Posts Tagged ‘Health Care’

Abortion, breast cancer, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and pro-life alternatives

Abortionbreastcancer.com is an organization that is getting the word out to women of all the risk factors that can lead to breast cancer. Please take some time to go to their website and tell others about them. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is October.

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Like many families, my grandmother and great-grandmother both had breast cancer. The issue of wanting to fight what harms your family or friends is noble. So when I tell people that I do not support Susan G. Komen an organization that exists to “fight breast cancer”, I normally get the look of one: why would you abandon your family or two: oh there goes one of those extremist.

However, my reasons are not that extreme, but rather principled.

I’m sure many of you reading this article have also been confronted with the issue of, “if I ‘m pro-life, how can I support an organization that supports the nation’s leading abortion provider?”  Hopefully, the following principles can shed some light on how to respond sympathetically, yet firm with why you cannot wear pink, or join the race, or all the various ways that Susan G. Komen is supported.

Principle # 1 Don’t give to organizations that promote the shedding of innocent blood.

If this were a list of commandments, we could start with Thou Shall Not Kill. However, Proverbs 6:17 states that one of the seven things God hates are hands that shed innocent blood.

Unfortunately, Susan G. Komen has given over $3 million dollars between 2003 and 2008 to Planned Parenthood which is the nation’s leading abortion provider.

While Susan G. Komen makes claims that these grants go for breast exams, once the funds go to Planned Parenthood they are fungible. For example, you can throw two twenty dollar bills into a purse one from a friend and one from your own account, but when you go to pay the light bill you use both.

The same is true with Planned Parenthood’s money it receives from Komen. Whenever someone applies for a grant they can say that while this $5,000 is going to breast cancer research, 20 percent of that money is going to pay for administrative costs like keeping the lights on and paying rent. So in essence, the money that people are raising to fight breast cancer is also going to keep the lights on at Planned Parenthood.

According to the 2008 Annual Report from Planned Parenthood, breast cancer services decreased by 4% and abortion procedures increased by 6%. In 2008, Susan G. Komen gave $731,000 to Planned Parenthood.

Principle # 2 Know and Recognize the Risk Factors for the Disease You are Trying to Prevent.

There are certain risks that can increase an individual’s chance of getting breast cancer. While Susan G. Komen says that they believe in knowing your risk factors, they have repeatedly denied the link between breast cancer and one of the greatest avoidable risk factors, abortion.

According to Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, “29 out of 38 worldwide epidemiological studies show an increased risk of breast cancer of approximately 30% among women who have had an abortion.”

Read more at Life Site News

Putnam County Right to Life has provided links these pro-life alternatives to the Susan G. Komen Foundation:

Because the Komen ‘Race for the Cure’ organization is a documented funder and partner of Planned Parenthood, click here for documentation, you may wish to familiarize yourself with these alternative agencies which work to prevent breast cancer without violating the sanctity of human life.

Breast Cancer Prevention Institute:  Founded by Joel Brind, Ph.D. and Angela Lanfranchi, M.D.; a leader in the study of the link between abortion / contraceptives and breast cancer; 1-86-NO CANCER (1-866-622-6237); http://www.bcpinstitute.org

The Polycarp Research Institute:  A non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating high-quality research designed to enhance the physical, psychological and spiritual condition of mankind; 717-732-4904; http://www.polycarp.org

Coalition on Abortion / Breast Cancer:  A leading international women’s organization that provides education and information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer; 877-803-0102; http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com.

Jill Stanek: Abortion, breast cancer, and the Susan Komen Foundation

Life Issues Institute: Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation’s Link to Abortion

President Obama Lied About Not Using Federal Funds for Abortions

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The Discovery Attacker: A True Green Believer

News Wednesday afternoon that an armed gunman had entered the cable TV headquarters of Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, Maryland and begun taking hostages alarmed people throughout the Washington, D.C. area and around the country. As law enforcement officials negotiated with the suspect, posts on social media outlets inevitably began arguing over the ideological motivations of the hostage-taker, James J. Lee. Conservatives were quick to point out the suspect’s radical environmentalist manifesto, while left-leaning sources disclaimed any connection. News a few hours later that the suspect had been shot and killed by police spawned a round of smug black humor, concluding that he had been successful in accomplishing one of his chief demands, a smaller world population.

