt by monetizing it and/or blow up the US Dollar for the purpose of establishing a new currency in its place. Either way this will have the effect of great damage to our economy, wiping out the value of peoples savings and creating yet another ecop0nopmic crisis that the government can use as an excuse to take more control.
Gold Futures Rise to Record on Speculation Dollar Will Decline
By Pham-Duy Nguyen and Nicholas Larkin
Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) — Gold surged to a record $1,119.10 an ounce in New York on speculation a decline in the dollar will spark demand for the precious metal as an alternative asset.
The metal climbed for the eighth straight session, the longest rally since January 2006. Before rebounding today, the dollar extended a slump to a 15-month low against a basket of currencies. India’s central bank bought gold last month to diversify reserves.
“The interest that central banks have shown for gold has really lit a fire under the market,” said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at LaSalle Futures Group Inc. in Chicago. “People are questioning the value of not only the U.S. currency, but all paper currencies. Investors are more comfortable holding gold.”
Gold futures for December delivery climbed $12.10, or 1.1 percent, to $1,114.60 on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex division. The price has jumped 7.1 percent this month, while the dollar dropped 1.5 percent against the currency basket. The metal is headed for a ninth straight annual gain.
Gold for immediate delivery jumped to a record $1,118.88.
The dollar has declined more than 7 percent since December, when the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark lending rate close to zero percent to pull the U.S. economy out of recession.
Dollar Outlook
“The dollar is not going to get any firm footing with rates at zero,” Zeman said. “The dollar is going to continue to be the victim of the carry trade. People are selling dollars and putting it in higher-yielding assets. All commodities are going higher.”
With the benchmark lending rate at zero (The rate at which the fed and some other top banks lend money to its most credit worthy customers) those customers are burrowing dollars now to buy gold, silver, Chinese investments, or Euro’s witch are going up. Since the value of the dollar is falling the dollars they are peying back are worth less than the dollars they borrowed. The affect is that they are creating a bubble of such assets and inflating their value while pushing the value of the dollar down and making servicing our foreign debt less attractive.
Question – what if that asset bubble bursts like the mortgage bubble did?
U.S. stocks extended a global advance, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a 13-month high, as China’s industrial production surged and Federal Reserve policy makers signaled interest rates will remain at a record low. Gold climbed to an all-time high.
A weaker dollar may boost the nation’s economy by increasing exports and narrowing the trade gap — but that won’t happen anytime soon.
Instead, the nation’s trade deficit rose in September by the largest percentage in a decade as U.S. exports grew for the fifth straight month, but imports rose faster, a government report showed Friday. That trend is likely to continue until the middle of next year, economists said.
Barrick shuts hedge book as world gold supply runs out.
Global gold production is in terminal decline despite record prices and Herculean efforts by mining companies to discover fresh sources of ore in remote spots, according to the world’s top producer Barrick Gold.
Aaron Regent, president of the Canadian gold giant, said that global output has been falling by roughly 1m ounces a year since the start of the decade. Total mine supply has dropped by 10pc as ore quality erodes, implying that the roaring bull market of the last eight years may have further to run.
“There is a strong case to be made that we are already at ‘peak gold’,” he told The Daily Telegraph at the RBC’s annual gold conference in London.
LONDON (AFP) – The dollar fell on Monday as China accused the United States of increasing protectionism and following unexpectedly strong Japanese economic growth figures, pushing gold prices to a record high point.
US President Barack Obama is in China for a three-day mission aimed at convincing Beijing that Washington is its partner, not its rival.
As the dollar dropped against the euro and yen, gold struck an all-time peak of 1,133.20 dollars an ounce.
In late morning trading here, the euro climbed to 1.4969 dollars from 1.4918 dollars late in New York on Friday.
Against the Japanese currency, the dollar fell to 89.42 yen from 89.66 yen late on Friday.
“Far better than expected Japanese third-quarter GDP data…spurred risk appetite,” said Jane Foley, an analyst for online trading firm Forex.com.
“This pushed the euro close to 1.50 dollars in early European hours.”
This is a video that anyone who cares about the status and future of the United States must see. Lou Dobbs explains a point of view that has a great deal of merit and truth. About how both parties are owned by special interests, how there are only a few honest and straight shooters in either party (by the way, Sarah Palin is attacked because she has successfully brought down a massive corporate/political corruption ring in Alaska. If Palin becomes President billions in corruption will come to an end and that has parts of both parties frightened to death).
I am very aware that some people see me and this blog as some ideological instrument, what we really try to do here is shine a light on what the elite media culture under reports, ignores, or tries to render powerless so people can be better informed.
This post has been stickied to the top of the page. Please scroll down for the latest posts & updates - Editor
UPDATE: SHOCK! Speaker Pelosi’s Government-Run Health Plan Will Require a Monthly Abortion Premium – LINK. UPDATE - So does Senator Reid’s new Bill! – LINK.
Obama Advisor and former Labor Sec. Robert Reich. Listen for yourself:
We are going to let the old die because its to expensive and we are going to make the drug companies poor so they cant innovate new drugs so you young people likely will not live much longer than your parents. We have to make the young pay more.
And the Democrats called Sarah Palin a liar ……
.. The Roundup:
Democrats Lied About Choice: Health Care Bill Targets Most New Private Health Insurance Policies. Watch the videos to listen to their own words - LINK
Ten questions to ask your Congressman about ObamaCare – LINK.
Obama health care advisors say: Very old and very young will get less care – LINK.
Oregon State health Service tells 64 year old woman: We wont pay for the drug to save your life, but we will pay for Euthanasia – LINK.
IBD Poll: 45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Obama/Pelosi Health Care Overhaul – LINK.
Answering far left talking points on US health care – LINK.
Congressional Committee confirms: Buy Insurance, Pay ObamaCare Penalty, or Go to Jail! – LINK.
Cornell Law Professor: Palin is right about “Death Panels” for ObamaCare – LINK.
European Member of Parliament – National Health Service has made us iller” – LINK.
CBO says that ObamaCare will result in benefit cuts. AARP stands to make millions from ObamaCare – LINK.
ABC 20/20 Takes on Government Health Care:
The Case Against Nationalized Healthcare in 3 minutes 42 seconds:
GOP Health Care Alternative Bill Online. First Step in Moving Towards Consortium Based Health Pools & Away from Mandates Forced On Citizens by Employers, Union Bosses, and the State - LINK.
You can examine all of our health care coverage HERE.
GOP Congressman: If Obama/PelosiCare is so good, why do you have to threaten people with jail if they try to opt out?
I saw the headline on the CBS web site “Statisticians: “Global Cooling” a Myth – Claims about Last 10 Years Are Deceptive; Temperatures Rise and Fall, But Overall Trend Is Higher”. Rest assured what is deceptive is this article that misrepresents what is already a bad study that stands in direct contradiction to a previous data set from the NCDC from January.
I was hoping that the Obama Administration had not politicized the National Climactic Data Center (NCDC) as they had the EPA when they suppressed a report showing how global warming skeptics are correct (LINK – LINK).
Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.
Only one problem: It’s not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.
Ok time to stop right there, as has been documented by us (one example we reported LINK) and others such as the Media Research Center (example LINK, LINK, LINK and I could fill a page of links with examples of this problem), that almost always, the people the elite media portray as “independent” are people who are known to the reporter or news organization, with a known point of view, who will say what the reporter wants to report. The same few “random experts” appear in the elite media over and over and over again. It is a main component of how the elite media editorializes the news and hide the fact that in reality it is the news organizations editorial point of view they are presenting.
Why is IPCC author Dr. John Christy not a common talking head in the elite media?
CBS/AP continues:
In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.
“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller “Freakonomics.” Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.
Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped – thus, a cooling trend. But it’s not that simple.
Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.
The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.
[Oh wait, could they mean this, UK Telegraph: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved – UPDATED!. This was one of our little posts that went viral on the internet and got my little IUSB Vision Web Log pronounced the second most reviled web site on global warming by the Huffington Post. I really should buy Arianna a nice lunch for the publicity she gave me on that one - Chuck Norton]
Notice how they said that the study relies on ground sensors and pay special attention to the quote “recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data” …under NOOOOOO political pressure from the new administration I’m sure…
So I headed over to the WUWT blog to see if they had found the data that I was suspecting and sure enough. The data the story relies on comes from NOAA ground sensors and ignores the oceanic data sets and other important data sets. The NOAA ground censors have been discredited as controlled data because in a great many cases the NOAA censors are placed on or near asphalt, stone, heat vents, parking lots, surrounded by black tires in junk yards etc. all of which absorb heat during the day and release it at night. Also notice how the article states that they did not rely on satellite data that tends to show cooling and that presents another problem. According to alarmist global warming theory more warmth is trapped under the “greenhouse layer” of the atmosphere causing temperatures globally to rise. This layer of the atmosphere can be read by satellites and weather balloons (the John Christy method). So if you are to measure greenhouse warming according to the theory, that is the place to do it. However, measuring it that way does not give global warming alarmists the measurements they want.
