Obama trying out for the NFL? (See 1 below)
===
Newt offers his solutions to The Republican Party! (See 2 below.)
---
Looking down the road.
But Americans always find humor even when matters look bleak!
===
I am not endorsing purchase of any of these stocks though I personally own several.
I found this an interesting way of looking at value. Because we tax the repatriation of corporate earnings at such a high rate many U.S. companies, who make money overseas, simply hoard the funds when they might redeploy them in stock repurchases, or better yet, green fielding in our own country. However, that would be sensible and Liberals would rather attack corporations for greed than encourage them to continue being Capitalists! (See 4 below.)
===
Tom Sowell continues his articles on Race Baiting. (See 5 below.)
===
This from a dear friend who disagrees with those who would tell you Obama is a failure. My friend believes Obama is a resounding success when judged by what he said and warned us he wanted to accomplish.
He buttresses his argument with an op ed piece by the Libertarian - Wayne Root.
Who needs Congress? (See 6a below.)
===
Looking down the road.
But Americans always find humor even when matters look bleak!
Hitler finds out about Obamacare
I am not endorsing purchase of any of these stocks though I personally own several.
I found this an interesting way of looking at value. Because we tax the repatriation of corporate earnings at such a high rate many U.S. companies, who make money overseas, simply hoard the funds when they might redeploy them in stock repurchases, or better yet, green fielding in our own country. However, that would be sensible and Liberals would rather attack corporations for greed than encourage them to continue being Capitalists! (See 4 below.)
===
Tom Sowell continues his articles on Race Baiting. (See 5 below.)
===
This from a dear friend who disagrees with those who would tell you Obama is a failure. My friend believes Obama is a resounding success when judged by what he said and warned us he wanted to accomplish.
He buttresses his argument with an op ed piece by the Libertarian - Wayne Root.
You won't believe this. I tried it and it is correct., The telephone # for Obamacare is 1-800-F---Y-- (I-800-382-5968). Don't believe it? Take a minute to call. (See 6 below.)
Who needs Congress? (See 6a below.)
===
Dick
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1)Obama punts so much that you'd think he is trying out for an NFL team
By Silvio Canto, Jr
The bad news from last week's “shutdown show” is that nothing got fixed.
The good news is that people overseas are noticing it, as we read in The Economist:
“For a long time American politicians have poured scorn on their European peers for failing to deal with the euro crisis.
This week Washington equalled Brussels on one measure of dysfunctionality and surpassed it by another.
The way in which the Democrats and Republicans, having failed to reach any agreement, decided to “kick the can down the road”, was deeply European.
The deal allows the government to stay open till January 15th and the debt ceiling to be raised until February 7th.
Just as America's economy seems to be recovering, with the promise of GDP growing by 2.7% in 2014, it could face another shutdown of the kind that has just sent consumer confidence to a nine-month low and knocked back growth in the fourth quarter by an estimated 0.6 percentage points.”
I agree. We “punted” to next year and set the stage for another show again. President Obama will punt again and push us into another crisis.
Someone should tell President Obama that his hometown Bears already have a punter.
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2)
BREAKOUT: A Strategy for Winning
and Governing for 2013-2017
By Newt Gingrich
The Current Situation
The Left broadly speaking--President Obama, most of the news media, left-wing interest groups, Democrats--believes it sees an opportunity to create a wave election similar to those of 1994, 2006, 2010 and retake majority control of the House of Representatives.
Their goal is to describe the Republican Party as an unacceptably radical party and defeat individual candidates by suppressing Republican turnout, driving independents away from Republicans and maximizing turnout of the Democratic base. In particular, efforts to control spending in Medicare and Medicaid and to reduce or eliminate funding for left wing activities will consistently be described as radical and unacceptable. Reading the polls after the recent government shutdown, the Left believes (mistakenly, I think) that this model is now even more likely to succeed.
Those same polls also reveal extraordinary opportunity for Republicans. The fact is that Americans are fed up with Washington, not just with Republicans. They believe America is on the wrong track, and President Obama's approval rating is now among lowest of his presidency.
While Republicans are currently on defense, the failures and costs of Obamacare, the continuing weak economy in jobs and take-home pay, growing government debt, and inevitable failures of bureaucratic big government will only make it more obvious that Washington and the bureaucracy is hopelessly broken. And the Democrats have very publicly reaffirmed themselves as the party of big government bureaucracy, most recently with the launch of Obamacare.
