Camels, Government and Health Care

By E. Ralph Hostetter

What on earth could Americans learn from the combination of camels, government and health care? Ask any Bedouin and he will answer quickly: "If the camel gets his nose in your tent his posterior will follow."

Comparably speaking, if government gets its nose into private health care a government health-care bureaucracy will follow, including the promise: “I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.”

America is rated, overall, as having one of the greatest private health-care systems in the world. People from many foreign nations, ranging from kings to ordinary citizens, flock to the United States for care. The late King Hussein of Jordan spent a period of time each year at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, getting his annual health check-up.

One of the issues that has come forth is the cost of providing private health care for the elderly. The last year of life is the most costly health-wise. Today’s elderly came of age in the late 1920s, ’30s and ’40s and are expected to cause a surge in elderly medical care. Tom Brokaw, of NBC News, in his book THE GREATEST GENERATION, describes those Americans in this manner:

“They came of age during the Great Depression and the second World War and went on to build America — men and women whose every day lives of duty, honor, achievement and courage gave us the world we have today.”

It would be inconceivable even to think about a national health-care system which would exclude or reduce benefits to any of those American patriots.

As an example of government-controlled health-care systems, we have only to look at the national health-care programs practiced by our neighbor to the North, Canada.

The Canadian Parliament enacted the 1984 Canada Health Act, which established the framework for its national health-care insurance system. It outlawed most private insurance for essential health care and provided the vast majority of Canadian citizens with free medical services. Canada's health-care expense amounts to $172 billion a year. Canadians pay about 33% of gross domestic product in taxes, compared to 28% for Americans. The increased tax for Canada is mostly for free health-care. In addition, the province of British Columbia charges residents an extra health premium of $54.

The main complaints against the national health-care system are the delays that citizens experience waiting for appointments, treatments and surgeries, some amounting to four to six months, even a year.

Canadians are availing themselves of American medical services just across the border. Many of these cases reach American television audiences.

A case in point is that of Canadian citizen Shona Holmes. Shona was suffering from crushing headaches and vision problems. Her family doctor recommended she see an endocrinologist and a neurologist. It was going to take four months for one specialist and six months for the other. She couldn't wait that long and sought medical help at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. She was diagnosed as having a brain tumor which was pressing on her optic chasm that needed to come out immediately. She was sent to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where the operation was performed at a cost of $100,000. A second mortgage and borrowed money from family and friends covered the cost.

The United Kingdom is facing “serious flaws” in its nation’s health-care program, according to BBC News Reports. A headline reads: “Babies born in hospital corridors and lifts.”

Another report reads: “People in the U.K. face longer waits for non-emergency surgery and struggle to see GPs at out-of-hours compared to other Western countries.” This is worse than Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand, and comes amid mounting criticism of the arrangements within Britain’s National Health Service. The BBC says: “The U.K. also has the worst record of waiting times with 15% having to wait for more than six months for elective treatment. “Canada was the next worst with 14% and the Netherlands was best with 2%.”

Maternity units in the U.K. are particularly hard pressed. “Thousands of babies are born in accident and emergency departments and along National Health Service corridors. Almost 4,000 women in England (in 2008) gave birth in a location other than a designated hospital labour bed.”

National health care has its own particular set of problems in different nations around the world. The United States does not have those problems with its private health care system. The Congressional Budget Office reported on October 7 that the present health-care legislation now before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee predicts that national health-care costs would cost U.S. taxpayers $829 billion over the next 10 years. The Finance Committee is the last of the Congressional panels to consider health-care legislation before debate begins in the House and Senate.

Over the past two weeks, the Finance Committee has considered several hundred amendments to the extensive health-care bill. Committee members increased the bill’s overall price tag by including an exemption for senior citizens from higher taxes on medical expenses. This health-care measure is the only proposal being seriously considered that would cost less than $1 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

There is an old, time-tested quotation that is very appropriate at this juncture: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

E. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and publisher, also is an award-winning columnist and Vice Chairman of the Free Congress Foundation Board of Directors.

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Cloistered media libs just don't get it

By David Limbaugh

 

CNN "senior political analyst" Gloria Borger doesn't get it. Like so many cloistered mainstream-media liberals, she just can't imagine why anyone would oppose Barack Obama's agenda. To her, it's all politics.

 

Where was Borger when Democrats, purely for partisan purposes, pummeled President George W. Bush for eight years? But let's stay focused on the present, because Republican opposition isn't about paybacks or getting even.

 

Borger argues that "Republicans don't really want to work with Obama" because they stand to regain congressional control simply by opposing his agenda without offering any ideas of their own. Their opposition couldn't possibly be grounded in principle because, to narrow-minded liberals such as Borger, the only legitimate ideas are liberal ones.

 

"In my next life," she writes, "I'd like to be an opposition party leader. What fun to go to work every day knowing you will always be right, largely because your ideas will remain untested. ... If we were in charge, you sing, the people would have tax cuts! More money in their pockets! And no deficits! But more jobs!"

 

Sorry, Gloria, but our ideas have been tested – since the beginning of this republic – and the record is pretty solid, though you might not view America's history with similar pride, given the left's revisionist mindset about America's mythical "imperialism" and capitalistic "exploitation."

 

As a matter of fact, reductions in marginal income tax rates have consistently stimulated economic growth without exacerbating our deficits, whose growth during the Reagan and Bush years (relatively modest, in retrospect) was attributable to unchecked government spending.

 

I understand that most liberals have decreed a consensus on catastrophic man-made global warming and barred further public debate despite global cooling for the past decade. But what's truly empirically indisputable is that the Kennedy, Reagan and Bush tax cuts all generated robust economic growth and yielded increases in government revenues. That may seem counterintuitive to you, but what seems counterintuitive to us are liberal plans to deliberately smother the engine of capitalism in order to imperceptibly reduce disputed global warming while other nations are prepared to "stoke their own furnaces" and offset anything we do anyway. Also counterintuitive (and nonsensical) is Obama's plan to dismantle our nukes while terrorist regimes are nuking up.

 

Conservative foreign policy ideas have passed the test, too. Try Ronald Reagan's "peace through strength" Cold War victory over the Soviet Union. Consider George W. Bush's phenomenally effective post-9/11 national security policies, which prevented any further attacks on American soil. How, by the way, is Obama's appeasement approach to turn us into a beloved nation by, say, our allies in France and Israel working for you? Poland? Tibet? How do you reconcile his affinity for tyrants – such as Ortega, Chavez and Zelaya – and his hostility toward democratic regimes in Israel and Honduras?

 

But if you want to talk "tested," Gloria, let's look at Obama's major domestic ideas. We have the sweep of world history as evidence that his socialistic agenda will destroy our prosperity and our liberties.