This [AP] article, however, (which is not a true independent assessment if the study was completed by NOAA scientists) is not based on the much more robust metric assessment of global warming as diagnosed by upper ocean heat content. Nor does it consider the warm bias issues with respect to surface land temperatures that we have raised in our peer reviewed papers; e.g. see and see.
So as Pielke points out at WUWT, the “study” and the AP article doesn’t even address oceanic data sets. Nor does it address other data sets. It gets worse, would you like to see examples of NOAA ground sensors??
WUWT is up to part 91 of its “How not to measure temperature” series on these NOAA ground sensors.
Oh Look! Its a NOAA sensor in a junk yard with black tires.
Oh Look! Its a NOAA sensor next to that concrete porch and look to the left, its a grill. It has no cover so I guess it has been used pretty frequently.
Oh look! Its a NOAA sensor in a parking lot of asphalt. Would you like to walk barefoot on that on a warm summer day? I wonder how much heat the cars that park right next to it give off when the people who live in those apartments come home. Hey what is that a few yards behind the sensor? It's the heat pump for a home air conditioner!
But worry not scientific community and global warming alarmists, WUWT reports in “How not to measure temperature: Part 87” that NOAA “adjusts” for these types of anomalies….yup they adjust the temperatures DOWN in the PAST thus increasing the “current statistical warming trend”!! There are 91 of these ground sensors that WUWT has catalogued so far and they all seem to have one thing in common. They are placed in areas that will artificially make them read higher temperatures.
As we stated above, the new NCDC “study” ignored other data sets such as ITS OWN North American Temperature Data Set updated just last January… hmmm now what has happened between January and today….oh yes we have a new political administration that has already demonstrated that it has no problem trying to shut scientists up (LINK – LINK) who dare tell the truth about global warming.
Yet ANOTHER dataset showing the cooling of the last 10 years.
NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black line is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.
This data set is a collection of this continent only, but it shows the same cooling trend that other global data sets have shown. Since 1998 the Earth is cooling and it happens to coincide with a similar period of unusually low solar activity.
Of course we realize that to many people, including many radicalized professors, global warming alarmism is almost like a religion. No data set or series of data sets is going to put a dent in those people. Fortunately there are still plenty of people who are not zealots who can appreciate the information. Thanks to the famed WUWT Blog for the heads up.
Maybe this article can get the Huffington Post to rank me the number one most reviled global warming columnist on the internet. Being number two just seems so second best.
Some have seen the original list of 26, but I felt compelled to few to add to my own to 46 and lets see if we can come up with a few more. I invite you to come up with some we missed in the comments section.
1. Offended the Queen of England.
2. Offended British PM By snubbing him and offering trade gifts that were a joke (25 DVD’s that wont play in England).
3. Offended the British People by returning a bust of Winston Churchill that they gave the United States (its like sending the Statue of Liberty back to France).
4. Offended the President of France by snubbing him multiple times.
5. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia.
6. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.
7. Kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek.
8. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia.
9. Sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras.
10. Announced we would meet with Iranians with no pre-conditions while they’re building their nuclear weapons.
11. Reneged on a missile shield agreement with Eastern Europe almost ending all relations with Poland and the Czech Republic.
12. Left the country of Georgia in the cold after the Russian invasion.
13. Gave away billions to AIG also without pre-conditions.
14. Expanded the bailouts.
15. Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.
16. Doubled our national debt.
17. Announced the termination of our new missile defense system the day after North Korea launched an ICBM.
18. Released information on U.S. Intelligence gathering despite urgings of his own CIA director and the prior four CIA directors.
19. Accepted without comment that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two other nominees withdrew after they couldn’t take the heat.
20. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as “dangers to the nation.”
21. Ordered that the word “terrorism” no longer be used and instead refers to such acts as “man made disasters.”
23. Circled the globe to publicly apologize for America’s world leadership.
24. Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.
25. Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from the Department of Commerce.
26. Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion to Cuba of a 9-year-old whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in the United States.
27. Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS who took down three terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush administration may stand trial for “torturing” three 9/11 terrorists by pouring water up their noses.
28. Low altitude photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers.
29. Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure them that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special manner and they might be on their own with the Muslims.
30. Praised Jimmy Carter’s trip to Gaza where he sided with terrorist Hamas against Israel.
31. Nationalized General Motors and Chrysler while turning shareholder control over to the unions and freezing out retired investors who owned their bonds. Committed unlimited taxpayer billions in the process.
31. Passed a huge energy tax in the House that will make American industry even less competitive while costing homeowners thousands per year.
32. Quietly ended the Washington DC school voucher program dooming promising children to one of the worst school districts in the nation.
33. Reversed himself on his transparency pledges multiple times.
34. After promising lobbying reform he had a financial responsibility summit that ended up being a lobbyist meet up with government. He also signed an order relaxing the lobbyist rules.
35. Allowed multiple lobbyists in the administration after promising not to.
36. After promising a new era of bi-partisanship his party locks Republicans out of bill negotiations.
37. Helped protect the bonuses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
38. Signed a bill containing over 9,000 pork earmarks after promising earmark reform.
39. Instead of using the TARP bailout funds to buy peoples mortgages and renegotiate them with citizens as promised he used the money to buy up/nationalize banks and leave citizens in the cold.
40. Committed multiple violations of the Hatch Act (see HHS.GOV).
41. Declared War on Fox News.
42. Declared War on the Chamber of Commerce.
43. Suppressed an EPA Report showing that global warming skeptics are largely correct.
44. Participating in the dismantling of the Dollar as the world reserve currency.
45. Signed into law the reversal of Bill Clinton & Newt Gingrich’s very successful and hugely popular bi-partisan welfare reform (which was the main plank of Bill Clinton’s legacy).
46. Announced nationalized health care “reform” that will strip seniors of their Medicare, cut pay of physicians, increase taxes yet another $1 trillion, and put everyone on rationed care with government bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t. Bloomberg: Daschle says, “Health care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them,” while former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm says seniors have “a duty to die.” If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that the President, Senators and Congressmen have their own special gold plated health care plan which is guaranteed the remainder of their lives and they are not subject to this new law if they pass it.
The biggest news here is the lack of transparency going on with the current process and of course all the new taxes the Democrats promised they wouldn’t levy…
In violation of the spirit of the process the bills are being merged behind closed doors with the Republicans being locked out. Remember when Obama promised transparency and how the hearings and such on the health care bill would all be on C-Span and not behind closed doors??
Just a reminder, here are Obama’s seven lies in under two minutes.
Below you will read about how what are called “Cadillac Plans” will be taxed at 40%. The bill also requires that those with pre-existing conditions and the sick cannot be turned down. It also mandates that there be limits on the differences in premiums between the old and young, healthy and sick. This will make the costs of premium go way up especially for the young. The young will choose to pay the tax penalty rather than get the insurance. But no worries, when you get sick go buy the insurance and when your better drop it.
The end result? Premiums will go up in cost and become considered Cadillac plans over time. Most good plans that are as good or better than the public option will be considered “Cadillac Plans” over time. using price forces to send you into the public option, which is the goal.
This will also make an adversarial relation ship between the doctor and the patient. The doctor will have budget schedules to meet and you will need the best care possible. One cannot serve two gods. perhaps this is why presidential advisors have said that the Hippocratic oath is taken too seriously and is a part of the problem.
This brings us back to the death panels again. Dick Morris believes that the final versions of the bill will have the same cost/benefit analysis called QARY (Quality Adjusted Remaining Years). So if you are 95 and need a pacemaker , well odds are you wont live much longer so the cost divided out over your QARY is too high so the answer is no. I know a nice married couple in their late 80’s who are in better physical shape than I am and very active. This is exactly why doctors and individuals need to make these choices and not a cost benefit analysis. And before it is said in the comments, death panels does not mean that they will decide who gets the plug pulled, rather it decides who gets the plug plugged in in the first place.
The Senate majority’s contempt for the American people rears its ugly head again. The Senate Finance Committee just voted down a GOP amendment requiring that Obamacare legislation be available online 72 hours before the panel votes. Instead, the Democrats offered to make “conceptual language” available.
Dems lied, transparency died:
WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes.
Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal. They also noted that their constituents are demanding that they read bills before voting.
Democrats said it was a delay tactic that could have postponed a vote for weeks.
Democrat leaders legislating in special deals for their states
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Nevada would get help with its Medicaid bills. The elderly in Florida and New York would receive additional Medicare benefits. And workers in so-called high-risk professions such as firefighting and construction would get a break on a new insurance tax.
Those are provisions that Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, put in an $829 billion health-care bill to shield constituents from measures intended to pay for the biggest overhaul of the medical system in four decades.
