Barney Frank: Obamacare Was a 'Mistake'

As far back as Fall 2011 Liberals were saying: Obamacare was a mistake

Via Noel Sheppard at News Busters comes word that Chris Matthews asked panelists on some round table show he runs, “What has been President Obama’s biggest mistake in his two and a half years so far?” Readers already knew the answer. Obamacare. Barack Obama wasted political capital on this half-baked attempt to have the government take over health insurance. I have said this repeatedly. But now it is dawning on the political insiders that maybe instead of playing hardball with the opposition, Barack Obama should have tried to swing a few Republican votes his way.

From News Busters, the transcript:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: This week we want to do something slightly different with our “Tell me Something” segment. Let me ask you all, all four of you, what has been President Obama’s biggest mistake in his two and a half years so far? Howard.

HOWARD FINEMAN, HUFFINGTON POST: Chris, on things under his control, not the wars so much because they were built in, his decision to spend all of his political capital in a year and a half of his time on the health-care reform law I think was his biggest political mistake.

MATTHEWS: Wow. Smart statement.

And then there was this exchange with another panelist:

DAVID IGNATIUS, WASHINGTON POST: I would agree with Howard. The idea of launching a major change in social legislation without having a consensus in the country and in Congress about what that should look like was a mistake. That’s just not how a president makes good policy.

MATTHEWS: Wow.

Wow indeed. What does Obama have to run on next year? The economy? Foreign policy? I suppose. One thing he cannot run on is the centerpiece of his domestic policy: Obamacare. Suddenly Obamacare vindicated the late Roberto Goizueta — the CEO who gave the world New Coke.

h/t to Don Surber  -  September 6, 2011

Forbes:

Well now Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), who is retiring from the House this year, now says that President Obama made a “mistake” in pushing for his signature health law. “I think we paid a terrible price for health care,” he told Jason Zengerle of New York magazine. “I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after [Republican] Scott Brown won [Sen. Kennedy’s old seat in Massachusetts], I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform but certainly not health care.” But Frank’s reasoning carries pitfalls for conservative reformers as well as liberal ones.

Frank explains that it’s difficult to enact reforms that threaten to disrupt the arrangements of those who already have health insurance and are happy with the care they get. “Obama made the same mistake Clinton made,” says Frank. “When you try to extend health care to people who don’t have it, people who have it and are on the whole satisfied with it get nervous.” (h/t Jim Geraghty.)

Obama, says Frank, over-interpreted his mandate from the 2008 election. “The problem with health care is this: Health care is enormously important to people. When you tell them that you’re going to extend health care to people who don’t now have it, they don’t see how you can do that without hurting them. So I think he underestimated, as did Clinton, the sensitivity of people to what they see as an effort to make them share the health care with poor people.”

Let’s leave aside Frank’s accusation that the reason Obamacare is unpopular is because the middle class doesn’t want to “share the health care with poor people.” (The middle class does plenty of sharing already.)

Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman and the Washington Post’s David Ignatius also both agree with the majority of Americans that socialist ObamaCare was President Downgrade’s biggest mistake.  See Video

Wouldn’t it be fascinating if media members that helped this President pass ObamaCare against America’s wishes came to the conclusion this was his biggest mistake?

On Sunday’s “The Chris Matthews Show,” the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman and the Washington Post’s David Ignatius both told a somewhat startled host that Obama spending so much of his time and political capital on passing healthcare reform was his worst decision to date. 

Love Chris Mathews at the end, “wow.”

Two other Democrats not runing re-election came out this week and announced that voting for ObamaCare was a mistake.  And even AARP admitted that supporting ObamaCare was a mistake for its members. Members' premiums up 8-13% for just next year. Spokesman on Fox twisting and squirming, admitting supporting ObamaCare might have been a mistake.

But before Republicans start chortling at Barney Frank’s admission of Obamacare’s unpopularity, it’s worth remembering that the overall problem he identifies makes sweeping market-oriented reforms difficult too.

That’s why, for example, Democrats go on about Republicans supposedly “ending Medicare as we know it,” even though that is patently dishonest, and why the new Republican plan for Medicare, endorsed by Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, (1) doesn’t affect anyone over the age of 55, and (2) retains an option for people to stay on traditional Medicare if they so choose.

