Obama Scraps Plan to Bill Private Insurance Companies for Veterans Injured During Service
One of the most reprehensible plans that I have ever heard of may now have been scrapped by President Obama. President Obama, in a move that would have saved about $500 million, was seriously considering the notion of forcing veterans to use their personal health insurance to cover injuries that they incurred during their service to our country. I can’t even begin to describe the anger and disgust that I feel when I think about this proposal.
Nancy Pelosi has come out and said that President Obama has abandoned this idea and the current policy will remain in place.
President Obama listened to the genuine concerns expressed by the veteran service organizations regarding the option of billing service-connected injuries to veterans’ insurance companies,” said Pelosi. “Based on the respect President Obama has for veterans and the principle concerns of our veteran leaders, the president made the decision that combat wounds should not be billed through their insurance policies
While I am extremely happy that the president changed his mind I have to take issue with Nancy Pelosi’s statement. She claimed that “based on the respect President Obama has for the veterans” Obama changed his mind. That statement is a crock of shit. If Obama had respect for the veterans he would never have even entertained the notion of taking their government health benefits away from them.
The truth is that this was a public relations nightmare for the president and only when he saw the negative attention that he was getting did he change his mind. I am glad the outcry paid off in this case, I can think of nothing more important that taking care of those who take care of the country, but don’t sit there and tell me that Obama feels the same way.
If it wasn’t for the outcry the president would have continued on with his plan to screw over the veterans who were injured defending our country and following the order that his majesty gave to them. The intent and the will was there, it was the outcry not Obama’s “respect for the veterans” that stopped this from happening.
It looks like in the end the right thing was done but we now know where Barack Obama stands in regards to his feeling toward United States veterans. And the military in general. I am glad this turned out right and I am equally glad that the president exposed himself on this issue.
Obama’s Cap And Trade Proposal Will Cost $2 Trillion
One of the president’s pet projects that he is trying to sneak through in his $3 trillion budget is his tax cap and trade proposal to help to curb the hoax known as global warming, I am sorry I mean climate change. The change in terms has been made so that these enviro-nazis can claim the cooling period the earth is in is an effect of global warming. Climate change covers any weather that may come our way.
Anyway, I got a little side tracked there, the annointed one has claimed that his cap and trade scam would only cost $646 billion over eight years but like almost everything else that passes through his lips this is a lie, or spin if you prefer. His plan is estimated to cost three times that amount, up to $2 trillion. That sounds more like it, when dealing with the dear leader’s spending we are usually talking in terms of trillions. Obama doesn’t like that “B” word, billions. He aims high.
The $2 trillion number was the estimate that came out of a breifing that the president had with senate staffers. Like most other issues ,when the most open and honest administration in history was asked about this new revelation the white house would not confirm the number but they did say that the $646 billion number was conservative. So the white house is admitting that the cost is going to be higher they just don’t have the balls to tell the American people how much higher the number will be. That’s okay, the senate staffers have told us all that we need to know.
Here is what Michael Steele had to say:
The last thing we need is a massive tax increase in a recession, but reportedly that’s what the White House is offering: up to $1.9 trillion in tax hikes on every single American who drives a car, turns on a light switch or buys a product made in the United States,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner. “And since this energy tax won’t affect manufacturers in Mexico, India and China, it will do nothing but drive American jobs overseas
Is there anyone out there who still doesn’t believe that this is nothing but a money grab, a tax increase of epic proportions?
Veteran Calls Obama’s Plan to Use Private Insurance to Cover Service Related Injuries a Betrayal
President Obama is mulling over a plan that would force veterans who are injured while in service to the United States to use private health care insurance for treatment. No longer would the government provide them with health care for serving the country.
This is a sin. President Obama just ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan of 17,000 of our finest men and women. If any of these troops are injured in battle President Obama doesn’t think enough of them or their service to provide them with the care that they deserve. Victims of injuries in Orange County need experienced legal representation to ensure their rights are protected.
Needless to say, this isn’t sitting well with veterans, some of whom went so far as to call this plan a “betrayal.”
It’s a betrayal,” said Joe Violante, legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, which signed the letter to Obama. “My insurance company didn’t send me to Vietnam, my government did. The same holds true for men and women now fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s the government’s responsibility
When people like me claim that President Obama has a disdain and contempt for the military it is stories like this that prove we are correct.
When press secretary Robert Gibbs was questioned on this horrific idea he refused to comment on it. Luckily this plan seems to have no support on either side of the aisle.
