Joe Biden on the economy: “less bad isn’t good”
The latest job loss numbers show us that in August employers cut less jobs than in any other month in the previous year. Joe Biden, who is acting president while Barack Obama remains MIA, tried to defend the stimulus package while at the same time tell the American people that the economy still isn’t where the administration would like it to be.
This is what Joe Biden had to say about the latest numbers:
I want to be clear about something: Less bad is not good,” Vice President Joe Biden said. “That’s not how President Obama and I measure success
If the president were not MIA I am sure that Joe Biden’s statement would come as a bit of a surprise to him because when the goal of the stimulus package was changed from creating jobs to creating or saving jobs the intent was to make less bad seem good. This is exactly how the president measures success.
We were originally told that the stimulus bill would create jobs but when it became abundantly clear that the stimulus bill was going to be a failure the stated goal stealthy changed to creating or saving jobs. This was done so that no matter how bad the economy got the president would be able to claim that it would be worse if the stimulus bill hadn’t been passed. There is no way to measure saved jobs so there is no way to contradict the president’s claim of having saved jobs with the passage of the stimulus bill.
By using the defense that the stimulus bill has saved jobs and that the economy would be worse without the stimulus bill the president has actually been measuring success with the less bad is good defense that Joe Biden claims is not how success is measured by this administration.
Somebody needs to tell Joe Biden that if less bad isn’t good than the stimulus bill is an absolute failure if we judgeit solely on the goals that the president himself publicly stated. Barack Obama and Joe Biden don’t seem to be on the same page.
The IRS will be responsible for implementing healthcare reform
If Barack Obama’s healthcare reform bill becomes law one of the most vilified government agencies of all time will have the power to make sure all Americans are adhering to the new policies, the IRS.
The IRS will have the responsibility of enforcing and implementing the new healthcare reforms.
Under the Democrats’ health care proposals, the already powerful — and already feared — IRS would wield even more power and extend its reach even farther into the lives of ordinary Americans, and the presidentially-appointed head of the new health care bureaucracy would have access to confidential IRS information about millions of individual taxpayers.
Under the various proposals now on the table, the IRS would become the main agency for determining who has an “acceptable” health insurance plan; for finding and punishing those who don’t have such a plan; for subsidizing individual health insurance costs through the issuance of a tax credits; and for enforcing the rules on those who attempt to opt out, abuse, or game the system. A substantial portion of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill, is devoted to amending the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 in order to give the IRS the authority to perform these new duties.
The part of this that I find the most disturbing is this part of the above quote; “the IRS would become the main agency for determining who has an “acceptable” health insurance plan.”
It sure sounds as if healthcare coverage will be mandated to all Americans, and when you read the following about the IRS having the authority to punish those who they don’t deem to have “acceptable” coverage you should be just as disturbed as I am.
The Democrats’ plan would require all Americans to have “acceptable” insurance coverage (the legislation includes long and complex definitions of “acceptable”) and would designate the IRS as the agency charged with enforcing that requirement. On your yearly 1040 tax return, you would be required to attest that you have “acceptable” coverage. Of course, you might be lying, or simply confused about whether or not you are covered, so the IRS would need a way to check your claim for accuracy. Under current plans, insurers would be required to submit to the IRS something like the 1099 form in which taxpayers report outside income. The IRS would then check the information it receives from the insurers against what you have submitted on your tax form.
If it all matches up, you’re fine. If it doesn’t, you will hear from the IRS. And if you don’t have “acceptable” coverage, you will be subject to substantial fines — fines that will be administered by the IRS.
Health insurance will be required by the Untied States government, but not just any healthcare insurance. If you do not have insurance that the government approves of you will face penalties and fines. The government will grow exponentially under Barack Obama’s healthcare plan and there will be nothing that we can do to change that once this bill is signed into law. Just look at the lastest Xarelto class action lawsuits for examples of how expensive it might get. The time to act is now. We must defeat this legislation at all costs.
Big Brother is watching!
Healthcare reform bill gives Obama the authority to appoint a government commissioner to oversee healthcare
If the current healthcare reform proposal ends up becoming law Barack Obama will have the authority to appoint a commissioner to oversee healthcare.
This commissioner would have a wide range of authority.
These powers would include deciding which treatments are covered, which companies can participate, which states can run their own exchange, and enrolling individuals into the public exchange.
I have just one question. If this commissioner would have the authority to decide which benefits are available under which plans, and if this commissioner can decide which plans will cover certain procedures than can’t his man diminish the coverage of certain healthcare providers while growing the coverage of the public option to the extent that all private insurance companies will get out of the healthcare insurance industry making the public option the only option? If so than that isn’t much of an option now is it?
