The contents are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Support for Reid’s Health Care Scheme Falls to New Low
Just 38% of voters now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support measured for the plan in nearly two dozen tracking polls conducted since June.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.
Half the survey was conducted before the Senate voted late Saturday to begin debate on its version of the legislation. Support for the plan was slightly lower in the half of the survey conducted after the Senate vote.
Splits widen for Democrats over health reform
Obama’s mission to “reform” US health care vaulted another legislative hurdle over the weekend, but the scramble to secure his own party’s votes sheds light on the messy compromises that may be needed to get it to the finish line. Far left Democrats are unhappy.
Fissures between liberal and centrist Democrats cracked open on Sunday in the aftermath of a procedural vote, which paved the way for the estimated $848bn (€570bn, £514bn) draft Senate bill to be debated on the floor. Leaders hope there will be a vote on the bill by Christmas. If passed, the House and Senate versions will have to be mashed together.
In what wags have already dubbed the “Louisiana Purchase”, Mary Landrieu was offered at least $100m in extra federal money for her state. Ben Nelson won the omission of a provision that would strip health insurers of their anti-trust exemption. Blanche Lincoln won more time. The group’s disproportionate power in the debate has antagonized some liberal Democrats.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8e2ec4c-d794-11de-b578-00144feabdc0.html
Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama: The approval gap silently shrinks to a few points
Sarah Palin's poll numbers are strengthening. President Obama's are sliding. Guess what? They're about to meet in the 40s.
Depending, of course, on which recent set of numbers you peruse and how the questions are phrased, 307 days into his allotted 1,461, the 44th president's approval rating among Americans has slid to 49% or 48%, showing no popularity bounce from his many happy trips, foreign and domestic.
One poll even gives Palin a 47% favorable measure. Her nationwide book selling blitz is just beginning,. How well she is treated by the exposure is interesting to contemplate..
Opinion:
Democrat health care votes and next year’s list of targets for defeat in the Senate: (mark them well)
The primary strategy for saving America from such threats as socialized medicine and other far left legislation and pressures, is a simple one: go after and defeat all vulnerable Democrats and replace them.
Certainly every Democrat representing a Congressional District that voted for McCain over Obama in last year’s election, must be designated a target for defeat. Other Democrats will be added to that list as well, based on other factors.
For example, in the Senate, revelations hinting misdeeds and potential corruption on the part of Chris Dodd has made him quite vulnerable – as should be the case.
But every Democrat who voted for Harry Reid’s health care scheme, should be targeted in the short run. Others will be added.
But here is the first cut:
Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas)
Barbara Boxer (California)
Ken Salazar (Colorado)
Daniel Inouye (Hawaii)
Evan Bayh (Indiana)
Barbara Mikulski (Maryland)
Harry Reid (Nevada)
Chuck Schumer (New York)
Byron Dorgan (North Dakota)
Ron Wyden (Oregon)
Patrick Leahy (Vermont)
Russ Feingold (Wisconsin)
Christopher Dodd (Connecticut)
Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania)
Several of these are probably secure: Mikulski, Feingold, Leshy, Inouye, and Bayh.
That leave nine on which to focus efforts.
Dodd, Reid, Specter, and Boxer are all vulnerable, and Blanche Lincoln chose to make herself vulnerable with her vote Saturday.
The reasons for defeating the Reid scam are obvious, have been discussed at length, and will be examined more in the future. For the moment, we must do all that can be done to delay any possibility of passage and push this bill into a year in which a host of Democrats will have to vote then face voters at the ballot box.
Our duty is clear.
Buddy
But to make matters even more obvious and the issue even clearer:
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/20/the-demcare-bribe-list/
The Democare bribe list
Michelle Malkin
Scroll for updates…Landrieu boasts that her payoff was $300 million, not $100 million…
The Most Transparent Administration Ever won’t keep this list.
The Most Ethical Congress ever won’t keep it either.
So we’ll do the list ourselves and shine the light on the payoffs and last-minute backroom deals being made as Demcare heads for the first test vote tomorrow. (On a procedural note, Hill folks note that “Senate Republicans started floor debate today at 11:00 a.m. and will continue until 11:00 p.m. to discuss the $2.5 trillion, 2,074-page health care bill drafted in Senator Harry Reid’s office” ahead of the Saturday cloture vote. C-SPAN’s covering.)
Here are the top five Demcare bribes. Keep an eye out on bribes/offers for Democrat Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska; Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas; and Evan Bayh of Indiana. Leave comments or e-mail any new info to add to the list.
Here we go:
1) MARY LANDRIEU AND LOUISIANA: $100 million via Jonathan Karl:
On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”
The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”
I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.
In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)
Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.