Many Republicans have aggressively pushed the critique that Obamacare prevents people from keeping their current arrangements, if they like them. But that critique would also apply to any plan that, say, eliminated the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance, in order to help fund universal coverage (an idea favored by people like me).

If Republicans are lucky enough to gain power in November, they will face two challenges. Democrats will instinctively push back on any changes to our three health-care entitlements: Medicare, Medicaid, and the employer tax exclusion. In addition, much of the conservative base does not appreciate that health care reform is urgently needed, because conservatives tend to be the people who are happiest with their current arrangements.

What’s the solution? The solution has two parts. First, any proposals to replace Obamacare must be implemented gradually, over time, so as not to overly disrupt the arrangements that many Americans like. Secondly, the solution ought to be bipartisan, by pairing free-market reforms with expansion of coverage (a liberal priority).

For all the partisan bluster right now, if Obamacare is overturned or repealed, it’s hard for me to see centrist Democrats voting against a significant expansion of coverage sponsored by Republicans, out of spite. But I could be wrong.

Good Reminder: Michigan Rep Rogers video statement on why we should say no to Obamacare

Video: Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.

Congressman Rogers' makes his opening statement on Health Care reform legislation (ObamaCare) in 2009 that was then under debate in Congress

h/t to Patricia Gillenwater & Michael Carpenter

Berries…

Berries are delicious, but they're also kind of delicate.  Raspberries in particular seem like they can mold before you even get them home from the market.  There's nothing more tragic than paying $4 for a pint of local raspberries, only to look in the fridge the next day and find that fuzzy mold growing on their insides. 

Well, with fresh berries just starting to hit farmers markets, we can tell you that how to keep them fresh!  Here’s a tip I’m sharing on how to  prevent them from getting there in the first place: 

Wash them with vinegar!!

When you get your berries home, prepare a mixture of one part vinegar (white or apple cider probably work best) and ten parts water.  Dump the berries into the mixture and swirl around. Drain, rinse if you want (though the mixture is so diluted you can't taste the vinegar,) and pop in the fridge.  The vinegar kills any mold spores and other bacteria that might be on the surface of the fruit, and voila!  Raspberries will last a week or more, and strawberries go almost two weeks without getting moldy and soft.

So go forth and stock up on those pricey little gems, knowing they'll stay fresh as long as it takes you to eat them.

You're so berry welcome!

h/t to Deonia Copeland

Americans Eat the Cheapest Food in the World, But What is It Really Costing?

Story at-a-glance

• In 2010, Americans spent just over 9 percent of their disposable income on food (5.5 percent at home and 3.9 percent eating out); this is less than half or more of most any other country on the planet
• The “faster, bigger, cheaper” approach to food production that the United States has mastered is unsustainable and is contributing to the destruction of our planet and your health
• Easy access to cheap, poor-quality food is contributing to the rising rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other chronic disease
• Nearly all cheap processed foods in the United States contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients and come from confined animal feeding operations, which contribute to environmental destruction, animal cruelty and the spread of antibiotic-resistant super-germs
• To protect your health and the environment, strive to make 90 percent of your diet non-processed, whole organic foods; it may cost more to eat this way initially, but the amount it will save you in the long run is immeasurable

By Dr. Mercola

In 2010, Americans spent just over 9 percent of their disposable income on food (5.5 percent at home and 3.9 percent eating out).ⁱ

This is a dramatically lower percentage spent just decades ago in the early 1960s, when over 17 percent was spent on food, and even more of a “bargain” compared to 1930, when Americans spent over 24 percent of their disposable income to feed their families.

When you compare what Americans spend to what people in other countries spend, you’ll also notice some great disparities.

On the surface, having cheaper food may seem like an advantage, but in reality while Americans may be saving a few dollars on their meals, they’re paying big time in terms of their health, and the health of the planet.

No Place on the Planet Has Cheaper Food Than the United States

As reported in TreeHugger, professor Mark J. Perry stated on his Carpe Diem blog:ⁱⁱ

“... compared to other countries, there's no other place on the planet that has cheaper food than the U.S. The 5.5% of disposable income that Americans spend on food at home is less than half the amount of income spent by Germans (11.4%), the French (13.6%), the Italians (14.4%), and less than one-third the amount of income spent by consumers in South Africa (20.1%), Mexico (24.1%), and Turkey (24.5%), which is about what Americans spent DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, and far below what consumers spend in Kenya (45.9%) and Pakistan (45.6%).”