 

You must be impervious to socialized medicine's record of perfect failure everywhere it's been tried, including here (in part), and unwilling to take Obama at his (previous) word that his goal is indeed a single-payer system. You must also be blind to the wholesale fraud in his tested and failed Keynesian backloaded "stimulus" bills.

 

But how do you defend his populist campaign promises to restore transparency to government and not increase taxes on 95 percent of the American people? His cynical dismissal of claims that Obamacare could cover illegal immigrants and federally fund abortions?

 

The Heritage Foundation reports that Obama's no-taxes pledges for families making $250,000 a year or less "lasted exactly 15 days," as he signed a bill hiking tobacco taxes 156 percent. The House passed a trillion-dollar energy tax, and Obama is prepared to impose punitive taxes on employers and individuals who don't procure health insurance. House leaders are also threatening a national value-added tax. Of course, the dirty little secret is that with all of Obama's budget-busting programs, he'll have to pass enormous taxes on everyone just to pay the increased interest on the national debt.

 

Meanwhile Heritage reports that Sen. Max Baucus' health-care bill would still leave 25 million Americans without insurance (kind of defeats the stated purpose, no?) and would dramatically increase the government's role in health care by expanding Medicaid. Predictably, Democrats also just rejected a Republican amendment to require any health-care bill to be published online before the Senate Finance Committee votes, with nary a protest from Mr. Transparency, President Obama. Obama has also been silent in the face of congressional Democrats blocking proposed amendments to bar federal funding for abortion.

 

Though Gloria Borger apparently can't grasp this, conservative opposition is grounded in principle and "tested" ideas – not primarily partisanship – and a duty to save the nation from efforts to transform it beyond recognition.

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Congress acts to extend hate crimes to cover gays

The House voted Thursday to make it a federal crime to assault people because of their sexual orientation, significantly expanding the hate crimes law enacted in the days after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968.

With expected passage by the Senate, federal prosecutors will for the first time be able to intervene in cases of violence perpetrated against gays.

Civil rights groups and their Democratic allies have been trying for more than a decade to broaden the reach of hate crimes law. This time it appears they will succeed. The measure is attached to a must-pass $680 billion defense policy bill and President Barack Obama - unlike President George W. Bush - is a strong supporter. The House passed the defense bill 281-146, with 15 Democrats and 131 Republicans in opposition.

"It's a very exciting day for us here in the Capitol," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., saying hate crimes legislation was on her agenda when she first entered Congress 22 years ago.

She said it's been 11 years since the gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard, whose name was attached to the legislation, was murdered.

The late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was a longtime advocate of the legislation.

Many Republicans, normally stalwart supporters of defense bills, voted against it because of the addition of what they referred to as "thought crimes" legislation.

"This is radical social policy that is being put on the defense authorization bill, on the backs of our soldiers, because they probably can't pass it on its own," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said.

GOP opponents were not assuaged by late changes in the bill to strengthen protections for religious speech and association - critics argued that pastors expressing beliefs about homosexuality could be prosecuted if their sermons were connected to later acts of violence against gays.

Supporters countered that prosecutions could occur only when bodily injury is involved, and no minister or protester could be targeted for expressing opposition to homosexuality.

The bill also creates a new federal crime to penalize attacks against U.S. service members on account of their service.

Hate crimes legislation enacted after King's assassination defined hate crimes as those carried out on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. It also limits the scope of activities that would trigger federal involvement.

The proposed expansion would include crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It eases restrictions on federally protected activities.

Some 45 states have hate crimes statutes, and the bill would not change the current situation where investigations and prosecutions are carried out by state and local officials.

But it would provide federal grants to help with the prosecuting of hate crimes and funds programs to combat hate crimes committed by juveniles.

The federal government can step in after the Justice Department certifies that a state is unwilling or unable to follow through on a purported hate crime.

While Republicans voted against the defense bill because of the hate crimes addition, openly gay Democrat Jared Polis of Colorado said he would vote for it despite his opposition to U.S. military presence in Iraq. The reason hate crimes are so odious, he said, "is that they are not just crimes against individuals, they are crimes against entire communities and create environments of fear in entire communities."

Tom McClusky, vice president of the conservative Family Research Council's legislative arm said the next step likely would be contesting the legislation in court. "The religious protections are pretty flimsy," he said. He contended that Democrats were trying to move their "homosexual agenda" this year because it would prove unpopular with voters next year.

The FBI says there are some 8,000 hate crimes reported around the country in a year. More than half of those are motivated by racial bias. Next most frequent are crimes based on religious bias at around 18 percent and sexual orientation at 16 percent.

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NYPD tracking cell phone owners, but foes aren't sure practice is legal

BY Rocco Parascandola

The NYPD is amassing a database of cell phone users, instructing cops to log serial numbers from suspects' phones in hopes of connecting them to past or future crimes.

In the era of disposable, anonymous cell phones, the file could be a treasure-trove for detectives investigating drug rings and other criminal enterprises, police sources say.

"It's used to help build cases," one source said of the new initiative.

"It doesn't replace the human element, like debriefing prisoners, but it's another tool to use that we didn't have in the past."

A recent internal memo says that when cops make an arrest, they should remove the suspect's cell phone battery to avoid leakage - then jot down the International Mobile Equipment Identity number.

The IMEI number is registered with the service provider whenever a call is made.

And that data could allow a detective to match, for example, a cell phone used by one suspect to a phone used by another.

There are limits to the data's usefulness - all Chinese-made cells sold in India have the same number and some overseas cells are embedded with fake numbers.

Still, civil libertarians are alarmed by the new policy since normally a warrant is needed to obtain information such as calls made or numbers in an address book.

New York Civil Liberties Union associate legal director Christopher Dunn said it appears the NYPD is "taking phones apart to get information" without warrants.

"It's hard to believe they feel there's a real need to take out the battery to prevent leakage," he said. "Instead, it looks like they're doing this to circumvent the warrant process."

The cell phone information joins another database of more than 20 million 911 callers that the NYPD has been building. It has paid off.

In one case involving a 911 call, detectives solved a burglary pattern after the suspect left a slip of paper with his cell number on it at a crime scene, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said.

The phone was disposable so no owner information was available, but police were able to track it to the suspect because he had used it to make a 911 call after he was assaulted.

The NYPD started collecting 911 data for incidents involving a police response in 2003. Four years ago, it began putting the information into its new computer nerve center, the Real Time Crime Center.

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Report: Global Muslim population hits 1.57 billion

By ERIC GORSKI

 

The global Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1 in 4 people in the world practice Islam, according to a report Wednesday billed as the most comprehensive of its kind.

 

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report provides a precise number for a population whose size has long has been subject to guesswork, with estimates ranging anywhere from 1 billion to 1.8 billion.

