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Gee, sounds like too many people I've met throughout my life.
They do follow the philosophy that a well placed lie can and will bring down someone you don't like. And they make the quiet fist and say ''Yessssss'', and move on with more confidence at their manipulative skills.
In the Martial Arts, I have been taught that the first strike generally dictates the outcome of a confrontation, so keep outside of strike ranges if at all possible. Too many folks are perfectly happy with the sucker punch.
Your post reminds me that the same holds true in other arenas of life.
People are too easily led by the first lie told. Accuse the opponent of what you are guilty of.
Those who snap and use a firearm have been on the receiving end of that tactic.
imo.
Beware the [Political] Psychopath, My Son
by Clinton Callahan
The following is largely extracted from two articles:
Twilight of the Psychopaths, by Dr. Kevin Barrett
and The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade by Silvia Cattori.
Both articles are recommended. Both articles reference the book Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes, by Andrzej Lobaczewski.
Cattori's article is longer and includes an interview with the book's editors, Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Henry See.
I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question:
Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice?
It doesn't seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again.
The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been built on slavery and mass murder. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination. The inventor of civilization - the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers - was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies - especially military hierarchies.
Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as their power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld - the overlapping criminal syndicates that lurk above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it.
During the past fifty years, psychopaths have gained almost absolute control of all the branches of government. You can notice this if you observe carefully that no matter what illegal thing a modern politician does, no one will really take him to task. All of the so called scandals that have come up, any one of which would have taken down an authentic administration, are just farces played out for the public, to distract them, to make them think that the democracy is still working.
One of the main factors to consider in terms of how a society can be taken over by a group of pathological deviants is that the psychopaths' only limitation is the participation of susceptible individuals within that given society. Lobaczewski gives an average figure for the most active deviants of approximately 6% of a given population. (1% essential psychopaths and up to 5% other psychopathies and characteropathies.) The essential psychopath is at the center of the web. The others form the first tier of the psychopath's control system.
The next tier of such a system is composed of individuals who were born normal, but are either already warped by long-term exposure to psychopathic material via familial or social influences, or who, through psychic weakness have chosen to meet the demands of psychopathy for their own selfish ends. Numerically, according to Lobaczewski, this group is about 12% of a given population under normal conditions.
So approximately 18% of any given population is active in the creation and imposition of a Pathocracy. The 6% group constitutes the Pathocratic nobility and the 12% group forms the new bourgeoisie, whose economic situation is the most advantageous.
When you understand the true nature of psychopathic influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless - they literally have no conscience.
In his book Political Oenology, Andrej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non-violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests), psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths. Since psychopaths have no limitations on what they can or will do to get to the top, the ones in charge are generally pathological. It is not power that corrupts, it is that corrupt individuals seek power.
How can we distinguish between psychopaths and healthy people?
What is the portrait of a true psychopath?
Such a dangerous question has almost never been successfully asked. The reason is because we mistakenly confuse healthy for normal. Human psychological diversity is the health of our race. There is no normal because healthy humans continuously evolve beyond all normalizing standards. The terrorism of searching through hierarchies for anyone deviating from normal is no different from witch hunts or Inquisitions. You must remember that hierarchies thrive on such low dramas, torturing victims until they confess to evil beliefs. Not so long ago the church and state ongoingly acquired significant income and property through witch hunts and Inquisitions. This continued for over two hundred and fifty years. Ten generations of Europeans understood pogrom as normal life. Let us not return to that nightmare. Testing for normal is guaranteed to backfire in our face. There is no normal. But there is conscience.
We have very little empirical evidence to support the idea that true psychopathy is the result of an abused childhood, and much empirical evidence to support that it is genetic. The neurobiological model offers us the greatest hope of being able to identify even the most devious psychopath. Other recent studies lead to similar results and conclusions: that psychopaths have great difficulty processing verbal and nonverbal affective (emotional) material, that they tend to confuse the emotional significance of events, and most importantly, that these deficits show up in brain scans! A missing internal connection between the feeling heart and the thinking brain is detectable.
Psychopaths are incapable of authentic deep emotions. In fact, when Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist who spent his career studying psychopathy, did brain scans on psychopaths while showing them two sets of words, one set of neutral words with no emotional associations and a second set with emotionally charged words, while different areas of the brain lit up in the non-psychopathic control group, in the psychopaths, both sets were processed in the same area of the brain, the area that deals with language. They did not have an emotional reaction until they intellectually concluded that it would be better if they had one, and then they whipped up an emotional response just for show.
The simplest, clearest and truest portrait of the psychopath is given in the titles of three seminal works on the subject:
Without Conscience by Robert Hare, The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley, and Snakes in Suits by Robert Hare and Paul Babiak.
A psychopath is exactly that: conscienceless. The most important thing to remember is that this lack of conscience is hidden from view behind a mask of normality that is often so convincing that even experts are deceived. As a result, psychopaths become the Snakes in Suits that control our world.
Psychopaths lack a sense of remorse or empathy with others. They can be extremely charming and are experts at using talk to charm and hypnotize their prey. They are also irresponsible. Nothing is ever their fault; someone else or the world at large is always to blame for all of their problems or their mistakes. Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, identifies what she calls the pity ploy. Psychopaths use pity to manipulate. They convince you to give them one more chance, and to not tell anyone about what they have done. So another trait - and a very important one - is their ability to control the flow of information.
They also seem to have little real conception of past or future, living entirely for their immediate needs and desires. Because of the barren quality of their inner life, they are often seeking new thrills, anything from feeling the power of manipulating others to engaging in illegal activities simply for the rush of adrenaline.
Another trait of the psychopath is what Lobaczewski calls their special psychological knowledge of normal people. They have studied us. They know us better than we know ourselves. They are experts in knowing how to push our buttons, to use our emotions against us. But beyond that, they even seem to have some sort of hypnotic power over us. When we begin to get caught up in the web of the psychopath, our ability to think deteriorates, gets muddied. They seem to cast some sort of spell over us. It is only later when we are no longer in their presence, out of their spell, that the clarity of thought returns and we find ourselves wondering how it was that we were unable to respond or counter what they were doing.
Psychopaths learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to themselves. They also become conscious of being of a different world from the majority of other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance.
Think about the ramifications of this statement: Psychopaths are, to some extent, self-aware as a group even in childhood! Recognizing their fundamental difference from the rest of humanity, their allegiance would be to others of their kind, that is, to other psychopaths.
Their own twisted sense of honor compels them to cheat and revile non-psychopaths and their values. In contradiction to the ideals of normal people, psychopaths feel breaking promises and agreements is normal behavior.
Not only do they covet possessions and power and feel they have the right to them just because they exist and can take them, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others; what they can plagiarize, swindle, and extort are fruits far sweeter than those they can earn through honest labor. They also learn very early how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of non-psychopaths, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of achieving their goals.
So now, imagine how human beings who are totally in the dark about the presence of psychopaths can be easily deceived and manipulated by these individuals, gaining power in different countries, pretending to be loyal to the local populations while at the same time playing up obvious and easily discernible physical differences between groups (such as race, skin color, religion, etc). Psychologically normal humans would be set against one another on the basis of unimportant differences (think of Rwanda 1994, think of Israelis and Palestinians) while the deviants in power, with a fundamental difference from the rest of us, a lack of conscience, an inability to feel for another human being, reaped the benefits and pulled the strings.
We are seeing the final desperate power-grab or endgame (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers; money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men - economic and otherwise; corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate predators and their political enablers; brainwashers and mind-rapists euphemistically known as psy-ops and PR specialists - in short, the whole crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so-called civilization. And they are running scared.
Why does the Pathocracy fear it is losing control?
Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge.
The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out.
Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. Deep down they know something is missing in them. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others' emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals.
Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the healthy human being - a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power.
We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish - militaries, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and secret societies. We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely and as quickly as possible.
Until the knowledge and awareness of pathological human beings is given the attention it deserves and becomes part of the general knowledge of all human beings, there is no way that things can be changed in any way that is effective and long-lasting. If half the people agitating for truth or stopping the war or saving the earth would focus their efforts, time and money on exposing psychopathy, we might get somewhere.
One might ask if the weak point of our society has been our tolerance of psychopathic behavior?
Our disbelief that someone could seem like an intelligent leader and still be acting deceptively on their own behalf without conscience? Or is it merely ignorance?
If the general voting public is not aware that there exists a category of people we sometimes perceive as almost human, who look like us, who work with us, who are found in every race, every culture, speaking every language, but who are lacking conscience, how can the general public take care to block them from taking over the hierarchies? General ignorance of psychopathology may prove to be the downfall of civilization. We stand by like grazing sheep as political/corporate elites throw armies of our innocent sons and daughters against fabricated enemies as a way of generating trillions in profits, vying against each other for pathological hegemony.
Nearly everyone who has been part of an organization working for social change has probably seen the same dynamic play out: The good and sincere work of many can be destroyed by the actions of one person. That doesn't bode well for bringing some sort of justice to the planet! In fact, if psychopaths dominate political hierarchies, is it any wonder that peaceful demonstrations have zero impact on the outcome of political decisions? Perhaps it is time to choose something other than massive, distant hierarchies as a way of governing ourselves?
So many efforts to provide essays, research reports, exposés and books to leaders so they might take the new information to heart and change their behavior have come to naught.
For example, in the final paragraph of his revised edition of the book, The Party's Over, Richard Heinberg writes:
I still believe that if the people of the world can be helped to understand the situation we are in, the options available, and the consequences of the path we are currently on, then it is at least possible that they can be persuaded to undertake the considerable effort and sacrifice that will be entailed in a peaceful transition to a sustainable, locally based, decentralized, low-energy, resource-conserving social regime. But inspired leadership will be required.
And that is the just-murdered fantasy. There are no inspired leaders anymore. And in hierarchical structures there can't be. Assuming that you can elect men or women to office who will see reason and the light of day, and who will change and learn and grow, make compassionate decisions and take conscientious actions is a foolish, childish dream. Continuing to dream it simply plays into psychopathic agendas.
Only when the 75% of humanity with a healthy conscience come to understand that we have a natural predator, a group of people who live amongst us, viewing us as powerless victims to be freely fed upon for achieving their inhuman ends, only then will we take the fierce and immediate actions needed to defend what is preciously human. Psychological deviants have to be removed from any position of power over people of conscience, period. People must be made aware that such individuals exist and must learn how to spot them and their manipulations. The hard part is that one must also struggle against those tendencies to mercy and kindness in oneself in order not to become prey.
The real problem is that the knowledge of psychopathy and how psychopaths rule the world has been effectively hidden. People do not have the adequate, nuanced knowledge they need to really make a change from the bottom up. Again and again, throughout history it has been meet the new boss, same as the old boss. If there is any work that is deserving of full time efforts and devotion for the sake of helping humanity in this present dark time, it is the study of psychopathy and the propagation of this information as far and wide and fast as possible.
There are only two things that can bring a psychopath under submission:
1. A bigger psychopath._2. The non-violent, absolute refusal to submit to psychopathic controls no matter the consequences (non-violent noncompliance).
Let us choose path 2! If individuals simply sat down and refused to lift a hand to further one single aim of the psychopathic agenda, if people refused to pay taxes, if soldiers refused to fight, if government workers and corporate drones and prison guards refused to go to work, if doctors refused to treat psychopathic elites and their families, the whole system would grind to a screeching halt.