Republicans could respond to these failures of government by becoming the Party of Austerity. But the Party of Austerity can rapidly reduce its supporters as people are told what the austerity means for them personally. Policies of pain almost never work in the absence of a large crisis. They might also play into the Democrat caricature of Republicans as radical and unacceptable.
There is a different strategy, however, which could dramatically unlock the current policy gridlock in Washington and create a new conversation in which Americans find the Republican Party to once again be the party of hope and opportunity (as it was in the Reagan years and in the 1994 Contract with America campaign).
An Historic Opportunity
The dramatic breakthroughs in science, technology, and entrepreneurship are creating new policy opportunities for a better future with a better economy, more take-home pay, better health, more learning, greater national security, a better, smaller, modernized government, and a balanced federal budget.
In Washington insider terms this sounds like a fantasy or an impossibility. In the dynamic world outside Washington all of these capabilities are increasingly obvious but outside the political news media, the political language, and the thinking of politicians and their staffs and their consultants.
This historic opportunity requires a very substantial change in the thinking and behavior of Republicans and there will be enormous resistance to the change (see quotes in appendix at end of paper for thinking about real change).
A key Republican goal should be to have 80% of all communications for the next four years be positive about exciting breakthroughs, exciting opportunities, and a better future for virtually all Americans.
Nothing would do more to defeat the Left's current strategy than a positive Republican Party focused on opportunities for the future.
Offering Americans a Better Future
Our premise is that new science, technology, and entrepreneurship can lead to:
- A rapidly growing economy with more jobs, more take home pay and more economic opportunity
- A new system of better learning at lower cost for your entire lifetime
- A dramatic improvement in health outcomes and reduced costs leading to longer lives, greater independence for the elderly, and a dramatic increase in high value jobs marketing American health innovations throughout the world
- A modernized government that is much less expensive, more effective, and more reliable and accountable
- A better environment through sound science, entrepreneurship, and focused problem solving
- A stronger, leaner, less wasteful national security system
- A balanced budget within a decade through a combination of:
- greater economic growth
- more government revenues from a larger economy and from royalties from energy and other natural resources
- dramatic modernization of government to reduce waste and eliminate fraud
- breakthroughs in health dramatically lowering the cost of health care
- returning power to the states and to the people.
Budget Conference Strategy
Republicans in the Budget Conference should focus first on economic growth, second on increased revenue through increased energy royalties, third on modernizing government to reduce fraud and theft, and fourth on dramatic opportunities for better health outcomes at lower costs.
A tax increase for entitlement cuts agreement is a pain-pain agreement and can't possibly achieve our goals or be supported by the American people.
There is no democracy in our lifetime that has sustained an austerity-led reform program.
We need a new model of budget breakthroughs and this formula creates a new focus on a positive, opportunity-oriented future.
What we are proposing is to replace the argument of more versus less with an argument of better future versus failed present.
Today we have Republicans who want more savings and less taxes versus Democrats who want less savings and more taxes. Neither side is arguing for rethinking the fundamentals, learning from non-Washington developments, and modernizing government systems and policies.
Better future versus failed present would be a profound change in the very nature of the national debate.
It will require an equally profound change in the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO is today incapable of measuring the impact of modernizing systems and adopting new technologies in government. Today CBO is a major "Prison Guard of the Past," blocking modernity and keeping budget talks in sterile and self-defeating strait jackets.
The budget talks cannot allow the petty bureaucrats of CBO to reject everything happening in the rest of America and score only obsolete models of static and inherently false formulas.
Breakthrough Examples as Proof of the Real Opportunities for Dramatic Improvement in Public Policy
These examples can be extended dramatically. They are designed to create a sense of how widespread the breakthroughs are and why Breakout as a concept is largely a matter of transferring what is already happening outside Washington into public policy in Washington.
Each of these examples could lead to hearings, legislation, town hall meetings, and a variety of positive activities.
1. Theranos is a breakthrough biotech company which may save $61 billion in Medicare and $96.1 billion in Medicaid over the next decade. Its new technology conducts a battery of up to 1,000 common medical tests very inexpensively and from just one drop of blood. It has pledged that each of its tests will cost less than half of the Medicare rate. Today there are 64,980 price controls for medical tests in Medicare. Retail prices for tests are trade secrets so it is impossible to know what Theranos could save for federal employees, Tricare, Veterans Administration, etc. Just holding hearings and accelerating the rate of adoption would save tens of billions. The technology is already in use in a handful of pharmacies and will soon be available at Walgreens nationwide. You can see the menu/prices of tests here (this alone is revolutionary):http://www.theranos.com/test-menu?ref=for_providers
See Breakout Introduction, Chapters 3 and 11 for more on cost-saving health breakthroughs.