The immediate verdict from the online world seems to be that Lee was simply insane, even as differently motivated voices tried to pin the source of his insanity on each other. If we take a step back, though, we can look at the demands he made — which law enforcement officials said “mirrored” those in his online manifesto — and see the wider context of Lee’s beliefs.

His focus on population control is clear from the beginning. Lee demands that the Discovery Channel and its affiliates must “Focus…on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution.” On the topic of immigration, he recommends that we “find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that” and in order to safeguard the future of wildlife, he writes that doing so “means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!”

While his rhetoric is crude and offensive, that doesn’t mean his ideas don’t have wider currency. From the time of Paul Ehrlich’s infamous 1968 manifesto The Population Bomb to the work of groups like Zero Population Growth (first re-branded as simply “ZPG” and currently known as “Population Connection”), the specter of unsupportable population growth has been one of the environmental movement’s greatest scare stories. It’s the kind of all-encompassing disaster that was supposed to be hard to ignore — even if you didn’t care about the environment, the pitch goes, you have to be worried about overpopulation! You don’t want millions of people to starve to death or see wars spawned by a fight over food and scarce natural resources, do you?

But how does a concern over famines and resources depletion translate into the vicious anti-human ideology of a James Lee? The answer is clear — combine one old theory about the inherent limitations of mankind with one new theory about the alienation of human beings from the rest of the natural world. Lee provides us with all of the leads we need when he demands that the Discovery Channel “develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences.”

Read more at American Spectator

The Malthusian Delusion and the Origins of Population Control

James Lee Discovery Channel bomber – Al Gore disciple

My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn – James Jay Lee’s bible

John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet

Call for two-child limit on families from the Government’s leading green adviser

Fewer Children to Save the Planet?

Environmentalism Is the New Religion

Inhofe: Some Senators Share Holdren’s View That Born Babies Are Not ‘Human Beings’

People asks: How many kids are too many?

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Mark Levin: We can’t just rally. We must be political activists to save our country!


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From the Right Scoop:

An excellent monologue from Mark Levin talking about how we must be active in politics in order to take back our country. He says we can’t just sit on the sidelines and expect to win the biggest elections of our lifetimes, in 2010 and 2012, and we can’t leave these great Tea Party candidates hanging out to dry. We must be politically active to restore our country to the principles on which it was founded.

You know, personally, I felt like Levin was playing off of the big rally this weekend, even though he never mentioned it directly. He has always been critical of Beck who tends to take a somewhat ‘hands off’ approach to politics and I think there is something to be said for that. But in this monologue I think Levin was saying ok, this rally thing was good, but we must turn this into a political movement or else we lose.

Now to just differentiate for a second, Beck believes that if you live up to a high standard by turning back to God and letting Him guide you, then you will pick candidates who reflect the Godly principles of how you live. I think he’s right and I don’t think Levin would disagree at all. But Levin looks at the practical side as well and emphasizes that you must do the hard work of getting candidates elected in order to affect change. I think he’s right as well. In fact I think they are both right and that both philosophies need each other to get maximum effectiveness of political change.

But let me add that I don’t believe that Beck would just have you change your lives for nothing. I think he too believes you must be politically active as well, or else we lose. The main difference in the two of them really is nothing more than emphasis. Beck is emphasizing the ‘God side’ while Levin is emphasizing the ‘activist side’.

But try not to look at this as Beck vs Levin and visa versa. They both have the same goal in the end of seeing this country turned back to God and the founding principles on which this great nation was established.

Activism or Awareness? A False Choice

Join the fight to take back our nation!

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The Left is in Full Retreat: Time to Step Up the Pressure

Last Thursday, a who’s who of the progressive movement met for a conference call organized by Families USA and hosted by the advocacy group for government-run health care, The Herndon Alliance. The Alliance’s partners include AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, MoveOn and La Raza, among many others. Democratic pollsters John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg were the call’s main event, and they were there to deliver some bad news.  Politico reports:

“Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. … The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.”