True change happens in the moment that a person becomes aware of psychopathy in all its chilling details. From this new awareness, the world looks different, and entirely new actions can be taken. Distinguishing between human and psychopathic qualities begins the foundation of responsibility upon which we have a real chance to create sustainable culture.
Clinton Callahan, originator of Possibility Management, author of Radiant Joy Brilliant Love, founder of Callahan Academy, empowers responsible creative leadership through authentic personal development. Read other articles by Clinton, or visit Clinton's website.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Politicians/Political_Psychopaths.html
Speaker Will Keep 'Villains' Money
By Jonathan Allen | July 30, 2009 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called health insurers "the villains" in the unfolding story of the health care overhaul on Thursday, ratcheting up an anti-insurer theme trotted out by President Obama earlier this month and encouraged by other Democratic leaders in Congress.
"It is somewhat immoral what they are doing. Of course, they have been immoral all along how they have treated the people that they insure," MSNBC's Luke Russert quoted her as saying. "They are the villains in this."
Pelosi, of course, has accepted campaign contributions from said villains this year and in the past, as have most of her Democratic colleagues. Pelosi's campaign committee, for example, took $2,500 from AFLAC's political action committee on April 13. But she's not giving the money back just because she thinks the sources are immoral and villainous.
"As the Speaker's opposition to the health insurance companies being in charge of American's health care shows, there is no link between political contributions and positions on policy," said her spokesman Brendan Daly.
Besides, a quick look at her records suggests that health insurers make up a fraction of the money she accepts from the broader insurance industry and place her fairly low on the list of recipients -- particularly given her longtime spot atop the Democratic Party -- according to a study released earlier this year by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Pelosi ranked 55th among members of the 111th Congress in contributions from health insurers since the 1989-1990 election cycle, according to CRP, having taken in $186,750 (less than $20,000 per two-year cycle).
The real trick -- as Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., has shown -- is to turn your entire enemies list into your fundraising pool.
The targeting of insurance companies is a political natural, as Americans view them with great skepticism in polls. In one recent Gallup survey, only 4 percent of respondents chose insurers over doctors and hospitals, Obama and congressional Democrats, and congressional Republicans as the entity they most trust to reform the health care system.
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/notepad/2009/07/speaker-will-keep-villains-mon.html
Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano resigns after arrest in sweeping corruption probe
By Larry Mcshane
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Another one bites the dust in New Jersey.
Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, once considered a rising Democratic Party star, resigned Friday after his arrest last week in a sweeping corruption probe.
The 32-year-old Cammarano served just 30 days as mayor before sending his letter of resignation to the city clerk, according to his attorney.
He was accused of taking a $25,000 bribe in return for his support for a potential high-rise building project in the city opposite lower Manhattan.
The ex-mayor took the oath of office on July 1 after a hotly-contested race.
Cammarano became the second New Jersey mayor forced out of office by the sprawling scandal.
Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell stepped down Tuesday after authorities charged him with taking a $10,000 payoff.
One of the 44 people named in the indictment was found dead in his Jersey City apartment Tuesday.
Authorities were investigating whether political consultant Jack Shaw, 61, committed suicide.
A preliminary autopsy was inconclusive.
The corruption sweep uncovered alleged bribe-taking, money laundering and even kidney-trafficking from Jersey to Brooklyn.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/07/31/2009-07-31_hoboken_mayor_peter_cammarano_resigns_after_arrest_in_sweeping_corruption_probe.html
STATE'S A WRECK? PARTY!
GOV AT CLUB BASH AMID A NEW DI$ASTER
ALBANY -- What's Gov. Paterson got to celebrate?
Just hours before delivering news of soaring budget deficits and lagging revenues from the recent millionaire's tax, the party-hearty Paterson was spotted hobnobbing at a Chelsea hot spot with "new BFF" Russell Simmons and others from the hip-hop set.
The night-owl chief executive reportedly lingered for hours at the West 21st Street nightclub Taj, which was the site of several overlapping cocktail parties, including an invitation-only birthday bash for BET executive Rhonda Cowan, a longtime Paterson friend.
Stagnant poll numbers, lackluster campaign fund-raising and the threat of a challenge within his own party didn't keep the Democratic governor from enjoying himself at the midweek fiesta.
"God's Favorite MC," Frank Jugga, contributed "mike flava," and music promoter Dontay Thompson leaped on a table. Hot 97 deejay Funkmaster Flex was there, too.
Just hours later, Paterson called on the Legislature to address a yawning budget gap that has swelled to $2.1 billion in just three months.
The governor blamed his latest bleak forecast, which pushes the state's budget gap to $38.2 billion over the next four years, on plunging tax collections and job losses.
Plummeting tax revenues were behind much of the shortfall.
In the first three months of this fiscal year, income-tax collections fell 35 percent, to $7.7 billion, compared with the same period last year. The drop was $584 million below estimates set in April, when the governor and the Legislature agreed to a $8 billion tax-and-fee package.
Budget officials said revenues from the $3.9 billion millionaire's tax have lagged behind projections.
Last year, the state collected about $1 billion from top earners. Those collections may now come in at only $500 million, lower than forecast last spring.
Officials said it could be due to changes in the way the wealthy are reporting their income, the possibility that some have moved out of state, or that they are earning less.
Given the state of the economy, one Brooklyn blogger, Tionna Smalls, who outed Paterson with a call to Gawker.com after leaving the party herself, was not amused.
"I mean it's a nice event for a regular person like me that's going to come up -- but not for a governor," Smalls told The Post.
Smalls, who co-stars in an upcoming VH1 reality show with Rozonda "Chili" Thomas, of TLC, and Sandra "Pepa" Denton, of Salt-N-Pepa, said Paterson should be busy working to fix the state's economy.
"I have some advice for him: Stay his ass out the clubs," Smalls said.
Paterson has become a regular on the cocktail-party circuit since taking over for hooker-happy ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
In recent weeks, Page Six spies have spotted him at at least two Hamptons gatherings, including a pool party at Simmons' house. Smalls described the impresario as Paterson's "new BFF."
Several who attended the Chelsea bash said Paterson stayed until 1 a.m., but a friend of Cowan's insisted the governor "mostly posed for photos" and left before midnight.
Paterson brought his 21-year-old stepdaughter, Ashley, to the soirée, sources said.
He was drinking the nightspot's sugary Elderflower cocktails ($14) and sat in a booth in the back between mugging for photos with guests. The governor stood out as the only guest warning a suit.
Marissa Shorenstein, a spokeswoman for Paterson, refused to answer questions about whether the eve of a woeful budget announcement was an appropriate time to party.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07312009/news/regionalnews/states_a_wreck__party__182249.htm
Barney Frank: Public Option Leads to Gov't Control
Friday, July 31, 2009 11:19 AM
By: Jim Meyers Article Font Size
Rep. Barney Frank said healthcare reform legislation that includes a public insurance option is the first step toward a single payer system providing all Americans with government health insurance.
"I think if we get a good public option it could lead to single payer, and that's the best way to reach single payer," the Massachusetts Democrat said in remarks reported by The Hill newspaper.
Frank favors a single payer system but supports the less comprehensive public insurance option in the current House bill.
"The best way we're going to get single payer, the only way," he said, "is to have a public option to demonstrate its strength and its power."
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/barney_frank_health_bill/2009/07/31/242448.html
Mass. medical leaders wary of healthcare overhaul’s cost
By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | July 28, 2009
If you want to know how the proposed overhaul of the US healthcare system may play out nationally, talk to top executives at the biggest medical and life sciences companies in Massachusetts.
As the heads of leading hospitals, insurers, and biotechnology companies, they have dealt with the complexities of near-universal healthcare since 2006, when Massachusetts became the first state to mandate insurance coverage. That gives them a unique perspective on the national effort to overhaul healthcare.
As the debate in Washington heats up, local executives warn that two goals of the Obama administration - expanding insurance coverage and controlling spending - may prove incompatible. And as Massachusetts strains to deal with the increasing costs of its successful healthcare program, they raise questions about who will pay for the projected $1 trillion cost on the federal level.
“Healthcare isn’t free, and if more people want an MRI on demand, that isn’t going to reduce costs or improve care,’’ said Ellen M. Zane, president of Tufts Medical Center in Boston. To make reform work on such a big scale, Zane said, the burden will have to be shared by providers, insurers, employers, and patients.
Most Massachusetts business leaders agree the healthcare system needs major surgery. But they have their own particular concerns about the impact of proposed healthcare changes on their organizations’ health, underscoring how difficult it will be to reach consensus.
Hospitals and doctors say that lower federal reimbursements could hurt the quality of medical care, while insurers chafe at a proposed government-run health plan they argue would put them at a competitive disadvantage.
At the same time, biotech and medical-device makers say the focus on cost savings could hinder their ability to develop life-saving drugs and innovative devices.
Details have yet to emerge on the healthcare plan, but some provisions, especially coverage of an estimated 47 million uninsured US citizens, are likely to mirror steps already taken here.
Cost is a proven issue. Nationwide, hospitals have committed themselves to forgoing $155 billion in government reimbursements over 10 years, but even that may not be enough. James J. Mongan, chief executive of Partners HealthCare, which operates Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General hospitals, said providers must find ways to deliver top care for less money.
“The hospitals understand they’re going to have to give up something, but believe there’s room for more efficiency over the coming decade,’’ said Mongan. He said Partners hospitals are working to cut costs, through methods such as improved disease management and electronic medical records.
Hospital executives said those steps may eventually pare expenses, as will preventive care if more people sign up with primary care doctors. But a wave of newly insured patients will almost certainly drive up short-term costs for insurers and employers, executives said.
That has happened in Massachusetts. The stress of paying for universal coverage is showing, too; last month, the Connector Authority, which oversees the state’s healthcare program, cut $155 million, or about 12 percent, from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes insurance for low-income residents.
With the federal government proposing to decrease reimbursement payments to hospitals at the same time they are forced to take on more patients, “what you could get is a gradual degradation in the ability of hospitals to deliver services,’’ said Paul Levy, president of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Ralph de la Torre, chief executive of Caritas Christi Health Care, a six-hospital chain, said hospitals will have to make smarter choices about care. “It needs to be more based on quality and less based on the number of procedures,’’ said de la Torre, who suggested doctors can be too quick to order tests.
For insurers, the biggest stumbling block is a government insurance plan, proposed by President Obama as an alternative to private insurers.
“Proponents say it will add a level of competition,’’ said Cleve L. Killingsworth, chairman of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, based in Boston. “But when you’re introducing a plan that doesn’t have to make a [profit] and can go to the Treasury to get bailed out, you’re creating an unlevel playing field.’’
James Roosevelt Jr., president of Tufts Health Plan in Watertown, said the national overhaul effort is taking aim at some problems - such as the exclusion of patients with pre-existing conditions - that are more prevalent nationally than in Massachusetts. The government could set lower prices, forcing insurers to follow suit, Roosevelt said, possibly limiting care for many people. “Providers would get less money and fewer conditions would be covered,’’ he said.
Massachusetts life sciences companies worry about unintended consequences. Trimming budgets at teaching hospitals could crimp their ability to collaborate with researchers on medical devices and biotech drugs, executives said. For medical-device makers, there is the added concern that expanded healthcare could be financed partly by taxing their products.
“We have to make sure that, in making changes, we don’t damage patient outcomes or innovation,’’ said Ray Elliott, who took over this month as president of Boston Scientific Corp., a Natick maker of stents, defibrillators, and other medical equipment.