The result is the new policies may be unevenly administered, with some U.S. states getting preferential treatment, a possibility that has given Republican lawmakers ammunition to attack the legislation.
“It’s going to hurt the bill and raise the level of cynicism about Washington politics,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican. “The provisions ought to be applied to all of the states.”
The number of special provisions is likely to grow as the full Senate begins debating the measure in coming weeks. Because Democrats are unlikely to win many Republican votes, individual lawmakers will have leverage to demand changes to satisfy parochial interests.
Baucus Senate Health Bill Costs Skyrocket Over Time
Remember when health-care reform was supposed to make life better for the middle class? That dream began to unravel this past summer when Congress proposed a bill that failed to include any competition-based reforms that would actually bend the curve of health-care costs. It fell apart completely when Democrats began papering over the gaping holes their plan would rip in the federal budget.
As it now stands, the plan proposed by Democrats and the Obama administration would not only fail to reduce the cost burden on middle-class families, it would make that burden significantly worse.
Consider the bill put forward by the Senate Finance Committee. From a budgetary perspective, it is straightforward. The bill creates a new health entitlement program that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will grow over the longer term at a rate of 8% annually, which is much faster than the growth rate of the economy or tax revenues. This is the same growth rate as the House bill that Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) deep-sixed by asking the CBO to tell the truth about its impact on health-care costs.
To avoid the fate of the House bill and achieve a veneer of fiscal sensibility, the Senate did three things: It omitted inconvenient truths, it promised that future Congresses will make tough choices to slow entitlement spending, and it dropped the hammer on the middle class.
One inconvenient truth is the fact that Congress will not allow doctors to suffer a 24% cut in their Medicare reimbursements. Senate Democrats chose to ignore this reality and rely on the promise of a cut to make their bill add up. Taking note of this fact pushes the total cost of the bill well over $1 trillion and destroys any pretense of budget balance.
It is beyond fantastic to promise that future Congresses, for 10 straight years, will allow planned cuts in reimbursements to hospitals, other providers, and Medicare Advantage (thereby reducing the benefits of 25% of seniors in Medicare). The 1997 Balanced Budget Act pursued this strategy and successive Congresses steadily unwound its provisions. The very fact that this Congress is pursuing an expensive new entitlement belies the notion that members would be willing to cut existing ones.
Most astounding of all is what this Congress is willing to do to struggling middle-class families. The bill would impose nearly $400 billion in new taxes and fees. Nearly 90% of that burden will be shouldered by those making $200,000 or less.
It might not appear that way at first, because the dollars are collected via a 40% tax on sales by insurers of “Cadillac” policies, fees on health insurers, drug companies and device manufacturers, and an assortment of odds and ends.
But the economics are clear. These costs will be passed on to consumers by either directly raising insurance premiums, or by fueling higher health-care costs that inevitably lead to higher premiums. Consumers will pay the excise tax on high-cost plans. The Joint Committee on Taxation indicates that 87% of the burden would fall on Americans making less than $200,000, and more than half on those earning under $100,000.
Industry fees are even worse because Democrats chose to make these fees nondeductible. This means that insurance companies will have to raise premiums significantly just to break even. American families will bear a burden even greater than the $130 billion in fees that the bill intends to collect. According to my analysis, premiums will rise by as much as $200 billion over the next 10 years—and 90% will again fall on the middle class.
Senate Democrats are also erecting new barriers to middle-class ascent. A family of four making $54,000 would pay $4,800 for health insurance, with the remainder coming from subsidies. If they work harder and raise their income to $66,000, their cost of insurance rises by $2,800. In other words, earning another $12,000 raises their bill by $2,800—a marginal tax rate of 23%. Double-digit increases in effective tax rates will have detrimental effects on the incentives of millions of Americans.
Lieberman Says Baucus Health Bill Will Raise Prices and Taxes by $400 Billion:
Pricewaterhouse Coopers Report Baucus Bill will cause premiums to rise by $1700 per family by 2013.
You can examine the report yourself HERE. Fox News Analysis did an analysis with a GOP Senator
Clinton Advisor Dick Morris on What the Obama-care Bills Mean for You
Morris gives more details about the high price of Obama-care HERE and HERE.
Were Saved! Mew House Health Bill Only Costs $900 Billion and Will be Deficit Neutral for 10 Years….
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday new estimates showed a healthcare overhaul drafted by Democrats would reduce the U.S. budget deficit over 10 years and cost less than $900 billion.
The preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office moved Democratic leaders closer to finishing a merger of three separate healthcare reform bills into one for debate on the House floor.
Ok now how did they do it….. well this is the part where the proposal gets a lot less popular.
They do it by starting the new taxes now, cutting Medicare now, reducing the rates at which doctors are reimbursed now and kicking in the “reform” five years from now so that the new government expense for the program wont fully kick in for five years.
Those of you who are old enough to remember the 1970’s know what price controls do. They limit supply and choice. Oil lines, brown outs and rolling power outages in California etc. When you can’t make sufficient profit to cover costs, growth, and unexpected economic shocks would you produce more of it?
The $871 billion estimate — well under the $900 billion limit set by President Obama — is the latest of several versions scored by congressional budget analysts, according to a Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. The measure would include a government-run insurance plan that pays providers at rates tied to Medicare, the aide added. That so-called “robust” public option is preferred by liberals because it would save the government money and could force private insurers to lower their own reimbursement rates, driving down the cost of health care overall. (Thats price controls which result in long wait lines and reduced quality – Editor]
But the idea is opposed by many conservative Democrats from rural areas, where Medicare rates are well below the national average. A new insurance plan that paid such low rates would be devastating to their communities financially, these Democrats say. Instead, they argue that any public plan should negotiate rates directly with providers, as private plans do.
Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com has a nice detailed explanation HERE Patientpowernow.com produced the following videos:
They produced this video criticizing Oregon State run health care and yes this is what Oregon did.
Canadians Speak Out On Health Care
This is from the Mackinac Center who has more video’s and details.
242 Patients Died of Malnutrition in British Health Service Hospitals in 2007
PRISONERS HAVE A BETTER DIET THAN NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE HOSPITAL PATIENTS, SCIENTISTS WARN
Patients in Great Britain’s government-run National Health Service (NHS) hospitals are far more likely to go hungry than criminals in jail, scientists warn.
They say frail and elderly patients do not get the help they need with meals, and nobody checks whether they get enough to eat. Despite years of Government promises to tackle poor hospital nutrition, food still arrives cold, and patients often miss out because meal times clash with tests and operations. Meanwhile, prisoners are enjoying carbohydrate-rich, low-fat foods which in many cases are better than they would have been eating on the outside.
The Daily Mail has been highlighting the scandal of old people not being fed properly in hospital as part of its Dignity for the Elderly campaign. Hospital meals are often taken away untouched, because they are either unappetizing or are placed out of patients’ reach:
The latest figures show 242 patients died of malnutrition in NHS hospitals in 2007 — the highest toll in a decade.
More than 8,000 left hospital under-nourished — double the figure when Labor came to power.
The NHS throws away 11million meals every year, and many nurses say they are too busy to help the frail eat.
Earlier this year the Mail revealed that some hospitals spend less on meals than the average prison:
Ten hospitals spent less on breakfast, lunch and an evening meal than the £2.12 (about U.S.$3.54) a day allocated for food by the prison service; one spent just £1 (about U.S.$1.67).
Although most hospitals do spend more than £2.12 (about U.S.$3.45), prisoners end up better nourished than patients, say experts from Bournemouth University.
After studying the food offered to inmates and across the NHS, they found patients face more barriers in getting good nutrition.
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: “It’s incredible that so many hospitals are failing to serve healthy meals. If prisons can serve good food then so can hospitals.”
Obama Administration Violating Hatch Act by using Tax Dollars to Politic for ObamaCare
And yes it’s illegal. In short the Department of Health and Human Services Web Site has a section on the right hand side of the page to sign up to support and lobby Congress ObamaCare. Of course there is only one option, to support it.Senator Grassley fired off a letter to HHS letting them know that it is illegal. Ed Morrissey at Hotair has more details. This administration seems to be politicizing most everything. Afghanistan, the CIA, FCC etc.
Jack Abramoff. Remember him? The former Republican lobbyist who was sentenced to five years for unlawful campaign fundraising and influence peddling crimes. The elite media had him on the TV and front pages for months. The New York Times published 235 stories on Jack Abramoff and of course it was a page 1 story from the beginning.
So here we have Norman Hsu, ….well lets have Associated Press tell the story:
NEW YORK – Former Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was sentenced Tuesday to more than 24 years in prison by a judge who accused him of funding his fraud by manipulating the political process in a way that “strikes at the very core of our democracy.”
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero sentenced the 58-year-old Hsu, who raised money for Hillary Rodham Clinton and others, to 20 years in prison for his guilty plea to fraud charges and another four years and four months in prison for his conviction at trial for breaking campaign finance laws.
