Friday, February 28, 2014
Dear Editor,
Once again, Mr. Guzenda plays fast and loose with his facts in his "rebuttal." For someone who dislikes "talking points," he makes liberal use of progressive talking point spin in trying to defend the Affordable Care Act. For instance, he claims "an additional 9 million Americans now have coverage" under Obamacare. How many of those were Medicaid clients who have to enroll every year? How many of those were because of the 6 million policies that were canceled? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 22% of the uninsured view Obamacare favorably. According to a CBS poll, only 6% of the entire population views Obamacare favorably. If you ask Harry Reid, all the rest of American citizens are liars! Well, Harry, my wife and I had our supplemental drug insurance premiums increase 70.5% this year...you can't handle the truth!
If the problem was 40 million without insurance, why does the CBO say there will still be 30 million uninsured when Obamacare is fully implemented? What is the Democrat position on Health Savings Accounts, insurance portability, health care tort reform, allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines, and allowing small businesses to join pools so their companies and their employees can obtain more favorable rates? These are all alternatives that have been offered and rejected by democrats.
Finally, although Congress had "ample time to read the bill," name one Democrat legislator who did. There is not enough room to list all those who admit they didn't, including Nancy "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it" Pelosi, then Speaker of the House.
Democrats don't have enough lipstick for this pig so they kill the messenger, blame Fox News, blame the Koch brothers, blame the Tea Party, blame the Heritage Foundation, blame Rush Limbaugh and still try to blame George Bush. It's not working and neither is Obamacare.
Sincerely,
Bill Garvin
Monday, February 24, 2014
Creeping Through Cyberspace
An
audiologist was discussing hearing aids with a new patient. “I have good news and bad news,” he
said. “The good news is I can help you
hear better; the bad news is I can help you hear better.” That seems very similar to the internet and
cyberspace. The good news is you can
find lots of information; the bad news is you can find lots of
information. Most of the information is
straightforward and much of it is useful but it ranges from the innocuous to
the disconcerting to the terrifying.
Some
of it is politically sardonic. One wag
posted “I don’t understand how the
Constitution is a ‘living document’ that protects phone calls, emails, and text
messages, yet the Second Amendment only applies to muskets.” Another noted that “The media obsesses over Romney at seventeen and Bush at twenty-five
but declares Hillary and Benghazi at sixty-five to be ‘old news.’” Another poster declared that “Having government watch your health care is
like having Michael Vick watch your dog!”
Maybe that’s why Moody’s downgraded the entire health care sector from
“stable” to “negative” because of Obamacare.
It’s
interesting to note that New York, one of the bluest of Democrat states, is attempting
to attract new business in order to cope with their 7% unemployment. Surprisingly, the centerpiece of their ad
campaign is to reduce/eliminate taxes for start-up companies. It’s estimated that “The Tonight Show” will
save $20 million in taxes by moving from Los Angeles to New York. This reduction of taxes (along with
reductions in spending!) sure sounds like a conservative principle.
It’s
disconcerting to follow the $85 billion taxpayer bailout of General Motors. When the Treasury Department sold off the
last of the GM shares, taxpayers lost from $10.5 to $20 billion on their
investment. If you want to rub salt in
the economic wounds, check out the video of Dan Akerson, the GM CEO in 2011, on
YouTube. He clearly outlines the plan to
shrink U.S. operations and expand China operations. He points out that seven of ten GM vehicles
are already made outside the U.S. Now they
have eleven joint ventures, eleven assembly plants, and 2,700 dealerships
planned for China. Their research and
development and state of the art technology is now being jointly shared with a
communist country. If that’s not
unsettling enough, how about the Cadillac Division sponsoring a film
celebrating the birth of the Chinese Communist Party, complete with the hammer
and sickle!
All
that pales compared to an article in “Slate”
by William Saletan. He was
commenting on an article in the Journal
of Medical Ethics by two “philosophers” named Alberto Giubilini and
Francesca Minerva. It has been noted
that there is no theory so bizarre that you cannot find an intellectual to
defend it. This seems to be the perfect
case on point. Most human beings would
condemn killing newborn babies but Giubilini and Minerva write that: “We
propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than
‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is
comparable with that of a fetus…rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn
could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would
be. Such circumstances include cases
where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at
risk.”