US drug companies have pledged $80 billion in cost savings to help build a new healthcare system. But deliberations on Capitol Hill have left industry leaders wary about price controls on drugs. Companies say they depend on high profits to cover research and development. That’s especially true of biologic drugs - costly treatments made from living cells that have allowed Massachusetts’ biotech sector to grow. “If they do this in a way that interrupts the innovation cycle, that would be a very high cost,’’ said Henri A. Termeer, chief executive of the Cambridge-based biotech Genzyme Corp.
http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2009/07/28/mass_executives_wary_of_healthcare_overhauls_cost?mode=PF
Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
Heinlein
Hey, Finally a stimulus program that worked:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25662.html
I don't worry about who I am....
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. Oscar Wilde
Libs Reject Blue Dog Deal
by Connie Hair (more by this author)
Posted 07/30/2009 ET
Updated 07/30/2009 ET
The on again off again healthcare compromise was off again last night as the farthest of the far left members of the Democrats in the House revolted. When their slightly less liberal counterparts, the Blue Dog Democrats (better known as the Lapdogs), rolled over, fetched and played dead for their masters, it appeared for a moment there was a sellout by the Lapdogs on healthcare. Members of the Democrat “Progressive” Caucus, which is the coven of hyperlibs, went apoplectic over what they called a “watering down” of the government takeover of healthcare.
Just after the lunch hour on Capitol Hill, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, ordered that the markup on the government takeover of healthcare bill be resumed at 4:00 pm. Word of a compromise began to leak out to the media as majority Democrats are absolutely desperate to at least get the bill out of this final committee of jurisdiction before their month-long August vacation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) is running out of room for more egg on her face.
After keeping media in the hearing room waiting for more than an hour, committee staffers informed those assembled that the hearing was being postponed until Thursday. The so-called deal was already bursting a few seams.
This “deal” is still devastating to job creation, crippling small businesses, which are the engine of job creation. The compromise that was acceptable to the tax and spend Lapdogs still impose huge new taxes and mandates on small employers with only 17 or more employees on average. Using Census data, the Small Business Administration estimates that to be about 844,842 small businesses employing 70 percent of all small business employees, or 42.3 million workers. The so-called exemption for small businesses still imposes the full eight percent payroll tax on small businesses with only 32 employees on average. That’s a job-killer.
I spoke Rep. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Az.), a senior member of Energy & Commerce, in the hallway of the Capitol building after the markup postponement.
“If I were to be a lawyer again for a moment I would say it looks the compromise is illusory,” Shadegg said. “It hasn’t quite happened yet. I would suggest that they are being smart if they’re saying we are not proceeding until we get it absolutely nailed down. I think that to the extent the Blue Dogs are able to negotiate some changes in what is an abysmal piece of legislation they better be sure they get them in stone before they lose their leverage. And they lose their leverage when the bill clears committee. So it’s very interesting and it does not look from the outside to be particularly well organized.”
I also spoke with Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), member of the Energy & Commerce and an outspoken opponent of this legislation, having experienced firsthand her state’s disastrous flirtation with TennCare. I asked what she thought of the Democrat majority chaos over the healthcare bill.
“I think that what it reflects is the discontent of the American people with what they are hearing on the way the administration and Speaker Pelosi are approaching healthcare reform,” Blackburn said. “People do not want a government-run system. They are being very vocal about this. They do not like the process. If they’ve said one thing they’ve said it a dozen times: throw that bill out and start over. And I think the American people are just showing their disgust with what they see taking place here in D.C. and their dissatisfaction is well placed.”
The Blue Lapdogs have been holding up passage in the final of the three committees of jurisdiction in an attempt to convince any conservative who might have once voted for them that they are fiscally conservative. After voting to pass bailouts, a national energy tax and the largest budget deficits in history, the Blue Lapdogs aren’t fooling anyone anymore. Voting to pass the government takeover of healthcare at the expense of small business jobs will be the final nail in their electoral coffins.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=32922
Carroll woman's answer to highly visible Obama: Selling her televisions
By DOUGLAS BURNS
Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
A 78-year-old Carroll woman says she's so tired of seeing President Barack Obama on the airwaves that she's selling her television sets - two of them.
Deloris Nissen, a retired nurses' aide and former Kmart employee who was raised on a farm near Audubon, placed a classified advertisement with The Daily Times Herald for Friday's paper.
In the $5.50 ad, Nissen tells readers she has two television sets for sale.
The reason: "Obama on every channel and station."
In an interview Nissen said she is serious about selling two TVs - and genuine about her disgust with what she believes to be an overexposed president.
"I just got tired of watching him on every channel," Nissen said. "I thought, my gosh, does he ever stay at the White House?"
Nissen, who voted for U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential election, said she could live with seeing Obama come on television to make serious announcements. But he seems to be on all the time, Nissen said.
When the president does appear on a channel she happens to be watching, Nissen said, she quickly turns.
"I have the remote real handy," Nissen said. "I have the batteries. I'm ready for him."
Nissen's annoyance with the president as a frequent presence on her television doesn't mean she'll abandon the medium altogether.
She's keeping a bigger flat-screen television and selling an older 20-inch Sony and possibly a 13-inch set.
"It's too heavy," Nissen said of the 20-inch TV. "I can't handle it anymore."
That said, she doesn't plan on selling it for less than $100 - even if Obama was just on Tuesday pitching his health-care-reform plans.
Obama's own advisers and political observers across the ideological spectrum have for months debated whether the now popular president is overexposed.
For her part, Nissen said she expects to take some flack for the advertisement in her local paper. After all, Obama did win Iowa and Carroll County in the 2008 election.
But she's not worried about any criticism.
"I'm an old lady, and I don't care," Nissen said.
http://www.carrollspaper.com/print.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=8449&TM=46039.14
Venezuela: 'Freedom of expression must be limited'
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99P3IKO0&show_article=1
You Paid For It: Ambulance Rides, Health Care Reform
Watch 2 On Your Side's investigative, team coverage of alleged abuse of your tax dollars.
If it's a medical emergency, Erie County 911 will respond, but there is one address many of its dispatchers know by heart.
They find Scott Graham usually waiting at that Buffalo address for his ambulance several times a week.
"Sometimes two times a day," Graham told 2 On Your Side. He suffers from Sickle Cell Anemia, a blood disorder. If left untreated, it can block blood flow to limbs and organs.
"It feels like somebody shooting me with battery acid, and I'm stepping on razor blades, and I'm having a heart attack at once," he said talking about the pain the disorder causes.
Graham doesn't have a job, insurance or car. So, when he feels bad, he doesn't call a cab. He calls 911 to have an ambulance drive him to the hospital.
A 2 On Your Side investigation found that from January 2006 to May of this year, Rural Metro Ambulance picked him up 603 times.
Medicaid picked up the tab for each ride, costing taxpayers at least $118,158.
Graham estimates he's requested even more rides. "I'd say about a thousand times."
Rural Metro and Erie County chose not to respond on camera about Graham's case. The county follows the same rules most emergency systems follow across the country. If you call, they must haul you to the hospital, no matter what your call is about.
Graham says he requests an ambulance because he can't see his doctor as much as he needs. He also says he gets help quicker by arriving in an ambulance rather than by cab.
2 On Your Side contacted Medicaid to have them look into the number of times Graham used an ambulance. Medicaid appeared more interested in how we got the information, rather than how much it cost taxpayers to pick him up.
Medicaid fraud and abuse costs $60 billion each year nationwide.
2 On Your Side contacted our lawmakers to discuss how to lower that number.
"As we look at health care reform," Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said, "we should also look at oversight and accountability for those programs to make sure that people aren't abusing the system."
Gillibrand says cracking down on abuse should be part of the major health care reform going through Congress to force more oversight.
Take Mr. Graham's case. His trips cost Medicaid $118,000, but the government reimbursements are low. In fact, most ambulance companies lose money, up to 30% or more, when they transport Medicaid patients, because the government simply does not pay the full cost. Therefore, Mr. Graham's actual cost to the ambulance company and to the health care system in general, is much more, as high as $360,000.
Erie County Executive Chris Collins, a Republican, says government is not the answer to limiting that type of alleged abuse and waste.
"Fundamentally, inherently I think the private sector is better able to do anything and everything compared to government," Collins said.
Instead, Collins said the solution is insurance that is private and not public.
"Would the type of reform that you're suggesting here be able to crack down more on this type of fraud?" asked 2 On Your Side's Michael Wooten.
"I'm actually talking about the basic design of the program in New York," Collins said. "where fraud is something we have to look at everyday. But the actual larger cost is the actual design of the program and the fact that we took the entire menu and said we'll provide it all."
Gillibrand disagrees.
"Bottom line then, expanded government-run health care can be efficient you believe?" 2 On Your Side's Michael Wooten asked Gillibrand. "Absolutely," she responded. "Talk to your mother. Talk to your father. Talk to someone who has Medicare. They're pretty happy."
Currently, New York has a dubious distinction of having the highest Medicaid costs in the entire country, about $2,300 per person. Collins said if we had a system similar the one in California, which does not provide as much care, we would save enough money to completely eliminate the county property tax.
http://www.wgrz.com/includes/tools/print.aspx?storyid=69029
Hilarious, I guess Reid doesn't listen to Obama....
Senate Dems blame media for August health deadline
"That is a deadline that you created,” Reid told a group of about 75 reporters. "
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/senate-dems-blame-media-for-august-health-deadline-2009-07-30.html
I don't believe I did the 1st. time.
You haven't thanked me for plugging your security oversight.
That's why I have my own bidness. No SOB for a boss.
life as it nurtures those in need.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=40073294
I'm guessing Ayn Rand didn't see it this way. Atlas Shrugged attitudes would have just let the kittens starve to death.
I saw it too!
Thanks for the post.
We just got back from a one and a half hour Yoga class for beginners. ten bucks a person is a good rent fee for the lady's home that its held in. If you think you're strong, take a Yoga class. If you're really putting in the stretch effort, you ought to be dripping inside of 45 minutes.
The people from the lab I transferred out of are starting to wait in line for the energywork. I'm getting weekly appointments for a blast of light and my other energy tools.
The new micromanager is berating everybody for not being able to do their jobs. Well, lets look at it. He wants everybody to crosstrain to a new piece of gear. He assigns people to the new piece of gear. You're not allowed the luxury of asking advice from somebody who understands the gear. Now enter the fact that sites start complaining that the equipment isn't getting fixed. Does upper management reprimand the new super? fucking hell no!
Grow a thicker skin and do your job. I told the person two managers up before I left that it looked like they wanted everybody to leave the lab so they wouldn't have to lay anybody off, because it looked like the end result was to close the lab. She actually didn't change her poker face expression. I watched carefully for any left right up down etc etc movements of eyes mouth, nothing. Her tell is a dead zone. so she was masking all of it. blank expressions can explain a lot too. Like wiping away your trail in a forest with a branch, creates a trail to right where you are. (love the Tom Brown Jr books)
Many people have noticed that NLP seems to be the new management tool. Fall into your motive of speech, mannerisms, so I learned to deadpan too. I just make believe I don't comprehend a word they're saying and my expressions don't change.
If site can't get things fixed the contracts move elsewhere.
Its like they're doing their best to throw a money maker away.
Too many assaults from too many directions.
I won't get a chance to retire before the jobs go overseas.
Everybody is replaceable by a little foreign accent.
Can I get a witness?......
US Should Declare Victory and Leave Iraq, Says Top Military Officer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/30/iraq-memo-reese-usa-withdrawal
Call me 'Sue' one more time.
