Congress: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”

What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.

The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSA’s.

With HSA’s out of the way, a key obstacle to the left’s expansion of the welfare state will be removed.

The public option won’t be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn’t be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans’ lives.

It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.

The great lumbering health care reform gears are in motion in Washington D.C., and the Big Government machine is spitting out a new recipe for the bankruptcy of America: A “health care reform” bill that pleases all the special interest groups and pharmaceutical companies but does nothing to improve the health of ordinary Americans.

Health care reform in Washington today isn’t about health, or reform. It’s about mandating monopoly-priced western medicine for the masses. It’s about fining people who wisely opt out of the criminally-operated health insurance industry, and it’s designed to keep the American people sick and diseased while emptying their pockets of any remaining earnings they might have somehow squirreled away during the ongoing financial / real estate crash.

For starters, this Senate health reform bill would financially penalize people who take care of their own health and choose not to hand over $1,000 or month (or more) to a corrupt, criminally-operated health insurance system. This is a bill that actually punishes people for staying healthy! At the same time, it just happens to expand the monopoly of western medicine to encompass the entire U.S. population, criminalizing those who have opted out of the failed health care system.

The other joke in this health care reform is the idea of a new government-run health plan, which is being hilariously presented as a way to “drive down costs.”

Since when has Big Government ever been able to drive down the costs of anything? It was Big Government, under the Bush administration, that actually made it illegal for government to negotiate price discounts with drug companies, locking in monopoly prices that filled the coffers of Big Pharma while bankrupting the taxpayers.

Even now, the FDA (under the Obama administration) continues its outright war against the natural products industry, censoring truthful information about the health benefits of dietary supplements in a tyrannical effort to eliminate Big Pharma’s competition. This has the effect of eliminating choice for consumers, ultimately driving up monopoly health care costs under the system of western medicine that (laughingly) claims to provide health care today.

Life is a pre-existing condition

The one good thing in the current discussions about health care reform is the idea of barring insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. Because, after all, who doesn’t have a pre-existing condition? Simply being born is a pre-existing condition, isn’t it? (Hospitals consider pregnancy and childbirth to be medical emergencies requiring drugs and surgery…)

According to drug-pushing psychiatrists, life itself is a pre-existing condition requiring pharmaceutical intervention. Merely experiencing emotions like sadness or happiness (or too much happiness followed by too much sadness) is a disease, they claim. Where are the reforms that would outlaw this psych drugging nonsense?

Meanwhile, there is nothing in these reforms that would actually teach Americans how to be healthy. Where are the calls for the arrest and imprisonment of Big Pharma executives, corrupt FDA officials and rogue FTC enforcers who have indirectly caused the deaths of millions of Americans through their war on natural remedies? Where is the ban on pharmaceutical TV ads, or the requirement that medical studies practice something resembling honest science instead of just making up whatever numbers they want and submitting those to medical journals for publication?

Why is aspartame still legal? Or monosodium glutamate? Or Ritalin? Where are the real reforms that Americans desperately need to raise a generation of healthy children?

Those reforms, of course, are never to be discussed. They would threaten the profits of too many powerful food and drug corporations. So they aren’t even part of the discussion.

My own Health Revolution Petition is the real pathway to health reform in America. And yet even that petition is still a long way from the needed 100,000 signatures. That’s because good ideas don’t get much traction in mainstream America these days. Now, if I had a movie about teenage vampires (Twilight), that would get some traction. But sensible ideas about helping teens get healthy are utterly ignored.

The last sputtering gasp of western medicine in America

I’ve watched the health care situation in America quite closely for the past five years, and it’s not difficult to see where this is heading.

The political whores and sellouts in Washington routinely and predictably trade your future for their own short-term political gain, and that means selling out to medical special interest groups that thrive on disease and disinformation. The last thing these people want is a healthy population that needs fewer medical services. They don’t want a cure for cancer. They don’t want natural remedies for reversing heart disease. They don’t want kids to be healthy and happy without drugs.

