Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

America’s Drug Story and the Rockefeller Empire

 “We Are Living Too Short and Dying Too Long”.

…Dr. Myron Wentz, founder, chairman, and CEO of USANA Health Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: USNA) and Sanoviv Medical Center, honored with the Albert Einstein Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Life Sciences.

 
By Marion Algier – AskMarion/THITW
The Drug Story

"The truth about cures without drugs is suppressed, unless it suits the purpose of the censor to garble it. Whether these cures are effected by chiropractors, Naturopaths, Naprapaths, Osteopaths, Faith Healers, Spiritualists, Herbalists, Christian Scientists, or MDs who use the brains they have, you never read about it in the big newspapers."  ...Morris A. Bealle

In the 30's, Morris A. Bealle, a former city editor of the old Washington Times and Herald, was running a county seat newspaper, in which the local power company bought a large advertisement every week. This account took quite a lot of worry off Bealle' s shoulders when the bills came due. But according to Bealle's own story, one day the paper took up the cudgels for some of its readers that were being given poor service from the power company, and Morris Bealle received the dressing down of his life from the advertising agency which handled the power company' s account. They told him that any more such 'stepping out of line' would result in the immediate cancellation not only of the advertising contract, but also of the gas company and the telephone company.

That' s when Bealle' s eyes were opened to the meaning of a 'free press', and he decided to get out of the newspaper business. He could afford to do that because he belonged to the landed gentry of Maryland, but not all newspaper editors are that lucky.

Bealle used his professional experience to do some deep digging into the freedom-of-the-press situation and came up with two shattering exposes - The Drug Story, and The House of Rockefeller. The fact that in spite of his familiarity with the editorial world and many important personal contacts he couldn't get his revelations into print until he founded his own company, The Columbia Publishing House, Washington D.C., in 1949, was just a prime example of the silent but adamant censorship in force in 'the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave'. Although The Drug Story is one of the most important books on health and politics ever to appear in the USA, it has never been admitted to a major bookstore nor reviewed by any establishment paper, and was sold exclusively by mail until the 1970s,  when we first got to read it. But nevertheless, it was already in its 33rd printing, under a different label - Biworld Publishers, Orem, Utah.

As Bealle pointed out, a business which makes 6% on its invested capital is considered a sound money maker. Sterling Drug, Inc., the main cog and largest holding company in the Rockefeller Drug Empire and its 68 subsidiaries, showed operating profits in 1961 of $23,463,719 after taxes, on net assets of $43,108,106 - a 54% profit. Squibb, another Rockefeller controlled company, in 1945 made not 6% but 576% on the actual value of its property.

That was during the luscious war years when the Army Surgeon General's Office and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery were not only acting as promoters for the Drug Trust, but were actually forcing drug trust poisons into the blood streams of American soldiers, sailors and marines, to the tune of over 200 million 'shots'. Is it any wonder, asked Bealle, that the Rockefellers, and their stooges in the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Public Health Service, the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau, the Army Medical Corps, the Navy Bureau of Medicine, and thousands of health officers all over the country, should combine to put out of business all forms of therapy that discourage the use of drugs.

'The last annual report of the Rockefeller Foundation', reported Bealle (in the early 1970’s), 'itemizes the gifts [grants] it has made to colleges and public agencies in the past 44 years, and they total somewhat over half a billion dollars. These colleges, of course, teach their students all the drug lore the Rockefeller pharmaceutical houses want taught. Otherwise there would be no more gifts, just as there are no gifts to any of the 30 odd colleges in the United States that don't use therapies based on drugs.

'Harvard, with its well publicized medical school, has received $8,764,433 of Rockefeller's Drug Trust money, Yale got $7 ,927,800, Johns Hopkins $10,418,531, Washington University in St. Louis $2,842,132, New York's Columbia University $5,424,371, Cornell University $1,709,072, ete., etc.'

And while 'giving away' those huge sums to drug propagandizing colleges, the Rockefeller interests were growing to a world-wide web that no one could entirely explore. Already well over 30 years ago it was large enough for Bealle to demonstrate that the Rockefeller interests had created, built up and developed the most far reaching industrial empire ever conceived in the mind of man. Standard Oil was of course the foundation upon which all of the other Rockefeller industries have been built. The story of Old John D., as ruthless an industrial pirate as ever came down the pike, is well known, but is being today conveniently ignored. The keystone of this mammoth industrial empire was the Chase NationaI Bank, now renamed the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Not the least of its holdings are in the drug business. The Rockefellers own the largest drug manufacturing combine in the world, and use all of their other interests to bring pressure to increase the sale of drugs. The fact that most of the 12,000 separate drug items on the market are harmful is of no concern to the Drug Trust...

The Rockefeller Foundation was first set up in 1904 and called the General Education Fund. An organization called the Rockefeller Foundation, ostensibly to supplement the General Education Fund, was formed in 1910 and through long finagling and lots of Rockefeller money got the New York legislature to issue a charter on May 14, 1913.

It is therefore not surprising that the House of Rockefeller has had its own 'nominees' planted in all Federal agencies that have to do with health. So the stage was set for the 'education' of the American public, with a view to turning it into a population of drug and medico dependents, with the early help of the parents and the schools, then with direct advertising and, last but not least, the influence the advertising revenues had on the media makers.

A compilation of the magazine Advertising Age showed that as far back as 1948 the larger companies in America spent for advertising the sum total of $1,104,224,374, when the dollar was still worth a dollar and not half a zloty. Of this staggering sum the interlocking Rockefeller-Morgan interests (gone over entirely to Rockefeller after Morgan' s death) controlled about 80 percent, and utilized it to manipulate public information on health and drug matters - then and even more recklessly now.

'Even the most independent newspapers are dependent on their press associations for their national news,' Bealle pointed out, 'and there is no reason for a news editor to suspect that a story coming over the wires of the Associated Press, the United Press or the International News Service is censored when it concerns health matters. Yet this is what happens constantly.'

In fact in the '50s the Drug Trust had one of its directors on the directorate of the Associated Press. He was no less than Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and as such one of the most powerful Associated Press directors.

It was thus easy for the Rockefeller Trust to persuade the Associated Press Science Editor to adopt a policy which would not permit any medical news to clear that is not approved by the Drug Trust 'expert', and this censor is not going to approve any item that can in any way hurt the sale of drugs.

This accounts to this day for the many fake stories of serums and medical cures and just-around-the-corner breakthrough victories over cancer, AIDS, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, which go out brazenly over the wires to all daily newspapers in America and abroad.

Emanuel M. Josephson, M.D., whom the Drug Trust has been unable to intimidate despite many attempts, pointed out that the National Association of Science Writers was 'persuaded' to adopt as part of its code of ethics the following chestnut: 'Science editors are incapable of judging the facts of phenomena involved in medical and scientific discovery. Therefore, they only report 'discoveries' approved by medical authorities, or those presented before a body of scientific peers.'

This explains why Bantam Books, America's biggest publisher, made a colossal mistake in its initial enthusiasm and optimism sending review copies of  SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT to the 3,500 'science writers' on its list, instead of addressing them to the literary book reviewers who are not  subject to medical censorship. One single censor decreed NO and SLAUGHTER OF  THE INNOCENT sank in silence.

Thus newspapers continue to be fed with propaganda about drugs and their alleged value, although according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 1.5 million people landed in hospitals in 1978 because of medication side effects in the U.S. alone, and despite recurrent statements by intelligent and courageous medical men that most pharmaceutical items on sale are useless at best, but more often harmful or deadly in the long run.

The truth about cures without drugs is suppressed, unless it suits the purpose of the censor to garble it. Whether these cures are effected by Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Naprapaths, Osteopaths, Faith Healers, Spiritualists, Herbalists, Christian Scientists, or MDs who use the brains they have, you never read about it in the big newspapers.

To teach the Rockefeller drug ideology, it is necessary to teach that Nature didn't know what she was doing when she made the human body. But statistics issued by the Children's Bureau of the Federal Security Agency show that since the all-out drive of the Drug Trust for drugging, vaccinating and serumizing the human system, the health of the American nation has sharply declined, especially among children. Children are now given 'shots' for this and 'shots' for that, when the only safeguard known to science is a pure bloodstream, which can be obtained only with clean air and wholesome food. Meaning by natural and inexpensive means. Just what the Drug Trust most objects to.