Pelosi falls to the back of the pack of speakers
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
July 30, 2009
In an era of symbolic breakthroughs, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is closing in on a dubious achievement — being the least effective leader of the House in the modern era.
Since the 1920s, when Speaker Nicholas Longworth rescued the position from a brief period of irrelevancy, the office of speaker has been held by political heavyweights.
The 17 speakers since Longworth have mostly maintained or enhanced the power and prestige of the post, but with a train wreck taking shape in the House, Pelosi may be remembered for diminishing the office.
And when historians inspect the record of the lady from California, they will find that hubris and empty talk sealed her fate.
In seven months, the House has taken up the largest spending package in history, new fees on carbon emissions, and the reordering of the American health care system. Any one of those would have been considered a signal accomplishment for a single legislative year.
But Pelosi embraced all three proposals from the White House. In addition to trying to manage a legislative load that would baffle the flight boss on an aircraft carrier, Pelosi pridefully picked a politically damaging fight with the CIA. Rather than concede she knew some of the rough stuff being tried on terrorists after 9/11, the speaker opened a range war with America’s spymasters.
If Sam Rayburn — the Texan who defined the position in the 20th century — had been faced with an impractical president who wanted too much too fast, Rayburn would have backed him down.
Rayburn was tight-lipped in public and careful never to make promises he couldn’t keep. When Rayburn was finishing the work of the New Deal for Franklin Roosevelt, few beyond the Red River Valley knew his name. He was wise enough to know that worked to his advantage.
But Pelosi, who learned her craft in the minority, believes that she is some sort of super spokesperson for the Democratic Party. When she could simply disparage George W. Bush and then hold another fundraiser, talk was enough.
But now President Barack Obama is doing enough talking for everybody, and Pelosi is still confusing status with power. She is constantly in the spotlight, snarling at her foes one day and backing down the next.
On Sunday, Pelosi made a pledge to pass health care legislation before the August recess that begins this week. On Monday she changed that deadline to “whenever.”
When told by Politico that she had sunk to a 25 percent approval rating, Pelosi said, “I don’t care.” But that seems rather unlikely for a person who seeks so much attention. Plus, she knows her unpopularity in the districts of moderate Democrats reduces her power as speaker.
A Blue Dog Democrat recruited to run in a deep-red district gets points for shunning Pelosi, not being browbeaten by her. So her unpopularity has compounded the problems caused by her indecision.
Minority Leader John Boehner likens serving in the Pelosi-led House to standing in front of a machine gun: There is always something coming at you and there’s no time to think.
But the casualties will likely be Pelosi’s fellow Democrats.
Having been arm-twisted into massive fees on greenhouse gasses, centrists balked at voting for a budget-shattering health plan. They saw that the Senate had cast aside their cap-and-trade bill, leaving their “yea” votes to molder until they reappear in a 2010 campaign commercial.
Pelosi said she would make her members walk the plank again on health care, but they refused. Unless the Senate passes a bill first, don’t expect any bold strokes from the House.
Had Pelosi told Obama that he could have health care but not global warming fees, she would have faced only one contentious vote, and would have done it on an issue with broader Democratic appeal than the new religion of global warmism.
Joining Pelosi in the bottom tier of speakers are Jim Wright, the Texas Democrat whose ethical lapses helped pave the way for the Republican takeover of 1994, and the passive Bostonian John William McCormack, who couldn’t respond to the changing political composition of the Democratic Party in the 1960s.
The months to come will decide if she remains in their company or takes sole position of the title of worst speaker.
http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Pelosi+falls+to+the+back+of+the+pack+of+speakers+|+Washington+Examiner&expire=&urlID=407660012&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fpolitics%2FPelosi-falls-to-the-back-of-the-pack-of-speakers--52005447.html&partnerID=376964
The Pelosi Jobs Tax
Workers will pay for the new health-care payroll levy.
Even many Democrats are revolting against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 5.4% income surtax to finance ObamaCare, but another tax in her House bill isn’t getting enough attention. To wit, the up to 10-percentage point payroll tax increase on workers and businesses that don’t provide health insurance. This should put to rest the illusion that no one making less than $250,000 in income will pay higher taxes.
To understand why, consider how the Pelosi jobs tax works. Under the House bill, firms with employee payroll of above $250,000 without a company health plan would pay a tax starting at 2% of wages per employee. That rate would quickly rise to 8% on firms with total payroll of $400,000 or more. A tax credit would help very small businesses adjust to the new costs, but even a firm with a handful of workers is likely to be subject to this payroll levy. As we went to press, Blue Dogs were taking credit for pushing those payroll amounts up to $500,000 and $750,0000, but those are still small employers.
So who bears the burden of this tax? The economic research is close to unanimous that a payroll tax is a tax on labor and is thus shouldered mostly if not entirely by workers. Employers merely collect the tax and then pass along its costs in lower wages or benefits. This is the view of the Democratic-controlled Congressional Budget Office, which advised on July 13: “If employers who did not offer health insurance were required to pay a fee, employee’s wages and other forms of compensation would generally decline by the amount of that fee from what they otherwise would have been.”
View Full Image
Associated Press
To put this in actual dollars, a worker earning, say, $70,000 a year could lose some $5,600 in take home pay to cover the costs of ObamaCare. And, by the way, this is in addition to the 2.5% tax that the individual worker would have to pay on gross income, if he doesn’t buy the high-priced health insurance that the government will mandate. In sum, that’s a near 10-percentage point tax on wages and salaries on top of the 15% that already hits workers to finance Medicare and Social Security.
Even Democrats are aware that his tax would come out of the wallets of the very workers they pretend to be helping, so they inserted a provision on page 147 of the bill prohibiting firms from cutting salaries to pay the tax. Thus they figure they can decree that wages cannot fall even as costs rise. Of course, all this means is that businesses would lay off some workers, or hire fewer new ones, or pay lower starting salaries or other benefits to the workers they do hire.
Cornell economists Richard Burkhauser and Kosali Simon predicted in a 2007 National Bureau of Economic Research study that a payroll tax increase of about this magnitude plus the recent minimum wage increase will translate into hundreds of thousands of lost jobs for those with low wages. Pay or play schemes, says Mr. Burkauser, “wind up hurting the very low-wage workers they are supposed to help.” The CBO agrees, arguing that play or pay policies “could reduce the hiring of low-wage workers, whose wages could not fall by the full cost of health insurance or a substantial play-or-pay fee if they were close to the minimum wage.”
To make matters worse, many workers and firms would have to pay the Pelosi tax even if the employer already provides health insurance. That’s because the House bill requires firms to pay at least 72.5% of health-insurance premiums for individual workers and 65% for families in order to avoid the tax. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in 2008 found that about three in five small businesses fail to meet the Pelosi test and will have to pay the tax. In these instances, the businesses will have every incentive simply to drop their coverage.
A new study by Sageworks, Inc., a financial consulting firm, runs the numbers on the income statements of actual companies. It looks at three types of firms with at least $5 million in sales: a retailer, a construction company and a small manufacturer. The companies each have total payroll of between $750,000 and $1 million a year. Assuming the firms absorb the cost of the payroll tax, their net profits fall by one-third on average. That is on top of the 45% income tax and surtax that many small business owners would pay as part of the House tax scheme, so the total reduction in some small business profits would climb to nearly 80%. These lower after-tax profits would mean fewer jobs.
To put it another way, the workers who will gain health insurance from ObamaCare will pay the steepest price for it in either a shrinking pay check, or no job at all.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574316183688201934.html#printMode
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
America Needs a Take-Home Pay Raise
by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)
Posted 07/29/2009 ET
It’s a frustration I hear all the time.
With the mainstream media, Washington insiders and the so-called “experts” in elite universities all singing off the same leftwing song sheet, there is a desperate need for the facts and the arguments that support time honored American values and principles that lead to safety, prosperity and freedom.
The Left can rely on the mainstream media to put out the spin it needs.
Meanwhile, Americans are exposed to far fewer voices that explain why America has been an exceptional nation, and how to keep it that way.
For the Left, “Stimulus” Means Bailing Out Politicians and Paying Off Big Business Through Big Bureaucracy
Take just one example: the economic stimulus bill. President Obama and his allies in Washington and the elite media rammed through a $787 billion bill, asserting that the best way to get our economy moving again is through economic “stimulus,” which means giving politicians more money to pay off big businesses through big bureaucracy.
But what the economy really needs is a plan that gives small businesses more resources and more incentives to create good, permanent, well-paying jobs.
The Left argues that “stimulus” is how you grow the economy, but most Americans know that you grow the economy by creating the conditions for better job creation.
So how do Americans, in the Margaret Thatcher tradition of “first you win the argument, then you win the vote,” make the case for growing jobs when Washington and the elite media are busy making the case for growing government through “stimulus”?
I think we’ve found a way.
President Obama Doesn’t Get It – Energy and Health Care Taxes Kill Jobs
I spent most of last weekend talking with local groups of small businessmen and women in New Jersey and Ohio about the need for jobs. The concern among the people I met with was clear and undeniable.
Everyone I spoke to was outraged that Washington is considering job killing health care policies -- just after passing a job killing energy bill -- when federal officials are forecasting 9 and 10 percent unemployment for the next five years.
President Obama and his team don’t seem to grasp what every American I met with implicitly understands: New energy taxes will kill jobs. Health care taxes will kill jobs. Meekly accepting automatic tax increases will kill jobs and put off economic recovery.
Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First
At American Solutions, we believe it’s time for a fundamentally different approach -- a plan for creating jobs that you can apply to your own family or business budget and decide if it works for you.
We’ve boiled it down to a simple phrase: Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First.
It is a step-by-step program that you can share with your friends and the small business owners you know.
Read it here and use it to tell Washington politicians that their number one priority ought to be job creation.
Use it to convince small business owners that we need a jobs creation program that is real, that works in the world market, and that creates permanent, long-term economic growth.
Use it to tell your friends and neighbors that a pay raise may not be possible in this economy, but a take-home pay raise is within our reach.
Four Very Bold “Reagan-Style” Tax Changes
Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First consists of four very bold tax changes.
1. A 50 Percent Cut in Payroll Taxes for Two Years
For workers, this means cutting Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes in half for two years –a substantial take-home pay raise for every person who has a job.
For employers, a 50 percent cut in the Social Security and Medicare tax match means more money to hire new workers and invest in new technology.
For the economy as a whole, it would bolster small businesses and lead to an explosion of jobs.
2. Abolish the Capital Gains Tax
To compete with China for news jobs and investment we need to match their capital gains tax: It’s zero.
If we want our children and grandchildren to live in the most productive country in the world, we need more than short-term, government make-work jobs. We need the investment required for new factories, new companies and new technologies to create long lasting jobs.
Abolishing the capital gains tax would produce such investment.
3. Reduce the Corporate Tax Rate
The Left loves to demonize corporations, but when you add together state and federal taxes, American corporations pay the highest taxes in the world.
We believe that by matching the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent, America would become the most desirable economy in the world to open a factory, create a new job or develop a new production.
And that means more jobs for American workers.
4. Eliminate the Death Tax Permanently
By taxing Americans a second time after they die, government does a fundamentally immoral thing: It tells us that it wants us to work all our lives, save all our lives, and provide for our families. And then it takes the fruit of that hard work when we die.
If we want to be a pro-work, pro-savings and pro-family nation, it’s past time we stop punishing Americans who work, save and provide for their families.
Workers Understand What a 50% Cut in Payroll Taxes Means for Their Families
When I explained the Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First plan to people in Ohio and New Jersey this weekend, they instantly understood that this plan would be good for them personally, but also for the economic competitiveness of the country as a whole.