What they want is a nation of drug addicts who play the role of helpless medical system dependents. They want people to be uninformed, nutritionally ignorant and irreversibly diseased because that’s the way they make more money and stay in power.

And that’s why health care reform in America is ultimately about appeasing the special interest groups of the medical-pharmaceutical-agriculture industrial complex. It’s all about keeping them in power (and in the money), and it has absolutely nothing to do with improving the health of a single American.

Yes, health care in America today is a disaster. But the last thing it needs is more Big Government running the show. Think about where our nation is headed right now with Big Government:

• Big Government now owns 50% of the homes in America (through the bailout fiasco involving Freddie and Fannie).

• Big Government now owns the biggest banks and investment houses in America.

• Big Government wants to become the landlord-in-chief by turning homeowners into home renters, where half the population rents from the government (and has no ownership of the homes in which they live).

• Big Government now runs a significant portion of the auto industry.

• And now, Big Government wants to run the health care system, too!

How is this not some strange brand of American Communism? When government owns (and runs) everything, and the free choice of the citizens is stripped from them, you no longer have a free country; you have Communism.

And that, unfortunately, is where America is headed: The land of the medical-financial-economic dictatorship, where all decisions are made for you by Big Brother, and free citizens who exercise free choice are either fined or imprisoned. It’s already happening with vaccines and cancer treatments. Just wait to see what happens when you dare say “no” to the new Obama health insurance plan!

Health care dictatorship

This new “health care reform” bill might as well be called the health care dictatorship bill. They say it will cover all Americans. Yes, it will, but it will cover them in a smokescreen of sickness and bankruptcy, accelerating the rapid decline of the American empire and trapping its people in a quagmire of medical enslavement from which the nation will never escape.

We are, in a very real sense, watching the slow, miserable death of a nation. Between its insurmountable financial problems ($12 trillion in debt right now, and nearly another $100 billion each month) and its health care failures (widespread degenerative disease now dominates the American population), America has positioned itself as a geopolitical failure of truly historic proportions. Yet instead of working to actually solve its problems, America has decided to spend more debt money, drug more people, take over more banks, print more fictitious money and hurl itself head-first into a brick wall with even more rapidity than anyone had previously thought possible.

It’s almost as if America’s leaders can’t wait to kill the nation, and they’d love to take a few million more citizens with them.

The philosophy in Washington today is like this:

• If the debt is too great to bear, spend more debt money!

• If health care is a disaster due to the monopolistic medical industry, enforce the monopoly nationwide!

• If the financial system isn’t working because of bad decisions made by investors, just make bigger and “badder” decisions at a higher level! (And bail out the investors while you’re at it.)

• If the money runs out, just print more!

Such is the mindset dominating America’s decisions today. They are beyond reckless. They are hopelessly suicidal. And what we’re seeing with health care reform today is merely a reflection of the national suicide being committed by our ethically-compromised representatives in Washington who would rather shore up their own six-year terms than help protect the next hundred years for the very people they hypocritically claim to represent.

By Brett Arends

Thanks to the financial crisis many people will have to reconsider the legacy they’ll leave behind.

Ross Schmidt, a financial advisor in Denver, sat down with a well-to-do client last fall, just after the stock market had collapsed. The client was in her sixties, divorced, with two adult sons. “We were scrambling to stem losses in her portfolio” and re-evaluate retirement plans, Mr Schmidt recalls. He asked his client how much she wanted to leave her sons.

With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU’s in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper.

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors.

California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.

Bleak Picture

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

The Obama administration has no shame, and is willing to abandon reason altogether to achieve its short-term political goals. Ronald Reagan ran up big deficits in part because he believed that his tax cuts would produce economic growth, and ultimately pay for themselves. He may well have been excessively optimistic about the merits of tax cuts, but at least he had a story.

Obama has no story. Nobody believes that his unprecedented expansion of the welfare state will lead to enough economic growth. Nobody believes that it will pay for itself. Everyone understands that higher spending today begets higher spending tomorrow. That means that his economic strategy simply doesn’t add up.