Unfortunately, the “faster, bigger, cheaper” approach to food production that the United States has mastered is unsustainable and contributing to the destruction of our planet and your health. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and a number of other bestsellers, said it best:

"Cheap food is an illusion. There is no such thing as cheap food. The real cost of the food is paid somewhere. And if it isn't paid at the cash register, it's charged to the environment or to the public purse in the form of subsidies. And it's charged to your health."

In other words, pay now or pay later. American food may be cheap, but that’s about the only “compliment” it deserves, because when you rely on cheap food, you typically get what you pay for.

Why are So Many Americans Fat and Sick?

In many cases, easily the majority, it is due to dietary factors! Millions of Americans live in "food deserts" where fresh produce is hard to find but processed food and fast food is available everywhere. If your meals consist of $1 burgers and super-size drinks, your diet may be cheap, but it is also excessively high in grains, sugars, and factory-farmed meats. This is a recipe for obesity, diabetes and heart disease, just to name a few calamitous conditions that befall those who consume the standard American diet!

You have the U.S. government to thank for this cheap food, as farm subsidies bring you high-fructose corn syrup, fast food, animal factories, monoculture, and a host of other contributors to our unhealthful contemporary diet. A report comparing federal subsidies of fresh produce and junk food, prepared by U.S. PIRG, a non-profit organization that takes on special interests on behalf of the public, revealed where your tax dollars are really going, and it's quite shocking.

If you were to receive an annual federal subsidy directly, you would receive $7.36 to spend on junk food and just 11 cents to buy apples. In other words, every year, your tax dollars pay for enough corn syrup and other junk food additives to buy 19 Twinkies, but only enough fresh fruit to buy less than a quarter of one red delicious apple.

Heart disease is a direct reflection of poor dietary choices. Heart disease costs us $189.4 billion per year. However, statistics show that by 2030, these costs will triple, resulting in a mind-bending $818 billion!ⁱⁱⁱ Meanwhile, as TreeHugger reported:

“If Americans continue to pack on pounds, obesity will cost us about $344 billion in medical-related expenses by 2018, eating up about 21 percent of healthcare spending, according to an article in USA Today.^iv Not to mention the unseen health issues associated with a genetically modified and pesticide-bathed food system.”

What's the "Cost" of a Food System Based on Genetically Modified Foods?

The damage is quite simply immeasurable. Nearly all processed foods in the United States contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients, particularly Bt corn and Roundup Ready soy. These crops and other GM varieties are now planted on nearly 4 billion acres of land throughout 29 countries, as their makers (primarily Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta) continue to praise their worth. These companies, which have created patents and intellectual property rights so that they now control close to 70 percent of global seed sales, extol the virtues of GM crops as though they are a panacea for ending world hunger and solving the food crisis.

But in fact, as a report coordinated by Navdanya and Navdanya International, the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, The Center for Food Safety (CFS) and others, has stated, GM crops are surrounded by false promises and failed yields, to the extent that they are now destroying the food system with superweeds, superpests and more.

Scientists have discovered a number of health problems -- like changes in reproductive hormones, testicular changes and damage to the pituitary gland -- related to genetically modified foods, however these studies have been repeatedly ignored by both the European Food Safety Authority and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). GM foods are typically regarded as equivalent to their conventional counterparts. This, however, is flawed logic because GM foods contain foreign genes that have never before been introduced into the food supply, and are universally contaminated with toxic GMO-specific herbicide residues.

Behind Virtually Every Cheap Burger is a CAFO

It cannot be ignored that the animals raised on confined animal feed operations (CAFOs) pay one of the highest prices for Americans’ cheap food. The typical CAFO can house tens of thousands of animals (and in the case of chickens, 100,000) under one roof, in nightmarish, unsanitary, disease-ridden conditions.