These men and women volunteer to serve our country, they feel a duty and a pride in America that most of us can only hope to understand. And to see them thrown under the bus like this by a president who is looking to save about $500 million while he is willing to spend trillions on social welfare programs has to be disheartening to them. I know it is to me.
If Obama really needs to save $500 million I am sure he can find that somewhere else, maybe he can cut some of the billions that he is giving to ACORN. Just leave the veterans alone Mr. President, they at least deserve that much.
Obama Thanks Himself in Telepromter Gaffe
This story is pretty funny. We all know how reliant President Obama is on the teleprompter. He carries a handheld one everywhere because he can’t speak well of the cuff. When he speaks without a teleprompter he stumbles on about breathalators and tire pressure without making any sense.
A teleprompter glitch led to the president making a gaffe and thanking himself for inviting everyone to a party.
All I can think about is the movie Anchorman, when Ron Burgundy signed off from a news report with, “I’m Ron Burgundy?” which led Ed Harken to ask, “Who typed in the question mark? You know Ron Burgundy will read whatever is written on the teleprompter.”
President Obama is Ron Burgundy, without the hair.
United States Army Called in to Police Alabama Town
This story is mysterious and just a bit frightening. Last week after a murder spree in Samson, Alabama the United States army was called into the town. It is unclear who called them in or what they actually did while they were there.
Their deployment was clearly illegal. Nobody is answering questions as there is an ongoing investigation into the matter, but it doesn’t appear the governor of Alabama or the president called the troops into the town. But somebody did and this crime carries a two year prison sentence.
The officials are downplaying this incident, they claim that they think the troops were unarmed and performing traffic duty. But this is a serious matter. we need to know who called the troops in and what they were doing there.
The media doesn’t think that this is a big deal either, it is getting hardly any exposure. This is the same media that was aghast at the notion of the president of the United States listening to calls coming into this country from middle eastern terrorist supporting countries. That was considered a huge violation of the constitution yet the deployment of troops on an American town is not newsworthy? Can you imagine if this had happened on Bush’s watch what the reaction would be?
We need to get to the bottom of this. I hope that this investigation doesn’t get swept under the rug, we need to know who is responsible for calling in the troops and we need to see that person prosecuted.
Obama Received Over $100,000 in Donations From AIG
Cross posted on Grizzly Groundswell
President Obama was outraged, we were told, with AIG for paying out bonuses to their employees after receiving taxpayer bailout money. He has said he will use any means possible to recover the bonus money.
But President Obama knew about the bonuses and he knew that they were going to be paid out and he did nothing to stop them beforehand. The president is now claiming that he didn’t realize the bonuses were going to be paid out until two weeks ago, still time to stop the bonuses but yet he didn’t bother to try back then. Why?
Now we may have the answer. In this post that I wrote about the whole AIG fiasco I wrote about Chris Dodd’s role in guaranteeing that AIG would be able to pay out their bonuses with what Obama’s administration is calling the Dodd amendment to the stimulus bill. I wrote that Chris Dodd put protections in the stimulus bill that ended up protecting AIG and allowed them to pay the bonuses. I also wrote that Chris Dodd just happened to be the largest recipient of campaign donations from AIG at $103,100. It is now being reported that none other than Barack Obama was number two on AIG’s campaign donation list at $101,332.
Could this be the reason why Dodd wrote the amendment that allowed AIG to pay out bonuses with the bailout money? And could this be why President Obama really wasn’t outraged when the story hit the airwaves about AIG? The president only became outraged when he saw the reaction of the people. Before that he was just a recipient of funds from AIG.
Now the president is outraged (I think it is really embarrassment that he is feeling) and he is calling for AIG executives to give back the bonuses. Chuck Schumer is threatening to tax the bonuses into oblivion. I think the president should be held to the same standard. It is time for the president to give back the money that he accepted from AIG. It is time for Chris Dodd to give the money back that he received from AIG.
President Obama and Chris Dodd tried to pull a fast one on the American people, they were caught, the least they could do would be to give the donations back.
Democrats appear to be scrambling in the midst of the AIG bailout/bonus fiasco like cockroaches when the lights are turned on and some of them appear to have Timothy Geithner in the cross-hairs.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) blamed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for letting bailed-out insurance giant American International Group pay $165 million in bonuses to its employees, saying he wrote a letter to Geithner two weeks ago warning him of just such a possibility.
And the man who wrote the amendment that let AIG pay bonuses with bailout money, Chris Dodd, (who was the beneficiary of over $100,000 of campaign donations from AIG), is even blaming Timothy Geithner.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), tagged by Republican aides for sponsoring an amendment to the stimulus bill that allowed the bonuses, shifted the blame to the Treasury Department and “the bill conferees,” saying he had no idea that the AIG bonuses were coming.