Health care is not the only issue where the left is retreating in the face of strong disapproval from the American people. Versionista, a Portland, Oregon-based company that tracks changes to the White House website, reported last week that the Obama administration had made “whole-cloth” changes to its “Energy & Environment” issues page. Out are any references to a cap on carbon emissions and a campaign pledge to spend $150 billion on clean energy technologies. In its place the new White House site includes a three-minute Earth Day-themed video from President Barack Obama. And across the country, leftist Senate candidates in Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana have all come out against President Obama’s impending trillion dollar tax hike, due in January.

As satisfying as it is to see Obamacare’s supporters come to terms with the failure of their grand plan, it is not enough for conservatives to just say “no.” Conservatives must have real plans for reform if the American people choose to empower them. The Heritage Foundation’s Solutions for America chapter on Getting Health Care Reform Right recommends:

Repeal Obamacare: There is a precedent for repealing highly unpopular and misguided laws: the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988. Recently, over 70% of Missouri residents rejected a key provision of Obamacare­—the requirement that individuals purchase a health insurance plan designed and approved by government bureaucrats. The House of Representatives even voted recently to repeal one provision of Obamacare that will impose draconian paperwork requirements on millions of small businesses. The easiest way to address all these grievances: repeal Obamacare.

Promote Personal Control Through Tax Equity: Today, workers who purchase coverage through their employer receive an unlimited tax break on the value of their health care benefits. However, those who purchase coverage on their own receive no comparable tax break. Ideally, the current tax exclusion should be replaced (or at the very least capped) with a system of universal tax credits for taxpayers. Medicaid and SCHIP spending should also be redirected to help low-income individuals and families purchase private health insurance

Read more at the Heritage Foundation

Warning for Republicans: Don’t underestimate Barack Obama

Half-Measures Won’t Work Against Tyranny

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Government raids increasing on farms and private food-supply clubs

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” ~ Ronald Reagan


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Here come the food police – literally!

When the 20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday a couple weeks back, Sharon Palmer didn’t know what to say. This was the third time she was being raided in 18 months, and she had thought she was on her way to resolving the problem over labeling of her goat cheese that prompted the other two raids. (In addition to producing goat’s milk, she raises cattle, pigs, and chickens, and makes the meat available via a CSA.)

But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn’t the least bit tongue-tied. “She started back-talking to them,” recalls Palmer. “She said, ‘If you take my computer again, I can’t do my homework.’ This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven’t gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids.”

As part of a five-hour-plus search of her barn and home, the agents — from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County Sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture — took the replacement computer, along with milk she feeds her chickens and pigs.
 
While no one will say officially what the purpose of this latest raid was, aside from being part of an investigation in progress, what is very clear is that government raids of producers, distributors, and even consumers of nutritionally dense foods appear to be happening ever more frequently. Sometimes they are meant to counter raw dairy production, other times to challenge private food organizations over whether they should be licensed as food retailers.

What’s behind all these raids? They seem to stem from increasing concern at both the state and federal level about the spread of private food groups that have sprung up around the country in recent years — food clubs and buying groups to provide specialized local products that are generally unavailable in groceries, like grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, fermented foods, and, in some cases, raw dairy products. Because they are private and limited to consumers who sign up for membership, these groups generally avoid obtaining retail and public health licenses required of retailers that sell to the general public. (For more on what’s behind the raids, see this new post.)

Read more at Grist

S510 Vote Delayed, But Not Defeated

Food freedom under attack

The FDA vs Raw Milk and the Constitution

Delia Lopez: Our government has gone Gestapo

The Oregon Consumers and Farmers Association endorses Delia Lopez for Congress

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Worldview Revolution Taking Place in America


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How to Brainwash a Nation

Seven Lessons The Church Must Learn From Nazi Germany

David Horowitz on Democrats’ Shadow Cabinet and the New Communists

Activism or Awareness? A False Choice

Join the fight to take back our nation!

It’s Time To Take Back Education

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Obama Administration’s Medicare Issues First-Ever Denial of FDA-Approved Treatment to Cancer Patients

Death panels?  What death panels? 

From the Doug Ross Journal:

Just days after the recess appointment of Donald Berwick, the controversial new head of Medicare and Medicaid, the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance posted the following grim news: for the first time in history, an FDA-approved anti-cancer therapy may not be covered by Medicare.

Provenge, a vaccine to treat the recurrence of prostate cancer, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)… Medicare usually covers the cost of FDA-approved anti-cancer therapies. However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is still reviewing whether it will cover Provenge, and at what rate.