When the FDA, whose officials have to be acceptable to Rockefeller Center before they are appointed, has to put an independent operator out of business, it goes all out to execute those orders. But the orders do not come directly from Standard Oil or a drug house director. As Morris Bealle pointed out, the American Medical Association (AMA) is the front for the Drug Trust, and furnishes the quack doctors to testify that even when they know nothing of the product involved, it is their considered opinion that it has no therapeutic value.

Wrote Bealle:

'Financed by the taxpayers, these Drug Trust persecutions leave no stone unturned to destroy the victim. If he is a small operator, the resulting attorney's fees and court costs put him out of business. In one case, a Dr. Adolphus Hohensee of Scranton, Pa., who had stated that vitamins (he used natural ones) were vital to good health, was taken to court for 'misbranding' his product. The American Medical Association furnished ten medicos who reversed all known medical theories by testifying that 'vitamins are not necessary to the human body'. Confronted with government bulletins to the contrary, the medicos wiggled out of that one by declaring that these standard publications were outdated!'

In addition to the FDA, Bealle listed the following agencies having to do with 'health' - i.e., with the health of the Drug Trust to the detriment of the citizens - as being dependent on Rockefeller: U.S. Public Health Service, U.S. Veterans Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Surgeon General of the Air Force, Army Surgeon General' s Office, Navy Bureau of Medicine & Surgery, National Health Research Institute, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington is considered the all wise body which investigates everything under the sun, especially in the field of health, and gives to a palpitating public the last word in that science. To the important post at the head of this agency, the Drug Trust had one of their own appointed. He was none other than Alfred N. Richards, one of the directors and largest stockholders of Merck & Company, which was making huge profits from its drug traffic.

When Bealle revealed this fact, Richards resigned forthwith, and the Rockefellers appointed in his place the President of their own Rockefeller Institution, Detlev W. Bronk.

The medico drug cartel was summed up by J.W Hodge, M.D., of Niagara Falls,  N.Y., in these words:   'The medical monopoly or medical trust, euphemistically called the American Medical Association, is not merely the meanest monopoly ever organized, but the most arrogant, dangerous and despotic organization which ever managed a free people in this or any other age. Any and all methods of healing the sick by means of safe, simple and natural remedies are sure to be assailed and denounced by the arrogant leaders of the AMA doctors' trust as fakes, frauds and humbugs.  Every practitioner of the healing art who does not ally himself with the medical trust is denounced as a 'dangerous quack' and impostor by the predatory trust doctors. Every sanitarium who attempts to restore the sick to a state of health by natural means without resort to the knife or poisonous drugs, disease imparting serums, deadly toxins or vaccines, is at once pounced upon by these medical tyrants and fanatics, bitterly denounced, vilified and persecuted to the fullest extent.'

The Lincoln Chiropractic College in Indianapolis requires 4,496 hours, the Palmer Institute Chiropractic in Davenport a minimum of 4,000 60 minute classroom hours, the University of Natural Healing Arts in Denver five years of 1,000 hours each to qualify for a degree. The National College of Naprapathy in Chicago requires 4,326 classroom hours for graduation. Yet the medico drug cartel spreads the propaganda that the practitioners of these three 'heretic' sciences are poorly trained or not trained at all - the real reason being that they cure their patients without the use of drugs. In 1958, one of those 'ill trained' doctors, Nicholas P. Grimaldi, who had just graduated from the Lincoln Chiropractic College, took the basic science examination of the Connecticut State Board along with 63 medics and osteopaths. He made the highest mark (91.6) ever made by a doctor taking the Connecticut State Board examination.

Rockefeller' s various 'educational' activities had proved so profitable in the U S. that in 1927 the International Educational Board was launched, as Junior' s own, personal charity, and endowed with $21,000,000 for a starter, to be lavished on foreign universities and politicos, with all the usual strings attached. This Board undertook to export the 'new' Rockefeller image as a benefactor of mankind, as well as his business practices. Nobody informed the beneficiaries that every penny the Rockefellers seemed to be throwing out the window would come back, bearing substantial interest, through the front door.

Rockefeller had always had a particular interest in China, where Standard Oil was almost the sole supplier of kerosene and oil 'for the lamps of China'. So he put up money to establish the China Medical Board and to build the Peking Union Medical College, playing the role of the Great White Father who has come to dispense knowledge on his lowly children. The Rockefeller Foundation invested up to $45,000,000 into 'westernizing' (read corrupting) Chinese medicine.

Medical colleges were instructed that if they wished to benefit from the Rockefeller largesse they had better convince 500 million Chinese to throw into the ashcan the safe and useful but inexpensive herbal remedies of their barefoot doctors, which had withstood the test of centuries, in favor of the expensive carcinogenic and teratogenic 'miracle' drugs Made in USA, which had to be replaced constantly with new ones, when the fatal side effects could no longer be concealed; and if they couldn't 'demonstrate' through large-scale animal experiments the effectiveness of their ancient  acupuncture, this could not be recognized as having any 'scientific value'. Its millenarian effectiveness proven on human beings was of no concern to the Western wizards.

But when the Communists came to power in China and it was no longer possible to trade, the Rockefellers suddenly lost interest in the health of the Chinese people and shifted their attention increasingly to Japan, India and Latin America.

'No candid study of his career can lead to other conclusion than that he is victim of perhaps the ugliest of all passions, that for money, money as an end. It is not a pleasant picture.... this money maniac secretly, patiently, eternally plotting how he may add to his wealth.... He has turned commerce to war, and honey-combed it with cruel and corrupt practices.... And he calls his great organization a benefaction, and points to his church-going and charities as proof of his righteousness. This is supreme wrong-doing cloaked by religion. There is but one name for it - hypocrisy. '

This was the description Ida Tarbell made of John D. Rockefeller in her 'History of the Standard Oil Company', serialized in 1905 in the widely circulated McClure's Magazine. And that was several years before the 'Ludlow Massacre', so JDR was as yet far from having reached the apex of his  disrepute. But after World War II it would have been hard to read, in America or abroad, a single criticism of JDR, nor of Junior, who had followed in his father' s footsteps, nor of Junior' s four sons who all endeavored to emulate their illustrious forbears. Today's various encyclopedias extant in public libraries of the Western world have nothing but praise for the Family. How was this achieved?

Ironically, the two apparently most NEGATIVE events in the career of JDR brought about a huge POSITIVE change in his favor, to a degree that he himself could not foresee. To wit:

In the year when according to the current Encyclopedia Britanica (long become a Rockefeller property and transferred from Oxford to Chicago), Rockefeller had 'retired from active business', namely in 1911, he had been convicted by a U.S. court of illegal practices and ordered to dissolve the Standard Oil Trust, which comprised 40 corporations. This imposed dissolution was to provide his Empire with added might, to a degree that was unprecedented in the history of modem business. Until then, the Trust had existed for all to see - an exposed target. After that, it went underground, and thereby its power was cloaked in security, and could keep expanding unseen and therefore unopposed.

The Ludlow Massacre

The second apparently negative experience was a certain 1914 event that persuaded JDR, until then utterly contemptuous of public opinion, to gloss over his own image.

The United Mine Workers had asked for higher wages and better living conditions for the miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, one of the many Rockefeller owned companies.

The miners - mostly immigrants from Europe's poorest countries - lived in shacks provided by the company at exorbitant rent. Their low wages ($1.68 a day) were paid in script redeemable only at company stores charging high prices. The churches they attended were the pastorates of company-hired ministers; their children were taught in company-controlled schools; the company libraries excluded books that the Bible-thumping Rockefellers deemed 'subversive', such as 'Darwin's Origin of the Species.' The company maintained a force of detectives, mine guards, and spies whose job it was to keep the camp quarantined from the danger of unionization.

When the miners struck, JDR, Jr., then officially in command of the company, and his father's hatchet man, the Baptist Reverend Frederick T. Gates, who was a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, refused even to negotiate. They evicted the strikers from the company-owned shacks, hired a thousand strike-breakers from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency, and persuaded Governor Ammons to call out the National Guard to help break the strike.

Open warfare resulted. Guardsmen, miners, their women and children, who since their eviction were camping in tents, were ruthlessly killed, until the frightened Governor wired President Wilson for Federal Troops, who eventually crushed the strike, The New York Times, which then already could never be accused of being unfriendly to the Rockefeller interests, reported on April 21, 1914.