The truth is that healthcare reform has nothing to do with healthcare reform, it has everything to do with expanding the federal government and controlling the American people and their behaviors. Just look at some of the new government bureaucracies that will be created under the Obama administration’s healthcare reform bill. I defy you to argue that this isn’t about government expansion.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the new and powerful federal agencies that would be created by the passage of a national health care bill. The Health Choices Administration, the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, the Health Insurance Exchange — there are dozens in all.
Obama’s “green czar” is a 9/11 truther
Obama’s “green czar,” Van Jones, has recently come under fire for saying that Republicans are assholes but in my opinion that opinion is the least of his infractions.
According to this article Van Jones is a 9/11 truther. He believes that is most likely possible that September 11th was an inside job.
Jones joined the “9/11 truther” movement by signing a statement in 2004 calling for then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggests “people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”
Of course this comes from the same man who has said that “white polluters” are purposely “steering poison” into black neighborhoods and also declared himself a communist in the 1990’s so I suppose it should come as no surprise that he believes that President Bush orchestrated 9/11 in order to go to war.
It is an absolute abomination that this man is an unconfirmed czar in the Obama administration. President Obama has named all of these radical czars to his administration so that he could fore-go the confirmation process and the more we learn about his radical czars the more we understand why he took this route. These radicals never would have made it through the confirmation process so Obama spit on the whole nomination process by running an end around past the congress in order to thwart the system that all other presidents have followed.
Barack Obama has spent his entire life surrounded by radicals, he is a radical. This is who Obama is and this is what many of us have been trying to tell the American people for over a year now. It is not surprising to me that this president would have a 9/11 truther as one of his advisers.
The fact of the matter is that we now have a president who doesn’t give a fuck about the constitution and doesn’t give a damn about the proper role of government in America. We have a president who wants to force Americans into his radical idea of what the governance of the United States should be. And he is setting out to accomplish a radical overthrow of the United States constitution.
The more that we learn about Obama’s czars the more we find out how many anti-American, America hating radical thugs this man has as his advisers and we should all be afraid. But more importantly we must stay vigilant, we must expose the president and his czars for who they really are.
I can’t even begin to explain how offensive I find it that Barack Obama would have a 9/11 truther as one of his advisers. If Barack Obama had any decency in his soul he would demand the resignation of Van Jones once he found out about his connection to 9/11 truther groups. But then again Barack Obama probably knew about this connection all along and he didn’t find it a reason to cut his ties with Van Jones. Maybe Barack Obama is a 9/11 truther himself.
Soda may be taxed to help pay for healthcare reform
As a candidate Barack Obama promised that 95% of Americans would not see a tax increase of any kind,his words not mine. To quote Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop, “you are lying your ass off.” He has already broken that promise because I am pretty sure that more than just the top five percent of the wage earners smoke cigarettes and he has already raised the cigarette tax. Thusly he has broken his promise.
And now there is the very real chance that he could break his promise once again on an even larger portion of the United States population. Government officials are seriously eyeing a tax on soda and other sugary drinks, this new tax will affect much more than just the top five percent in wage earners and an even greater percentage of the American people than the cigarette tax increase affected.
The tax would be imposed to help pay for what I thought was supposed to be free healthcare. According to the government spin in addition to helping to pay for healthcare reform this tax would have the secondary benefit of helping to steer the American people towards a better lifestyle. This administration loves to create crisis in order to implement their agenda; the so-called healthcare crisis is a perfect example and now the administration is looking to couple the healthcare crisis with the obesity crisis in an attempt to regulate behavior and implement government run healthcare.
The government should not be in the business of regulating the people’s behavior. One of the lesser known founding fathers, John Dickinson, knew this and understood the different reasons for taxation when he wrote about the difference between taxes meant to raise revenue and taxes raised to regulate the people. He claimed that taxes designed to regulate the people were illegitimate and insidious.
Yet here we are all of these years later, the sacrifice of our founding fathers forgotten and the lessons that they learned shunned. If only more Americans would take the time to read the Federalist papers, the anti-federalist papers, the Declaration, Common Sense, and all of the other founding documents they would realize that we are falling back into the same type of government that the founders fought so hard to rid us of.
Massachusetts lawmaker who voted to raise the sales tax caught in New Hampshire avoiding the sales tax
Earlier this year Massachusetts lawmakers increased the state sales tax from 5% to 6.25%, an increase of 25%. In doing so they also pulled a fast one on Massachusetts residents. They extended the sales tax to alcohol which was exempt from the sales tax because there is already an excise tax on alcohol in Massachusetts. Massachusetts now has two taxes on alcohol. Needless to say the sales tax is calculated on the full cost to the consumer meaning that part of the sales tax that Massachusetts residents are now paying on alcohol is a tax on the excise tax. Massachusetts residents are being taxed on a tax.
