You Decide

March 29, 2010 Posted by John at 6:59 PM

[W]ithout an effective mechanism of enforcing the individual mandate, the entire system is likely to collapse. (The individual mandate is the "third leg of the stool" as many a liberal has been pointing out for months.) Given that the bill also bans insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, WHY WOULD ANYONE OBTAIN INSURANCE COVERAGE PRIOR TO NEEDING IT? This was already going to be a problem with the relatively low cost of the penalty, but take away any meaningful enforcement of it and it is a complete and total joke.

The net result will be an ever increasing shift of healthcare costs on to those who remain in the insurance system (or to tax payers), and possibly even the bankruptcy of the insurance industry.

Hmm. Bug or feature? We report, you decide. A reader writes:

Absolutely essential and fundamental to the very design of the Obamacare bill is the individual mandate to require purchase of prescribed health insurance. And yet in what is an amazingly revealing feature of the bill there is literally no provision for enforcement of the mandate. While this has been known for some time -- it was discussed a few weeks ago in NRO in the context of resistance or civil disobedience to the mandate -- it is only now getting the exposure it deserves.

As the linked article makes clear, while the bill does provide for fines to enforce the mandate through the income tax system....the IRS is explicitly prevented from collecting the fines by assessments, liens or seizures, no civil or criminal penalties attach to failure to pay such fines and no interest accrues from the date the fine is due!! This is actually amazing and cries out for explanation.

In my view, this is not the result of a simple oversight or error...quite the contrary. This is a feature, not a bug. We can be sure of this because they had to go to the trouble of specifying that enforcement was prohibited; silence would have meant that the normal IRS enforcement powers were available and presumed to be used to ensure that the mandate legislated by Congress was carried out. Normally the simplest explanation would involve stupidity, incompetence, error, haste or some other ordinary failure. In this case I think the explanation has to be, since it was intentionally put in the bill, that the architects of Obamacare intend that the individual mandate will fail....and guarantee it by actually affirmatively prohibiting enforcement.

Why would they do this? One reason is that, despite all the confident left wing bluster, they may very well be afraid that, given the extraordinary implications for the vast expansion of government power, the Supreme Court may well find, as they should, such a mandate to be unconstitutional. [Ed.: Unlikely, in my view.] That would undermine the whole program and is a complication that the Obama administration I am sure would prefer to avoid. As well as avoiding nasty scenes of property seizures or wage garnishments lack of enforcement would also prevent an individual desiring to make a test case from having standing to sue. (Why the approach taken by the Attorney General in Virginia in relying for standing on conflict of state and federal laws is clever.)

The real reason, I suspect, is more insidious -- quite simply to destroy the private health insurance industry and create an irresistible demand for expansion of the program to a public option and ultimately to single payer provision. It is undeniable that guaranteed issue of insurance at ordinary rates for those with preëxisting medical conditions is popular; but forcing insurance companies to cover them at average rates cannot possibly work unless healthy younger people are forced into the risk pool at rates higher than what their risk rating would otherwise be. Without the mandate, in other words, the insurance companies cannot possibly be viable and also cover preëxisting conditions at average premium rates.

Quite simply, Obamacare has created a ticking time bomb for the insurance industry. Those with preëxisting conditions will be covered.....and demand continuation of the coverage at prescribed rates....and those who ignore the mandate, presumably anybody at all affected by it, face no consequences. As costs spiral out of control, premiums will have to rise and subsidies increase. Insurance companies would have to either fold or shift costs....to those covered by employers....becoming a perfect target for left wing demagoguery and vilification. The only way out as more and more of those covered by employers get pushed into the exchanges as costs get shifted to them and employers no longer offer insurance -- yet another intended consequence -- is the public "option" or outright nationalization through a single payer plan.

We know that a single payer nationalized health care plan is the long term objective and intention for proponents of Obamacare and has been all along. They're completely disingenuous about how "incremental" and "modest" the program is. The astonishing fact that they deliberately prohibited enforcement of a critical component of the plan tells you all you need to know. It will intentionally create a crisis...a feature, not a bug....and a crisis is something this crowd never wants to go to waste."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025954.php

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"Joint Committee on Taxation Confirms that ObamaCare Does Not Enforce Individual Mandate

One of the more controversial elements of ObamaCare is the mandate for most individuals to purchase insurance beginning in 2014. There is really no precedent for a federal mandate of this scale requiring individuals to purchase a product or service. So not surprisingly a number of state Attorney Generals have indicated they will be filing suit questioning the constitutionality of this provision.

Of course the individual mandate is also very risky from a political standpoint, as the Democrats who orchestrated the passage of this bill are mandating not only that the young and healthy obtain insurance, but also that even their most fervent liberal constituents must purchase this coverage from the “evil”, private insurance industry.

Republicans for their part have focused on the fact that this mandate will be enforced via threat of a financial penalty (or tax), with the added assumption that it is the dreaded IRS which will be enforcing this. And sure enough, it’s already been reported that the IRS anticipates hiring possibly in excess of 15,000 additional personnel to deal with the collection of the individual mandate, and other tax related provisions within the bill.

However, it turns out that the Democrats who crafted this bill significantly – and I mean significantly – hamstrung the ability of the IRS or any other federal agency to enforce or collect on this mandate. Here is what the federal Joint Committee on Taxation had to say about this issue in a report released earlier this week:

Individuals who fail to maintain minimum essential coverage in 2016 are subject to a penalty equal to the greater of: (1) 2.5 percent of household income in excess of the taxpayer’s household income for the taxable year over the threshold amount of income required for income tax return filing for that taxpayer under section 6012(a)(1);67 or (2) $695 per uninsured adult in the household. The fee for an uninsured individual under age 18 is one-half of the adult fee for an adult. The total household penalty may not exceed 300 percent of the per adult penalty ($2,085). The total annual household payment may not exceed the national average annual premium for bronze level health plan offered through the Exchange that year for the household size…

The penalty applies to any period the individual does not maintain minimum essential coverage and is determined monthly. The penalty is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code. The use of liens and seizures otherwise authorized for collection of taxes does not apply to the collection of this penalty. Non-compliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay such assessments in a timely manner.

According to a footnote in the report, “subtitle F of the Code” is the portion of the tax code which grants the IRS the authority to assess and collect taxes. In other words, as the law is written the federal government has no legal authority to enforce this mandate, nor will it have any recourse to collect any penalties that go unpaid!

This issue was actually the subject of a very amusing exchange between Rep. Anthony Wiener and Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday. While the facts seem to vindicate Rep. Wiener who argued repeatedly that the bill would not criminalize non-compliance with the individual mandate, this is actually the worst possible news for those who believe in the merits of the mandate and the bill in general.

Because without an effective mechanism of enforcing the individual mandate, the entire system is likely to collapse. (The individual mandate is the “third leg of the stool” as many a liberal has been pointing out for months.) Given that the bill also bans insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, WHY WOULD ANYONE OBTAIN INSURANCE COVERAGE PRIOR TO NEEDING IT? This was already going to be a problem with the relatively low cost of the penalty, but take away any meaningful enforcement of it and it is a complete and total joke.

The net result will be an ever increasing shift of healthcare costs on to those who remain in the insurance system (or to tax payers), and possibly even the bankruptcy of the insurance industry. Given all the double-talk the past year over the public option, and the demonizing of private insurers, it is hard not to wonder whether this was by design. But let’s give our Democratic friends the benefit of the doubt, in which case this represents an inexcusable level of incompetence from the people we have just entrusted with overseeing one-sixth of the economy. Nice job guys."

http://biggovernment.com/mrichmond/2010/03/26/joint-committee-on-taxation-confirms-that-obamacare-does-not-enforce-individual-mandate/

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/28/2010 14:27 -0500
Source Zero Hedge

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer country. On March 18, with very little pomp and circumstance, president Obama passed the most recent stimulus act, the $17.5 billion Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (H.R. 2487), brilliantly goalseeked by the administration's millionaire cronies to abbreviate as HIRE. As it was merely the latest in an endless stream of acts destined to expand the government payroll to infinity, nobody cared about it, or actually read it. Because if anyone had read it, the act would have been known as the Capital Controls Act, as one of the lesser, but infinitely more important provisions on page 27, known as Offset Provisions - Subtitle A—Foreign Account Tax Compliance, institutes just that. In brief, the Provision requires that foreign banks not only withhold 30% of all outgoing capital flows (likely remitting the collection promptly back to the US Treasury) but also disclose the full details of non-exempt account-holders to the US and the IRS. And should this provision be deemed illegal by a given foreign nation's domestic laws (think Switzerland), well the foreign financial institution is required to close the account. It's the law. If you thought you could move your capital to the non-sequestration safety of non-US financial institutions, sorry you lose - the law now says so. Capital Controls are now here and are now fully enforced by the law.

Let's parse through the just passed law, which has been mentioned by exactly zero mainstream media outlets.

Here is the default new state of capital outflows:

(a) IN GENERAL.—The Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by inserting after chapter 3 the following new chapter:

‘‘CHAPTER 4—TAXES TO ENFORCE REPORTING ON CERTAIN FOREIGN ACCOUNTS
‘‘Sec. 1471. Withholdable payments to foreign financial institutions.
‘‘Sec. 1472. Withholdable payments to other foreign entities.
‘‘Sec. 1473. Definitions.
‘‘Sec. 1474. Special rules.
‘‘SEC. 1471. WITHHOLDABLE PAYMENTS TO FOREIGN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS.

‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—In the case of any withholdable payment to a foreign financial institution which does not meet the requirements of subsection (b), the withholding agent with respect to such payment shall deduct and withhold from such payment a tax equal to 30 percent of the amount of such payment.

Clarifying who this law applies to:

‘‘(C) in the case of any United States account maintained by such institution, to report on an annual basis the information described in subsection (c) with respect to such account,
‘‘(D) to deduct and withhold a tax equal to 30 percent of—

‘‘(i) any passthru payment which is made by such institution to a recalcitrant account holder or another foreign financial institution which does not meet the requirements of this subsection, and

‘‘(ii) in the case of any passthru payment which is made by such institution to a foreign financial institution which has in effect an election under paragraph (3) with respect to such payment, so much of such payment as is allocable to accounts held by recalcitrant account holders or foreign financial institutions which do not meet the requirements of this subsection.

What happens if this brand new law impinges and/or is in blatant contradiction with existing foreign laws?