'A 14 hour battle between striking coal miners and members of the Colorado National Guard in the Ludlow district today culminated in the killing of Louis Tikas, leader of the Greek strikers, and the destruction of the Ludlow tent colony by fire.'

  And the following day.

'Forty five dead (32 of them women and children), a score missing and more than a score wounded is the known result of the 14 hour battle which raged between state troops and coal miners in the Ludlow district, on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Rockefeller holding. The Ludlow is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath it is a story of horror unparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes that had been dug for their protection against rifle fire, the women and children died like trapped rats as the flames swept over them. One pit uncovered this afternoon disclosed the bodies of ten children and two women.'

The worldwide revulsion that followed was such that JDR decided to hire the most talented press agent in the country, Ivy Lee, who got the tough assignment of whitewashing the tycoon' s bloodied image.

When Lee learned that the newly organized Rockefeller Foundation had $100 million lying around for promotional purposes without knowing what to do with it, he came with a plan to donate large sums - none less than a million- to well known colleges, hospitals, churches and benevolent organizations. The plan was accepted. So were the millions. And they made headlines all over the world, for in the days of the gold standard and the five cent cigar there was a maxim in every newspaper office that a million dollars was always news.

That was the beginning of the cleverly worded medical reports on new 'miracle' drugs and 'just-around-the-corner breakthroughs' planted in the leading news offices and press associations that continue to this day, and the flighty public soon forgot, or forgave, the massacre of foreign immigrants for the dazzling display of generosity and philanthropy financed by the ballooning Rockefeller fortune and going out, with thunderous press fanfare, to various 'worthy' institutions.

In the following years, not only newsmen, but whole newspapers were bought, financed or founded with Rockefeller money. So Time Magazine, which Henry Luce started in 1923, had been taken over by J.P. Morgan when the magazine got into financial difficulties. When Morgan died and his financial empire crumbled, the House of Rockefeller wasted no time in taking over this lush editorial plum also, together with its sisters Fortune and Life, and built for them an expensive 14 story home of their own in Rockefeller Center - the Time & Life Building.

Rockefeller was also co-owner of Time's 'rival' magazine, Newsweek, which had been established in the early days of the New Deal with money put up by Rockefeller, Vincent Astor, the Harrimann family and other members and allies of the House.

For all his innate cynicism, JDR must have been himself surprised to discover how easily the so-called intellectuals could be bought. Indeed, they turned out to be among his best investments.

By founding and lavishly endowing his Education Boards at home and abroad, Rockefeller won control not only of the governments and politicos but also of the intellectual and scientific community, starting with the Medical Power - the organization that forms those priests of the New Religion that are the modern medicine men. No Pulitzer or Nobel or any similar prize endowed with money and prestige has ever been awarded to a declared foe of the Rockefeller system.

Henry Luce, officially founder and editor of Time Magazine, but constantly dependent on House advertising, also distinguished himself in his adulation of his sponsors. JDR's son had been responsible for the Ludlow massacre, and an obedient partner in his father' s most unsavory actions. Nonetheless, in 1956 Henry Luce put Junior on the cover of Time, and the feature story, soberly titled 'The Good Man', included hyperbole like this:

'It is because John D. Rockefeller Junior's is a life of constructive social giving that he ranks as an authentic American hero, just as certainly as any general who ever won a victory for an American army or any statesman who triumphed in behalf of U.S. diplomacy.'

Clearly, Time's editorial board wasn't given the choice to change its tune even after the passing of Junior and Henry Luce, since it remained just as dependent on House of Rockefeller advertising. Thus, when in 1979 one of Junior's sons, Nelson A. Rockefeller died - who had been one of the loudest hawks in the Vietnam and other American wars, and was personally responsible for the massacre of prisoners and hostages at Attica prison - Time said of him in it obituary, without laughing:    'He was driven by a mission to serve, improve and uplift his country.'

Perhaps it was all this that Prof. Peter Singer had in mind when telling the judges in Italy that the Rockefeller Foundation was a humanitarian enterprise bent on doing good works. One of their best works seems to be sponsoring Prof. Peter Singer, the world's greatest animal friend and protector who claims that vivisection is indispensable for medical progress and for more than 20 years refuses to mention that legions of medical doctors are of the opposite view.

Another interesting revelation in the article of Time was that many years ago already Singer 'was pleasantly surprised when Britanica approached him to distill in about 30,000 words the discipline that is, at its heart, the systematic study of what we ought to do.' So now we touch the subject of sponsorship and patronage. They don't always mean immediate cash but, more important, long-term profits.

Many decades ago the Encyclopedia Britannica moved from Oxford to Chicago because Rockefeller had bought it to add much needed luster to the University of Chicago and its medical school, the first one he had founded. Peter Singer, 'the world's greatest animal defender' who keeps a door permanently open to vivisection and the lucrative medical swindle, gets millions of dollars free publicity thanks to the worldwide engagement of the Rockefeller Foundation and the media makers who are in no position to oppose it.

From the article in Time we also learned that Singer' s mother had been a medical doctor in the old country, which could mean that little Peter started assimilating all the Rockefeller superstition on vivisection with his mother's milk.

Taken from the CIVIS Foundation Report number 15, Fall-Winter 1993

CIVIS: POB 152, Via Motta 51-CH 6900, Massagno/Lugano, Switzerland

Originally web posted at: http://www.eurosolve.com/charity/bava/story.htm

 

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ROCKEFELLER DRUG EMPIRE (Overview)

(Part II)

The Drug Story: By Hans Ruesch, although an older publication is definitely worth a read if you haven’t read it or don’t know the history!)

Also, please beware that the Insurance Companies, the Drug Companies and the Progressives in our Government are all Behind ObamaCare!!  Ask yourself why you (average Americans) should not be running the other way?!? Whenever the Federal Government and members of the Progressive movement are involved individuals and freedom lose!!

As Bealle pointed out, in his piece ‘The Drug Story’ (above), a business which makes 6% on its invested capital is considered a sound money maker. Sterling Drug, Inc., the main cog and largest holding company in the Rockefeller Drug Empire and its 68 subsidiaries, showed operating profits in 1961 of $23,463,719 after taxes, on net assets of $43,108,106 - a 54% profit. Squibb, another Rockefeller-controlled company, in 1945 made not 6% but 576% on the actual value of its property.

That was during the luscious war years when the Army Surgeon General's Office and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery were not only acting as promoters for the Drug Trust, but were actually forcing drug trust poisons into the blood streams of American soldiers, sailors and marines, to the tune of over 200 million 'shots'. Is it any wonder, asked Bealle, that the Rockefellers, and their stooges in the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S.

Public Health Service, the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau, the Army Medical Corps, the Navy Bureau of Medicine, and thousands of health officers all over the country, should combine to put out of business all forms of therapy that discourage the use of drugs.

"The last annual report of the Rockefeller Foundation", reported Bealle, "itemizes the gifts it has made to colleges and public agencies in the past 44 years, and they total somewhat over half a billion dollars. These colleges, of course, teach their students all the drug lore the Rockefeller pharmaceutical houses want taught. Otherwise there would be no more gifts, just as there are no gifts to any of the 30 odd colleges in the United States that don't use therapies based on drugs.

"Harvard, with its well-publicized medical school, has received $8,764,433 of Rockefeller's Drug Trust money, Yale got $7 ,927,800, Johns Hopkins $10,418,531, Washington University in St. Louis $2,842,132, New York's Columbia University $5,424,371, Cornell University $1,709,072, etc., etc."

And while "giving away" those huge sums to drug-propagandizing colleges, the Rockefeller interests were growing to a world-wide web that no one could entirely explore. Already well over 30 years ago it was large enough for Bealle to demonstrate that the Rockefeller interests had created, built up and developed the most far reaching industrial empire ever conceived in the mind of man. Standard Oil was of course the foundation upon which all of the other Rockefeller industries have been built. The story of Old John D., as ruthless an industrial pirate as ever came down the pike, is well known, but is being today conveniently ignored. The keystone of this mammoth industrial empire was the Chase National Bank, now renamed the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Not the least of its holdings are in the drug business. The Rockefellers own the largest drug manufacturing combine in the world, and use all of their other interests to bring pressure to increase the sale of drugs. The fact that most of the 12,000 separate drug items on the market are harmful is of no concern to the Drug Trust...

