News You Missed 10.30.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington                                       

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Obama's Seven worst Lies About "Obamacare"

Obamacare Lie #1: "If you like your healthcare plan, you'll be able to keep your healthcare plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what."

President Obama said this often. But for many Americans, that promise will be broken. This week, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report in which it estimated that by 2022, Obamacare will cause 7 million Americans to lose their employer-based health insurance. That's because many of the Obamacare benefits will make many plans more expensive, prompting employers to drop coverage. Ironically, this broken promise could affect millions of workers in unions, which campaigned hard to get President Obama elected.

Obamacare Lie #2: "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase."

Here at Money Morning, we told you about numerous Obamacare taxes, hidden and not-so-hidden, that will hit the middle class. In addition to the notorious "mandate tax," middle-class Americans will get hit by taxes levied on businesses that will get passed through to consumers, particularly the 2.4% tax that covers any medical device that cost $100 or more. Other Obamacare taxes affecting the middle class include a 10% tax on tanning services and a doubled penalty on withdrawals made from Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for non-medical purposes.

Obamacare Lie #3: "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits - either now or in the future."

This week, the CBO again raised its estimate on what Obamacare will cost over the next decade, from $814 billion to $1.047 trillion. While President Obama has claimed the ACA will actually reduce deficits due to all the money raised from taxes, penalties and fees, critics say much of the "savings" result from accounting tricks and double-counting. And with Obamacare's estimated costs rising rapidly, it's more a question of when, not if, the law will begin contributing to the federal budget deficit.

Obamacare Lie #4: Obamacare will "cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year."

Sorry, the "Affordable Care Act" will in fact make healthcare insurance far less affordable. On Jan. 30 the IRS released new regulations regarding Obamacare - remember that the IRS is in charge of penalizing you should you fail to purchase the mandated insurance - that included cost estimates for the plans the government will offer. For a family of four, the cheapest plan - dubbed Bronze in Obamacare-speak - will cost $20,000 a year in 2016. That's an increase of more than $4,000 from the average of $15,745 such families paid in 2012.

Obamacare Lie #5: The new healthcare law will improve, not hurt, the quality of American healthcare.

We don't have proof of this yet, but given that more people (Obamacare provides coverage to millions of people who do not now have it) will be using the same amount of healthcare resources, it stands to reason that quality will decline. Here's what Dr. Adam Frederic Dorin said in a recent article in The Washington Times: "Most doctors will not be able to afford to see patients with an Obamacare card. This means that patients will be increasingly relegated to longer lines in publicly funded clinics.... More patients will be denied access to advanced, cutting-edge drugs like chemotherapeutics."

Obamacare Lie #6: It's not a government takeover: "I don't believe that government can or should run healthcare."

Although Obamacare doesn't seize total control of the U.S. healthcare system, it extends the tendrils of government deep into it and gives the Department of Health and Human Services broad powers. One particularly troubling example is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which will have the power to lower payment rates for Medicare treatments, which could reduce the care available to seniors.

Obamacare Lie #7: The state health insurance exchanges will open on time.

One of the keys to fully implementing Obamacare is launching the so-called health insurance exchanges in each state, where people will be able to shop for health plans using tax credits. The CBO this week contradicted assurances from the Obama administration that the exchanges will be ready later this year. The CBO report said the exchanges are unlikely to open in October, as promised, because they won't have enough plan options, and people will be reluctant to use something untested and unfamiliar.

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Liberals in the US could learn from a world that wants to relocate here

As I’ve documented in the past, many leftist teachers teach our youngsters to hate our country. For example, University of Hawaii Professor Haunani-Kay Trask counseled her students, “We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.”

Some universities hire former terrorists to teach and indoctrinate students. Kathy Boudin, former Weather Underground member and convicted murderer, is on the Columbia University School of Social Work’s faculty. Her Weather Underground comrade William Ayers teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Bernardine Dohrn, his wife, is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Her stated mission is to overthrow capitalism.

America’s domestic haters have international company. "24/7 Wall St." published an article titled “Ten Countries That Hate America Most.” The list includes Serbia, Greece, Iran, Algeria, Egypt and Pakistan. Ranking America published an article titled “The U.S. ranks 3rd in liking the United States.” Using data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, it finds that just 79 percent of Americans in 2011 had a favorable view of Americans, compared with Japan and Kenya, which had 85 and 83 percent favorable views, respectively. Most European nations held a 60-plus percent favorable view of Americans, compared with countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey, with less than 20 percent favorable views.

