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When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

Entries Tagged as 'Destroying the American People'

ObamaCare and Voters: Clinton and Obama told Democrats it would be popular. Whoops.

October 31st, 2010 · Corruption, Dissention, Healthcare, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within

By the time anyone finds out, the bill will already have passed!!

Midterm elections amid a lousy economy are usually bad for the President’s party, but it looks as if a neutron bomb may detonate on Democrats in 2010. And one of the major reasons that this year shifted from ordinary losses to potential catastrophe is ObamaCare. This election is a referendum on an entitlement the public never wanted and continues to hate, as evidence from around the country is showing.

Take almost any poll at random. Even this week’s New York Times-CBS poll has repeal leading among likely voters, 47% to 43%. The latest Pew-National Journal survey shows that a majority of likely voters—51%—favors repeal, including 53% of independents. The Real Clear Politics average of all polling shows support for the law at 40.9%—and opposition at 50.6%.

The Kaiser Family Foundation—whose outlier tracking poll has consistently shown the most ObamaCare support—now reports that only 42% view the law favorably. That’s a seven-point drop since September, and it happened to coincide with the start date for the “patients bill of rights,” which Kaiser says is among the bill’s popular parts. Voters are learning that mandates—like those that allow “children” to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26—tend to increase costs.

There are many other such scales-from-the-eyes moments. The New England Journal of Medicine, another outlet for ObamaCare partisans, recently conceded in a “perspective” akin to an editorial that “it seems clear that Americans today have very negative views about the general direction of the country,” in large part because of the health bill.

Speaking of the shock of recognition, there’s the case of Earl Pomeroy. The nine-term North Dakota Democrat earned liberal plaudits for his numerous TV ads defending ObamaCare and his vote for it, as well as blasting Republican Rick Berg for ostensibly putting “big insurance first.”

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Price tag of midterm campaign likely to hit $4 billion: Helping America HOW??

October 29th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Economy, Ethics, Government, Politics

By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 27, 2010; 10:17 PM

The midterm numbers just keep piling up.

In the latest sign of this year’s record-breaking election season, an independent research group estimated Wednesday that candidates, parties and outside interest groups together could spend up to $4 billion on the campaign.

Data from the Center for Responsive Politics provide evidence for a spending surge, even without a White House race. Expenditures have eclipsed what they were when George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000. The current election makes that contest “look like a bargain,” said Sheila Krumholz, CRP’s executive director.

There are three general tides of money swamping this year’s elections, according to CRP’s data: House and Senate candidates, who have reported raising $1.7 billion; the political parties, with about $1.1 billion; and outside interest groups, which have raised at least $400 million.

That adds up to $3.2 billion, but the numbers are incomplete amid the frenzy of ad buys and other activity in the week before the election. Candidate campaigns alone are on pace to eclipse $2 billion, which is a remarkable number, given restrictions on contributions.

Other patterns are also becoming clearer as the data accumulate. Donations from Wall Street, medical and insurance firms, energy conglomerates and other corporations have shifted decisively toward Republicans over the past year because of policy disputes with Democrats and anticipation of a possible GOP takeover in Congress.

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Obama administration’s sex-ed program criticized by both sides of abstinence debate

October 29th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government Control, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Terrorism from Within

By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 12:27 AM

Over the past decade, politicians have battled about how to reduce the teen pregnancy rate: safe-sex vs. abstinence-only sex education programs, even as films such as “Juno” and births by famous teens such as Bristol Palin and Jamie Lynn Spears seemed to make adolescent pregnancies more socially acceptable.

At the same time, after declining for years, the teen pregnancy rate increased, but the pace at which teens were having babies appeared to stop falling or even inch up.

Now, the Obama administration has entered the politically sensitive debate, promising to put scientific evidence before political ideology. A $110 million campaign will support a range of programs, including those that teach about the risks of specific sexual activities and the benefits of contraception and others that focus primarily on encouraging teens to delay sex.

The initiative exemplifies the administration’s oft-repeated quest to find new strategies to defuse some of the nation’s most divisive issues. In this case, officials are hoping to appease advocates of teaching teens about condoms and other forms of birth control as well as those who oppose sex outside marriage.

Although the program is being hailed by many adolescent health experts, it is being denounced by some on both sides of the abstinence debate.