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation was first set up in 1904 and called the General Education Fund. An organization called the Rockefeller Foundation, ostensibly to supplement the General Education Fund, was formed in 1910 and through long finagling and lots of Rockefeller money got the New York legislature to issue a charter on May 14, 1913.

It is therefore not surprising that the House of Rockefeller has had its own "nominees" planted in all Federal agencies that have to do with health. So the stage was set for the "education" of the American public, with a view to turning it into a population of drug and medico dependents, with the early help of the parents and the schools, then with direct advertising and, last but not least, the influence the advertising revenues had on the media-makers.

A compilation of the magazine Advertising Age showed that as far back as 1948 the larger companies in America spent for advertising the sum total of $1,104,224,374, when the dollar was still worth a dollar and not half a zloty. Of this staggering sum the interlocking Rockefeller-Morgan interests (gone over entirely to Rockefeller after Morgan's death) controlled about 80 percent, and utilized it to manipulate public information on health and drug matters - then and even more recklessly now.

Censorship

"Even the most independent newspapers are dependent on their press associations for their national news," Bealle pointed out, "and there is no reason for a news editor to suspect that a story coming over the wires of the Associated Press, the United Press or the International News Service is censored when it concerns health matters. Yet this is what happens constantly."

In fact in the 50s the Drug Trust had one of its directors on the directorate of the Associated Press. He was no less than Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and as such one of the most powerful Associated Press directors.

It was thus easy for the Rockefeller Trust to persuade the Associated Press Science Editor to adopt a policy which would not permit any medical news to clear that is not approved by the Drug Trust "expert", and this censor is not going to approve any item that can in any way hurt the sale of drugs.

This accounts to this day for the many fake stories of serums and medical cures and just-around-the-corner breakthrough victories over cancer, AIDS, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, which go out brazenly over the wires to all daily newspapers in America and abroad.

Emanuel M. Josephson, M.D., whom the Drug Trust has been unable to intimidate despite many attempts, pointed out that the National Association of Science Writers was "persuaded" to adopt as part of its code of ethics the following chestnut: "Science editors are incapable of judging the facts of phenomena involved in medical and scientific discovery. Therefore, they only report 'discoveries' approved by medical authorities, or those presented before a body of scientific peers."

This explains why Bantam Books, America's biggest publisher, made a colossal mistake in its initial enthusiasm and optimism sending review copies of SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT to the 3,500 "science writers" on its list, instead of addressing them to the literary book reviewers who are not subject to medical censorship. One single censor decreed NO and SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT sank in silence.

Thus newspapers continue to be fed with propaganda about drugs and their alleged value, although according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 1.5 million people landed in hospitals in 1978 because of medication side effects in the U.S. alone, and despite recurrent statements by intelligent and courageous medical men that most pharmaceutical items on sale are useless at best, but more often harmful or deadly in the long run.

The truth about cures without drugs is suppressed, unless it suits the purpose of the censor to garble it. Whether these cures are effected by Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Naprapaths, Osteopaths, Faith Healers, Spiritualists, Herbalists, Christian Scientists, or MDs who use the brains they have, you never read about it in the big newspapers.

To teach the Rockefeller drug ideology, it is necessary to teach that Nature didn't know what she was doing when she made the human body. But statistics issued by the Children's Bureau of the Federal Security Agency show that since the all-out drive of the Drug Trust for drugging, vaccinating and serumizing the human system, the health of the American nation has sharply declined, especially among children. Children are now given "shots" for this and "shots" for that, when the only safeguard known to science is a pure bloodstream, which can be obtained only with clean air and wholesome food. Meaning by natural and inexpensive means. Just what the Drug Trust most objects to.

When the FDA, whose officials have to be acceptable to Rockefeller Center before they are appointed, has to put an independent operator out of business, it goes all out to execute those orders. But the orders do not come directly from Standard Oil or a drug house director. As Morris Bealle pointed out, the American Medical Association (AMA) is the front for the Drug Trust, and furnishes the quack doctors to testify that even when they know nothing of the product involved, it is their considered opinion that it has no therapeutic value.

Persecution

Wrote Bealle:

"Financed by the taxpayers, these Drug Trust persecutions leave no stone unturned to destroy the victim. If he is a small operator, the resulting attorney's fees and court costs put him out of business. In one case, a Dr. Adolphus Hohensee of Scranton, Pa., who had stated that vitamins (he used natural ones) were vital to good health, was taken to court for 'misbranding' his product. The American Medical Association furnished ten medicos who reversed all known medical theories by testifying that 'vitamins are not necessary to the human body'. Confronted with government bulletins to the contrary, the medicos wiggled out of that one by declaring that these standard publications were outdated!"

In addition to the FDA, Bealle listed the following agencies having to do with "health" - i.e., with the health of the Drug Trust to the detriment of the citizens - as being dependent on Rockefeller: U.S. Public Health Service, U.S. Veterans Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Surgeon General of the Air Force, Army Surgeon General's Office, Navy Bureau of Medicine & Surgery, National Health Research Institute, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington is considered the all-wise body which investigates everything under the sun, especially in the field of health, and gives to a palpitating public the last word in that science. To the important post at the head of this agency, the Drug Trust had one of their own appointed. He was none other than Alfred N. Richards, one of the directors and largest stockholders of Merck & Company, which was making huge profits from its drug traffic.

When Bealle revealed this fact, Richards resigned forthwith, and the Rockefellers appointed in his place the President of their own Rockefeller Institution, Detlev W. Bronk.

America's Medico-Drug Cartel

The medico-drug cartel was summed up by J.W Hodge, M.D., of Niagara Falls, N.Y., in these words:

"The medical monopoly or medical trust, euphemistically called the American Medical Association, is not merely the meanest monopoly ever organized, but the most arrogant, dangerous and despotic organization which ever managed a free people in this or any other age. Any and all methods of healing the sick by means of safe, simple and natural remedies are sure to be assailed and denounced by the arrogant leaders of the AMA doctors' trust as fakes, frauds and humbugs.

Every practitioner of the healing art who does not ally himself with the medical trust is denounced as a 'dangerous quack' and impostor by the predatory trust doctors. Every sanitarian who attempts to restore the sick to a state of health by natural means without resort to the knife or poisonous drugs, disease imparting serums, deadly toxins or vaccines, is at once pounced upon by these medical tyrants and fanatics, bitterly denounced, vilified and persecuted to the fullest extent."

The Lincoln Chiropractic College in Indianapolis requires 4,496 hours, the Palmer Institute Chiropractic in Davenport a minimum of 4,000 60-minute classroom hours, the University of Natural Healing Arts in Denver five years of 1,000 hours each to qualify for a degree. The National College of Nephropathy in Chicago requires 4,326 classroom hours for graduation. Yet the medico-drug cartel spreads the propaganda that the practitioners of these three "heretic" sciences are poorly trained or not trained at all - the real reason being that they cure their patients without the use of drugs. In 1958, one of those "ill-trained" doctors, Nicholas P. Grimaldi, who had just graduated from the Lincoln Chiropractic College, took the basic science examination of the Connecticut State Board along with 63 medics and osteopaths. He made the highest mark (91.6) ever made by a doctor taking the Connecticut State Board examination.

Colonization

Rockefeller's various "educational" activities had proved so profitable in the U S. that in 1927 the International Educational Board was launched, as Junior's own, personal charity, and endowed with $21,000,000 for a starter, to be lavished on foreign universities and politicos, with all the usual strings attached. This Board undertook to export the "new" Rockefeller image as a benefactor of mankind, as well as his business practices. Nobody informed the beneficiaries that every penny the Rockefellers seemed to be throwing out the window would come back, bearing substantial interest, through the front door.

Rockefeller had always had a particular interest in China, where Standard Oil was almost the sole supplier of kerosene and oil "for the lamps of China". So he put up money to establish the China Medical Board and to build the Peking Union Medical College, playing the role of the Great White Father who has come to dispense knowledge on his lowly children. The Rockefeller Foundation invested up to $45,000,000 into "westernizing" (read corrupting) Chinese medicine.

Medical colleges were instructed that if they wished to benefit from the Rockefeller largesse they had better convince 500 million Chinese to throw into the ashcan the safe and useful but inexpensive herbal remedies of their barefoot doctors, which had withstood the test of centuries, in favor of the expensive carcinogenic and teratogenic "miracle" drugs Made in USA, which had to be replaced constantly with new ones, when the fatal side-effects could no longer be concealed; and if they couldn't "demonstrate" through large- scale animal experiments the effectiveness of their ancient acupuncture, this could not be recognized as having any "scientific value". Its millenarian effectiveness proven on human beings was of no concern to the Western wizards.