Animals raised at CAFOs are treated like objects, not animals -- stuck in cages, overcrowded, often covered in feces -- which is not only hard to watch, but also hard to stomach. It is not at all unusual for animals to be abused in these circumstances; the very conditions in which they live are abuse in their own right. For those who aren't aware, about 80 percent of all the antibiotics produced are used in agriculture -- not only to fight infection, but to promote unhealthy (though profitable) weight gain in animals. Unfortunately, this practice is also contributing to the alarming spread of antibiotic-resistant disease -- a serious problem that is costing tens of thousands of Americans their lives.

CAFOs have been highly promoted as the best way to produce food for the masses, but the only reason CAFOs are able to remain so "efficient," bringing in massive profits while selling their food for bottom-barrel prices, is because they substitute subsidized crops for pasture grazing.

Factory farms use massive quantities of corn, soy and grain in their animal feed, all crops that they are often able to purchase at below cost because of government subsidies. Because of these subsidies, U.S. farmers produce massive amounts of soy, corn, wheat, etc. -- rather than vegetables -- leading to a monoculture of foods that contribute to a fast food diet. As written in "CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories":^v

"Thanks to U.S. government subsidies, between 1997 and 2005, factory farms saved an estimated $3.9 billion per year because they were able to purchase corn and soybeans at prices below what it cost to grow the crops. Without these feed discounts, amounting to a 5 to 15 percent reduction in operating costs, it is unlikely that many of these industrial factory farms could remain profitable.

By contrast, many small farms that produce much of their own forage receive no government money. Yet they are expected somehow to match the efficiency claims of the large, subsidized megafactory farms. On this uneven playing field, CAFOs may falsely appear to "outcompete" their smaller, diversified counterparts."

As it stands, the book notes that "grazing and growing feed for livestock now occupy 70 percent of all agricultural land and 30 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet. If present trends continue, meat production is predicted to double between the turn of the 21st century and 2050." Does this sound like a good deal to you?

Allocating More Money to Your Food is Investing in Your Most Valuable Asset...

You... and your family (including those who are yet to be born)! If you want to optimize your health, you simply must return to the basics of healthy food choices. And, as more and more people begin to grasp this concept and demand healthy, unadulterated foods, the more must be produced, one way or another. There is just no way around it -- if you want your family to be healthy, someone in your household, or someone you pay, must invest some time in the kitchen preparing your food from scratch, using fresh, whole ingredients.

Avoiding processed food requires a change in mindset, which is not always an easy task. It CAN be done, however. Rather than looking at processed foods as a convenience that tastes good or saves money, try thinking of it as:

• Extra calories that will harm your body
• A toxic concoction of foreign chemicals and artificial flavors that will lead to disease
• A waste of your money
• Likely to lead to increased health care bills for you and your family
• Not something to give to children, whose bodies are still developing and in great need of nutrients

Your goal should be to strive for 90 percent non-processed, whole food. Not only will you enjoy the health benefits—especially if you buy mostly organic—but you’ll also get the satisfaction of knowing exactly what you’re putting into your body, and that in and of itself can be a great feeling. It may cost more to eat this way, but then again it might not. (And in the long run the amount it will save you in the long run is immeasurable.)

You may be surprised to find out that by going directly to the source you can get amazingly healthy, locally grown, organic food for less than you can find at your supermarket. This gives you the best of both worlds: food that is grown near to you and sold with minimal packaging, cutting down on its carbon footprint and giving you optimal freshness, as well as grown without chemicals, genetically modified (GM) seeds, and other potential toxins.

Restaurants are able to keep their costs down by getting food directly from a supplier. You, too, can take advantage of a direct farm-to-consumer relationship, either on an individual basis by visiting a small local farm or by joining a food coop in your area. To find these types of real foods, grown by real farmers who are eager to serve their communities, visit LocalHarvest.org.

Simple Strategies to Eat Well Without Spending More

There are many strategies available to stretch your food dollars while feeding your family healthy foods. Rather than wasting money on expensive cereal boxes and bags of chips, put your money toward foods that will serve your health well, such as raw organic dairy, cage-free organic eggs, fresh vegetables and fermented foods you make at home (fermented foods are incredibly economical because you can use a portion of one batch to start the next).

