The Policy IS the Problem

Did everybody catch the Obama overload this weekend?  If you are in withdrawal, fear not -- catch him on Letterman tonight.

Great balls of fire!  This man is Orwellian with his Big Brother image in your living rooms on a daily basis, and if this story comes true, he will be "in your face" every minute of every day.  This is how it's done -- it's called brainwashing, and it's too creepy for words.

The Heritage Foundation has an excellent exposé on this:


The Policy Is The Problem
September 21, 2009

Prior to his September 9th, health care “make or break” press conference, the Wall Street Journal estimated that President Barack Obama had by that time already given 27 speeches entirely devoted to health care and he had mentioned the issue prominently in another 92. While the September 9th presser bumped approval of Obamacare all the way up to 51% in Rasmussen’s tracking poll by September 13th, today that number is down to 43% with a record high of 56% disapproving.

Undaunted the White House again plastered President Obama on as many friendly media outlets as possible this weekend. Yesterday he appeared on five Sunday news shows (every major network excluding FOX News, but including Univision), and tonight Obama will appear on David Letterman. The result of this latest media blitz? Nothing.

Politico reports: “In the interviews taped Friday – the first time a sitting president has done five Sunday shows back-to-back – Obama broke little new ground in how he tried to sell his own program, which has sharply divided his own party and left many in the public confused and deeply skeptical.” Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he “lost control” of the health care debate, President Obama replied: “Well, not so much lost control, but where I’ve said to myself, somehow I’m not breaking through.”

Mr. President, if you didn’t break through the first 32 times, maybe it is not the message that is the problem. Maybe the problem is that the American people do not understand what your health care plan will mean for them, and they just don’t like it.

While President Obama has been careful not to formally endorse any of the health care bills in Congress, he not only specified a final price tag, $900 billion, that is closest to Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) health plan, but he went on to defend the individual mandate and excise taxes in the Baucus bill on two of the Sunday shows. While the Baucus bill is not nearly as bad as parts of the Kennedy-Dodd bill or the House bills, it still constitutes an unprecedented expansion in the size and role of government, raises taxes, and bankrupts states:

Individual Mandates: Starting in 2013, almost everyone who does not have coverage would be required to purchase health insurance at a minimum level to be specified in the bill. Any individual who fails to buy health insurance will be forced to pay a tax by the Internal Revenue Service. Depending on your income and family status the new tax would be as low as $750 per person and as high as $3,800 per family. Worse, in order to enforce these provisions, the Baucus bill would require individuals, health insurers, employers, and government health agencies to report detailed health insurance information on all Americans to the IRS, adding significant administrative costs and reducing privacy protections.

Employer Mandates: Employers with more than 50 employees that do not offer health coverage would have to pay a tax for each employee whose family income is low enough to qualify for a premium credit. By requiring employers to pay taxes based on employees’ family income, not just their pay, companies would have to be informed of their employees’ family income from other sources. Worse, since the credits are based on family income rather than individual income, employers would be discouraged from hiring sole family income earners. This is a job killing employment tax plain and simple.

Unfunded Mandates: All adults with incomes at 133 percent of poverty ($14,440 for single person) would be eligible for Medicaid under the bill. The current and very broken Medicaid program is unsustainable for states and poorly serves the needy and the indigent who depend upon it. Under the Baucus bill, there is no real relief for states in the cost of the current program. States will still face a steep budget cliff in December 2010 when the federal matching formula for Medicaid payment expires. Adding additional costs through expansion of eligibility and benefits is adding people to a sinking boat.

Middle Class Tax Hike: During the 2008 presidential campaign and at the inception of the current national health care reform debate, the President promised that with the enactment of his agenda, the typical American family would see an annual $2,500 reduction in health care premium costs. But, beginning in 2013, the Baucus bill would impose a new federal excise tax on high cost health insurance plans. The tax would be applied to health plans valued at $8,000 for single policies and $21,000 for family policies. Because not all workers in such plans are high income, many will likely be on the receiving end of a middle class income tax increase, which contradicts President Obama’s promise that “if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”

A new Gallup poll shows that 57% of Americans say the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to businesses and individuals. Another 51% say the federal government today has too much power. The American people are clearly signaling that they want less, not more, government influence in the health care system. The White House should stop talking to the American people and start listening.

