The Department of Health and Human Services placed a gag order preventing private health insurance companies from communicating to their Medicare Advantage customers how the pending health care legislation, if passed, could impact them. Last week, Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Chairman, ordered Medicare regulators to investigate and likely punish Humana Inc. for sending out a mailer to its Advantage plan customers (senior citizens) that mislead and “confused beneficiaries.”
Mr. Blum, the acting director of a regulatory office in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), informed Humana of its investigations, and further banned all Advantage contractors from informing their customers what Congress is currently debating and discussing regarding health care.
But it gets better. Who is Mr. Blum? The former senior aide to Mr. Baucus, former health care policy adviser on Obama’s transition team, and now the acting director of the CMS. Mr. Blum’s former boss, Max Baucus, is the one who originally asked the CMS to investigate the companies critical of the health care bill.
Wait…better still. The letter Humana sent to its customers warned that Democratic plans to reform health care could result in benefit cuts, conclusions that the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) supports with its own assertions made to Max Baucus’ committee. On Tuesday, the CBO director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Finance Committee that its plan to cut $123 billion from Medicare Advantage (the program that gives almost ¼ of all seniors’ private health insurance options) will result in lower benefits and almost 2.7 million seniors losing their coverage.
Baucus believes that Humana is purposefully misleading seniors in just another scare tactic. I’m sure it has nothing to do with Humana, a private insurance company, tending to the needs and interests of its own customers, and honestly informing them of the damaging democratic plans to overhaul health care. Since the Obama administration has been so welcoming to opposing points of views, not only meticulously reviewing the Republican versions of health care reform, but also responding to the concerns of millions of American citizens, I’m sure the recent gag order coming from his own appointee to silence unfavorable statistics is simply a coincidence.
And then we have the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP) who has spent millions of dollars on its TV ad campaign and newsletters to its members, including eight million direct-mail letters sent over Labor Day. On its own website, AARP claims that the proposed health care reform will not in any way cut benefits or increase expenses for seniors. AARP markets its version of the Advantage plan, through United HealthCare, and boasts 1.7 million customers. And by the way, AARP happens to be one of the most powerful lobbying groups on Capitol Hill.
I’m sure their letter from Mr. Blum just got lost in the mail, even though our post office is an exceptional example of government funds well managed and budgeted. Just ask Obama.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574431212166204156.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/09/24/hhs-1997-prohibiting-hmos-informing-clients-pending-legislation-viola
Friday, September 25, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Do Your Homework
Van Jones stepped down as the “green jobs” czar last week. Great, he should leave. Jones is a radical liberal and self-professed communist who was exposed largely because of independent thinkers with a microphone. With Jones out, it’s time the other czars indisputably chosen for such prominent positions by Obama and his administration are exposed for their worldviews. Expose their character and their beliefs, and if needed, take action once again to protect the interests of Americans.
Don’t wait for someone else to look into these czars. Do your homework. My choice for the next target: Cass Sunstein. On September 9th, the same day as President Obama’s speech to congress on health care, Harry Reid (D-NV) pushed for cloture (a method used to close a debate and cause an immediate vote) for the confirmation of Sunstein as the “regulatory czar.” Conveniently, while the media and much of the informed public focused on Obama’s Trojan horse, the senate rushed into voting on a man they probably know little about. How can I be so sure they don’t know who he is? Because this is Cass Sunstein:
- In a speech at Harvard University in 2007, Sunstein expressed his animal rights views. He stated that hunting should be banned, and that subjecting animals to such unjustified suffering is akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings.
- He believes the Second Amendment does not protect and individual’s rights to bear arms.
- He believes that animals should have the right to bring suit against human beings, with a human as its attorney, because animals are not property to own. (No, I’m not making that up.)
- He does believe, however, that animals should have the right to own property.
- In his 2001 book, “Republic.com,” he argued that the Internet weakens democracy because it allows citizens to isolate themselves within groups of like-minded individuals, thus cutting themselves off from information that challenges their beliefs, also known as “cyberbalkanization.” Further, he said that the internet must be regulated for “democratic principles.”
