Obama Gives a Health Care Waiver to Entire State of Maine

The federal government Tuesday granted Maine a waiver of a key provision in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, citing the likelihood that enforcement could destabilize the state's market for individual health insurance.
The U.S. Health and Human Services department said in a letter it would waive the requirement that insurers spend 80 cents to 85 cents of every premium dollar on medical care and quality improvement. Instead, the letter said, the state could maintain its 65 percent standard for three years, with the caveat that HHS intends to review the figures after two years.
The decision makes Maine the first state to receive a waiver of the requirement. Similar requests are pending from Kentucky, Nevada and New Hampshire.
In seeking the waiver, Maine Insurance Superintendent Mila Kofman feared that one of three major insurers offering individual plans in Maine would withdraw from the market altogether if the federal requirement remained in place. The insurer, MEGA Life and Health Insurance Co., has 37 percent of the state's individual market.http://nation.foxnews.com/obamacare-waivers/2011/03/08/obama-gives-health-care-waiver-entire-state-maine?cmpid=NL_FiredUpFoxNation_20110309

Muslim Brotherhood Strips Bylaws From Website

The Muslim Brotherhood removed its bylaws from its English-language website just days after longtime Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak was driven from office.
The Brotherhood, which has been banned in Egypt, appears eager to promote a more moderate image and downplay its past history of Islamic extremism in hopes of gaining a spot on the ballot in future Egyptian elections.
“The bylaws have long been a source of discussion and debate on the Internet because of the group’s stated intention to create an Islamic state, uniting Muslims around the world,” observes Steven Emerson, executive director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
“It’s not clear why the bylaws disappeared, but the timing is highly suspicious. With a genuine opportunity to appear on an Egyptian ballot, they have vanished from public view within days of President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.”
Tellingly, the bylaws remain posted on the Brotherhood’s Arabic-language site, Emerson notes.
The vanished bylaws cited “the need to work on establishing the Islamic State,” and sought “the sincere support for a global cooperation in accordance with the provisions of the Islamic shariah.”
They also stressed the “need to inform the masses, Muslim and non-Muslims, of Islamic teachings.”
Emerson writes: “Now, it seems, the Brotherhood sees its written bylaws as something they don’t want to be read by the English-speaking world.”
As for claims the Brotherhood is moderating its positions, Emerson discloses that as recently as September, the organization’s General Guide Mohammed Badie said Muslims are duty-bound to make the Koran the law of Egypt.
And another senior member of the Brotherhood, Kamal Helbawy, said a week ago that Egypt needs “innocent, honest and brave leaders like” Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV in February, former Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle warned: “The Muslim Brotherhood is potentially a very serious problem, since it is committed to the global expansion of an extreme approach to Islam, which is strict shariah law.
“I know a lot of people take a different view now, but they’re not looking at what the Muslim Brotherhood has done from its inception and they’re not listening to what the Muslim Brotherhood is saying in Arabic. They’re listening to what’s being said in English and that’s a very different story.”newsmax.com

Clean up your own Trash First

In a Newsmax.TV exclusive interview, determined Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Friday began the legal notification process that could lead to 1,500 state employees losing their jobs in April. He also said that President Barack Obama should stay out of his state’s fiscal crisis and instead ought to focus on “the much, much graver budget crisis we have in our nation’s capital, which he’s failed to lead on.” 

The GOP governor said the jobs will be saved, however, if at least one of 14 AWOL Democratic state senators return to the state next week, which would allow the Wisconsin Senate the quorum it needs to pass Walker’s “budget repair bill.”

Wisconsin has been mired in weeks now as thousands of union members, many of them bused in from neighboring states, march to protest the fiscal austerity measures that Walker maintains are necessary to rein in a $3.6 billion deficit. Among his proposals are limitations on unions’ ability to conduct collective bargaining, which would be limited to negotiating salaries. Unions would have no say in how much their members pay for pension and health benefits.
Read more on Newsmax.com: Gov. Walker: Obama Should Fix His Own Budget Crisis
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!


Bailey: I think that Obama should clean up his own trashy backyard before he starts complaining about  his neighbors. What a hypocrite!

14 Missing Dems got Big Money from Union

The 14 Wisconsin Democratic senators who fled to Illinois share more than just political sympathy with the public employees and unions targeted by Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill.

The Senate Democrats count on those in the public sector as a key funding source for their campaigns.

In fact, one out of every five dollars raised by those Democratic senators in the past two election cycles came from public employees, such as teachers and firefighters, and their unions, a Journal Sentinel analysis of campaign records shows.

"It's very simple," said Richard Abelson, executive director of District Council 48 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "We have interests and because of that we attempt to support candidates who support our interests. It's pretty hard to find Republicans who support our interests these days."

Bailey: It most be nice to get free insurance and a free pension plan for life.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/missing-wisconsin-democrats/2011/02/28/14-missing-dems-got-big-money-union?cmpid=NL_FiredUpFoxNation_20110301#ixzz1FTNDcsgr

Look like Jackasses

As members of Congress fight over what to cut in the current federal budget to avert a government shutdown, lawmakers are about to receive a blockbuster report that could provide a roadmap to potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in waste. The nonpartisan General Accounting Office (GAO) is poised to release a report Tuesday that one senator said "will make us all look like jackasses."
"Go study that (report). It will show why we're $14 trillion in debt," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. "Anybody that says we don't look like fools up here hasn't read the report."
The report, a summary of which was obtained by Fox News, was mandated by Congress the last time it raised the debt limit in January 2010. In its analysis of federal agencies, the GAO found 33 areas with "overlap and fragmentation."
"Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, or fragmentation could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services," the report says. In one example, the report found that if the Defense Department were to make "broader restructuring" of its "military health care system" it "could result in annual savings of up to $460 million."
Even more scathing is the duplication investigators found in the nation's biodefense efforts, with the report essentially saying that the billions of dollars spent annually is the responsibility of no one individual and that there is no plan for post-attack coordination, this on the heels of a 2010 federal commission finding that gave the U.S. a "failing grade" in its prevention measures.


Read more: http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/02/28/gao-details-billions-federal-waste-report-obtained-fox#ixzz1FLq6Myuw

WHAT IS GOING on in Wisconsin will come soon to a neighborhood near you.

All governments, city, state and federal, are running out of money. Every night on the news stories of budget deficits abound.

This could be a good thing. Bloated salaries and outrageous benefits for public sector workers was easier to overlook when the economy was rosy, and the impending disaster "can" was being kicked down the road.
It is time to confront the issues that are sending almost all governments into bankruptcy.

The silver lining?

There are more of us in the private sector than there are in the public sector. Believe me, that is not for lack of trying by people who continue to expand government programs and bureaus within the bureaus. But what politicians seem to overlook is that no government jobs can exist without some people in the private sector paying taxes to support them.
Now is the perfect time to get those who have not been paying attention to start taking notice.
Many of us make a certain salary yet are supporting our counterparts in the government who make more than we do.
Not only that, but we are responsible for their retirement and health care for life. They may participate toward those benefits, but it has been minimal.
It is time for them to join the rest of us and make the sacrifice.http://www.marinij.com/opinion/ci_17476216

Grow up People, nothing is for FREE!

http://townhall.com/cartoons/2011/2/23/80843