DNC Admits Obama WAS Collecting Information on People

In an attempt to justify the invasion of privacy by the White House, Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent compares the flag@whitehouse.gov debacle to John Cornyn's Senate website.

The distinction between the two should not be lost -- one is given freely, the other is given by a snitch. And that is -- running it up the flagpole.

A report in RedState:


DNC Admits Barack Obama WAS Collecting Information on People Via Flag@Whitehouse.gov
By Erick Erickson, August 20, 2009

Greg Sargent, doing his part as a mouthpiece for the online left, is trying his best to deflect concerns over flag@whitehouse.gov, but in the process reveals that Democrats are now admitting the White House collected data on individuals from flag@whitehouse.gov.

Here’s the deal — and you’ll have to pardon wading through the stupid that is Greg Sargent regurgitating DNC talking points:

John Cornyn has a contact form on his Senate website.

You can contact Cornyn by filling in your name, address, etc. and sending an email note.

Greg Sargent breathlessly reports that:

"Now the DNC is striking back by pointing out that similar email collection is done on the Web sites of Senators and members of Congress, including … John Cornyn.

Over on Cornyn’s Senate Web site, for instance, you find that people who want to contact the Senator are asked to submit personal info, such as their names, addresses and emails, which are all required."

In other words, “John Cornyn does it too.”

But, as Cornyn points out, and the DNC admits, with Cornyn’s website it is an individual offering their own information to contact the Senator. With Barack Obama, it is people offering other people’s information.

The distinction is huge.

But the DNC argues this is a meaningless distinction. Following Cornyn’s logic about the White House, the DNC says, shouldn’t those who write in to Cornyn’s Web site to criticize the Senator ask what his office will do with their personal info?

Of course that is desperation on the Democrats’ part. Trying to deflect attention from the White House invading people’s privacy, the Democratic National Committee is making real news by admitting flag@whitehouse.gov was used to collect data on people being turned in by third parties.

Health Care Reform Is About Control, Not Health

In another example of common sense, the government does not need to tell us to wash our hands, as Obama did when the Swine Flu first appeared. The government does not need to tell us what foods to eat, or what cars to drive, or what temperature to set our homes. But, the Libs just gotta.

This piece from PajamasMedia makes excellent examples:


Health Care Reform Is About Control, Not Health
By AWR Hawkins, August 17, 2009

Liberals have always been fixated on controlling people. In America, they accomplish this through taxation, regulation, and unrelenting appeals to our leftist-dominated court system. And when these avenues prove unsuccessful, liberals don’t give up, they simply look for a covert means to reach their original goal.

ObamaCare is just such a covert means. This is why Rush Limbaugh has spent weeks telling listeners that the president’s plan isn’t about health care, but about “government control of life [and] death” and everything in between.

As usual, Limbaugh is right. And even a cursory glance at the 1,018 page House health care bill (http://tinyurl.com/phs6da) demonstrates an end-around by the liberals which will allow them to control heretofore private aspects of our lives. For instance, ObamaCare will allow liberals to control diets over which they’ve failed to gain control through their anti-trans fat campaigns. ABC News confirms that ObamaCare will require obese citizens “to undergo diet counseling,” with the understanding that “those who fail to lose sufficient weight could face further ‘reeducation.’”

I find it ironic that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi describes opponents of ObamaCare as Nazis “carrying swastikas” (http://tinyurl.com/pwnorx) to congressional town hall meetings, while she and the majority of congressional Democrats are the ones who plan to send non-conformists to “reeducation” camps. Such liberal vitriol only proves Limbaugh’s point that as far as health care goes, any and every discoverable “health risk” will be used to further the government’s control over our lives.

Yet beyond “health risks,” an even easier way for liberals to control our lives through ObamaCare is by denying us the treatments we need once government officials, rather than doctors, are making our health care decisions. This is why the American Spectator’s R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. recently wrote:

"If you have any sense that you may be getting sick in the years ahead, I suggest you get sick immediately. If you will be in need of surgery or any other medical procedure, do it now! If not immediately, be certain that you hand yourself over to the health care professionals before October 15 of this year."