 

The project, three years in the making, also presents a portrait of the Muslim world that might surprise some. For instance, Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon, China has more Muslims than Syria, Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined, and Ethiopia has nearly as many Muslims as Afghanistan.

 

"This whole idea that Muslims are Arabs and Arabs are Muslims is really just obliterated by this report," said Amaney Jamal, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University who reviewed an advance copy.

 

Pew officials call the report the most thorough on the size and distribution of adherents of the world's second largest religion behind Christianity, which has an estimated 2.1 billion to 2.2 billion followers.

 

The arduous task of determining the Muslim populations in 232 countries and territories involved analyzing census reports, demographic studies and general population surveys, the report says. In cases where the data was a few years old, researchers projected 2009 numbers.

 

The report also sought to pinpoint the world's Sunni-Shiite breakdown, but difficulties arose because so few countries track sectarian affiliation, said Brian Grim, the project's senior researcher.

 

As a result, the Shiite numbers are not as precise; the report estimates that Shiites represent between 10 and 13 percent of the Muslim population, in line with or slightly lower than other studies. As much as 80 percent of the world's Shiite population lives in four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq.

 

The report provides further evidence that while the heart of Islam might beat in the Middle East, its greatest numbers lie in Asia: More than 60 percent of the world's Muslims live in Asia.

 

About 20 percent live in the Middle East and North Africa, 15 percent live in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2.4 percent are in Europe and 0.3 percent are in the Americas. While the Middle East and North Africa have fewer Muslims overall than Asia, the region easily claims the most Muslim-majority countries.

 

While those population trends are well established, the large numbers of Muslims who live as minorities in countries aren't as scrutinized. The report identified about 317 million Muslims — or one-fifth of the world's Muslim population — living in countries where Islam is not the majority religion.

 

About three-quarters of Muslims living as minorities are concentrated in five countries: India (161 million), Ethiopia (28 million), China (22 million), Russia (16 million) and Tanzania (13 million).

 

In several of these countries — from India to Nigeria and China to France — divisions featuring a volatile mix of religion, class and politics have contributed to tension and bloodshed among groups.

 

The immense size of majority-Hindu India is underscored by the fact that it boasts the third-largest Muslim population of any nation — yet Muslims account for just 13 percent of India's population.

 

"Most people think of the Muslim world being Muslims living mostly in Muslim-majority countries," Grim said. "But with India ... that sort of turns that on its head a bit."

 

Among the report's other highlights:

 

_ Two-thirds of all Muslims live in 10 countries. Six are in Asia (Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran and Turkey), three are in North Africa (Egypt, Algeria and Morocco) and one is in sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria).

 

_ Indonesia, which has a tradition of a more tolerant Islam, has the world's largest Muslim population (203 million, or 13 percent of the world's total). Religious extremists have been involved in several high-profile bombings there in recent years.

 

_ In China, the highest concentrations of Muslims were in western provinces. The country experienced its worst outbreak of ethnic violence in decades when rioting broke out this summer between minority Muslim Uighurs and majority Han Chinese.

 

_ Europe is home to about 38 million Muslims, or about five percent of its population. Germany appears to have more than 4 million Muslims — almost as many as North and South America combined. In France, where tensions have run high over an influx of Muslim immigrant laborers, the overall numbers were lower but a larger percentage of the population is Muslim.

 

_ Of roughly 4.6 million Muslims in the Americas, more than half live in the United States although they only make up 0.8 percent of the population there. About 700,000 people in Canada are Muslim, or about 2 percent of the total population.

 

A future Pew Forum project, scheduled to be released in 2010, will build on the report's data to estimate growth rates among Muslim populations and project future trends.

 

A similar study on global Christianity is planned to begin next year.

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DEMS PLOT 'SECOND STIMULUS'

Proposals to create jobs add up to second stimulus

 

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

 

Confronted with big job losses and no sign the U.S. economy is ready to stand on its own, Democrats are working on a growing list of relief efforts, leaving for later how to pay for them, or whether even to bother.

 

Proposals include extending and perhaps expanding a popular tax credit for first-time home buyers, and creating a new credit for companies that add jobs. Taken together, the proposals look a lot like another economic stimulus package, though congressional leaders don't want to call it that.

 

Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House say they have no appetite for another big spending package that adds to the federal budget deficit, which hit a record $1.4 trillion for the budget year that ended last week.

 

But with unemployment reaching nearly 10 percent, many lawmakers are feeling pressure to act. Some of the proposals come from the Republicans' playbook and focus on tax cuts, even though they, too, would swell the deficit.

 

"We have to do something for the unemployed, politically and economically," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

 

The House already has voted to extend unemployment benefits an additional 13 weeks for laid off workers in the 27 states where the jobless rate is 8.5 percent or above. Senate Democrats reached a deal Thursday to extend the benefits an additional 14 weeks in every state. Both proposals are paid for by extending a federal unemployment tax.

 

Also on the table: extending subsidies for laid-off workers to help them keep the health insurance their former employers provided, known as COBRA. The current program, which covers workers laid off through the end of the year, costs nearly $25 billion.

 

Congressional leaders haven't settled on the length of an extension, or how to pay for it.

 

Several bills would issue extra payments to the more than 50 million Social Security recipients, to make up for the lack of a cost-of-living increase next year. One bill would set the one-time payments at $250, matching the amount paid to Social Security recipients and railroad retirees as part of the stimulus package enacted in February.

 

The payments would cost about $14 billion and would be paid for by applying the Social Security payroll tax to incomes between $250,000 and $359,000 in 2010. Currently, payroll taxes apply only to the first $106,800 of a worker's income.

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she is also considering a Republican proposal to allow money-losing companies to use their losses to get refunds of taxes paid in the previous five years. Under current law, most companies can only use current losses to get refunds from the previous two years.

 

"The issue of a net operating loss carryback to five years rather than two is an idea that has some currency," Pelosi said.

 

Pelosi didn't offer specifics, but a similar proposal that was dropped from the first stimulus package had a cost of $19.5 billion.

 

Pelosi said she is also looking into extending and expanding a popular tax credit for first-time homebuyers. The credit, set to expire Dec. 1, allows first-time homebuyers to reduce their federal income taxes by 10 percent of the price of a home, up to a maximum of $8,000.

 

Pelosi said the credit could be expanded to people who already own homes, though she offered no details. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has announced his support for extending the existing credit an additional six months.

 

"The question is, would that be just first-time homeowners or would you open it up to other purchasers of homes?" Pelosi said.

 

The program is scheduled to run for 11 months this year and cost a projected $6.6 billion. Extending or expanding the program would add to the costs.

 

Lawmakers are also working on proposals to award tax credits to companies that add jobs. Obama's economic team proposed a similar incentive during negotiations over the stimulus package enacted in February but the idea was abandoned amid questions over its implementation.