Employers in manufacturing, services, large and small businesses understood that this would allow them to invest more and create new jobs.
And workers understood in very real terms the difference a 50 percent reduction in payroll taxes would make for themselves and their families.
If you’re interested in learning more about Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First, just go to www.americansolutions.com. Tell your friends to do the same. Sign our petition and help send Washington the message that America doesn’t work if Americans aren’t working.
Let the other side make the case for job-killing higher taxes and “stimulus” that has big politicians paying off big business through big bureaucracy. We’ll make the case for jobs.
This is one debate we should be eager to begin.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=32901
Large difference between the term b.s. and what you are spewing...
Enjoy your taxes
maybe I should just abbreviate it and make believe it isn't profanity eh?
"What B.S."
G.F.Y.
Mr. President, what's the rush?
Obama could learn a thing or two about health care reform from Massachusetts. One, time is not the enemy. Two, neither are the Republicans.
By Mitt Romney
Because of President Obama's frantic approach, health care has run off the rails. For the sake of 47 million uninsured Americans, we need to get it back on track.
Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.
No other state has made as much progress in covering their uninsured as Massachusetts. The bill that made it happen wasn't a rush job. Shortly after becoming governor, I worked in a bipartisan fashion with Democrats to insure all our citizens. It took almost two years to find a solution. When we did, it passed the 200-member legislature with only two dissenting votes. It had the support of the business community, the hospital sector and insurers. For health care reform to succeed in Washington, the president must finally do what he promised during the campaign: Work with Republicans as well as Democrats.
Massachusetts also proved that you don't need government insurance. Our citizens purchase private, free-market medical insurance. There is no "public option." With more than 1,300 health insurance companies, a federal government insurance company isn't necessary. It would inevitably lead to massive taxpayer subsidies, to lobbyist-inspired coverage mandates and to the liberals' dream: a European-style single-payer system. To find common ground with skeptical Republicans and conservative Democrats, the president will have to jettison left-wing ideology for practicality and dump the public option.
The cost issue
Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.
When our bill passed three years ago, the legislature projected that our program would cost $725 million in 2009. At $723 million, next year's forecast is pretty much on target. When you calculate all the savings, including that from the free hospital care we eliminated, the net cost to the state is approximately $350 million. The watchdog Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation concluded that our program's cost is "relatively modest" and "well within initial projections."
And if subsidies and coverages are reined in, as I've suggested, the Massachusetts program could actually break even. One thing is certain: The president must insist on a program that doesn't add to our spending burden. We simply cannot afford another trillion-dollar mistake.
The Massachusetts reform aimed at getting virtually all our citizens insured. In that, it worked: 98% of our citizens are insured, 440,000 previously uninsured are covered and almost half of those purchased insurance on their own, with no subsidy. But overall, health care inflation has continued its relentless rise. Here is where the federal government can do something we could not: Take steps to stop or slow medical inflation.
At the core of our health cost problem is an incentive problem. Patients don't care what treatments cost once they pass the deductible. And providers are paid more when they do more; they are paid for quantity, not quality. We will tame runaway costs only when we change incentives. We might do what some countries have done: Require patients to pay a portion of their bill, except for certain conditions. And providers could be paid an annual fixed fee for the primary care of an individual and a separate fixed fee for the treatment of a specific condition. These approaches have far more promise than the usual bromides of electronic medical records, transparency and pay-for-performance, helpful though they will be.
Try a business-like analysis
I spent most of my career in the private sector. When well-managed businesses considered a major change of some kind, they engaged in extensive analysis, brought in outside experts, exhaustively evaluated every alternative, built consensus among those who would be affected and then moved ahead. Health care is many times bigger than all the companies in the Dow Jones combined. And the president is rushing changes that dwarf what any business I know has faced.
Republicans are not the party of "no" when it comes to health care reform. This Republican is proud to be the first governor to insure all his state's citizens. Other Republicans such as Rep. Paul Ryan and Sens. Bob Bennett and John McCain, among others, have proposed their own plans. Republicans will join with the Democrats if the president abandons his government insurance plan, if he endeavors to craft a plan that does not burden the nation with greater debt, if he broadens his scope to reduce health costs for all Americans, and if he is willing to devote the rigorous effort, requisite time and bipartisan process that health care reform deserves.
Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007.
The Massachusetts plan
• Everyone must buy health insurance or face tax penalties.
• Hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on free hospital care were converted into subsidies to help the needy buy insurance.
• A health insurance "exchange" was established to help connect the uninsured with private health plans at more affordable rates.
• Health plans can offer consumers higher deductibles and more restrictive physician and hospital networks in order to lower costs.
• Businesses with 11 or more workers that do not offer insurance must pay a $295 per employee fee.
Source: Massachusetts Health Connector Authority
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/07/mr-president-whats-the-rush.html
Facing budget gaps, U.S. states shuffle tax codes: group
Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:35pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Caught with near-chronic budget shortfalls, U.S. states are scrambling to change their tax codes and bring in more revenues, the Tax Foundation said on Wednesday.
The foundation has compiled an annual index on 37 categories of states' taxing and spending since 1937. This is the first time that it has had to update the report in the middle of the year.
"Many states have started the new fiscal year with tax codes that are vastly different compared to just a few months ago," Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge said in a statement.
Hawaii, for example, has recently increased its top marginal tax rate to 11 percent, making it tied for first in the country with Oregon. New Jersey, New York, Wisconsin and Delaware also increased individual income taxes for high earners in recent months.
"It's a bit of a troubling trend to see," Mark Robyn, the foundation's staff economist, said on a conference call with reporters. "One of the problems we see with taxing high income individuals is that high-income individuals tend to have volatile incomes."
Their business and capital gains income fluctuate with the economy "even more than the average person's income," he said, adding they shy away from starting businesses in states with higher income tax rates.
On the other hand, Maine, North Dakota and Vermont have cut income taxes since January, the foundation found.
Ten states have pumped up their taxes on cigarettes, while four have increased sales taxes.
California raised its sales tax to 8.25 percent this year, the foundation said. The state, which finalized its budget this week after a drawn-out battle in Sacramento, also allows local governments to add to the sales tax.
In the Los Angeles area, five communities have sales taxes of 10 percent, according to the group.
California has also moved up one spot to No. 2 in the rankings of states with the highest gasoline taxes, as it has raised its levy to 39.9 cents per gallon from 35.3 cents. New York remains the state with the highest gas tax, with an increase to 42.5 cents per gallon from 41.3 cents in January.
According to the National Governors Association, U.S. states will likely face deficits totaling at least $200 billion over the next three years, and most are required to eliminate any gaps at the end of their fiscal years.
http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USTRE56S6O520090729
Gotta love civil servants and elected officials, the problem is Always more money and or more people.
HOW ABOUT A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ON RACE HOAXES?
by Ann Coulter
July 29, 2009
You could not ask for a more perfect illustration of the thesis of my latest book, "Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America," than the black president of the United States attacking a powerless white cop for arresting a black Harvard professor -- in a city with a black mayor and a state with a black governor -- as the professor vacations in Martha's Vineyard.
In modern America, the alleged "victim" is always really the aggressor, and the alleged "aggressor" is always the true victim.
President Barack Obama planted the question during a health care press conference, hoping he could satisfy the Chicago Sun-Times, which has been accusing him of not being black enough. He somehow imagined that the rest of the country might not notice the president of the United States gratuitously attacking a cop in a case of alleged "racial profiling."
Oops.
Suddenly, with the glare of the national spotlight being turned on a small local story, it became clear that there was no "racial profiling" involved -- other than by the black Harvard professor, who lorded his credentials and connections over a white working-class cop.
We wouldn't have known about this case at all if the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., hadn't blast e-mailed the universe that he was harassed by racist cops. Gates thought it would be a feather in his cap, not realizing there are huge areas of the country where people don't think it's heroic to browbeat cops checking on you after you break into your own house, such as 99 percent of the country outside of Cambridge.
Contrary to liberals' ardent desire, Sgt. James Crowley was not on tape saying, "I know it's his house, but let's stick it to this uppity negro." (Curiously, the tape of Gates' call demanding to talk to the chief of police to "report" Crowley has been withheld. Some watchdog group has got to demand that tape.)
But what if Crowley hadn't been a model policeman who taught diversity classes and once famously gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a black athlete?
What if the 911 caller had identified the suspected burglars as black, which it turns out she did not?
What if Crowley hadn't been fully supported by other cops at the scene, one Hispanic and one black? (Liberals will say cops stick together, but I say liberals stick together.)
What if, at some point in his life, Crowley had been accused -- falsely or not -- of racism?
His life would be ruined.
Desperate to blame the cop, despite the facts, some liberals have begun making up their own facts. Radio talker Opio Sokoni claimed Crowley told Gates to "shut up" and "I'm going to win, you're going to jail." Even Gates doesn't claim the cop said that.
On MSNBC's "Hardball," Chris Matthews said that Gates did not say, "I'll speak with your mama outside," as stated in the police report.
"He didn't say this," Matthews asserted as fact. This invented fact allowed Matthews to accuse the cop of engaging in "projection" and to conjure Crowley's psychological state, saying, this is "what a white guy thought a black guy would say."
Eugene Robinson endorsed Matthews' invented fact, saying: "I cannot imagine in this universe Skip Gates saying, 'I'll speak with your mama outside.'" As proof, Robinson explained that Gates "rolls with kings and queens and Nobel Prize winners." (I'm not "projecting" what I think a black man would say; he really said that.)
And then they both had a laugh about the cop applying racist stereotypes to such an esteemed figure as Professor Gates, who apparently would NEVER use the phrase "your mama."
First, unlike these aesthetes, I don't consider "your mama" such an implausible expression for someone to use.
Second, Sgt. Crowley wrote his police report, including the "your mama" line, long before he, or anyone else, could have imagined the arrest was going to become nationwide, front-page news.
Third, there's a video of Gates using the N-word all over the Internet, and in that short, three-minute video, Gates uses the phrase "your mama."
The only contrary evidence is that Gates recently denied that he told the cop he'd "speak with your mama outside." He also desperately wants to drop the subject.
The left's last-ditch attempt to defend a powerful black man's attack on a powerless white man is to say the arrest was improper. In Time magazine, Lawrence O'Donnell factually announced, "Yelling does not meet the definition of disorderly conduct in Massachusetts."
You can argue the facts in court, but there's no question that the police report described the misdemeanor offense of "disorderly conduct" under Massachusetts law, which includes engaging in "tumultuous behavior" in "any neighborhood," thereby causing public "inconvenience, annoyance or alarm."
As everyone who's read the police report knows, Gates is described as going on an extended tirade against the officer, calling him a racist, saying the officer didn't know who he was messing with, acting irrationally, following the officer outside to continue haranguing him, and engaging in "tumultuous behavior" in and outside his house, drawing a small crowd of alarmed onlookers and police.
Suppose a cop didn't arrest a guy who was ranting and raving -- in his own home -- and, an hour later, the hothead assaults someone. Policeman: I was as surprised as anyone that he shot his girlfriend! Every liberal in the country would demand the cop's head.
And by the way, try screaming at a judge that he's a racist and see what happens. Why should police officers deserve less protection than judges? They're in more danger.
The disorderly conduct charge was not dropped because it wasn't a good arrest. It was dropped, according to Gates' own lawyer, because of Gates' connections.
Before liberals declare that this a case of racial profiling and move on, how about liberals produce one provable example of racial profiling that isn't a hoax?
http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=323
"It was OK for Bush to rape the country blind. you fucks just laughed and went along"
What B.S.