Tyrrell stresses October 15 because that’s “the date on which President Barack Obama hopes to sign his health care bill,” and that means that’s also the date on which the government will take ultimate decision-making power out of the hands of doctors and place it in the hands of D.C. bureaucrats.

If any of this seems too far a stretch, just consider the story of an American soldier who spent 14 months in Iraq, where he “withstood more than 12 IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices)” and suffered significant injury to “both of his feet and legs.” He has been home from Iraq for three years, and although doctors have known for those same three years that his ACL is torn as a result of the IEDs, they have not been allowed to operate on him because the government “hasn’t finished rating him” yet. In other words, because this American hero is on government health care through the VA system, both he and his doctors have been waiting years for a bureaucrat to clear him for surgery.

Although this soldier should “have had surgery two-and-a-half years [ago], …[bureaucrats] will not [allow] surgery until [the ACL’s] totally torn apart.” Instead, they just keep “giving him a cortisone shot or they put leg braces on him.” As this scenario plays out, his family looks on in unbelief, presuming he’ll be in a wheelchair “within another year.”

The soldier’s harrowing health care experience should be hauntingly familiar to anyone who heard Obama’s statement about “end of life” treatment on July 22, 2009, when he said senior citizens will be evaluated before being allowed to undergo surgery once ObamaCare is in place. Pending the outcome of the evaluation, where bureaucrats will decided whether grandma or grandpa is worth saving, the citizen may be told they’re “better off not having the surgery but taking [a] painkiller [instead].”

One thing we can all count on is this: once officials in the Obama administration gain control over our nation’s health care system they’ll exercise it as broadly as they can. Bureaucrats with no medical training will search out health risks based on cost to the government and will then hand down decisions on everything from proper dietary intake to knee operations to end of life treatment. And it doesn’t look like there will be any way to avoid this mess if it becomes law. There will be no way to retain private health insurance and therefore control of our own lives. For Obama and his comrades have structured ObamaCare in such a way that it will bankrupt most private insurers and greatly restrict those that are solvent.

It looks like R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr. was right when he said, “If you will be in need of surgery or any other medical procedure, do it now,” before ObamaCare is implemented. And I would add that if you enjoy buttery foods, fattened beef, or a good smoke now and then, you might want to avail yourself of those things as well. Because ObamaCare, if passed, will give faceless bureaucrats the ability to deny you many things you love in life based on how those things impact “the greater good.”

WHITE HOUSE CALL FOR INFORMANTS UPDATE

RedState's Jeff Emanuel has added an interesting UPDATE to the abhorrent move of the White House call for snitches:

UPDATE: As Erick (Erickson), one of RedState’s resident lawyers, points out below, this program may go beyond sinister and actually be a violation of current U.S. law.

Further, flag@whitehouse.gov is not currently subject to Freedom of Information Act requests — something a freedom-loving legislator (Jim DeMint? Tom Coburn? Paul Ryan? Eric Cantor?) should seek to correct at his or her earliest convenience.


White House Actions Might Be Unlawful
By Erick Erickson, August 5, 2009

As Jeff noted yesterday, the White House is asking individuals to report misinformation to the White House on healthcare.

Specifically, the White House said:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Emphasis added. Given the near certainty that no one will be stripping from emails the names of the people forwarding on the information, the White House is most likely engaged in unlawful activity.

According to 5 U.S.C. § 552a, United States agencies, including the Executive Office of the President shall, “maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity.”

The White House may take the position that certain of its offices aren’t subject to the Privacy Act (that is a longstanding Office of Legal Counsel position, see here), but most Presidents instruct their staffs to comply. This will be a the first significant time the White House has ignored the Privacy Act and may open President Obama up to litigation.

This is another example of the Obama administration ignoring long time precedent when it is no longer convenient for them. And ignoring this precedent lets them collect data on and potential harass individual American citizens.

The flag@whitehouse.gov email address is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. Some enterprising legislator should introduce legislation to make it subject to the FOIA.