2. Booz and Co. have estimated that insurance administrative costs can be driven down from around $29 per member per month to around $5 per member per month. An 80 percent reduction in administrative costs would save substantial amounts in government health programs. The Federal Employee Health Benefits Program would save about $10 billion over the decade by moving to an Administrative Services Only (ASO) plan. Connecticut has moved Medicaid to an ASO plan and saved $41 million in 2012 and expects to save $80 million this year.
3. Moving from the broken “Fee for Service” model in Medicare to the ASO model would save close to $300 billion over the coming decade, according to UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and Modernization. Those savings estimates assume a 5 year phase in. By the end of the decade, savings would be 5 percent of total Medicare spending.
4. A vastly more powerful step toward dramatic reduction in costs would be requiring that citizens and payers have the right to simple transparency in price and quality. Today the insurance companies insist that they own the data even for the plans that are self-insured. Medical device companies want a tax break but refuse to release price and quality information, claiming they are trade secrets. No single change would do more to reduce costs and accelerate innovation than insisting on a real market with real price and quality information. The savings could literally be several hundred billion dollars every year.
5. Two states (Florida and Texas) have initiated four year degrees for a total cost of $10,000. If every state adopted this program what would the impact be on the student loan program and its projected costs?
6. The revolution in online learning is accelerating. Kahn Academy has had 283 million views on YouTube and its website has six million students visit each month. Kaplan is developing very sophisticated real time feedback systems to maximize the effectiveness of online learning. Duolingo teaches six foreign languages for free and has over 10 million users. Udacity has signed a contract with Georgia Tech to produce a Master's degree in Computer Science for $7,000 (the residential degree costs $70,000 so Udacity is reaching its goal of reducing tuition by 90%). The implications of online learning for pre-school through adult learning have barely been considered. It has enormous power to change the world dramatically.
7. Attaching online learning to unemployment compensation would create a dramatic new worker training program at virtually no cost. The 2012 federal-state spending of $94 billion to people to do nothing could be transformed into an enormous job training and skill development program (see Khan Academy's and Udacity's amazing free offerings as an example). It would be a major step towards rebuilding the middle class by rebuilding the knowledge base needed to succeed. For more see Breakout Chapter 10.
8. Achieving normal commercial standards of competence would save billions. One study by the IBM Center for Business of Government estimated $100 billion a year in saved costs by adopting commercial business practices in government operations. This process by modernizing the civil service, the procurement regulations, and the information systems to the norms of a modern multinational corporation would save tens of billions a year and improve performance. The fiascos of the F-35 fighter overruns and the Obamacare rollout collapse should provide more than enough incentive to profoundly modernize the management and information systems and cut through a 130 year old civil service model that is fossilized. Applying continuous improvement systems like Lean Six Sigma could save hundreds of billions over a few years.
For more see Breakout Chapter 9.
9. STOP PAYING THE CROOKS. This is capitalized because it is so much money it is outrageous, and yet Washington is determined to ignore it. In 2009 Jim Frogue wrote a book by this title outlining for Medicare and Medicaid alone how big the fraud problem is. The estimate at that time was that Medicare and Medicaid combined, as paper based bureaucratic systems, had fraud in the range of $70 to $120 billion a year paid to crooks. That is more than $1 trillion dollars over a decade. Nothing systemic has been done. American Express, Visa, and MasterCard among others have very serious systems for stopping fraud. The fraud and theft are not simply Medicare and Medicaid. Earned Income Tax Credit false payments are in the 25% range because of IRS mismanagement and incompetence. That is an estimated $12 to $15 billion a year--or $132 billion over the last decade to be precise. Food Stamp fraud and mispayments have skyrocketed as the program has grown dramatically larger. Even the government's own website on accuracy lists high error rate programs amounting to about $100 billion a year ($1 trillion over a decade not counting the interest on the debt it would accrue).
For more see Breakout Chapter 8.
10. Dramatically greater revenues can be generated without a tax increase by opening up government lands to oil and gas and mineral development and opening up offshore opportunities to develop oil and gas fields. This makes sense for national security and jobs reasons. It also makes sense for government revenue reasons. Scott Noble of Noble Royalties has commissioned studies which estimate that government opportunities in oil and gas would lead to a $5 trillion increase in the economy over thirty years, a $780 billion increase in royalties to the government and a $1 trillion dollar increase in tax revenue from a bigger energy industry. In other words a sound American energy policy would add $1.78 trillion in government revenue and create hundreds of thousands of jobs while improving our national security and energy independence.