The CMS statute states that Medicare must cover therapies that are reasonable and necessary, while the FDA is instructed to approve drugs that are safe and effective. Because of the conflicting Federal coverage and approval requirements, there are some non-FDA approved drugs (called off-label drugs) that are paid for by CMS. However, with respect to Provenge, it appears that CMS is arguing that while the treatment is safe and effective, it may not be reasonable and necessary. For the first time, an FDA approved anti-cancer therapy may not be covered by Medicare.

A life-saving cancer treatment “may not be reasonable and necessary”? Gee, that kind of decision-making by an unelected federal bureaucracy certainly sounds like a death panel to me.

Say, I thought the President said that pre-existing conditions would always be covered. Isn’t cancer a pre-existing condition?

Oh. What’s this?

Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Ovarian Cancer National Alliance Appeal to FDA and Key Lawmakers on Avastin Issue

Patient Access and the Impact on Development of New Treatments at the Heart of Komen for the Cure’s Concerns

Susan G. Komen for the Cure® and the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance (OCNA) today urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to continue to allow the use of the drug bevacizumab, commonly known as Avastin, for metastatic breast cancer patients, noting that it is effective for some patients and warning of a chilling effect on new drug development if approval is withdrawn…

…In a joint letter sent to the FDA and key Congressional lawmakers Thursday, Komen for the Cure and the OCNA wrote, “We are particularly concerned about patients who are presently receiving bevacizumab and the message that this decision sends about drug development for women with advanced breast cancer.”

…According to Komen, the decision to use Avastin should be made between a woman and her doctor after a thoughtful conversation that carefully considers the drug’s benefits and risks. Komen does not want to see access limited by Medicare and Medicaid.

Gee, and I thought no one would be denied coverage by ObamaCare.

Didn’t the President himself say, “I want seniors to know, despite what some have said, these reforms will not cut your guaranteed benefits.”

That’s what President Obama told us, endlessly and repeatedly, for months on end.

Do you mean to say he was lying?

Folks, this is precisely why the cancer survival rate for the U.K. is so much lower than that of the U.S. — and, in some cases, lower than Eastern Europe’s. And why Donald Berwick’s nickname is Dr. Death.

America’s seniors are about to find out that having coverage is not the same thing as receiving care. And our seniors are about to pay the piper.

This is eerily similar to an incident last year, where the state-run Oregon Health Plan offered to pay for a woman’s physician-assisted suicide, but not life-saving cancer drugs.

I’m getting flashbacks of Monty Python: “I’m not dead yet!”

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Rationing health care is now official Obama policy

Administration comes clean, explains death panels

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New fairy tales from Obamaland

It cannot be said often enough that Washington is a city of endless fairy tales. Politicians in both parties can be found spinning these fantasies, but the yarns have been coming especially fast and furious since President Obama and his two best buddies — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — have been running the government. They spun two new fantasies just this week.

The first was that without the latest Obama-Reid-Pelosi government bailout, at least 100,000 teachers would lose their jobs this fall. That’s why the $26 billion “stimulus” bill passed by the House in an “emergency” session included $10 billion for “job creation.” That’s a charming legend for the gullible.

The reality, as the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci noted, is that “it’s common practice for school districts to overestimate the number of teachers that will be laid off in advance of budgets being set, and in advance of the school year.” So the vast majority of those dire warnings of 100,000 teachers being laid off were mostly just hot air.

And here’s something else to ponder: If it cost $10 billion to save 100,000 teachers’ jobs, they are each being paid $100,000 a year. Since the national average teacher salary is just over $54,000 a year, somebody — federal bureaucrats? — is making a bundle on overhead.

The second was the assertion by the Medicare trustees in their annual report to Congress that Obamacare “improves the financial outlook for Medicare substantially.” That assessment was based on multiple assumptions that, frankly, defy political reality.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

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Missouri Voters Soundly Reject Obamacare


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Missouri voters dealt Obamacare a significant setback yesterday, approving a statewide ballot measure by an overwhelming 71 percent.

The vote was the first time citizens had an opportunity to cast a ballot on the unpopular healthcare law. Missouri’s measure prohibits the federal government from enforcing the individual mandate to buy health insurance. The victory sends a strong message about Obamacare in a bellwether state.

