The Case Against Obamacare: A Health Care Policy Series for the 112th Congress

Building on decades of Heritage research, The Case Against Obamacare: A Health Care Policy Series for the 112^th Congress examines 15 key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Each report:

Cites specific sections of the 2,700-page health care law

• Provides detailed analysis of specific Obamacare provisions
• Identifies key principles for a better way to reform health care

The unmistakable conclusion of this series is that Obamacare must be fully repealed. Congress cannot build sound market-based health care reform on the flawed foundation of this health care law. Until it can be repealed, Congress must employ its full powers authorized by the Constitution to:

• De-fund the new law’s critical aspects
• Block any further provisions from going into effect
• Engage in aggressive oversight of Obamacare – its regulations and implementation.

Upon repeal, Congress should pursue a careful and thoughtful process to develop targeted solutions that address practical problems in the health care system based on the principles of personal ownership, consumer choice, and free markets.

Via: The Foundry

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Poll: Romney Up In Swing States

Swing State Statistics

Mitt Romney has posted gains in the 12 swing states that will be critical in determining the outcome of the 2012 election, according to a Purple Insights poll released Wednesday.

The new poll shows Romney with small leads in three of the biggest swing states on the map  — Florida, Ohio and Virginia. Those three states have a total of 60 electoral votes.

The poll was taken after Romney picked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate. 

“Taken as a whole, these data indicate a small bump in the immediate aftermath of the [Paul] Ryan [vice presidential] announcement,” the report from Purple Insights said. “Nonetheless it is also the first sign of positive momentum for the Romney campaign that we’ve seen in the Purple Poll in the last few months.”

Obama won Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin in his 2008 bid for the White House, and will need to win about half of these in 2012 to secure reelection.



Via: The Hill

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LAWS -

1. Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to go to the bathroom.
2. Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt or screw when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place in the universe.
3. Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.
4. Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal ... and someone always answers.
6. Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.
7. Law of the Bath - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.
8. Law of Close Encounters - The probability of meeting someone you know INCREASES dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.
9. Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, IT WILL!!!
10. Law of Bio-Mechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.
11. Law of the Theater & Hockey Arena - At any event, the people whose seats are farthest from the aisle always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer or to the toilet, and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies, and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.
12. The Coffee Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.
13. Murphy's Law of Lockers - If there are only 2 people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.
14. Law of Physical Surfaces - The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.
15. Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible IF you don't know what you are talking about.
16. Brown's Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they're ugly.
17. Olivers Law of Public Speaking-- A CLOSED MOUTH GATHERS NO FEET!!!
18. Wilson's Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.
19. Doctors' Law - If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you'll feel better.. But don't make an appointment, and you'll stay sick.  

Family Business Sticks to Principles, Challenges Obamacare Mandate

The Obama administration’s anti-conscience mandate went into effect at the beginning of this month, and private business owners are now required to cover contraceptive care in employee health plans thanks to Obamacare.

Weingartz, a family owned lawn supply store in Michigan, is one of several businesses challenging that mandate in court, saying it requires business owners to violate their religious beliefs.

“As people of faith … we’ve looked at our business as an extension of that faith and we’ve always tried to run it in a way that’s compatible with our faith,” Daniel Weingartz, the company president, said. “We’ve never had to go against something that was against our religious principles in order to run our business. In 67 years, we’ve held true to that.”

Weingartz is not complying with the anti-conscience mandate, but will not face penalties until its health insurance plan renews in January. At that time, the company could be fined up to $100 per employee per day for not including the mandated services in its plan. Ironically, the fine for offering a plan that doesn’t comply with the mandate could exceed the fine for not offering health insurance at all. Under Obamacare, the fine for not offering employees health insurance is $2,000 a year per employee.

Via: The Foundry

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ARIZ. GOV. JAN BREWER SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER PROHIBITING PUBLIC BENEFITS TO YOUNG ILLEGAL ALIENS

(TheBlaze/AP) — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday ordered state agencies to deny driver’s licenses and other public benefits to young illegal immigrants who obtain work authorizations under a new Obama administration policy.

In an executive order, Brewer said she was reaffirming the intent of current Arizona law denying taxpayer-funded public benefits and state identification to illegal immigrants.