But when the Communists came to power in China and it was no longer possible to trade, the Rockefellers suddenly lost interest in the health of the Chinese people and shifted their attention increasingly to Japan, India and Latin America.

The Image

"No candid study of his career can lead to other conclusion than that he is victim of perhaps the ugliest of all passions, that for money, money as an end. It is not a pleasant picture.... this money-maniac secretly, patiently, eternally plotting how he may add to his wealth.... He has turned commerce to war, and honey-combed it with cruel and corrupt practices.... And he calls his great organization a benefaction, and points to his church-going and charities as proof of his righteousness. This is supreme wrong-doing cloaked by religion. There is but one name for it - hypocrisy."

This was the description Ida Tarbell made of John D. Rockefeller in her "History of the Standard Oil Company", serialized in 1905 in the widely circulated McClure's Magazine. And that was several years before the "Ludlow Massacre", so JDR was as yet far from having reached the apex of his disrepute. But after World War II it would have been hard to read, in America or abroad, a single criticism of JDR, nor of Junior, who had followed in his father's footsteps, nor of Junior's four sons who all endeavored to emulate their illustrious forbears. Today's various encyclopedias extant in public libraries of the Western world have nothing but praise for the Family. How was this achieved?

Ironically, the two apparently most NEGATIVE events in the career of JDR brought about a huge POSITIVE change in his favor, to a degree that he himself could not foresee. To wit:

In the year when according to the current Encyclopedia Britannica (long become a Rockefeller property and transferred from Oxford to Chicago), Rockefeller had "retired from active business", namely in 1911, he had been convicted by a U.S. court of illegal practices and ordered to dissolve the Standard Oil Trust, which comprised 40 corporations. This imposed dissolution was to provide his Empire with added might, to a degree that was unprecedented in the history of modem business. Until then, the Trust had existed for all to see - an exposed target. After that, it went underground, and thereby its power was cloaked in security, and could keep expanding unseen and therefore unopposed.

The second apparently negative experience was a certain 1914 event that persuaded JDR, until then utterly contemptuous of public opinion, to gloss over his own image.

"The Ludlow Massacre"

The United Mine Workers had asked for higher wages and better living conditions for the miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, one of the many Rockefeller-owned companies.
The miners - mostly immigrants from Europe's poorest countries - lived in shacks provided by the company at exorbitant rent. Their low wages ($1,68 a day) were paid in script redeemable only at company stores charging high prices. The churches they attended were the pastorates of company-hired ministers; their children were taught in company-controlled schools; the company libraries excluded books that the Bible-thumping Rockefellers deemed "subversive", such as "Darwin's Origin of the Species." The company maintained a force of detectives, mine guards, and spies whose job it was to keep the camp quarantined from the danger of unionization.

When the miners struck, JDR, Jr., then officially in command of the company, and his father's hatchet man, the Baptist Reverend Frederick T. Gates, who was a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, refused even to negotiate. They evicted the strikers from the company-owned shacks, hired a thousand strike-breakers from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency, and persuaded Governor Ammons to call out the National Guard to help break the strike.

Open warfare resulted. Guardsmen, miners, their women and children, who since their eviction were camping in tents, were ruthlessly killed, until the frightened Governor wired President Wilson for Federal Troops, who eventually crushed the strike, The New York Times, which then already could never be accused of being unfriendly to the Rockefeller interests, reported on April 21, 1914.
"A 14-hour battle between striking coal miners and members of the Colorado National Guard in the Ludlow district today culminated in the killing of Louis Tikas, leader of the Greek strikers, and the destruction of the Ludlow tent colony by fire."

And the following day:

"Forty-five dead (32 of them women and children), a score missing and more than a score wounded is the known result of the 14- hour battle which raged between state troops and coal miners in the Ludlow district, on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Rockefeller holding. The Ludlow is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath it is a story of horror unparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes that had been dug for their protection against rifle fire, the women and children died like trapped rats as the flames swept over them. One pit uncovered this afternoon disclosed the bodies of ten children and two women."

Thorough Facelift

The worldwide revulsion that followed was such that JDR decided to hire the most talented press agent in the country, Ivy Lee, who got the tough assignment of whitewashing the tycoon's bloodied image.

When Lee learned that the newly organized Rockefeller Foundation had $100 million lying around for promotional purposes without knowing what to do with it, he came with a plan to donate large sums - none less than a million - to well-known colleges, hospitals, churches and benevolent organizations. The plan was accepted. So were the millions. And they made headlines all over the world, for in the days of the gold standard and the five cent cigar there was a maxim in every newspaper office that a million dollars was always news.

That was the beginning of the cleverly worded medical reports on new "miracle" drugs and "just-around-the-corner breakthroughs" planted in the leading news offices and press associations that continue to this day, and the flighty public soon forgot, or forgave, the massacre of foreign immigrants for the dazzling display of generosity and philanthropy financed by the ballooning Rockefeller fortune and going out, with thunderous press fanfare, to various "worthy" institutions.

The Purchase of Public Opinion

In the following years, not only newsmen, but whole newspapers were bought, financed or founded with Rockefeller money. So Time Magazine, which Henry Luce started in 1923, had been taken over by J.P. Morgan when the magazine got into financial difficulties. When Morgan died and his financial empire crumbled, the House of Rockefeller wasted no time in taking over this lush editorial plum also, together with its sisters Fortune and Life, and built for them an expensive 14-story home of their own in Rockefeller Center - the Time & Life Building.

Rockefeller was also co-owner of Time's "rival" magazine, Newsweek, which had been established in the early days of the New Deal with money put up by Rockefeller, Vincent Astor, the Harrimann family and other members and allies of the House.

The Intellectuals - A Bargain

For all his innate cynicism, JDR must have been himself surprised to discover how easily the so-called intellectuals could be bought. Indeed, they turned out to be among his best investments.
By founding and lavishly endowing his Education Boards at home and abroad, Rockefeller won control not only of the governments and politicos but also of the intellectual and scientific community, starting with the Medical Power - the organization that forms those priests of the New Religion that are the modern medicine men. No Pulitzer or Nobel or any similar prize endowed with money and prestige has ever been awarded to a declared foe of the Rockefeller system.

Henry Luce, officially founder and editor of Time Magazine, but constantly dependent on House advertising, also distinguished himself in his adulation of his sponsors. JDR's son had been responsible for the Ludlow massacre, and an obedient partner in his father's most unsavory actions. Nonetheless, in 1956 Henry Luce put Junior on the cover of Time, and the feature story, soberly titled "The Good Man", included hyperboles like this:

"It is because John D. Rockefeller Junior's is a life of constructive social giving that he ranks as an authentic American hero, just as certainly as any general who ever won a victory for an American army or any statesman who triumphed in behalf of U.S. diplomacy."

Clearly, Time's editorial board wasn't given the choice to change its tune even after the passing of Junior and Henry Luce, since it remained just as dependent on House of Rockefeller advertising. Thus, when in 1979 one of Junior's sons, Nelson A. Rockefeller died - who had been one of the loudest hawks in the Vietnam and other American wars, and was personally responsible for the massacre of prisoners and hostages at Atticia prison - Time said of him in it obituary, without laughing:

"He was driven by a mission to serve, improve and uplift his country."

Perhaps it was all this that Prof. Peter Singer had in mind when telling the judges in Italy that the Rockefeller Foundation was a humanitarian enterprise bent on doing good works. One of their best works seems to be sponsoring Prof. Peter Singer, the world's greatest animal friend and protector who claims that vivisection is indispensable for medical progress and for more than 20 years refuses to mention that legions of medical doctors are of the opposite view.

Compare Animal-based toxicity testing of drugs and other chemicals and animal experimentation in cancer research: flawed science costing human lives?

Millions of Dollars Free Publicity

Another interesting revelation in the article of Time was that many years ago already Singer "was pleasantly surprised when Britannica approached him to distill in about 30,000 words the discipline that is, at its heart, the systematic study of what we ought to do." So now we touch the subject of sponsorisation and patronage. They don't always mean immediate cash but, more important, long-term profits.