For more see Breakout Chapters 4 and 5.
11. Even more revenue increases would come from a dramatically bigger economy. The number one goal of the current budget negotiations should be to restart the economic dynamism of small businesses and baby businesses (the former are designed to remain relatively small, the latter are launched in the hopes they will grow). The Small Business Committee should bring in small business and entrepreneurial witnesses (including the self-employed) and identify every unnecessary burdensome regulation which slows down job creation and business creation. Today red tape is often a bigger hindrance than taxes in creating jobs. A Small Business Independence Act should be developed with the goal of reducing by 80% or more the regulatory burden on entrepreneurs and small business owners. That would substantially accelerate job growth.
12. Regenerative Medicine is one of the greatest areas of breakthrough in improving human health and creating very high value American jobs, as well as in permanently curing many of the most common and most expensive medical problems. The field is currently crippled by the Food and Drug Administration which requires that regenerative technologies meet the demands of two regulatory paths simultaneously. This means it is almost impossible to bring the technology to market, since it's hard enough to meet the requirements of ONE regulatory track. This is an area where lives can be saved and improved, costs can be reduced, and high value American jobs can be created.
For more see Breakout Introduction, Chapters 3 and 11
13. Self-driving cars will be a reality within a few years. They have enormous implications for infrastructure development, safety, and a host of other aspects of life. The regulatory hurdles to their adoption, however, are quite significant. We should have extensive hearings on how to accelerate this development and how it will improve our lives. For more see Breakout Chapter 6.
Conclusion
There are an extraordinary number of opportunities to improve lives, create jobs, increase government revenue without taxes, balance the federal budget and improve services while lowering costs.
We should be committed to an intense period of becoming the advocates of a Breakout which can move us far beyond the current policy gridlock.
With positive, optimistic ideas that will improve people's lives, we can re-engage the American people in their own self-government and their political process.
We can reach out to the "Pioneers of the Future" who are actually developing the ideas that will change our lives.
We can bring together the "Champions of the Future" who know that this will lead to better lives and who want to help implement the developments of the Pioneers.
We will inevitably be attacked and opposed by the "Prison Guards of the Past" who oppose the changes that may make America better but may harm their interests or privileges. Some of those "Prison Guards" will be entrenched in the Republican Party. Remember that the future has publicists but the past has lobbyists, and sometimes the future doesn’t even have a publicist.
Finally, many Americans today are "Prisoners of the Past" not because they are trapped but because in their own minds they can't imagine a new and better world. Our job is in part to reach them with a message of hope and a program of real opportunity that liberates them from the past and draws them into an exciting and fulfilling future.
Appendix: Key Principles for Real Change
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: "First you win the argument, then you win the vote."
Albert Einstein (attributed): “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
President (and General of the Armies) Dwight David Eisenhower: "Whenever I run into a problem I can’t solve, I always make it bigger. I can never solve it by trying to make it smaller, but if I make it big enough I can begin to see the outlines of a solution.”President Abraham Lincoln Message to Congress December 1, 1862: "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country
."Following these principles will lead America to a dramatically better and more desirable future.
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3)
By Bradley Allen
3)
ObamaCare 2016: Happy Yet?
The website problems were finally solved. But the doctor shortage is a nightmare.
By Bradley Allen
Three years after the disastrous launch of the Affordable Care Act, most of the website troubles finally have been ironed out. People are now able to log on to the government's ACA website and to most of the state health-insurance exchanges. The public has grudgingly come to accept higher insurance premiums, new taxes and increases in part-time workers who were formerly full-time. But Americans are irate anyway—because now they're seeing the health-care law's destructive effect on the fundamental nature of the way their care is delivered.
Even before the ACA's launch in 2013, many physicians—seeing the changes in their profession that lay ahead—had begun talking their children out of going to medical school. After the launch, compensation fell, while nothing in the ACA stopped lawsuits and malpractice premiums from rising. Doctors must now see many more patients each day to meet expenses, all while dealing with the mountains of paperwork mandated by the health-care law.
The forecast shortage of doctors has become a real problem. It started in 2014 when the ACA cut $716 billion from Medicare to accommodate 30 million newly "insured" people through an expansion of Medicaid. More important, the predicted shortage of 42,000 primary-care physicians and that of specialists (such as heart surgeons) was vastly underestimated. It didn't take into account the ACA's effect on doctors retiring early, refusing new patients or going into concierge medicine. These estimates also ignored the millions of immigrants who would be seeking a physician after having been granted legal status.
