The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It’s time to start cashing them in.
Like that’s going to work.
via FOXNews.com - Social Security to Start Cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs.
In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it’s General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment.
via The Twilight of the Elites - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years - TIME.
If a yearlong struggle to pass sweeping health care reform that will affect every American wasn’t enough for Democrats, they have now decided to add a sweeping overhaul of student aid to the bill.
That means Democrats will try to muscle through two top administration priorities using a bare-knuckled tactic called reconciliation that only requires the approval of a simple majority in the Senate and prevents Republicans from killing the bills through filibusters.
via FOXNews.com - Democrats Dump Student Aid Overhaul Into Health Care Bill.
In “The March of Folly,” Barbara Tuchman asked, “Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?” Her assessment of self-deception — “acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts” — captures the conditions that are gripping President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership as they renew their efforts to enact health-care reform.
Their blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political march of folly into an electoral rout in November. In the wake of the stinging loss in Massachusetts, there was a moment when the president and the Democratic leadership seemed to realize the reality of the health-care situation. Yet like some seductive siren of Greek mythology, the lure of health-care reform has arisen again.
“Game on,” says Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, to National Review Online. “The Democrats are moving on reconciliation. They are revving up their machine, even though they don’t yet have the votes to pass the Senate bill in the House. This is their do-or-die moment. They know can’t let their members go home for Easter with this hanging out there.”
via Ryan: ‘This Is Their Do-or-Die Moment’ - Robert Costa - The Corner on National Review Online.
Some New York City chefs and restaurant owners are taking aim at a bill introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.
“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises,” the bill, A. 10129 , states in part.
The health care reform bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve appears to be dead on arrival in the House, as seven anti-abortion Democrats intend to join the ranks of lawmakers who plan to vote against the legislation, Fox News has confirmed.
Seven new no votes would be enough to kill the Senate bill, and several more fence-sitting lawmakers are under pressure from both sides of the aisle.
Fingers crossed.
via FOXNews.com - Senate Health Care Bill Dead on Arrival, Pro-Life House Democrats Say.
The Treasury Department released its monthly budget statement this afternoon and the results aren’t pretty. The federal government ran up its largest-ever monthly deficit in February at $220.9 billion, a 14 percent increase from a year ago.
The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.
This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.
Is this guy trying to get ever Senator and Representative booted from office.
Those who do not wish to have their details on the £11 billion computer system are supposed to be able to opt out by informing health authorities.
But doctors have accused the Government of rushing the project through, meaning that patients have had their details uploaded to the database before they have had a chance to object.
via Patients’ medical records go online without consent - Telegraph.
According to the 2008 Health Insurance Report Card (PDF) released by the American Medical Association, the “carrier” with the highest percentage of denials is . . . Medicare.
via Which Insurer Denies the Most Claims? | www.statehousecall.org.
Northrop Grumman, which in 2008 was named the victor in the Pentagon’s $40 billion KC-X tanker competition only to have the win taken away, announced on Monday that it will not re-submit its bid, citing unfairness in the contest with Boeing.
Wes Bush, chief executive of Northrop Grumman Corporation, said in a statement that the company opted not to submit a bid to the Department of Defense after reaching the conclusion that proposal “clearly favors Boeing’s smaller refueling tanker and does not provide adequate value recognition of the added capability of a larger tanker, precluding us from any competitive opportunity.”
They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.
But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress — or lack of it — over the last decade. California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.
via Low-tax Texas beats big-government California | Washington Examiner.
A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.
Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.
They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.
The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.
She said nurses had failed to give him vital drugs which controlled fluid levels in his body. ‘He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.’
President Obama’s decision to appoint his close political ally, union leader Andrew Stern, to the newly created National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has set off a firestorm of criticism from business and conservative groups who charge he is a political radical who should be investigated for failure to register as a lobbyist.
The prestigious 18-member commission will study and recommend ways to whittle down the $12 trillion debt the federal government has amassed. Stern is one of six panelists Obama has named; the House of Representatives and the Senate will each appoint six others.
Stern, the 59-year-old president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union, has angered business groups and political conservatives because of his support for health care reform and controversial “Card Check” legislation, which would make it easier for unions to organize in workplaces.
via FOXNews.com - Obama Draws Fire for Appointing SEIU’s Stern to Deficit Panel.
A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.
via Congressional estimates show grim deficit picture - Yahoo! News.
President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday, including more than $2 trillion that Obama proposes to devote to extending a variety of tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration.
The 10-year outlook by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama’s policies would add $8.5 trillion to the debt by 2020. While the two agencies are in relative agreement about the short-term budget picture, with both predicting a deficit of about $1.5 trillion this year and $1.3 trillion in 2011, the CBO is less optimistic about future years, predicting that deficits will grow rapidly after 2015.
via Obama policies projected to add $9.7 trillion to U.S. debt by 2020 - washingtonpost.com.
Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.
Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.
A dozen House of Representatives Democrats opposed to abortion are willing to kill President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plan unless it satisfies their demand for language barring the procedure, Representative Bart Stupak said on Thursday.
“Yes. We’re prepared to take responsibility,” Stupak said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when asked if he and his 11 Democratic allies were willing to accept the consequences for bringing down healthcare reform over abortion.