The following strategies will also make it easier to eat well on a tight budget:

• Identify someone to prepare meals. Someone has to invest time in the kitchen to prepare your meals, or else you will succumb to costly and unhealthy fast food and convenience foods. So it will be necessary for either you, your spouse, another family member or someone you pay to prepare your family's meals from locally grown healthful foods.
• Become resourceful: This is an area where your grandmother can be a wealth of information, as how to use up every morsel of food and stretch out a good meal was common knowledge to generations past. Seek to get back to the basics of cooking -- using the bones from a roast chicken to make stock for a pot of soup, extending a Sunday roast to use for weekday dinners, learning how to make hearty stews from inexpensive cuts of meat, using up leftovers and so on.
• Plan your meals: If you fail to plan you are planning to fail. This is essential, as you will need to be prepared for mealtimes in advance to be successful. Ideally this will involve scouting out your local farmer's markets for in-season produce that is priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly. But, you can also use this same premise with supermarket sales or, even better, produce from your own vegetable garden.

  You can generally plan a week of meals at a time, make sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare if you're short on time in the evening.

  It is no mystery that you will be eating lunch around noon every day so rather than rely on fast food at work, before you go to bed make a plan as to what you are going to take to work for lunch the next day. This is a simple strategy that will let you eat healthier and save money, especially it you take healthy food from home in with you to work.

• Avoid food waste: According to a study published in the journal PloS One, Americans waste an estimated 1,400 calories of food per person, each and every day.^vi The two steps above will help you to mitigate food waste in your home, and you may also have seen my article titled 14 Ways to Save Money on Groceries. Among those tips are suggestions for keeping your groceries fresher, longer, and I suggest reviewing those tips now.
• Buy organic animal foods. The most important foods to buy organic are animal, not vegetable, products (meat, eggs, butter, etc.), because animal foods tend to concentrate pesticides in higher amounts. If you cannot afford to buy all of your food organic, opt for organic animal foods first.

References:

---

• ⁱ USDA Economic Research Service, Food CPI and Expenditures
• ⁱⁱ Carpe Diem July 3, 2010
• ⁱⁱⁱ Huffington Post April 21, 2011
• ^iv USA Today November 17, 2009
• ^v CAFO - The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories
• ^vi PLoS ONE 4(11): e7940

Source: Treehugger March 24, 2012

Related Links:

How to Save Up to 89% on Your Organic Food

Why is it Suddenly Cheaper to Eat Out?

The Drug Industry May Be Bad, But THIS Industry May Be Even Worse for Your Health

Nothing to Do With Health Care! It's All About New Taxes and Tax Collection

What Does the IRS Know About Obamacare That We Don't? and Why Do They Need 16,500 New IRS Agents to Enforce Obamacare 

April 10, 2012

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I got an e-mail note from a friend. "Hey, Rush, why are the markets plunging? Volume is at a four-year low." So I looked up there. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 149. That's no big deal. We're still at 12,700, but volume, trading is down. The amount of activity going on in the stock market is at a four-year low. I don't know. I guess they read that Obamacare is gonna add to the deficit. Maybe these people up there just figured that out for the first time today. Folks, today's report did remind me of one thing about Obamacare that I had almost forgotten. Not only does Obamacare create a new tax on the uninsured and employers who don't provide insurance -- that's the fine -- and the requirement to buy it.

That's the requirement to buy health insurance or pay a fine if you don't. Now, the regime has gone back and forth on whether or not they're gonna call that a tax. When they call it a tax is at the Supreme Court. They say, "Hey, this is not a mandate. This is not violation. We have the power to levy taxes." But it also puts a new tax on people who have insurance already, people who have what Obama calls "high-end insurance." Even they have to pay a tax under Obamacare. Everybody gets soaked here, and that's why there are 4,000 new IRS agents to secure compliance with a piece of legislation that everybody thinks is about making them well when they get sick.

And I think the question should be asked frequently: "What do 4,000 IRS agents have to do with making sick people well?" Why are they even needed? And the regime, by the way, just this week (or maybe it was Friday, I forget which) confirmed that the 4,000 agents are being hired and $500 million is being diverted from somewhere to hire them.