An interesting facet of foreigners’ liking or hating America can be seen in a poll Gallup has been conducting since 2007 asking the questions: “Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country? To which country would you like to move?”

Guess to which country most people would like to move. If you said “the good ol’ US of A,” go to the head of the class. Of the more than 640 million people who would like to leave their own country, 23 percent – or 150 million – said they would like to live in the United States. The United Kingdom comes in a distant second, with 7 percent (45 million). Other favorite permanent relocations are Canada (42 million), France (32 million) and Saudi Arabia (31 million), but all pale in comparison with the U.S. as the preferred home.

The next question is: “Where do people come from who want to relocate to the U.S.?” China has 22 million adults who want to relocate permanently to the U.S., followed by Nigeria (15 million), India (10 million), Bangladesh (8 million) and Brazil (7 million). The Gallup report goes on to make the remarkable finding that “despite large numbers of people in China, Nigeria, and India who want to migrate permanently to the U.S., these countries are not necessarily the places where the U.S. is the most desired destination. Gallup found that more than three in 10 adults in Liberia (37 percent) and Sierra Leone (30 percent) would move permanently to the U.S. if they had the opportunity. More than 20 percent of adults in the Dominican Republic (26 percent), Haiti (24 percent), and Cambodia (22 percent) also say the same.”

That’s truly remarkable in the cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone, where one-third of the people would leave. That’s equivalent to 105 million Americans wanting to relocate to another country.

The Gallup poll made no mention of the countries to which people would least like to relocate. But I’m guessing that most of them would be on Freedom House’s list of the least free places in the world, such as Uzbekistan, Georgia, China, Turkmenistan, Chad, Cuba and North Korea.

I’m wondering how the hate-America/ blame-America-first crowd might explain the fact that so many people in the world, if they had a chance, would permanently relocate here. Maybe it’s that they haven’t been exposed to enough U.S. university professors.

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16 Million Private Insurance Plans to be Cancelled Due to Obamacare   By Dave Jolly

Doing his best to brainwash Americans into accepting Obamacare, our honest president kept telling everyone that they would be able to keep their present health plans when Obamacare went into effect.  This promise will go down in the list of his many other broken promises and perhaps one of his biggest lies.

According to a recent report, more than 1 million Americans have already been notified that their current private health insurance policies are being cancelled due to the implementation of Obamacare.  If health-policy expert Bob Laszewski is right, this is only the tip of the iceberg.  He says that nearly 16 million Americans will have their current plans cancelled due to Obamacare.

Why, may you ask?

Laszewski points out that there are about 19 million Americans with their own private health insurance policies.  Obamacare does have a grandfather clause to allow existing policies to remain in effect, but that clause has very strict requirements.  In fact the grandfathering requirements are so strict that it will only cover about 15% of the 19 million private policies.  The remaining 85% of existing policies, just over 16 million, fail to meet the grandfathering requirements, meaning that they will all be cancelled thanks to Obamacare.

Insurance companies around the country are already dropping policies like mad and it’s all due to Obamacare.  Here is a list of some of those companies and what they are dropping:

• Blue Cross in New Jersey dropping 800,000 policies.
• Aetna in New Jersey reporting that 1.1 million policies are at risk.
• Blue Cross in Florida dropping 300,000 policies.
• California has around 500,000 people with catastrophic plans that don’t comply with Obamacare.
• Blue Cross in Louisiana dropped Medicare D prescription plan, affecting 13,000 senior citizens.
• Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield dropping Medicaid and Family Health Plus programs, affecting 13,000 people.
• Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield sent letters to all of their policy holders warning them that any policies that don’t meet the Obamacare grandfathering requirements will be cancelled in 2014.  Numbers were not released.
• Medical Mutual of Ohio has completely pulled out of South Carolina, dropping 28,000 policies.

In the next month or two, we will see that list grow considerably.  So remember the next time you hear President Obama say that you’ll be able to keep your existing plans, remember that he is a liar 16 million times over.  Wouldn’t it be great if all 16 million Americans that lose their health plan due to Obamacare, congregate in front of the White House.  They need to surround the White House and hold it captive until Obama is forced to stand by his word and allow all of these cancelled policies to remain in effect.