- He believes we should have a second bill of rights because no one really opposes government intervention. This “second bill” would advocate citizens’ rights to an education, a home, health care, and a right to protection against monopolies because the Constitutional framers didn’t give thought to social and economic guarantees in the Bill of Rights.
- In his 2004 book “The Second Bill of Rights,” he stated that citizens’ rights exist only to the extent that the government grants them.
- He is a believer in the concept of “libertarian paternalism,” which promotes the concept that regulators will gently “nudge” citizens into making choices they (the regulators) deem are appropriate, thus rewarding citizens for those appropriate choices (a theory he wrote about in his 2007 booked called “Nudge”).
This is America’s regulatory czar; the head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Every piece of major regulation will sit on his desk until he takes a red pen to it. The internet, television and radio will be well within his realm of jurisdiction. This former Harvard Law Professor will be in the back pocket of radical groups such at PETA who salivate with the idea that animals are equal citizens with you and I.
Hours before Obama’s health care speech, Sunstein was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate in a 63-35 vote. Numerous republicans and all but three democrats voted yes. Our senators voted for a man who has so perverted the original intent of our founding documents and has every intention of influencing society to an extent that could become principally unrecognizable.
Richard Epstein, a liberal law professor at University of Chicago and co-editor with Sunstein of a book about the 2000 elections, supported his confirmation “notwithstanding the many substantive disagreements between us.” Glenn Reynolds, the libertarian blogger and law professor remarked that Sunstein’s confirmation “shows that the Obama administration is perhaps willing to look at new and less intrusive approaches to regulation … there are a lot of people worthy of more concern than Sunstein. If I were advising Republicans, I’d tell them to focus their attention elsewhere.” Too many of the Republican Senators did just that.
Place a frog in boiling water and it will jump out, but start with luke warm water, raise the temperature slowly, and eventually you’ll have frog legs for dinner. This simple concept is what too many extremists within our government understand and are implementing, and what too few conservatives fail to recognize.
It is time for the principles and morality that has served this country (and the world) well for over 200 years to make a quick comeback. The temperature is rising. Jump out of the pot… and fight.
Sources:
http://washingtonindependent.com/58152/attacks-on-sunstein-frustrate-conservative-fans
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2156473/is_cass_sunstein_the_next_van_jones_pg2.html?cat=9
http://stopsunstein.com/
Don’t wait for someone else to look into these czars. Do your homework. My choice for the next target: Cass Sunstein. On September 9th, the same day as President Obama’s speech to congress on health care, Harry Reid (D-NV) pushed for cloture (a method used to close a debate and cause an immediate vote) for the confirmation of Sunstein as the “regulatory czar.” Conveniently, while the media and much of the informed public focused on Obama’s Trojan horse, the senate rushed into voting on a man they probably know little about. How can I be so sure they don’t know who he is? Because this is Cass Sunstein:
- In a speech at Harvard University in 2007, Sunstein expressed his animal rights views. He stated that hunting should be banned, and that subjecting animals to such unjustified suffering is akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings.
- He believes the Second Amendment does not protect and individual’s rights to bear arms.
- He believes that animals should have the right to bring suit against human beings, with a human as its attorney, because animals are not property to own. (No, I’m not making that up.)
- He does believe, however, that animals should have the right to own property.
- In his 2001 book, “Republic.com,” he argued that the Internet weakens democracy because it allows citizens to isolate themselves within groups of like-minded individuals, thus cutting themselves off from information that challenges their beliefs, also known as “cyberbalkanization.” Further, he said that the internet must be regulated for “democratic principles.”
- He believes we should have a second bill of rights because no one really opposes government intervention. This “second bill” would advocate citizens’ rights to an education, a home, health care, and a right to protection against monopolies because the Constitutional framers didn’t give thought to social and economic guarantees in the Bill of Rights.
- In his 2004 book “The Second Bill of Rights,” he stated that citizens’ rights exist only to the extent that the government grants them.
