Quote:

Originally Posted by BobK 

 

Obama did argue that it was a tax and that Congress had the right to impose taxes. That's the reason it was passed by the Supreme Court.

Page 29, sentence one of the bill  says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”

And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: “The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.”

The bill requires every American, with few exceptions, to carry health insurance. To enforce this individual mandate, the Senate Finance Committee created the excise tax as a penalty for people who don’t have insurance – and it can run as much as $3,800 a year per family.

Obama has exempted most unions (of course!) from the new healthcare law. Right now, in boardrooms across the country management is figuring out how soon they can drop everyone from coverage. The problem is that most employers, that provide health insurance coverage, consider that as part of the 'benefits package' in total compensation. So..if they drop employees from coverage, and the employees ate 'taxed' up to $3800 per year....the cos. would have to increase their pay by up to $1.82 an hour...I think that has as much chance of happening as a snow storm in hell.

Maybe the good to come out of this is that the bill got passed so early (in relation to the election). When the average working stiff finds out that he will be paying an additional $1-4 thousand a year in taxes, and his company just pays a one-time fine, there should be some uproar and maybe, possibly, hopeful, lead to Obama getting trounced in Nov.

Bait And Switch on Obamacare

By Cal Thomas

6/29/2012

When is a tax not a tax? When President Obama says it isn't, or when the Supreme Court says it is?

Obamacare was sold on several fraudulent lines. The president knows the country doesn't want to pay higher taxes, given the deplorable way their government spends the money. And so the administration packaged it as something different.

That's called bait and switch, which is defined as "an illegal tactic in which a seller advertises a product with the intention of persuading customers to purchase a more expensive product." And Obamacare, if it is not repealed, is guaranteed to be more expensive, not to mention more bureaucratic, delivering lower-quality care and eventually rationing to save money.

Does it matter what this president promises since so many have turned up empty?

This ruling will impose a massive tax increase during a lingering recession. Twenty-one new taxes are associated with Obamacare, according to the House Ways and Means Committee. That doesn't include the scheduled year-end expiration of the Bush tax cuts. President Obama has said taxes shouldn't be raised during a recession.

Simply put, if government is going to take more money from the people who earn it -- mostly small businesses -- it will result in those businesses hiring fewer people, or laying off more employees, or both, thus increasing already high unemployment. People who have never run a business, or made a payroll, like most in this administration, have no sense of that.

The list of lies and deceptions by this administration is long and growing. When campaigning for president in 2008, candidate Obama made "a firm pledge" not to raise taxes: "Not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." In 2009, he vigorously denied to George Stephanopoulos of ABC that the individual mandate is a tax. Now Chief Justice John Roberts says it is. If money leaves your pocket and goes to government, it's a tax, no matter the label.

Some congressional Democrats, especially those running for re-election in traditionally Republican districts, might not have voted for this law had it been presented as a tax increase. They will now have to either defend the tax hike or vow to repeal the law. One way, they appear not to have known what they were doing. The other way, they will be portrayed as having lied.

In the short term, the president may have won the argument, but the Supreme Court has given Mitt Romney and the Republicans three issues: higher taxes, a loss of individual freedom and the wrong solution to reforming health insurance.

The Founders sought to "secure the blessings of liberty." This president wants to secure the power of government. And so government, which has done a poor job of running Medicare and Medicaid, will now be responsible for an even bigger program. This is like renewing the license of a serial drunk driver.

Roberts joins a long line of justices nominated by Republican presidents, beginning with Earl Warren, who agreed with the liberal wing of the court on cases favored by the Left. Rarely, if ever, does a liberal justice vote with the conservatives.

Roberts suggested he wouldn't do the work of the people. If they don't like Obamacare, they can change the leadership. The Republican Governors Association is planning to do nothing on Obamacare until after the election, an indication they believe a Romney presidency and a Republican Congress will repeal the law.

In a statement following the court's decision, President Obama promised to implement the law with all deliberate speed. He apparently hopes that with more of it in place (except the taxes that come in 2014), people will become dependent on it and won't want to do away with it.

In just four months, voters will have the opportunity to live up to the responsibility that Roberts says is theirs. Otherwise, voters will become co-conspirators in the weakening of health care and the further destruction of our liberties.

Ignoring the Obvious

by Jeff Thomas

June 30, 2012

"How can an otherwise sane individual become so enamored of a fantasy, an imposture, that even after it’s exposed in the bright light of day, he still clings to it – indeed, clings to it all the harder? No amount of logic can shatter a faith consciously based on a lie."