“We’re excited and proud to be ground zero in the battle against this misbegotten federal healthcare reform,” said Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder in an exclusive interview. “We had the first vote in the nation in the Show-Me State. And we’re showing the nation the way to repeal and replace this big government, big bureaucracy, one-size-fits-all law.”

Read more a Human Events

Nullification Movement Gains Steam: Missouri Rejects Healthcare Mandates

Show Me State Shows Obamacare the Door — In a Rout!

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Obamacare’s bureaucratic web clearly mapped for the first time

Four months after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously declared “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it,”a congressional panel has released the first chart illustrating the 2,801 page health care law President Obama signed into law in March.

Developed by the Joint Economic Committee minority, led by U.S Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the detailed organization chart displays a bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates.

“For Americans, as well as Congressional Democrats who didn’t bother to read the bill, this first look at the final health care law confirms what many fear, that reform morphed into a monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington bureaucrats,”said Brady, the committee’s senior House Republican. “If this is what passes for health care reform in America, then God help us all.”

Brownback, the committee’s ranking member, added, “This updated chart illustrates the overwhelming expansion of government control over health choices and the bewildering complexity facing everyone affected by this law. It doesn’t take long to see how the recently signed health care bill causes a hugely expensive and explosive expansion of federal control over health care. Personal choices that should be between a doctor and a patient will quickly be strangled in a never ending web of bureaucracy.”

Read more at the New Patriot Journal

ObamaCare Looks Worse Upon Further Review

Obamacare’s disastrous effects are already showing

The Problems with Socialized Health Care

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The Stark Truth: If Obamacare Is Legal, Then Government Has No Limits


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Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) is one of the more honest members of the left in Congress. Long before President Barack Obama first started pushing Obamacare, Rep. Stark was advocating for a government “Medicare for All” takeover over our nation’s health care system.

Rep. Stark’s honest view about the proper role and power of the federal government were on display again last month at a townhall in Hayward, CA.  In the video posted, a constituent asks Stark: “If this legislation is Constitutional, what limitations are there on the federal governments ability to tell us how to run our private lives? … If they can do this, what can’t they?”

Stark eventually answers: “The Federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country.”

Stark’s logic, if not his understanding of the Constitution, is dead on.

Read more at The Foundry

Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Obamacare

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Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Obamacare


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From ObamacareClassAction.com:

The purpose of this lawsuit is to reverse Supreme Court precedent related to the Commerce clause and thereby overturn Obamacare. The Supreme Court has historically erred in its interpretation of the Constitutional role of the Federal Government. Recent Supreme Court rulings hint that they may be willing to take another look at Commerce clause precedent. Obamacare is so over reaching and so onerous, that it must either be repealed in Congress or struck down in the courts. We must fight this on both fronts. This is our historic opportunity to reverse America’s trend toward Socialism by overturning this unconstitutional precedent.

Private Citizen Sues The Feds

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American citizens appeal ObamaCare

When Commerce is not Commerce

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Mama Can’t Find a Doctor, and Other Fallout From New Democratic Legislation

Lately, even the most elite in media have started to report some of the intended and unintended consequences of the rushed and ill-conceived federal health care bill passed earlier this year by the Barack Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress.

And I’ve had my first eye-opener. Like everyone of their generation, my parents automatically qualify for Medicare. Soon after the new health care bill passed, their personal physician retired. When they set about looking for a new one, they kept hearing the same refrain: “We are no longer accepting new patients.”

Why? Because while Congress fashioned a massive — and massively expensive — new health care program, they have also allowed Medicare reimbursements to physicians to be reduced. Many seniors have physicians who are their contemporaries because they’ve been under their care for many years. As these older physicians retire, their patients are scrambling to find replacements. They’re encountering “do not apply” signs on the doors of medical facilities.

Now that’s change you can believe in.

Next comes the unfolding realization that the new law is stocked with all sorts of little gems that are destined to make life harder for the young and those still working. For example, many small businesses already dread the annual task of creating 1099 tax forms for those individual contractors they pay each year for goods and services. Apparently they now also will be required to issue similar forms to every corporation, vendor or other party they pay during the taxable year.

As interpreted by many, the new law suggests the need for, say, a local hardware store to search out the tax identification number of huge corporations they pay for products or services. If this interpretation of the law is correct, and it’s truly enforced, business in America will be ground to a halt by a cascade of paperwork.