In a lengthy criticism of Hsu’s fraud, the judge said the former fundraiser used political contributions to win respect and impress investors as he committed campaign finance fraud.
“Mr. Hsu’s disgraceful use of political campaigns to perpetuate his Ponzi schemes, as well as his acts of campaign finance fraud, strikes at the very core of our democracy,” Marrero said.
The judge said Hsu stole more than $50 million from hundreds of investors in a 10-year Ponzi scheme by winning their confidence with his pristine reputation and friendly nature, a two-faced quality the judge noted was common among certain white collar criminals.
Norman Hsu with Hillary
The government said at trial that Hsu used clients of his fraudulent investment business, including actors and other political novices, as straw donors to make thousands of dollars in campaign donations. The scheme bypassed rules limiting what any individual or group can donate.
During the May trial, prosecutors played a voicemail recording of Clinton, then a senator, effusively praising Hsu for his support.
“I’ve never seen anybody who has been more loyal and more effective and really just having greater success supporting someone than you,” she told him. “Everywhere I go, you’re there. If you’re not, you’re sending people to be part of my events. You know, we’re going to win this campaign, Norman, because you single-handedly are going to make that happen.”
Hmm…. so why hasn’t anyone heard of this guy? I went on Google and what did I discover? Well a 50 million dollar scandal at the highest levels of government should be big page 1 news right? After all, Abramoff only got got five years in prison and Hsu got 24. Oh I almost forgot, these are Democrats so thats ‘different’. The New York Times published all of 19 stories on Norman Hsu, none of which indicate that they were on page 1.
So I decided to do some searching on the other big fundraising scandals since 1990. Maria Hsia, another name you likely never heard, who was funneling bundled checks of illegal money of which the reported source was the Chinese Government and other Chinese interests to the Democrats, saw 22 stories in the New York Times and even managed a single page 1 mention upon her conviction.
Of course the two biggest names in illegal fundraising from Chinese interests to the Democrats are John Huang and Charlie Yah Lin Trie. Once again, unless you listened to the few talk hosts who covered this story like Quinn & Rose these are names you have likely never heard of. They raised funds for Democrats and Governor Clinton and on into his presidency. The group operated for nearly a decade.
The story was made more egregious by the fact that there were a number of policy changes that happened from Interior to Commerce that benefited the Chinese/Indonesian group including Trie and Huang. Huang was even named a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Commerce Department. While plead down to just a few counts, Huang and Trie’s group raised over a million dollars for the DNC and the Clinton Legal Defense Fund alone. The New York Times published 97 articles on Huang and 50 on Trie.
For more details on the depth of this corruption the Senate Report on this scandal is published HERE and published a short bio on Maria Hsia HERE.
This is a valuable lesson about what stories the elite media gives a prominent position and which ones they do not. It is one of the most effective ways they assert their own ideological bias.
Here is most the news I wanted to talk about in the last three weeks while I have been sick. Of course this resulted in falling behind on school work which didn’t help either. Keep checking back as News Roundup Part II is on the way. – Editor
ACORN has asked an “Independent Panel” to do an investigation of the organization.
Well ok come to find out it is not so independent after all.
In a press release, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis says, that as “a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees,” the group will immediately stop accepting anyone into ACORN office for service programs, will conduct in-service training of staff, and begin an audit “to review all of the systems and processes called into question by the videos,” to be conducted by the group’s Independent Advisory Council.
The Council includes many prominent Democrats, including the man who helped President Obama Transition Team, John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; Andrew Stern, International President of the Service Employees International Union; and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Hotair.com’s new blogger Karl has a few interesting details:
Cisneros, whoworked regularly with ACORNas HUD Secretary, would laterplead guilty to lying to the FBIto cover up a political embarrassment.Perfect choice. Townsend is so inependent that she called the stories of ACORN’s frequent involvement in voter fraud a“desperate smokescreen maneuver”masking an extensive coast-to-coast GOP push to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in 2008.No bias there. Stern heads SEIU, which hasa very cozy relationship with ACORN. How cozy? ACORN controls or significantly dominates several SEIU chapters. And Stern hand-picked ACORN’s Wade Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.He could not be more independent. And Podesta runs the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which has beencoordinating the public defense of ACORN this summer.He might be even more independent than Andy Stern.
Results from a national Sacred Heart University survey released today reveal that many news consumers believe the media played a significant role in electing President Barack Obama and that the media continue to promote his presidency.
“A large majority, 89.3 percent, suggested the national media played a very or somewhat strong role in helping to elect President Obama,” according to a summary of the findings. “Just 10.0 percent suggested the national media played little or no role. Further, 69.9 percent agreed the national news media are intent on promoting the Obama presidency while 26.5 percent disagreed. Some, 3.6 percent, were unsure.”
And 86.6 percent said they believe the news media try to influence public opinion and that they have their own public policy and political positions. This compares to 87.6 percent in 2008 and 70.3 percent in 2003.
The survey, the third Sacred Heart survey of its kind, was conducted from Sept. 8-11. I am still seeking demographic information about the people who took the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
Of those surveyed, 70.4 percent said they believe the national news media are not responsive to “consumer preferences and market desires.”
Congressional Research Service: Obama Wrong, Honduras Correct to Remove Zelaya
Another shocker and it is just like we told you HERE and HERE. The CRS Report is HERE.
The legal arguments made in the report, which was prepared by Senior Foreign Law Specialist Norma Gutierrez, are quite intricate and based in Honduran law. But the bottom line is this:
The Honduran Congress appears to have acted properly in deposing President Manuel Zelaya. Unlike in the United States, the Honduran Congress has the last word when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. Although there is no provision in Honduras’s Constitution for impeachment as such, the body does have powers to disapprove of the president’s official acts, and to replace him in the event that he is incapable of performing his duties. Most importantly, the Congress also has the authority to interpret exactly what that means.
The Supreme Court was legally entitled to ask the military to arrest Zelaya. The high court, which is the constitutional venue for trials of the president and other high-ranking officials, also recognized the Congress’s ouster of Zelaya when it referred his case back down to a lower court afterward, on the grounds that he was “no longer a high-ranking government official.”
The military did not act properly in forcibly expatriating Zelaya. According to the CRS report and other news stories, Honduran authorities are investigating their decision, which the military justified at the time as a means of preventing bloodshed. In fact, Zelaya should have been given a trial, and if convicted of seeking reelection, he would have lost his citizenship. But he is still a citizen now, and the Constitution forbids the expatriation of Honduran citizens by their government.
The proper line of succession was followed after Zelaya’s ouster. Because there was no Vice President in office when Zelaya was removed (he had resigned to run for president), Micheletti was the proper successor, as he had been president of the Congress.
“The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded the removal of former President Zelaya was Constitutional, and we must respect that,” Rep. Aaron Schock said today. “It’s unconscionable the administration would attempt to force Honduras to violate its own Constitution by cutting of foreign aid.”
By the way Zelaya’s thugs trashed part of the capital of Honduras, but since the elite media is in the tank for Obama there was zero coverage of it. Gateway Pundit has the DETAILS.
Our ambassador is the only person I met there who thinks there was a ‘coup.’ Let’s release the State Department legal analysis.
In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military “coup” that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it has created.
After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders from Honduras’s government, business community, and civil society, I can report there is no chaos there. There is, however, chaos to spare in the Obama administration’s policy toward our poor and loyal allies in Honduras.
That policy was set in a snap decision the day Mr. Zelaya was removed from office, without a full assessment of either the facts or reliable legal analysis of the constitutional provisions at issue. Three months later, it remains in force, despite mounting evidence of its moral and legal incoherence.
While in Honduras, I spoke to dozens of Hondurans, from nonpartisan members of civil society to former Zelaya political allies, from Supreme Court judges to presidential candidates and even personal friends of Mr. Zelaya. Each relayed stories of a man changed and corrupted by power. The evidence of Mr. Zelaya’s abuses of presidential power—and his illegal attempts to rewrite the Honduran Constitution, a la Hugo Chávez—is not only overwhelming but uncontroverted.
As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.
The presidential election is on schedule for Nov. 29. Under Honduras’s one-term-limit, Mr. Zelaya could not have sought re-election anyway. Current President Roberto Micheletti—who was installed after Mr. Zelaya’s removal, per the Honduran Constitution—is not on the ballot either. The presidential candidates were nominated in primary elections almost a year ago, and all of them—including Mr. Zelaya’s former vice president—expect the elections to be free, fair and transparent, as has every Honduran election for a generation.
Indeed, the desire to move beyond the Zelaya era was almost universal in our meetings. Almost.
In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.
When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a “coup,” he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh’s report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied.
On the other hand, the only thorough examination of the facts to date—conducted by a senior analyst at the Law Library of Congress—confirms the legality and constitutionality of Mr. Zelaya’s ouster. (It’s on the Internet here .)