President Obama is now claiming that he had no idea about the bonuses until two weeks ago, perhaps he should have read the stimulus bill with the Dodd amendment that might have just clued him in.
This is turning into a nightmare for Democrats. It seems as though some Democrats are beginning to turn on Timothy Geithner, could he take the fall for this? Isn’t this the same man that was so damned smart that his tax problems had to be overlooked during his confirmation hearings because he was the only person who could solve this economic crisis? Maybe they should have taken a closer look at him.
This whole ordeal was summed up best by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor.
“What’s going on in this administration? It seems like an administration in disarray.”
Or an administration that is in over its head.
Chris Dodd Amendment Permitted AIG to Hand Out Millions of Bailout Dollars in Bonuses
Cross posted on Grizzly Groundswell
It is well known by now that AIG received a total of $173 billion in taxpayer funded bailout money, $150 billion of which came from President Bush, with President Obama handing out the other $23 billion. President Bush gave AIG our money with basically no stipulations on how it was to be spent and no oversight. That was President Bush’s second mistake, his first being to hand out this corporate welfare at taxpayer’s expense in the first place thus thrusting America down a path to socialism and government intervention that President Obama is all to willing to continue and expand.
It is equally well known that AIG then proceeded to pay some of it’s executives bonuses with our money to the tune of $165 million. Normally I am someone who doesn’t believe in government intervention at all (which is why I don’t think we should have given them a bailout in the first place), I don’t care how many millions a company hands out in bonuses to it’s employees. A private business is just that, private. How they conduct their business is their business. But on this issue I am torn because the company was handed out my money, money I didn’t want to give AIG in the first place and money that taxpayers shouldn’t have had to spend on this business. The government (taxpayers) now owns a stake in the company. They have relinquished part of their soul to the devil and that devil is government control. Once they accept government money they have to play by government rules.
This is nothing but an abuse of taxpayer money, or is it? Was AIG actually doing the right thing by paying out these bonuses? I mentioned that there were basically no stipulations put on AIG when it came to how they would spend their money, that was President Bush’s fault, but he is not alone in blame when it comes to this issue. And in fact he may not even be the main culprit behind this fiasco, Chris Dodd had a major roll in this also.
When the stimulus bill was being put together Chris Dodd (who was the largest recipient of AIG campaign contributions by the way) added a stipulation, which Obama knew about and dubbed the Dodd amendment, that put a limit on executive pay for companies that accepted federal (taxpayer) money but the amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009.” This amendment exempted AIG from the executive pay caps that Dodd put in place in the stimulus bill as AIG is claiming that those bonuses were contractually obligated.
Chris Dodd is denying that he put the dates of the exemption in, he claims that there were no dates in his amendment but when the bill came back and was voted on the dates were already added by someone else but it doesn’t matter. I guess we will have to take the Democrat senator at his word and believe that he didn’t exempt AIG in return for the $103,100 they donated to his campaign. (And whose largest office is located in his home state.)
If AIG was following the rules that Dodd wrote and Obama agreed to when he signed the stimulus bill (even though he didn’t read it) and they are obligated to pay the bonuses they did than the government should have no recourse here. The government screwed up, as it always does when it interferes where it has no business.
The president was not all that upset about the bonuses that AIG payed out until he began to feel the heat from the people. In fact he was resigned to it because he knew about the Dodd amendment from the beginning but he signed the bill anyway. However with outrage growing the president realized that he had to take a firm stand even though there probably is no legal way that he can stop AIG from paying out the bonuses. He just had to pretend that this was the first he heard about the bonuses.
But the bonus plan that AIG had in place was made public one year ago and was not a considered a problem for them in receiving the bailout money. To pretend outrage now is disingenuous and a nothing more that a political ploy now that the heat is on and the public is upset. President Obama knew about the bonus plan, as did all of the other politicians, when he increased the bailout to $173 million, evidently he didn’t have a problem with the plan at that point.
Now politicians on both sides of the aisle are trying to out-outrage each other to the point where Republican Senator Chuck Grassley even said that the AIG executives that paid the bonuses should kill themselves. However the truth is that they knew that not only was this bonus payout a possibility, it was a certainty because these bonuses were contractually obligated by AIG and under the Dodd amendment they were guaranteed.