One of the arguments that was used against increasing the sales tax was the fact that this would drive Massachusetts residents into New Hampshire to buy goods in order to save on the tax. Once this new tax was applied to alcohol it was inevitable that Massachusetts residents would flock to New Hampshire to buy their booze. New Hampshire residents are laughingly calling the increase in the Massachusetts sales tax the Massachusetts “New Hampshire stimulus package” and New Hampshire politicians have gone on record as thanking Deval Patrick for stimulating the New Hampshire economy.
The idea that so many Massachusetts resident would flock to New Hampshire in numbers that would neutralize the revenue intake of Massachusetts was laughed at by proponents of the sales tax increase. Michael J. Rodrigues, a Massachusetts lawmaker who voted to increase the sales tax, was one of the people who decided that the increase in the sales tax and extension of the sales tax to alcohol was a vital and neccessary sacrifice that Massachusetts resident should make.
However just last weekend Michael J. Rodrigues was spotted pulling into a New Hampshire state liquor store, in his official Massachusetts vehicle no less, and loading up on alcohol to transport tax free back into Massachusetts.
Rodrigues claimed that he was just buying a car load of booze while making a rest area stop and blamed the uproar on Republicans.
He also blamed the brouhaha on “Republican demagoguery.”
“Unfortunately, I think that’s why the Republican Party is in such bad shape in Massachusetts,” Rodrigues is quoted as saying. “The electorate here is smart enough to figure out what they’re up to
He voted to extend the sales tax to alcohol and then he crossed state lines to avoid the tax that he supposedly feels that all Massachusetts resident should pay. And then he has the balls to blame the very few Republicans legislators that are in Massachusetts. I hope that he is right about one thing. When he says that “The electorate here is smart enough to figure out what they’re up to” I hope that he is right and that the voters in Massachusetts are indeed smart enough to see what is going on here.
This man is nothing but a hypocrite. He felt that extending the sales tax to alcohol was necessary and he thought it was fair to tax the excise tax on alcohol. He asked Massachusetts residents to sacrifice for the good of the state, the least that he could do would be to adhere to the same sacrifices that he is asking his constituents to adhere to.
Besides the hypocrisy of this man on this issue there is one more aspect to this story that I would like to write about. Massachusetts has what they call a “use tax” that means that any goods that are bought by Massachusetts residents out of state that is to be used in the state of Massachusetts must be claimed on state tax returns so that the state can collect the sales tax. This law is not enforceable and Deval Patrick took on a campaign to strong arm New Hampshire businesses to collect Massachusetts sales tax. This was met with great dissatisfaction by all of New Hampshire politicians and New Hampshire quickly passed a law that would bar Massachusetts from infringing on the interstate commerce clause of the constitution. And recently the Massachusetts supreme court ruled that Deval Patrick’s attempt to infringe on state’s rights was unconstitutional.
So I find it very interesting that the governor of Massachusetts tried to collect sales tax from New Hampshire businesses and meanwhile his own legislators are streaming over the border to avoid the sales tax that they themselves agreed to raise.
So yes, I hope that Massachusetts voters are smart enough to realize what is going on, but not in the way that Rodrigues claimed. I hope that they are catching on to the type of duplicitous dirtbags they have elected to run their state. If Deval Patrick’s 20% approval rating is any indication, the voters are finally catching on.
Obama to drop public option from healthcare reform
We have been heard loud and clear. The townhall meetings have had an effect. President Obama is considering dropping the public option from the healthcare reform bill. In what is being called a shift of position, Obama is now ready to concede his public option proposal in an effort to pass healthcare reform.
We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there
This is sure to be met with opposition from some members of his own party but in the end they will probably go along with the president. This will not make the far left happy but Obama has to weigh the ramifications between upsetting the far left and upsetting mainstream America. The logical outcome of that analysis would be to go along with mainstream America.
If the president does indeed drop the public option it is a good start but without tort reform it is only a start. We are making progress, we are being listened to. We have been loud and we have been vocal. The Democrats and the media have tried to downplay the townhall meeting protests but the president and the insiders know that this is a real movement and it is a movement that they have realized cannot be ignored.
There is nothing more impressive in the realm of politics than when the people stand up for what they believe in and make the government listen to them.
This may be a good sign but we must not let our guard down. We are winning this debate but we must not let up now! Keep fighting and we will be victorious. We can stop this healthcare bill, we may already have stopped the most insidious part of it.
President Obama’s poll numbers are historically low
Barack Obama’s presidency is historic, there is no denying that. But his poll numbers are equally historic in a bad way. Barack Obama’s poll numbers have fallen faster than almost all the presidents numbers in modern day history. Only Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton’s poll numbers have dropped quicker.