"for the record, your ilk means all the wealthy folks who don't want the Bush tax breaks on the wealthy to go away."
I keep telling you people you are wrong...
You're no better of a guesser than Sue.
You really should lose the vulgarity, it doesn't help anything.
The folks that vote want health care. In congress its translated as the folks want health insurance. Now they want to pass mandatory health insurance policies. What a great idea! The insurance companies can gouge everybody as well as car insurance companies have out here because of 'mandatory car insurance', and they can decide at the flip of a coin 'that kind of thing isn't covered as of yesterday', when you file a claim.
There ought to be a bounty on lobbyists, and the ones who take the bribes. Its just 'legalized' bribery.
Yeah yeah, everybody does it.
They're proving it every day.
Believe me, I'm not yelling at you.
I just resent that its said to be all at Obama's feet because he's the new fall guy. It was OK for Bush to rape the country blind. you fucks just laughed and went along, and now make believe you're whining because Obama can't fix what all of your ilk resists fixing every time the pukes in congress meet.
for the record, your ilk means all the wealthy folks who don't want the Bush tax breaks on the wealthy to go away. Doesn't have anything to do with anything but the color green.
I'm guessing you made your nugget in the telecom industry and now you're out there laughing at everybody who has to worry about a future.
Just like the frauds who have been voted into office.
Yeah I'm pissed.
that enough foreplay for ya?
A look at the deal worked out on health care
By ERICA WERNER (AP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — The White House, Democratic leaders and four fiscally conservative House lawmakers worked out a deal Wednesday to move ahead on sweeping health care legislation.
The agreement would allow a committee vote, preserving momentum on President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.
The deal calls for exempting more small businesses from a requirement to offer coverage, trimming subsidies to help people buy health insurance, and making any government-sponsored insurance plan negotiate payment rates with medical providers — instead of dictating them.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee planned to begin work on the bill Thursday. Amendments to the legislation would include provisions of the deal. The committee is the last of three in the House to act on the legislation, and Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., hoped to finish by Friday when lawmakers leave for their monthlong August recess.
The House has put off a vote on the overall legislation until September.
The deal gave momentum to the push for health care heading into the August recess, while saving face for all sides in the intraparty Democratic dispute over the legislation's size and scope.
The White House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Waxman praised the progress. The conservative to moderate Blue Dogs head home without being blamed by liberals for derailing the effort. However, there was immediate backlash from House liberals to some provisions of the deal — particularly the reduction in subsidies and the change to the government-sponsored insurance plan.
"The question is have we given up too much," said Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Presuming Waxman gets the bill through his committee, all sides will have the summer to rethink their positions and plan for September. New cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, lobbying by all sides on the issue and public opinion could change minds by the time lawmakers return.
The Blue Dogs did not commit themselves to doing anything when the full House votes in several weeks. They could support the bill or, once again, oppose it en masse and hold it hostage to new demands.
Pelosi will face one of the summer's bigger challenges. She will have to figure out how to find enough votes from liberal and moderate Democrats while weaving a single bill out of the three measures approved by the Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Labor committees.
The leader of the Blue Dogs, Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., said the deal included:
_Exempting businesses with payrolls of up to $500,000 from a requirement to provide insurance to employees or pay a penalty. The existing bill had set the level at $250,000.
The penalty would hit businesses with payrolls between $500,000 and $750,000 on a sliding scale before kicking in fully at 8 percent of payroll.
_Poor people would get subsidies to help them buy care after spending 12 percent of their income on premiums, instead of 11 percent in the existing bill.
_Payment rates to doctors and other medical providers in a new public insurance plan would be negotiated with the secretary of Health and Human Services, instead of tied to Medicare rates as the bill now says. The Blue Dogs contend that change will lead to fairer payment rates.
_In addition to the public plan, states will have the option of setting up health care co-ops. Details on that were still being worked out.
_Instead of the federal government picking up the full cost of an expansion of Medicaid, states would pick up part of the costs.
Ross said that together the changes would cut costs in the $1.5 trillion bill by about $100 billion, though the new break for small businesses and the decision to allow negotiated rates in the public plan would also add significant costs, so it wasn't clear that there was any net cost savings from the deal.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMRM8IFKa3ZmMaa-N_nRCuf9U9oAD99OFARO0
Will Steven Weber Put His Health Where His Ideology Is?
by John Nolte
It only makes sense that if ObamaCare’s passed employers will opt out of providing private insurance and millions upon millions, 85 million by some estimates, will end up herded into the President’s public plan. But that’s okay with millionaire actor Steven Weber because he know what’s best for us he and his loved ones will never ever have to worry about being the victims of the government run health-care system he’s so eager to see the rest of us shoved into against our will. Weber’s motives don’t come off as entirely pure, either. This is an angry guy eager to stick it to the rich (who don’t work in the entertainment industry).
In fact, the greatest threat to the health of individuals in the US is the lack of a nationalized, affordable health care program. Why the spin to cast it as socialist or downright deadly? Because to some, it ain’t medicine which makes you live a better life.
It’s money.
And that’s the only reason everyone from the Blue Dog to the fair and balanced Fox (craven animals which have a tendency to lick their own testicles and consume feces — just saying) hates the idea of people paying less and ultimately becoming healthier and detached from Big Pharma’s slow drip.
Three points:
1. There’s nothing quite like someone labelling someone else as “craven” just before they launch into descriptions of testicle licking and feces consumption — just saying.
2. Do you think Canada’s awesome health-care system might benefit from the billions upon billions America’s “Big Pharma” companies invest into research and development? Leftists demonizing drug companies who have done more to improve quality of life than even 172 episodes of “Wings” is the worst kind of demagoguery. Why not just demonize the American military while you at– oh wait.
3. Anyone pushing ObamaCare but unwilling to subject themselves and their loved ones to it has zero credibility. In order to punish the wealthy (who don’t work in the entertainment industry) and enjoy a nice little ordered Utopian world, Weber and his ilk are willing to risk the health of you and yours with the DMV of Health Care Plans while they float above it all on their platinum plans. Hell, even the President won’t go on his own plan. What more do you need to know?
And who is Weber speaking for anyway? He cites a poll showing 92% of Canadians are happy with their “doctor” but doesn’t seem at all interested in a recent CNN poll showing 80% of American are happy with their health care.
I don’t believe in socialized medicine but if the poll Weber cites is accurate and Canadians are happy with what they got, I’m not going to demand they conform to my beliefs.
That would be elitist.
So, come on Weber, man up. Lobby the Screen Actors Guild to shuffle all you government lovers into ObamaCare and not only is all forgiven but I’ll save you a place in line.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/07/25/obamacare-will-steven-weber-put-his-family-where-his-ideology-is/
"it is wrong to for a modern, wealthy country to not provide all its citizens with health care."
Couldn't agree more...
Hopefully there is no vote before recess and this a(o)bomination
of a Health Care bill is discussed instead of trying to be rammed through.
First Lady requires more than twenty attendants
Author Dr. Paul L. Williams
By the staff of thelastcrusade.org
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”
--Albert Einstein
“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much,” she said. “See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service, “ Michelle Obama
No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession. Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.
How things have changed! If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the benefit package for these servants of Miz Michele are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public:
1. $172,2000 - Sher, Susan (CHIEF OF STAFF)
2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND WHITE HOUSE SOCIAL SECRETARY)
4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
5. Winter, Melissa E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
6. $90,000 - Medina, David S. (DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (DIRECTOR AND PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)
8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND ADVANCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)
9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)
11. Reinstein, Joseph B. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)
12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND EVENTS COORDINATOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)
13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ADVANCE AND TRIP DIRECTOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)
14. Lewis, Dana M. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT AND PERSONAL AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)
15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)
16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR SCHEDULING AND TRAVELING AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)
17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)
18. Tubman, Samantha (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,SOCIAL OFFICE)
19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (STAFF ASSISTANT TO THE SOCIAL SECRETARY)
21. Bookey, Natalie (STAFF ASSISTANT)
22. Jackson, Deilia A. (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)
Paul L. Williams, Ph.D., is the author of such best-selling books as The Day of Islam, The Al Qaeda Connection, Osama’s Revenge: The Next 9/11, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Crusades and The Vatican Exposed. An award-winning journalist, he is a frequent guest on such national news networks as ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, MSNBC, and NPR. Williams operates from his blog thelastcrusade.org
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12652
Civil Warp
Steven Weber
When the history of the last 10 years of this country is writ (if anyone will give a good goddamn or be able to read anything that's not in twit-speak) it will reflect the final moments before the two disparate, warring sides of the American psyche separated.
The last, moist threads linking those two factions are at their breaking points, with each side the embodiment of an ideology whose ultimate fear is the opposition's complete dominion over the other, thus signaling the end of America as a country and arguably the greatest and most successful experiment in democracy the world has seen.
On the current flashpoint of health care, the shrill voices of opposition, having hoarded their profits, are inundating the masses with primal fears of death and evoking iconic evil. And like good, sensitive, easily manipulated children, they believe Mommy and Daddy could never be wrong, could never be cruel.
In the instance of health care for all Americans, they have declared a war on reason. The instigators of this assault, one must assume, had to have been emotionally broken as children. They cling to myths and have developed a mortal hatred of the truth. They seethe and simplistically demonize their opponents in order to understand the purpose of their own existence in this short life; if they didn't they might realize that perhaps they had no purpose, no practical reason for being here at all. And when their arteries eventually burst, they will need the very health care they assail as wicked.
And the poor folks who are stirred to hurling mindless vitriol at the idea of health care for all Americans are, of course, the victims of a massive scam: drench the herds in low-brow entertainment, decry long-held fact based beliefs, isolate people's genuine feelings of pride and hope, add a dash of primal fear and stand back.
They are the Gullible Americans (to go alongside their Ugly cousins) and their fear based psychology cannot conceive of traitors in their midst -- unless the traitor is of a darker color or has a foreign sounding name. From swift boats to birthers, the sales pitches have reached a level of fervor seen only in tent meetings, full of hyperkinetic gobbledygook and political glossolalia.
The division is clear. It is, finally, right versus wrong. And on this side of the division we declare:
it is wrong to for a modern, wealthy country to not provide all its citizens with health care.
It is wrong to not provide better education.
It is wrong to go to war unilaterally.
It is wrong to cater to corporate interests when ordinary people are disadvantaged and struggling.
It is wrong to cater to radical, ignorant, religious zealotry and to give it a place at the table when it should be banned to the fringes.
It is wrong to foster a distrust of progress.
It is wrong to have a fear of "otherness."
It is wrong to perpetuate institutionalized racism.
It is wrong to deny science and to avoid culpability in the polluting of our planet.
These are the things a thinking, modern, progressive nation stands for. Those on the other side of the divide -- well, we've seen what they believe in. And, sadly, we've lived it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-weber/civil-warp_b_247502.html
2004: Obama condemns Bush for legislation rush
http://www.youtube.com/v/eOnYnIDX0Eg&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1
Of course, the Patriot Act was rushed to protect us from future terrorist activity.
And talk about intimidation! The Obama Machine has gone to unprecedented lengths to intimidate opposition - firing the Inspector General who exposed corruption in Americorps and now trying to intimidate Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Chief Elmendorf for doing his job by presenting Congress with an objective and realistic picture of the financial repercussions of the Obama Health Plan.