 

A proposal by Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., would provide a $4,000 tax credit, to be paid out over two years, for each new employee. His office could not provide a cost estimate.

 

Pelosi said lawmakers need to hear from economists before settling on a package to create jobs. "What is it that we can afford? What works the fastest?" Pelosi said.

 

Rep. Dave Camp, D-Mich., the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said: "The fact that they're putting forward all of these things is really an indication that the stimulus was a failure. It didn't work."

 

Congress passed a $787 billion economic stimulus package in February, providing tax cuts for individuals and businesses, relief for the unemployed, spending on infrastructure and aid to the states.

 

President Barack Obama and other Democrats are adamant the package has lessened the effects of the recession, saving jobs that would have otherwise been cut. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September, the highest since 1983. A total of 15.1 million people are unemployed, and 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007.

 

(This version CORRECTS cost of tax refunds for companies to $19.5 billion, not $35 billion.)

 

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Whodunit? Sneak attack on U.S. dollar

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Saudis ask for aid if world cuts dependence on oil

There are plenty of needy countries at the U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that make the case they need financial assistance to adapt to the impacts of global warming. Then there are the Saudis.

 

Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.

 

That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. That is the limit most countries agree is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

 

The head of the Saudi delegation Mohammad S. Al Sabban dismissed the IEA figures as “biased” and said OPEC's own calculations showed that Saudi Arabia would lose $19 billion a year starting in 2012 under a new climate pact. The region would lose much more, he said.

 

“We are among the economically vulnerable countries,” Al Sabban told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the talks ahead of negotiations in Copenhagen in December for a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

 

“This is very serious for us,” he continued. “We are in the process of diversifying our economy but this will take a long time. We don't have too many resources.”

 

Saudi Arabia, which sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves, is seeing economic growth slide because of fallout from the global meltdown, but experts still expect the country, flush with cash from oil's earlier price spike last year, to be better able than other nations to cope with the current crisis.

 

Al Sabban accused Western nations of pursuing an agenda against oil producers, under the guise of protecting the planet.

 

“Many politicians in the Western world think these climate change negotiations and the new agreement will provide them with a golden opportunity to reduce their dependence on imported oil,” Al Sabban said. “That means you will transfer the burden to developing countries, especially to those highly dependent on the exploitation of oil.”

 

Al Sabban said his country wanted a new deal and was not impeding progress in talks as some activists have claimed.

 

An Arab environmental group IndyACT and the environmental group Germanwatch released a report today accusing Saudi Arabia of blocking key elements of the negotiations. Among their tactics, the groups said, was slowing negotiations by insisting that the economic woes of oil producers be included in the text.

 

“Despite the variability in the region, the current Arab position is mainly focused around protecting the oil trade rather than saving the planet form the adverse impacts of climate change,” said Wael Hmaidan, the executive director of IndyACT.

 

Most countries have agreed that any new pact should include provisions to avoid temperature increases of more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels — the threshold at which most scientists say serious climate change will ensue.

 

That would require emissions cuts from industrial countries of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, far above the 15 to 23 percent cuts rich countries have offered so far. It would also require developing countries to scale back their emissions.

 

Both rich and poor countries are counting on a transition to a low carbon economy as a key component of meeting their reductions, a move that would require them to away from fossil fuels and toward renewables like solar, wind and hydro power.

 

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Weak Himself, Obama Draws Strength From Bush

by Michael Barone

In trying to understand what is happening in the nation and world, we all employ narratives -- story lines that indicate where things are going and what is likely to happen next. We can check the validity of these narratives by observing whether events move in the indicated direction. If so, the narrative is confirmed. But if things seem to be moving in an entirely different direction, it's time to discard the narrative and look for another.

When Barack Obama took office, most Americans and certainly most of the press had a narrative in mind. Call it Narrative A. The financial crisis and the ensuing deep recession had removed the blinkers from voters' eyes and moved Americans away from reliance on markets and toward reliance on government.

The new president's call for hope and change would be followed by enactment of big government policies -- a big-spending stimulus package, government-led health care reform, restrictions on carbon emissions and the effective abolition of the secret ballot in unionization elections. The new president's powers of persuasion would sweep Republicans along and make for bipartisan change.

It certainly seemed plausible. New Deal historians had taught us that economic collapse increases support for big government. Opponents of the Obama program seemed incoherent and demoralized.

But Narrative A looks increasingly shaky. The unions' anti-secret ballot bill is going nowhere, and neither, it seems, is carbon emissions legislation. The stimulus package is widely regarded as a failure, and the Democrats' various health care bills are not winning majorities in polls. If anything, Americans are more leery of big government than they were a few years ago.

Moreover, the balance of enthusiasm has shifted. The tea parties and town halls have shown that millions of Americans are strongly opposed to big government measures. The Obama e-mail lists that brought in so much money and so many volunteers in 2008 now seem unable to get a few dozen people to a rally, and Democratic fundraising is alarmingly low for a party in power.

So it may be time to advance a Narrative B. It goes something like this. George W. Bush's inability to produce progress in Baghdad and New Orleans, along with floundering by congressional Republicans, led voters to give Democrats majorities in Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008. But the huge flow of dollars designed to staunch the financial crisis (TARP), finance bailouts and fund the stimulus package raised fears that government would crowd out private-sector growth.

In this narrative, Democrats' big congressional majorities owe more to perceived Republican incompetence and to the $400 million that labor unions poured into Democratic campaigns than to any change in fundamental attitudes toward the balance between markets and government.

Narrative B does a better job than Narrative A of explaining the unpopularity of the Democrats' big-government programs and the unwillingness of many Democratic officeholders, especially those facing voters in 2010, to support them. It does a better job of explaining the shift in the balance of enthusiasm from 2008 to 2009.

It still may be possible for Democrats to jam through some of their health care proposals, and tax rates are scheduled to go up when the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010. The Democrats may be able to make basic policy changes because of accidental advantages. In the framework of Narrative B, government-directed health insurance and vastly enhanced union power would be reactions to George W. Bush's inept handling of Iraq before the surge and his hapless response to Hurricane Katrina.

Narrative B doesn't explain all current developments satisfactorily. Voters still have a lingering distaste for Republican politicians and give higher (or less low) ratings to the Democratic than the Republican Party. Republican policy proposals, while not nonexistent as the Democrats charge, have not caught the public's attention and may prove no more popular than the Democrats' health insurance and cap-and-trade proposals. And Democratic proposals may turn out to be more popular than they are today.

But overall Narrative B has done a better job so far of explaining 2009 than Narrative A. Which suggests that it's time that fans of Narrative A who don't like Narrative B to come up with Narrative C.

Michael Barone is a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report and the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National Journal every two years.