“This is one of those emotionally charged issues where it’s very difficult to find compromise,” said Amy E. Black, a political scientist at Wheaton College in Illinois. “It inevitably becomes entangled in a larger constellation of issues, such as abortion, that raise ideological, moral and religious questions.”

During the George W. Bush administration, the federal government spent $1.5 billion on programs that encouraged teens to delay sex until marriage. Critics said it was grounded in religious tenets and conservative doctrine, failed to educate teens about condoms in the age of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and ineffective.

In response, the Obama administration launched a teen pregnancy prevention program that officials promised would fund only programs that had been proven to work. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded $75 million to 75 groups to try to reproduce some of the 28 programs deemed to have been “proven effective through rigorous evaluation.”

HHS also awarded $35 million to 40 organizations to test “innovative strategies” that appeared promising. Altogether, 115 programs in 38 states and the District received funding.

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Most Americans worry about ability to pay mortgage or rent, poll finds

October 29th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Economy, Federal Spending, Housing Industry, Reform, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Unemployment

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Jon Cohen Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 12:52 AM

A majority of Americans now say they are worried about making their mortgage or rent payments, underscoring the extent of economic anxiety in the country heading into midterm elections.

A new Washington Post poll shows that concerns about housing payments have spiked since 2008 despite some improvements in the overall economy. In all, 53 percent said they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about having the money to make their monthly payment. Worries are the most intense among those with lower incomes and among African Americans.

The poll results highlight the political challenge facing the Obama administration: Despite committing hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out troubled financial firms, create jobs and keep distressed borrowers in their homes, it has not been able to make many people feel better about their personal situations or even relieve fears about the cost of a need as basic as shelter.

The recent foreclosure mess provides another example of this gap between the policy decisions in Washington and the sentiment of ordinary Americans. The poll reveals that just over half of the country thinks the administration should impose a national moratorium on foreclosures to sort out whether banks are improperly seizing the homes of struggling borrowers. But the White House rejected that idea, saying it would gravely wound the fragile housing market.

White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said the administration has deployed every possible resource at its disposal to “pull our economy back from the brink.”

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There They Went Again: The 111th Congress fits a familiar Democratic pattern.

October 29th, 2010 · Accountability, Congress, Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Federal Spending, Government, Government Control, Greed

Democrats and their allies are already rationalizing their likely defeat next Tuesday, variously blaming the economy, GOP obstructionism, corporate money, or an inexplicable collapse in President Obama’s communications skills. Whatever minor truth lies in these excuses, they obscure the larger reality: Americans appear ready to repudiate Democratic governance for the fourth consecutive time.

Senior Editorial Writer Joseph Rago maps out the bureaucracy to come.

Far from being a unique historical event, a GOP victory on Tuesday will repeat the pattern we have seen since the 1960s. Four times Democrats have won control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and four times they have attempted to govern from the left. Each time Americans saw that agenda and its results, and they rejected it at an early opportunity. Maybe there’s a lesson here.

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We cite the 1960s as a watershed because it marked the creation of the modern Democratic Party. The Southern conservatives who had checked the left since the de facto end of the New Deal in 1938 were swept away by LBJ’s 1964 landslide. Democrats implemented their fondest ambitions—the Great Society, Medicare and Medicaid—only to lose 47 House seats in 1966 and the White House two years later, as the Democratic coalition split over Vietnam and flower power.

Thanks to Watergate, Democrats returned to overwhelming dominance in 1976. Jimmy Carter had run as a centrist—he favored regulatory reform and sun-setting programs—but he quickly ran afoul of young liberals on Capitol Hill who had flooded into the House in 1974. They overrode Mr. Carter’s spending vetoes and ran his budget director out of town. Democrats avoided major losses in 1978 only to lose both the Senate and White House in the first Reagan landslide amid inflation and gasoline lines.

Their next chance to govern came in 1992, as Bill Clinton won the Presidency after 12 years of GOP dominance. Mr. Clinton ran as a New Democrat, but there were few of those in Congress. Democrats imposed a huge tax increase, put off welfare reform and tried to pass HillaryCare. They lost both houses in 1994, and they wouldn’t reclaim the House for 12 years, amid the near-defeat in Iraq and GOP corruption of 2006. For his part, Mr. Clinton saved his Presidency by moving back to the center.

