Archive for July, 2009

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RHETORIC V. REALITY: HEALTH CARE BY ORWELL

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published in the New York Post on July 23, 2009

President Obama’s rhetoric last night summoned the memory of “1984,” George Orwell’s novel of a nightmarish future — where the slogan of the rulers is “War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.”

The president assures us that he will cut health-care spending. . .by adding $1 trillion to health-care spending.

He says that “health-care decisions will not be made by government”. . .while he sets up a new Federal Health Board to tell doctors what treatments they can offer and to whom and under what circumstances.

Obama told the media, “I will free doctors to make good health-care decisions”. . .by telling the physicians what to do.

When the president says he guarantees the “same coverage” to people who like their current health-insurance policies, he means that their current HMOs, insurers and doctors will be the ones to implement the protocols and instructions the government hands down to them — not that we’ll have our current freedom of decision-making.

When he blandly assures us that we will “stop paying for things that don’t make us healthier,” he really means that his Federal Health Board will overrule your doctor and stop him from using his own best judgment in your treatment.

The president will “get the politics out of health care” by putting it under government control.

Obama says that he will not “add to the deficit” to fund health care. But the bill reported out by Rep. Charlie Rangel’s Ways and Means Committee leaves $550 billion unfunded.

The president says that he’ll identify savings that will reduce the need for more taxes — even though the Congressional Budget Office refuses to say that his “savings” will actually work and warns that the bill will really be added to the deficit.

He repeatedly tells us that he’ll cut health-care spending. What he means is that he will cut doctors’ incomes and will turn down patients — particularly the elderly — when they seek medical care that his bureaucrats disapprove of.

And he ignores that cutting incomes in the medical field will reduce the number of doctors and force further rationing of care.

The president opines that he will replace the most “expensive care” with the “best care” by empowering government officials who have never met you to substitute their judgment for that of your doctor, who has examined you thoroughly.

When Obama laments that “14,000 people lose their insurance every day,” he is referring to the job losses that his own failed efforts to end the recession have permitted.

He warns that health-care costs are gobbling up money that employers should use to raise wages and worker pay — yet the plans he backs would require employers to pay 8 percent of their payroll as a tax or provide insurance to their workers.

The Obama plan highlights greater preventive care — but, at the same time, cuts medical incomes and so will cut the number of doctors who might provide it.

The stimulus package, in the Gospel According to Barack, was “designed” to work over the next two years. But at the time, he demanded immediate passage to “jump-start the economy” — something that clearly did not happen.

Medicare and Medicaid are “driving the deficit” even as he increased the amount of red ink by at least $800 billion in six months with little, if any, increase in the cost of either program.

He says he “expects” banks to repay their TARP money. In fact, they’re lining up around the block to do so — but the Treasury will only permit a handful of them to do so.

In summary, Obama’s health program will promote “lower cost and more choice” by increasing spending by $1 trillion, telling patients what care they’re permitted to have, and limiting their access to quality care.

Orwell’s heirs should sue for violation of copyright.

July 20 (Bloomberg) — U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The Treasury’s $700 billion bank-investment program represents a fraction of all federal support to resuscitate the U.S. financial system, including $6.8 trillion in aid offered by the Federal Reserve, Barofsky said in a report released today.

“TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity,” Barofsky said in testimony prepared for a hearing tomorrow before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

full story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aY0tX8UysIaM

The article below regards Commerce Secretary Gary Locke’s comments to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. Now that developing countries have said they will not participate in “cap and trade”, this U.S. offical proposes to TAX US CITIZENS for carbon use in other countries. HUH?

To address the serious threat of global warming, Americans should be required to “pay” for the carbon
content of goods they consume from countries around the world….”It’s important that those who consume
the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption
activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for
that,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that creates a market for companies to trade
permits to emit greenhouse gases, which would be capped at a certain level and then reduced over time.
The bill also contains “carbon tariffs” that would allow the United States to slap duties on imports of
carbon-intensive goods…Locke said Chinese officials raised concern about those provisions this week.
“They feel in essence it’s a tax on their carbon activity,” he said. http://www.reuters.com/article/GCAGreenBusiness/
idUSTRE56G1A320090717

Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie- 7/19/09 Washington Post

just  few paragraphs:

Beyond pushing the “emergency” $787 billion stimulus package (even while acknowledging that the vast majority of funds would be released in 2010 and beyond), Obama signed a $410 billion omnibus spending bill and a $106 billion supplemental spending bill to cover “emergency” expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan (and, improbably, a “cash for clunkers” program). Despite pledges to achieve a “net spending cut” by targeting earmarks and wasteful spending, Obama rubber-stamped more than 9,000 earmarks and asked government agencies to trim a paltry $100 million in spending this year, 0.003 percent of the federal budget.

In the same way that Bush claimed to be cutting government even while increasing real spending by more than 70 percent, Obama seems to believe that saying one thing, while doing another, somehow makes it so. His first budget was titled “A New Era of Fiscal Responsibility,” even as his own projections showed a decade’s worth of historically high deficits. He vowed no new taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then jacked up cigarette taxes and indicated a willingness to consider new health-care taxes as part of his reform package. He said he didn’t want to take over General Motors on the day that he took over General Motors.

Such is the extent of Obama’s magical realism that he can promise to post all bills on the Internet five days before signing them, serially break that promise and then, when announcing that he wouldn’t even try anymore, have a spokesman present the move as yet another example of “providing the American people more transparency in government.”

whole article here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/17/AR2009071702093.html

(CNSNews.com) – Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money.

(CNSNews.com) – The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.

This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal “green” guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law.

The bill, which now goes to the Senate, directs the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement a national policy for residential and commercial buildings. The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to “facilitate” the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide.

“The Administrator shall develop and implement, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, standards for a national energy and environmental building retrofit policy for single-family and multi-family residences,” the bill reads.

It continues: “The purpose of the REEP program is to facilitate the retrofitting of existing buildings across the United States.”

The bill leaves the definition of a retrofit and the details of the REEP program up to the EPA. However, states are responsible for ensuring that the government’s plans are carried out, whatever the final details may entail.

“States shall maintain responsibility for meeting the standards and requirements of the REEP program,” the bill says.

full story: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50365

Obama mulls rental option for homeowners: sources