via youtube.com
Absolutely sickening that this teacher is pushing her political beliefs on impressionable young students. The cult of personality is again rearing its ugly head. And I thought this was only done in N. Korea, China, Iran, etc.
25 September 2009
20 September 2009
The Hard Hitting Journalism of the MSM Aimed at Obama. NOT!!! #TCOT #GLENNBECK #IAMTHEMOB
And liberals still claim the unbiased nature of the mainstream media while castigating Fox News. How do they do it with such a straight face? Botox?
The Baucus Plan in all its ummmm glory or something like that. #TCOT #IAMTHEMOB #GLENNBECK
Here is the freedom expunging part that “taxes” you for not having an “acceptable” level of health insurance:
Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. If a taxpayer‘s MAGI is between 100-300 percent of FPL, the excise tax for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or an individual claimed as a dependent) is $750 per year. However, the maximum penalty for the taxpayer unit is $1,500. If a taxpayer‘s MAGI is above 300 percent of FPL the penalty for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or as an individual claimed as a dependent) is $950 year. However, the maximum penalty amount a family above 300 percent of FPL would pay is $3,800.
The excise tax would apply for any period for which the individual is not covered by a health insurance plan with the minimum required benefit but would be prorated for partial years of noncompliance. The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. No excise tax will be assessed for individuals not maintaining health insurance for a period less than or equal to three months in the tax year. However, assessed excise taxes for those not insured for more than three months include the entire duration the individual was uninsured during the tax year.
Exemptions from the excise tax will be made for individuals where the full premium of the lowest cost option available to them (net of subsidies and employer contribution, if any) exceeds ten percent of their AGI. Available policies are defined as an employer policy in the case of an individual who works for an employer who offers coverage and an individual policy in the case of an individual who does not have access to an employer sponsored plan. Exemptions from the excise tax will also be made for individuals below 100 percent of FPL, any health arrangement provided by established religious organizations comprised of individuals with sincerely held beliefs (e.g., such as those participating in Health Sharing Ministries), those experiencing hardship situations (as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services) and an individual who is an Indian as defined in Sec. 4 of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. Additionally, in 2013, individuals at or below 133 percent of FPL will be exempt from the excise tax. When making these determinations, income from individuals not subject to the mandate should not be considered.
Here is one small-business killing provision:
Auto Enrollment. Employers with 200 or more employees must automatically enroll employees into health insurance plans offered by the employer. Employees may opt out of employer coverage, however, if they are able to demonstrate that they have coverage from another source (e.g., through a public program such as Medicare, Medicaid or the Children‘s Health Insurance Program or as a dependent in a spouse or other family member‘s health benefits).
Here is another:
All employers with more than 50 employees that do not offer coverage would be required to pay a fee for each employee who receives a tax credit for health insurance through a state exchange. The number of employees shall be accounted from the most recent year using the COBRA definition of employee that applies for purposes of determining if an employer is eligible for the small employer exception from continuation coverage.
For each full time employee (defined as working 30 hours or more each week) enrolled in a state exchange and receiving a tax credit, the employer would be required to pay a flat dollar amount set by the Secretary of HHS and published in a schedule each year. The flat dollar amount would be equal to the average tax credit in the state exchanges. These payments would not be linked to the individual, but would be contributed to a general fund. The assessment is capped for all employers at an amount equal to $400 multiplied by the total number of employees at the firm (regardless of how many are receiving the state exchange credit).
The employer would pay the lesser of the flat dollar amount multiplied by the number of employees receiving a tax credit or a fee of $400 per employee paid on its total number of employees.
Blog Post: Religion. Liberals' New Weapon Against Opposition. #TCOT #IAMTHEMOB #GLENNBECK
I don’t know how many times over Twitter or Facebook have I seen a statement from a liberal that went something like this: “If you were a true Christian you have to support healthcare reform because (insert scripture here)” or “Hey so-called Christians, how can you oppose healthcare reform and still believe this (insert another scripture here)” or my favorite “You can’t be a Christian and oppose healthcare reform because you are told (insert favorite reference).”
Here’s how I see the strategic timeline of liberals regarding current dissent over healthcare reform and massive government spending. First, ignore dissent. Hmmm. That didn’t work. Second, mention dissent but make off-color jokes and snide comments about them. That didn’t work either. Third, go with the tried and true name calling (un-American, racist, hate-monger, evil-monger, etc.). Man these people just won’t go away. When all else fails, the liberal strategy is to attack the opposition at their core beliefs. I really hope this works because this vocal opposition is really getting annoying and others are starting to pay attention to them.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with using an opponent’s beliefs and words against them in a debate; in fact I use this strategy quite often. However, it is necessary to fully understand the beliefs of an opponent before trying to use them. It is quite apparent that most of the liberals I have seen across the social media landscape spouting biblical scripture with derision against their opponents have no clue about the actual base of beliefs surrounding the teachings of the bible. What liberals do not understand about the Bible, and subsequently about God’s teachings, is that it is about free will and choice. It is “If you love me keep my commandments” NOT “You have no choice but to keep my commandments.” We are all our brother’s keepers but no where within Christian belief or God’s teachings are there mandates that force the execution of that charge. Christians believe that charity is a willingness to assist others in need through the good will and desire of the giving party without forced compliance. If one has to be forced to do something then they are an unwise and slothful servant. Should someone fall into that category, God does not then force them to capitulate and obey.