‘‘(F) in any case in which any foreign law would (but for a waiver described in clause (i)) prevent the reporting of any information referred to in this subsection or subsection (c) with respect to any United States account maintained by such institution—

‘‘(i) to attempt to obtain a valid and effective waiver of such law from each holder of such account, and
‘‘(ii) if a waiver described in clause (i) is not obtained from each such holder within a reasonable period of time, to close such account.

Not only are capital flows now to be overseen and controlled by the government and the IRS, but holders of foreign accounts can kiss any semblance of privacy goodbye:

‘‘(c) INFORMATION REQUIRED TO BE REPORTED ON UNITED STATES ACCOUNTS.—
‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—The agreement described in subsection (b) shall require the foreign financial institution to report the following with respect to each United States account maintained by such institution:
‘‘(A) The name, address, and TIN of each account holder which is a specified United States person and, in the case of any account holder which is a United States owned foreign entity, the name, address, and TIN of each substantial United States owner of such entity.
‘‘(B) The account number.
‘‘(C) The account balance or value (determined at such time and in such manner as the Secretary may provide).
‘‘(D) Except to the extent provided by the Secretary, the gross receipts and gross withdrawals or payments from the account (determined for such period and in such manner as the Secretary may provide).

The only exemption to the rule? If you hold the meager sum of $50,000 or less in foreign accounts.

‘‘(B) EXCEPTION FOR CERTAIN ACCOUNTS HELD BY INDIVIDUALS.—Unless the foreign financial institution elects to not have this subparagraph apply, such term shall not include any depository account maintained by such financial institution if—
‘‘(i) each holder of such account is a natural person,and
‘‘(ii) with respect to each holder of such account, the aggregate value of all depository accounts held (in whole or in part) by such holder and maintained by the same financial institution which maintains such account does not exceed $50,000.

And, while we are on the topic of definitions, here is how "financial account" is defined by the US:

‘‘(2) FINANCIAL ACCOUNT.—Except as otherwise provided by the Secretary, the term ‘financial account’ means, with respect to any financial institution—
‘‘(A) any depository account maintained by such financial institution,
‘‘(B) any custodial account maintained by such financial institution, and
‘‘(C) any equity or debt interest in such financial institution (other than interests which are regularly traded on an established securities market). Any equity or debt interest which constitutes a financial account under subparagraph (C) with respect to any financial institution shall be treated for purposes of this section as maintained by such financial institution.

In case you find you do not like to be subject to capital controls, you are now deemed a "Recalcitrant Account Holder."

‘‘(6) RECALCITRANT ACCOUNT HOLDER.—The term ‘recalcitrant account holder’ means any account holder which—
‘‘(A) fails to comply with reasonable requests for the information referred to in subsection (b)(1)(A) or (c)(1)(A),
or ‘‘(B) fails to provide a waiver described in subsection (b)(1)(F) upon request.

But guess what - if you are a foreign Central Bank, or if the Secretary determined that you are "a low risk for tax evasion" (unlike the Secretary himself) you still can do whatever the hell you want:

‘‘(f) EXCEPTION FOR CERTAIN PAYMENTS.—Subsection (a) shall not apply to any payment to the extent that the beneficial owner
of such payment is—
‘‘(1) any foreign government, any political subdivision of a foreign government, or any wholly owned agency or instrumentality of any one or more of the foregoing,
‘‘(2) any international organization or any wholly owned agency or instrumentality thereof,
‘‘(3) any foreign central bank of issue, or
‘‘(4) any other class of persons identified by the Secretary for purposes of this subsection as posing a low risk of tax evasion.

One thing we are confused about is whether this law is a preamble, or already incorporates, the flow of non-cash assets, such as commodities, and, thus, gold. If an account transfers, via physical or paper delivery, gold from a domestic account to a foreign one, we are not sure if the language deems this a 30% taxable transaction, although preliminary discussions with lawyers indicates this is likely the case.

And so the noose on capital mobility tightens, as very soon the only option US citizens have when it comes to investing their money, will be in government mandated retirement annuities, which will likely be the next step in the capital control escalation, which will culminate with every single free dollar required to be reinvested into the US, likely in the form of purchasing US Treasury emissions such as Treasuries, TIPS and other worthless pieces of paper. 

Congratulations bankrupt America - you are now one step closer to a thoroughly non-free market."

Full HIRE Act text:   http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/HIRE%20act.pdf

h/t Jørgen and Panama Investor Blog"

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/its-official-america-now-enforces-capital-controls

March 28, 2010 Posted by John at 3:09 PM

"Clean Government Now sums up the disaster that is Obamacare:

The essence of this bill is quite simple: It makes the health insurance industry an arm of the federal government by mandating (not regulating to be clear) the terms, conditions and comparative rates health insurers can offer. In short, it tells them how to run their business and then picks up the cost where those conditions prove uneconomic. We tried this experiment before. It is called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it is a major reason for the collapse of the financial system under the weight of $2T of bogus AAA securities.

When mandates replace competition, there is only one direction for prices to go: UP. Americans will not put up with rationing, and they have come to expect the best care in the world, so any pretense of cost controls is just that: pretense. Obamacare only expands the cancerous dynamics of the third party payer and creates more of a sense of entitlement to be paid for by the ever diminishing "other guy". ...

That is Washington: the bad ideas stick around like venereal disease. The good ones just ride off into the sunset like good soldiers who served us well, but whose time is too brief.

More disturbing is the reality that the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments will not be determined by medical practitioners and their patients, but rather Gucci-garmented lobbyists. ...

Beyond the inevitable failure of central planning, the unavoidable increases in premiums and overall costs, the abdication of personal responsibility and cost control through choice and consequences, the ultimate victim will be the quality of our health care.

It has only one direction to go and that is DOWN.

If you liked what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did to the mortgage market and the world financial system, you will LOVE Obamacare.

But it isn't too late. We have a three to four year window in which Obamacare can be repealed and replaced."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025948.php

Not sure if this is photoshopped or a real sign.  Could be any child .... but gets the point across.

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Just picked this up from The Market Ticker.  At the very least it should be thoroughly and impartially investigated.

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http://4closurefraud.org/2010/03/26/scandalous-substantiated-allegations-of-foreclosure-fraud-that-implicates-the-florida-attorney-generals-office-and-the-florida-default-law-group/

"Truth Comes Out

March 26, 2010 Posted by John at 5:13 PM

Source Powerlineblog.com

"The consequences of the Democrats' health care takeover begin to be felt:

Remember the part in the ObamaCare pitch when they said if you like your current healthcare, it won't change?

Turns out it might.

Companies are already announcing that their healthcare premium costs are going through the roof. Some are responding by firing people. Some are cutting benefits. And some are presumably eating it.

But costs they are a-rising.

Examples include Caterpillar, which said Obamacare will cost it an additional $100 million in the first year; Medtronic, which warned that the new tax on its products "could force it to lay off a thousand workers;" and Verizon, which has told its employees that it "will likely have to cut healthcare benefits to offset the new costs."

Here's one more:

AT&T on Friday said it will record a $1 billion non-cash expense in the first quarter related to the newly passed health-care law, joining a growing list of large U.S. companies. ...

Among its many changes, the new health-care law eliminated a tax deduction that companies used to cut the cost of drug-benefit programs for retired workers. ... companies that still offer retiree drug benefits, mostly older industrial concerns or those with unionized employees, say the end of the deduction could force them to alter their benefit plans. In other words, they might curtail or even cancel them.

"As a result of this legislation, including the additional tax burden, AT&T will be evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health care benefits offered by the company," AT&T said in a filing with the government on Friday.

Conclusion:

So, people who like your employer-provided health insurance, get ready to pay more or get less.

So Obamacare will contribute to higher unemployment as well as worse and more expensive health care. My only question is: where were all of these companies when the Democrats' takeover plan was being debated?"

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025933.php

Source Powerlineblog.com 

"Under government medicine, all health care is necessarily political. Why anyone would want to live in that world is beyond me. Here is the latest from Great Britain, where the Labour government is trying to keep budget cuts secret until after the election:

Tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments under secret plans for £20 billion of health cuts.

The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped. ...

Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country.

This one is especially scary:

In the East region, covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, up to £2 billion is to be cut. The SHA proposes shifting services out of hospitals and making social workers take over some treatments.

Hey, that makes sense: they have a shortage of doctors and a surplus of social workers, so let's have the social workers start diagnosing diseases and performing surgery. That's what I call a death panel!"

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025935.php

Linking back to a couple of articles previously posted.  Conspiracy theory??? You decide.

_____________

Thursday, October 23, 2008

"Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

https://blogs.lotterypost.com/konane/2008/10/strategy-of-manufactured-crisis.htm

https://blogs.lotterypost.com/konane/2008/11/cloward-piven-strategy-of-orchestrated-cris.htm

Pinned by SteveQuayle.com Q News as Video of the Decade.

________

YouTube - We have failed to listen to America. And we have failed to reflect the will of our constituents

Interesting quote from Dem. Rep. Dingell.

________

Posted by Karl Denninger in Editorial

Source The Market Ticker

".... before our citizens - and government - wake up?

If you remember in October of 2008 I put forward the following:

The Truth is that we now require about $5 of debt to generate $1 of GDP.

The Truth is that the reason you were not asked to approve $700 billion to capitalize 10 new banks, thereby creating seven trillion in lending capacity is that the economy cannot soak up that new lending capacity; each dollar of new debt generates almost no aggregate GDP.  If this were not true then that would be the logical and effective cure for the 'credit crunch" - if the borrowing capacity and impact on GDP necessary to help existed.  They do not. 

The Truth is that you were lied to about the purpose of the TARP/EESA, because what you were sold was mathematically impossible.  It is supposed to be unlawful to lie to Congress.

As I pointed out at the time, the reason they didn't create that $7 trillion in new credit issuance is that there was no more capacity to take on new debt in the private sector.

They knew it.

They lied about what "had to happen" for stability to be restored.

They lied because the alternative was that their friends - powerful friends - would have to go bankrupt.

But it gets worse.  Some of the other points:

The Truth is that the absolute worst thing you can do when "in the hole" like this is to spend even more on a deficit basis, thereby driving the debt ratio higher and return-per-dollar-of-debt in GDP lower.  The last eight years have been disastrous in this regard.

Yet that is exactly what we have done - we have replaced fully 10% of private GDP with public spending, and while the claim was made that this is "temporary" the CBO says it is not, Obama's budget says it is not, and the credit contraction that is continuing in the private economy says it is not.

Bernanke and Paulson, and now Geithner, know that this attempted "reflation" won't - and can't - work.  They have put forward this path not because it is the right thing to do, but because the alternative means a lot of people with power and money will go bankrupt and the Government of The United States will have to change how it finances itself, removing the corrupt influences that have been used to "cook" the books - and outcomes - for the last 30 years.