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ACORN: Congress can't hurt us

By MICHAEL FALCONE

Any successful efforts by Congress to cut off federal funding to scandal-plagued ACORN would have little effect on the community organizing group’s overall operations, its chief executive officer said on Tuesday.

“We didn’t have government funding for years,” said ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis. “We may not have government funding in the future.”

Lewis said ACORN typically receives about $2.5 million to $3 million annually from the federal government – roughly 10 percent of its $20 million to $25 million annual budget. Member dues and private sources make up a much larger chunk of the budget, she said.

After a series of undercover videos surfaced showing ACORN employees giving advice to conservative activists posing as a prostitute and a pimp, opponents in Congress have sought to cut the group’s sources of federal money. In recent weeks, both the U.S. Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service have also ended partnerships with ACORN.

But Lewis, who spoke Tuesday at Washington’s National Press Club, called the congressional actions a case of “modern day ACORN McCarththyism,” and she dismissed a report by the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee alleging that ACORN used some charitable funding for political purposes.

Last month, the group suspended new intakes to its service programs throughout the country, pending the results of an independent review led by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger.

Lewis, who said her remarks were part of a “set-the-record-straight tour,” said the group would continue to pursue a lawsuit against the makers of the videos as well as the conservative Web site, Breitbart.com, where they first appeared.

“Just because we were embarrassed by these highly edited tapes,” Lewis said, “doesn’t mean that these people didn’t break the law in order to embarrass and attack the organization.”

Still, Lewis acknowledged that when she watched the clips, “it made my stomach turn over – it just made you sick.”

The Website’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, could not be reached for comment. But in appearance on Fox News last month he called the lawsuit “an attempt to stifle free speech and the First Amendment.”

Lewis also denied fresh allegations revealed in connection with an investigation of ACORN in Louisiana that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled as much as $5 million from the organization. The amount of missing money was just under $1 million, according to Lewis, who said the higher figure was “completely false and not based on any documentation or any audit other than two disgruntled former board members.”

On Tuesday, Lewis wistfully recalled her own years as community organizer and said that she planned to continue serving as CEO of ACORN for at least another year.

“I admit I’m not a graduate of the Wharton School of Business,” she said. “But you know something, I believed – and my board believed – that if you worked hard and if you got the proper people to do the job that we could make sure that ACORN was solid and stable going into the 21st century.”

Read more >>

ACORN tossed out Republican voter registrations

by Pamela Geller

ACORN wants people to register to vote – as long as they’re Democrats. Republican registrations go into the trash.

Here is a first-hand account of how it happens. In February 2008, Fathiyyah Muhammad of Jacksonville, Florida, heard that ACORN was paying people three dollars for each voter they could register. ACORN paid her three dollars for each voter she registered, but Fatiyyah Muhammad says that the group threw out her votes and fired her when she brought them registrations of Republican voters.

Fathiyyah Muhammad voted for Obama. “I’m a Republican,” she says, “and this was the first time that I voted for a Democrat since JFK…. I’m one of those rare birds, a black conservative Republican, and actually this is the black conservative capital of the country, Jacksonville, Florida.” She is an entrepreneur and a great American: she makes custom caps for her businesses Bilal’s Custom Caps and Only in America. She and her James have made custom caps for politicians, sports heroes, musicians, and others. “America,” she says, “is the place you can live your dreams if you work at it.” She’s a can-do woman with a great American spirit, and when she saw what was breaking in the news about ACORN, she came forward; I interviewed her Monday morning.

“This is my first experience” with ACORN, Muhammad said. “This was before Obama got the nomination, long before then….I heard about this group that was paying $3.00 per person, to go out and to get people to sign up to vote. So I went over, I thought that well this is a good way to make some money because I know everybody, you know. I went over there and this guy signed me up and everything, and gave me my little pad, all this stuff.”

Muhammad went to the ACORN office in Jacksonville. There she encountered a young man speaking to a room of about twenty people. “He was telling us, you know, about his experience, he was from Brooklyn, he wasn’t from this area. He was just here recruiting people to register people to vote. They had a big office here, and I would say maybe about ten or twelve people at there.”

She went to work: “Well, I went out and got a lot of people, homeless people, but of course I signed everybody up as a Republican, and I would have put people had they been Democrats.” She was not forcing people to sign up as Republicans: “You could put down anything you wanted.” But when she got back to ACORN, a group leader was not pleased: “So I showed what I had, and he said, “No, no, you a fraud, there can’t be any black Republicans,’ and oh, he just kind of hung me out to dry…. But of course their main aim was to register only Democrats. They’re not interested in registering Republicans.”

She saw ACORN officials in Jacksonville throw out the Republican registrations she made. “They just discarded those, they weren’t valid. All of the registrations… they just threw those out.” Yet she says that she is sure that the people she registered were actually going to vote: “Yes, they all were going to vote, I just didn’t want to get anybody just to get the three dollars, I wasn’t desperate for three dollars.”

ACORN did not honor its agreement to pay three dollars for each registered voter. “He took my papers,” says Muhammad, “didn’t pay me anything and I just left, I just figured that this is just another scam…. Everyone else got paid, all the other people got paid, but I didn’t. And I didn’t make a big deal about it, I just figured that it was another one of life’s experiences.”

Fatiyyah Muhammad didn’t know anything about ACORN at that time. She didn’t know that ACORN has been doing this for a long time. As far back as November 2006 the organization was indicted for some 40,000 illegal voter registrations, and that was before any of the recent revelations.

Now Fatiyyah Muhammad says: “I can’t believe that they got away with it for so long.” And she wants her story to be told: “How are you going to shine a light on the laundry if you don’t want to come out and say what happened?”

Fatiyyah Muhammad is unafraid to shine that light. And her testimony is another nail in the coffin of the community organizers of ACORN and their stealth agenda.

Read more >>

'Make no mistake. We're now in the middle of a bloodless coup'

Impeachment suggested to remove 'threats' to America

By Bob Unruh

A political activist who was behind the famous Willie Horton advertisement that left Gov. Michael Dukakis' candidacy for president floundering and was among the first to sound the alarm on the need for Bill Clinton's impeachment says the United States is collapsing around its citizens right now, but there is a defense.

"Make no mistake. We're now in the middle of a bloodless coup – the takeover of an entire nation by the hate-America crowd – a cold-blooded gang that despises America's prosperity, our standing in the world, our trust in God and our generosity and goodness," says political activist Floyd Brown in a column in WND.

His suggested defense is nothing more or less than a strike at the emperor, plans which are detailed on the new Impeach Obama Campaign website.

"Like so many on the far-left before him, going all the way back to Karl Marx, he [Obama] believes that it's his mission to promote 'equality of outcome' over 'equality of opportunity' even if Americans must learn to live in chains to make it happen," Brown said. "That worldview makes Barack Hussein Obama a very dangerous man and one of the greatest threats to your personal liberty today."