It is surprising that the doctor shortage was not better anticipated: After all, when Massachusetts mandated health insurance in 2006, the wait to see a physician in some specialties increased considerably, the shortage of primary-care physicians escalated and more doctors stopped accepting new patients. In 2013, the Massachusetts Medical Society noted waiting times from 50 days to 128 days in some areas for new patients to see an internist, for instance.
But doctor shortages are only the beginning.
Even before the ACA cut $716 billion from its budget, Medicare only reimbursed hospitals and doctors for 70%-85% of their costs. Once this cut further reduced reimbursements, and the ACA added stacks of paperwork, more doctors refused to accept Medicare: It just didn't cover expenses.
Then there is the ACA's Medicare (government) board that dictates and rations care, and the board has begun to cut reimbursements. Some physicians now refuse even to take patients over 50 years old, not wanting to be burdened with them when they reach Medicare age. Seniors aren't happy.
Medicaid in 2016 has similar problems. A third of physicians refused to accept new Medicaid patients in 2013, and with Medicaid's expansion and government cuts, the numbers of doctors who don't take Medicaid skyrocketed. The uninsured poor now have insurance, but they can't find a doctor, so essentially the ACA was of no help.
The loss of private practice is another big problem. Because of regulations and other government disincentives to self employment, doctors began working for hospitals in the early 2000s, leaving less than half in private practice by 2013. The ACA rapidly accelerated this trend, so that now very few private practices remain.
When doctors are employed like factory workers by hospitals, data from the Medical Group Management Association and others indicate, their productivity falls—sometimes by more than 25%. They see fewer patients and perform fewer timely procedures, exacerbating the troubles caused by physician shortages. Continuity of care also declines, since now a physician's responsibilities end when his shift is over.
Of those doctors still in private practice, many have taken refuge from the health-care law by going into concierge medicine, where the patient pays an annual fee (typically $500-$3,000 a year per individual) to a primary-care physician. This doctor provides enhanced care, grants quicker appointments and spends more time with each patient, working with a base of 300-600 patients instead of the 3,000-5,000 typical in the ACA era. Doctors and patients who can afford it love concierge medicine: It allows treatment to be administered as the doctor sees fit, instead of as if the patient is on an assembly line with care directed on orders from Washington.
Patients who can't afford concierge medicine but have seen their doctor take that route are out of luck: They have been added to the swelling rolls of patients taken care of by the shrinking pool of physicians. So even people with "private" insurance have found that the quality of their health care declined. Nowadays, many are forced instead to see a nurse or other health-care provider. The traditional doctor-patient relationship is now reserved primarily for those who can pay extra.
Concierge-type care was easily expanded to specialists. The top surgeons now simply opt out of Medicare or become "out of network" providers, allowing them to bill patients directly. Many have joined the plastic surgeons and ophthalmologists who work on a straight fee-for-service basis.
Equally important: With the best and most successful doctors disappearing into concierge medicine or refusing new Medicare and Medicaid patients, replacing these experienced physicians with bright young doctors to work with the "general public" has become difficult. Why? Because such doctors are hard to find—going into medicine doesn't have the professional allure it once did.
With an average of $300,000 in student loans, eight years of college and medical school, and three to seven years as underpaid, overworked residents, a prospective physician in the ACA era would be starting a career at age 30 in a job that requires working 70-80 hours a week in an assembly-line fashion to earn perhaps $100,000 a year. No wonder so many qualified individuals these days are choosing careers on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley instead of medicine.
It is also no wonder that three years ago members of Congress got themselves exempted from the Affordable Care Act. They may have passed the law, but they're not stupid.
Dr. Allen, a pediatric heart surgeon, is a former professor and surgical director of the Children's Heart Institute in Houston.
