Get ready for more taxes! The worst part is the fact that Obama made a campaign promise not to raise taxes on us (those of us makeing less than $250k).

In a way, I think Bush should have raised taxes in order to pay for his crusade against terror. Yet I am pretty sure he would not have been able to pass a tax hike (many in congress were up for re-election). The current deficit spending started years ago. And yet instead of going down, deficits are going up! While it might not be the fault of any one person or party; what are we going to do about it?

"Few of President Obama's 2008 campaign pledges were more definitive than his vow that anyone making less than $250,000 a year 'will not see their taxes increase by a single dime' if he was elected. And he was right, very strictly speaking: It's going to be many, many, many billions of dimes. Asked about raising taxes on the middle class on Sunday on CBS's 'Face the Nation,' White House economist Larry Summers wouldn't repeat Mr. Obama's pre-election promise. 'It is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out no matter what,' Mr. Summers said -- except, apparently, when his boss is running for office. Meanwhile, on ABC's 'This Week,' Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also slid around Mr. Obama's vow and said, 'We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically. And that's going to require some very hard choices.' These aren't even nondenial denials. The Obama advisers are laying the groundwork for taxing the middle class while claiming the deficit made them do it. ... In an editorial on February 26, 'The 2% Illusion,' we wrote that the feds could take 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning more than $500,000 and still have raised only $1.3 trillion even in the boom year of 2006. The rich are fewer and less rich now, while the Obama budget is nearly $4 trillion. Democrats already plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts, but that won't raise enough money. So they're proposing an income tax surcharge on 'the wealthy,' but that won't raise enough either. Democrats have no choice but to soak the middle class because only they have enough money to finance the liberal dream of yoking the middle class to cradle-to-grave government entitlements." --The Wall Street Journal

In a way, I think Bush should have raised taxes in order to pay for his crusade against terror. Yet I am pretty sure he would not have been able to pass a tax hike (many in congress were up for re-election). The current deficit spending started years ago. And yet instead of going down, deficits are going up! While it might not be the fault of any one person or party; what are we going to do about it?

Stormy, I get nervous when you and I agree on anything. :)

It was sheer stupidity to deficit finance not one, but TWO wars! We wouldn't be in the mess we are now if Bush had just gone to the American people after 9/11 and said "We need to go after these bastards, so I'm suspending the tax cuts." You know what? Congress would have backed him. Virtually every American would have gladly supported him. I would have, for sure. Instead, he cooked the books by counting war costs off budget as "emergency appropriations" and left our kids holding the bag.

---

Join the PACK!

In a way, I think Bush should have raised taxes in order to pay for his crusade against terror. Yet I am pretty sure he would not have been able to pass a tax hike (many in congress were up for re-election). The current deficit spending started years ago. And yet instead of going down, deficits are going up! While it might not be the fault of any one person or party; what are we going to do about it?

Stormy, I get nervous when you and I agree on anything. :)

It was sheer stupidity to deficit finance not one, but TWO wars! We wouldn't be in the mess we are now if Bush had just gone to the American people after 9/11 and said "We need to go after these bastards, so I'm suspending the tax cuts." You know what? Congress would have backed him. Virtually every American would have gladly supported him. I would have, for sure. Instead, he cooked the books by counting war costs off budget as "emergency appropriations" and left our kids holding the bag.

See, I'm not completely crazy! I agree 100%.

Obama and the irony of status quo

---

me@rescam.org

"Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans." --columnist Robert Samuelson

"[Barack] Obama seems to think the country owes it to him to accept ObamaCare because he was kind enough to agree to be our president." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

'I'm as Mad as Hell, and I'm Not Gonna Take This Anymore!'

That famous line from the 1976 movie "Network" sums up the sentiment of many Americans as the health care debate continued to roar across the fruited plain. More town hall meetings featured citizens angry over proposed government expansion, leaving many congressmen not knowing quite how to handle the reaction. It's clear that many Americans have simply had enough.

Frightening future if health reform fails
by Uwe Reinhardt
James Madison professor of political economy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School

Watching the angry outbursts at town hall meetings on health reform and the continuing public ambivalence about current efforts to reform our health system almost makes me wish that the reform effort fails.