Many decades ago the Encyclopedia Britannica moved from Oxford to Chicago because Rockefeller had bought it to add much needed luster to the University of Chicago and its medical school, the first one he had founded. Peter Singer, "the world's greatest animal defender" who keeps a door permanently open to vivisection and the lucrative medical swindle, gets millions of dollars free publicity thanks to the worldwide engagement of the Rockefeller Foundation and the media-makers who are in no position to oppose it.

From the article in Time we also learned that Singer's mother had been a medical doctor in the old country, which could mean that little Peter started assimilating all the Rockefeller superstition on vivisection with his mother's milk.

Taken from the CIVIS Foundation Report number 15, Fall-Winter 1993
CIVIS: POB 152, Via Motta 51-CH 6900, Massagno/Lugano, Switzerland

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Sunday, January 26, 2014

Moody's Downgrades Health Insurers, Cites ObamaCare Uncertainty

New American: In announcing credit rating firm Moody’s downgrade of all health insurers, Senior Vice President Stephen Zaharuk placed the blame firmly and directly on the Obamacare rollout and implementation:

The ongoing and unstable and evolving environment is a key factor for our outlook change. The past few months have seen new regulations and announcements that impose operational changes well after product and pricing decisions were finalized.

Translation: Health insurers could lose their shirts if the assumptions they made in their premium calculations prove false. So far, it doesn’t look good. Zaharuk cited some of those uncertainties, including the demographics of those enrolling for coverage. The insurers assumed that the Obama administration was right when it estimated that at least 2.7 million young and healthy individuals aged 18 to 34 would sign up by the end of March. Only 24 percent of the 2.2 million enrolled by the end of the year fall into that category. Put another way, so far just 528,000 of the 2.7 million needed to make the math, and the economics, work out are in that category.

That’s why, in its report, Moody’s cut its earnings estimate for all insurers by a full third, while expecting enrollments will fall short by two-thirds.

There are other uncertainties, including the decision by the administration to allow insurers to continue to offer “bare bones” (read: low profit margin) coverages in response to pressure from those previously insured who had their present insurance plans terminated. The administration delayed the premium payments deadline (delaying expected cash flows to the insurers), delayed the sign-up date, pushed back the second-year enrollment period until after the November elections, and extended the enrollment deadline for those with pre-existing conditions.

There’s also the industry’s new tax on medical devices that insurers somehow had to factor into their calculations. Said Zaharuk: “While some insurers built this tax into their premium calculations, the amounts [they receive] may still be insufficient to cover their share of the assessment.”

Also, many ObamaCare enrollees are actually pouring into the states’ Medicaid programs, and insurers have no direct way to offset those increased expenses and will have to eat any losses, perhaps for years. Zaharuk explained: “The Medicaid business is particularly vulnerable to this disconnect as insurers cannot pass on additional costs to consumers, and it remains to be seen whether states will permit insurers to factor in the assessment costs in determining Medicaid reimbursement rates.”

Health insurers are vulnerable on other fronts as well. Gallup just published its latest “Well-Being Index,” which shows the uninsured rate to be virtually the same as it was two years ago, despite the enormous marketing efforts by the administration touting the wonders of ObamaCare, and actually significantly higher than it was in January 2008, long before the federally mandated law was birthed in the hothouse of central planning. In addition the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that, even under the most favorable circumstances, by 2016, when Obamacare was assumed to be fully functioning, 31 million citizens will remain uninsured. This means insurers can’t count on that huge block of customers to enhance their revenue streams.

Moody’s was not optimistic:

In 2015, insurers will need to deal with the implications of the employer mandate and the second year of the individual mandate. Both require substantial lead time with respect to product development and pricing. Ad hoc changes to these provisions, as experienced at the end of 2013 … add additional risks and financial uncertainty.

When asked by Kate Rogers of Fox News what it would take for Moody’s to reverse its downgrade, Zaharuk said:

We would need [to see] some positive enrollment numbers, the back-end problems with the exchanges fixed, and the regulatory environment … stabilized.

Positive news would help the situation.

How likely is that? Responded Zaharuk:

The first test comes in March when we will see what enrollment looks like, if the back-end issues are fixed, if people are getting access to health care, and what the costs … are.

If these things don’t work, it may have a longer and more detrimental effect on the industry as they struggle under the new law. 

Whether intended or not, this disruption in the healthcare marketplace is having its consequences, nearly all of them negative. First experienced by the consumers, they are now spilling over, inevitably, to the insurers. 

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

Here comes Obama’s solution to the disastrous Affordable Care Act: National Health Care a.k.a. the Single Payer System
Betsy McCaughey: Obamacare designed to vastly expand single payer Medicaid by eviscerating Medicare 
Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Stephen Moore: Hidden Obamacare Tax Will Cost Consumers Another $100-$500 a Year

Video: Stephen Moore: Hidden Obamacare Tax Will Cost Consumers Another $100-$500 a Year

Get ready for another hidden Obamacare tax...

Stephen Moore, economist and Wall Street Journal contributor, discussed the hidden Obamacare tax that will take effect in two weeks.

The hidden Obamacare tax will cost consumers $100-$500 a year and will take effect on January 1, 2014

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Millennials Abandon Obama and Obamacare

A majority of America's youngest adults would vote to recall the president.

(JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

National Journal: Young Americans are turning against Barack Obama and Obamacare, according to a new survey of millennials, people between the ages of 18 and 29 who are vital to the fortunes of the president and his signature health care law.

The most startling finding of Harvard University's Institute of Politics: A majority of Americans under age 25 -- the youngest millennials -- would favor throwing Obama out of office.

The survey, part of a unique 13-year study of the attitudes of young adults, finds that America's rising generation is worried about its future, disillusioned with the U.S. political system, strongly opposed to the government's domestic surveillance apparatus, and drifting away from both major parties. "Young Americans hold the president, Congress and the federal government in less esteem almost by the day, and the level of engagement they are having in politics are also on the decline," reads the IOP's analysis of its poll. "Millennials are losing touch with government and its programs because they believe government is losing touch with them."

The results blow a gaping hole in the belief among many Democrats that Obama's two elections signaled a durable grip on the youth vote.

Indeed, millennials are not so hot on their president.

Obama's approval rating among young Americans is just 41 percent, down 11 points from a year ago, and now tracking with all adults. While 55 percent said they voted for Obama in 2012, only 46 percent said they would do so again.

When asked if they would want to recall various elected officials, 45 percent of millennials said they would oust their member of Congress; 52 percent replied "all members of Congress" should go; and 47 percent said they would recall Obama. The recall-Obama figure was even higher among the youngest millennials, ages 18 to 24, at 52 percent.

While there is no provision for a public recall of U.S. presidents, the poll question revealed just how far Obama has fallen in the eyes of young Americans.

IOP director Trey Grayson called the results a "sea change" attributable to the generation's outsized and unmet expectations for Obama, as well as their concerns about the economy, Obamacare and government surveillance.

The survey of 2,089 young adults, conducted Oct. 30 through Nov. 11, spells trouble for the Affordable Care Act. The fragile economics underpinning the law hinge on the willingness of healthy, young Americans to forgo penalties and buy health insurance.

According to the poll, 57 percent of millennials disapprove of Obamacare, with 40 percent saying it will worsen their quality of care and a majority believing it will drive up costs. Only 18 percent say Obamacare will improve their care. Among 18-to-29-year-olds currently without health insurance, less than one-third say they're likely to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges. 

More than two-thirds of millennials said they heard about the ACA through the media. That's a bad omen for Obamacare, given the intensive coverage of the law's botched rollout. Just one of every four young Americans said they discussed the law with a friend or through social media. Harvard's John Della Volpe, who conducted the poll, said the president has done a poor job explaining the ACA to young Americans.

Infographic

Republican and Democratic leaders should find little solace in the results. The survey said that 33 percent of young Americans consider themselves Democrats and 24 percent identify with the GOP. The largest and growing segment is among independents, 41 percent of the total.

Democrats' advantage among young voters is fading. Among the oldest millennials (ages 25 to 29), Democrats hold a 16-point lead over the GOP: 38 percent say they're Democrats, and 22 percent call themselves Republicans. Among the youngest of this rising generation (ages 18 to 24), the gap is just 6 points, 31 percent for Democrats and 25 percent for Republicans.

Approval ratings of Congress have declined steeply in the past few years, with congressional Democrats now at 35 percent and congressional Republicans at just 19 percent.