Character Deficit

Back in the 1980s, Reagan’s own economist, Martin Feldstein, spoke up when he felt that the Reagan administration was pushing the deficit too far. Where are the economists with such character today? Apparently, the job description for economists has transformed from recommending policies that are defensible to defending whatever policies that the political hacks in the West Wing dream up.

As bad as the California legislature has been over the years, it has never entered a fiscal crisis like the one that we face today and then doubled down with a massive spending increase. In the end, when times got tough, patriotic and sensible Californians of both parties stood up and began acting like adults.

Maybe the same thing is starting to happen in our nation’s capital. The key players in Washington are Senator Evan Bayh and 15 Senate Democrats who joined him this year in forming a coalition of moderates. One thing that has distinguished moderate Democrats from the garden variety of the species is heightened concern about fiscal responsibility.

Off a Cliff

With the price tag of Obama-care likely to exceed $1 trillion, moderate Democrats face a simple choice. They can jump off the cliff with the president, or they can stay true to the principles that they have espoused throughout their careers.

There are reassuring signs that principle is winning. One of the most expensive components of the Obama plan is the so- called public-insurance option, which opponents fear would result in massive government subsidies. Senator Mary Landrieu said that she is “not open” to a public option that will compete with private insurance.

Many other Democratic Senators, including Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Tom Carper, also oppose the public option. As the cost estimates increase and support wanes, the Senate Finance Committee is even going as far as to pursue its own health-care plan, meaning that the health-care end game is now in sight.

Tax Bite

Moderates might support Obama’s health-care objectives if the bill also included tax increases to cover the spending increases. But those tax increases would likely be unpopular, making it almost impossible to pass a bill.

Given the increasing public concern about deficits that heightened significantly last week because of the California crisis, there are only two possibilities left. Either the Obama plan will come crashing down or Senate Democrats will concoct some bill that has health in the title but costs almost nothing and does even less. With Al Franken arriving in the Senate and providing Democrats with a crucial 60th vote, the latter seems most likely.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

A Triple Coincidence

As the Fourth of July, 1826, approached, Thomas Jefferson lay wasting away in his bed at Monticello. His physical being was not cooperating with his brilliant mind, and he knew his time was short. Our beloved Founding Father had tried with all his might, and to the last ounce of his being, to remain alive until this sacred day.

His last earthly triumph was to survive until the 50th anniversary of the day he and his fellow revolutionaries announced our independence from the economic tyranny and the oppressive government of England. He was a patriot to the bone, and he loved this country to the death. All those around him feared he would not make it to that blessed day and that he would not fulfill his wish, for his body was failing and he was very weak.

It was nearly 1 o’clock on that summer afternoon, July 4, 1826, one of the greatest men ever to walk the Earth, had expired. Surrounded by many friends and family, Jefferson clutched a Bible, several books of Greek tragedy, manuscripts of Socrates, remnants of other great thinkers of history, and accounts of other successful civilizations that had risen to greatness, then collapsed in failure. He had learned much from their history. Jefferson vowed not to make the same mistakes of Rome or Greece, his brilliant, written architecture and verbal designs would see to that indeed. Jefferson was not an extremely pious man, but he knew the importance of God and felt the role He played in the forging of any successful republic. He relied on Him at this hour, as he did during other tribulations before this day.

All our founders’ inspiring, biblical quotes in one place – a must-have for your library: “America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations”

About 600 miles north at Quincy, Mass., John Adams lay in his deathbed as well, awaiting his faithful departure from Earth. Two days prior, Mr. Adams showed no signs of the fate to befall him. Surrounded by family and friends, and other notables, John Adams died only a few hours the latter of Mr. Jefferson, and also on the Fourth of July, 1826.

The last words uttered out of his struggling lips were: “Thomas Jefferson still survives,” and then Mr. Adams fell silent forever.