Unlike the Obama administration’s snap decision after June 28, the Law Library report is grounded in the facts of the case and the intricacies of Honduran constitutional law. So persuasive is the report that after its release, the New Republic’s James Kirchick concluded in an Oct. 3 article that President Obama’s hastily decided Honduras policy is now “a mistake in search of a rationale.”
Police association contractor charged with snooping on ‘Joe the Plumber’
Now lets have the government have all of our medical records and tax records tied together with Obamacare….
A former contractor for the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police has been charged with rummaging through state computers to retrieve confidential information about “Joe the Plumber.”
Brett A. Gerke, 52, of 2329 Woodcreek Place on the Far North Side, is charged with attempted unauthorized use of property.
The Toledo-area resident was popularized as “Joe the Plumber” by Republican John McCain in a presidential debate the night before with Democrat Barack Obama.
Gerke was project manager in the development of the Ohio Local Law Enforcement Information Sharing Network, working on the project between 2004 and 2008 as a contractor for the police chiefs’ association.
Gerke used a test account and password he received to work on the project to search for information on Wurzelbacher and others, authorities say.
He was working as a contractor for the Ohio Department of Insurance at the time of the computer checks. Gerke’s lawyer, Joseph Scott of Columbus, would not comment on the case.
The Dispatch revealed several questionable checks of state computer systems for confidential information about Wurzelbacher after the presidential debate.
Helen Jones-Kelley, then director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, authorized several computer checks on Wurzelbacher that the state inspector general concluded had no legal purpose.
Jones-Kelley, who was suspended by Gov. Ted Strickland after The Dispatch also revealed that she used her state e-mail account to raise campaign funds for Obama, later resigned. Two of her top aides also lost their jobs.
Government Blew Up GI Bill Program for Veterans Too
It’s not just cash for Clunkers, Medicare, Social Security, etc etc…
The U.S. government failed to send promised college tuition checks to tens of thousands of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars before they returned to school this fall, even after being warned that it was inadequately staffed for the job.
The Veterans Affairs Department blamed a backlog of claims filed for GI Bill education benefits that has left veterans who counted on the money for tuition and books scrambling to make ends meet.
Veterans like American University student John Kamin, who received a letter Wednesday from the Army. He was hoping it contained news that his overdue GI Bill college tuition money would soon arrive. Instead, the Iraq war veteran was informed that he may be called back into active duty.
“It felt like salt in the wound,” said the 24-year-old from New York City. He is depleting his savings account and borrowing money from his parents to make up for thousands of dollars the government promised him to complete his political science degree.
“That was really disheartening,” Mr. Kamin said.
He isn’t alone. Out of more than 277,000 veterans who have filed for the college tuition benefits this semester, more than 200,000 claims have been processed and approved, but fewer than 11 percent of the veterans have received the funding, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).
The late-payments episode is the latest in a string of embarrassing cases of VA failures for the nation’s veterans.
Earlier this year, it was discovered that three VA medical centers failed to properly sterilize endoscopes, exposing 10,000 patients to infections including the HIV virus.
Last month, the agency sent letters to 600 veterans erroneously telling them they had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Last year, the VA was embroiled in numerous scandals involving tests and medical experiments on veterans in which officials failed to follow certain standards.
For Obama American Decline is a Deliberate Choice
Charles Krauthammer’s brilliance on display once again. By the way he has a medical degree, degrees in political science and economics and is a board certified psychiatrist.
This is yet another of a very long list of sexist attacks against Sarah Palin from the elite media and the far left.
The news-Miner published an apology to Gov. Palin for calling her a broad HERE. Hotair.com rightly asks, “but an explanation of how editors signed off on the caption is also in order — and someone should be out looking for a new job”.
Journalism is it used to be is dead. Now you get more truth from some of the partisan press and at least they are honest enough to tell you that they have a point of view. We here at IUSB have an agenda to, to focus upon and highlight exactly what the elite media culture does not. Only that way can you be more fully informed.
The Power and Importance of New Media
CBS forged documents against president Bush, Monica Lewinski, Kathleeen Willey, Juanita Broaderick, Van Jones, ACORN , whats really in that House health care bill anyways; most of the big stories of our time are not broke by the elite media. They are broken by talk radio, blogs, Matt Drudge, and Fox News.
On Meet the Press this past Sunday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman railed against internet news sources, referring to them as an “open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information.” He continued to mock new media, suggesting that the American public is incapable of deciphering between facts, fiction and opinion, when he said that modems should have a warning label from the surgeon general that reads “judgment not included.” What Mr. Friedman cannot understand is that web-based information sources like blogs, wikis and vlogs (video blogs) are the new beat reporters and investigative journalists of our time.
~snip
In a June 18, 2009, article in Forbes magazine, pollster John Zogby noted that over twice as many Americans trust internet news sources more than television, newspapers and radio. That poll came just eighteen months after a Harris Poll showed that 54 percent of Americans, in general, do not trust the press.
Veteran journalists such as Mr. Friedman want you to distrust new media. But it’s clear that the American people no longer trust the old press corps. Mainstream media’s complete disregard for the Van Jones controversy has highlighted the need for a new breed of watchdog – citizen’s journalists, as well as internet based professional news organizations that can bring back the investigative journalism prowess and objectivity that is lacking in the traditional Fourth Estate.
By the way, he is wrong about the “wikis”. Wikis claim to be public information but the truth is that ideological zealots, PR pros and law firms have managed to get in as “official” editors in the wiki’s to act as “watch dogs”. Wiki’s have become nothing but PR nonsense much of which is just plain inaccurate, but we know AT means well.
ACORN Took Tax and Charity $$$ for Poor and Transfered it to Themselves, Political Allies.
Documents released by a Senate Republican on Thursday show that leaders of the ACORN community organizing network transferred several million dollars in charitable and government money meant for the poor to arms of the group that have political and sometimes profit-making missions.
ACORN’s tax-exempt groups and allied organizations [~snip] used more than half their charitable and public money in 2006 to pay other ACORN affiliates, according to an analysis by the tax staff of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
On Thursday, Grassley called the transactions a “big shell game” and said ACORN donors may be surprised by how the liberal group known for helping the poor obtain housing and health care was spending their money. He urged the Internal Revenue Service to take a closer look.
According to the Grassley report, charities “are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or to other organizations for purposes other than what the donor may have intended. . . . Dollars raised for charitable [purposes] appear to be used for impermissible lobbing and political activity.”
Fearful that they’re losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.
The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party’s spines on the contentious issue, say it’s unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they’ve been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.
State of Michigan to Mom: Stop Babysitting Neighbors Kids
IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.
Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.
“I was freaked out. I was blown away,” she said. “I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls” — that is, the mothers whose kids she watches — “every one of them.”
Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.
On Tuesday, agency Director Ismael Ahmed said good neighbors should be allowed to help each other ensure their children are safe. Gov. Jennifer Granholm instructed Ahmed to work with the state Legislature to change the law, he said.
Of course the problem is that a nameless, faceless, idiot bureaucrat had to sign off on this action. This is yet another example of how extremists, idiots and others who have no place wielding any power at all are attracted to government and education jobs.
One day after the Herald reported some surprised Bay State inmates – including murderers and rapists – were cashing in $250 stimulus checks, federal officials revealed the same behind-bars bonus was mailed to nearly 4,000 cons nationwide.
A federal watchdog is now probing how the cons were cut the checks. The same cash also may have been sent to fugitive felons, people kicked out of the country and even individuals now deceased.
Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate [who has been actively involved with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - IUSB Vision Editor] calls his new book “Three Felonies a Day,” referring to the number of crimes he estimates the average American now unwittingly commits because of vague laws. New technology adds its own complexity, making innocent activity potentially criminal.
Mr. Silverglate describes several cases in which prosecutors didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand technology. This problem is compounded by a trend that has accelerated since the 1980s for prosecutors to abandon the principle that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent.
Some say that ignorance of the law is no excuse and if thats your view I suggest that you go turn yourself in immediately because you ARE guilty of something. Our government is so large and so foolish that it has creates so many laws and regulations that no one could possibly follow them all and will inadvertently violate some of them every single day.
Do you have any idea how many laws you violate when you have a garage sale?
Idiot Indiana prosecutor goes after old woman for buying two cold medicines:
Wabash Valley woman didn’t realize second cold medicine purchase violated drug laws
CLINTON — When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.
Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others won’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.
“This is a very traumatic experience,” Harpold said.
Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.
Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.
When the police came knocking at the door of Harpold’s Parke County residence on July 30, she was arrested on a Vermillion County warrant for a class-C misdemeanor, which carries a sentence of up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine. But through a deferral program offered by Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander, the charge could be wiped from Harpold’s record by mid-September.
Harpold’s story is one that concerns some law-abiding citizens who fear that innocent people will get mistakenly caught in the net of meth abuse roundups.