We have blown three trillion dollars since these intentionally-wrong decisions were made, and we will continue to blow more and more money until the entire banking and economic system collapse unless we change course.

Nate has updated the debt-GDP contribution chart that I posted back in 2008 (and which was originally generated by Legg-Mason - it's not difficult to generate it from the Federal Reserve Z1) and it shows exactly what I was predicting - and why the policies of the government and Fed not only haven't but can't work:

Now let's be clear: Essentially all money is debt in our current system.  As such attempting to "print" your way out, or attempting to "inflate" out, or attempting any act other than forcing the default of the bad debt in the system results in digging the hole deeper and deeper - that is, depressing private GDP further.

Government's efforts have not helped, they have destroyed the four years we had before "zero hour" was reached.  Bernanke's interference in the mortgage market didn't "help" that market, he effectively entirely replaced the private market. The Government's "interference" in the private markets by borrowing and spending $3 trillion over the last two years - more than 9% of GDP annualized - is an attempt to "paper over" the insolvency of private actors in the markets - both borrowers and creditors.

These acts of interference did lead to a huge stock market rally, but just as with all forms of cooking the books they are false dawns and false hopes.  They present a picture of "solvency" that does not actually exist.  They present a picture of private demand in the economy that does not actually exist. 

Since we are now below the "zero line" of GDP-contribution from further debt issuance we simply tighten the monetary flat spin by trying to further print or deficit spend.

The chart in the above link has been updated, of course.  It now looks like this:

Despite all the printing, despite all the borrow-and-spend politics each new dollar of currency is representing a decreasing monetary velocity multiplier - that is, we now get less than one dollar for each dollar - the real rate of return is now NEGATIVE.

As in a flat spin in an aircraft, you cannot pull up and live.  All pulling up does (printing or borrowing more money) is tighten the spiral.  I identified this crossover in December of 2008, and warned of it months earlier. 

We have tried it Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner's way and it has failed.

We will strike the ground unless immediate corrective action - that is, pushing forward on the stick - occurs. 

Taking that corrective action will cause us to lose altitude faster for a while.  If we wait until the ground is "too close", we will strike the ground and (economically) die.  The precise point where there is no longer enough time (altitude) is not known in advance, but that we have far less margin now, more than a year later, than we did in December of 2008 is a mathematical fact.

To halt this process we must take the following actions now:

1. All direct taxes must be scrapped immediately.  This means implementation of something like The Fair Tax.  I fully understand the political ramifications of thousands of lobbying firms and individuals losing their ability to game tax code, and why this sort of reform is unpopular with the political class.  Politics must give way to mathematics; the government must align its revenue with the promulgation of actual business success as measured by actual consumer final demand.  In addition such a change, while radical, would cause an immediate rush into America for the world's business headquarter locations, and with those businesses would come high-paying executive, administrative and manufacturing jobs.  This proposal is an actual bill (HR. 25 / S. 296) which means it can be moved and passed.  We just need the political will to do so.
   
   
2. ALL government support for insoluble debt must be removed.  This means restoring mark-to-market, barring all off-balance-sheet activities and deeming that loans such as HELOCs behind underwater, non-performing firsts be written to recovery value (which in most cases is in fact zero.) I understand that this will expose the existing insolvency of some very large financial institutions.  I also understand this is very politically unpopular for obvious reasons.  It does not matter; this has to be done.
   
   
3. Banks must be required to hold Capital Reserves equal to 10% of their outstanding assets that are secured and 100% against all unsecured loans.  This will cause even more insolvencies, but it will instantly clean up the banking system.  Provide a six month time period for all institutions to come into compliance with (2) and (3), with no extensions, and mandate that any firm that does business in the US must comply - no exceptions.  Going forward the 10% capitalization level (for secured assets) must be monitored and maintained as a "warning level" and firms must be liquidated at 6%.  This will guarantee in the future that the FDIC will never a take a loss on the deposit insurance fund.
   
   
4. Treasury must then use the existing authority under The Constitution to issue non-debt-backed dollars.  This does not require new legislative authority - all existing coins are in fact not debt-backed!  Treasury can thus issue fiat, non-debt-backed currency under existing authority - it has simply refused to do so!  This use should be restricted to funding FDIC pay-out requirements for the firms that become insolvent under this reform process.  This issuance - if limited to FDIC payout coverage - will not be inflationary as it will exactly balance the deflationary force of default on the debt caused by those insolvencies.
   
   
5. An expedited, one-time bankruptcy provision must be made available to consumers so they can enter and process against an expedited Chapter 7 liquidation.  It is essential that we permit consumers to de-leverage back to sustainable levels.  Points #2-4 will insure that banks that fail as a consequence will have their depositors covered.
   
   
6. Credit-Default Swaps - or any other form of derivative - must be forbidden unless exchange-traded with a central clearing and margining counterparty that exposes all information to the market, including bid, offer, size and open interest.  That counterparty must be the buyer for all sellers and the seller for all buyers, as is done today by the CFTC and OCC.  Those firms that cannot post cash margin against their open, underwater positions must tear them up within 180 days.  Speculation is fine - provided you can prove you can clear the trade!  Again, any firm that wishes to do business in The United States must comply in all markets, or be barred from our markets.  Once again this may produce insolvencies but point #4 will (again) guarantee that all depositor guarantees are covered.

Government is enacting "health care reform" today not to reform health care, not to provide health care, but rather to impose an immediate tax on all Americans to attempt to pull up even harder on the monetary stick.

It won't work folks.  It can't work.  More than 18 months ago I identified the primary failure in the path that was being taken, and why.  We have tried it Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner, President Bush and President Obama's way now for nearly three years, and yet there has been no resolution of the debt problem, no resolution of the housing market and no actual economic growth.  Instead we have papered over insolvency and lied about the health of both our banking and economic systems.

Meanwhile the cracks in the dam continue to grow.  Greece is not just "one little problem" over in Europe.  Behind Greece is Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and even Great Britain.  None of these nations have yet taken the actions necessary to resolve the problem, for the same reason we have not - it is politically very difficult to tell the entrenched banking interests "you must eat your own cooking - even if you choke on it."

We still have time to choose between bad and horrifically awful.  We can choose between recognizing the Depression we are already in (private GDP has contracted by more than 10% from the peak, which is the definition of economic Depression) or we can risk Zombieland or Mad Max becoming reality.

Since Europe and the rest of the world show no desire or expectation to do the right thing, we must either firewall ourselves off from their collapse or we will inevitably go down the bowl with them. 

We are risking severe civil unrest and the possible destruction of our republic by our continued refusal to face the mathematical facts, not just a "double dip" recession.  What Greece and other nations are seeing now is nothing compared to what is on the horizon and will reach us if we do not act.

Mathematics yield to no political desire or arrogance wielded by man or woman.  Those relationships described by mathematics inexorably come to pass, unless you change the equations.  In a debt-backed fiat currency world continuing to load debt into a system that has too much debt in it related to production is a futile and self-destructive act, just as is an alcoholic deciding to chug yet another bottle of whiskey.

Economically we are facing liver failure and brain cancer unless we stop gorging on our drug of choice - debt.  Whether the consequence of ceasing to do so is politically expedient or not is, at this point, immaterial.  We are literally gambling with the ability of this nation to continue forward as a going and peaceful, civil concern.

We still have time to act and do the right thing to halt what will befall us should we continue on our present path, but that time is running out."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2104-How-Far-Down-The-Rabbit-Hole-Must-We-Go.html

Someone sent this in email.

______ 

From Congressman Ted Poe, 2nd District, Texas

Dear Neighbors,

Tonight, in the last hour, politics trumped the people and the House passed the Senate bill by a vote of xxx-xxx.  As promised, I voted NO.

Over the last year, our country has been more engaged in our government than ever before and because of that we remain united to fight another day.  While tonight was a devastating assault on our constitutional rights, it is far from over.  Lawsuits will be filed in every courthouse in America.  I have spoken to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and he has the full support, and vigorous encouragement, of the Republican members of Congress to take immediate action on the state level.

As a former judge, I have an appreciation for the laws in our country.  The government takeover of healthcare is unconstitutional.  Our federal government does not have the authority to force us to buy anything.  That's not allowed under any stretch of the law or imagination.

This power grab is not about health, and it's certainly not about care. It's about liberty. It's about federal government control over people's lives. The federal government has no right to dictate to the people their healthcare needs or any other goods or services they deem necessary.

Over 70 percent of the American people are against this bill.  I will continue to fight along side of the people against government intrusion and champion real reform that fixes what is broken and  improves the greatest healthcare system in the world.  No one argues that we need reform, but this bill was not the answer.  It was never about reform – it was always about government control.

Rest assured tonight, this is not over.  Let me leave you with these words:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

God and Texas,

Ted Poe
Member of Congress
TEXAS

Full credit to Time*treat for the link to this list.

https://www.lotterypost.com/blogentry/38941/viewcomments

_________

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 165(Democrats in roman; Republicans in italic; Independents underlined)
      H R 3590      RECORDED VOTE      21-Mar-2010      10:49 PM
      QUESTION:  On Motion to Concur in Senate Amendments
      BILL TITLE: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

---- AYES    219 ---

---- NOES    212 ---

Seems the process is not quite over.

____________

http://senate.gov/

________

March 21, 2010 Posted by John at 4:13 PM

"With Stupak's collapse, passage of the Democrats' government medicine bill is assured. This is a dark day in American history; one of the darkest. But there are many reasons for optimism. Here are a few:

* The health care battle is just beginning. Next, the Senate will try to enact the House's "fixes" to the original Senate bill. Some Senators say that won't happen. If not, then President Obama has the option of signing the original Senate bill--now passed by the House--Cornhusker Kickback and all. I assume he would do that, but the resulting blowback from House Democrats, not to mention the American people, would be something to behold.

* The health care bill's taxes will go into effect promptly, but its substantive provisions are, for the most part, deferred for four years. This means that we have plenty of time to repeal the legislation. Sure, it will take a new Congress and new President. But repealing this disaster of a bill will by a rallying cry for the American people for years to come. Moreover, even if the Republicans only take over the House in November, and not the Senate, won't it be possible to throw roadblocks in the way of the bill's implementation? Won't budget appropriations be necessary to sustain the various federal tentacles the bill seeks to establish? What will happen if the House simply refuses to fund them?