Also in the coming months, all types of entities touched by the new financial reform laws will suddenly learn that they are required to comply with new bureaucratic rules related to the ethnicity, or other demographic profiles, of their employees. Maybe this is well-intended, but once again the burden of compliance will be staggering.

There’s more. Under the guise of a “watered down” climate bill, there could soon be plenty of opportunities to add even more costs to American businesses. Ultimately, those costs will be passed on to consumers, of course.

Read more at Townhall.com

Small businesses cancelling health coverage due to increasing costs

The Tax Tsunami On The Horizon

Britian’s National Health Service forced to make sweeping cuts to services: restrictions on the most basic treatments for sick and injured

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The Tax Tsunami On The Horizon

Many voters are looking forward to 2011, hoping a new Congress will put the country back on the right track. But unless something’s done soon, the new year will also come with a raft of tax hikes — including a return of the death tax — that will be real killers.

Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.

But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.

Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn’t the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it’s not just the rich who will pay.

The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.

But the damage doesn’t stop there.

The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.

Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000. Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.

Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.

But even more tax headaches lie ahead. This “second wave” of hikes, as Americans for Tax Reform puts it, are designed to pay for ObamaCare…

Read More at Investors Business Daily

The Obama Tax Tsunami is Here

Obamacare socks middle class with $3.9 billion tax increase

The Obama Tax Trap: How some Republicans are preparing to walk right into it

The Price of Obamacare

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American Jeopardy: What is Fascism?

Over the years, words lose meaning and often take on new forms that in no way represent their original usage. This can be observed in the now taboo word “fascism.” Fascism is now most closely associated with the system of government that effected the slaughter of over 6 million Jews and other political prisoners. But at its core, fascism is really no more than a system where government, through agreements with the private sector, controls virtually all property and income indirectly.

Prosperity and economic growth become the domain of government. The philosophical aim is to eliminate recessions by eliminating robust growth — the underlying philosophy being that if there is no boom, there will be no bust. This system usually appeals to populations coming out of severe economic depressions and upheaval, as in pre-Nazi Germany during the period of the 1930s.

The problem with the system is obvious: property-owning democracy must take a back seat to the interests of the state. And, by blurring the distinction between the private sector and the public sector, individual liberty can often be conditioned on complicity with state aims, as manifested in the private sector sphere.

It is the go along to get along syndrome. With the right leverage, people will do anything. Think BP and Obama’s radical energy agenda. If threatened with destruction, BP will likely comply with any and every request of the brazen Obama Administration. This type of interaction is essential to the success of fascism.

Fascism is, however, correctly associated with tyranny since nations that employ the tenets of fascism almost always transition from a republican or parliamentary form of government to some sort of personality cult usually centered on an economic “savior.” Fascism requires extensive state control, and if this control is not centralized in a singular personality, the results will be muddied and plagued with excessive overlap. Many envisioned President Obama in this way prior to the election, and President Obama certainly did not hesitate to utilize workers’ paradise imagery during his campaign.

During an early period of popular expectation — for “hope and change,” perhaps — the savior can implement highly undemocratic and centralist policies simply by ignoring the existence of laws and constitutions that preclude this sort of behavior. Before citizens and their representatives have time to respond to these abuses, the savior has already opened new fronts and perpetrated new abuses. It is the finger in the wind method. If there are no outcries of public furor for the scrapping of, say, states’ rights, the savior will know that even greater violations are possible. President Obama has done just this.

Read more at American Thinker

Is Obama a Socialist?

Corporate or Government Takeover? Two Sides, Same Coin

To Own Or Be Owned—That Is The Question

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Note: Please keep your comments respectful and relevant to the topic at hand. I will not approve ad hominem attacks or profanity. Nor will I approve comments by advertisers using their business or product and hyperlink as their username. This blog is not a forum for free advertising.
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Rachel's bookshelf: read

Date Night in a Minivan: Revving Up Your Marriage after Kids ArriveMyths, Lies, & Half-Truths: How Misreading the Bible Neutralizes ChristiansOn Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing NonfictionTwo Treatises of Government & A Letter Concerning TolerationHeavenYour Time-Starved Marriage: How to Stay Connected at the Speed of Life

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