McCaughey: Surge in Costs Start Of Obamacare Disaster

A new report claims that Obamacare is only negligibly responsible for the surge in health insurance premiums this year, but former New York Lt. Gov. and healthcare expert Betsy McCaughey says its provisions do come with a steep price and there is “no tooth fairy.”


The survey of private and public employers conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation disclosed that the average cost of a family policy climbed 9 percent to $15,073 in 2011, the largest increase since 2005. Premiums for single coverage rose 8 percent.

The group’s findings also showed that health insurance is consuming a bigger share of employer costs, forcing many companies to eliminate pay raises and pass on more medical costs to workers.

Drew Altman, chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation, asserted that the healthcare reform bill enacted last year accounts for just 1 to 2 percentage points of the premium increases in 2011.

But McCaughey told Newsmax: "The early provisions of the Obama health law are bending the cost curve up, the opposite direction from what the president promised. The new rules — young adults on parents' plans, no annual caps on benefits, and no copays for preventive care — are not free. They add to the premium. There is no tooth fairy." http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/mccaughey-healthcare-costs-insurance/2011/09/28/id/412623?s=al&promo_code=D261-1

Liberal scare tactics: Death by government cuts

"To be a little melodramatic, the budget would kill people," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently told CNN about House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity. "No question." With the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund set to run out of money Thursday, and with none of the federal government's 12 appropriations bills signed into law so far, you can expect a lot more melodramatic quotes like this one in the coming weeks.

Liberal assertions that cuts in government spending will cause certain death are nothing new. Sixteen years ago this week, Krugman's fellow columnist Bob Herbert warned New York Times readers that the welfare reform bill Republicans were then debating in the Senate "would hurt many people, would kill some and would help no one."  http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/09/liberal-scare-tactics-death-government-cuts

Obama's unserious plans are losing the future

In consecutive weeks, President Obama has presented two painfully unserious and economically misguided proposals. The first, his $450 billion "American Jobs Act," is another stimulus proposal, based on the ill-conceived notion that more government spending is the answer to what ails the economy. The second is the president's plan to raise taxes by $1.5 trillion on American job creators. Both plans are a far cry from "winning the future," as the president claims on the campaign trail.

Like the president's last stimulus, which cost nearly $1 trillion and failed to turn the economy around, Stimulus 2.0 assumes that massive government spending on feel-good projects (with the administration picking the economic winners and losers) will result in job creation and jolt the economy out of its doldrums. This assumption is already a proven loser.

Stimulus 1.0 ended in bad investments, massive corporate welfare, wasteful spending and more debt. What was supposed to keep unemployment below 8 percent, create millions of new jobs and hasten the economic recovery instead stands as a textbook example of the failed liberal notion that we can spend our way out of an economic hole.

The most egregious failure of the first stimulus is the now-infamous case of Solyndra, a California solar energy company, which received a $535 million stimulus loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. At the time, Obama said such investments were "leading the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future." Vice President Biden said, "We are not only creating jobs today, but laying the foundation for long-term growth in the 21st century economy."

Solyndra has now filed for bankruptcy and more than 1,000 jobs have been lost, sadly emphasizing the disastrous consequences of economic meddling by the federal government.

President Obama then followed up his poor jobs plan with an equally unserious and overtly political deficit reduction proposal. It relies heavily on enormous tax increases at a time when the economy can least afford them.  http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/09/obamas-unserious-plans-are-losing-future

Replace the property tax

I think everyone, including our legislators, would agree that school property taxes are out of control and only getting worse with relentless increases on the horizon.

My previous letter listed 10 reasons why we should replace school property taxes. Replace them with what, you ask? The answer is very simple. The state sales tax. The state Sales and Use tax was enacted in 1953 specifically to fund education. Why not broaden it?

The Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations, with 64 member groups statewide, has a plan to do just that. In simplest terms, the property tax replacement plan will replace school property taxes with a broadened 6 percent sales tax. The plan will not increase the sales tax rate, but simply broaden the base to include more services and items such as gum, candy, magazines and dry cleaning.

The sales tax was enacted to fund our schools; not property taxes. The property tax should be replaced with the most broad-based tax available so that everyone contributes. This heavy tax burden should not lie solely on the homeowners of Pennsylvania. This simple plan can work to ensure more equitable school funding and fairness for taxpayers and schoolchildren.

The plan has been vetted against numbers provided by the House Appropriations Committee and other economic entities and has been proven to work.

Do not let your legislators tell you that replacing the school property tax is too difficult. It's just not true. They just need the political courage to do what's right: replace the property tax!

For details on the plan, please go to www.ptcc.us. If you agree with the plan, contact your legislators (representative, senator and Gov. Corbett) and tell them you want them to replace the unfair property tax now. No tax should have the power to leave you homeless.
MARGIE LAVIN
EAST HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP http://www.ydr.com/letters/ci_18979709

Government out of control

To the editor:

    Cache Valley Politicians say they’re cutting the budgets to the bone? The corporate State of Utah was never meant to be a state for profit, controlling private businesses or private property! The state can only tax properties of corporations and government officers within the three branches of government.