Let’s hope so…
via UPDATE 2-US Democrats would kill healthcare over abortion | Reuters.
Students carried out raucous rallies on college campuses nationwide Thursday in protests against deep education cuts that turned violent as demonstrators threw punches and ice chunks in Wisconsin and blocked university gates and smashed car windows in California.
At least 15 protesters were detained by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee police after as many as 150 students gathered at the student union then moved to an administrative building to deliver petitions to the school chancellor.
Young idiots - if they think I am going to support this foolishness while we have not the money to pay for it, they are idiots.
via Students rally on college campuses for funding - Education- msnbc.com.
That this inexperienced travesty of a chief executive, Obama, more a byproduct of timing and media collaboration, than his own worth, or accomplishment, is personally advocating for the so-called nuclear option is the final straw.
…
Only a fool with no clear appreciation of, or for, America past and present, would dare undertake what this pustule in the White House is attempting to do. It is contingent upon the Republican Party to undertake every step, every maneuver it can to bring this government to a halt.
This guy is pissed and if I could write a coherent thought, it would have hopefully been written a lot like this.
Democrats are pretending that their ideas are similar to the Republicans’. They said it over and over last week. This provides the political cover they need to ram this legislation through via reconciliation. But the Democrats have no idea the sleeping giant they will awaken if they do this: the giant that is the American people.
via Health Care Made Like Foie Gras - Erik Dahl - Critical Condition on National Review Online.
As Democrats in Congress prepare to shut Republicans out of the health care debate by triggering the “nuclear option” to pass legislation, the GOP is turning to a familiar tactic in a last-ditch effort to stall the bill: make some noise.
The strategy worked during last summer’s congressional recess, when rowdy town hall meetings disrupted health care reform’s momentum. It was thrown off track again in January, when Massachusetts voters sent Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate, breaking the Democrats’ 60-vote, filibuster-proof supermajority.
via FOXNews.com - Republicans Plan Anti-Health Care Reform Bill ‘Blitz’ as Democrats Regain Footing.
Nothing’s certain but one of them looks solid and, given Pelosi’s margin, even one is potentially disastrous. Let’s start with the solid. Blue Dog Michael Arcuri, come on down!
via Hot Air » Blog Archive » Oh my: Two House yes votes on ObamaCare may flip to no.
White House officials tell ABC News that in his remarks tomorrow President Obama will indicate a willingness to work with Republicans on some issue to get a health care reform bill passed but will suggest that if it is necessary, Democrats will use the controversial “reconciliation” rules requiring only 51 Senate votes to pass the “fix” to the Senate bill, as opposed to the 60 votes to stop a filibuster and proceed to a vote on a bill.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been awaiting the president’s remarks direction on how health care reform will proceed.
From health care reform and transportation to education to the environment, the Obama administration has–from the beginning–sought to expand the power of the central state. The president’s newest initiative to wrest environment, wage and benefit concessions from private companies is the latest example. But this trend of centralizing power to the federal government puts the political future of the ruling party–as well as the very nature of our federal system–in jeopardy.
The Democrats haven’t been shy about giving their opinions on whether it would be appropriate to use “budget reconciliation” to circumvent the filibuster and pass major legislation such as their proposed health-care overhaul. Here are some of the comments they’ve made within the past year:
“I was one of the authors of the legislation that created the budget ‘reconciliation’ process in 1974, and I am certain that putting health-care reform and climate-change legislation on a freight train through Congress is an outrage that must be resisted” (Sen. Robert Byrd, W.Va., the Washington Post, 3/22/09).
…
via The Democrats on Reconciliation - Jeffrey H. Anderson - Critical Condition on National Review Online.
In Indiana’s HSA, the state deposits $2,750 per year into an account controlled by the employee, out of which he pays all his health bills. Indiana covers the premium for the plan. The intent is that participants will become more cost-conscious and careful about overpayment or overutilization.
Unused funds in the account—to date some $30 million or about $2,000 per employee and growing fast—are the worker’s permanent property. For the very small number of employees (about 6% last year) who use their entire account balance, the state shares further health costs up to an out-of-pocket maximum of $8,000, after which the employee is completely protected.
The HSA option has proven highly popular. This year, over 70% of our 30,000 Indiana state workers chose it, by far the highest in public-sector America. Due to the rejection of these plans by government unions, the average use of HSAs in the public sector across the country is just 2%.
via Mitch Daniels: Hoosiers and Health Savings Accounts - WSJ.com.
Essentially, we all want to live forever. This makes health care a very desirable good. At the same time, the normal restraints imposed by price are frequently lacking. Today, of every dollar spent on health care in this country, just 13 cents is paid for by the person actually consuming the goods or services. Roughly half is paid for by government, and the remainder is covered by private insurance. And, as long as someone else is paying, consumers have every reason to consume as much health care as is available.
On the other, when consumers share in the cost of their health care purchasing decisions, they are more likely to make those decisions based on price and value. Take just one example. If everyone were to receive a CT brain scan every year as part of their annual physical, we would undoubtedly discover a small number of brain cancers much earlier than we otherwise would, perhaps early enough to save the patient’s life.
via RealClearPolitics - The Case for High-Deductible Health Insurance.
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