* I've never been prouder to be a Republican. The party's Congressional leaders have fought this battle to the end on behalf of the American people--with intelligence, toughness, persistence and good humor. The contrast between the parties has never been starker than in today's debate. If any intelligent Democrats were watching--there must be some left--they had to be embarrassed for their party.

* Paul Ryan has emerged as one of the conservative movement's strongest spokesmen. In the years to come, I think we will hear the words "I'm a Paul Ryan Republican" with increasing frequency.

* The health care debate has energized the conservative movement and awoken the sleeping giant, that is, the American people. The Democrats misinterpreted their electoral victories in 2006 and 2008 as a mandate for socialism. Now a majority of voters are intent on disabusing them of that misapprehension. Just about all of the political energy today is on the right--a remarkable fact, only sixteen months after the Democrats' high-water mark in November 2008.

* Barack Obama has used his political capital--pretty much all of it--on unpopular legislation that will continue to rile the voters for years to come. As a result, Obama is a remarkably unpopular second-year President. And he hasn't even experienced any bad luck yet. It is hard to see how he will be able to regain his footing.

So, be of good cheer. To paraphrase a great American, we have not yet begun to fight.

UPDATE: Tim Pawlenty tweets:

Hard to believe Congress would pass this mess of a health care plan. It will put us further into debt & dangerously expand scope of gov't.

PAUL adds: Repeal may not be out of the question, but my advice is to exercise more and improve your diet. Try to minimize your encounters with Obamacare and delay your encounter with the death panel in whatever form it takes."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025892.php

Can you hear us now??????????????????

__________

March 20, 2010 Posted by John at 2:30 PM

Source Powerlineblog.com

Thousands of Americans are rallying at the Capitol to urge Congress to defeat the Democrats' health care takeover bill. You can follow events on Twitter at #killthebill. This photo was taken at noon from the Speaker's Lobby and posted via Twitter. Click to enlarge

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025881.php

-

-

Poll is about 2/3 of the way down the page on the righthand side.  There was no direct link to the poll or I would have posted it.

_________

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/18/obama-endorses-immigration-blueprint/

March 16, 2010

"Talking Points vs. Reality

By Thomas Sowell

Source CNSNews.com

"Author and conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin pointed to the U.S. Capitol and told the crowd at the Nov. 5, 2009 House Call rally it belongs to them. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/62939

"Huge (53%) Tax Increase On SAVERS

Source The Market Ticker   Wednesday, March 17. 2010

Posted by Karl Denninger

If you were wondering where the hidden taxes are in "Health Reform", guess what - President Obama has just given you something to sit on.

The forced march to pass ObamaCare continues, and all that matters now is raw politics. But opponents should go down swinging, and that means exposing such policy debacles as President Obama's 11th-hour decision to apply the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to "unearned income."

That's what savings and investment income are called in Washington, and this destructive tax wasn't in either the House or Senate bills, though it may now become law with almost no scrutiny.

This is unbelievably destructive to capital formation.

For the person who is "short-term trading" (e.g. daytrading, etc) this is a relatively small tax, an increase of about 7% in the tax (2.9% applied to the 39.6% maximum rate on "ordinary income", which short-term capital gains are.)

But for the person who is INVESTING for the long haul, that is, who is holding stocks for more than one year, this takes the marginal rate from 15% to 17.9%, an increase of almost 20% in the tax owed.

This, of course, comes on the back of President Obama's fraudulently engineered "rally", which was created through Congressional intervention to permit - surprise surprise - legalized accounting fraud through "mark to model."

So you got your stock market rally, and now President Obama and The Democrats are going to cram a 20% tax increase down your throat if you profited from it - and at this point, being 2010, there's not a thing you can do about it.

It gets better.  Since ordinary investors can only write off $3,000 in capital losses, when you lose you don't get a tax credit.  Oh yeah, you get to carry forward the loss to future years, but you paid the tax on the gains already - this is a putative future credit back.

Oh, and let's not forget that there was already a huge tax increase coming this year - the long term capital gains rate goes to 20% at the end of this year anyway as the Bush tax cuts expire.

So in fact the rate goes from 15% to 22.9%, a fifty-three percent increase in the tax rate.

And oh, if your AGI goes over $200,000 by even a dollar you are subject to this tax from the first dollar of your investment income.

A fifty-three percent increase in taxes on long-term (that is, capital-forming, long-term investment) capital gains - exactly the sort of investment activity you want to form businesses and invest for the long haul in America's future, not to mention generating jobs by forming those enterprises.

That's slammed the door on any interest I might have in forming a new business as I did in the 1990s - ever - and I suspect I'm not alone.

When this goes into effect my capital, other than that which I can shelter from taxation, is no longer going to be put at risk in the markets. I'd rather live in a nice little cottage on the beach and simply expend what I have rather than contributing to capital formation in any way, shape or form under a punitive system like this.

Why?

Because if Congress demonstrates that it will put 53% on the capital gains rate once I've already committed my capital (thereby destroying my return) I will not take the risk of them doing it again and making the rate even more punitive."

"Unconstitutional Procedure Being Used to Pass Unconstitutional ObamaCare

"House leaders are preparing to ram through ObamaCare this week  without a vote.  Not only is the legislation unconstitutional, but the process being used to pass it is unconstitutional.  The House is preparing a rule that would consider the Senate-passed version of ObamaCare passed in the House even though members would never directly vote on it.  That would violate Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution.

Here is how the trick would work:  In the House, the Rules Committee sets up the parameters for debate on legislation.  House leaders are considering a complicated rule that would be structured so that a vote on the rule setting down the structure for the ObamaCare debate would allow the Senate’s version of health care reform to pass without a vote.  First, there would be a vote on a rule.  If the rule is passed by the House, then the House would vote on a health care budget reconciliation measure that is an amendment to the Senate passed ObamaCare bill.  If that reconciliation measure passes, then reconciliation goes to the Senate and the ObamaCare legislation is deemed passed without a direct vote.  The plan for the legislation is unclear.  House leadership will either structure the rule to either immediately present ObamaCare to the President for his signature or they will hold the bill and deliver it only if the Senate passes a health care reconciliation measure.  Either way, the Constitution and the American people are the losers.

Understand that this procedure is drafted in a way so your average American can’t understand it.  The simple way to understand the situation is that the House is trying to pass a bill without a vote.

The Constitution states that the House and Senate are supposed to pass identical versions of a bill before the President can sign it into law.  One of the reasons for this tricky procedure is to provide cover for moderate Democrats who don’t want to vote for the Senate-passed ObamaCare bill because it includes the federal funding of abortion.

Michael McConnell, Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, explains it this way at the Wall Street Journal today:

Democratic congressional leaders have floated a plan to enact health-care reform by a procedure dubbed “the Slaughter solution.” It is named not for the political carnage that it might inflict on their members, but for Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.), chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, who proposed it. Under her proposal, Democrats would pass a rule that deems the Senate’s health-care bill to have passed the House, without the House actually voting on the bill. This would enable Congress to vote on legislation that fixes flaws in the Senate health-care bill without facing a Senate filibuster, and without requiring House members to vote in favor of a Senate bill that is now politically toxic.

McConnell is right.  The Constitution says that:

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law.

If a branch does not vote on a bill, then that bill did not pass.  This proposed procedure seems to be a clear violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution.  There will be debate on the proper remedy for this constitutional affront, but all can agree that, at a minimum, House members can raise a constitutional point of order against the rule.

Liberals in the House understand that this process is hard to defend.  Chris Frates at Politico writes about a leaked memo drafted by Assistant to the Speaker Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) intended to provide talking points to Democrat members when challenged on the unconstitutional process.

The Van Hollen memo also advised members to avoid talking about the process.  “At this point, we have to just rip the band-aid off and have a vote — up or down; yes or no? Things like reconciliation and what the rules committee does is INSIDE BASEBALL,” the memo says. “People who try and start arguments about process on this are almost always against the actual policy substance too, often times for purely political reasons.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the House Rules Committee have come up with a very complicated procedure to get ObamaCare to the President’s desk without House members having to vote directly on the bill.  This procedure is going to be debated extensively this week and may be the key issue as to whether President Obama signs legislation to provide a de facto government-run health care system."

http://biggovernment.com/bdarling/2010/03/15/unconstitutional-procedure-being-used-to-pass-unconstitutional-obamacare/

March 22, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 26

"A stranger moment in politics has seldom been seen. A vast expansion of government that affects every one of the country’s 300-plus million inhabitants may be passed by a hair against fierce and fiercely repeated public opposition by a Congress that no longer speaks for its voters—most of whose members are angry and scared. They are afraid of their voters, and mad at each other, or rather, the Democrats are: The liberals are mad at the centrists, the centrists are mad at the liberals. Democrats in the House are angry at those in the Senate, and deeply suspicious of being betrayed. The centrists are also mad at Obama, for picking the wrong cause (health care and not the economy), doing it in the wrong way (big and expensive, not incremental and smaller), and pushing them to risk their careers in backing a cause and a program neither they nor their constituents want. 

For Obama himself, health care has been toxic, decimating his numbers, and ripping apart his mystique. In the course of the fight his approval ratings have dipped from near 70 to the mid-40s, his magic has vanished, and his words have gone flat. The coalition that elected him has fallen apart, as independents, mistakenly lured by his “conservative” temperament, have fled to the welcoming arms of the opposite party. Polling suggests that all the red and swing states Obama took from George W. Bush have now turned against him. The elections held since health care became the main issue have rendered votes of no confidence: In 2008, Virginia went to Obama by a 7-point margin; in 2009, it elected a Republican governor by 18, a 25-point recalibration. In 2008, New Jersey went to Obama by 15 points; in 2009 it went to Chris Christie by 4. Massachusetts, which went for Obama by 26 points (and which hasn’t had a Republican senator since the late 1970s), gave Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican who campaigned against health care, by a margin of 5 points. Respected nonpartisan political analysts now predict a “wave” election for the upcoming midterms, in which the out party wins one or both houses of Congress?—an event that is usually driven by a major calamity like the failure of the Clinton health care reform plan in the 1994 midterms plus congressional scandal or the 2006 loss for Republicans, triggered by congressional scandal and what looked then like a loss in Iraq. Democrats hold massive majorities—18 seats in the Senate, and 79 in the House—but many of the states and districts that they represent now poll as being against the health care proposal, creating a major democratic dysfunction, as many members are voting against the wishes and interests of their districts and states. This lopsided body, in which Democrats are clawing to eke out even a one-vote majority, is a dead Congress walking, out of step with most of its voters, who on this issue at least are temporarily represented by the naysayers on the Republican side of the aisle. Health care reform has dissolved the Democrats’ coalition, and with it much of their moral authority. If health care survives, it will have been passed by the shell of a Congress that outlived its own mandate.