The fourth great Democratic governing opportunity arrived two years ago as Barack Obama rode his post-partisan rhetoric and the financial panic to the largest win by a Democrat since LBJ. Their House majority swelled to 39 seats, and in the Senate they achieved a filibuster-proof 60 seats. The Republican “brand” was badly tarnished, and pundits heralded a new Democratic era. Amid the Democratic euphoria, New York Senator Chuck Schumer visited our offices and told us to cooperate with this new agenda or we would be irrelevant.

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While economy is down midterm campaign funds exceed $2 BILLION.

October 26th, 2010 · Congress, Deception, Economy, Government, Greed, Politics

House and Senate shatter fundraising records for midterm election and may exceed $2 billion

By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2010; 12:04 AM

House and Senate candidates have already shattered fundraising records for a midterm election and are on their way to surpassing $2 billion in spending for the first time, according to new campaign finance data.

To put it another way: That’s the equivalent of about $4 million for every congressional seat up for grabs this year.

The frantic fundraising by candidates has largely been overshadowed in recent weeks by a tide of spending by outside interest groups, most of it targeting vulnerable Democrats. Such groups could spend $400 million or more by Nov. 2.

But the latest Federal Election Commission data, along with a new study from a campaign watchdog group, show that most of the money sloshing around the 2010 elections is being raised and spent by the candidates themselves.

As of last week, House and Senate campaigns reported taking in more than $1.5 billion, exceeding the total collected by congressional candidates in 2006 and in 2008, FEC data show. Most of that money already has been put toward advertising and other expenses.

The Public Campaign Action Fund, a watchdog group, will release a study Tuesday predicting that House candidates alone could spend nearly $1.5 billion by the time the dust settles on Election Day. The calculation is based on previous elections in which about half of a campaign’s money was spent in the final month of the contest.

Senate campaigns are also on track to exceed the $550 million mark from 2006, bringing the likely total to $2 billion or more by the time the ballots are counted.

The surge is driven in part by the unusually broad battlefield in the House, where an estimated 90 seats are in play, almost all of them held by Democrats. Many Democratic incumbents are emptying their coffers in an attempt to win the message wars against GOP-allied interest groups.

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Big Insurance, Big Medicine: ObamaCare is already driving a wave of health-care consolidation—and higher costs.

October 26th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Federal Spending, Government Control, Healthcare, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within

ObamaCare’s once and future harms have been well chronicled, but the major effects so far are less obvious and arguably more important: A wave of consolidation is washing over the health markets, and the result is going to be higher costs.

The turn toward consolidation among insurance companies is not new, and neither is it among doctors, hospitals and other providers. Yet the health bill has accelerated these trends, as all sides race to anticipate and manage political risk and regulatory uncertainty. This dynamic is leading to much larger hospital systems and physician groups, and fewer insurers dominated by a handful of national conglomerates. ObamaCare was sold using the language of choice and competition, but it is actually reducing both.

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The first surge will come among the 1,200 insurers doing business in the U.S., given that a major goal of ObamaCare is to convert these companies into de facto public utilities. Those regulations are now being written—and once they’re up and running some medium-sized carriers will collapse under the new mandates and higher overhead. State insurance commissioners warned the Administration this month that “improper or overly strident application . . . could threaten the solvency of insurers or significantly reduce competition in some insurance markets.” They also implied that bankruptcies are likely.

With these headwinds, investors and Wall Street analysts are now predicting a lost decade for health insurance stocks. But it may be more accurate to say that there will be a lot of losers and some very big winners. Mergers and acquisitions will increase dramatically once companies get a better look at the regulation and figure out the valuation of M&A targets. Larger carriers will swallow smaller ones quietly before they fail.

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Employers looking at health insurance options

October 25th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government Control, Healthcare, Immigration, Money Lost, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Small Business, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treason, Treasury, Unemployment

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR – The Associated Press
Monday, October 25, 2010; 4:12 AM

WASHINGTON — The new health care law wasn’t supposed to undercut employer plans that have provided most people in the U.S. with coverage for generations.

But last week a leading manufacturer told workers their costs will jump partly because of the law. Also, a Democratic governor laid out a scheme for employers to get out of health care by shifting workers into taxpayer-subsidized insurance markets that open in 2014.

While it’s too early to proclaim the demise of job-based coverage, corporate number crunchers are looking at options that could lead to major changes. Gov. Phil Bredesen, D-Tenn., said the economics of dropping coverage are “about to become very attractive to many employers, both public and private.”