Jefferson and his fellow founders forged a new document, a blueprint to design a better, stronger, more perfect union that would stand the temptations of men and their relentless quests for power. However, even the founders may not have foreseen what was to come, or could have conceived such maniacal stresses to our country’s foundations. These present tests to the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution have not yet succumbed her to the ravages of man’s greed, thus far. Jefferson and Adams, perhaps from beyond the grave, hold out hope that their magnificent design will not fail its intended purpose and our framers’ foundations will remain intact.

These great men helped found this nation and suffered greatly for it. But they knew the cause was just and the mission noble, for they understood that without freedom of the individual, tyranny and misery would forever rule men’s souls. Even the most ardent atheist could not ignore this magnificent, triple coincidence, and what I believe to be one of Divine providence. Two men, entwined in history and destiny, to both pass on that fateful day, within hours of one another, and for Adams to know Jefferson’s fate so immediately, was incredible indeed.

Long live the United States of America, not as our contemporaries may try and transform her into, but long live the America our Founding Fathers entrusted all of us to protect and preserve at all costs. This country was not created for man’s pleasure to bastardize or change into his own vision, or to have the audacity to believe it needs to be corrected in any manner whatever. This country is the greatest gift to mankind and the best hope for the world to prosper in peace and the preservation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Finally some truth on this outrageous tax!

World Net Daily
June 29, 2009

By Chuck Norris

The entertainment world lost a few giants last week. Like the rest of the world, my wife Gena and I offer their families, friends and fans our most heartfelt condolences.

America’s most infamous late-night sidekick Ed McMahon, favorite “Angel” Farrah Fawcett and the “King of Pop” Michael Jackson made their final exits, and even in death they were as big as they were in life. The magnitude of their presence, power in their presentation and the caliber of their giftedness placed them among the most elite of stars.

You might not agree with all that Michael, Farrah and Ed did. You might not like all the ways they managed who they were and what they had. But you can’t deny the monumental impact they had upon entertainment and this world, and how most people enjoyed what they offered. They will be greatly missed.

Like you, I have vivid memories of each of them and was honored to meet two.

Who can ever forget Ed McMahon’s curtain call for Johnny Carson on the “Tonight Show”: “Heeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!”? I had been a guest on the “Tonight Show” several times through the years, and I had the privilege to talk with Ed during my visits. Every time I spoke with him, I could easily tell that he really enjoyed what he was doing on the show. He always knew his was a supportive role and never lost that perspective. He truly was a man’s man, and I thought that before ever knowing he was a former Marine. Being an honorary Marine myself, I say to Ed even now, “Semper Fidelis!”

I never had the honor of meeting Farrah, but I always admired her for her activism in organizations that benefit victims of domestic violence. After creating a name for herself in the big-hit ’70s television show “Charlie’s Angels,” she didn’t merely stick with roles that were based upon beauty. I know her award-winning performance in the “Burning Bed” as a battered and abused wife helped to open the eyes and liberate many homes from enabling domestic violence.

When the Jackson Five were young, I was a six-time undefeated world professional middle-weight karate champion. I was at an event in Los Angeles, and all five Jackson kids were following me around. I would catch them at a distance staring at me, but they were too shy to approach. So I thought I would go up to them and introduce myself, but just as I would try, someone else would come up to me and begin talking. Finally, the Jackson kids came up to me, and I’ll never forget the few words they said: “We study kung fu.” I met each one of them, and they all were very polite and nice boys. There’s no doubt, however, that Michael had a special charisma – something that set him apart to be the superstar he was.

The deaths of Michael, Farrah and Ed are repeated reminders that we’re not on this planet forever. But they are also reminders that we are called to use our time, talents, treasures to be a blessing to others. We all are called to use our greatest potential to serve the greater good. We were not just called to invest in commodities but people. It’s the legacy you leave behind that really matters. That is why I started my non-profit foundation Kickstart.

As I quoted in the section about how to rediscover the American dream in my book “Black Belt Patriotism,” sociologist Dr. Anthony Campolo once did a study in which 50 people over the age of 95 were asked, “If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?” An array of responses came from these eldest of senior citizens. However, three answers constantly surfaced far more than others: 1) If I had it to do over again, I would reflect more, 2) If I had it to do over again, I would risk more, and 3) If I had it to do over again, I would do more things that would live on after I am dead.