But the flip side of the story comes from the law enforcement arena, which is battling a resurgence in methamphetamine production in the Wabash Valley.
As the 12th-smallest county in the state, Vermillion County ranked as the state’s fifth-largest producer of methamphetamine just a few years ago.
“I don’t want to go there again,” Alexander told the Tribune-Star, recalling how the manufacture and abuse of methamphetamine ravaged the tiny county and its families.
While the law was written with the intent of stopping people from purchasing large quantities of drugs to make methamphetamine, the law does not say the purchase must be made with the intent to make meth.
“The law does not make this distinction,” Alexander said.
Anyone who has taken a law class knows that intent or criminal neglect/recklessness is one of the three conditions for determining if a crime has been committed. The charges should be dropped all together without paying court costs. She should have been interviewed but never arrested in the first place. Alexander is a lawyer who is supposed to be educated and enlightened and yet has no ability to use some common sense or to exercise her power with reasonable restraint.
Examine the comments under the story from the Tribune-Star. At the time of publishing of this post not one commenter supported the arrest of Miss Harpold proving once again that the average Joe is wiser than the enlightened elite.
This is child abuse and I stand by that statement 110% and challenge anyone to DARE debate me publicly on the subject.
The growing list of these video’s is a real indicator of just what bad judgement many teachers have, but also to the degree the NEA will go to abuse the public trust for their own partisan reasons. How many times must we learn the lesson that cults of personality have consequences?
The caption with the video says: Sand Hill Elementary School in Asheville, NC
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
How often is this going on when we don’t find the video?
Our friend Michael van der Galien at Poligazette posted a link to a study that explains the degree in which bad government can destroy wealth, kill jobs and raise the prices of everything you buy.
Poligazette explains that the total cost of regulation to the State of California is $492.994 billion per year. That is ‘almost five times the State’s general fund budget, and almost a third of the State’s gross product.’ 3.8 million jobs are lost because of overregulation which is a tenth of the State’s population. Furthermore:
Since small business constitute 99.2% of all employer businesses in California, and all of non-employer business, the regulatory cost is borne almost completely by small business. The total cost of regulation was $134,122.48 per small business in California in 2007, labor income not created or lost was $4,359.55 per small business, indirect business taxes not generated or lost were $57,260.15 per small business, and finally roughly one job lost per small business.
Some people feel better “when that rich guy” or “that business owner” gets taxed. Democrats play the class warfare game and tell us how they are going to “make them pay” etc… How does $500 Billion in lost wealth every year make you feel now? How many jobs could that money create? How many movie tickets bought, homes built, computers made, policeman trained, schools improved, cars repaired, and the list goes on?
It is important to keep in mind, every regulation is an arbitrary barrier to creating products, wealth and jobs. Getting rid of regulation does NOT mean getting rid of good policing. While rhetorically there may not be much difference between regulation and policing, in practice the difference is massive. We all want an active but limited government to protect us from fraud, abuse and crooks.
As I commented on Poligazette:
I hate to throw soot on a gloomy picture, but it is even worse.
Why does California, a state that has more ability to create wealth than most countries, have this level of regulation that is causing the state to fall apart and its population vote with their feet and leave?
For each of these regulations, someone benefits either monetarily or ideologically. Many of these regulations simply serve to pick winners and losers by tilting the scale to help some business while harming their competition; with the winners kicking money back to interest groups and legislators.
The California Legislature is so strapped with the corruption otherwise known as “political market economics” (aka corporatism light) that it is a wonder the state went this long before starting to fall apart economically. But until the people who vote there learn a lesson I do not expect things to change in any meaningful way.
These regulations keep coming and the latest proposals are to have the state ban certain colors from cars, mandate the color of the roof of buildings and even have your home thermostat connected to the internet so the state can control the temperature of your home.
President Obama’s diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to “step down” in favor of minorities, prescribed policies to make liberal talk radio more successful, and described Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela “an incredible revolution.”
Mark Lloyd’s provocative comments – most made during a tenure at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank – are giving fodder to critics who say Mr. Obama has appointed too many “czars” to government positions that don’t require congressional approval. They are also worrying to some conservatives who fear the FCC might use its powers to remove their competitive advantage on talk radio and television.
Many of the remarks have been unearthed by conservative-leaning writers and bloggers and discussed on cable television amid a broader critique of Mr. Obama’s penchant for czars that exploded with the ouster this month of “green jobs czar” Van Jones.
In one of his more eye-opening comments, Mr. Lloyd praised Mr. Chavez during a June 2008 conference on media reform, saying the authoritarian Venezuelan president had led “really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.”
~
At another conference, Mr. Lloyd spoke about the need to remove white people from powerful positions in the media to give minorities a fairer chance.
“There’s nothing more difficult than this because we have really truly, good, white people in important positions, and the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions,” he said.
“And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions, we will not change the problem. But we’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.”
He added: “There are few things, I think, more frightening in the American mind than dark-skinned black men. Here I am.”
Andrew Breitbart published the audio of the conference on his Breitbart.com Web site on Monday. Mr. Breitbart said the recording was made during a conference on media reform and racial justice in May 2005.
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.
Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it “Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold.”
The note was a follow-up to Ensign’s questioning at the markup.
Yet another “capitalism & America is evil” video shown to students.
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
UPDATE: Lou Dobbs on this indoctrination video called “The Story of Stuff”
“How The World Works” Took this video apart piece by piece.
This is a documentary about how sing alongs, peer pressure, the want of recognition, feeling of importance, and fear of humiliation was used to indoctrinate children into the Hitler Youth.
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.” – B. Obama
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
This is very disturbing. And by the way, what is it with the far left and their hostility towards freedom of speech and conscience? Well the far left is statist and absolutely convinced of their own moral and intellectual superiority…perhaps that has something to do with it.
Senator McConnell protests from the Senate Floor. Here is the entire clip – WATCH IT:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to go to the Senate floor on Tuesday to call out the Obama administration for using the full power of a federal regulatory agency to suppress free speech — specifically, to silence Humana’s predictions about the impact of proposed ObamaCare cuts to the Medicare Advantage program — led ABC, but not CBS or NBC, to air a story on the “gag order.”
ABC’s story began with a McConnell soundbite (“’Shut up,’ the government says, ‘don’t communicate with your customers. Be quiet and get in line,’”), before reporter Jonathan Karl explained McConnell was referring to the “Department of Health and Human Services, telling insurance companies who serve Medicare recipients, to stop ‘misleading’ and ‘confusing’ mailings, saying, quote: ‘We are instructing you to immediately discontinue all such mailings, and remove any related materials from your Web sites.’”
Karl continued: “The extraordinary order comes in response to a mailing the Humana insurance company sent to customers in the Medicare Advantage program. The Humana mailing warned that because of Medicare cuts in the health care reform bills, quote, ‘millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many important benefits and services.’”
ABC News actually does a story on this…wow:
On Monday, HHS offered “guidance” to silence criticism: “MEDICARE ISSUES NEW GUIDANCE TO INSURANCE COMPANIES ON MEDICARE MAILINGS.”
So far, the government’s power play has succeeded. “Humana backed down, stopping the mailing and announcing that it would cooperate with the investigation,” James Taranto noted in his Monday “Best of the Web,” lamenting: “Corporations may provide lots of useful goods and services, but never count on them to take a stand for freedom.”
Now the question is, will the media champion free speech and be outraged by the abuse of power to suppress it, or will most journalists not mind the government hushing voices which go against Obama?
The story on the Tuesday, September 22 World News on ABC (transcript provided by the MRC’s Brad Wilmouth):
CHARLES GIBSON: In Washington, the Senate Finance Committee today began voting on amendments to the health care reform bill, and the bill that comes out of that committee will become the centerpiece for the health care debate. But even before the amendment process began, a war of words broke out over what one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies is saying about the bill. Here’s Jonathan Karl.
JONATHAN KARL: It’s not often you hear language like this on the Senate floor.
MITCH MCCONNELL, SENATE MINORITY LEADER: “Shut up,” the government says, “don’t communicate with your customers. Be quiet and get in line.”
KARL: He’s talking about this order issued last night by the Department of Health and Human Services, telling insurance companies who serve Medicare recipients to stop “misleading” and “confusing” mailings, saying, quote, “We are instructing you to immediately discontinue all such mailings, and remove any related materials from your Web sites.” The extraordinary order comes in response to a mailing the Humana insurance company sent to customers in the Medicare Advantage program.
The Humana mailing warned that because of Medicare cuts in the health care reform bills, quote, “millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many important benefits and services.” But Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus says it is misleading to say his bill cuts Medicare benefits and ordered the HHS to investigate, prompting the gag order. Some legal experts say the order is unconstitutional. Senator McConnell agrees.
MCCONNELL: We cannot allow government officials to target individuals or companies because they do not like what they say.