Supporters of the current legislation on health care reform compare this effort to Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the mid-1960s, but the differences between them are stark. None of these passed with substantial majorities of the public strongly against them. None passed without substantial backing from the opposite party. None of them had the remarkable effect of uniting the opposition in monolithic resistance, while at the same time splitting their party, demoralizing it, and setting its various factions strongly at odds. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson never had to spend billions of dollars to pick up the votes of unhappy senators. Their stature was enhanced by passing these measures, not lessened and compromised. And their bills were passed on their merits, not on desperate appeals to save the party and president from a political pasting, which seems the main talking point being used on reluctant members of Congress now. “The crusade that is dragging itself toward the finish line doesn’t quite feel like a triumph, let alone the launch of a new New Deal,” wrote Howard Fineman in Newsweek, even before Scott Brown tossed his bombshell. “The reasons offered .  .  . have been ever-shifting. .  .  . By the time Bill Clinton met privately with Senate Democrats .  .  . it was .  .  . primarily about the political optics: the need to pass something, anything, to avoid defeat.” “Their sole remaining reason for completing the <snip>ed thing is that they started it,” writes George Will, noting that the main passion driving Democrats is a fear of repeating the 1994 wipeout, which they trace, perhaps incorrectly, to the failure to pass health care that year. At any rate, the main emotion among Democrats seems to be a balance of terror: fear of passing the bill against fear of killing it, making them face the wrath of the voters; or their party’s base, leaders, and president. 

No party or president has ever put its members in a vise of this nature before. Or seen its backers make so many strange statements in trying to press a bill’s case. Back in the days before Scott Brown’s victory, when the Democrats still had their 60-man supermajority, the claim was that the fault lay in the “system” and the Senate, and never in the bill. “What precisely is the point of the United States Senate?” asked New York magazine’s John Heilemann. “If a popular, shrewd president coupled with a Congress with a strong majority in both houses held by the president’s party can’t get its program passed .  .  . something is structurally wrong.” What was wrong, however, wasn’t the structure. The president was not in fact shrewd and was no longer popular, the party wasn’t strong but split (at least on this issue), and the bill was disliked by much of the public, which made its objections often and noisily felt.

As for the Senate, it is a more representative body than Obamacare’s defenders believe. In many states having two Democratic senators, the health care bill polls very poorly; indicating not that the Senate rules give the minority too much power, but that in many states represented by Democrats, the senators aren’t giving voice to their voters’ ideas. Virginia, which has two Democrats (James Webb and Mark Warner), strongly opposes the president’s version of health care and gave Republican Bob McDonnell a landslide in the governor’s race to drive home the message. New Jersey, with two Democrats (Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez), elected Republican Chris Christie governor to make the same point. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas is in very deep trouble, as is her fellow Democratic senator, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, who, when he got the Cornhusker Kickback, was jeered and hissed roundly by resident voters, and saw his numbers plummet. Massachusetts, which between 1978 and 2010 had no Republican senators at all in its delegation, and for eight years had no Republican members of Congress, elected Republican Scott Brown, on a pledge to fight health care. In this sense, John Kerry, Paul Kirk, and even Ted Kennedy, didn’t represent Massachusetts. The woes of the health care reform are not the fault of the Senate at all.

Another strange view now being floated is that the public in general is angry because the bill is held up in Congress, and nothing is now being done. Let’s back up and break this down into two different segments: The liberal base is angry because the bill is being tied up in Congress. The public in general is furious because the bill is still being brought up at all. If the bill is passed, the base will be pleased, but the public at large will be even more furious. And at the last calculation, the public in general was about three times as large as the base. A similar view is that the bill has to pass because it’s unpopular, because it’s only after its passage that its merits can be fully discussed. In this sense, the debate in itself is the primary obstacle.  “We have to pass the bill, so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy,” says Nancy Pelosi. “Once they pass a plan, you can actually talk about a plan,” says E. J. Dionne. “No president can win the argument over health care prospectively because the country is not inclined to believe that Washington can reform a system this complex,” Ron Brownstein quotes White House flack Dan Pfeiffer. “The only way to sell comprehensive reform, Pfeiffer continued, is to pass it despite poor poll numbers, and then build support.” Usually, one builds support before voting, and then votes when one has it. But these are unusual times. 

Strangest of all is the popular theory that if the bill passes?—by bribes, threats, and payoffs, and against fierce opposition—there will be a triumphant, Rose Garden signing, and then the whole issue will fade. Good luck with that. A bill forced through against such popular dissent is likely to start, and not settle, contention, for two big reasons.

First, this bill is not only disliked, it is disliked intensely, and across a wide swath of the population. Majorities not only dislike it, but majorities of those majorities dislike it intensely. Twice as many independents dislike as support it intensely, and the intensity of antipathy has only grown. They dislike it intensely because it will affect them intensely, on a personal level. Tax cuts don’t affect everyone equally. Very few people are ever on welfare. Most people who live long enough do get on Medicare, but not everyone does at the same time. Health care involves everyone, every day, on an emotional, primitive, life and death level. Everyone needs doctors. Everyone has had an experience, or has friends and relations who have had the experience, where the right or wrong medical treatment at the right or wrong time by the right or wrong doctor made the difference between life and death, between a full and a partial recovery, and an experience that was neither traumatic nor financially ruinous, or one that was hell on all counts. Everyone fears a system that could give them the wrong doctor instead of the right one at just the wrong moment, and everyone, no matter how rich, strong, well-connected, or seemingly healthy, knows that an accident or a bad diagnosis can come any day. Polls show that most people believe this plan will make their care more expensive, and at the same time, less satisfactory than what they already have. Add to this the fact that the bill by necessity trips a mare’s nest of hot wires—abortion, rationing, euthanasia on the basis of “social utility,” and the whole moral complex of beginning- and end-of-life issues—and one has no reason for thinking this issue will be laid to rest soon.

Second, the bill’s defenders say “process” themes don’t move the public, and they may be right. But what they call “process” in this case reads like “corruption” to others, such as the bribes, threats, and buyoffs with which the bill cleared the Senate. Three hundred million dollars to buy Mary Landrieu, over a billion to pay off Ben Nelson. Besides being corrupt, the administration is looking inept in the bargain: The past week brought Massapiece Theatre, along with the wavering Democratic congressman whose brother was offered a judgeship just as he was being asked to the White House for a collegial talk. This is beginning to look like The Godfather crossed with a Marx Brothers movie, a bad sign for an administration that came in touting competence and projecting the feel of a Frank Capra film. 

In fact, the process is part of the problem, and stems from the bill’s weakness, which makes payoffs essential: “Because the legislation is frightening and unpopular, Democrats have had to resort to serial bribery,” writes George Will, correctly. “Massachusetts voted immediately after the corruption of exempting, until 2018, union members from the tax on high value” insurance plans. This and the Cornhusker Kickback helped fuel Scott Brown’s upset, which created the need for still more extravagant buyoffs: Each bribe makes the bill more unpopular, creating the need for more bribes. Senate rules may bore voters, but they find this arresting—one reason the strife will go on.

Other big bills may have been controversial, but most passed in the end by comfortable margins. No reform bill on this grand scale has ever passed in the face of such opposition, with solid majorities so firmly against it, with no votes at all from the opposite party, and with the party in power so split. No such bill had an organized opposition?—the tea party movement—in place against it, ready to march at the first opportunity. Opposition to health care has been very good to the Republican party, and as long as it is, the party will use and run on it. Legal challenges from the states, already in progress, will also add to the air of contention. This is a war that could go on for years.

Liberals say Democrats have to pass this bill to prove they can govern. But will the public see wasting a year on something that’s not a priority, then pushing a bill they don’t want through multiple payoffs, and ending up with something they think will make their lives worse as a species of “governing” they want anything more to do with? Meanwhile, the Democrats are in the intensive care unit, their president wounded, their members demoralized, their coalition in tatters. Come November, voters may decide they’d rather be much less “governed”—or governed by somebody else."

Noemie Emery is a Weekly Standard contributing editor and columnist for the Washington Examiner.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/dead-congress-walking

Dems sense of urgency to shove healthcare through reeks of desperation for money.  Money to perhaps support yet another war via IOU's like were given to Social Security when they raided those funds years ago. 

Could be I've been reading too many conspiracy theories.  Decide for yourself.

____________

Submitted byTyler Durden on 03/15/2010 15:23 -0500
Source Zero Hedge

"Is war just around the corner? While in theory it would make perfect sense to distract Americans from the long road to US insolvency, and other more pressing issues such as the endless criminality all around us, in practice we have so far heard merely rumors. The Herald of Scotland, however, may have credible proof that a US-led attack on Iran approaches and could be just  days away. The newspaper has procured proof of an arms shipment to Diego Garcia, which consists of "of 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs...put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities." Additional insight comes from Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran. US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours." Is war imminent? And will Obama repeat Bush's mistake with Iraq, resulting in a huge spike in oil, coupled with a rush to safety in dollars and/or gold? If inflation will not start on its own, its has to be kindled: preferably by a Blu-117 bomb. Is the relatively long period of market stability and low volatility about to come to a sudden end?

More from the Herald:

Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.

Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.

Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.

The Sunday Herald reported in 2007 that stealth bomber hangers on the island were being equipped to take bunker-buster bombs.

And it gets worse, when one considers the eerie similarities with Operation Desert [blank]. We all know how that whole fiasco ended.

Contract details for the shipment to Diego Garcia were posted on an international tenders’ website by the US navy.

A shipping company based in Florida, Superior Maritime Services, will be paid $699,500 to carry many thousands of military items from Concord, California, to Diego Garcia.

Crucially, the cargo includes 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs.

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. “US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he added.

The preparations were being made by the US military, but it would be up to President Obama to make the final decision. He may decide that it would be better for the US to act instead of Israel, Plesch argued.

“The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely,” he added. “The US ... is using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.”

According to Ian Davis, director of the new independent thinktank, Nato Watch, the shipment to Diego Garcia is a major concern. “We would urge the US to clarify its intentions for these weapons, and the Foreign Office to clarify its attitude to the use of Diego Garcia for an attack on Iran,” he said.

For Alan Mackinnon, chair of Scottish CND, the revelation was “extremely worrying”. He stated: “It is clear that the US government continues to beat the drums of war over Iran, most recently in the statements of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

“It is depressingly similar to the rhetoric we heard prior to the war in Iraq in 2003.”