Considering that the Obama era was ushered in with such hope that Washington wouldn’t be bogged down in politics as usual and that Obama would end the era of partisan politics, (remember: no red states, no blue states, only the United States), this fall from grace quicker than Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson is unprecedented.
President Obama has let all of the good will that he inspired during the campaign dwindle away as people begin to realize who he really is and what he really stands for.
While we can expect to see a spike in his poll numbers if the economy returns we can also expect to see a precipitous drop-off if he is foolish enough to take on immigration reform that includes amnesty, (the same issue that drove away the last of President Bush’s remaining loyal supporters.) If he takes on immigration reform he will be running into the arms of a Republican majority in congress in 2010.
While Bill Clinton was able to shrug off falling poll numbers he was much more of a moderate than Barack Obama ever will be. Obama will not be able to move to the center, he doesn’t have it in him after spending his life surrounded by radicals. This is who Obama is and the American people are finally starting to realize it.
Obama’s great healthcare budget deception
The president likes to claim that his healthcare reform bill will save money; indeed his latest budget claims a $600 billion savings in healthcare, with additional taxes raising the healthcare savings to over $950 billion but there is one little problem with this analysis. It doesn’t include the costs of healthcare reform.
I will take the president at his word on these numbers even though the article that I linked to above also shows estimates by the Congressional Budget Office that the president’s plan may only save $219 billion and not $600 billion before the tax increases. If the president is right and his reform bill will save $600 billion and an additional $300+ billion will be raised with new taxes that still leaves a net loss in healthcare reform as the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the reforms that the president will institute will cost $1 trillion dollars over the same ten years that he will save just over $950 billion.
Under the president’s plan we will spend $1 trillion to save $954 billion; that is a net loss of over $40 billion, and that is if the president’s numbers are correct. If the Congressional Budget Office numbers are correct than the loss is substantially more.
It really doesn’t matter whose numbers are correct, in the end we will be spending more on healthcare reforms than we will save with these very same healthcare reforms yet the president is ignoring this data as he pushes his healthcare reform on the people. This just proves what many of us already believe; healthcare reform in the president’s eyes in not about cutting the costs of healthcare and it is not about saving the people money, it is about government control. Pure and simple.
Barack Obama is either ignorant of the facts, doesn’t understand economics, or is lying to the American people. Which option is it and which option is more alarming?
Garage sales targeted in new government crack down
With every thing that the federal government could be worried about cracking down on; illegal immigration, terrorism, heroin being sold to our children to fund our enemy in the war in Afghanistan, what are the feds concerned about? Garage sales. Yep, those evil people trying to make a couple of dollars selling their no longer used items.
If you’re planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you’d best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products.
The government has seemingly found a new enemy that must be thwarted and it is average Americans who may be selling “dangerous and defective products.” While illegal immigrants, some of whom could possibly be dangerous, are allowed to flow unchecked into America the government is more concerned about what products law abiding citizens may be selling at yard and garage sales and Christmas holiday bazaars.
It would seem to me that the feds just don’t have their priorities in order. Who are some other offenders that could possibly be targets under Operation Resale Roundup? Nefarious and insidious organizations like Goodwill and the Salvation Army could be in the fed’s sights. People who sell items on eBay and Craiglist could also be targeted. It makes you wonder if the resale of “dangerous and defective products” will be enough of an emergency to authorize the president to shut down the internet if the bill sponsored by Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe ever gains passage.
Even as I write this federal agencies are holding training seminars to route out the evil thrift shops and people selling second hand merchandise. Internet surveillance teams are scouring eBay and Craigslist to find new federal criminals. One mother who was selling her daughter’s old dolls has been notified that she may be in violation of federal law.
Nancy Lothrop, a mother of two in Monroe, Wash., was surprised to learn that she might be violating the law by selling about $200 worth of Polly Pocket dolls and accessories on Craigslist that her 12-year-old daughter no longer wants
In the interest of fairness it must be stated that the law currently being enforced was signed into law by President Bush as one of his last acts as president after the uproar from the lead paint found in many toys made in China. President Obama seems to be taking this law to the next level as he is appropriating an additional funding of over 11% to this agency.
President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders are crafting an appropriations bill that would boost the agency’s funding next year by more than 11.4 percent – to $117 million – and it’s already hiring new inspectors and other employees in anticipation of the funding infusion.
Once again we see the government take a law that might have initially have had good intentions to the extreme. Beware: if you plan on holding a yard sale you may be violating federal law. The government is expanding to unprecedented levels, and they may be watching you. Be careful what you sell because Big Brother is watching.
While Americans are being killed in record numbers in the Afghanistan war and while terrorists may be sneaking over the border it seems that the federal government is much more interested in what used goods you are selling.
Did anyone really think that it would ever come to this in America?