The idea of forced redistribution of wealth through government social programs, including healthcare reform in its current incarnation, in the name of social justice is not in line with God’s teaching. The 10th commandment states: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s." The theory of wealth distribution and social justice wholly and completely violates this commandment. Thus, opposition to such programs is not anti-Christian by any means, rather because Christianity is about free will and choice any opposition to a program that takes free will away can arguable be a Christian act.
Mandatory Insurance Is Unconstitutional - It's good that someone is finally talking about it.
By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. AND LEE A. CASEY
Federal legislation requiring that every American have health insurance is part of all the major health-care reform plans now being considered in Washington. Such a mandate, however, would expand the federal government’s authority over individual Americans to an unprecedented degree. It is also profoundly unconstitutional.
An individual mandate has been a hardy perennial of health-care reform proposals since HillaryCare in the early 1990s. President Barack Obama defended its merits before Congress last week, claiming that uninsured people still use medical services and impose the costs on everyone else. But the reality is far different. Certainly some uninsured use emergency rooms in lieu of primary care physicians, but the majority are young people who forgo insurance precisely because they do not expect to need much medical care. When they do, these uninsured pay full freight, often at premium rates, thereby actually subsidizing insured Americans.
The mandate's real justifications are far more cynical and political. Making healthy young adults pay billions of dollars in premiums into the national health-care market is the only way to fund universal coverage without raising substantial new taxes. In effect, this mandate would be one more giant, cross-generational subsidy—imposed on generations who are already stuck with the bill for the federal government's prior spending sprees.
Chad Crowe
Politically, of course, the mandate is essential to winning insurance industry support for the legislation and acceptance of heavy federal regulations. Millions of new customers will be driven into insurance-company arms. Moreover, without the mandate, the entire thrust of the new regulatory scheme—requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and to accept standardized premiums—would produce dysfunctional consequences. It would make little sense for anyone, young or old, to buy insurance before he actually got sick. Such a socialization of costs also happens to be an essential step toward the single payer, national health system, still stridently supported by large parts of the president's base.
The elephant in the room is the Constitution. As every civics class once taught, the federal government is a government of limited, enumerated powers, with the states retaining broad regulatory authority. As James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers: "[I]n the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects." Congress, in other words, cannot regulate simply because it sees a problem to be fixed. Federal law must be grounded in one of the specific grants of authority found in the Constitution.
These are mostly found in Article I, Section 8, which among other things gives Congress the power to tax, borrow and spend money, raise and support armies, declare war, establish post offices and regulate commerce. It is the authority to regulate foreign and interstate commerce that—in one way or another—supports most of the elaborate federal regulatory system. If the federal government has any right to reform, revise or remake the American health-care system, it must be found in this all-important provision. This is especially true of any mandate that every American obtain health-care insurance or face a penalty.
The Supreme Court construes the commerce power broadly. In the most recent Commerce Clause case, Gonzales v. Raich (2005) , the court ruled that Congress can even regulate the cultivation of marijuana for personal use so long as there is a rational basis to believe that such "activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce."
But there are important limits. In United States v. Lopez (1995), for example, the Court invalidated the Gun Free School Zones Act because that law made it a crime simply to possess a gun near a school. It did not "regulate any economic activity and did not contain any requirement that the possession of a gun have any connection to past interstate activity or a predictable impact on future commercial activity." Of course, a health-care mandate would not regulate any "activity," such as employment or growing pot in the bathroom, at all. Simply being an American would trigger it.
Health-care backers understand this and—like Lewis Carroll's Red Queen insisting that some hills are valleys—have framed the mandate as a "tax" rather than a regulation. Under Sen. Max Baucus's (D., Mont.) most recent plan, people who do not maintain health insurance for themselves and their families would be forced to pay an "excise tax" of up to $1,500 per year—roughly comparable to the cost of insurance coverage under the new plan.
But Congress cannot so simply avoid the constitutional limits on its power. Taxation can favor one industry or course of action over another, but a "tax" that falls exclusively on anyone who is uninsured is a penalty beyond Congress's authority. If the rule were otherwise, Congress could evade all constitutional limits by "taxing" anyone who doesn't follow an order of any kind—whether to obtain health-care insurance, or to join a health club, or exercise regularly, or even eat your vegetables.
This type of congressional trickery is bad for our democracy and has implications far beyond the health-care debate. The Constitution's Framers divided power between the federal government and states—just as they did among the three federal branches of government—for a reason. They viewed these structural limitations on governmental power as the most reliable means of protecting individual liberty—more important even than the Bill of Rights.
Yet if that imperative is insufficient to prompt reconsideration of the mandate (and the approach to reform it supports), then the inevitable judicial challenges should. Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to invalidate "regulatory" taxes. However, a tax that is so clearly a penalty for failing to comply with requirements otherwise beyond Congress's constitutional power will present the question whether there are any limits on Congress's power to regulate individual Americans. The Supreme Court has never accepted such a proposition, and it is unlikely to accept it now, even in an area as important as health care.
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey, Washington D.C.-based attorneys, served in the Department of Justice during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A23
via online.wsj.com
I have challenged several liberals to show me where Obamacare and the Baucus Plan would be considered Constitutional. There has been no response. This is the best article that I have read about it so far. Too bad this type of discussion can't spread through the entire conversation, but those in charge of Congress and the MSM know where that would lead.
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