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Anyone one that believes the Left Media supporting Obamacare is being played as a fool

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Barackalypse Now: Slavery is Legal Again and Food Stamp Zombies Want All Your Candy  By Donald Joy

Trick or treat!!  The word, according to Neil Cavuto, is that the gazillions of food stamp recipients across the land are to have their “benefits” reduced as of November 1st, and that the Department of Homeland Security is gearing up for widespread riots.

Such wonders abound in our neo-socialist dystopia of “hope & change.”  For the past several years, the Obama administration has aggressively sought to solidify and expand the democrat party’s grip on power by encouraging as many people as they possibly can to sign up for food stamps and other government programs, to make dependency on government a way of life for more and more generations of future voters.  For most readers, this is by now an elementary fact of political life.

Problem is, the free-lunch tree is being stripped of goodies very quickly…

Remember that story from about a month ago, where the socialist regime in Venezuela was stationing armed troops inside toilet paper factories, in order to enforce production and distribution quotas, due to severe shortages resulting from price controls?  Seems that centrally-planned economies can never satisfy human demands for goods and services, no matter how many times central planning is tried; nor does it matter who is doing the planning.

Government’s proper role is not to feed & take care of people, nor could it do so adequately even if that was its job.  Instead, government should promote the general welfare by helping to create conditions which allow people to prosper in freedom–chiefly, by protecting individual rights, especially property rights.

To repeat a quote often attributed to our country’s first president, George Washington(a man who knew a little something about the proper role of limited government–he refused the suggestion by some that he be crowned king of the new nation of America, and rebuked those who suggested it):  “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence–it is force.  Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

Today, we are “evolving” into more and more of a democracy, rather than the republic once cherished by those who fought so long and hard for liberty.  Increasingly, the masses of people can simply vote themselves less personal responsibility, and more of the property produced by others, by electing democrats to use the force of government to redistribute goods.  How much longer do you suppose before stuff here is inadequately produced at gunpoint, like in Venezuela?

Eminent black economist Walter Williams points out that during the time when chattel slavery was legal on this continent, there was (in addition to the usual plantation-bound, field hand arrangement) a sort of journeyman category of skilled slaves who actually lived rather independently from their owners.  They plied their particular specialized trades according to their own comings and goings, and often had families and homes separate from their masters; however, the extent of their being slaves in bondage was that their masters still owned them, and owned what they produced.  Their earnings were turned over to their masters, who allowed them to keep enough to maintain their separate livelihoods.  If they tried to evade this relatively liberal arrangement in any way, they could be legally dealt with, and harshly, their owners resorting to bounties and whatnot if necessary.

Compare such a category of chattel slave of yesteryear with the taxpayer of today–is there really that much difference?

The more skilled and productive the taxpayer, the more of his or her product that the voting democrat masters seize, leaving him or her (if the taxpaying slave happens to be very resourceful) enough to enjoy a tidy or even splendiferous separate existence, yes, but the arrangement really is no different in essential character.  We also have some very wealthy and highly skilled slaves today, owned by a multitude of democrat voters helping themselves to upwards of half of what the slaves produce.

So all of this can just continue on indefinitely, right?  No?

You mean to tell me the takers are vastly out-breeding and out-voting the makers?  You’re saying the makers are becoming disillusioned and discouraged? Yes indeedy, an Investor’s Business Daily headline from yesterday reads: “Welfare, Not Full-Time Work, Is Now America’s No. 1 Occupation.”

Trick or treat!!

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'60 Minutes' on Benghazi

In Sunday night's episode of "60 Minutes," CBS correspondent Lara Logan reported even more damning information regarding the Sept. 11, 2012, assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, dead. It's now firmly established that al-Qaida was responsible for the well-planned attack and that the Obama administration lied about its being a spontaneous protest about a YouTube video, all in order to preserve its "al-Qaida is decimated" narrative in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election. But Logan did have some interesting revelations.

Logan reported, "Sufian bin Qumu, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and long-time al-Qaeda operative, was one of the lead planners." Bin Qumu was sent to Gitmo in 2002, but was transferred by the Bush administration in 2007 to Libya, where he was eventually released.

Logan also interviewed a former British soldier and security officer at the installation with the assumed name Morgan Jones. He told of the advance flags and warning signs he saw from the moment he arrived five months before the attack. First, there were the al-Qaida flags flying openly. Then there was the absence of any security forces when he arrived at the U.S. compound. He said, "They were all inside drinking tea, laughing and joking."