How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
2) CALIFORNIA: $300 million, via LA Times:
Contained in the nearly 2,000-page House healthcare bill is a little-noticed provision — worth $300 million to California — that would increase federal Medicare payments to doctors in a wide swath of the state in response to complaints that low reimbursement rates have kept them from taking new patients.
Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel) was able to include a reimbursement calculation fix in the overhaul legislation. It was a testament to California’s political muscle in the House, where its delegation is the largest of any state and includes Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- San Francisco) and five committee chairs.
3) AARP (a long time stealth Democrat organization - not an honest representative of seniors)
a) Via Philip Klein: $18 million in stimulus money
b) The Medigap royalty/kickback scheme
4) THE ABORTION LOBBY, via LifeNews:
Two leading pro-life organizations that have analyzed the new 2,000-page government-run health care bill released by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid late yesterday say the legislation contains massive abortion funding and a fake amendment that does not truly ban it.
The Senate health care bill does not contain the Stupak amendment the House approved that stops abortion funding under the public option and affordability credits.
Instead, the measure contains a slightly-reworded version of the much-maligned Capps amendment, which a House committee approved on a partisan vote and which pro-life groups say is an accounting scheme to hide government-funded abortions.
“Reid has rejected the bipartisan Stupak-Pitts Amendment and has substituted completely unacceptable language that would result in coverage of abortion on demand in two big new federal government programs,” National Right to Life legislative director Douglas Johnson assured LifeNews.com late Wednesday.
“Reid seeks to cover elective abortions in two big new federal health programs, but tries to conceal that unpopular reality with layers of contrived definitions and hollow bookkeeping requirements,” he continued.
Rep. Lois Capps, whose amendment was deleted when the House adopted the Stupak language, has applauded Reid’s language.
“It appears that their approach closely mirrors my language which was originally included in the House bill,” she said in a statement.
Johnson notes that Reid’s bill establishes the public option and authorizes (on page 118) the Secretary of Health and Human Services to require coverage of any and all abortions throughout the public option program.
“This would be federal government funding of abortion, no matter how hard they try to disguise it,” he says.
He also says the bill creates the affordability credits — new tax-supported subsidies to purchase private health plans — and that these government-funded credits can be used to purchase health insurance plans that directly pay for abortions.
Attorney Mary Harned of Americans United for Life, has also examined the abortion sections of Reid’s new measure, which she says “provides for an unprecedented expansion of federally-funded abortion. ”
“The bill includes pro-abortion language and mirrors the false compromise Capps Amendment from the House debate — it allows the public option to include abortion coverage and provides federal subsidies for private plans which cover abortion,” she said.
5) BIG LABOR
Via Houston Chronicle, Goodies for labor tucked away in health bill:
While higher-profile aspects of health care reform drew attention, pro-union legislators slipped a variety of big benefits for labor into the proposed legislation. Quietly tucked among the proposals’ thousands of pages, these provisions have avoided much scrutiny.
One provision epitomizes the nature of this ploy. According to research firms, unions are woefully short of funds to pay their retirees’ anticipated insurance claims. Thus, under the House resolution, union leaders who have mismanaged these plans for their members could receive up to $10 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money, innocuously referred to as a “reinsurance program.”
Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Under the proposed public option, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius would wield tremendous discretionary authority to regulate participating health care workers. She and various federal panels, where the unions would have guaranteed seats, would take the lead in recommending health care policy. Thus, labor would have considerable influence over decisions affecting most doctors, nurses and patients.
The House resolution establishes a scenario that would effectively exclude non-union employers from eligibility to work on program-funded contracts. It also requires participating health care providers to pay wages and benefits that have been collectively bargained or that union-friendly appointees determine are competitive. This is plainly a move toward coerced unionization. With guaranteed seats at the table, unions are poised to control many newly formed oversight posts and/or committees, formed in connection with new employer mandates and cooperative health care associations.
Yet another provision would establish lucrative state training partnerships that contain little or no opportunities for non-union employee organizations. Provisions in Senate proposals would exempt union-negotiated health care plans from taxes on “Cadillac” health plans.
These features all encourage more unionization. The unions know that under Canada’s nationalized system, union membership among all health care workers is 61 percent, compared to just 11 percent in the U.S.
Increasing membership similarly in this country would swell labor’s coffers with as much as another $2 billion in dues.
In fact, Senate proposals include language that could force home health workers into unions. Disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and former California Gov. Gray Davis used this approach to repay political debts to the SEIU in their states. They reclassified state-reimbursed home health contractors as state employees, thus forcing them to pay union dues. Again and again, it is apparent that these union-friendly proposals have nothing do with improving our health care system.
is there another "list of bribes" source other than "Michelle Malkin". Not that I doutb her but a second relialble sourse, I think, would convince a stubbern friend.
Posted by: R. Hutten | December 04, 2009 at 12:43 PM