Last
year, a Planned Parenthood lobbyist named Alisa LaPolt Snow answered a question
before the Florida legislature as to what would happen if a baby was born alive
as a result of a botched abortion. Her
answer was that “any decision that’s made
should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.” To all these people, a living baby is not
a person and it is perfectly acceptable to kill them. If there is any doubt as to this conclusion,
Giubilini and Minerva conclude: “Although
fetuses and newborns are not persons, they are potential persons because they
can develop, thanks to their own biological mechanisms, those properties which
will make them ‘persons’ in the sense of ‘subjects of a moral right to life’
that is the point at which they will be able to make aims and appreciate their
own life.”
If
social, psychological, or economic costs are grounds for abortion, they are
then acceptable grounds for infanticide.
Would they then advocate euthanasia for the elderly, the infirm, or the
terminally ill? Some things you just
don’t want to know, but you must…even if it’s terrifying.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Laws, Lies, Leeway and Lunacy
By
William L. Garvin
Is
there any doubt that the Affordable Care Act is nothing but bait and switch, a
pig in a poke, an absolute sham sold under false pretenses, and a massive fraud
perpetrated upon the American people by “progressives” with malice of
forethought? “If you like your doctor,
you can keep your doctor, period.”
Wrong. “If you like your health
insurance plan, you can keep your health insurance plan, period.” Wrong.
“The Affordable Care Act will create four million jobs, four hundred
thousand immediately.” Wrong. “Obamacare will dramatically improve
Medicare.” Wrong. “I will not sign a bill that adds one dime to
the federal debt.” Wrong. “The average family will have their insurance
premiums reduced by $2,500 per year.”
Wrong. The Democrats unilaterally
passed this law and as we finally get to read and find out what’s in it, the
news gets worse and worse.
Even
if you think that government is capable of and is responsible for planning,
implementing, and controlling your health care, you must have the same mounting
concerns that the majority of your fellow Americans do. There is no denying that the rollout of
Obamacare has been an unmitigated failure.
Dems can do their best to rationalize the absurdly expensive, absurdly malfunctioning,
absurdly complicated website as a “glitch” or a “bump in the road,” but there
is no putting lipstick on this pig. Predictably
that is what happens when the nanny state formulates a “one size fits all” plan
that the private insurance companies must offer which must include unnecessary
and unwanted benefits that everyone is forced to purchase or be “taxed” for their
noncompliance. We have already seen over
six million plans cancelled and no one knows how many more notices are still to
come. Unfortunately, the Congressional
Budget Office says that after all is said and done, there will still be thirty
million Americans who are uninsured.
After all the angst, after all the disruption, after all the turmoil and
hardship, Obamacare does not solve the problem of the uninsured and does
absolutely nothing to improve the quality of health care or the availability of
health care. Adding political insult to
injury, Democrat political puppets now redefine your loss of personal freedom
as “liberating”! It is now somehow laudable
in liberal la la land to work less in order to reduce your income so you too
can receive a government subsidy! Pray
tell what happens when the worker bees morph into dependent parasites and the
symbiotic relationship collapses?
If
this government-centric future is not frightening enough, delve further into
the insidious nature of the law itself.
Charles Kesler, a Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont
McKenna College singles out the Independent Payment Advisory Board, aka “death
panel” in the Act. The IPAB is fifteen
people appointed by the President. They
are to recommend “efficiencies” regarding Medicare. Typically, such efficiencies are accomplished
by rationing or reducing payments to doctors and hospitals to the point that no
one will perform them. According to
Professor Kesler’s analysis, “Unless both houses of Congress overrule IPAB by
passing their own equal or greater cuts to Medicare, IPAB’s proposals
automatically become law.” Here’s where
the perfidy ensues. According to the
Act, no resolution to repeal the IPAB can be made before January 1, 2017, or
after February 1, 2017, nor can it take effect until 2020! In effect, the IPAB is exempt from the
Constitution for the next six years except for a single month! What sort of Machiavellian intent is behind
this machination? Skeptical minds may
conclude that the entire charade is merely a stepping stone to single-payer,
government run health care as advocated by the President, the Vice-President,
the Senate Majority Leader, and the Minority House Leader, all Democrats.
Also keep in mind that Section 1342 of the
Affordable Care Act forces taxpayers to make insurers whole for most of the
losses they incur selling policies on the Obamacare exchanges through 2016.
This “absorption of costs” (don’t ever call it a bailout!) is meant to hide the
full scope of the economic failure of Obamacare until after the next
presidential election.