Brown said that view also explains why Obama "has already gobbled-up major banks and why the government now controls more and more of our money – yours and mine. And if you wake up one day to discover you're broke, don't be surprised. Barack Hussein Obama is Bernie Madoff with the political power of the presidency at his disposal."

"That dangerous worldview explains why his attorney general, Eric Holder, despises the 2nd Amendment… And that dangerous worldview explains why Obama intends to take away your freedom to choose your own doctor …. Your own treatment," he said.

Brown said the only one solution to the problem he described as a "monomaniac."

"Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution reads: 'The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.'"

Brown told WND that first and foremost, "people need to believe that it's possible."

He recalls the campaign to impeach Bill Clinton was begun back in the 1990s when Congress was controlled by the Democrat Party and there was virtually no obvious support for the concept.

"But we were patient and we kept at it, and he was impeached," he said.

"We believe he [Obama] is not qualified to be president, he should have never been allowed to be president, and [impeachment] is the best process for resolving this situation," he said.

Brown said most people remember him for being behind the Horton ad, which highlighted the subsequent crimes of a felon released from prison under Dukakis' watch. He also was among the first to sound the alarm on the Clinton Whitewater scandal as well as the mysterious circumstances of the apparent suicide of White House Counsel Vince Foster.

In a WorldNetDaily column, Floyd and Mary Beth Brown write that the idea already is mushrooming among conservatives, such as those in the discussions on the Expose Obama website where Floyd Brown is a moderator.

"Radio-personality, Tammy Bruce may have captured these activists beliefs about Obama best: '... ultimately, it comes down to... the fact that he seems to have, it seems to me, some malevolence toward this country, which is unabated,'" she said, according to the Browns.

They argue Obama already is guilty of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" for which the U.S. Constitution provides impeachment as a penalty.

"Our Founding Fathers fully intended to allow for the removal of the president for actions which include: gross incompetence, negligence, and distasteful behavior," they wrote.

According to the Impeach Obama Campaign, Obama already has:

• Lied to the American people when he said people could keep private insurance, knowing full well that his legislation would inevitably drive private insurers out of business.
  
  
• Vindictively fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin, who investigated Kevin Johnson, a buddy of the president, for misuse of funds from an AmeriCorps grant.
  
  
• Supervised the effective takeover by government of banks, the largest insurance company (AIG), and General Motors (GM) and Chrysler... the bulk of the U.S. auto industry, thus depriving bondholders, shareholders, and others of their property.
  
  
• Pursued cap-and-trade legislation. It would in a manner of speaking tax the very air people exhale and give the government unprecedented control over the economy and American businesses.
  
  
• Added a trillion dollars to the national debt in just a handful of weeks.
  
  
• Appointed "Czars" to oversee everything from the closing of Guantanamo to the nation's food.
  
  
• And finally, Obama has consistently refused to approve the release of his actual birth certificate, college transcripts and his medical records.

Since impeachment proceedings are handled by no one but Congress, Brown writes that it is important now for people to realize the impact of their votes in 2010, because that will determine the makeup of Congress, and very probably whether any impeachment against Obama could proceed.

Brown cited a key opinion from former President Gerald Ford, who while serving in the House of Representatives, said an impeachable offense was, "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."

"Impeachment, as written in the Constitution, was tailor-made for Barack Hussein Obama and our Founders placed it in our Constitution for such a time as this," Brown said.

Brown cited his concerns over Obama's attitudes and behaviors, including:

• When Obama said America is not a Christian nation.
  
  
• When, in his book, Obama wrote of Muslims, "I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
  
  
• When the White House insisted the name of Jesus be covered before Obama could speak at Georgetown University.
  
  
• When in 2009 Obama said, "You might say that America is a Muslim nation."
  
  
• When he treated the Queen of England with casual familiarity, but bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, where Muslims won't permit Christian worship under penalty of death.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums probably exceeding $1 million to avoid releasing an original long-form state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions.

WND also has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.

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Atheists say prayer makes them physically sick

'My stomach did a somersault with disgust'

By Bob Unruh

Atheists recruited to be part of a lawsuit that is trying to rid government ceremonies such as the inauguration of a president of any invocation or other prayer have claimed they are made physically ill by prayer.

"As I watched the inauguration, my stomach did a somersault with disgust for how much our country was violating the constitution (sic), the most important document in our country," wrote a 15-year-old in testimony being given to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit was filed before President Obama's inauguration and subsequently was dismissed at the district court level. Briefs now are being submitted to the appeals court in plaintiffs' hopes the case will be reopened.

"I felt a temporary state of disconnection when these religious statements and prayers were made during the inauguration," wrote another, according to an appendix of information submitted with the plaintiffs' recent arguments in the case.

"All the prayers made me feel excluded from the political process and a second-class citizen," wrote another. " But, when Chief Justice Roberts asked the president to say, 'So help me God,' I felt threatened and sick to my stomach."

Officials with the Pacific Justice Institute, who are defending the Revs. Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery, who spoke at the inauguration, said in their response that the Constitution simply does not demand that the government be "amoral or atheistic."

"Prayers designed to solemnize public events have a long and venerable history in our nation," said PJI Chief Counsel Kevin Snider, who authored the brief rebutting the claims.

"The First Amendment cannot be divorced from common sense," added Brad Dacus, president of PJI. "While atheists, humanists and freethinkers are a tiny minority in America, they are free to express and practice their lack of faith as they please.

"That does not mean," he continued, "however, that the vast majority of God-fearing citizens and public officials must be silenced in order to appease them."

The complaint originally was filed by a long list of people who describe themselves as atheists, as well as the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the American Humanist Association, Atheists United, Atheists for Human Rights and Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers.

The trial court judge speculated that he didn't have the authority to censor speech at the inauguration. And he suggested that perhaps a sitting federal judge did not have the authority to instruct the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and the soon-to-be commander-in-chief what they could and could not say at an inauguration.

Eventually the case was dismissed because the inauguration, at which the atheists wanted to prevent any prayer, already had happened.

The case named those involved in the inauguration as defendants. The ministers, Warren and Lowery, offered prayers at the inauguration and also are named as defendants. They are being represented in the dispute by PJI.

The PJI response noted that Michael Newdow, a California lawyer who has litigated over references to God a number of times, previously challenged inaugural prayers twice, and twice has had his arguments rejected.

However, in this case he goes so far as to suggest an ulterior motive in having invocations and benedictions at Washington ceremonies.

"Plaintiffs … contend that the 'real meaning' of these declarations goes far beyond that constitutional benignity [of affirming believers' views], for they contain an element analogous to the 'real meaing' of the 'separate but equal' laws of our nation's earlier history and tradition," the atheists argue.

