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July 27th, 2009Dear Liberty Activist, ObamaCare is in big trouble, and you have yourselves to pat on the back for taking your message—the message of the American people—to your representatives in Congress! As we reported on Friday, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman's gamble to go over the Blue Dog Democrats' heads on the Energy and Commerce committee completely backfired. According to Roll Call, talks between seven key Blue Dogs and Waxman have now completely broken down. As the apparent leader of the Blue Dog rebellion stated, "It's my understanding that will be the last meeting we have." And now, with just two short weeks before the August recess, and Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman planning to bypass the Energy and Commerce committee altogether if no agreement could be reached with Blue Dogs, it is time to help galvanize the Blue Dog coalition to continue standing against the dramatic expansion of socialized medicine—and deficits—proposed in ObamaCare. Click here for a list of 40 Blue Dogs who signed a letter against ObamaCare earlier this month, promising not to support a proposal that was not deficit-neutral. Expanding health coverage to more than 45 million individuals without paying more is simply impossible, and attempts to try—which are doomed to failure with deficits as far as the eye can see—will only result in watering down everyone else's coverage, rationing, shortages, and even higher prices. The 40 Blue Dogs' districts and numbers are included in the spreadsheet to make it easier for you. And please keep calling your own representatives in the House and in the Senate. They are feeling the heat and there should be no respite. The switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. In today's Liberty Action Report, Barack Obama is readying his "Soylent Green" Rationing Rooms for the elderly, Capitol South returns with the Senator avoiding pesky tea parties, and government putting small businesses squarely in their crosshairs. Plus, the Washington Examiner features a fantastic William Warren editorial cartoon in their Sunday edition. Please send your letters to the editor at Robert@getliberty.org. We
publish all points of view! Today, Lee Anne and Greg Wells of Austin,
Texas write in part, "What do we need to get this craziness
stopped?! My husband is 47 and has one leg and this health care plan is
merely a plan to weed out those of us—I am also disabled—weeded out of
the American public. If Obama cuts Medicare and Medicaid he will cut
the medical plans that I am needing for my life to survive since I am
on SSD. This is insane! ... Help us organize to hit the streets when
our representatives and senators come home this August so they know we
the people are not Obama's puppets, far from it! My husband was in the
Army before he lost his leg! It is time to make this bill for health
Care by him open for all to read. And how can he state he does not have
to participate since he is President and he and the Congress have
special care assigned to them. Enough already! We the people,
the disabled, the elderly, the young, the middle aged, the working, the
un-employed, the professionals, the blue collar workers, all of us and
all our neighbors say we the people are taking back our Country! We
the people say no to national healthcare!" For Liberty, Robert Romano P.S. Had enough? Help us out with a small donation today!
Open Source & Copyright Free Barack
Obama's Soylent Green Rationing Rooms Capital
South Small
Business Squarely in the Government's Crosshairs ALG
in the News: Slipping Fast Barack Obama's Soylent Green Rationing RoomsBy Carter Clews The latest figures from James Carville's Democracy Corps polling firm cannot be good news for Barack Obama and his head-strong, headlong push for government-run socialized medicine: A full 54 percent of senior citizens oppose the scheme. And 40 percent oppose it "strongly." Perhaps they have figured out what Obama is covering up and the mainstream media is refusing to reveal: "Obamacare" is the ultimate redistribution program. Only in this case, it's far worse than the mere "redistribution of wealth," candidate Obama proposed in his campaign. With "Obamacare," the president proposes "redistributing the health" – from the old who have worked hard all of their lives to provide for their "Golden Years" to the younger members of the welfare culture who have come to believe that everything they receive from the hand of government is an "entitlement," and that universal health care should now be loaded onto the Gravy Train. In short, the Obama government-run "health care" plan is actually a not-so-veiled attempt to take from those who have worked hard and – once again – give to those who have hardly worked. Need proof? Asked where he would get the funds to provide free universal health care coverage for all 43 million uninsured Americans – including the full 40 percent of whom simply did not bother to work last year -- he boasted that he would cut Medicare and Medicaid by more than $500 billion, completely gutting those long-established programs. Now, keep in mind that today, more than one-third of senior citizens depend on those two programs for vital – often life-sustaining -- medical treatment. Within 30 years, as Baby Boomers continue to age, that number will double. And under the Obama program, the services they rely upon most will no longer exist. At his recent press conference designed to push his welfare healthcare program, Obama was forced to admit that under "Obamacare," he would appoint a panel of government-ordained "experts" to ration out health care to those they think deserve it most. Conceded the president, "And part of what I think government can do effectively is to be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options." And who will Dr. Obama's "honest brokers" choose to let live – or die? In an interview with the New York Times, Obama pulled no punches in pronouncing that his rationing police would have to take a long, hard look at "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives [who are] are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here." And that, he added, "certainly [is] true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, where the taxpayers are footing the bill and we have an obligation to get those costs under control." Now, lest anyone think that the Obama plan would never, ever consign senior citizens to Solyent Green-type "dying rooms," consider what has occurred in the countries he most often cites as models for his health care rationing regime. Dr. Karol Sikora, the former head of the World Health Organization Cancer Program and author of The Economics of Cancer Care, recently revealed that under the British national "health care" program there are 25,000 "unnecessary deaths" every year. "As a practicing oncologist," he disclosed, "I am forced to give patients older, cheaper medicines. The real cost of this penny-pinching is premature death for thousands of patients." In Canada, according to Dr. David Gratzer, a Canadian physician, author, and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, "More