Perhaps Americans need to be taught a basic lesson on the economics of employment-based health insurance before they will feel as smugly secure with it as they do now and before they will stop nitpicking health-reform efforts to death over this or that detail.

And America's currently insured middle class will be increasingly desperate if health reform fails. Millions more such families will see their take-home pay shrink. Millions will lose their employment-based insurance, especially in medium and small-sized firms. And millions will find themselves inexorably priced out of health care as we know it.

Milliman Inc., an employee benefits consulting firm, publishes annually its Milliman Medical Index on the total health spending by or for a typical American family of four with private health insurance. The index totals the family's out-of-pocket spending for health care plus the contribution employers and employees make to that family's job-related health insurance coverage.

The Milliman Medical Index stood at $8,414 in 2001. It had risen to $16,700 by 2009. It is likely to rise to $18,000 by next year. That is more than a doubling of costs in the span of a decade!

Since 2005, the index has grown at an average annual compound rate of 8.4 percent. Suppose we make it 8 percent for the coming decade. Then today's $16,700 will have grown to slightly over $36,000 by 2019.

Economists are convinced that this $36,000 would come virtually all out of the financial hides of employees, even if the employer pretended to be paying, say, 80 percent of the employment-based health insurance premiums. In the succinct words of the late United Automobile Worker Union leader Douglas Fraser:

"Before you start weeping for the auto companies and all they pay for medical insurance, let me tell you how the system works. All company bargainers worth their salt keep their eye on the total labor unit cost, and when they pay an admittedly horrendous amount for health care, that's money that can't be spent for higher [cash] wages or higher pensions or other fringe benefits. So we directly, the union and its members, feel the costs of the health care system." ("A National Health Policy Debate," Dartmouth Medical School Alumni Magazine, Summer 1989: 30)

Unfortunately, very few rank-and-file workers appreciate this fact. Aside from their still modest out-of-pocket payments and contributions to employment-based insurance premiums, most employees seem sincerely to believe that the bulk of their family's health care is basically paid for by "the company," which is why so few members of the middle class have ever been much interested in controlling health spending in this country.

The price for that indifference will be high. If efforts at better cost containment fail once again, and health care costs rise to $36,000 on average for a typical American family of four under age 65 -- as almost surely it would -- that $36,000 will be borne entirely by the family. That family's disposable income would be much higher if the growth of future health spending was better controlled. And, as noted, many smaller firms will stop altogether providing job-based health insurance.

It would be a major problem for families with an income of less than $100,000 a year. In 2007, only about 25 percent of American families had a money income of $100,000 or more. Close to 60 percent had family incomes of less than $75,000.

Here it must be remembered that the wages and salaries of the solid American middle class have been relatively stagnant in recent years and are likely to remain so for the next decade. Unemployment is not likely to fall significantly soon, regardless of what stock prices do on Wall Street. Indeed, often stock prices rise as firms lay off workers to drive up profits through leaner payrolls.

This prospect -- relatively stagnant family incomes combined with family health-care costs that double every decade -- is what America's middle class should contemplate as it thinks about the imperative of health reform.

It is a pity that this central issue seems to have been shoved aside by mendacious distortions from Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh and other extremist commentators seeking to frighten Americans with their prattle about "death panels" and "pulling plugs on granny" that no bill before Congress even remotely envisions.

---

Join the PACK!

Frightening future if health reform fails
by Uwe Reinhardt
James Madison professor of political economy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School

A majority of Americans believe things would be worse if it passes (according to recent polls). You cannot blame this on republicans, if democrats wanted to pass this they could (they have enough votes).

SK:

1) I never "blamed" Republicans. As you correctly point out, the problem is the gutless Senate Democrats. Sadly, many of them have been taking contributions from the insurance industry for years, particularly in states (like mine) with health insurance companies that cover a significant majority in the state. In North Carolina, one company covers 71% of all policies. Our Republican senator is so deep in their pocket he has to look past their socks to see daylight.

2) You are also correct that the most recent (today) NBC/WSJ poll shows that "...support for a government-run public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers slipped slightly from 46 percent to 43 percent."

"The poll of 805 Americans was taken from Saturday to Monday and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points." While significant, this is hardly a "sea change".

The poll also showed that "...misconceptions about the plan were widespread, however, with 55 percent saying it would give health coverage to illegal immigrants and 45 percent saying it would let the government decide when to stop care for the elderly. Both are untrue."