Young illegal immigrants around the nation on Wednesday began the process of applying for federal work permits under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The federal policy defers deportations for that group if they meet certain criteria, including arrival in the United States before they turned 16 and no convictions for certain crimes.

After President Barack Obama announced the policy change in June, Brewer labeled it “backdoor amnesty” and political pandering by the Democratic president.

Arizona has been in the vanguard of states enacting laws against illegal immigration.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned parts of the Arizona enforcement law known as SB1070 but ruled that a key provision on requiring police to ask people about their immigration status under certain circumstances can be implemented.

The Obama administration challenged that law in 2010 after Brewer signed it into law.

Via: The Blaze

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Fast and Furious Question: Can/Will Romney-Ryan DOJ Pursue Chicago-Bound Eric Holder?

Congressman Darrell Issa and the House Oversight Committee filed the civil lawsuit yesterday against Attorney General Eric Holder in the Fast and Furious case. To be clear, there are no charges that Holder had anything to do with Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's death, or the walking of guns across the U.S. border into Mexico. The charges are simply that Holder has ignored subpoenas and withheld Fast and Furious documents from Congress, and thus, is in Contempt of Congress. The documents are the starting point to actual prosecutions of criminal and civil liability in one of the worst acts of Government against The People's Second Amendment rights in our Nation's history. It is reasonable to assume the civil litigation will not be resolved before the election, and perhaps not by the time Obama and Company exit Washington, D.C. It begs the question, what can a Romney-Ryan White House do about it?

The House voted for both criminal and civil Contempt of Congress. Obama's spokeskid, Jay Carney, announced in June that the White House will NOT act to direct the DOJ to prosecute Holder criminally on the Contempt of Congress charges - with Obama claiming Executive Privilege. So the only avenue is civil "justice" for The People to force the administration to produce documents that many of us believe will show Fast and Furious was devised to weaken Second Amendment rights, and along the way managed to kill a Border Patrol agent.

The question: when we have an Romney-Ryan DOJ, which will undoubtedly be a strong Second Amendment protector, can and/or will the new DOJ be directed to take up the criminal charges against Holder for ignoring subpoenaed documents, which will be the only way to eventually receive justice for Agent Brian Terry, and hold Eric Holder accountable?

Via: Free Republic

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Poll: 40% Say US Turning Into a Socialist State

The perception that America is turning more socialist is not just a fringe view, according to a Monitor/TIPP poll. Debate over the size of government could influence November elections.

                                                 A woman holds an anti-Obama sign at America's Tea Party 

                                                 held at Southfork Ranch in Parker, Texas, in this file photo.

                                                 Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters/File

Two of every five Americans today say their country is evolving into a socialist state.

That finding, contained in a new nationwide poll, highlights a central debate in the 2012 election campaign and a major challenge for President Obama.

The "socialist state" survey is just one many indicators that Americans are worried that the federal government is growing too large – a feeling that works against Mr. Obama's reelection hopes.

Are you more liberal than President Obama? Take our quiz!

In a Christian Science Monitor/Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll completed last week, 40 percent of respondents generally agreed with the statement: "The US is evolving into a socialist state." That outnumbered the 36 percent who disagreed. About one-quarter of respondents expressed a neutral view or said they were unsure.

The same poll asked other questions that took America's temperature on the size of government. A majority said it should not be the government's role to redistribute wealth, and a majority said they prefer "a smaller government providing less services."

Those results, taken together, indicate an opening for Obama's Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. He's trying to seize it.

Via: Christian Science Monitor

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DOE loan chief warned staff that personal e-mail could be subpoenaed

Tuesday, the Washington Post reported on documents showing that Jonathan Silver, the former head of the Department of Energy’s $38 billion clean-energy loan guarantee program, directed a staff member not to use personal e-mail addresses in official DOE correspondence in order to prevent personal accounts from becoming eligible for government subpoena — and did so a matter of days before the now-failed, $500-million-loan-recipient solar company Solyndra went bankrupt.