than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12 percent of that province's population) can't find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who'd get a doctor's appointment." None of which bodes well for senior citizens already consigned by Mr. Obama to the tender mercies of the rationing police. But, actually, despite the horrors of Britain and Canada, the real model for "Obamacare" might be even worse. In the nation of Zimbabwe several decades back, another highly popular, charismatic leader proposed government-mandated socialized medicine for what, at the time, was known as "The Breadbasket of Africa." After all, he reasoned, if they could provide food for an entire continent, they could certainly provide health care for their own people. A noble mission, indeed. Or, so it may have seemed. Soon, according to the Oxford Journal's "Health Policy and Planning" monograph, "health care was free for people earning less than 150 Zimbabwe dollars (Zim$) per month (US$8.6). Fees were only charged at the level of the district hospital." Sound like Utopia? Well, not quite. Here, according to Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), is the situation in Zimbabwe today: "How can he [the formerly charismatic Robert Mugabe] be proud of a country where we looked at a doctor's paycheck for the month – we held the pay stub in our hands – for 32 cents for a month's compensation?" According to PHR, in Zimbabwe today, "Since November (2008) all of Zimbabwe's public hospitals have closed. Mission hospitals are scarce, overcrowded, and lack basic resources like running water." It's clear: socialized medicine – whether called "the public option," "national health care," or "Obamacare" – simply doesn't work. And one is left to wonder: When – not if, when – the "redistribution of the health" in America descends to the level of Britain, Canada, or, yes, Zimbabwe, and the rationing police are called in to divvy up the scarcity, who will be the first to be sent to the "Soylent Green Rationing Rooms" in order to, in Obama's words, "get these costs under control"? Perhaps the 54 percent of seniors who now oppose Mr. Obama's health care scheme have already figured out the answer to that chilling question. Carter Clews is the Executive Director of ALG News. http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=1405 Capital South
ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge. http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=1404 Small Business Squarely in the Government's CrosshairsBy Dave Cribbin The Obama Administration and it's policies have the business community squarely in it's cross hairs and is moving in for the kill. Proposed taxes on energy, increased taxes on businesses to pay for expanding health care coverage, and the rising cost of complying with ever more regulation are serving to choke off profits and restrict growth at the very time our country needs them the most. Policy makers across the nation choose not to understand a very basic yet simple truth, the more difficult the government makes it for an employer to earn a profit, by confiscating profits through taxation and increasing expenses through regulation, the fewer profitable employers there will be. By extension, corporate and personal income tax revenues will be lower, as will the growth in employment. Thus, government spending on welfare and unemployment must be higher. This seems like pretty basic stuff, don't you think? Even the economist they love to quote when they want to increase government spending understood this. "Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget." John Maynard Keynes Sadly it is the rare Politician who understands the quote above. Raising tax rates to raise tax revenue, and passing regulations that restrain the capacity of entrepreneurs is ultimately the disappointing folly of fools, for it never produces the desired results. When you reduce incentives you restrict growth. When you limit economic growth, you lessen opportunity and eliminate prosperity. The bell curve also applies to folks who run small businesses, not just college entrance exam scores. Only a relative few business owners are near genius at organizing and running profitable companies. Most of the rest are spread out across the balance of the curve. It's these business owners, at the margin, who are hit hardest by increases in taxation and the cost of more government regulations. They run businesses where profit margins can be razor thin, even in good times. The one other critically important thing that needs to be remembered is that they are the job growth engine of the economy. A business only grows when the principals responsible for the decision to expand or not conclude that the risks of a proposed expansion are outweighed by the potential for increased profits. When they conclude otherwise, businesses don't expand and jobs are not created. Yet it is these very business owners who find themselves under attack and in the administration's cross hairs. We hear it over and over again from the President and his advisers in a never ending chorus: "We'll take it from the rich," "We will only tax those earning over $250,000 per year because they can afford it." "They need to pay their fair share." The large majority of these folks are small business owners. We have heard this all before and tried it with disastrous results, but evidently congressional memories are short. I remember the luxury surtax on boats which came into effect in the early 90's; it too was supposed to raise additional revenue for the government. It would do so by soaking rich boat buyers who could afford to pay the surtax, billions in tax revenue would be made available for the Washington pols, or so the theory went. Did it work? No, it seems the rich opted not to be taxed more and they stopped buying boats from American manufacturers. The American boat building industry was crushed, and it's hard working employees were forced into unemployment lines. I'm sure that wasn't the intent of the do gooders who passed the legislation. But it was the result, and as always the folks at the margin were the ones who felt the pain of the government's misguided attempts to "soak the rich." What politicians fail to understand is that the rich who work hard to earn their wealth in the first place will rightly work just as hard to protect it. The governments new found infatuation with income redistribution, which they hope to accomplish by once again "soaking the rich" will only serve to dig our nation deeper into the hole of diminishing revenues and increased spending on transfer payments. Business owners will keep their powder dry, delaying their expansion plans until the misguided policies of this administration are replaced by the wisdom of the electorate in the voting booth. The American people instinctively know that the massive increase in government spending accompanied by a reduction in the incentives for productive work and economic expansion is a recipe for disaster soup. Dave Cribbin is a Contributing Writer for ALG News. http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=1403
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