Young blacks say they are much less likely to vote in the 2014 midterm election than they were in November 2009, signaling a worrisome level of engagement among a key Democratic constituency.

In addition to health care, domestic spying is an issue that puts Obama on the wrong side of the rising generation. While split on whether Edward Snowden is a "patriot" or a "traitor" for revealing Obama's surveillance programs, strong majorities of 18-to-29-year-olds oppose the government collecting information from social networks, Web-browsing histories, email, GPS locations, telephone calls, and text messages.  

College loans are a big issue with young Americans, too. Nearly six of 10 called student debt a major problem, and another 22 percent called it a minor one. Seventy percent said their financial situation played into their decision whether to attend college.

Respondents were given a list of options for shrinking the nation's debt. Majorities favored suggestions to tax the rich, cut foreign economic aid in half, slash the nuclear-warhead arsenal, and reduce food stamps.

The results conform with a story I did this summer with the help of the IOP ("The Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It?"), arguing that while Millennials are deeply committed to public service they don't see government as an efficient way to improve their lives or their communities.

The IOP report issued today said: "This is not to say that young Americans are rejecting politics, the role of government and the promise of America more generally. They are sending a message to those in power that for them to re-engage in government and politics, the political process must be open, collaborative and have the opportunity for impact -- and not one that simply perpetuates well-worn single issue agendas."

The survey was conducted online. The National Journal generally refrains from covering online-only polls but has made past exceptions. In this case, Harvard's IOP survey uniquely focuses on millennials with accumulated data set and a credible polling operation.

(Find full poll results here: http://www.iop.harvard.edu/)

Monday, November 18, 2013

Obamacare: The Final Nail In The Coffin For The Middle Class

Coffin-300x208 Tom Halloran: If there were any shreds of hope left that the stunning decline of the middle class could be turned around, Obamacare has absolutely destroyed them.  Over the past decade or so, the middle class in the United States has been absolutely eviscerated.  The number of working age Americans without a job has increased by 27 million since the year 2000, median household income in the U.S. has fallen for five years in a row, and the poverty numbers in this country are spiraling out of control.  And now here comes Obamacare.  As you will see below, Obamacare is causing millions of Americans to lose their current health insurance policies, it is causing health insurance premiums to explode to absolutely ridiculous levels, and it is systematically killing jobs even though the employer mandate has been delayed for a while.  All of this is creating a tremendous amount of stress for millions of middle class families that are already stretched extremely thin financially.  According to CNN, a survey that was conducted earlier this year found that 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  Most of those families simply cannot afford to pay much higher health insurance premiums for new policies that also come with much larger deductibles and significantly increased out-of-pocket costs.  Millions of those families will ultimately end up choosing to do without health insurance altogether, and that will create a whole host of new problems.  This is a disaster that is so enormous that it is really hard to put into words.  If the U.S. health care system was a separate country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire globe all by itself.  And now Obamacare is going to bring the entire U.S. health care system to its knees.

Obamacare: Since October 1st, The Number Of Americans With Health Insurance Has Fallen By Nearly 4 Million

Last week, Barack Obama decided to allow Americans to keep their current health insurance plans for one more year.

Isn’t that generous of him?  Especially considering the fact that he promised us over and over that if we liked our current health insurance policies that we would be able to keep them permanently.

The funny thing is that Obama is not actually changing the law.  So if your health insurance company allows you to stay on your current health insurance plan that does not meet the requirements of Obamacare, it is technically breaking the law.

And if you continue to stay on that current health insurance plan that does not meet the requirements of Obamacare, you are technically breaking the law.

It is just that Obama has promised not to enforce what the law says for one year.

For a president to just blatantly disregard the rule of law is a very dangerous precedent.  Do we really want the president to have the power to decide what laws are going to be enforced and what laws are not going to be enforced?

That sounds dangerously close to a dictatorship to me.

And in any event, there are many Americans that are not going to be able to keep their current policies no matter what Obama says.  For example, just two hours after Obama announced his plan last week, the state of Washington announced that they would not be allowing insurance companies to extend their old health insurance plans if they don’t comply with Obamacare under any circumstances…

State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler has rejected President Obama’s proposal to allow insurance companies to extend health insurance policies for people who have received notices that their policies will be cancelled at the end of the year.

Within two hours of President Obama’s news conference announcing the proposed administrative fix for Americans upset by their policy cancellations, Kreidler issued a statement rejecting the proposal.

“I understand that many people are upset by the notices they have recently received from their health plans and they may not need the new benefits [in the Affordable Care Act] today,” he said. “But I have serious concerns about how President Obama’s proposal would be implemented and more significantly, its potential impact on the overall stability of our health insurance market.”

“I do not believe his proposal is a good deal for the state of Washington,” Kreidler’s statement continued. “We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies.”

How do you think the people of the state of Washington will respond to that?

Things are getting crazy out there, and the number of people that are losing their health insurance policies is absolutely stunning.

According to the Wall Street Journal, so far 106,185 Americans have enrolled in Obamacare since October 1st.  Most of those that have successfully enrolled have done so through the state insurance exchanges.  So far, only 26,794 Americans have signed up for health insurance using the federally run exchanges on HealthCare.gov.

Meanwhile, during that same time frame, 4.02 million Americans have had their health insurance policies cancelled.

So that means that the number of Americans with health insurance has actually decreased by 3,918,205 since October 1st.

Wasn’t Obamacare supposed to result in more Americans being covered?

And according to U.S. Senator Rand Paul, Obama not only knew that this would happen, he actually wrote the regulation that caused this to happen…

“I’m still learning about it. It’s 20,000 pages of regulations. The Bill was 2,000 pages and I didn’t realize this until this week, the whole idea of you losing or getting your insurance cancelled wasn’t in the original Obamacare. It was a regulation WRITTEN BY PRESIDENT OBAMA, three months later. So we had a vote, this is before I got up there. The Republicans had a vote to try to cancel that regulation so you COULDN’T BE CANCELLED, to grandfather everybody in. You know what the vote was? Straight party line. EVERY DEMOCRAT VOTED TO KEEP THE RULE THAT CANCELS YOUR INSURANCE.”

So now millions of Americans, including women battling cancer, are losing health insurance plans that they were depending upon.

Thanks Obama?

Obamacare: Skyrocketing Health Insurance Premiums

How much more are you willing to pay for health insurance than you are paying right now?

10 percent?

20 percent?

30 percent?

Well, according to one study health insurance premiums for men are going to go up by an average of 99 percent under Obamacare and health insurance premiums for women are going to go up by an average of 62 percent under Obamacare.

And of course some groups are going to see increases that are much larger than that.  For example, it is being projected that health insurance premiums for healthy 30-year-old men will rise by an average of 260 percent.

Ouch.

And there are some families out there that have already been hit with health insurance premium increases that are absolutely jaw-dropping.  In a previous article, I included the example of one family down in Texas that has been hit with a 539% rate increase…

Obamacare is named the “Affordable Care Act,” after all, and the President promised the rates would be “as low as a phone bill.” But I just received a confirmed letter from a friend in Texas showing a 539% rate increase on an existing policy that’s been in good standing for years.

As the letter reveals (see below), the cost for this couple’s policy under Humana is increasing from $212.10 per month to $1,356.60 per month. This is for a couple in good health whose combined income is less than $70K — a middle-class family, in other words.

Obamacare: Enormous Deductibles And Huge Out-Of-Pocket Expenses For All

It isn’t just health insurance premiums that are going up either.  Deductibles are going up too.  In fact, just check out what one survey of Americans living in seven different states recently discovered

Expenses for some policies can reach $6,350 for a single person and $12,700 per family, the most allowed by the health-care law, according to a survey by HealthPocket Inc. of seven states, including California and Ohio. That’s 26 percent higher than the average deductible in the seven states, and a scenario likely repeated across the country, said Kev Coleman, head of research and data at Sunnyvale, California-based HealthPocket.

That same article has a great quote from an elderly New Jersey resident.  82-year-old Larry Saphire thinks that if you have to pay a $5,000 deductible up front, “you might as well not have any insurance at all”…

“If you have to pay $5,000 upfront” when illness hits, “you might as well not have any insurance at all,” said Larry Saphire, 82, of West Orange, New Jersey, who shopped for coverage for his wife and two children, ages 16 and 21. “That’s not insurance.”