The British Ministry of Defence has said in the past that the US government would need permission to use Diego Garcia for offensive action. It has already been used for strikes against Iraq during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf wars.

We are confident that the administration's diplomatic core is wildly spinning in advance of a possible incursion, and fully expect that Tehran will be exposed as a poison nest full of dirty, smelly CDS speculators who have been controlling the spreads on global credits ever since the late 70's, about the time Iran ceased being a most favored nation (forget that CDS did not come to the scene until the late 90's, at least Ollie North may get a cameo appearance as head CDS Novator). At worst, the Administration will coin a new term for the incursion's target, recycled appropriately from none other than the Oracle of Omaha: Weapons Of Mass CDS-based Destruction and Other Types of Mass Destruction that Speculators Do Good Too."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-preparing-total-destruction-iran

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Pelosi-Once-we-kick-through-this-door-more-reform-will-follow-87741467.html

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/15/another-billboard-mystery-in-minnesota/comment-page-1/#comments

Source Wired.com

"Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties knight in shining armor many were expecting.

Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.

When it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration has come under fire for often mirroring his predecessor’s practices surrounding state secrets, the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There’s also Gitmo, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18 states that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The data is lodged in state and federal databases, and has fostered as many as 200 arrests nationwide, Walsh said.

The American Civil Liberties Union claims DNA sampling is different from mandatory, upon-arrest fingerprinting that has been standard practice in the United States for decades.

A fingerprint, the group says, reveals nothing more than a person’s identity. But much can be learned from a DNA sample, which codes a person’s family ties, some health risks, and, according to some, can predict a propensity for violence.

The ACLU is suing California to block its voter-approved measure requiring saliva sampling of people picked up on felony charges. Authorities in the Golden State are allowed to conduct so-called “familial searching” — when a genetic sample does not directly match another, authorities start investigating people with closely matched DNA in hopes of finding leads to the perpetrator.

Do you wonder whether DNA sampling is legal?

The courts have already upheld DNA sampling of convicted felons, based on the theory that the convicted have fewer privacy rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that when conducting intrusions of the body during an investigation, the police need so-called “exigent circumstances” or a warrant. That alcohol evaporates in the blood stream is the exigent circumstance to draw blood from a suspected drunk driver without a warrant."

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/obama-supports-dna-sampling-upon-arrest

Every state is in a money grab for revenues because we're all suffering during the Great Depression II. 

Cathy Cox Georgia State Superintendent of Schools has proposed a 50% increase in Georgia Lottery ticket prices.  https://www.lotterypost.com/blogentry/38612

Mrs Cox may want to take a serious look at salaries of university employees before reaching into lottery players' pockets. 

__________

Tuesday, March 9. 2010
Posted by Karl Denninger in Education at 19:56

Source The Market Ticker

"Then aim your "demonstrating" at the people who are bankrupting your state - and you personally.

I speak specifically of people such as those that The Daily Illini pointed out - all employees for the University of Illinois.

Let's see what we have here....

The head of the football team - the coach - makes $1 million.  For coaching a college football team.

The "intercollegiate (sports) director makes $600,000.

The President of the University is just $50 large shy of a half-million.

A large number of Deans and Professors make $250,000 - or more.

Indeed, I have to get eight pages into this list before I drop below $200,000.

Oh, we also have two Lieutenants in the Police Department that make $192,545 - each - per year.  Handing out tickets to scooter riders without helmets and issuing University Parking Citations (probably more than $200,000 worth of those) I'm sure.

Now maybe you can justify how it is that these fine bastions of American Government Employment earn these bloated salaries. 

I will point out some demographics to readers for Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where the University happens to be.

The median home price is $159,900, which the top fifteen pages of these employees can afford to pay cash for with one year's salary. 

The median income for a family is $52,628, while per-capita income according to the BEA is $31,354.  Fewer than FIFTEEN PERCENT of the persons on the University Payroll make equal to or less than the median per-capita income for the city.

Oh, and let's not discuss retirement benefits.  Legacy pensions anyone?  How about medical care once one retires.  And speaking of which, what's the retirement age?

There has been much written about overblown pensions, double and even triple-dipping and similar games.  But this table, nicely sortable by salary, makes quite clear exactly who the system employs and how much they pay - and that the pay is, shall we say, ridiculous compared to the average private-sector prevailing wage.

This much should be clear: If you're curious about why you're being bankrupted with parabolic tuition and fee increases along with demands to take on outrageous amounts of debt to get a so-called "college education", you might discern from the above that the only "educating" you're getting in the UofI system is how to hold still while you're bent < snip>.

What you, Dear Student, who is being given the whaaaaambulance treatment by the Administration (the folks making those six-figure salaries that are all radical multiples of the average living wage in your town) do about that "education" is, of course, up to you."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2062-IF-You-Are-Going-To-Demonstrate.....html

Note this is a corrected post.  I referenced the wrong person named Cathy Cox, Democrat, former Secretary of State who ran for Governor, in my previous deleted post which featured the same article below.

______

Kathy Cox, Superintendent of Schools State of Georgia and a Republican has proposed raising Georgia Lottery ticket prices from $1.00 to $1.50.

I personally want ticket prices to remain at current levels because Georgia has always captured lottery money from bordering states, from travelers on our extensive interstate system and from people flying through Hartsfield Jackson airport.  

A 50% increase in ticket prices in our current Depression is shortsighted,  money grabbing, and will not increase overall lottery revenues.  Kathy Cox might want to consider trimming salaries of university employees, or simply raising sales tax.  Would suggest contacting your respective state legislator if you're opposed to a ticke price increase.

Or you might want to email Mrs. Cox with a short polite message.

__________

Kathy Cox
State Superintendent
of Schools (Georgia)

 (404) 656-2800
 (404) 651-8737
state.superintendent@
doe.k12.ga.us

http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/sup.aspx

________

"Is Cox taking a gamble in suggesting raising price of lottery tickets to fund schools?

2:06 pm March 12, 2010, by Maureen Downey
Source BogsAJC.com

The suggestion today by state school Superintendent Kathy Cox that lottery ticket prices could be raised by 50 cents to help support k-12 education in Georgia is bound to be controversial because it would shift a larger share of school funding on low-income Georgians.

My former colleague Jim Wooten contended that the lottery took “poor people’s butter-and-egg money.” I argued that all of us are entitled to waste our own money. (I come from a family where my aunts and parents were weekly lottery ticket buyers. I don’t buy them.)

When the AJC looked at lottery sales by zip codes in 2003, we found the areas where people tend to play the lottery most and benefit least from HOPE are substantially poorer than areas that receive the most HOPE scholarships. At the time, Zell Miller, the father of the lottery and the HOPE Scholarship, had a retort to that, saying that the lottery was a diversion.

Players “buy that lottery ticket instead of buying People magazine or the National Enquirer, ” Miller said. “They buy that lottery ticket instead of a six-pack sometimes. They buy that lottery ticket instead going to a baseball game.”

According to the AJC:

Cox said during an appearance Friday on CNN that hiking the price by just 50 cents per ticket could raise $350 million to help fill a massive hole left by state budget cuts in the last two years. Cox said raising prices would ensure K-12 got money while also preserving funding for the HOPE college scholarship and state’s prekindergarten program.

The state constitution already allows lottery revenue to go to technology and buildings for elementary and high schools, but lawmakers stopped allotting that money to K-12 in 2003. Cox said the state’s education budget has been slashed by nearly $3 billion in the last 19 months.

http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2010/03/12/is-cox-taking-a-gamble-in-suggesting-raising-price-of-lottery-tickets-to-fund-schools/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog

Article has charts to illustrate points, click link at bottom to access.

_____________

"Squeezing the Last Drop of Productivity from the American Working Class – 18 Percent National Underemployment and why Wall Street and the Government are Cheering Your Financial Failure.

Posted by mybudget360   

Source My Budget 360

"The American financial press cheered on Friday when “only” 36,000 jobs were lost in February.  This if you haven’t noticed now passes for good economic news.  The unemployment rate remained unchanged because the actual workforce continued to show a decline yet Wall Street somehow viewed this as positive developments.  And why not?  The middle class is under assault from every angle.  Things are so twisted with propaganda that many Americans now believe that the banking elite are actually looking out for the well being of American workers.  As news of the job losses somehow echoed as positive developments, more and more Americans are continually being kicked out of their homes from banks they helped to bail out.  Irony has no meaning to Wall Street.

And if we look at the details of the jobs report, it turns out that 17.9 percent of Americans are either unemployed or underemployed or flat out have stopped looking for work:

Source:  BLS

This wasn’t the only spin going on in the media.  Before the jobs report came out there was a preemptive flow of information trying to justify the job cuts by blaming it on the weather.  Yes, now instead of blaming the financial catastrophe on the actual perpetrators in Wall Street who systematically looted the American system and turned our economy into a giant casino that they leeched onto, we are now to believe people are losing their jobs because of the weather:

“(CNSnews) Ahead of Friday’s announcement, Goldman Sachs predicted that the storm might skew the job loss number by as much as 100,000 – a prediction that was embraced by officials in the Obama administration.

“The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics,” Larry Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said in an interview with CNBC. “So it’s going to be very important … to look past whatever the next figures are to gauge the underlying trends.”

If the storm caused a skewing of job loss numbers I wonder how many job losses can be linked to Goldman Sachs and their casino style gambling in the derivatives markets and mortgage backed securities?  Then again, people should be happy that the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.7 percent even though more Americans are working part-time with no benefits and many others have simply fallen off the payrolls.  This is supposedly the new American dream for the middle class through the eyes of Wall Street who are selling capitalism but living in a world of corporate handout socialism.

There is a new show called Undercover Boss where a CEO goes undercover to work in the trenches with the proletariat.  As it turns out, the middle class is being worked to death and as we all know, the CEO can’t even do the job most workers do on a daily basis.  Even Henry Ford understood the interworking of the cars he was putting out.  In the end the CEO reveals his identity and gives a nice little handout to the worker and all is well in TV land.  The check is a token of what CEOs actually make.  This is the ultimate reflection of our trickle down economy where those at the top act like sociopaths and rulers of the universe but when it comes to doing the daily tasks of their company, they have no clue.  This is the de facto rule running on Wall Street.  In fact, CEO pay has grown outrageously over the past few decades as the middle class has gotten poorer:

Source:  American Progress

In reality, part-time employment has spread even to poor CEOs making 300 to 400 times the average American worker salary.  Poor CEOs and Wall Street executives need time off to enjoy their tax payer funded yachts and all expense hedonism trips to the Caribbean.  They would like to convince each other that the money they have is all through their will power and market prowess but in reality it is nothing more than being part of a corporatocracy and buying out the government with an army of lobbyist and insiders.  You have to be a self indulgent narcissist to take the economy to the brink of financial destruction in the case of many Wall Street firms and still reward yourself with outrageous bailouts.  The fact that average Americans are still not protesting in mass about this tells me that many actually believe what Wall Street is saying.  You see this when many would rather blame the working class for the ills of today than focus their energy where it really needs to go.