    The corporate county of Cache as well as Logan, Smithfield, etc. as state fostered political subdivisions for gain, are illegal, and are in contempt of both U.S. and Utah Constitutions!

    Governments have no lawful regulatory authority to regulate us, as if we were their corporate properties! The governments never were lawfully set up to raise profits, nor receive retirements and other benefits as politicians. They were to do one term, and go back to their private job. No one was ever to retire with pay for being a public servant!

    In Utah, control of rights and empire building are unbridled, because the majority of people have fallen asleep at the watch towers, due to their comforts and money.

    Governments can’t compete or assist private businesses, and by doing so have damaged the balance of free enterprise markets.

    Politicians are being bought by large corporations. In return, billion-dollar socialist projects, are given to big oil, auto, pharmaceutical, medical and insurance companies, whom are making unrealistic profits; yet we are paying more for fuel, etc. than we ever have; we lost our freedoms to regulations, taxations and are fleeced by price fixing monopolies!

    Remove empire building, along with revenue-making traffic courts, private property taxes, private income taxes, and stop enforcing private businesses to be income tax collectors, licensing, and Social Security number enforcers.

    We need to get back to basic governments of bare bones, protecting the people’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We do not want governments to regulate our lives! Leave us alone and allow us to work, earn wealth, keep or spend our wealth as we desire, and soon, all the unemployment, socialist government budget problems, etc. will disappear by themselves! Leave us alone!

    Do away with all government agencies that are not paid for by state and federal fuel taxes, sales taxes, and “corporate property taxes.”

    This nation must stop the war they declared on the people (war on drugs) and instead, focus to preserve our boarders, our language, our monetary system backed by silver and gold supporting our U.S. Treasury notes, getting rid of the giant leach called Federal Reserve Bank. Protect the rights and liberties of the people!

    If governments will not act lawfully, then we the people will make citizens’ arrests and rid ourselves of the socialist parasites that now have this nation to its knees, being  financially distraught and morally corrupted.

Don Dunbar

Hyrum http://news.hjnews.com/article_2273ff94-e734-11e0-a692-001cc4c002e0.html

How large is the federal debt?

Total federal debt—also known as gross debt—is the amount of the federal government's outstanding debt issued by the Treasury and other federal government agencies. Totaling about $13.6 trillion at the end of fiscal year 

Any yearly accounting period, regardless of its relationship to a calendar year. The fiscal year for the federal government begins on October 1 of each year and ends on September 30 of the following year; it is named by the calendar year in which it ends. Prior to fiscal year 1977, the federal government began its fiscal year on July 1 and ended it on June 30.2010, gross debt consists of two components: (1) debt held by the publicFederal debt held by all investors outside of the federal government, including individuals, corporations, state or local governments, the Federal Reserve and foreign governments. and (2) debt held by government accountsFederal debt owed to government accounts, primarily to federal trust funds such as Social Security and Medicare. The cumulative surpluses, including interest earnings, of these trust funds and other government accounts have been invested in Treasury securities, almost always nonmarketable. Whenever a government account needs to spend more than it takes in from the public, the Treasury must provide cash to redeem debt held by the government account. Consequently, this reflects a future burden on the economy. (also known as intragovernmental debt holdings), such as the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/longterm/debt/debtbasics.html#heldbypublic

Live blogging the US Sen. race, the CPAC, P5 edition

After languishing in the shadows of the Republican presidential race, the U.S. Senate race just took center stage at Conservative Public Action Conference and the Republican Party of Florida Presidency 5 event this morning.

First up at CPAC: Adam Hasner, the former Republican leader in the Florida House, a post he was given by former House Speaker and current Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Hasner invoked to much applause in the first 30 seconds of his 15 minute speech.

"He called me the most partisan Republican in Tallahassee. He meant it as a compliment. The mainstream media tried to make it an insult. I made it a badge of honor," Hasner said.

Hasner soon took a subtle shot at opponent George LeMieux, the former right hand mand of Charlie Crist, the Republican-turned-independent governor who lost to Rubio last year. Before Obama took the reins of power, Hasner said, "the establishment in the Republican Party was saying the best way for Republicans to beat the Democrats was to be more like them. I didn’t buy into that philosophy."

Hasner,, however, made himself sound like more of an opponent to the establishment and Charlie Crist than he was. As this story of ours shows,Hasner also supported a watered-down climate-change law that the Legislature now wants to repeal. And he voted for a budget with $2.2 billion in tax and fee increases and billions more in federal stimulus money. He also favored high-speed rail and SunRail, which tea party activists came to abhor. Though he privately mocked and fought Crist behind the scenes at times, Hasner also boasted of working with the governor on the federal stimulus program.

Hasner spoke forcefully at CPAC, garnering wild applause for his shots at Obama.

"The Obama administration doesn't have a messaging problem. They have a policy problem. They are waging class warfare," Hasner said, noting he has been a lifelong Republican despite being the son of two liberal Jews from New York.

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2011/09/live-blogging-the-us-sen-race-the-cpac-p5-edition.html

"Life as a Republican isn’t easy," Hasner said. "Being a pro-life pro-second amendment conservative from Boca Raton hasn’t made it any easier."