This tells me that the blitz of misinformation media campaigns, "extremist commentators" (to borrow Dr. Reinhardt's term) and the "Town Howl Meetings" are currently succeeding in scaring people. This uncertainty will continue until a firm plan emerges from Congress and the Administration.

---

Join the PACK!

Preparing America for free medical care may be difficult for Barack Obama, but, everyone wants it.

The Englishman who is accomplishing himself in America operating free health care is the boss of ''Remote area medical''.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Area_Medical

SK:

1) I never "blamed" Republicans. As you correctly point out, the problem is the gutless Senate Democrats. Sadly, many of them have been taking contributions from the insurance industry for years, particularly in states (like mine) with health insurance companies that cover a significant majority in the state. In North Carolina, one company covers 71% of all policies. Our Republican senator is so deep in their pocket he has to look past their socks to see daylight.

2) You are also correct that the most recent (today) NBC/WSJ poll shows that "...support for a government-run public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers slipped slightly from 46 percent to 43 percent."

"The poll of 805 Americans was taken from Saturday to Monday and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points." While significant, this is hardly a "sea change".

The poll also showed that "...misconceptions about the plan were widespread, however, with 55 percent saying it would give health coverage to illegal immigrants and 45 percent saying it would let the government decide when to stop care for the elderly. Both are untrue."

This tells me that the blitz of misinformation media campaigns, "extremist commentators" (to borrow Dr. Reinhardt's term) and the "Town Howl Meetings" are currently succeeding in scaring people. This uncertainty will continue until a firm plan emerges from Congress and the Administration.

I think uncertainty as you put it has a major efffect on public opinion. There will always be a fear of the unknown. Plus, people who oppose the plan probably are the same people who have employers that provide good insurance. Only time will tell...

SK:

1) I never "blamed" Republicans. As you correctly point out, the problem is the gutless Senate Democrats. Sadly, many of them have been taking contributions from the insurance industry for years, particularly in states (like mine) with health insurance companies that cover a significant majority in the state. In North Carolina, one company covers 71% of all policies. Our Republican senator is so deep in their pocket he has to look past their socks to see daylight.

2) You are also correct that the most recent (today) NBC/WSJ poll shows that "...support for a government-run public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers slipped slightly from 46 percent to 43 percent."

"The poll of 805 Americans was taken from Saturday to Monday and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points." While significant, this is hardly a "sea change".

The poll also showed that "...misconceptions about the plan were widespread, however, with 55 percent saying it would give health coverage to illegal immigrants and 45 percent saying it would let the government decide when to stop care for the elderly. Both are untrue."

This tells me that the blitz of misinformation media campaigns, "extremist commentators" (to borrow Dr. Reinhardt's term) and the "Town Howl Meetings" are currently succeeding in scaring people. This uncertainty will continue until a firm plan emerges from Congress and the Administration.

I think uncertainty as you put it has a major efffect on public opinion. There will always be a fear of the unknown. Plus, people who oppose the plan probably are the same people who have employers that provide good insurance. Only time will tell...

surprisingly not. Many of the folks are already receiving the "socialized" medicine we call Medicare. Seems the misinformation has hit them as well. BTW I have really good insurance from my work. I am still greatly interested in seeing what can be done with the uninsured and expensively insured folks. I tend to think beyond my own nose. This will benefit everyone. Does anyone ever consider that the folks with no insurance or bad insurance spend a great deal of money at the ER for things that could have easily been taken care of at a GP's office. Given the expense we are all already burdened with it only makes sense to get something Gov't sponsored so that everyone can get decent healthcare in this country, drive down prices and leave the ER for real emergencies not for easily treated illnesses that could have been covered without an expensive trip to the ER.

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

SK:

1) I never "blamed" Republicans. As you correctly point out, the problem is the gutless Senate Democrats. Sadly, many of them have been taking contributions from the insurance industry for years, particularly in states (like mine) with health insurance companies that cover a significant majority in the state. In North Carolina, one company covers 71% of all policies. Our Republican senator is so deep in their pocket he has to look past their socks to see daylight.

2) You are also correct that the most recent (today) NBC/WSJ poll shows that "...support for a government-run public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers slipped slightly from 46 percent to 43 percent."