Wall Street loves this economic crisis.  They receive trillions in bailouts yet convince the public that what is occurring today is merely the “market” correcting itself.  So as most Americans have more and more troubles keeping up with their daily bills, companies are squeezing every little excess from those currently working.  Those that have jobs out of fear will work harder and probably demand less merit increases in the current economy.  After all, the head guy is only making 300 times what you make even though he can’t even understand the main function of the organization.  So what if the low level guy is selling toxic crap to some homeless person with no income and giving him access to a $500,000 loan.  These Wall Street tycoons are big picture thinkers and can’t be worried with the day to day operations of the proletariat unless it means turning it into a caricature for mass viewing and quick TIVO access.

You don’t think productivity actually increased?  Take a look at this:

Source:  BLS

This recession has been fantastic for productivity.  Just look at the above chart.  American workers have been doing their part during this recession.  After all, now you can hire a cadre of “contract” workers and not have to pay them one cent in healthcare support or even contribute to their pension.  Once the job is done you can kick them to the curb.  After all, this is capitalism so long as those at the top have managed to setup sweetheart deals and golden parachutes.  This is how the top 1 percent makes sure their hold on 40 percent of the nation’s wealth isn’t damaged.  And if you think financial institutions deserve this bailout money and their outrageous bonuses then companies like Circuit City or Mervyns would still be around today if that model applied across the board.  But this doesn’t apply to the general economy.  This applies to Wall Street and somehow the absurdity of it all still goes on.  The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and not one solid reform has been enacted.  26 months of job losses and nothing.  Who is running the show?

The rise of the part-time work force is nothing new as we become more and more like Japan.  Japan bailed out their financial institutions after their failed stock market and real estate bubbles popped and today, their working class is made up of one-third part-time workers:

“(LA Times) In the world’s second-largest economy, the global financial crisis has forced part-time workers such as Kudo to face a harsh new reality.

Over the last few years, temporary employees have gone from being a rarity in Japan to accounting for one-third of the workforce of 67 million. They enjoy far fewer protections than full-time workers — placing their necks squarely on the layoff chopping block.

By March, the government predicts, 85,000 part-timers will fall prey to haken-giri, or temporary-worker cutbacks — a relatively small number compared with U.S. layoffs but high for a nation where job security has long been a staple.

On Wednesday, embattled Prime Minister Taro Aso made the plight of part-timers a major piece of a proposed stimulus package. Aso pledged to create 1.6 million jobs, partly by turning part-time jobs into full-time ones.”

Japan’s headline unemployment rate is 4.9 percent.  Just like our headline unemployment rate, the devil is really in the details.  If we continue on this path part-time work may be all that is left."

http://www.mybudget360.com/squeezing-the-last-drop-of-productivity-from-the-american-working-class-%e2%80%93-18-percent-national-underemployment-and-why-wall-street-and-the-government-are-cheering-your-financial-failure/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mybudget360%2FQePx+%28My+Budget+360%29

Wonder if how much tax payer money is being used to spike the numbers?

_______

Amazing what exposure does to an issue.  Check out the buy amount now down from 60% to 49% as of posting this link.  Today, 11:51 am

http://data.intrade.com/graphing/jsp/closingPricesForm.jsp?tradeURL=https://www.intrade.com&contractId=709242

_________

Joe Weisenthal | Mar. 9, 2010, 12:06 PM | 10,064

Source Business Insider 

"Everyone today is talking about the fact that on Intrade the odds of Obamacare passing have spiked up above 60%.

But this doesn't just reflect conventional wisdom. No, this is Washington DC insiders speaking here.

We reached out to InTrade CEO John Delaney, who confirmed that a lot of the trade volume on this particular contract is coming out of DC.

Specifically he said:

...it is a reasonably active market but atypically a lot of the trade is coming from the DC area when normally we might see trade coming from all the major urban areas.

Think of this as political insider trading.

When the insiders are talking, you should listen.

Update: We discuss the possibility that this is manipulation, here.

Don't miss: How the Obama administration plans to raise $1.9 trillion in taxes >

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-you-should-take-the-intrade-healthcare-betting-very-seriously-2010-3

______________

 What Is The Tax: By re-establishing reporting rules of deals over $600 between individuals or businesses, compliance in terms of paying proper taxes on such deals would increase making for fewer losses in the tax system.

Tax Revenue 2011-2020: $9.154 Billion

Source: Green Book 2011

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-heck-do-you-raise-taxes-11-trillion-2010-2#9154-billion-disclosing-all-payments-over-600-to-anybody-1

http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=1201

____________

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/11/AR2010031102904.html

I can't seem to reconcile how collecting global funds will diminish climate change which has been and always will be cyclical.

Excerpt

____________

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100308/ap_on_bi_ge/af_imf_climate_change

http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/MichaelRamirez

I have permission to post this link.

I am not trying to advertise this site but it is often used to test the pulse of an issue ... how well or badly it's faring with public opinion.  Hope this link opens to the chart showing bets on healthcare passage.  Price has climbed some lately but doesn't seem a done deal yet.

http://data.intrade.com/graphing/jsp/closingPricesForm.jsp?tradeURL=https://www.intrade.com&contractId=709242

Commerntary from Powerlineblog.com which seems to be the heart of this administration's government takeover of health care.

______

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025774.php

___________

Ya think?????  For anyone fretting about how we looked to the world with GW as President ........ this resembles a redneck bar fight midnight, full moon.

Please note polls cited have not been conducted by conservative pollsters.

_______

"EMBATTLED DEM CONGRESSMAN: I WAS PUSHED OUT FOR HEALTHCARE!

"Teen Paralyzed After Getting H1N1 Vaccine
Doctors Say Boy Developed Rare Condition

POSTED: 6:34 pm CST March 5, 2010
UPDATED: 8:00 pm CST March 5, 2010
CECIL COUNTY, Md. --
Source WDSU.com

"A 16-year-old boy in Maryland was paralyzed from the chest down after getting the H1N1 flu vaccine at school, a doctor said.

In December, Robert Beckham lost feeling in both his legs and was rushed to Baltimore's Sinai Hospital, Baltimore station WBAL reported.

"Under very heavy treatment, not only did he not improve, he even got slightly worse," said Sinai pediatric neurologist Dr. Yuval Shafrir.

Shafrir said Robert is being treated for a rare condition called transverse mylitis in which a segment of Robert's spinal cord was destroyed by his own immune system.

Transverse mylitis is a disease that can occur after infection, but in this case, Shafrir said it was a medically unpredictable reaction to a vaccination that's being given in schools all over the country.

"The only obvious cause was the H1N1 vaccination," Shafrir said.

"I kept pestering my parents to get me this shot. I got it, and a month later, it went bad," Robert said.

"I'm still in shock from it. I can't believe that this happened to him," his mother, Belinda Beckham said.

Robert's parents are disabled and financially unable to bring him home from the hospital.

"If he had received the regular flu vaccine, the family would be able to file a claim with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program," said attorney Clifford Shoemaker. "But because it was the swine flu program, which falls under the same bill as terrorism … the family will get very little in compensation for what's happened to this child."

The family needs help making their home handicapped-accessible for Robert. There's a fundraiser this weekend at the Porters Grover Baptist Church. All donations can be made at Cecil Bank in care of Robert Beckham.

Meanwhile, Maryland Health Department officials are aware of Robert's case.

"Certainly, there are instances of adverse events -- they're very rare -- and it's something we want to monitor closely," said DHMH Deputy Secretary Fran Phillips.

While Robert Beckham's paralysis is heartbreaking, Shafrir said it shouldn't deter anyone from getting the vaccination."

http://www.wdsu.com/mostpopular/22758511/detail.html

An excellent reasoned discussion well worth the read.  Quoted in full from Powerlineblog.com.

________

March 5, 2010 Posted by Paul at 8:33 AM

"Earlier this week, Fox News identified the seven Justice Department officials who, prior to being brought to DOJ by the Obama administration, provided legal services to terrorists and terrorist suspects, including Osama bin Laden's driver, John Walker Lindh, and Jose Padilla. The names of two other such lawyers were already known. DOJ has confirmed that Fox News got the additional seven right.

It was appropriate for Senator Grassley and others to seek this information. It is also approprirate to (1) point to the correlation between the presence of this many representatives of terrorists and terrorist suspects and the Holder Justice Department's policy on dealing with terrorists and (2) attempt to ascertain the extent to which these lawyers are making decisions about how to deal with terrorists.

Finally, it is appropriate to criticize lawyers who defend terrorists and terrorist suspects. Contrary to what Walter Dellinger would like us to believe, these lawyers have no professional obligation to represent terrorists and terrorist suspects. They did so by choice and this choice, like all others, is fair game for criticism.

However, it is entirely inappropriate to suggest that these lawyers share the values of terrorists or to dub the seven DOJ lawyers "The al Qaeda Seven." Unfortunately, this is what a video released by the organization Keep America Safe does.

I would rather give up my law license than represent Osama bin Laden's driver, for example. And I take a very dim view of the decision by Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to undertake that representation.

However, I would not deserve to have a law license if my personal views on this matter caused me to launch vicious, unfounded attacks on lawyers who exercise their right to represent despicable clients.

Via Repubclic.

SCOTT notes: I feel roughly the same way Bill Kristol , Liz Cheney and Debra Burlingame do about lawyers who undertake the representation of enemy combatants pro bono as a glorious professional cause. It is unfortunate Bill and Liz and Debra had to seek to shame the Department of Justice into identifying the seven previously unidentified Department of Justice officials who represented or advocated on behalf of Guantanamo detainees. The disclosure of their identities was pro bono publico too.

PAUL adds: The Huffington Post has a story about conservative reaction (or at least the reaction of a handful of conservatives) to the video. The story says I declared that what Cheney did is comparable if not potentially worse than the notorious anti-communist crusades launched by Sen. Joseph McCarthy. It then quotes some of the things I told Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein.

The quotes themselves are accurate, but I think the characterization of what I said is somewhat misleading. In response to Stein's questions asking me to compare the video to "McCarthyism," I said the implication that the DOJ lawyers share al Qaeda's values is almost certainly false. I also said that some of McCarthy's assertions were true and others were false (or unfounded, I'm not sure which word I used).

