Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc - May 13 Alex Gimarc <[email protected]>
Monday, May 11, 2009 Interesting Items 5/11 - Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy - In this issue: 1. Retirees 2. Rationing 3. DC Vouchers 4. Shell Oil 5. CA Budget 6. Sovereignty 1. Retirees. I came across a poll done on retiree costs done by the Securian Financial Group on actual and perceived costs borne by retirees. There were 225 retirees surveyed in August 2008. Ages were between 70 and 75, and the average net worth was at least $1 million. Their largest yearly expense was combined taxes at just under $40,600 yearly. Health related costs were just under $6,700 yearly. They spent more on travel, cars, charity, real estate taxes, food, gifts and mortgages than health care. Before retirement, these folks believed their largest expense by far would be health care. Instead it was taxation. Keep this in mind as the as the push for Obamacare heats up. AAII Journal, April, 2009. 2. Rationing. Second health care related piece for your consideration: Next on the Hit parade out of the Obama administration and the fascist congress will be an attempted takeover of health care, supposedly to control costs. Funding for this mess will be the cap and trade carbon taxes, new taxes on businesses, and energy exploration. While cap and trade appears to be in some trouble in the House of Representatives, it appears today that Obama and congressional democrats are going to end up pushing both throughout the course of this summer. Some observers believe they will pass both entirely without Republican votes if necessary; passing the health care piece as part of the budget so that it is not subject to filibuster in the senate. Should this takeover of health care happen, expect very quickly a shortage of doctors, rationing, and increasingly long waits in treatment – even before the government does anything. There is no way that the feds can manage health care choices, treatments, research or anything else without creating shortages, jacking up overall costs, and quickly resorting to rationing as the only way to manage scarce resources. The elderly and handicappers will feel the impact of this first, and their lives will be brutally shortened. And after the elderly, infirm and handicappers are targeted, it will be a very short leap toward the same sort of treatment for any other group that does not fall inside the circle of favored groups for our new federal masters. Nationalized health care does not work. It drags down level of care for every single American except the chosen, well connected few inside the Beltway. This is about liberty, and we ought not to shrink from the challenge. 3. DC Vouchers. Congressional democrats and the Obama administration managed to kill one of the few good things for education within the District of Columbia. The program, started in 2004, provided 1,900 students with $7,500 yearly vouchers for pubic education. It has been a roaring success, with great test scores and a long waiting list. Recipients are selected via lottery. The program has long been a target for congressional democrats, who profit by keeping their voters just a poor, unsuccessful, angry, sullen and ignorant as possible. They managed to defund it via the stimulus package passed earlier this year. When it was passed, there were instantly many thousands of people angry at both congress and the Obama administration for killing it. Last week, Obama, playing good cop to congress’ bad cop, announced that the program would continue long enough for everyone currently in it to graduate. There were going to be no new scholarships given out or created. This program provides an opportunity for conservatives. It costs $14 million yearly, and would be an opportunity for conservatives to do something real in opposition to both Obama and the fascist congress. 4. Shell Oil. Shell Oil announced last Wednesday that they would be withdrawing their exploration program for the Beaufort Sea off the North Slope of Alaska. The drilling program had successfully been fought by the greens and nimbys in the north Slop Borough. Shell promises to be back with a restructured and significantly smaller exploration plan in 2010. The successful opposition to Shell’s exploration and drilling plans cost the State of Alaska over 800 high paying, technical jobs. Shell invested over $2 billion on offshore leases in the Chukchi Sea over the last couple of years and is heavily invested in successful exploration. The ADN article quoted a representative of the green and nimby opposition as saying that one exploration ship is one ship too many; that they would continue to worry about the impact of exploration on bowhead whales, polar bears, seals and other wildlife. He was also quoted being skeptical about Shell’s ability to clean up after a spill, saying that they had not demonstrated the ability to clean one up in the Arctic. Interesting notion that: If you run a sufficiently clean operation that has not had any spills, how is it possible to demonstrate your ability to clean one up afterwards? This bozo is criticizing Shell for running a clean, environmentally sensitive operation. 5. CA Budget. California is in the midst of one of their perennial budget battles, with several propositions on the ballot next week. All are being pushed as budget caps, controls on spending. The majority of them appear to be in trouble with the electorate ad may not pass. Part of the negotiations for the current budget in California has been pay cuts for union members of the Service Employees International Union (which donated over $60 million for Obama’s campaign last year) and the United Domestic Workers Union. Last week, the Obama Administration’s HHS threatened to withhold nearly $7 billion in stimulus money intended for Medicare / Medicaid payback unless the union wage cuts were repealed. So much for federalism under the Obama administration. This strong-armed intrusion into the California budget wars is not setting well with anyone on either side of the political aisle, generating a pretty nasty LA Times editorial over the weekend. Up here in Alaska, Governor Palin took no small amount of flack from the Loyal Opposition over her intention to refuse some of the stimulus due to federal strings. It appears that she was right after all. Unfortunately she rolled, and agreed to accepting the majority of the stimulus money. Big Lizards, Sat. 6. Sovereignty. Oklahoma last week joined a growing list of states asserting their Tenth Amendment rights by overriding a veto by their democrat governor and passing a Sovereignty Resolution. These resolutions are in process in over 40 states so far, having passed in around half of them. Alaska passed such a resolution unanimously last month. It is awaiting transmission to the Governor for action. When the feds get too big too quickly, there will be some pushback. It remains to be seen what final form this movement will take. There are some concerns, as the Paulians have jumped in front of the parade and are trying to take credit for it. On a parallel track, there is a draft constitutional amendment starting to make the rounds under the heading of Bill of Federalism. It was drafted by Randy Barnett of Georgetown and calls for a constitutional convention by the states to consider. The potential hijacking of such a convention by the community organizer / community activists makes this path a very dangerous one indeed. While it would be a very nice way to cut the Gordian knot of out of control federal government action and intrusion, the potential for destruction of liberty and property rights is significant. Note that the last time a constitutional convention was called to repair the Articles of Confederation; we ended up with something else entirely. It was a long time ago and the outcome was precisely the right outcome, but it was not what they were called into convention to do. I have long noted that the Laws of Physics apply to the political world, but with a twist: Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. In the political world the twist is that for every action, there will be a reaction. And that reaction is not necessarily equal or opposite. Obama and the fascist congress’ headlong drive into thuggery, destruction of property rights and outrageous spending is going to trigger a reaction, one that is already under way. The outcome of that reaction is as yet, unclear. More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations: The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/ MatSuValley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com District 28 http://www.dist28.com/ subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/ and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter * Shout Out * To any one organizng a Tea Party. Reply with your details (when where, etc) to this email with "TP" in the subject to be further posted to others on the Internet. July 4, 2009 http://www.teapartyday.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are welcome to join the [email protected] Rich Martin . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To join RichsRants, send email to: [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/richsrants?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