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4)
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| Investors have a rare opportunity – one that should never exist – right now. Today, we can buy some of the best, most cash-rich companies for ridiculously low prices. In fact, we can buy a basket of these businesses for a crazy 34% discount to the overall stock market. Longtime readers understand that some of the biggest stocks on the planet are the best investment value today. Yet somehow, the stock market hasn't figured this out. Let me show you what I mean… Recently, it was widely reported that technology giant Apple's cash hoard was equal to roughly 10% of all the cash held by non-financial U.S. companies. That's crazy to think about, but it's just scratching the surface. The truth is, all the major technology giants are sitting on billions of excess dollars. Take a look:
Take Cisco, for example. It holds around 40% of its market cap in cash. It's like buying a house for $100,000 and finding $40,000 in a kitchen cabinet… For every share you buy, the company holds $9.40 in cash. With the stock at $22.50 per share, you're really only paying $13.10 per share for the business. And this number is less than six times what the company is expected to earn next year. It's dirt-cheap. And it's not the only one… Take a look:
Said another way, these technology behemoths trade for a 34% discount to U.S. stocks. Deals like this don't come around often. So it'd be foolish not to take advantage. These technology giants could rise by 50% as a whole and they still wouldn't be expensive. I expect stocks in general to do very well over the next two years, and this group should easily outperform. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Race-Hustling Results: Part IIIBy Thomas SowellOne of the reasons for being glad to be as old as I am is that I may be spared living to see a race war in America. Race wars are often wars in which nobody wins and everybody ends up much worse off than they were before.
Initial skirmishes in that race war have already begun, and have in fact been going on for some years. But public officials pretend that it is not happening, and the mainstream media seldom publish it at all, except in ways that conceal what is really taking place.
For American society, a dangerous polarization has set in. Signs of this polarization over the years include opposite reactions between blacks and whites to verdicts in the O.J. Simpson murder case, the "rape" charges against Duke University students, and trials resulting from the beating of Rodney King and the death of Trayvon Martin.
More dangerous than these highly publicized episodes over the years are innumerable organized and unprovoked physical attacks on whites by young black gangs in shopping malls, on beaches and in other public places all across the country today.
While some of these attacks make it into the media as isolated incidents, the nationwide pattern of organized black on white attacks by thugs remains invisible in the mainstream media, with the notable exception of Bill O'Reilly on the Fox News Channel.
Even when these attacks are accompanied by shouts of anti-white rhetoric and exultant laughter at the carnage, the racial makeup of the attackers and their victims is usually ignored by the media, and public officials often deny that race has anything to do with what happened.
These attacks have sent many people to the hospital, and some have died, but the attacks are often carried out in a festive atmosphere. What are called "troubled youths," in this and other contexts, are often in fact young people enjoying themselves greatly by creating big trouble for others.
Some of these many attacks are covered in detail in a book titled "White Girl Bleed A Lot" by Colin Flaherty. It was a phrase that I recognized immediately, from my own previous research.
That phrase was uttered by one of a group of black attackers who descended on a group of whites at a July 4th fireworks show in Milwaukee. But what happened there was not unique, either in itself or in the efforts of police and political authorities to play down what happened -- and to say that race had nothing to do with it.
When the Chicago Tribune was criticized for editing out the race of the attackers in a series of similar organized attacks in Chicago, it replied that race was irrelevant. Yet race is not considered irrelevant when indignantly editorializing on a disproportionate number of young black males arrested and imprisoned.
Sadly, what happened in Milwaukee and Chicago were not isolated incidents. They were part of a pattern repeated in dozens of cities, located in every region of the country. Colin Flaherty's book, which is subtitled "The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It," reveals this pattern in painful detail.
Other books are emerging that are more clearly a white backlash, in the sense that they attack behavior patterns among contemporary blacks in general.
Perhaps the most clearly backlash books are those written by Paul Kersey, whose central theme is that whites have created thriving cities, which blacks subsequently took over and ruined. Examples include his books about Birmingham ("The Tragic City") and Detroit ("Escape from Detroit").
Kersey even takes a swing at Rush Limbaugh (and at yours truly) for saying that liberal policies destroyed these cities. He says that San Francisco and other cities with liberal policies, but without black demographic and political takeovers, have not been ruined. His books are poorly written, but raise tough questions.
It would be easy to simply dismiss Kersey as a racist. But denouncing him or ignoring him is not refuting him. Refuting requires thought, which has largely been replaced by fashionable buzz words and catch phrases, when it comes to discussions of race.
Thought is long overdue. So is honesty.
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6)There are two major political parties in America. I’m a member of the naïve, stupid, and cowardly one. I’m a Republican.