That’s just not going to happen, White House officials say.

“The absolute certainty about the Affordable Care Act is that for many, many employers who cover millions of people, it increases the incentives for them to offer coverage,” said Jason Furman, an economic adviser to President Barack Obama.

Yet at least one major employer has shifted a greater share of plan costs to workers, and others are weighing the pros and cons of eventually forcing employees to strike out on their own.

“I don’t think you are going to hear anybody publicly say ‘We’ve made a decision to drop insurance,’ ” said Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. “What we are hearing in our meetings is, ‘We don’t want to be the first one to drop benefits, but we would be the fast second.’ We are hearing that a lot.” Deloitte is a major accounting and consulting firm.

“My conclusion on all of this is that it is a huge roll of the dice,” said James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, which represents big company benefits administrators. “It could work out well and build on the employer-based system, or it could begin to dismantle the employer-based system.”

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Obama’s Incoherent Closing Argument : While the economy is the No. 1 issue, the president constantly changes the subject.

October 21st, 2010 · Democrats, Economy, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US

Associated Press

By Karl Rove

At an April 2008 fund-raiser in San Francisco, Barack Obama let loose with his famous “they cling to guns or religion” line. Last Saturday at a West Newton, Mass., fund-raiser, the president said, “facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning . . . because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.”

Memo to White House: Calling voters stupid is not a winning strategy.

The economy and jobs are the No. 1 issue in every poll. Yet Mr. Obama of late has talked about immigration reform and weighed in (unprompted) on the Ground Zero mosque. He devoted Labor Day to an ineffective Mideast peace initiative. He demeans large blocs of voters and now is ending his midterm pitch with attacks on nonexistent foreign campaign contributions and weird assertions that “the Empire is striking back.”

Meanwhile, Republicans have talked about little else than the economy—drawing attention to lackluster job growth, the failed stimulus, out-of-control spending, escalating deficits and the dangers of ObamaCare.

On Sunday, White House senior adviser David Axelrod promised that the administration’s focus next year would be “to generate more growth and jobs” and “on our fiscal situation.” That must have left congressional Democrats—battered for months by the GOP’s message discipline—wondering why there’s been no focus on that up to now.

Much of the blame lies with the president, who has left his party with an incoherent closing argument 12 days before the election.

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Felon voting rights expanded in 23 states: With the right vote, maybe they will no longer be felons.

October 20th, 2010 · Corruption, Politics, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within

Headshot of Reggie Mitchell, the central figure in a story about outreach to ex-offenders who can now vote in Florida. (Courtesy Of Reggie Mitchell)

By Krissah Thompson Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 19, 2010; 1:37 PM

A study of felony disenfranchisement laws has found that 800,000 former felons have been returned to the voter rolls in the past decade.

A push by criminal justice advocates and civil rights groups to rewrite state laws that sometimes place lifetime voting bans on felons has resulted in 23 states amending their policies since 1997 to expand voter eligibility, according to a report out by the Sentencing Project.

Nine states repealed or reduced their lifetime voting bans, and eight states made it easier for former felons to appeal to have their voting rights restored.

Those changes were made despite “political challenges that hinder reform and can make it difficult for elected officials to extend civil rights to persons with felony convictions,” said Nicole Porter, author of the report and the Sentencing Project’s state advocacy coordinator.

Existing policies vary from state to state, with Kentucky and Virginia denying ex-felons the right to vote – even after they have completed parole or probation sentences. Both states require individuals to apply to the governor for restoration of civil rights.

Other states have changed those policies. Rhode Island repealed a state prohibition on parolees voting, resulting in the restoration of voting rights to more than 15,000 people. Maryland made a similar change resulting in 52,000 ex-felons regaining the right to vote.

Changes to voting laws have come from both Republicans and Democrats.

In Florida, black state legislators led the fight for a decade before populist Republican Gov. Charlie Crist pushed through the change shortly after being elected in 2006. The legislation permits many nonviolent felons to vote as long as they have no charges pending, have paid restitution and have completed probation. About 152,000 ex-felons are now on voter rolls there.

Then-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) restored voting rights to almost 100,000 ex-felons, and New Mexico’s repeal of a lifetime voting ban for felons affected 69,000 people.

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