That’s also the reason the President “with his phone and his pen”
delayed the mandate to provide Obamacare-compliant insurance for some
employers. With a stroke of his
presidential pen, he changed established law from “will”, “shall”, and “must”
to “may”, “might”, and “maybe.” Welcome
to the “fundamental transformation” of America.
It’s good to be king!
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Deliberate or Dysfunctional?
By
William L. Garvin
During
the presidential campaign, Candidate Obama was continually lauded for his new
age prowess via his Blackberry while Candidate McCain was derided as a techno-troglodyte. There was considerable ballyhoo relating to
encrypting the Obamaphone as he was continually multi-tasking, perpetually
wired and virtually on top of everything.
His campaign was praised in the highest terms for its sophisticated use
of technology and supreme organization in gathering funds and voters. Then there is his presidency.
Typical
of many multi-taskers, there is very little multi-finishing. For someone who is reputedly so
technologically advanced, President Obama seems to get most of his information
from the “same news reports you watch.”
How can someone who is so on top of things know nothing about “Fast and
Furious,” know nothing about IRS targeting political opponents, know nothing
about NSA spying, and know nothing about DOJ seizing AP and Fox reporter
correspondence? Furthermore, how could
someone who was so directly involved that you would have thought he personally
pulled the triggers on the Somali pirates and personally led the charge up the
stairs to kill Bin Laden know so little about Benghazi? Despite Candy Crowley’s erroneous lifeline in
the 2012 debate, he never called Benghazi a terrorist attack until long after
his “provocative video” cover story was exposed for the blatant lie that it was
and is.
What
is even more astounding is the absolute technological incompetence displayed
throughout the Democrat rollout of Obamacare.
After more than three years of advance planning and hundreds of millions
of dollars of taxpayer money, the Democrats could not even build a functioning
website. What is wrong with this picture? How could such aforementioned technological brilliance
and organizational genius deteriorate into such an abysmal and unmitigated
disaster? Is this the final nail in the
progressive belief that government can do everything and compelling evidence
that big government has bitten off more than it can chew or could there be another
explanation?
A
socialist professor at Columbia University (President Obama’s alma mater) named
Richard Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (also a socialist professor)
developed the Cloward-Piven strategy. Inspired
by Saul Alinsky, these left-wing, radical champions of the poor deliberately
sought (Cloward died in 2001) and seek the destruction of capitalism by class
warfare in physical terms. Not satisfied
with gradual evolution, they prefer violent revolution. The overarching principle in their strategy
is to overload the entitlement system by adding so many people to the roles
that our economic system collapses.
Anarchy, chaos and violence will be the inevitable result. If you need a visual picture, think of Greece
in combination with a Mad Max film…Detroit on a national scale.
As
far back as 1966, Cloward and Piven wrote:
“It is our purpose to advance a
strategy which affords the basis for a convergence of civil rights
organizations, militant anti-poverty groups and the poor. If this strategy were implemented, a
political crisis would result that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed
annual income and thus an end to poverty.”
In blunter terms, Cloward stated that poor people will only advance
when “the rest of society is afraid of
them.” Cloward and Piven were instrumental
in developing ACORN. Cloward and Piven
were standing behind President Clinton when he signed the “Motor Voter” act
into law. President Obama was a
community organizer who practiced Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” tactics. As a young lawyer, Obama represented ACORN in
a lawsuit to implement the motor-voter law in Illinois. President Obama has stated: “I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care
about my entire career.” President
Obama has also promised to “fundamentally transform” America. The question is, into what?
Does
the president envision some sort of socialist utopia? Does he think that the Democratic Socialists,
brandishing their shibboleths of social justice, economic justice, income
inequality, and redistributive justice will step to the fore and bring about a
“fair” New World Order? Does he think
this political-economic theory which has a one hundred percent failure rate
elsewhere will somehow miraculously work here?
If so, maybe the failure of the trillion dollar stimulus makes
sense. If so, maybe his trillion dollar
deficit years make sense. If so, maybe a
$17.3 trillion dollar national debt makes sense. If so, maybe record numbers of people on food
stamps and millions more too dispirited to even look for work makes sense. In that perspective, the disastrous Obamacare
policy and implementation makes sense.
It is not clear whether or not President Obama’s administration is
consciously employing the Cloward-Piven strategies. But if they were to do so, it’s crystal clear
that they would only have to make minor adjustments to their current practices.
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