How stupid is the GOP? They still don’t get it. I told them 5 years ago, 2 books ago, a national bestseller ago ("The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide The GOP needs to stop calling ObamaCare a “trainwreck.” That means it’s a mistake, or accident. That means it’s a gigantic flop, or failure. It’s NOT. Message to the GOP: This isn’t a game. This isn’t tiddly-winks. This is a serious, purposeful attempt to highjack America and destroy capitalism. This is a brilliant, cynical, and purposeful attempt to damage the U.S. economy, kill jobs, and bring down capitalism. It’s not a failure, it’s Obama’s grand success. It’s not a “trainwreck,” ObamaCare is a suicide attack. He wants to hurt us, to bring us to our knees, to capitulate- so we agree under duress to accept big government. Obama’s hero and mentor was Saul Alinsky -- a radical Marxist intent on destroying capitalism. Alinksky’s stated advice was to call the other guy “a terrorist” to hide your own intentions. To scream that the other guy is “ruining America,” while you are the one actually plotting the destruction of America. To claim again and again…in every sentence of every speech…that you are “saving the middle class,” while you are busy wiping out the middle class. The GOP is so stupid they can’t see it. There are no mistakes here. This is a planned purposeful attack. The tell-tale sign isn’t the disastrous start to ObamaCare. Or the devastating effect the new taxes are having on the economy. Or the death of full-time jobs. Or the overwhelming debt. Or the dramatic increases in health insurance rates. Or the 70% of doctors now thinking of retiring- bringing on a healthcare crisis of unimaginable proportions. Forget all that. The real sign that this is a purposeful attack upon capitalism is how many Obama administration members and Democratic Congressmen are openly calling Tea Party Republicans and anyone who wants to stop ObamaCare “terrorists.” There’s the clue. Even the clueless GOP should be able to see that. They are calling the reasonable people…the patriots…the people who believe in the Constitution ... the people who believe exactly what the Founding Fathers believed…the people who want to take power away from corrupt politicians who have put America $17 trillion in debt…terrorists? That’s because they are Saul Alinsky-ing the GOP. The people trying to purposely hurt America, capitalism and the middle class…are calling the patriots by a terrible name to fool, confuse and distract the public. ObamaCare is a raving, rollicking, fantastic success. Stop calling it a failure. Here is what it was created to do. It is succeeding on all counts: 1. ObamaCare was intended to bring about the Marxist dream -- redistribution of wealth. Rich people, small business owners, and the middle class are being robbed, so that the money can be redistributed to poor people (who vote for Democrats). Think about it. If you’re rich or middle class, you now have to pay for your own health care costs (at much higher rates) AND 40 million other people’s costs too (through massive tax increases). So you’re stuck paying for both bills. You are left broke. Brilliant. 2. ObamaCare was intended to wipe out the middle class and make them dependent on government. Think about it. Even Obama’s IRS predicts that health insurance for a typical American family by 2016 will be $20,000 per year. But how would middle class Americans pay that bill and have anything left for food or housing or living? People that make $40K, or $50K, or $60K can’t possibly hope to spend $20K on health insurance without becoming homeless. Bingo. That’s how you make middle class people dependent on government. That’s how you make everyone addicted to government checks. Brilliant. 3. As a bonus, ObamaCare is intended to kill every decent paying job in the economy, creating only crummy, crappy part-time jobs. Why? Just to make sure the middle class is trapped, with no way out. Just to make sure no one has the $20,000 per year to pay for health insurance, thereby guaranteeing they become wards of the state. Brilliant. 4. ObamaCare is intended to bankrupt small business, and therefore starve donations to the GOP.Think about it. Do you know a small business owner? I know hundreds of them. Their rates are being doubled, tripled and quadrupled by ObamaCare. Guess who writes 75% of the checks to Republican candidates and conservative causes? Small Business. Even if a small business owner manages to survive, he or she certainly can’t write a big check to the GOP anymore. Money is the “mother’s milk” of politics. Without donations, a political party ceases to exist. Bingo. That’s the point of ObamaCare. Obama is bankrupting his political opposition and drying up donations to the GOP. Brilliant. 5. ObamaCare is intended to make the IRS all-powerful. It adds thousands of new IRS agents. It puts the IRS in charge of overseeing 15% of the U.S. economy. The IRS has the right because of ObamaCare to snoop into every aspect of your life, to go into your bank accounts, to fine you, to frighten you, to intimidate you. And Obama and his socialist cabal have access to your deepest medical secrets. By law your doctor has to ask your sexual history. That information is now in the hands of Obama and the IRS to blackmail GOP candidates into either not running, or supporting bigger government, or leaking the info and ruining your campaign. Or have you forgotten the IRS harassed, intimidated and persecuted critics of Obama and conservative groups? Now Obama hands the IRS even more power. Big Brother rules our lives. Brilliant. 