But maybe I am giving these politicians too much credit, maybe they didn’t realize these bonuses were guaranteed under the Dodd amendment in the stimulus bill because none of the politicians who voted for the stimulus bill actually read what they were voting for. So maybe their outrage now is merely a cover up of the embarrassment they feel for signing something that they didn’t read. Maybe they should be outraged at their own stupidity.
Now the government is trying to make up for their own stupidity by doing what they do best- raising taxes. The new plan is to tax the bonuses that they themselves guaranteed to the AIG executives in a publicity stunt designed to show us how much they care about us. While this is being done to a company that made the deal with the devil and took taxpayer money I can’t feel sorry for them, they are reaping what they sowed, but I am concerned that it will not stop here and that this will eventually carry over to companies who have not accepted federal funds as the government looks to expand control over private companies and how much money their employees can make.
This is what happens when government sticks its nose in where it doesn’t belong and this is probably only the beginning. This is just the first controversy to come out of the bailout/stimulus fiasco, I am sure there will be much, much more to follow. This is a perfect example of why I am for small, limited government.
Update: President Obama is now claiming that he didn’t know about the AIG bonuses until two weeks ago. Still, where was the outrage back then?
Democrats Slow Down Obama’s Global Warming Plan
Part of President Obama’s budget contains cap and trade policies to curb man-made global warming. This is being met with skepticism by eight Democrats who do not want to include this in the budget bill. The would prefer an actual debate on an issue this important and do not like the idea of pushing it through in the budget. Republicans combined with these eight Democrats may be able to filibuster this deliberate attack on liberty in this country.
Enactment of a cap-and-trade regime is likely to influence nearly every feature of the U.S. economy,” wrote the Democratic senators, mostly moderates. They were joined by 25 Republicans. “Legislation so far-reaching should be fully vetted and given appropriate time for debate
We just need to hope the Republicans remain true and join with the Democrats to block this from becoming law. The eight Democrats who want to have a debate on the issue are: Robert Byrd, W.Va.; Blanche Lincoln, Ark.; Mary Landrieu, La.; Carl Levin, Mich.; Evan Bayh, Ind.; Ben Nelson, Neb.; Bob Casey Jr., Pa.; and Mark Pryor, Ark.
We also need to hope that these Democrats do not succumb to pressure from party leaders. I have made my position on this issue well known and I am glad to see that there are a number of people on both sides of the aisle that want to slow down this proposal and have an extended debate on it. President Obama has a habit of trying to fast track all of his legislation and there is a reason for that. He wants to pass as much as he can before people realize what he is doing. He is trying to do the same with his budget and his cap and trade proposal.
The policies of cap and trade and other global warming initiatives are costly. During tough economic times the last thing that the American people need to be hit with are higher taxes and more regulations on anything, especially a scam like this. This is not the time or the issue to fast track. Regardless of what Al Gore claims the debate is not over. We haven’t even had a debate and if President Obama had his way we wouldn’t. Luckily for us it appears as if there are enough Democrats in the senate who do want to have a debate and this initiative will not get passed before there is at least some debate on it. Unless the leaders get to the eight Democrats.
Cross posted on Grizzly Groundswell
President Obama had a meeting today with the leader of the Department of Veteran Affairs in which he has infuriated the department with his plan to bill an injured veteran’s private health insurance for treatment needed for injuries suffered while serving the country.
Depending on a veteran’s health coverage there could be deductibles and maximum insurance coverage limits not to mention the additional premiums that the insurance companies are likely to charge. All of these charges will fall on the veterans themselves or their families.
Obama states that this plan will save the government $540 million. Saving $540 million by refusing to treat injured veterans after the government just passed out $1 trillion to stimulate the economy is a pittance.
This is the most disgraceful thing that I have heard this president consider yet, it doesn’t get any more pathetic than this. This is how we treat the men and women who volunteered to serve our country? This is how we pay them back?
We send these brave heroes all over the world to protect and defend this country’s national interests and when they get hurt in the line of duty the least that America can do for them is to make sure they get the care that they need.
“This reimbursement plan would be inconsistent with the mandate ‘ to care for him who shall have borne the battle’ given that the United States government sent members of the armed forces into harm’s way, and not private insurance companies. I say again that The American Legion does not and will not support any plan that seeks to bill a veteran for treatment of a service connected disability at the very agency that was created to treat the unique need of America’s veterans!”
President Obama after passing out money to organizations like ACORN, and to illegal aliens with his bullshit stimulus plan is trying to skimp out on the people who deserve his support the most and it is reprehensible.
Seeing where Obama decided to spend trillions and where he has decided to skimp out tells us quite a bit about this man. President Obama should be ashamed of himself.