KARL: And even some Democratic Senators are concerned that the bill now before the Senate Finance Committee reduces spending on Medicare Advantage by $123 billion.
SENATOR BILL NELSON (D-FL): I think it would be intolerable to ask the senior citizens on Medicare who have it to give up substantial health benefits that they’re enjoying under Medicare.
KARL: HHS declined a request for an on-camera interview, but told us that they are investigating whether the mailings illegally give the impression that they are official communications from Medicare. While that investigation goes forward, Charlie, the gag order remains in place.
CBS News Liberty Blog (amazing that they have a libertarian guy who has a liberty blog):
The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.
A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.
A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”
The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.
See the timing of this, they knew in November that this would take a huge chunk of money out of the economy. 1% of GDP is massive (dont sound much but in economic terms its huge). This means that the clips of Democrats and the White House saying that this would not cost much that Glenn played above…. well they were lying and full well knew it.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in Cernobbio, Italy
Published: 9:06PM BST 06 Sep 2009
The US Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.
Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China’s green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed’s recourse to “credit easing”.
“We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again,” he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.
“If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies,” he said.
China’s reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world’s largest.
“Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets,” he added.
UPDATE II – ACORN office number five! San Diego ACORN offered to help smuggle the teen sex workers through Mexico! This video was released on the Sean Hannity Show moments ago September 16th 2009.
UPDATE – San Bernardino ACORN office sting. Worst yet so far – LINK.
As you all know the Baltimore and Washington DC office of ACORN was caught on hidden camera aiding and conspiring to help others commit prostitution, tax fraud, bank fraud, and child sex trafficking. We covered this story and showed you the video HERE.
Now on Andrew Brietbart’s web site the third video of the New York office sting has been posted and odds are this is just the beginning. The NY Post has a story on the sting HERE.
By the way, ACORN released a statement saying that this sting was tried and FAILED in New York. It looks like they lied.
This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.
-Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, ACORN
UPDATE V – ACORN office number five! San Diego ACORN offered to help smuggle the teen sex workers through Mexico! This video was released on the Sean Hannity Show moments ago September 16th 2009.
UPDATE IV – San Bernardino ACORN office sting. Worst yet so far – LINK.
UPDATE III – Now the New York office has been caught, same sting – LINK.
UPDATE II –
UPDATE – ACORN has a problem, they are blaming a couple of rogue employees at one office and saying that they are not representative of the organization, but after this startling revelation at the Baltimore ACORN office, it has been revealed that multiple offices engaged in illegal conduct on hidden camera. - LINK
One day after two ACORN officials in Baltimore were fired for offering to help a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute to engage in child prostitution and a series of tax crimes, another secretly shot videotape has surfaced that shows the same couple getting similar advice from ACORN officers in Washington.
The newly released videotape, shot on July 25, shows ACORN staffers explaining to the pair how they can hide the woman’s professed work — prostitution — and get a loan that will help them establish a brothel.
James O’Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as the pimp while visiting the ACORN office, accompanied by 20-year-old Hannah Giles, who posed as the prostitute. On a videotape provided to FOXNews.com, they are seen receiving guidance to establish the woman as the sole proprietor of a bogus company to mask the nature of her business.
“She’s not going to put on (the loan application) that she’s doing prostitution … she doesn’t have to,” the ACORN staffer says. “You don’t have to sit back and tell people what you do.”
Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.
Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy – almost four months early.
They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.
Miss Capewell, 23, said doctors refused to even see her son Jayden, who lived for almost two hours without any medical support.
She said he was breathing unaided, had a strong heartbeat and was even moving his arms and legs, but medics refused to admit him to a special care baby unit.
Miss Capewell is now fighting for a review of the medical guidelines.
Medics allegedly told her that they would have tried to save the baby if he had been born two days later, at 22 weeks.
In fact, the medical guidelines for Health Service hospitals state that babies should not be given intensive care if they are born at less than 23 weeks.
The guidance, drawn up by the Nuffield Council, is not compulsory but advises doctors that medical intervention for very premature children is not in the best interests of the baby, and is not ’standard practice’.
James Paget Hospital in Norfolk refused to comment on the case but said it was not responsible for setting the guidelines relating to premature births.
A trust spokesman said: ‘Like other acute hospitals, we follow national guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine regarding premature births.’
Good video and an important point. While war powers give the executive more power during times of conflict, the DHS Secretary did go through the standard vetting process and the few presidents who have created “Czar” positions in the White House appointed only 1-4 of them and kept their role in the government very limited such as the “Drug Czar” appointment whose job it is to keep the president informed on the international drug trade. The Drug Czar runs the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (LINK) and unlike many of these other new “czar” positions it is a pretty open book.
The point about the shadow government is an important one and Democrat Robert Byrd was the first to sound the alarm on this issue. Remember when one of Obama’s Czar’s was caught telling the staff ”to put nothing in writing, ever.” LINK. Czar’s can escape Congressional oversight because it can be said that they are special advisors to the president and are thus covered by “executive privilege”. These people are not just advisors, they seem to be implementors.
Fox News does a good job presenting this issue factually as it is consistent with the history of government radio censorship that we learned in communications classes at IUSB.
And now you understand why the Stimulus Bill is mostly just growing government and not creating jobs.
By the way, one of the founders of Apollo Alliance is Jeff Jones, the other guy who founded the “Weather Underground” terrorist group with Bill Ayers who was Barack Obama’s employer before he ran for Senate. (LINK)
UPDATE II – OUT. Keep in mind that before the resignation, ABC, CBS, NBC, NYT and WashPost did ZERO coverage of this story before the resignation. Fox News was the only one that covered it. – Byron York on the elite media giving no coverage of the mounting story.
UPDATE: Bob Beckel says that Jones should be filing for unemployment.
The past of Van Jones has been coming out for a while and as David Horowitz said, “One does not declare himself to be a communist three years after the wall came down without knowing and approving of what went on behind that wall.”
Gateway Pundit, a prominent blogger, did the background checks that the White House and/or FBI failed to do and found Van Jones as signatory number 46 on 911truth.org. The 9/11 Truther’s believe that the Bush Administration engineered the attack to murder 3000 Americans.
Jones was 47 on the list and now he is 46 (LINK to view), I wonder whose name got scrubbed.
Jones also helped to found a group called STORM, a self proclaimed revolutionary Marxist group. On September 12, 2001 STORM held an event to bring attention to the victims of evil AMERICAN imperialism. So much for our 300 victims of radical islamists.
Jones also led a protest to free a convicted cop killer LINK.
Charles Krauthammer, Mara Liasson and Stephen Hayes comment on Van Jones
In this video Van Jones Compares President Bush to a “Crack head” for wanting to increase the US supply of domestic energy. The problem with Van Jones point of view here is that it is typical of someone who is an avowed communist in that they are in complete denial of basic laws of economics. If I were thrown out a broken window I would hope that the laws of gravity would not apply to me, it is just as foolish to claim that the laws of supply and demand do not apply to energy as Van Jones does. perhaps Jones forgot that there is this oil cartel called OPEC that manipulates the market to suck as many dollars out of us as possible. The more domestic energy we produce the more energy prices fall and the more the influence of the cartel is lessened.
Van Jones says that white people and white environmentalists are putting poluution in minority communities. Ok talk about your goofball conspiracy theories.
Van Jones says and advocates that the “green movement” is being used to incrementally transfer the capitalist system to a socialist system. No shock we have been saying that for years, but at least now they admit it. Via Hotair.com and Naked Emporer News. This interview was from 17 months ago.
Ed Morrissey comments: Jones, the green jobs czar, explains how his allies want to conduct a revolution on the sly. Call it radical incrementalism, call it an offshoot of the Alinksy method, but it certainly seems that Jones is easily the most radical White House aide in many, many years.
By the way, the networks, the NYT and Washington Post have not covered this story at all. If Bush were president and a joker like this was in the administration they would be all over it, wall to wall. Fox is covering it.
Glenn Beck dedicated a show to Van Jones:
Ann Coulter: The elite media has become the guard dog for the administration instead of the guard dog for the people –
Michelle Malkin – On Jones and the other Marxist Czar’s that got lucky and were propped up bt far left foundation money from Tides Foundation, Ford Foundation and George Soros. –
This is a great piece on the plan for the government to shut down the internet from CBS news correspondent Declan McCullagh. Declan McCullagh asks some critically important questions about this proposed bill and policy that are worth examining:
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.
“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”
Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller’s aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.
A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president’s power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.
When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. “We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs–from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records,” Rockefeller said.
The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government’s role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is “not as prepared” as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.
Rockefeller’s revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a “cybersecurity workforce plan” from every federal agency, a “dashboard” pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a “comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy” in six months–even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.
The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. “As soon as you’re saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it’s going to be a really big issue,” he says.
Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.” The White House is supposed to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government. (“Cyber” is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)
“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” EFF’s Tien says. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)…The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review. That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”
Translation: If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.