6. ObamaCare is intended to unionize 15 million healthcare workers. That produces $15 billion in new union dues. That money goes to fund Democratic candidates and socialist causes -- thereby guaranteeing Obama’s friends never lose another election, and Obama’s policies keep ruining capitalism and bankrupting business owners long after he’s out of office. Message to the GOP: This isn’t a game. This isn’t tiddly-winks. This is a serious, purposeful attempt to highjack America and destroy capitalism. This isn’t a trainwreck. It's purposeful suicide. It's not failing, it's working exactly according to plan. Obama knows what he’s doing. Stop apologizing and start fighting. Oh and one more thing…Conservatives aren’t “terrorists.” We are patriots and saviors. We represent the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. We are the heroes and good guys. Unless you get all this through your thick skulls, America is lost…forever. Wayne Allyn Root is capitalist evangelist, entrepreneur, and Libertarian-conservative Republican. He is a former Libertarian vice presidential nominee. 6a) White House Extends 'Individual Mandate' DeadlineThe Obama administration is giving individuals who buy health insurance through government-run marketplaces until the end of March to enroll in a plan without a penalty, an administration official said. The administration plans to issue guidelines soon to clear up confusion over deadlines under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, according to the official, who asked for anonymity Wednesday because the change hadn’t been formally announced. The open enrollment period extends from Oct. 1 to March 31. Under the law, anyone who isn’t covered for three months or longer faces a financial penalty for not having insurance. In order for the insurance to take effect, uninsured Americans would have to sign up by Feb. 15 to avoid facing fines. The change effectively gives individuals an extra six weeks to enroll. Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said via Twitter that the “individual mandate timing hasn’t changed.” The deadline to get insurance remains March 31. Enrollments through online insurance exchanges, a central part of the healthcare law that was Obama’s signature legislative achievement, have been plagued by technical issues on the HealthCare.gov website since its debut on Oct. 1. The difficulties have spurred congressional hearings and calls from some congressional Republicans for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to resign. Obama, who said this week he’s frustrated by the website’s flaws, has drafted healthcare entrepreneur and adviser Jeffrey Zients to lead the effort to fix the process. The government also is bringing outside technical specialists to assist. Sebelius and other administration officials met Wednesday at the White House with the heads of WellPoint Inc., Aetna Inc., and at least 10 other insurers to discuss correcting flaws in how data from the marketplaces are transferred to the companies. House Republicans have seized on the technical defects with the exchanges to renew a push to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act. So far, the White House has resisted GOP pleas to delay the requirement that individuals purchase insurance — though officials have expressed frustration with the technical problems. It was one of the demands House Republicans tried to make Obama accept as their price for ending the recent government shutdown — without success. The law allows for “short coverage gaps” of up to three months before imposing the penalty, the report said. But because the new health policies take effect on the first day of each month, in order to be covered by March 31, people would actually need to have insurance by March 1. And since it takes up to two weeks to process insurance applications, consumers would have to apply by Feb. 15. The report said the Obama administration has recognized there’s a “disconnect” between the actual and effective deadlines — and is working to revise its current policies making sure the two deadlines line up. The delay has been gaining traction with a number of lawmakers, including at least one key Democrat. “Allowing extra time for consumers is critically important so they have the opportunity to become familiar with the website, survey their options, and enroll,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, said in a letter to the White House Tuesday. “If an individual is unable to purchase health insurance due to technical problems with enrollment, they should not be penalized because of lack of coverage.” And Wednesday night, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said on Fox News he is working on a bill with Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia to delay Obamacare's individual mandate for a year. Others don't think a delay will be needed, The Washington Times reported. “I really don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t think the website will still be down in February. But if it is, the secretary [Sebelius] so far has shown a great deal of flexibility in creating ‘hardship exceptions.’ If people can’t get health insurance, they can’t get health insurance,” Timothy Jost, a professor and researcher of health care law at Washington and Lee University, told The Washington Times. “I think it would be within her discretion to issue some kind of blanket exception. I think that would be possible.” But Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, is pushing legislation to delay the mandate until the website is fully functional and consumers are able to reliably access it and seek insurance. Other Republicans are echoing that call. “The healthcare law’s disastrous rollout has created not only a competence question for the administration, but it has again raised the issue of fairness,” said Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health. “Forcing Americans to purchase a product that is too expensive and not accessible is unacceptable, unrealistic and unfair.” House Speaker John Boehner said Republicans would use their oversight powers to conduct hearings into problems with the main federal insurance exchange website, as well as other problems with the law, including reports that it is causing employers to drop their own healthcare plans. "Whether it's Obamacare or issues with the Department of Defense, it's our job to hold them accountable. And when it comes to Obamacare, there's a lot to be held accountable," Boehner said. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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