RUSH: Investor's Business Daily -- or I guess it's just now Investors.com -- has an editorial on the army of IRS enforcers. "After foisting its 2,700-page health law on the public, the White House now plans to enforce its detested mandate by siccing the IRS on unwilling citizens. All that stands in the way is 'the consent of the governed.' Back in 2009, when ObamaCare was being debated in Congress, then-House Minority Leader John Boehner warned that the takeover of the health care system could only lead to armies of enforcers from the Internal Revenue Service forcing Americans to buy insurance of the government's choosing.

"Boehner recognized that this so-called reform would inevitably trigger major public resistance. Boehner was mocked as an alarmist by Obama's Democratic allies. But in reality, he was right, and nobody knew it better than the Obama administration itself. That's why the behemoth ObamaCare bill sneakily left out the detail that it intended to hire 500 Internal Revenue Service agents to enforce the unpopular mandate, while 300 other IRS operatives would be added to push 'free' benefits to the indigent to ensure their complete dependence on the state."

I've mistakenly been using the number 4,000. That's a financial figure related to this. It's 500 agents. Actually, now I'm getting confused. I know the number 4,000 is in there somewhere. But whatever, 500 plus an additional 300 IRS operatives to run out and ostensibly alert the poor, "Hey, there are free benefits here for you." And there's this brilliant observation in the Investors.com piece. "When vast numbers of people refuse to obey a law, there's a problem with the law." And, by the way, how can you even say that something 2,700 pages is a law? It's impossible for the average American to know how to comply with this law and not be in breach of it. Regardless, IRS agents, what do they have to do with making the sick get better? What in the world could IRS agents have to do with that? What role is the IRS going to play in curing illness and disease? What role?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It is 4,000 agents. This Investor's Business Daily has a typo in it. I've looked at a bunch of different sources and, by all accounts, the best estimate is the IRS is gonna hire at least 4,000 more agents. The Washington Examiner had it. "IRS Seeks 4,000 Agents, $303 Million for Obamacare." What does the IRS know about Obamacare that we don't?

RUSH: There is another lie that Obama keeps repeating, and this is it. It's a direct quote: "What drags down our entire economy is the growing gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else." Direct quote. And this stems, ladies and gentlemen, from his belief that the founding of this country was unjust and immoral, and it's gone on for 200-plus years. And now finally, a little over three years ago, we started -- finally! -- to get it right. It's gonna take a while. And the big problem with this country since its founding is "the gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else." And the founders were ultra-rich and they set up a system to maintain that for themselves and their family and everybody else in their group, and at the same time make it impossible with this you're-on-your-own economy.

Because most people, on their own, are incompetent. Most people, on their own, will be walked all over. Most people, on their own, are weak and helpless. This is how the left looks at people. But quite simply, this is preposterous. There are no facts to back up this assertion that what drags down the economy is "the growing gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else." What drags down the economy is Obama. What drags down the economy is the government looting the private sector, transferring wealth from people who produce it to themselves and government and then giving it to people that they ultimately want to vote for them.

When you loot the private sector, when you make it smaller, you are by definition reducing the size of our economy and its potential to grow. In fact, you might say that the opposite is true. If anything, you need very rich people to drive the economy, which some of our news media have even admitted in previous random acts of journalism. And the most recent example I could give you is the Christmas season when they lamented (and they were rubbing their hands together) that the luxury segment was suffering. Remember that? The rich just were not going to Neiman Marcus or Saks or wherever they go.

Luxury sales were down, and this was bad for all of the sensible reasons. It was gonna hurt future employment. It was gonna hurt overall economic growth. So they do engage in random acts of journalism now and then. There's no capitalism without capital, and there's no capital without the rich. Everybody has had a story today on the health care law adding $340 billion to the deficit -- except the New York Times. I looked. AP's got it and Reuters has it. Everybody's got it and is breathless talking about it as though it's some sort of big news. I looked at the New York Times website; it's not there. I Googled the words to find it. Not there. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.

I wanted to see what the New York Times had to say about the fact that Obamacare blows up the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars. 'Cause it is news to people. Amazingly, this is news to people. So I went to the Washington Post, and, lo and behold, there it is! I have it right here (shuffling paper). In my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, I have it. And they actually report this fraud, this massive fraud perpetrated on the American public by Obama and virtually every Democrat in Congress. It's outrageous what Obamacare does to the economy, to doctors, patients, private health insurance companies. We've talked about it before, but the New York Times has nothing. In fact, by the way, Jay Carney, the spokeskid at the White House...