"The poll of 805 Americans was taken from Saturday to Monday and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points." While significant, this is hardly a "sea change".

The poll also showed that "...misconceptions about the plan were widespread, however, with 55 percent saying it would give health coverage to illegal immigrants and 45 percent saying it would let the government decide when to stop care for the elderly. Both are untrue."

This tells me that the blitz of misinformation media campaigns, "extremist commentators" (to borrow Dr. Reinhardt's term) and the "Town Howl Meetings" are currently succeeding in scaring people. This uncertainty will continue until a firm plan emerges from Congress and the Administration.

I think uncertainty as you put it has a major efffect on public opinion. There will always be a fear of the unknown. Plus, people who oppose the plan probably are the same people who have employers that provide good insurance. Only time will tell...

surprisingly not. Many of the folks are already receiving the "socialized" medicine we call Medicare. Seems the misinformation has hit them as well. BTW I have really good insurance from my work. I am still greatly interested in seeing what can be done with the uninsured and expensively insured folks. I tend to think beyond my own nose. This will benefit everyone. Does anyone ever consider that the folks with no insurance or bad insurance spend a great deal of money at the ER for things that could have easily been taken care of at a GP's office. Given the expense we are all already burdened with it only makes sense to get something Gov't sponsored so that everyone can get decent healthcare in this country, drive down prices and leave the ER for real emergencies not for easily treated illnesses that could have been covered without an expensive trip to the ER.

No doubt there are problems with the way healthcare is paid for. Emergency rooms are often used by the uninsured for non emergencies. The question is wether the Obama/democrat plan is the best way to fix these problems. Also, I do not like the idea of only having two choices; Obama's plan or no plan.

I would think that the people that currently can't afford insurance and want it will benefit in 2 ways. The lowering of cost from private insurers and the public plans (hopefully) low cost

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

I would think that the people that currently can't afford insurance and want it will benefit in 2 ways. The lowering of cost from private insurers and the public plans (hopefully) low cost

One can hope...

I would think that the people that currently can't afford insurance and want it will benefit in 2 ways. The lowering of cost from private insurers and the public plans (hopefully) low cost

One can hope...

...all Americans will receive the same healthcare that the President receives.

---

me@rescam.org

"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent." --Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790)

Is this really what we were promised when we voted for change? Wait, how can anyone be surprised? When one party controls our government, stuff like this happens. Remember Bush and his buddies in the republican congress?



The story began when two young conservative activists, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking advice on obtaining a loan for a home to use as a brothel, evading income tax on the young woman's income and claiming as dependents underage El Salvadoran girls they wanted to employ. In five different ACORN offices (Baltimore, DC, New York, and San Diego and San Bernardino, California), workers bit on the story, hooker, line and sinker, freely giving pointers without so much as batting an eye on how to get illegal loans and evade taxes. The videos are posted on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com. None showed concern for the obvious implication of child abuse.

The truly unfortunate thing is that ACORN has received more than $50 million in taxpayer dollars since 1994 and was set to receive $8.5 billion in "stimulus" cash. Most Democrats are feverishly turning off the funding spigot before this scandal drags their own political skeletons out of the closet. For the record, however, seven senators voted to continue funding this criminal enterprise, and, not surprisingly, they're all Democrats: Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Dick Durbin (IL), Roland Burris (IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Bob Casey Jr. (PA), Patrick Leahy (VT) and self-proclaimed socialist independent Bernie Sanders (VT). In addition, 75 (yes, seventy-five) House Democrats voted to continue throwing our money at the group. Space doesn't permit us to list the names of these disgraceful twits, but BigGovernment.com has them for all to see.

One of the ACORN workers did tell O'Keefe, "Honesty is not going to get you the house." Perhaps she meant "House" with a capital "H." In any case, O'Keefe and Giles deserve a medal.

ACORN director fires organizer seen on tape

“As you know, California law requires there to be consent when you record somebody,” said Scott Gerber, a spokesman for the attorney general. “We're going to look into it without fear or favor.”

EEENT wrong! That applies to telephone conversations ala Linda Tripp. Otherwise omeone tell Scott Gerber that I don't consent to being recorded by any security cameras around me that I don't know about.

---

me@rescam.org