Morgan says he spent the next five months warning about lax security to no avail. It's shocking that the warning signs were so clear, and yet nothing was done.  Greg Hicks, Ambassador Stevens' deputy based in Tripoli, spoke with Logan about the horror of learning during the attack that no help was on the way. "For a moment, I just felt lost," Hicks recounted. "I just couldn't believe the answer. And then I made the call to the Annex chief, and I told him, 'Listen, you've gotta tell those guys there may not be any help coming.' ... For the people that go out onto the edge, to represent our country, we believe that if we get in trouble, they're coming to get us. That our back is covered. To hear that it's not, it's a terrible, terrible experience." It's tragic that four Americans needlessly lost their lives, only to have their story lied about for political gain. Worse, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was ultimately responsible for all embassy security, will run for president in 2016 based on her resumé.

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Lord Kelvin Extolled as Giant of Science and Creationist

Peter Crutchley, writing for the BBC’s Religion and Ethics page, asked “Kelvin’s conundrum: Is it possible to believe in God and science?”  His answer is a resounding yes, because, as Crutchley describes, William Thomson (better known as Lord Kelvin) never wavered as a creationist through his long, productive scientific life.  Furthermore, as Crutchley goes on to say, a number of living scientists maintain that legacy.

Lord Kelvin is a giant of 19th Century science. He was also a devout Christian who found a way of reconciling his science and his faith, but not without finding himself in conflict with his contemporaries including Darwin.

Kelvin was no slouch: “Kelvin himself became a professor at the University of Glasgow in 1846 and in a 53 year career his scientific achievements were many and diverse.”  Some biographers focus on his mistakes (as if no scientist today is faultless), but Crutchley rightly emphasizes the successes of this highly-respected scientist who was knighted for his contributions.  Kelvin also combated Darwinian thinking by calculating an upper limit on the age of the earth.  Crutchley claims this put him at odds with Biblical creationists who found his calculation too long, but Kelvin intended it as an upper limit, not an actual age – a limit far too young for the time Darwin needed.

At the end of the article, Crutchley discusses whether science and religion are in conflict.  He gives first mention to the views of atheists like Dawkins and Hawking, but then gives substantial attention to a Christian and supporter of intelligent design:

Professor John Lennox, professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, countered Hawking’s argument in an article published in 2010.

“Much of the rationale behind Hawking’s argument lies in the idea that there is a deep-seated conflict between science and religion. But this is not a discord I recognise,” Lennox said.

Lennox, who has engaged in a number of debates with Richard Dawkins, believes that far from being at odds with science, the Christian faith actually makes perfect scientific sense.

“For me, as a Christian believer, the beauty of the scientific laws only reinforces my faith in an intelligent, divine creative force at work. One of the fundamental themes of Christianity is that the universe was built according to a rational, intelligent design.”

Lennox also referred to Joseph Needham, who wondered why China fell so far behind Europe in scientific achievement.  Needham “reluctantly came to the conclusion” that “European science had been spurred on by the widespread belief in a rational creative force, known as God, which made all scientific laws comprehensible.”

Crutchley ended by celebrating Kelvin’s secure scientific legacy, mentioning his crypt in the “scientists’ corner” of Westminster Abbey alongside that of Isaac Newton (incidentally, another creationist).

It was refreshing to see this article, despite a few disagreements we might have (see our biography of Lord Kelvin on this site).  One is Crutchley’s use of Francis Collins to argue against the old “warfare of science and religion” hypothesis, since Collins is a theistic Darwin-loving evolutionist who opposes supporters of intelligent design.  Another is this statement about Kelvin’s age-of-the-earth calculation, “His estimation for the age of the earth was far too young to satisfy geologists and Darwinists, but too old to satisfy creationists, leaving him caught between religion and science in this instance.”  This suggestion that creationists were not satisfied (where is his evidence?) overlooks the strategic ploy Kelvin was using.  He was not asserting that the earth was tens of millions of years old, but that it could not be older than that.  It was an upper limit.  Kelvin was not “caught between religion and science” at all.  He was a good debater!  Crutchley’s quote from Dr. Andrew Holmes that the calculation “can easily be dismissed” today is a half-truth.  While radioactivity was discovered later, complicating the picture, Kelvin’s reasoning from thermodynamics was sound.  The untruth part of the statement ignores the great deal of evidence accumulated by modern creation scientists (physicists and geologists with doctorates) who support an upper limit of thousands, not millions of years.  Now, 106 years after Kelvin’s death, the evidence for creation is much more substantial.  The Bible-Science Association of southern California, for instance, routinely fills some two dozen tables with books and videos of creation evidences at all levels from children’s books to technical treatises, across all scientific fields.  There are at least four peer-reviewed creation journals, and many organizations answering evolution and showing the evidence for creation from all directions, from physics to human history, from astronomy to genetics, from philosophy to entomology, covering all the bases.