And of course, the reference to hitting the public with numerous pressing issues in order to win by sheer force of confusion - well, that's exactly what we've been seeing for the last six months. Exhausting, isn't it?
http://mommylife.net/archives/2009/07/2004_obama_cond.html
Pelosi ready to call off House vote on ObamaCare before recess?
posted at 9:25 pm on July 28, 2009 by Allahpundit
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Rahm’s trying to change her mind, if only to save face after last week’s prediction, but what incentive do House Democrats have to pass a bill now when Reid’s already said the Senate won’t vote before the break? Whatever gets through will be torn to pieces by Republican ads next month. Better to wait for now, keep things in flux, and mouth some talking points about how “all options are on the table” so that the GOP has no concrete target with which to galvanize opposition.
“It doesn’t look like it to me,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said in an interview. “I really hoped that we could have gotten a bill out of here by now,” he said, adding that he has a “heavy political heart.”…
With the Senate already planning to leave for its recess without voting, Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, went to Capitol Hill to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and members of the so-called Blue Dog coalition of Democrats, who object to the cost and structure of the legislation.
The House would only stay in session a few days after the start of the August break if an agreement can be reached to allow the bill to clear the Energy and Commerce Committee, where the Blue Dogs are holding up the legislation, Hoyer said earlier…
The Blue Dogs say they want to wring out hundreds of billions of dollars in additional cost savings from the medical system before agreeing to legislation that would extend coverage to uninsured Americans. They also insist that Congress find a way to pay for the plan without increasing the deficit.
Democratic leaders told Politico earlier today that there would indeed be no floor vote before the recess but now Pelosi’s saying nothing’s been decided yet. What possible benefit would there be to voting now? Is the idea to create some momentum heading into the break, i.e. “we’re halfway there!” That’ll arguably work even better in reverse for the GOP, driving home the urgency of stopping the Senate bill. Maybe it’s all just an ego stroke for The One: “Let me be clear: I said we’d pass something before the break and we did.” I don’t get it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/28/pelosi-ready-to-give-up-on-house-vote-on-obamacare-before-recess/
Trial starts for contractor with ties to Murtha
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Directors of a Panhandle Air Force research lab and special operations command center got around rules prohibiting the military from lobbying Congress by encouraging defense contractors to seek the money from political leaders for their pet projects, an attorney for a contractor said Monday at the start of a criminal trial.
Contractor Richard Schaller is accused of destroying records and lying to a grand jury. Schaller is also accused of aiding and abetting a research lab employee in a scheme to hide the worker's connection to Schaller's company. The lab worker would then steer contracts to Schaller's company.
Schaller is among those accused by federal prosecutors who are looking into alleged wrongdoing by defense contractors with ties to Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Murtha has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing.
Schaller and other contractors were doing what Air Force leaders wanted in the aftermath of 9/11 - ensuring funding for special research projects that would save lives on the battlefield, Schaller's attorney Albert Oram said.
"The vice commander of the Air Force Special Operations Command signed a directorate that they try to leverage Congressional funding," Oram said. "It violated Air Force policy, there is a chain of command and they are not supposed to lobby Congress."
Air Force leaders ignored the lobbying by defense contractors before widespread publicity surrounding Murtha and defense earmarks, he said.
"Then they got cold feet and decided that they really had a problem because the earmarks have become a political hot potato, but the lab wanted this done and the special operations command wanted this done," he said.
Among those expected to testify is Richard Ianieri, the former chief executive of a defense contractor with ties to Murtha. Ianieri pleaded guilty in federal court July 20 to a kickback scheme and defrauding the Air Force.
Federal prosecutors said Ianieri solicited kickbacks from a subcontractor while he headed Coherent Systems International Corp.
Prosecutors said Monday that Schaller had ties with Coherent and with Kuchera Defense Systems.
Murtha has directed hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts over the years to Coherent and other defense contractors through a process called earmarking.
Executives at Coherent and two other companies named in court papers in Ianieri's Florida case have donated over $95,000 to Murtha's re-election campaigns and his political action committee since 2002, according to Federal Election Commission records.
One of the companies is Kuchera of Windber, Pa., about 10 miles from Murtha's political home base of Johnstown.
In 2006, Murtha said Coherent and Kuchera Defense Systems were working "virtually as one company" on 14 contracts worth $30 million to develop high-tech military gear. Kuchera built high-tech components that Coherent designed.
The Florida charges against Ianieri concerned a Coherent contract given through the Air Force Research Laboratory to deliver four Ground Mobile Gateway Systems, which are designed to help soldiers and pilots trace U.S. units and cut down on friendly fire.
The United States paid Coherent $5.9 million to build the systems. According to court documents, Coherent subsequently paid about $1.8 million to subcontractors for the delivery of software and materials that were not part of the contract.
Prosecutor Stephen Preisser said Schaller was among those paid for work he did not do.
"Coherent lobbied Congress for $8.2 million for the Ground Mobile Gateway System," he told jurors. He said Schaller received payments from this money, at least $60,000 for work he did not perform.
The Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1160041.html
The Gates of Political Distraction
Obama’s mistake was falling for a culture war diversion.
The essential point about Gates-gate, or the tempest over last week’s arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is this: Most liberal commentary on the subject has taken race as its theme. Conservative commentators, by contrast, have furiously hit the class button.
Liberals, by and large, immediately plugged the event into their unfair-racial-profiling template, and proceeded to call for blacks and whites to “listen to each other’s narratives” and other such anodyne niceties even after it started to seem that police racism was probably not what caused the incident.
Conservatives, meanwhile, were following their own “narrative,” the one in which racism is often exaggerated and the real victim is the unassuming common man scorned by the deference-demanding “liberal elite.” Commentators on the right zeroed in on the fact that Mr. Gates is an “Ivy League big shot,” a “limousine liberal,” and a star professor at Harvard, an institution they regard with special loathing. They pointed out that Mr. Gates allegedly addressed the cop with that deathless snob phrase, “you don’t know who you’re messing with”; they reminded us that Cambridge, Mass., is home to a particularly obnoxious combination of left-wing orthodoxy and upper-class entitlement; and they boiled over Mr. Gates’s demand that the officer “beg my forgiveness.”
“Don’t you just love a rich guy who summers on the Vineyard asking a working-class cop to ‘beg’? How perfectly Cambridge,” wrote the right-wing radio talker Michael Graham in the Boston Herald.
Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.
The “elitism” narrative routinely blind-sides them, takes them by surprise again and again. There they are, feeling good about their solidarity with the coffee-growers of Guatemala, and then they find themselves on the receiving end of criticism from, say, the plumbers of Ohio.
The Gates incident was a trap that could not have been better crafted to ensnare President Barack Obama, who is himself a loyal son of academia’s most prestigious reaches, and to whom it was immediately obvious, even without benefit of the facts, that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in the situation.
Mr. Obama’s way of backing out of his gaffe was just as telling: He invited Mr. Gates and the policeman who arrested him to the White House for a beer, the beverage so often a gauge of a politician’s blue-collar bona fides. One symbolic gesture, hopefully, can exorcise another.
Class is always an ironic issue in American politics, and the irony this time is particularly poignant. We are in the midst of a great national debate about how to make health care affordable; almost nothing is more important to working-class Americans. “For the health of the nation, both physically and economically, we need a system with a public option,” Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, wrote recently in the Huffington Post. “And we need it now.”
But whether working families get it now depends to a large degree on Mr. Obama’s personal popularity. And now comes Gates-gate, this latest burst of fake populism from the right. Waving the banner of the long-suffering working class, the tax-cutting friends of the top 2% have managed to dent the president’s credibility, to momentarily halt his forward movement on the health-care issue.
Umbrage at a Harvard professor’s class snobbery, in other words, might derail this generation’s greatest hope for actually mitigating the class divide.
Another irony: Long before he became a hostage to the culture wars, Henry Louis Gates had another career as a pithy commentator on the culture wars. The false appeal of victimization was something he understood well. In “Loose Canons,” his 1992 book on the subject, he joked that his colleagues should “award a prize at the end [of a conference] for the panelist, respondent, or contestant most oppressed.”
But when he sits down for that can of beer in the White House, it is another passage from his book that I hope Mr. Gates remembers. Speaking for liberal academics, he wrote in 1992 that “success has spoiled us; the right has robbed us of our dyspepsia; and the routinized production of righteous indignation is allowed to substitute for critical rigor.”
Today the cranking out of righteous indignation is a robust growth industry, and it threatens to do far worse than cloud our critical faculties. Help us to put the culture wars aside, Professor Gates. Too much is on the line these days.
http://sbk.online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574316441057304748.html#printMode
Political consultant Jack Shaw found dead in Jersey City
by The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk
Tuesday July 28, 2009, 8:03 PM
JERSEY CITY -- Jack Shaw, a Jersey City political consultant who was among 44 people charged in a federal corruption probe, has died.
Two officials with knowledge of the investigation said Shaw was found at home with several bottles of pills nearby. One of the officials said Shaw, 61, had an unspecified medical condition, and authorities are not jumping to conclusions about the cause of his death. Shaw was charged with taking $10,000 from Solomon Dwek, an FBI informant posing as a real estate developer, and proposing Dwek make another $10,000 payment to a Jersey City official.
Shaw was a longtime political lieutenant for former Governor Jim Florio, joining his camp while Florio was still in Congress, before becoming an operative for the Hudson County Democrats around 1991.
"Jack Shaw was a very intelligent political operative," said state Sen. Ray Lesniak, who said he first got to know Shaw during his years in Trenton. "Very blunt, straight forward, and intellectual....not a tough guy, a Hudson county politician type. He was more of a thoughtful analyzer of the issues and what the public wants from government."
Around 7:30 p.m. tonight the regional medical examiner arrived at Shaw's waterfront apartment building, located in the Paulus Hook neighborhood of Jersey City.
Jersey City Councilwoman-at-Large Willie Flood said Shaw was very well known in the area's political scene.
"He was a staple in Jersey City," Flood said. "Everybody knew Jack."
She was shocked at the news of his death.
"This is such a horrible thing," Flood said. "Jack Shaw? He knew everybody."
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/jack_shaw_jersey_city_politica.html
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
Mark Twain
Visualizing The Health Care Lobbyist Complex
As Featured on NPR's All Things Considered
http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/projects/2009/healthcare_lobbyist_complex/
Take a look...
That's fairly humerous since it is the Lib. Dems. pulling all the strings and trying to ram legislation through one would think.
Fat Cat whoredogs eat large for our Health Care destruction....
Key GOP Senators Soak Up Thousands At Health-Specific Fundraiser
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/key-gop-senators-soak-up_n_246151.html
In the Name of Global Warming
By Don Blankenship
In the name of global warming, politicians in Washington, DC are threatening to pass so called Cap and Trade legislation that will handicap our economy and force more American jobs offshore.
Many business groups and leaders are convinced that the best way to advocate against Cap and Trade legislation is not to challenge the science of global warming. They believe that although global warming is not a fact that the "scientific debate" is over. These business elites say that only the "political science" remains. They say it's a "political reality." They also say global warming is a "religion" and that the faith of those who believe in it cannot be changed.
But say what they will, "global warming" is neither a reality nor a religion. It is instead a "superstition." A reality is something that actually exists. Global warming has not existed for at least 7 years. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's internal memos say it does not exist, and so do increasing numbers of noted scientists. A religion is a belief in a supernatural being, a system of faith or worship. Obviously, global warming does not fit this definition.
A "superstition" is a fear founded on irrational feelings and marked by credulity -- i.e. a willingness to believe in the improbable or the marvelous. It should be easy for even members of our Congress to understand that no projection of future world temperatures is a scientific reality. Even they can't be that credulous ... or can they?
