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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (23800)	12/29/2009 4:19:58 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

"the first order of business is to repeal obamacare..." If it takes 60 votes to move anything big through the Senate, then how is that gonna be possible?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (23800)	12/29/2009 5:05:11 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

"This clown dodd was one of the pack leaders that caused the banking crisis in the first place" He and Lieberman were at the very head of the pack.

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (23800)	12/30/2009 12:06:49 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 103300

Back In The Tank With Fannie, Fred Posted 06:50 PM ET Fiscal Follies: While Americans are distracted by the holidays and a failed terror attack, Washington is giving another blank check to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Say, isn't this how we got into trouble before? When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two bankrupt, government-sponsored mortgage companies, were first bailed out in 2008, Americans were stunned that they'd have to pony up $200 billion. But Congress and the White House assured us it was necessary. But lo, this year, as Fannie and Freddie continued to deteriorate and their loan portfolios imploded, Treasury handed over another $200 billion. Now, in a sneaky move made on Christmas Eve, Treasury lifted the $400 billion cap on borrowing by the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), at least through 2012. So you, the taxpayer, are on the hook for their losses over that time — maybe longer. It's not chump change. Just this year, the two will post nearly $100 billion in losses — with more to come as a wave of nonperforming home loans are erased from their balance sheets. Thanks to government subsidized credit, Fannie and Freddie hold nearly $6 trillion in mortgage loans — roughly half the U.S. total. The dirty secret is they're now essentially state-owned companies. The fiction of them being publicly held by shareholders has been stripped bare. They'll continue sucking billions of dollars in wealth and income out of the economy and skewing rational decision-making in the mortgage markets for three years, maybe more. It was Fannie and Freddie, forced by Congress to fund subprime home loans, that caused the epic Financial Meltdown of 2008. Now, by further exposing taxpayers to Fannie's and Freddie's bad decision-making,we're seeding Financial Meltdown, Part II. "This is the culmination of an unprecedented policy disaster, inflicted on the American taxpayer by congressional supporters of Fannie and Freddie who refused over many years to approve new and tougher regulations for the two GSEs," wrote American Enterprise Institute fellow Peter J. Wallison, in a Dec. 28 blog entry. He's right. And Wallison has more credibility than most. Back in 2004, he warned that Fannie and Freddie would have to be reined in, or they would pose a massive financial risk to U.S. taxpayers. If Washington had listened, the crisis wouldn't have occurred. Among the most prominent of those in Congress who fought repeated efforts to change how Fannie and Freddie did business were two key Democrats, Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank. Guess what? They're still there, making things worse. Today, Fannie and Fred continue to bleed billions of taxpayer dollars, yet their CEOs are eligible for bonuses this year of as much as $6 million each, presumably for a job well done. Compare that to the CEOs of companies that Treasury "helped" this year, like Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Chrysler and GM. They all got coal in their stockings. What's truly outrageous is that by enabling Fannie and Freddie to continue lending, we are replicating the very process that caused our financial meltdown in the first place. Have we learned none of the obvious lessons from our recent past? Fannie and Freddie should have been closed or privatized a long time ago, and left to the tender mercies of a free market. Instead, Americans face at least three more years of socialized mortgage lending. More "hope and change"? Looks like neither.

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (23800)	12/30/2009 12:07:49 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 103300

More Reasons For Killing Off Health Reform By PHYLLIS SCHLAFLYPosted 06:50 PM ET New reasons emerge almost daily as to why ObamaCare can and must be defeated. 1. Americans oppose ObamaCare by almost 2 to 1 in the latest CNN poll. Other polls show lopsided opposition to passing either the Senate or House health care bill. Public opinion is against the bill because of its obscene costs in higher taxes, burdensome debt, anti-freedom mandates, rationing and reduced care for seniors. The American people have awakened to the fact that ObamaCare is transformational legislation that will drag us against popular will into European-style socialism. 2. The Democrats' double-counting of ObamaCare's financial benefits has been exposed as a colossal lie. Harry Reid told the Senate that his bill strengthens our future by both "cutting our towering national deficit by as much as $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years" and "strengthening Medicare and extending its life by nearly a decade." The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) refuted that assertion. CBO said the claim that ObamaCare would provide these benefits simultaneously "would essentially double-count a large share of those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the government's fiscal position." 3. ObamaCare is unconstitutional because of its mandate that all individuals must carry "approved" health insurance and all businesses must give health insurance to their employees whether or not the company can afford it. "Universal" coverage will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service with power to punish those who don't have such a plan. Constitutional lawyers say the Commerce Clause does not give Congress authority to force Americans to buy health insurance as a condition of living in the U.S. because personal health insurance is not "commerce." The CBO wrote that "a mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action"; the Supreme Court has never upheld any requirement that an individual must participate in economic activity. 4. Since the Senate bill imposes sharp limits on health insurance companies' ability to raise fees or exclude coverage, it likely will force many of them out of business. ObamaCare is unconstitutional because it violates the Bill of Rights protections against takings without just compensation and deprivation of property without due process of law. 5. Other ObamaCare provisions blatantly legislate racial and other forms of discrimination. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights sent two letters to the president and congressional leaders warning about the obnoxious requirements for racist and sexist quotas. The Senate bill requires that "priority" for federal grants be given to institutions offering "preferential" admissions to minorities (race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation and religion). Institutions training social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, behavioral pediatricians, psychiatric nurses and counselors will be ineligible for federal grants unless they enroll "individuals and groups from different racial, ethnic, cultural, geographic, religious, linguistic and class backgrounds, and different genders and sexual orientations." 6. Obama's claim that "everybody" will now be covered creates few winners but lots of losers. Universal health insurance will be achieved by forcing young people to pay the additional costs (insurance for the youngest third of the population would rise by 35%), and by restricting and rationing care for the elderly. 7. According to columnist Robert Samuelson, the "wild card is immigration." From 1999 to 2008, 60% of the increase in the uninsured occurred among Hispanics, and Obama's refusal to close our borders will make this problem more costly every year. 8. ObamaCare gives Medicare bureaucrats the power to ration health care by forcing doctors to prescribe cheaper medical devices and drugs. In the recent case of Hays v. Sebelius, the court ruled that Medicare doesn't have the right to make this rule, but ObamaCare takes jurisdiction away from the courts to hear any appeal from decisions of the new Medicare Commission. The "stick" applied to primary-care doctors is imposing financial penalties if they refer too many patients to specialists. The "carrot" is financial rewards to doctors who give up small practices and join into larger medical groups or become salaried employees of hospitals or other large institutions. 9. The Senate bill contains at least a dozen of what can be described as bribes. Sen. Mary Landrieu received a $300 million increase in Medicaid funding for her state (known as the Second Louisiana Purchase), and a $100 million bribe to Sen. Ben Nelson gives Nebraska a permanent exemption from the costs of Medicaid expansion. 10. The Senate bill even has a four-page section artfully written to enable Acorn to get federal health care grants. This section describes grant recipients as "community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups" having "existing relationships ... with uninsured and underinsured consumers."