“Don’t ever send an email on doe email with a personal email addresses,” Silver wrote Aug. 21, 2011, from his personal account to a program official’s private Gmail account. “That makes them subpoenable.” …

Silver repeatedly communicated about internal and sensitive loan decisions via his personal e-mail, the newly released records show, and more than a dozen other Energy Department staff members used their personal e-mail to discuss decisions involving taxpayer-funded loans as well. The Washington Post received the e-mails from Republican investigators on the committee. …

Silver said Tuesday that he did not mean to avoid congressional scrutiny. “I intended to advise my DOE colleagues to use their official email for official purposes and personal email for personal purposes,” he said in a statement. “It was never my intention to avoid the requirements of the Federal Records Act.”

…The White House and Chu have repeatedly asserted that the Energy Department staff made all loan decisions based on merit, without regard to politics or donors. …

Silver wrote on June 12, 2011, to David Lane, counsel to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, arguing that approving a loan to a solar-generation facility called Project Amp would help Obama politically.

Despite Silver’s protestations, this all looks more than a little bit sketchy. Perhaps instead of worrying over how to avoid making loan-related correspondence subject to Congressional subpoena, maybe they should have been worrying about — oh, I don’t know — not doing things that would make a Congressional subpoena cause for alarm?

Via: Hot Air

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House Ways and Means chairman demands Delphi pension termination documents from Obama administration

Republican House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp demanded Wednesday that the U.S. Treasury Department and the Obama administration release records connected to an emerging scandal surrounding autoworker pensions terminated during the auto bailout. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) and the Treasury Department axed pensions in 2009 for 20,000 non-union salaried retirees who worked for Delphi.

Those workers’ pension plans lost between 30 and 70 percent of their value, while similar plans covering members of the United Auto Workers and other labor unions were preserved and made whole.

Camp fired off letters to PBGC director Josh Gotbaum, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, asking for dosuments by September 7. His committee seeks internal documents and communications relating to the decision-making process that resulted in those pension losses for non-union Delphi retirees.

From the PBGC, Camp demanded Gotbaum provide “all records, including but not limited to electronic mail to or from PBGC, the Departments of Treasury, Labor and Commerce and the Executive Office of the President of the United States” that relate to Delphi and General Motors’ interest in Delphi “for the period of January 1 through December 31, 2009.”

He demanded similar documents from Geithner and Ruemmler.

Via: The Daily Caller

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The Childishness of the American Left

The American left is the most self-indulgent, arrogant, and spoiled group of people on the face of the earth.  They live in a nation facing national bankruptcy and societal upheaval -- a country presently subsisting on the residue of past economic achievements.  Yet the only things that matter to them are their lifestyles and imposing their self-determined superiority on rest of the American people.

The true indebtedness of the United States now exceeds $222 trillion.  Appearing on National Public Radio in August of 2011 Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff of Boston University said:

If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, and subtract all the taxes we expect to collect, the difference is $211 Trillion.  This is the fiscal gap.  That is our true indebtedness.

Since that interview, the indebtedness has increased by another $11 trillion.  Yet these estimates do not include the full impact of ObamaCare, which could add another $17+ trillion.  On the other side of the ledger: the annual Gross Domestic Product (the value of all economic activity in the U.S.) is $15.6 trillion.  The indebtedness to GDP ratio is a staggering 14.2 to 1 and guaranteed to further accelerate if Barack Obama is re-elected.

The United States is not facing bankruptcy, it is bankrupt.  The primary factor that has kept the nation afloat over the past four years is that the dollar, albeit temporarily, remains the world's reserve currency, thus allowing the Federal Reserve to print enormous sums of money to cover the Obama budget deficits and flood the global market with near worthless cash.  Today itrequires $100.00 to purchase the same goods $10.00 purchased in 1950.

Via: American Thinker

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ICE Chief Of Staff On Leave After New Allegations Of Lewd Conduct Surface

The top Homeland Security official accused of cultivating a "frat-house"-style work environment has "voluntarily placed herself on leave" amid an internal review, the department told FoxNews.com late Tuesday evening -- just hours after FoxNews.com contacted the agency about new allegations against her. 

The official, Suzanne Barr, is chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Two more ICE employees came forward this week to complain about "lewd" conduct inside the agency, submitting sworn affidavits that depict graphic comments made by two top officials working under DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. 