You know, I know Jay Carney and his wife, Claire Shipman. Claire Shipman is a reporter for ABC News. She used to be at CNN. Jay Carney used to be at TIME Magazine. He's now at the White House. But before he was at the White House, he was at Biden's office. He might have been the spokeskid for Biden or something else in Biden's office but he moved up the chain when Robert Gibbs left. Gibbs left to go earn some money while there still is some. (interruption) Gibbs? Oh, okay. I guess he earned enough money while there is some to earn and he left that and went back to the campaign now. Oh, okay.

Anyway, Carney when he was at TIME Magazine, called me one day to ask me a question about a story he was working on. I wasn't in, but they left a message for me to call back. So I did. I called back, and he picked up the phone. He said, "You return your own calls?" I said, "Yeah." "Wow!" He was really impressed that I didn't have a secretary to place my calls for me. What I didn't tell him was that I don't really do the phone much. And then I saw him once at a Washington Redskins game in the owners box back in that season where I spent five games with ESPN. The opener ESPN covered, we did the ESPN pregame show, and Dan Snyder invited the ESPN crew to his suite to watch the game.

Claire Shipman and Jay Carney were there. I said hi. They're very nice people. Now he's the spokeskid for Obama. From TIME Magazine to the White House, and I'm sure when this ends he goes back to some magazine. Anyway, yesterday Carney was asked about the IRS agents. At the White House press briefing, Wendell Goler at Fox said, "Hey, Jay, there's a report in The Hill that says a couple hundred million dollars of IRS money been used to fund aspects of Obamacare, and there's some Republicans on the Hill who feel that this is improper given that there is already a fund for implementation of Obamacare. Can you react to their criticism?"

CARNEY: This is about, uh, enabling the IRS to provide the, uhhh -- essentially the -- the -- the tax breaks to small businesses and individuals, uh, to assist them, uh, in acquiring health insurance. Or in the case of small businesses, providing health insurance.

RUSH: Okay! So there, ladies and gentlemen, is our answer! Four thousand IRS agents, according to Obama's spokeskid, to help small business and individuals in acquiring health insurance. Did you know that? Did you know that you were going to get "assistance" from the IRS in complying with the mandate? Did you know that, folks? That you are gonna have "assistance" from the IRS to acquire health insurance? Yeah, the IRS is gonna come and they're going to help you! It says here, small businesses... The IRS is gonna essentially tell you of the tax breaks. The IRS is gonna come along and they're gonna knock on your door. I don't know how they're gonna find you but they will if you haven't bought health insurance.

If you haven't abided by the mandate, they'll find you and say, "Hey, you know what? You're missing out on some tax breaks here! We're from the IRS, and the president has sent us to advise you of the tax breaks that are involved here in Obamacare. And we're here to help you in acquiring health insurance, because our records show that you don't have any. And the law is that you must have some. We're here from the IRS to help you get your health insurance. Or, if you are a really small business, we're here to help provide health insurance." So the regime has admitted, in whatever words Carney used, that the IRS is the enforcement mechanism. And that you can expect to get a friendly visit from the IRS to help you have health insurance, to help you get your tax breaks, to help you provide health insurance.

You know, you're from the Acme small business, and your primary customer is the Coyote, and the Coyote has had a bunch of trouble catching the Road Runner and none of what you have sent the Coyote is working, and every from Acme fails. You ever watch the Road Runner? Okay. So you're having trouble making ends meet at Acme, and here comes the IRS, and they knock on your door. "Hi. We see that you don't have health insurance. We're here to help you get it." What is your reaction going to be? And what happens if you don't buy it?

What if the IRS comes in and you don't like the menu of services being offered by the IRS, and if you say, "I'm sorry. I appreciate your concern but I really don't need or want health insurance"? What happens to you then? Well, what happens is, you are going to be fined. You will pay a fine. And early on in Obamacare, the fine is not very much money. It's much less than what a policy would cost you. And if I may be bluntly honest, that is by design, too, folks. The fine is seductively low in cost. Anybody who is young or has a small business would choose, if it's legal, to pay the fine instead of buying health insurance. (interruption)

I don't think most people will tell the IRS agent, "Take your health insurance and shove it."