"Specifically, the 'real meaning' is that Atheists are 'so inferior and so degraded' that their religious views warrant no respect," they allege.

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Sunstein: Americans too racist for socialism

Defends communism, welfare state but says 'white majority' oppose programs aiding blacks, Hispanics

By Aaron Klein

The U.S. should move in the direction of socialism but the country's "white majority" opposes welfare since such programs largely would benefit minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics, argued President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.

"The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics)," wrote Sunstein.

The Obama czar's controversial comments were made in his 2004 book "The Second Bill of Rights," which was obtained and reviewed by WND.

In the book, Sunstein openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism.

"During the Cold War, the debate about [social welfare] guarantees took the form of pervasive disagreement between the United States and its communist adversaries. Americans emphasized the importance of civil and political liberties, above all free speech and freedom of religion, while communist nations stressed the right to a job, health care, and a social minimum."

Continued Sunstein: "I think this debate was unhelpful; it is most plausible to see the two sets of rights as mutually reinforcing, not antagonistic."

Sunstein claims the "socialist movement" did not take hold in the U.S. in part because of a "smaller and weaker political left or lack of enthusiasm for redistributive programs."

He laments, "In a variety of ways, subtle and less subtle, public and private actions have made it most difficult for socialism to have any traction in the United States."

Sunstein wants to spread America's wealth

WND first reported Sunstein penned a 2007 University of Chicago Law School paper in which he debated whether America should pay "justice" to the world by entering into a compensation agreement that would be a net financial loss for the U.S. He argues it is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth to poorer nations.

A prominent theme throughout Sunstein's 39-page paper, entitled "Climate Change Justice" and reviewed by WND, maintains U.S. wealth should be redistributed to poorer nations. He uses terms such as "distributive justice" several times. The paper was written with fellow attorney Eric A. Posner.

"It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid," wrote Sunstein.

He posited: "We agree that if the United States does spend a great deal on emissions reductions as part of an international agreement, and if the agreement does give particular help to disadvantaged people, considerations of distributive justice support its action, even if better redistributive mechanisms are imaginable.

"If the United States agrees to participate in a climate change agreement on terms that are not in the nation's interest, but that help the world as a whole, there would be no reason for complaint, certainly if such participation is more helpful to poor nations than conventional foreign-aid alternatives," he wrote.

Sunstein maintains: "If we care about social welfare, we should approve of a situation in which a wealthy nation is willing to engage in a degree of self-sacrifice when the world benefits more than that nation loses."

Sunstein proposed 'socialist' bill of rights

In "The Second Bill of Rights," WND also reported, Sunstein proposed a new "bill of rights" in which he advanced the radical notion that welfare rights, including some controversial inceptions, be granted by the state. Among his mandates:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
  
  
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
  
  
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
  
  
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
  
  
• The right of every family to a decent home;
  
  
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
  
  
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
  
  
• The right to a good education.

On one page in his book, Sunstein claims he is "not seriously arguing" his bill of rights be "encompassed by anything in the Constitution," but on the next page he states that "if the nation becomes committed to certain rights, they may migrate into the Constitution itself."

Later in the book, Sunstein argues that "at a minimum, the second bill should be seen as part and parcel of America's constitutive commitments."

WND has learned that in April 2005, Sunstein opened up a conference at Yale Law School entitled "The Constitution in 2020," which sought to change the nature and interpretation of the Constitution by that year.

Sunstein has been a main participant in the movement, which openly seeks to create a "progressive" consensus as to what the U.S. Constitution should provide for by the year 2020. It also suggests strategy for how liberal lawyers and judges might bring such a constitutional regime into being.

Just before his appearance at the conference, Sunstein wrote a blog entry in which he explained he "will be urging that it is important to resist, on democratic grounds, the idea that the document should be interpreted to reflect the view of the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party."

Read more >>

Shouts of 'Stop printing money' greet Dem congressman at townhall...

Shouts, insults fly at Rep. Israel's health care town hall

By REID J. EPSTEIN

Rep. Steve Israel gamely tried to explain the proposed health care reform Monday night, but was often shouted down during his town hall-style meeting at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood.

Israel (D-Huntington) at one point pleaded with those in the crowd yelling at him to "stop calling me a liar and listen." Judging by the ever-increasing decibel level, he did not win over many converts.

Shouts of -- "Stop printing money,"  "We don't care what you think,"  and "You're a moron" -- permeated the 90-minute session, which drew far more than the 450 people who filled Van Nostrand Theatre.  Scores more were not allowed inside after a Suffolk fire marshal closed the doors.

People opposing the proposed health care reform outnumbered those in favor, though both sides strove to outshout each other during the question-and-answer period.

A typical scene came after Anneliese Lanza of Huntington asked, "Why can't we just fix the part of health care that is broken when what is needed is tort reform?" The anti-reform portion of the crowd broke into a raucous standing ovation chanting "tort reform."

"You're saying tort reform now, but if something happens to you, you'll be the first one to want to take the case to a judge and jury," Israel said. "I don't believe a member of the United States Congress should decide when you can go to court."

Israel, who supports the public option, which would allow people to purchase insurance through a government program, said he does not expect to support every aspect of the final reform bill.

"I'm not going to draw any lines in the sand," he said. "I'm not going to vote against 60 percent of what I want because I can't get 40 percent of what I want. There is no perfection."

Israel explained how the proposed legislation will affect Medicare -- it will eliminate overpayments to doctors in the Medicare Advantage program; that undocumented immigrants won't be covered; that the federal government would administer the public option just as it does Medicare and Medicaid; and that "the days of insurance companies dropping your coverage because you get sick will be over."

After several people began shouting concerns about rationed health care, Israel said he hears daily from constituents who have been dropped by their health insurance companies after becoming ill.

"If you can't get medical care because your insurance company doesn't want to pay for it, you've been rationed out of health care," Israel said.

Catherine Mullahy, 65, from Huntington, asked if public funds would be used to pay for abortions under the public option. Israel, who favors abortion rights, said they would not be but people could choose an insurance plan that would cover the procedure.

"I would prefer that he be against abortion," she said. "But I understand."

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Forced Inoculations? Sebelius: Americans must get swine flu vaccination

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appealed anew Wednesday for widespread inoculation against a surging swine flu threat, calling the vaccine "safe and secure."

Sebelius unconditionally vouched for the safety of the vaccine, saying it "has been made exactly the same way seasonal vaccine has been made, year in and year out."

Appearing on morning news shows to step up the Obama administration's campaign for vaccinations, Sebelius said that "the adverse effects are minimal. ... We know it's safe and secure. ... This is definitely is a safe vaccine for people to get."