The affidavits were given as part of a discrimination and retaliation suit filed earlier this year by James T. Hayes Jr., the head of the New York office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The two new affidavits described separate incidents in 2009. Both accounts described the actions of Barr, who was also mentioned in Hayes' lawsuit. 

Via Fox News

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Birth Of A Talking Point: Obama (Again) Refers To Romney’s Economic Views As “Fairy Dust” – Update: Goodbye “Trickle-Down Fairy Dust”: Hello “Trickle-Down Snake Oil”…

OSKALOOSA, Iowa – President Barack Obama called the latest addition to the GOP ticket, Rep. Paul Ryan, “a good man, a family man” during a speech in Iowa on Tuesday. But he had little good to say about the Wisconsin congressman’s positions on the budget and economy, criticizing Republican economic policy as “trickle-down fairy dust.”

“They don’t have a plan to cut the deficit. They don’t have a plan to increase jobs. They sure don’t have a plan to restore the middle class,” said Obama. “We don’t need more tax cuts for people like me.”

Obama delivered a half-hour speech in Oskaloosa, his first visit to the eastern Iowa city since he campaigned for the Democratic nomination he won four years ago. Obama’s staff, which distributed tickets for the event, said 852 people attended.

Via Weasel Zippers

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RYAN LIKELY TO RUN FOR BOTH HOUSE SEAT AND VP

From Washington D.C. to Wisconsin, betting is strong that newly-minted Republican vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan will run on Mitt Romney’s ticket while simultaneously seeking re-election to Congress.

“It is perfectly legal under state law for Paul Ryan to run for the House and vice president concurrently,” veteran Madison (Wisc.) Republican consultant Scott Becher told Human Events shortly after Ryan was formally tapped as Romney’s running mate Saturday morning. Becher noted that the Badger State will hold its primaries next Tuesday (August 14) and Ryan is already on the ballot for renomination to a seventh term as U.S. Representative from the 1st District.

Ryan, who has more than $5 million in his congressional campaign committee, appeared headed for another big re-election. Since winning his first term in 1998 with 57 percent of the vote, the Janesville lawmaker has been re-elected with margins ranging from 63 to 68 percent of the vote.

Even talk of who would succeed Ryan if the Republican ticket triumphed in November has been dampened. State Rep. Robin Voss of Rochester, a Ryan-style Republican who is likely to become the next speaker of the state assembly, discouraged talk that he was likely to run in the 1st District next year if his close friend became vice president and resigned his seat.

“It’s way too early to talk about that but…I’ve made a commitment to my colleagues in the Assembly,” Vos said of a possible open seat. “And that is my first commitment.”

Via: Human Events

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Darrell Issa to Sue Eric Holder Monday

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa plans to sue Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday for refusing to provide documents related to the "Fast and Furious" gun-smuggling operation.

"The committee expects to file the civil contempt suit against the attorney general Monday," a Republican source said. The suit will be filed in the federal district court for the District of Columbia.

The action is the latest escalation in the dispute between House Republicans and the Justice Department over the documents, which relate to a botched gun-smuggling operation.

On June 28, the House voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress and authorized the Oversight panel to bring suit to enforce its rights.

In Fast and Furious, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed assault guns to "walk," which meant ending surveillance on weapons suspected to be en route to Mexican drug cartels.

The tactic, which was intended to allow agents to track criminal networks by finding the guns at crime scenes, was condemned after two guns that were part of the operation were found at Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's murder scene.

In the most recent conflict between Congress and the president over a Congressional subpoena, Democrats' and Republicans' roles were reversed.

Via: Roll Call

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Obama cuts Medicare more than Romney would

To borrow a phrase from President Reagan, there they go again.

As soon as Mitt Romney announced Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate the Democrats again started with their debunked and discredited MediScare campaign. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called Ryan “the architect of the Republican plan to kill Medicare” in a fundraising message sent by DCCC Executive Director Robby Mook. A false charge that the left-leaning Politifact called the 2011 “lie of the year.”