~ Lamar Keene, a scam artist who posed as a psychic, describing why it was so easy to fleece people.

Homo sapiens is a creature of habit. Most people have a strong desire to do what they can to create a life (and lifestyle) that is comfortable for them. Once this is done, we curl up and settle in. We then may add the occasional improvement to this situation, but, otherwise, we prefer then to be left alone to maintain what we have created.

It should not, therefore, be surprising if, when that comfy situation is threatened, we wish the threat would simply go away. Similarly, it is understandable if, when that threat begins to grow, we may simply pull the covers over our heads and pretend the threat either does not exist, or is far more benign than it appears.

Hence, it is a perennial condition of human nature to behave as described by Lamar Keene, when we discover that the government that we have been brought up to believe exists for our protection, has become no less than the greatest threat to our well-being.

Consider the following events, with regard to the USA:

• The Patriot Act (Passed in 2001 and extended in in 2011 with additional controls) expands law enforcement powers and removes civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed rights.

• The National Defense Authorization Act, passed on 31^st December, 2011, allows the indefinite imprisonment by the military of any "suspects" (including American citizens on American soil) without allowing due process of law.
•  
• The MAP-21 Bill, which allows the Internal Revenue Service to suspend the passport rights of Americans, based on the premise that their tax obligations may be unfulfilled.
•  
• The National Defense Resources Preparedness order, created in March, 2012, allows the President to take over control of all food, water, labour and industry in the US, "to promote national defense."

• 30,000 Drones to fly over the US allowed by executive order, February, 2012, providing the government with an Orwellian surveillance ability and a killing capacity ranging from selected individuals to entire communities.

• FEMA Interment Camps, to be constructed in every state, with 3 – 15 in each state, for an undisclosed purpose.

• Compounds to store "disposable coffins," each with hundreds of thousands of 4-5 person coffins stored near city centres around the country.

• 450 million hollow point bullets ordered by the Department of Homeland Security To be used domestically. (The DHS is not responsible for addressing national invasions or overseas wars; it exists solely for the control of internal disorder. Hollow point bullets are not intended for sharpshooting – they are designed specifically to maximize tissue damage.)
•  

The above are all actual occurrences. The reasons for them can be debated. (After all, the DHS may well have ordered 450 million rounds of hollow-point bullets because they were thinking of doing a bit of target practice. And the disposable coffins may be intended to be given out as grow-boxes on the next Earth Day.)

In fact, each of the above, conceivably could have been the product of well-meaning legislators, planning for what they conceived as "a better tomorrow." The trouble is, taken together, it is difficult to imagine that this may be the case. Indeed, taken together, they suggest the creation of a police state that rivals what Joe Stalin or Brother Adolf created.

Circa 1885, folk philosopher James Whitcomb Riley, said, "When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."

At some point, when we observe a government that consistently institutes executive orders and legislation that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it behooves us to conclude that it is in fact, a duck. Is it possible that we may be proven incorrect? Yes, absolutely so. However, when the overwhelming evidence points to the unpleasant realization that our comfy life is soon to end, we would be wise to take preparatory action.

Just how many ducks does it take before we decide there are enough to call them a flock? If such a flock represents a significant and uncontrollable danger to us, we would be advised to get out of the way. In such cases, it is infinitely wiser to err on the side of caution.

Not long ago, I overheard a discussion between an American businessman and an associate from my own country. The American was describing the seemingly endless array of draconian laws and executive orders that have been coming his way, courtesy of his government, in recent years.

His associate said, "I have only one question: "Why aren’t you packing now?"

Jeff Thomas  is British and resides in the Caribbean. The son of an economist and historian, he learned early to be distrustful of governments as a general principle. He began his study of economics around 1990, learning initially from Sir John Templeton, then Harry Schulz and Doug Casey and later others of an Austrian persuasion.

Rating and Ranking Our Presidents

by Patrick J. Buchanan

June 30, 2012

In 1948, Arthur Schlesinger Sr. wrote for Life magazine a controversial article on a subject that has been the cause of spirited and acrimonious debate ever since. He listed the consensus of our academic elite as to which American presidents had been Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average and Failures.

Leading the list were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and FDR. Below, but also among the Greats, were Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. The Near Greats were Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams and James K. Polk.