Celebrity has its costs. Fame is ultimately fleeting. Fortunes come and go. But who you are and what you leave behind in the wake of your life is everything. So let us live by priorities and principles. Let us work so that whenever the final curtain falls, we won’t have any regrets.

I love the way Mark Twain put it, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Climate hysterics need to stop focusing on foolish criticism, beware of hot air pushers

By Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun

Often, when climate hysterics and global warming alarmists don’t like what I write — but don’t know what they’re talking about and thus have nothing intelligent to say in response — they come back with what they think is their knock-out punch.

It’s always words to the effect of:

“I hope you’re happy getting your blood money from the oil companies, Mr. Goldstein. How can you look at yourself in the mirror every morning? Don’t you care about your grandchildren? What happened to journalistic integrity?”

Sometimes, they include in their missives their membership in some obscure organization, usually built around the idea that if we would all just give all our money to the government, or to some other collection of wise elites, and let them spend it for us on our behalf, the world would be a cleaner, safer and “cooler” (pardon the pun) place.

That’s pretty much the theory behind carbon taxes and cap-and-trade, by the way.

However, I’m afraid these rants don’t have the desired effect, because while their obvious aim is to make me angry via cheap smears, they just give me the giggles.

That’s because the idea that I’ve been sitting here for over two years reading book after book, doing hours upon hours of independent research and pounding out column after column, trying to get people to calm down about anthropogenic climate change before we do something really stupid, all because I’m secretly in the pay of the fossil fuel industry, is simply, utterly, laughably absurd. Plus, it’s a lie.

Besides, if you really want to skim the fiscal cream on the issue of man-made global warming these days, the last place you want to be is in the camp of the so-called skeptics, or, as I prefer to call us — sane.

No, where you want to be if you’re in it for the money, is in like flint with the politicians, environmentalists and energy companies who constantly preach that they’re all about saving the planet, even if it costs us every last cent we own.

Tom Adams, now an independent energy and environmental consultant, who for 11 years until 2007 was the highly respected executive director of Energy Probe, explains it all on a video he’s posted on YouTube titled the “Green Energy Act Paradox.”

While we agree his presentation skills need work (sorry, Tom), Adams, intimately familiar with the passage of Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Green Energy Act, succinctly lays out what’s going on.

He describes the “cosy relationship” that exists among governments that want power, energy companies that want profits and environmental organizations that want more renewable energy, but also consulting fees and government funding.

The way it works is governments hand out money to environmental organizations, who consult with and for energy companies, who together advise the government on what green energy laws should look like, and who then praise the government — ad nauseam — for the legislation they helped design when the government unveils it.

And who are the losers in this neat little drama, you ask?

Why, the public, of course, who are increasingly being presented with so-called “green” legislation in which all the key decisions have been made behind closed doors, long before the so-called public consultations begin.

Blowing Concern

Take, for example, the increasing number of rural communities suddenly finding themselves prospective sites for industrial wind farms, while their concerns about the possible health affects from noise are ridiculed, requests for adequate setbacks dismissed as “nimbyism” (not-in-my-backyard-syndrome) and demands for full planning and environmental hearings ignored.

Why? Usually because a bunch of politicians who don’t know the first thing about climate change, have convinced themselves they’ve somehow magically become experts in the field.

Take Premier McGuinty. When he promised to close Ontario’s coal-fired power generating stations in the 2003 election — a promise he’s broken so many times since we’ve all lost count — the only problem he identified with those plants was their contribution to air pollution. Not a word about greenhouse gases contributing to climate change, which is just about all he talks about now.

In reality, McGuinty could reduce the air pollution from those plants he now says he’ll close by 2014 — honest — by installing scrubbers. But the government’s argument now is this isn’t worth it, because that won’t simultaneously lower greenhouse gas emissions, the issue he didn’t mention in 2003.

And these folks are going to “fix” our climate? Sure they are.

When pigs fly.