Sebelius was asked on CNN about surveys showing many parents were wary of getting their children vaccinated for fear the vaccine has been too hastily prepared and wasn't safe. She replied that it was targeted specifically at the H1N1 virus and was "right on target with an immune response."

The HHS secretary appeared as new cases of the flu, particularly among younger people, have been appearing recently. Some 600 people have died so far from the flu in this country, and the government has targeted roughly 90,000 sites to receive the swine flu vaccine by the end of this month.

"This flu is a younger person's flu," Sebelius said on NBC's "Today" show. "Kids have no immunity to the flu ... children are great carriers of bugs and viruses."

Because of the danger of easy transmission, especially in school and day-care settings, Sebelius said, "We strongly urge parents to take precautionary steps. Flu kills every year ... and we've got a great vaccine to deal with it."

"There's going to be plenty of vaccine," the secretary said. "It's rolling off the production lines right now ... ahead of schedule, and that's good news... By the end of October we should have a substantial amount available and begin to vaccinate a wider population of folks."

Said Sebelius: "There's no question the disease is out there, which is why today we're rolling out PSAs (public service announcements) ... to make sure people take steps to help prevent the spread of the disease, and in the meantime we will push the vaccine out as quickly as we get it off the production lines."

Appearing on CBS's "The Early Show," she said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the President's Advisory Committee on Immunizations have identified five target populations: pregnant women, health care workers, children with underlying health conditions ages 6 months to 24 years, older Americans with underlying health conditions.

"That's a lot of people," Sebelius said. "That's about half the population."

"By the end of this week," she added,"we'll begin to have injectable vaccine also available. We're dealing with five production companies. That's very good news. But the vaccine will become available as the lines clear up. So as soon as we have any vaccine available, we're pushing it out to 90,000 sites around the country. The early going is a little bumpy but we'll have a good supply by October."

Read more >>

Is the Federal Reserve a Secret Society?

by Sharon Hughes

While the White House claims an urgency to pass healthcare reform, and while Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, tries to convince the American people that the $787 billion stimulus plan is working by siting things such as the $25 a week increase in unemployment checks the now 9.4% unemployed in our country are getting, the facts prove otherwise.

Holding something like this up as proof that the stimulus plan is working is, to put it mildly, unbelievable. Especially when you look at just how much of the 'stimulus' is actually 'stimulating' the economy, and how much (almost half of the $787 billion) is going for 'appropriations', aka pork, as seen in the chart put together by Senator Ben Nelson. (See chart here.) And, by the way, please note that Congress included in the 'stimulus' package an increase of $20 million for its own budget to cover the salaries and expenses of 'temporary staff'. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or economic wonk to see that this kind of 'Congressional oversight' is a foreshadow of what can be expected in the oversight of the proposed government-run healthcare system. But I digress.

What has really happened to our economy? Why did it plummet just before the 2008 election? What other forces were at play besides the initially sited culprits, Fannie and Freddie? Many Americans are still asking these questions.

Let me ask you a question: How much do you know about the Federal Reserve, the all-powerful, privately owned, non-federal government-run, national bank that wields tremendous economic power over our nation? We talked about this on our show recently, including a segment of an interview I did with Paul Walter, about the book his publishing company reprinted, The Coming Battle, written in 1899 outlining how the banking money power gained control of America. (Hear that interview online here.)

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress shall have the power to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof.

In 1935 the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot delegate its power to another group.

But things have changed. Today it is the Federal Reserve that controls and regulates the U.S. dollar.

Interestingly, Congress refused to audit the Federal Reserve after bills co-sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul and more than half of the House (Federal Reserve Transparency Act, HR 1207), and in the Senate (S 604) co-sponsored by Sens. Jim DeMint, Mike Crapo and David Vitter, were stopped before even being introduced on the floor on "procedural grounds." Why would they do that?

Writing in his recent article, "A Force of One: the Federal Reserve," Chuck Norris makes the claim that the FED is a secret society, "I agree with Judge Andrew Napolitano, who said last week, 'We know more about the CIA than we do about the Federal Reserve.' The Federal Reserve is the Freemasonry of government agencies. It is a virtual secret society unto themselves - a group of unelected brokers who hold the value of our dollar in the palms of their hands. This one agency, with its power to raise and lower interest rates, has exercised more control over the economy than any other government body."

Norris continues, "Could it really be a mere coincidence that the bill to audit the Federal Reserve was refused from even being introduced and that this agency remains the "quick convenience store-house of money" for the Obama administration's borrowing and bailout monies? Again, as Judge Napolitano said, "The Obama administration not only doesn't want the Federal Reserve audited, it now wants to put the power to regulate all banks, insurance companies, brokerage houses – into the hands of this super secret bank. What are they afraid we might see if we get a chance to look at their books?" (Read his article here.)

So, how did the Federal Reserve become the money manager of the United States?

The Federal Reserve came into being with the stroke of the pen of President Woodrow Wilson, establishing a centralized banking system, that "balanced the competing interests of private banks and populist sentiment." (sound familiar?) He appointed seven members of the Board with twelve regional banks, which are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas and San Francisco.

Today's current (five) board members of the Federal Reserve are Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman,Donald L. Kohn, Vice Chairman, Kevin M. Warsh, Elizabeth A. Duke and Daniel K. Tarullo.

Henry Ford once said, 'It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.'"

Did Ford know something we don't?

Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild said, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws." He also said, "It (the Central Bank ) gives the National Bank almost complete control of national finance. The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class... The great body of the people, mentally incapable of comprehending, will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical (contrary) to their interests."

John D. Rockefeller wrote in his book Memoirs, "For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents, such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

But, this information doesn't answer Chuck Norris' claim that the Federal Reserve is a secret society.

Perhaps a speech given by John F. Kennedy to the American Newspaper Publishers Association sheds some light? In it he talks to the press about secret societies:

"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it." (Hear speech here.)

John F. Kennedy wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve. On November 22, 1963 he was assassinated as his motorcade took an unscheduled route in Dallas.

More than give detailed information about the Federal Reserve I wanted to provoke questions that would cause you to research for yourself. For in so doing you will learn more than any one article can tell.

Is the FED a secret society? You tell me.

Federal Reserve website

See the creation of the Federal Reserve

Sharon Hughes is Founder and President of The Center for Changing Worldviews and a radio talk show host on KDIA in San Francisco, and online at Salem Web Network’s Oneplace.com. Her articles appear in many recognized news sites and publications, including FRONTPAGEMAG. She also writes for NewsBusters.org, a pision of The Media Research Center, and has appeared on FOX News and other national radio programs. For further information and other radio networks she is on visit her Websites www.changingworldviews.com, WOMANTalk.us, and Blog http://changingworldviews.blogspot.com. Facebook http://www.facebook.com/cwsharon, Twitter http://twitter.com/sharonhughes_

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