- He is a believer in the concept of “libertarian paternalism,” which promotes the concept that regulators will gently “nudge” citizens into making choices they (the regulators) deem are appropriate, thus rewarding citizens for those appropriate choices (a theory he wrote about in his 2007 booked called “Nudge”).
This is America’s regulatory czar; the head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Every piece of major regulation will sit on his desk until he takes a red pen to it. The internet, television and radio will be well within his realm of jurisdiction. This former Harvard Law Professor will be in the back pocket of radical groups such at PETA who salivate with the idea that animals are equal citizens with you and I.
Hours before Obama’s health care speech, Sunstein was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate in a 63-35 vote. Numerous republicans and all but three democrats voted yes. Our senators voted for a man who has so perverted the original intent of our founding documents and has every intention of influencing society to an extent that could become principally unrecognizable.
Richard Epstein, a liberal law professor at University of Chicago and co-editor with Sunstein of a book about the 2000 elections, supported his confirmation “notwithstanding the many substantive disagreements between us.” Glenn Reynolds, the libertarian blogger and law professor remarked that Sunstein’s confirmation “shows that the Obama administration is perhaps willing to look at new and less intrusive approaches to regulation … there are a lot of people worthy of more concern than Sunstein. If I were advising Republicans, I’d tell them to focus their attention elsewhere.” Too many of the Republican Senators did just that.
Place a frog in boiling water and it will jump out, but start with luke warm water, raise the temperature slowly, and eventually you’ll have frog legs for dinner. This simple concept is what too many extremists within our government understand and are implementing, and what too few conservatives fail to recognize.
It is time for the principles and morality that has served this country (and the world) well for over 200 years to make a quick comeback. The temperature is rising. Jump out of the pot… and fight.
Sources:
http://washingtonindependent.com/58152/attacks-on-sunstein-frustrate-conservative-fans
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2156473/is_cass_sunstein_the_next_van_jones_pg2.html?cat=9
http://stopsunstein.com/
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Step Up and Lead
In a previous post, I asked the reader if they had the fortitude to step up to the plate and lead their neighbor or neighborhood for the sake of truth and prosperity.
To be a leader, you must:
"Be" ~ practice what you preach; be the person you say you are"Know" ~ have knowledge. This includes the integrity to hold only to truthful knowledge, not propaganda"Do" ~ put your beliefs into action
First things first, let us discuss the "Be" and the "Know".
It is my opinion that if you are to be a leader at this stage in the game, you need to come to the table already an embodiment of someone who practices what they preach. Very simply, I cannot help you with the "Be" portion; you either 'are' or you 'are not'.
While the overall intent of both this blog and the resource links contained within this post is to educate, as a potential leader it is inherent that you already possess at least some degree of knowledge relating the Constitution, the system of Government and the proper role of Government thereof. It need not be a vast and total understanding, just a basic grasp of some history and a few of the concepts in play. Again, at this stage in the game, you must already "Know" some of the basics on your own.
My purpose as the author of this post is only to develope the "Do" portion of this three part leadership philosophy - how to properly put your beliefs into action. First off, I proudly proclaim and admit that you exceed this author in your potential to shape the cause! I have never been one to micro-manage; I am no Wizard of Oz. All I can do is hopefully gain your attention, and show you a few resources to aid you in your pursuits.
I can tell you something, however, that is non-debatable: you must understand that as a leader in a cause such as the survival of our Republic, there are factors that must always be present if we are to accomplish any objective that contributes to the overall endstate:
1. Be prepared to question with BOLDNESS2. Once you find the TRUTH, hold to it3. You must speak without FEAR
There is something else as well: you must always accomplish your goals "by, with, and through" the American People. While this may seem obvious, always keep in mind that you are not part of some 'fringe' group. You must understand that you are only facilitating and carrying out the vision what the Founding Fathers intended some 233 years ago.
The below links will hopefully help you shape your discussion. In addition, please take note of the recently updated list of links to the right-hand side of this page. Use them as you see fit, or don't use them at all and make your own way. If you choose the latter, if you would please take the time to make a comment and let us all know what resources you used to aid your path in leadership.
Friday, September 4, 2009
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