As pointed out by The Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke, Politifact rebuked Democrats for engaging in such scare tactics:

“A complicated and wonky subject with life-or-death consequences, health care is fertile ground for falsehoods,” the fact checker said. “The Democratic attack about ‘ending Medicare’ was a pervasive line in 2011 that preyed on seniors’ worries about whether they could afford health care.”

The Democrats didn’t stop there. Obama spokesman Jim Messina said Ryan’s plan “would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors.” That is no more true than the DCCC’s MediScare claim. As explained by Avik Roy, the Wyden-Ryan plan would only apply to Americans younger than 55 years of age, and gives those younger individuals the option of remaining in the traditional Medicare program, or choosing a comparable private-sector insurance plan.

Via: RedState

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GALVANIZED: ROMNEY, RYAN DRAW MASSIVE CROWD IN NC

The announcement of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running mate is clearly galvanizing voters across the country; people are turning out in droves to see the new Republican ticket in person. Tweets from those attending the rallies today testify to the excitement:

@datakcy: At Romney/Ryan rally in NC: overflow crowd. Arena full. Cars backed up for miles!

@GayPatriot: All these people back into the trees are listening to ‪@PaulRyanVP on outside speakers. Wow.

@SarahPompei: You'd think a boy band walked into thousands of teenage girls. Nope.

Attendees tweeted pictures from the rally, which had enormous lines backed up around the block:

Via: Breitbart

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Agriculture Department Paid $2 Million for a Single Intern

A report from the Agriculture Department’s Inspector General has revealed some stunning examples of financial waste in the Department’s nascent technology security efforts, which have mismanaged about $63 million in taxpayer funding.

Among the IG’s findings: the USDA spent more than $2 million on an internship program that only hired one full-time intern, $3 million on technology hardware that was never used, and $235,000 on a project that was later canceled due to redundancy.

The office of USDA’s chief information officer, which was the subject of the report, “had not established internal control procedures, such as monitoring and oversight, for project management, and did not adequately plan its projects or how it would utilize resources,” the IG noted in explaining the underlying causes of financial mismanagement.

“With proper coordination within OCIO and improved communication between project managers, these unnecessary costs could have been avoided,” the IG explained. But because USDA has so far failed to address those underlying issues, “the Department is still at significant risk” for further financial losses.

Some highlights from the report:

• “OCIO [Office of the CIO] funded an intern program for a total of $2 million which, while funded as a security enhancement project, only resulted in one intern being hired full-time for ASOC [the Agriculture Security Operations Center]… This project is intended to develop and sustain a highly skilled IT security and computer technology workforce.  Expenditures for FY 2010 and 2011 included over $686,000 for development and implementation of a networking website and approximately $192,500 in housing costs for two summers.  While the intern program may be a beneficial step in the long-run, it did little to further the more pressing objective of improving USDA’s IT security.”
• “In FYs 2010 and 2011, OCIO spent at least $1.8 million to acquire four tools for the security sensor array project—which are not currently used—and subsequently spent additional annual maintenance costs of approximately $1.2 million.  In addition, OCIO determined that one of these tools, costing approximately $425,000, could not handle the amount of data that USDA’s network generates.  OCIO has maintained this tool at a cost of approximately $81,000 annually but has not been able to utilize it.”
• “In FY 2010, OCIO spent $235,000 to research possible solutions for a project intended to prevent data leakage outside of USDA networks. The project was subsequently cancelled because its goals were redundant with another ongoing project, the security sensor array.”

Via: The Foundry

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George W. Bush: 'This Is a Strong Pick'

The Romney campaign passes along George W. Bush's reaction to the announcement that Paul Ryan will be Mitt Romney's running mate: 

"This is a strong pick. Governor Romney is serious about confronting the long-term challenges facing America, and Paul Ryan will help him solve the difficult issues that must be addressed for future generations."

Here's Chris Christie's statement:

"With Paul Ryan on the ticket this is a team that understands the economic stagnation our country has been facing the last four years and the urgency with which we need to change course. The Romney-Ryan team is uniquely positioned to make the tough choices necessary to confront our fiscal challenges and get results."

And here's Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's statement:

"Paul is a good friend and one of the smartest guys I served with in Congress. He has the courage of his convictions, which is what our nation needs."

Via: The Weekly Standard