That, if I recall correctly, was the extent of my willingness to compare the video to "McCarthyism." I don't think I said or implied that the video is comparable to or worse than the totality of what goes by the name of McCarthyism or to the "crusades" launched by Sen. McCarthy.

JOHN adds: Defending the poor, the friendless and the unpopular is a proud tradition of the American bar. I grew up with that tradition, as the son of a small-town lawyer. When criminal defendants needed representation and were indigent--as most of them were--the lawyers in town took turns representing them, for free or for a pittance. It went with the territory, just as doctors treated people for free when they couldn't afford to pay. On those rare occasions when a serious crime was committed, the local judge would ask one of the town's skilled trial lawyers to defend the accused to make sure that the defendant got not just a defense, but a competent defense. That's what happened in To Kill A Mockingbird, as I recall. The local judge asked Atticus Finch to defend the apparently-doomed black man who had been accused of rape. And Finch was duty-bound to accept, although the assignment could only mean trouble for him.

That noble tradition is invoked by those who defended terrorist detainees and who now have gone to work for the Justice Department. Properly so, perhaps. Yet I wonder whether that is exactly what is going on here.

The law firms that signed up to defend al Qaeda terrorists are among the most prestigious in the country. Large law firms of this sort are among our most powerful institutions. They brought vast stature and resources to the task of representing terrorist detainees. The situation is not quite as though a random lawyer in New York or Washington, D.C. had taken his dutiful turn at the thankless job of defending a client who couldn't afford to pay.

One wonders: do these firms, or these lawyers, normally make a practice of volunteering to defend criminal defendants? (These detainees were not criminal defendants, for the most part, but the analogy is nevertheless apt.) My guess is that they do not. What, exactly, drew them to the cause of the terrorist detainees? Was it a humanitarian impulse to defend the friendless? Or were the country's wealthiest and best-connected law firms lining up for the privilege of taking on the terrorists' cases? Were the lawyers who volunteered to represent terrorists driven by ideology? That is to say, were they part of that large segment of the establishment that tried to undermine the foreign and national security policies of the Bush administration? If so, what ideology do these individuals now bring to the Department of Justice? And what roles are they playing within DOJ?

These strike me as legitimate questions. I certainly don't question the right of these lawyers to volunteer their services where they choose, and normally, the motives of a lawyer who volunteers to work for free would be no one else's business. But when those same lawyers, a very short time later, are tapped to work at the Justice Department, isn't the ideology that they--and Eric Holder--bring to national security issues fair game? I think it is.

As for the video, the phrase "the al Qaeda seven" is perhaps unfair. But the point of the video was to pressure Eric Holder to release the names of the lawyers who have shifted over from representing terrorists to representing the American people. He has now done so. If, as is often said, personnel is policy, the fact that the Obama administration has brought not one, not two, but seven lawyers (or is it nine, altogether?) who represented al Qaeda terrorists into the Justice Department may well be worthy of further discussion."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025746.php

http://www.energydigital.com/MarketSector/Renewables/Green-stimulus-package-should--buy-American--argue-senators_41819.aspx

ABC's Matthew Jaffe reports from Washington:

A self-proclaimed psychic who called himself "America's Prophet" and claimed the ability to predict stock market changes was charged today by the Securities & Exchange Commission with multi-million dollar securities fraud.

Sean David Morton started to solicit investors in the summer of 2006 by promising to use his psychic abilities for investment guidance, the SEC alleged in the complaint.

"I have called all the highs and lows of the market, giving exact dates for rises and crashes over the last 14 years," Morton said in a newsletter to potential investors. Along with his newsletter, Morton also used his website, public speaking engagements, and appearances on a nationally syndicated radio show to promote his Delphi Investment Group.

According to George Canellos, director of the SEC's New York Regional Office, "Morton's self-proclaimed psychic powers were nothing more than a scam to attract investors and steal their money."

In all, Morton raised more than $6 million from over 100 investors in 2006 and 2007. Morton invested about half the funds with foreign currency trading firms and diverted some of the investor funds, including at least $240,000 into his and his wife's non-profit religious organization, Prophecy Research Institute.

Morton, his wife Melissa Morton, and three corporate entities that they own under the umbrella of the Delphi Associates Investment Group were the subject of the SEC charges.

The SEC complaint can be found HERE.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2010/03/selfproclaimed-psychic-charged-with-investor-fraud.html

"Obama looking to give new life to immigration reform

In an effort to advance a bill through Congress before midterm elections, the president meets with two senators who have spent months trying to craft legislation.

By Peter Nicholas
March 4, 2010 | 6:18 p.m.
Source Los Angeles Times

"Reporting from Washington - Despite steep odds, the White House has discussed prospects for reviving a major overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, a commitment that President Obama has postponed once already.

Obama took up the issue privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections.

In the session, Obama and members of his Domestic Policy Council outlined ways to resuscitate the effort in a White House meeting with two senators -- Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- who have spent months trying to craft a bill.

According to a person familiar with the meeting, the White House may ask Schumer and Graham to at least produce a blueprint that could be turned into legislative language.

The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Citizenship would not be granted lightly, the White House said. Undocumented workers would need to register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law. Failure to comply might result in deportation.

Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, said the president's support for an immigration bill, which would also include improved border security, was "unwavering."

Participants in the White House gathering also pointed to an immigration rally set for March 21 in Washington as a way to spotlight the issue and build needed momentum.

Though proponents of an immigration overhaul were pleased that the White House wasn't abandoning the effort, they also wanted Obama to take on a more assertive role, rather than leave it to Congress to work out a compromise.

Immigration is a delicate issue for the White House. After promising to revamp in his first year of office what many see as a fractured system, Obama risks angering a growing, politically potent Latino constituency if he defers the goal until 2011.

But with the healthcare debate still unresolved, Democrats are wary of plunging into another polarizing issue.

"Right now we have a little problem with the 'Chicken Little' mentality: The sky is falling and consequently we can't do anything," Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said in an interview.

Republicans are unlikely to cooperate. On Capitol Hill, Republicans said that partisan tensions had only gotten worse since Obama signaled this week that he would push forward with a healthcare bill, whether he could get GOP votes or not.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said in an interview, "The things you hear from the administration won't be well received."

Schumer, speaking as he walked quickly through the Capitol, said he was having trouble rounding up Republican supporters apart from Graham. "It's tough finding someone, but we're trying," Schumer said.

On Thursday, Schumer met with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who oversees the government's immigration efforts, to strategize over potential Republican co-sponsors.

"We're very hopeful we can get a bill done. We have all the pieces in place. We just need a second Republican," Schumer said in a statement.

Among proponents, there is a consensus that a proposal must move by April or early May to have a realistic chance of passing this year. If that deadline slips, Congress' focus is likely to shift to the November elections, making it impossible to take up major legislation.

"There's no question that this is a heavy lift and the window is narrowing," said Janet Murguia, president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.

When it comes to immigration, Obama's strategy echoes that of healthcare. He has deferred heavily to Congress, leaving it up to Schumer and Graham to reach a breakthrough with the idea that he would put his weight behind the resulting compromise."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-immigration5-2010mar05,0,1123497.story

_________

"Passing the healthcare proposals before Congress will "hang out to dry" every Democratic incumbent running for reelection this fall, Howard Dean said Thursday.

Dean, a physician by training who's a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said that Democrats in Congress -- and President Barack Obama -- would do themselves more harm than good by passing the current healthcare bill.

"The plan, as it comes from the Senate, hangs out every Democrat who's running for office to dry -- including the president, in 2012, because it makes him defend a plan that isn't in effect essentially yet," Dean said during an appearance on the liberal Bill Press Radio Show.

Dean, who has clashed publicly with the White House over the healthcare proposals favored by the administration, said that by passing the bills under consideration, Democrats would essentially be conceding defeat to Republicans.

"It's easy to campaign on repealing something if no one knows what the something is," Dean said. "And fundamentally people don't understand what the president's healthcare plan is."

"And if it passes next week and get's signed into law the week after, we're not going to be able to explain it to people over the din of Fox News and the Republicans," the former Democratic party chairman added.

Dean said that the only solution to correct the bill was to offer a buy-in to Medicare for consumers, which had once been proposed in the Senate, but was ditched by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as unable to win enough votes to pass.

"The president needs a win here," Dean said."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/84969-howard-dean-health-bill-hangs-dem-incumbents-and-obama-out-to-dry-in-elections

Posted by Karl Denninger in Corruption

"Now Seniors Get To Feel The Bezzle

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2033-Now-Seniors-Get-To-Feel-The-Bezzle.html

Source Weeklystandard.com 

"Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

“Scott Matheson is a distinguished candidate for the Tenth Circuit court,” President Obama said.  “Both his legal and academic credentials are impressive and his commitment to judicial integrity is unwavering.  I am honored to nominate this lifelong Utahn to the federal bench.” 

Scott M. Matheson, Jr.: Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit

Scott M. Matheson currently holds the Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985.  He served as Dean of the Law School from 1998 to 2006.  He also taught First Amendment Law at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1989 to 1990. 

While on public service leave from the University of Utah from 1993 to 1997, Matheson served as United States Attorney for the District of Utah.  In 2007, he was appointed by Governor Jon Huntsman to chair the Utah Mine Safety Commission.  He also worked as a Deputy County Attorney for Salt Lake County from 1988 to 1989.  Prior to joining the University faculty, Matheson was an associate attorney from 1981 to 1985 at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C.

Matheson was born and raised in Utah and is a sixth generation Utahn.  He received an A.B. from Stanford University in 1975, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.

So, Scott Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge, but was his nomination used to buy off his brother's vote?

The timing of this nomination looks suspicious, especially in light Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak's claim that he was offered a federal job not to run against Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary. Many speculated that Sestak, a former admiral, was offered the Secretary of the Navy job."

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-now-selling-appeals-court-judgeships-health-care-votes

"Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility.

The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.

The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data. 

On the spot: Professor Phil Jones being grilled by the Science and Technology committee in the Commons yesterday

The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics.

Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures.

In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'. 

Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method.

'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.'

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data.

But yesterday Professor Jones - in his first public appearance since the scandal broke - denied manipulating the figures.

Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.'

He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites.

And he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.

'I don't think there is anything in those emails that really supports any view that I, or the CRU, have been trying to pervert the peer review process in any way,' he said.

Professor Jones, who was forced to stand down as head of the CRU last year, also insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254660/Climategate-expert-tells-MPs.html