Tag Archives: Socialism

Videos

Selling single-payer health care with lies

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Holy Snark!

You will watch this 3 minute video about the Democrats’ plan for single-payer health care right now! (H/T Heritage Foundation)

This video is courtesy Verum Serum, the same guys who brought us that Jan Schakowsky video where she admits that Obama’s plan will destroy private medical insurance. They seem to be a Christian blog, so I blogrolled them, along with Bush White House economist Keith Hennessey, who I linked to twice.

Quick quote from Heritage Foundation’s post:

As Yale professor Jacob Hacker says in the video: “Someone once said to me this is a Trojan Horse for single payer and I said well its not a Trojan Horse, right? Its just right there.”

And then later:  “One of the virtues of it though is that you can at least make the claim that there is a competitve system between the public and private sectors.”

Don’t forget some other videos I posted on health care, (that post has a link to Laura’s amazing post on health care that was on Hot Air, which had more helpful videos!).

Michelle Malkin has some ideas about what the grassroots can do! We can fight this.

A comprehensive, point-by-point refutation of government-run health care is here, at the Heritage Foundation.

They cover:

  • the hidden costs of government-run health care, that are paid by the private sector
  • the low efficiency and low quality of existing government plans like Medicare and Medicaid
  • how government-run health care would lead to controls on your private life to reduce health costs
  • the real solution to the health care mess: competition, de-regulation and consumer choice

Some good news on health care

OK, Heritage Foundation had this story on a bill introduced by Republican senators Tom Coburn and Richard Burr. It’s called the “Patient’s Choice Act”.

Excerpt: (I bolded the stuff I liked)

As Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner and Joseph Antos with American Enterprise Institute note in The Wall Street Journal, the legislation “provides a path to universal coverage by redirecting current subsidies for health insurance to individuals. It also provides a new safety net that guarantees access to insurance for those with pre-existing conditions.”

By restructuring the tax treatment for health insurance, the plan would give every taxpayer direct assistance to buy private health insurance, and end the inequities that plague the current system. The bill would shift the $300 billion annual tax exclusion for employer-based health benefits toward refundable tax credits for families and individuals. Families would get $5,700 a year and individual consumers would get $2,300 a year to purchase private plans and invest in health savings accounts (HSAs).

Low-income families would receive a supplemental debit card worth up to $5,000 that would help them pay for health coverage and out-of-pocket medical bills. They’d also be incentivized to make the most of their health care dollars since the remaining balance on their card would roll over to the next year. The expected expansion of private health plans would reduce the dependence of many uninsured Americans on the hospital emergency rooms for routine care, saving American taxpayers billions of dollars.

“The combination of the refundable tax credit and debit card gives lower-income Americans a way out of the Medicaid ghetto so they can have the dignity of private insurance,” Turner and Antos add.

This is what Republicans would do if we could elect enough of them.

News

Who has the better economy? Canada or the USA?

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Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute reports:

1.2 million Americans have lost their jobs since the $800 billion stimulus package was signed into law.

The stimulus package has directly destroyed tens of thousands of jobs. A provision in the stimulus package that blocked 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads “caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade,” destroying 40,000 American jobs.

It also ignited a trade war with Canada. In response to vague “buy American” provisions in the stimulus package, “A number of Ontario towns, with a collective population of nearly 500,000, retaliated with measures effectively barring U.S. companies from their municipal contracts — the first shot in a larger campaign that could shut U.S. companies out of billions of dollars worth of Canadian projects.”

Yet, Obama had the audacity to claim that only passing the stimulus package would save us from “irreversible decline” and economic ““disaster”.

Obama’s policies echo those of Herbert Hoover, who helped spawn the Great Depression through his protectionism and tax increases.

Remember how Democrats used to complain about Bush and his “tax cuts for the rich”? Yeah, it’s strange how only people who pay taxes (59% of the public) can actually get tax cuts, isn’t it. But Obama has an even better idea: “tax hikes for the poor”.

The Washington Post reports on Obama’s new car tax: (H/T Heritage Foundation, Michelle Malkin, Stop the ACLU, Gateway Pundit)

A senior administration official said the new standards would raise the cost of an average car by $1,300, $600 of which could be attributed to the rules being announced today.

This is not to mention the electricity tax (cap and trade), the cigarette tax, taxing employee health care plans, and the rising cost of living caused by protectionism.

On the other hand, let’s take a look at Canada in relation to the United States, courtesy of the Cato Institute. (H/T Heritage Foundation)

The Cato Institute writes:

Spending: Spending by all levels of the Canadian government peaked at 53 percent of the country’s GDP in the early 1990s, then plunged to 40 percent in 2008. U.S. government spending has risen, reaching 39 percent of GDP in 2008. And with the stimulus package, that number is likely to jump even higher.

Government spending as % of GDP
Government spending as % of GDP

Debt: The Canadian government cut its debt from 71 percent of GDP in 1995 to 32 percent in 2008. Under President Obama’s budget plan, U.S. federal public debt will jump from 41 percent of GDP in 2008 to more than 60 percent next year.

Federal debt as % of GDP
Federal debt as % of GDP

Deficits: Canada has balanced its budget every year since 1998 — not by raising taxes, but by cutting spending. The United States balanced its budget for four years in the late 1990s, but now deficits are so large that it’s difficult to imagine that ever happening again.

Surplus / Deficit as % of GDP
Surplus / Deficit as % of GDP

Corporate Taxes: Canada has cut the corporate tax rate from 28 percent to just 15 percent, and most provinces have trimmed corporate taxes as well. The U.S. federalstate rate stands at about 40 percent, and the Obama administration is planning to increase corporate taxes.

Corporate tax rates
Corporate tax rates

It’s important to note that the Liberal party in Canada is socially progressive, but moderate on fiscal issues. Of course, now that the Conservatives have been running things, it’s gotten even better. It would be great if they could win a majority. The biggest problem in Canada right now is the fascist Human Rights Commissions, but there are candidates from the Conservative Party who intend to abolish the HRCs in BC and Ontario.

News

Are the oceans warming?

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We actually have a pretty comprehensive way of measuring the changes in the temperature of the oceans. We use a submersible sensor called an “Argo Buoy” in order to do the measurements. Since 2003, 3000 of them have been taking measurements in all the oceans of the world. The purpose of the buoys is to provide scientists with confirmation that the globe is really warming. But all was not well.

But the Vancouver Sun reports: (H/T Commenter ECM)

So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys’ findings? Because in five years the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters’ hypotheses, must be wrong.

In fact, “there has been a very slight cooling,” according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.

Well, maybe the climate models predicted some cooling?

The big problem with the Argo findings is that all the major climate computer models postulate that as much as 80-90 per cent of global warming will result from the oceans warming rapidly then releasing their heat into the atmosphere.

But surely the other models are being confirmed by observations?

Modellers are also perplexed by the findings of NASA’s eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily over the entire surface of the Earth, versus approximately 7,000 random readings from Earth stations.

In nearly 30 years of operation, the satellites have discovered a warming trend of just 0.14 C per decade, less than the models and well within the natural range of temperature variation.

But maybe if we wait for a while, scientists will discover new measurements that are the opposite of these measurements. The new measurements will confirm that global warming is real, that scientists need more grant money, and that socialists must take control of the economy right now in order to save us from the horrible Flying Spaghetti Global Warming Monster! Those 700 dissenting scientists? Paid off by big oil! All of them!

The polar ice caps were also paid off by big oil. How else do you explain their refusal to melt?

UPDATE: NASA study shows that solar activity is responsible for past global warming.