The Internet Security Alliance’s Clinton adds that his group is “supportive of increased federal involvement to enhance cyber security, but we believe that the wrong approach, as embodied in this bill as introduced, will be counterproductive both from an national economic and national secuity perspective.”
Update at 3:14 p.m. PDT: I just talked to Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee, on the phone. She sent me e-mail with this statement:
The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president’s authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks. To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a “government shutdown or takeover of the Internet” and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government’s response.
Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for an on-the-record answer to these four questions that I asked her colleague on Wednesday. I’ll let you know if and when I get a response.
Here are the four questions:
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Query from CBS News re: revised Rockefeller/Cybersecurity Act / S.773
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:20:11 -0700
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@cbsnews.com>
Reply-To: declan@cbsnews.com
Organization: CBSNews.com
To: charles_stewart@commerce.senate.gov
Charles,
Thanks for talking a minute ago. I’m reading a revised draft of the
Cybersecurity Act/S.773 dated this month and had a few questions:
* The original version of the legislation allowed the National
Cybersecurity Advisor to disconnect “critical” networks from the
Internet. The revised version says the president can “declare a
cybersecurity emergency” relating to “nongovernmental” networks and
“direct the national response to the cyber threat.” That seems vague:
does it mean the executive branch does or does *not* have the power to
disconnect private networks?
* The revised version gives the executive branch 180 days to “implement”
a “comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy” and 90 days to develop
a plan to implement a “dashboard pilot project.” But the mandated legal
review won’t be done until 1 year. Why not wait until the legal review
is done before implementing a “comprehensive national cybersecurity
strategy?”
* In Silicon Valley and the tech industry in general, lots of employees
do not have formal training in computer security (they may studied math
or physics, for instance) but nevertheless work in that area. Bill
Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, don’t have college
degrees. Will the cybersecurity certification program be open to
non-degreed people? And does the “certified service provider” extend to
services like Gmail and Hotmail?
* One section says that private sector crit. infrastructure firms “shall
share” certain information with the federal government. Is this
open-ended, or are there limits to this requirement?
SANTA FE, N.M. — New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former high-ranking members of his administration won’t be criminally charged in a yearlong federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving one of the Democratic governor’s large political donors, someone familiar with the case said.
The decision not to pursue indictments was made by top Justice Department officials, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified because federal officials had not disclosed results of the probe.
“It’s over. There’s nothing. It was killed in Washington,” the person told The Associated Press.
A federal grand jury began an investigation in 2008 into a possible pay-to-play scheme in which lucrative work on state bond deals went to a Richardson donor. The federal probe derailed Richardson’s appointment as commerce secretary in President Barack Obama’s administration.
Richardson withdrew his nomination in January, saying the investigation would have delayed his confirmation although he said expected to be cleared.
Richardson and members of his staff traveled to Cuba this week for a trade mission. Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos didn’t immediately respond to e-mail messages seeking confirmation that no charges were expected from the federal investigation.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Albuquerque said he had no information about the Justice Department’s decision and couldn’t comment.
Rep. Henry Waxman is making America’s health insurance companies an offer they can’t refuse.
Like a mafia underboss trying to face down a rival crime family, the powerful California Democratic chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has resorted to ugly intimidation tactics with opponents of government-run health care.
In the spirit of Joe McCarthy, earlier this week, Waxman and House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak, D-MI, sent a letter to 52 of the nation’s largest health insurance companies that contained a not-so-veiled threat.
Democrat Congressman Henry Waxman
Waxman and Stupak’s letter demanded detailed information from health insurance companies about executive pay, corporate conferences and retreats, and other business practices.
For any employees or officers making more than $500,000 a year in the past six years, the congressmen are demanding details on salaries, bonuses, pensions and other compensation.
They’re asking for a list of conferences and retreats that are paid for by insurance companies. They’re also insisting that insurance companies disclose the identity of all board members and their compensation.
According to the letter, all this information must be provided by Sept. 14 as part of an investigation of “executive compensation and other business practices in the health insurance industry.”
Imagine that. An investigation of health insurance compensation launched by two powerful Democratic House Committee Chairmen in the midst of a coordinated campaign to vilify health insurance companies.
As far as intimidation tactics go, this latest move by Waxman and Stupak makes the White House’s effort to “flag” online political opponents look small time.
Waxman and Stupak are attempting to use raw political power to silence their opponents, plain and simple. If that’s not the case, why single out one sector of healthcare and not others, like physician groups, hospitals, and drug companies? Could it be because many of these groups have publicly supported the emerging Democratic legislation?
The problem for Democrats is that making health insurance companies the cartoon villains of heath care reform is a sign of desperation, not strength.
President Obama and his congressional allies have insisted for months that government health insurance is necessary, not to lay the groundwork for a single payer system, but to provide healthy competition for insurance companies.”To keep them honest,” in the president’s words.
But the more they talk down private health insurance in order to talk up government health insurance, the more the public distrusts government health insurance.
The latest NBC news poll found that 47 percent of Americans now oppose the government health insurance plan while just 43 percent support it. That’s a reversal of opinion from last month’s poll, in which 46 percent supported the government plan and 44 percent were opposed.
Americans have a lot to be dissatisfied with when it comes to private health insurance, but we’re not buying the argument that “competition” from government run health insurance will fix things.
If the White House is so interested in creating competition, why not give health care consumers real choices of better plans by creating a national health insurance market?
Today, there are more than 1,300 health insurance companies in America divided among 50 different state markets with 50 different sets of regulation of what level of coverage private health insurance plans must offer in each state.
Consumers are currently prohibited from buying less expensive health insurance policies issued by a private health insurer in another state. Creating a nationwide health insurance market in which individuals or groups can choose better and less expensive coverage from another state would create real competition and force private insurers in each state to create better products, improve service and lower prices.
Americans know the public option is declining rapidly in support, and Waxman and Stupak know that we know it. That’s why they’ve resorted to Sopranos-style tactics with health insurance companies.
For them, private insurance companies aren’t legitimate options for Americans seeking higher quality, lower cost health care. They’re poll-tested straw men in a desperate campaign to create government run health care.
Maybe that’s why Americans view their health insurance companies more favorably than their congressmen.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has published 19 books, including 10 fiction and nonfiction best-sellers. He is the founder of the Center for Health Transformation and chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future.
President Barack Obama has an unquenchable need to control things. And now, it appears that he wants to control our access to the Internet.
In late January, when Congress was debating the $790 billion “stimulus bill,” I wrote in this column Obama had no intention of growing the economy, but rather, he just wanted to control it. Never before had I experienced such an outcry of reaction, with people literally stopping me in the streets to ask, “How dare you say such a horrible thing about the president?”
That was seven months and a couple trillion dollars, ago. Not only has the stimulus failed to stimulate, but Obama has even had to re-write the history of his own stimulus promises. And his need to control things has gotten more intense. Two American car companies, a handful of banks and financial institutions, salaries paid to corporate executives, the entire American medical profession and health-care industry – Obama needs to control it all.
And now, the man who ran the most successful political campaign in history utilizing online technology appears to be in an amazingly self-serving way planning to restrict other people’s use of the Internet.
Cass Sunstein, an American legal scholar and Harvard law professor, has been appointed by Obama to head up the White House Office of Information And Regulatory Affairs. His title is sufficiently broad and ambiguous, but he wields plenty of power. And with advance copies circulating of Sunstein’s new book “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” Americans who still care about their rights to “freedom of speech” should be paying close attention.
Perhaps most disturbing is Sunstein’s vision for the future of web content, as he argues for a so-called “notice and take down” law. Under this provision, those who operate webs sites – the Tribune, radio stations, private bloggers, and perhaps even you – we would all be required to “take down falsehoods upon notice” from the U.S. government.
And not only would the original content of web sites be scrutinized by the government for “falsehoods,” web site operators would also be held responsible for the content of “posts” created by the web site’s visitors and readers. At first blush it may seem that for a web operator to be held accountable for content generated by “posters” is completely untenable. But that may very well be Sunstein’s goal – to create an “untenable situation” for web site operators – given his assertion that “a ‘chilling effect’ on those who would spread destructive falsehoods can be an excellent idea.”
But who shall determine what, exactly, is “true” and “false”? Sunstein laments the supposed “lie” that emerged during last year’s presidential race, that “Barack Obama pals around with terrorists.” Despite that fact that a friendship between Obama and known domestic terrorist William Ayers was something that both men acknowledged, Sunstein alludes to the notion that this was one of those “destructive falsehoods” of the sort that needs to be policed.
MITCH MCCONNELL, SENATE MINORITY LEADER: “Shut up,” the government says, “don’t communicate with your customers. Be quiet and get in line.”
KARL: And even some Democratic Senators are concerned that the bill now before the Senate Finance Committee reduces spending on Medicare Advantage by $123 billion.