On California’s state-run exchange site, the standard low-premium “bronze” plan carries a $5,000 deductible per person, a $60 co-pay to see a doctor and a 30 percent fee, known as coinsurance, on hospital care. In Rhode Island, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s bronze plan has a $5,800 deductible while Missouri’s U.S.-run exchange offers plans by Anthem Blue Cross with the maximum-allowable $6,350 in out-of-pocket costs.

Obamacare: The Quality Of Care Is Going To Go Into The Toilet

A lot of Americans that are signing up for Obamacare are going to be in for a huge shock.  Many of the best hospitals and many of the best doctors are not covered by their plans

Meanwhile, sometime between March and June, the other shoe drops: People who bought exchange policies realize that the restricted networks insurers created to keep the premium costs low cut out the best hospitals and doctors. A newly insured child with cancer cannot get into a top pediatric hospital because her insurance has zero coverage for out-of-network emergency care. Tearful Mom goes on the evening news and says that she thought when they went on Obamacare, that meant they were safe, and why can’t I take my baby to Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, Mr. President?

Can you imagine being a parent in that situation?

In response, some hospitals are already filing suit over this.  For instance, check out what is happening over in Seattle

Seattle Children’s Hospital filed suit against Washington State’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner this week, after Obamacare implementation caused the hospital to be cut from four of the six insurance plans offered by the new Washington Health Benefit Exchange.

And even if you are on Medicare that does not mean that the quality of your care is going to stay the same either.  As Reuters just reported, UnitedHealth is dumping “thousands of doctors” from their Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly because of Obamacare…

UnitedHealth Group dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks, leaving many elderly patients unsure whether they need to switch plans to continue seeing their doctors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The insurer said in October that underfunding of Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly could not be fully offset by the company’s other healthcare business. The company also reported spending more healthcare premiums on medical claims in the third quarter, due mainly to government cuts to payments for Medicare Advantage services.

In the United States, we already pay much more for health care than everyone else in the world, and we typically have to wait longer to see a doctor than most of the rest of the industrialized world does.

Now Obamacare is going to make all of this even worse, and the quality of the care that we receive is going to go downhill fast.

Obamacare: The Jobs Killer

A while back, Obama unilaterally made the decision to delay the implementation of the employer mandate until 2015.

That was probably a good political decision, because it would have been a huge political issue in the 2014 elections.

But the truth is that we won’t have to wait until 2015 for Obamacare to start killing jobs.  In fact, according to CNBC it is already happening…

Approximately one-third of business decision-makers at companies with between 40 and 500 employees, say the health-care law has already increased their costs due to hikes in both the cost of insurance and compliance, according to a recent report from political-research firm Public Opinion Strategies. As a result, many business leaders say they are already making personnel decisions based on the Affordable Care Act.

Among franchised businesses, 27 percent report their company has replaced full-time workers with part-time workers and 31 percent have reduced worker hours. Among non-franchised businesses, 12 percent are replacing full-time workers with part-time workers or reducing hours. This is happening now, with more than a year before the mandate goes into effect; and undoubtedly, these numbers will rise as we approach next July’s “look back” period for tabulating workers’ hours.

It is kind of startling that we are already seeing employers make such big changes even though the employer mandate does not come into effect until 2015.  You can find a very long list of some of the employers that have already either eliminated jobs or cut hours because of Obamacare right here.

Remember, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Once we get closer to the deadline things are going to get much, much worse.

At a time when the middle class desperately needs jobs, Obamacare is going to slaughter them.

And even if you are able to keep your current job, that does not mean that your health plan will remain the same.  In fact, Forbes is projecting that a staggering 51 percent of all employment-based health insurance plans will be canceled and replaced with new ones.

Overall, Forbes is projecting that an astounding 93 million Americans will eventually lose their current health insurance policies due to Obamacare.

Obamacare: Providing Huge Incentives For Many Americans To Work Less And Make Less Money

Did you know that Obamacare is going to cause millions of Americans to want to keep their incomes under certain levels?

If you make too much money under Obamacare, you will miss out on some absolutely massive health care subsidies.  The following is an excerpt from one of my previous articles

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The figures that you are about to see were calculated using the Kaiser Family Foundation subsidy calculator.  These numbers apply to a husband and a wife that are both 62 years old.

A non-smoking, married couple living in San Francisco, California earning $63,000 a year will have to pay $20,318 a year for a silver plan under Obamacare and $12,647 a year for a bronze plan.

At $63,000, that couple would be making too much money to be eligible for a subsidy, so that couple will have to pay the total cost of whatever plan they choose by themselves.

But if that couple only made $62,000 a year, things would dramatically change.

The plans would still cost the same, but the couple would now be eligible for an Obamacare subsidy of $14,428.

So a silver plan would end up costing them only $5,890, and they would ultimately pay nothing for a bronze plan.

In other words, by reducing their income by $1,000, that couple would save $14,428 if they got a silver plan or they would save $12,647 if they got a bronze plan.

Isn’t that bizarre?

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In the end, millions upon millions of middle class families will decide to go without health insurance entirely for one reason or another.

This will work great until they get into an accident or become seriously ill.

As I have discussed previously, approximately 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical bills.  And most of those bankruptcies actually happen to people that are supposedly “covered” by health insurance.

Obamacare is going to make all of this so much worse.  Millions of middle class families will end up with no health insurance at all, and because so many of them are living paycheck to paycheck a single health emergency will be enough to send them hurtling down the path to financial oblivion.

If you get into an accident, a visit to the emergency room and a single night in the hospital can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars in many areas of the country.

If you get a serious illness such as cancer, the medical bills can be absolutely astronomical.  For instance, there are many cancer patients that rack up medical bills well in excess of a million dollars by the time that they die.

Something desperately needs to be done about our horrible health care system.  Unfortunately, Obamacare is going to make just about everything that is bad about our current system much, much worse.

And the American people are becoming increasingly disgusted and frustrated with Obamacare.  According to Real Clear Politics, an average of recent opinion polls shows that the American people are opposed to Obamacare by an average margin of 14.2 percentage points.

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

Monday, November 4, 2013

Perspective: New Law - "The Affordable Boat Act" 2014

The Hull Truth –  Stolen from another website - Cross Posted at AskMarion:

The U.S. government has just passed a new law called: "The affordable boat act" declaring that every citizen MUST purchase a new boat, by April 2014. These "affordable" boats will cost an average of $54,000-$155,000 each. This does not include taxes, trailers, towing fees, licensing and registration fees, fuel, docking and storage fees, maintenance or repair costs.

This law has been passed, because until now, typically only wealthy and financially responsible people have been able to purchase boats. This new law ensures that every American can now have a "affordable" boat of their own, because everyone is "entitled" to a new boat. If you purchase your boat before the end of the year, you will receive 4 "free" life jackets; not including monthly usage fees.

In order to make sure everyone purchases an affordable boat, the costs of owning a boat will increase on average of 250-400% per year. This way, wealthy people will pay more for something that other people don't want or can't afford to maintain. But to be fair, people who cant afford to maintain their boat will be regularly fined and children (under the age of 26) can use their parents boats to party on until they turn 27; then must purchase their own boat.
If you already have a boat, you can keep yours (just kidding; no you can't). If you don't want or don't need a boat, you are required to buy one anyhow. If you refuse to buy one or cant afford one, you will be regularly fined $800 until you purchase one or face imprisonment.

Failure to use the boat will also result in fines. People living in the desert; ghettos; inner cities or areas with no access to lakes are not exempt. Age, motion sickness, experience, knowledge nor lack of desire are acceptable excuses for not using your boat.

A government review board (that doesn't know the difference between the port, starboard or stern of a boat) will decide everything, including; when, where, how often and for what purposes you can use your boat along with how many people can ride your boat and determine if one is too old or healthy enough to be able to use their boat. They will also decide if your boat has out lived its usefulness or if you must purchase specific accessories,(like a $500 compass) or a newer and more expensive boat.

Those that can afford yachts will be required to do so...its only fair. The government will also decide the name for each boat. Failure to comply with these rules will result in fines and possible imprisonment.

Government officials are exempt from this new law. If they want a boat, they and their families can obtain boats free, at the expense of tax payers. Unions, bankers and mega companies with large political affiliations ($$$) are also exempt.

If the government can force you to buy health care, they can force you to buy a boat....or ANYTHING else..

So Yah...it's that stupid...  and that frightening!!

Mark Levin: ObamaCare Is A Purely Political Law And A Power Grab