What (other than extremely credulous) could you call a member of Congress who believes that by lowering the standard of living of 5% of the world's population (that includes you, me, and everyone else living in America) that the Congress -- by passing a law -- can reduce the temperature of the earth or lower sea levels? Simple common sense, not conflicted science is required to know better.
Only superstitious, credulous, and pompous politicians would even consider voting for such a bill ... sight unseen! You would have to first be irrational and have unfounded fears of something that doesn't exist; you would then have to be prone to believe in the highly improbable -- and then vain enough to believe you can change the climate system of the earth, even while most of the rest of the world is fully enjoying the benefits of carbon use.
Americans should be gravely concerned that Congress might act to deal with a superstitious belief and willfully and knowingly cost Americans their jobs, increase household utility bills, and increase worldwide toxic pollutants that are being released into the atmosphere. Yes, increase pollutants in the name of the environment by transferring more jobs and industrial activity to heavily polluting countries like China that don't even have an EPA. Additionally, it is naïve to believe that these countries will follow our lead on CO2 reductions since they have not done so for other truly polluting emissions.
The reality is that credulous political elites (whose personal ideology is to transfer wealth not only within classes of American citizens, but from America to foreign countries) will impede domestic energy production and fund countries and technologies that threaten America's homeland security.
But the political elites are only one group that is willing to damage America's economic strength and homeland security in support of Cap and Trade. Another group is the business elite. In the case of big businesses, it is not the grip of a medieval superstition, nor is it credulity driving, that is driving them. Instead it is what motivates most business people: profit and fear of government retaliation. Or maybe worse: hope for government favoritism. In fact, global warming - i.e., Cap and Trade - is a giant Ponzi scheme in the making that will make Madoff look like the tip of an advancing Alpine glacier.
Neither wind farms nor solar panels have any hope of effectively (cost effectively) displacing coal, nuclear, or natural gas as the primary energy sources for American electricity. Compelling America's workers to sacrifice more for the cap-and-trade falsehood is simply cruel and irresponsible.
Borrowing money from the largest polluting country in the world (China) to reduce a non-pollutant in order to address a superstition, to create a profit for multi-national companies that happen to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (making most of their profits overseas) is an evil and cruel abomination. Politicians and business persons who participate in such a scheme, for whatever reason, are insensitive and represent a risk to the American way of life.
Anyone -- politicians, business persons, labor union leaders, journalists, teachers, environmentalists or a U.S. President -- that desires the best for America and its people will oppose Cap and Trade. Anyone who desires American prosperity, energy independence, homeland security, an improved environment, jobs and a future for our children will not be superstitious or complacent. They will not resort to trickery or seek an illicit profit. Instead, they will use a cost versus benefit evaluation based on real-world data to achieve true environmental and economic improvements.
Business people and politicians should be Americans first. They must use real science, truth, reality, and love for their country oppose to "Cap and Trade." If they do not, future American generations will consider them what they will have been - unmindful, unscrupulous, and uncaring. Going forward, we all owe our employees, our neighbors, our children, our constituents and all Americans nothing less than our best and honest effort to find the right answers to real pressing and critical challenges. Global warming is not the challenge of our time. Even if it were, Cap and Trade is the wrong answer.
President Reagan was man enough to label "evil" when he saw it. Madoff's Ponzi scheme was described by a judge as "evil." The Cap and Trade scheme, if passed, will be many times more "evil."
Conversely, a true worldwide effort to regulate and reduce particulate, sulfur and other pollutants on a cost benefit basis in developing countries would provide a real and significant improvement to the world's environment, without empty sacrifices of American lives and liberties. The choice between the two possibilities should not be difficult, even for the U.S. Congress. It incorporates, after all, their oath of office to protect Americans from enemies foreign and domestic, and to defend the constitution.
Don Blankenship is CEO of Massey Energy.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/in_the_name_of_global_warming.html
Global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites
Geologist Ian Plimer takes a contrary view, arguing that man-made climate change is a con trick perpetuated by environmentalists
By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver SunJuly 28, 2009
Ian Plimer has outraged the ayatollahs of purist environmentalism, the Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming, and he seems to relish the damnation they heap on him.
Plimer is a geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, and he may well be Australia's best-known and most notorious academic.
Plimer, you see, is an unremitting critic of "anthropogenic global warming" -- man-made climate change to you and me -- and the current environmental orthodoxy that if we change our polluting ways, global warming can be reversed.
It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon with many precedents in history. Many have made the argument, too, that it is rubbish to contend human behaviour is causing the current climate change. And it has often been well argued that it is totally ridiculous to suppose that changes in human behaviour -- cleaning up our act through expensive slight-of-hand taxation tricks -- can reverse the trend.
But most of these scientific and academic voices have fallen silent in the face of environmental Jacobinism. Purging humankind of its supposed sins of environmental degradation has become a religion with a fanatical and often intolerant priesthood, especially among the First World urban elites.
But Plimer shows no sign of giving way to this orthodoxy and has just published the latest of his six books and 60 academic papers on the subject of global warming. This book, Heaven and Earth -- Global Warming: The Missing Science, draws together much of his previous work. It springs especially from A Short History of Plant Earth, which was based on a decade of radio broadcasts in Australia.
That book, published in 2001, was a best-seller and won several prizes. But Plimer found it hard to find anyone willing to publish this latest book, so intimidating has the environmental lobby become.
But he did eventually find a small publishing house willing to take the gamble and the book has already sold about 30,000 copies in Australia. It seems also to be doing well in Britain and the United States in the first days of publication.
Plimer presents the proposition that anthropogenic global warming is little more than a con trick on the public perpetrated by fundamentalist environmentalists and callously adopted by politicians and government officials who love nothing more than an issue that causes public anxiety.
While environmentalists for the most part draw their conclusions based on climate information gathered in the last few hundred years, geologists, Plimer says, have a time frame stretching back many thousands of millions of years.
The dynamic and changing character of the Earth's climate has always been known by geologists. These changes are cyclical and random, he says. They are not caused or significantly affected by human behaviour.
Polar ice, for example, has been present on the Earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time, Plimer writes. Plus, animal extinctions are an entirely normal part of the Earth's evolution.
(Plimer, by the way, is also a vehement anti-creationist and has been hauled into court for disrupting meetings by religious leaders and evangelists who claim the Bible is literal truth.)
Plimer gets especially upset about carbon dioxide, its role in Earth's daily life and the supposed effects on climate of human manufacture of the gas. He says atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at the lowest levels it has been for 500 million years, and that atmospheric carbon dioxide is only 0.001 per cent of the total amount of the chemical held in the oceans, surface rocks, soils and various life forms. Indeed, Plimer says carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but a plant food. Plants eat carbon dioxide and excrete oxygen. Human activity, he says, contributes only the tiniest fraction to even the atmospheric presence of carbon dioxide.
There is no problem with global warming, Plimer says repeatedly. He points out that for humans periods of global warming have been times of abundance when civilization made leaps forward. Ice ages, in contrast, have been times when human development slowed or even declined.
So global warming, says Plimer, is something humans should welcome and embrace as a harbinger of good times to come.
http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=1835847&sponsor=
Sgt. Crowley, a Cop in Full
by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)
Posted 07/28/2009 ET
Updated 07/28/2009 ET
Sunday, professor Louis Henry Gates retreated from his threat to sue Sgt. James Crowley. Friday, President Obama retreated from his charge that the Cambridge cops "acted stupidly." As Crowley has not budged an inch -- his arrest of Gates was correct, and there will be no apology -- there is no doubt who won this face-off. Game, set, match, Crowley and the Cambridge cops. It is, indeed, as Obama said Friday, a "teachable moment." And those most in need of teaching are the professor, the governor of Massachusetts and President Obama. By charging or suggesting Gates was a victim of racial profiling, all three were guilty of having reflexively reverted to racial stereotypes about white cops. Here is the chronology. Answering a 911 call about a break-in in progress, Crowley encountered the professor inside the house. According to Crowley's report, his request for Gates' I.D. was initially rebuffed, and he was accused of hassling Gates because he was black. The professor made a slurring reference to Crowley's "mama." The professor then raised such a ruckus Crowley arrested and cuffed him. Once in the street, Gates bellowed, "This is what happens to a black man in America." Gates then called Crowley a "rogue cop." Gov. Deval Patrick declared Gates' arrest "every black man's nightmare." Obama said the Cambridge cops had "acted stupidly" and went on to elaborate, on nationwide TV, on the sad history of racial profiling of blacks and Hispanics by police. Thus the two most powerful black elected officials in the U.S., with no hard knowledge of what happened, came down on the side of a black professor, their buddy, against a white cop and his department, implying racial motivation in the arrest of Gates. Yet there is still not a shred of evidence for their rush to judgment. Crowley's partner in the arrest was a black officer who said he stands "100 percent" behind Crowley and that Gates acted "strange." Sixteen years ago, Crowley gave CPR to an unconscious Boston Celtics star, Reggie Lewis, in an attempt to save his life. The memory of his failure caused Crowley to break down in tears and haunts him to this day. Crowley was selected by a black police lieutenant to teach fellow officers about racial profiling. He has been doing this for five years. And watching TV coverage for a week, this writer has yet to hear one cop anywhere condemn Crowley's handling of the incident. Outside the fevered imagination of Louis Henry Gates, then, where is the evidence Crowley engaged in racial profiling? The victim here is Sgt. Crowley, not professor Gates. Crowley is the one defamed as a "racist" and "rogue cop." He is the officer whom Gov. Patrick implied perpetrated "every black man's nightmare." He is the cop on the Cambridge force who, Obama told the nation, "acted stupidly." If anyone has grounds for legal action, it is Crowley. Indeed, upon what grounds would Gates sue? That he was wrongly arrested, when Crowley, his black partner, the Cambridge P.D., the police union and 1,000 cops would gladly come to Cambridge to testify that Crowley went by the book? Moreover, no one says Crowley abused Gates in any way. And there were witnesses in the street to the arrest. And Crowley apparently had his mike open, and a recording of the incident exists. But if Obama's racial reflexes served him badly Wednesday night, his political instincts served him well him on Friday. For he must have sensed that this confrontation was shaping up as three powerful black men coming down hard on a white cop with a stellar record who had only done his conscientious duty. Obama picked up the phone, called Crowley, regretted his choice of words about him and the Cambridge P.D., walked into the press room and told the nation Crowley was a "good guy," he himself had misspoken, that he and the sergeant had talked about getting together for a beer. It was a goodly slice of humble pie the president ate there, but it was a class act. To ask more would be churlish. As for Patrick and Gates, they, too, should eat a little crow. The president's decision to go before the White House press corps also suggests Obama is acutely aware of the political peril here. For while his black support is rock solid, his white support is soft. And Americans will usually side with an Irish cop over a Harvard don, especially when the professor is pulling rank and the cop is right. "This isn't about me," says Gates. Sorry, professor, it is about you. You have shown the country why William F. Buckley won laughter all over America when he wittily observed that, rather than be governed by the Harvard faculty, he would prefer to be governed by the first 300 names in the Cambridge telephone directory.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=32884
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Politics in America is getting to be more fun than ever.
Now we can heal the wounds inflicted by the Bush administration. Sioux
November 5, 2008
The NY Times breakdown of how the country voted compared to 2004.
The redder the area the more people shifted towards republicans.
The bluer the area, the more people shifted towards the Democrats.
get the interactive map here: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html
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