Other than that, Crutchley did a fair job.  Now read our more extended biography of Kelvin that tells the story of his battle with Darwin over the age of the earth, and how it  vexed Charlie and his frat boys to the point of desperation.  Evolutionists assume Kelvin’s arguments have been dismissed, but what do they do with the even more powerful evidence creationists offer today?  They ignore it!  They can afford to, because the moyboys now have a century of storytelling, assumption, and momentum, aided by their co-conspirators in the media, to enshrine their old-earth beliefs with the imprimatur of science, leaving the contradictory evidence outside the gate of their walled castle that says “No creationists allowed!”  Inside, they wave “millions of years, billions of years” around like a magic wand that can make all their demons disappear and pull rabbits out of naturalistic hats.  Given enough time, stuff happens.

The evidence remains strong not just for some undefined designer, however, but for the God of the Bible who made the Earth and its life in six days.  The Creator revealed Himself to man and walked among us in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, who affirmed the literal Adam and Eve and the Flood of Noah.  He proved His authority by rising from the dead.  This Savior has been trusted personally by Kelvin, Maxwell, Boyle and many other outstanding scientists cataloged in our scientist biography section.  Science and religion are not in conflict.  What’s in conflict is naturalism and the evidence.

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Bob Woodward: NSA Scandal Caused by 'Secret Government'

By Melanie Batley

There is a "secret government" at the heart of the Obama administration which is the cause of a number of highly controversial policies, including the National Security Agency's wiretapping of world leaders, says Bob Woodward of The Washington Post.

Appearing Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," Woodward cited drone strikes against terrorist targets as another example of how a number of government agencies are operating on autopilot, beyond the control of elected officials.

"They need to review this secret world and its power in their government because you run into this rat's nest of concealment and lies time and time again, then and now," Woodward said.

Because the United States was so intent on stopping terrorism, he said, intelligence agencies have acquired too much power and run amok. "What's interesting here is the technology that gives us the information about the terrorists is very similar, essentially, to the technology that allows us to get conversations of world leaders on cell phones. And ... somebody's got to look at this and see where it's going," he said, referring specifically to the NSA's phone tapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone.

"You get to a point where what do you worry about? Secret governments." Problems rolling out the Obamacare website also illustrate the point.

"We've got an incredibly powerful government that gets on automatic pilot and you have people with inexperience who don't know about nuts and bolts questions."

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If Obama Isn’t In Charge, Who Is?  by Allen West

When Senator Obama was running for President he wanted to have the world – especially Europe – “like” America all over again. Who will ever forget the adoring crowd when he spoke in Germany? I would be hard-pressed to believe that crowd would assemble today to hear the empty rhetoric of hope and change.

In pursuit of being “liked” as if we were a Facebook page, America under President Obama struggles to be respected. Last week a scathing letter from Saudi Arabia, certainly not our closest ally, was an indicator of the lack of respect Mr. Obama has engendered.

Now the Obama administration is fighting against allegations of spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as some 34 other world leaders. The confusion coming from the NSA regarding eavesdropping exploits causes great concern as to what President Obama is being told. We appear to have a President who is either uninformed — perhaps purposefully — incompetent, or possibly lying outright to other world leaders and to the American people. Singularly, any of those circumstances would be troubling, but any combination is greatly disturbing.

If Barack Obama is not engaged in these type of decisions, then who is? The real question America must begin to ask forcefully, because certainly the mainstream media will not, is who exactly is in charge of the United States of America? Is it Valerie Jarrett? Is it George Soros? Is it David Axelrod? Is it David Plouffe?

Who is the “man behind the curtain” pulling the levers creating the great and powerful Wizard of Obama? Why is it that a Canadian company was responsible for setting up the healthcare.gov website, which over the weekend had another fatal error? There are so many questions that must be answered and just imagine, if we didn’t have House Republicans holding hearings, how much more in the dark would we be in America?

Certainly, the Democrat-controlled Senate is not serious about investigating this administration. And a Nancy Pelosi redux will not hold the Obama administration accountable in its final two years. The President who claimed he would restore America’s reputation in the world is completely destroying it. The question must be, was that his real intent?

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