In 1962, Schlesinger followed with a New York Times piece, also based on the responses of historians, political scientists and journalists. This list had the same top seven. But Jackson had fallen to Near Great and Polk, who took the Southwest and California away from Mexico, had risen from 10th to eighth.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others have since produced their own rankings. The latest in the field is Robert Merry, a lifelong journalist and now editor at The National Interest. In "Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians," Merry adds a new criterion. Did this president win a second term, and was he succeeded by a man of his own party?

For this would mean his contemporaries, the American people of that era, had judged him to be a good, successful or even great president.

In the 20th century, McKinley, twice elected, but assassinated in 1901, left his office to Theodore Roosevelt, who won in his own right in 1904 and was succeeded by his friend and ally William Howard Taft.

FDR won four terms, and on his death in 1945 was succeeded by Vice President Harry Truman, who won in his own right in 1948.

Ronald Reagan won two landslides, pulled us out of the economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter presidency, won the Cold War and was succeeded by his vice president, George H.W. Bush, who swept 40 states in 1988.

Yet some historians have rated Carter, repudiated after one term, higher than Reagan, which tells us more about who has been doing the ranking than it does about Ronald Reagan.

Consider Warren G. Harding. After his 1920 landslide, he died in office in 1923. His successor, Calvin Coolidge, was elected in a landslide in 1924, and in 1928 Herbert Hoover won another Republican landslide.

Yet historians rank Coolidge as mediocre and Harding among our worst presidents. Liberal ideology has never lacked for a warm dwelling place in the history departments of America's universities.

Wilson's second term was an historic failure. After winning in 1916 on the slogan, "He kept us out of war!" he plunged us into a European bloodbath that produced 116,000 U.S. dead and a Versailles treaty that rewarded our imperial allies with new African, Middle East and Asian colonies, giving the lie to Wilson's promise that this was a war to "make the world safe for democracy."

Wilson – not Harding, Coolidge or Hoover, all of whom tried to ease the vindictive terms imposed on a defeated but democratic Germany – set the table for Nazism. Adolf Hitler was born at Versailles.

In 1918, Wilson lost both houses of Congress, and his party was crushed in 1920. Americans concluded that his second term had been a failure. Yet historians mark him as Great or Near Great.

Harding brought us out of the Wilson depression of 1919-1920 without any Obama-like intervention in the economy, cut the income tax rate by two-thirds, gave us the Washington Naval Agreement, the greatest arms reduction treaty in history, and worked to alleviate the most onerous aspects of the Versailles treaty that Wilson had imposed on Germany.

Harding and Coolidge gave America the greatest prosperity it had ever known, the Roaring Twenties, and the people rewarded them accordingly.

Yes, some of Harding's cronies were crooks – but so, too, were some of Harry Truman's, whose second term was marked by scandal, political nastiness and a winless war, after which he was repudiated by a nation that gave Dwight Eisenhower a landslide.

"Communism, corruption and Korea" was the slogan attached to Truman's legacy by the GOP in 1952. America agreed.

Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War in six months and presided over eight years of peace and prosperity, is now rising in the rankings of historians, some of whom now put him as high as 11th.

Though a plurality of Americans list John F. Kennedy in polls as the best president of their lifetime, fewer historians still share that view.

Other presidents are difficult to rank.

Richard Nixon's second term resulted in his resignation.

Yet his first term – ending the Vietnam War and the draft, creating the Cancer Institute and Environmental Protection Agency, creating a new majority that gave the GOP five victories in six presidential elections – was judged by the American people such a smashing success they rewarded him with a 49-state landslide.

In "Where They Stand," Bob Merry offers his own assessments. Buy his book, take it to the beach, and bring the subject up with the after-dinner drinks. A long and loud discussion should ensue.

Complete List of ALL ***733*** Waivers From Obamacare....unions, banks, law firms, etc. Probably all democratic voters. 733!!! From HHS report.

http://drscoundrels.com/2011/01/30/complete-list-of-all-733-waivers-from-hhs/

Quote:

Originally Posted by Venom08 

There's a strong chance that Obama will be reelected through voter fraud. For the first time in our nations history, we'll have our electronic votes counted by machines in Spain. These machines are owned by a company which is heavily involved with radical socialists in Europe as well as George Soros. I know that Obama would lose to Romney by a 10 point margin, at least, but with the Chicago machine backing him as well as international socialists, he'll have an advantage in November. And we can't forget about the In-Justice Department and their attacks on states trying to fight voter fraud. It'll be interesting, but I think if Obama gets reelected there'll be a revolution.

A possibility is that Romney wins the electoral college vote and Obama wins the total votes cast. It would be Romney as Pres. and 'rodney king' riots across the country.