Tag Archives: Lawsuit

News

Idaho and Virginia pass legislation to opt-out of Obamacare

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First, Idaho. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance. Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states.

And then, Virginia. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

The Virginia General Assembly has given final approval to a bill that would make it illegal for the government to require individuals to purchase health insurance, a measure intended to conflict with Democratic efforts to reform health care in Washington.

[…]Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Wednesday that he intends to sign the legislation.

The measure had been virtually assured passage since five Democrats crossed party lines last month in the state Senate, which their party controls, and supported the proposal.

Proponents of the measure said the federal government should not force private citizens to enter into private contracts for insurance. The legislation, they said, was a way to send a message to Washington.

Idaho is a red state, but Virginia is purple. Interesting. It looks like people are not interested in paying for mandatory coverages for medical services that they will never use, like abortions, in-vitro fertilization or sex changes. I guess people do who want those services will have to pay the full price themselves, while the rest of us who don’t want those services will just buy what coverage we need, and spend the rest of our money on gas and groceries, instead.

Tom Coburn warns corrupt Democrats

Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D., warning Democrats who vote for Obamacare in exchange for pork and bribes.

Suddenly, I feel proud to be a Republican. How about you?

News

Business leaders blame Obama for high unemployment rate

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Story from Reuters about a recent jobs summit. (H/T American Spectator via ECM)

Excerpt:

At a recent symposium, Intel boss Paul Otellini, a contributor to both parties, expressed concern about the “amount of variability in the system” created by the state of policy flux in healthcare, energy and tax policy. “It is very difficult to make a hiring decision,” he said. General Electric chief executive Jeffery Immelt, a strong supporter of Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal, added he would just like to “know what the rules are.”

All in all, a disturbing replay of the 1930s when FDR’s big changes left business reeling with uncertainty and confusion. The “devil you don’t know” and all that.

Small business is certainly with Big Business on this, particularly regarding the mercurial nature of healthcare reform. The substance of ObamaCare continues to morph daily — from the state of the public option to employer mandates to financing expanded coverage – as Senate leader Harry Reid scrounges for votes. On energy, the president will make big promises at Copenhagen even though cap-and-trade looks stillborn in the Senate.

As for financial reform, Senate banking committee chair Chris Dodd has proposed sweeping changes, while the Tim Geithner-Barney Frank version in the House seems beamed in from a universe where the credit crisis never happened. Compromise could prove elusive. Even Obama’s tax reform panel has delayed releasing its findings.

The thing you have to understand about business is that finding and hiring an employee is an expensive process. If this employee has to be laid off later because of government increasing tax rates or regulations, then that layoff poisons the atmosphere in the entire company. If you want businesses to feel comfortable about hiring, you need to convince them that you aren’t going to raise their taxes or expenses, unionize their work force, fine them for hurting the environment, or pass laws that encourage their employees to sue them for being offended, etc.

Legislative initiatives like card-check, health care mandates, cap-and-trade, ENDA, increased government spending, tariffs, “pay equity” laws, restrictions on executive salaries, capital gains tax hikes, etc., make businesses very risk-averse about hiring decisions. If Obama wants to attack businesses, these businesses may just leave the USA and set up shop elsewhere. But more likely they will just stay here and avoid hiring any new employees until the 2012 election.

News

Science czar says trees should be able to sue and born babies are not human beings

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Here’s the story from CNSNews. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

The idea has been endorsed by John P. Holdren, the man who now advises President Barack Obama on science and technology issues. Giving “natural objects” — like trees — standing to sue in a court of law would have a “most salubrious” effect on the environment, Holdren wrote the 1970s. “One change in (legal) notions that would have a most salubrious effect on the quality of the environment has been proposed by law professor Christopher D. Stone in his celebrated monograph, ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’” Holdren said in a 1977 book that he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. “In that tightly reasoned essay, Stone points out the obvious advantages of giving natural objects standing, just as such inanimate objects as corporations, trusts, and ships are now held to have legal rights and duties,” Holdren added.

And also:

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,” John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.”

I wonder which of Obama’s advisers is the most insane?

From the Secondhand Smoke article:

Just when you thought that the high advisers to President Obama couldn’t get any more radical. Consider: Cass Sunstein, his nominated regulations czar, wants animals to be able to sue their owners and has asserted that the lives of elderly people should be given less value in government regulatory cost/benefit determinations.  Ezekiel Emanuel, a high health care adviser, wants to ration health care based on quality of life (and perhaps against the elderly) and has asserted we all have a moral obligation to be experimented on.

I wrote before about how environmentalists banned DDT in Africa, causing 25-50 million innocent deaths. And I also profiled the murderous views of leading environmentalists, including the radical views of Obama’s pick for Science Czar. And don’t forget – they kill 1 million unborn babies per year in the USA alone – 50 million since abortion was legalized in 1973.

Secularism is not a nice worldview.