I don't think that's gonna happen, Snerdley. That's why it's the IRS that has been hired to help citizens get their health insurance. I don't think that citizens are going to tell the IRS to pound sand here. What instead will happen is the IRS will present all of the wonderful options available, and here's the cost of your average policy, and here's the cost of the fine. Well, the fine is gonna be so much cheaper, at first, than the health insurance policy, and if it's legal to pay the fine and the IRS will wave good-bye and leave, you'll do that. That's by design, folks. It's by design. The fine is purposely priced much lower for the first two or three years.

Now, what happens when all of these people choose the fine instead of the policy? Well, who is hurt then? Insurance companies. Now, remember, the insurance companies were among the early adopters for Obamacare because of the mandate requiring people to buy health insurance, that was a godsend. That made most insurance companies forget Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative. All they saw, and applauded, was a powerful force like the government making everybody buy their product. My ship has come in and I'm at the dock. If you're an insurance company, this is the greatest day of your life. The federal government, in association with the IRS, is making everybody by health insurance. Whoa.

If you sold Happy Meals, wouldn't you love it if every American had to buy a Happy Meal? Wouldn't you support that if you were McDonald's? If you were General Motors and an order came down that everybody has to have a Volt, would you care if it was Josef Stalin who issued the order? No. You'd sit there and go, "Right on." So the insurance companies, folks, didn't care. They forgot whether they were Republicans or Democrats, liberal or conservative. They didn't even think about the future of country. They just saw, "Man, everybody hates us. We're insurance companies, but now, doesn't matter, they've been ordered to buy our product." Yes, they have. But guess what the insurance companies weren't told? There's an opt-out, a much cheaper opt-out. You pay a fine.

So all of these 30 million, whatever the number is uninsured, pay the fine instead of buy the policy. What happens to the industry of private insurance? Just like the coyote falling off the cliff trying to catch the road runner using an Acme product, bam. The insurance industry ceases to exist. And then, after three years, folks, the fines all of a sudden become more expensive than the policy. Doesn't take long. This is all in Obamacare. This is in the plan after three years, four years, whatever, it doesn't take long. The fines end up costing much more than the policy, which means you will then, as a matter of economics, buy the policy, 'cause you have to now, remember, the mandate.

But now, where do you go? Because the private health insurance industry has been dealt a potentially fatal blow. It doesn't exist because all these people could opt-out and pay the fine instead. So the real objective is finally realized. The only place you can go when you have to, by law, have insurance, is a state-run exchange like an office at your county building where the DMV is or whatever. You go in there, you buy your health insurance. It's gonna be the only place you can go. And if you don't, after all this, if you don't, then someday soon, knock on the door. You look through the peephole and it's the IRS there to help you get your health insurance and to tell you about all the tax breaks.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, the fine for companies is 8% of the employee's salary. That's their option. The fine for not buying insurance under Obamacare is 8% of the employee's salary. Now, it ain't gonna stay at 8% for very long, but that's what it is the first couple of years. Well, what are they gonna do? Companies are gonna pay the fine. You lose your health insurance. They're gonna pay the 8% fine and you're on your own, in an economy that Obama says being on your own never worked. So where you gonna go? Now, that 8%, by the way, that doesn't last long, but it's enough to get the ball rolling to get all these companies to give up their health insurance programs, kick you out, get rid of you. That's all part of the plan to make the government the sole vendor for health insurance.

END TRANSCRIPT

All Audio & Video »

Related:

Obamacare Has Nothing to Do With Health Care! It's New Taxes and Tax Collection in 2,700 Pages

Maybe Sen. McCaskill Can Tell Us Why We Need Thousands of IRS Agents to Provide Health Care

Smokers Deserve a Medal for Funding Health Care Programs for Kids, Not Government Persecution

Austin’s Fluoridated Water Supply is Poisoning Our Children

Infowars.com | Should Austin’s infants and children be drinking our tap water when it tastes moldy and more like the bottom of Lake Austin than healthy, pure water? 

But this should be a concern for all Americans, fluoride is added to the water systems of more water districts throughout American than not and with more and more people moving to Texas and Austin specifically, it could be a direct problem for more and more people moving there!

Video:  Austin's Fluoridated Water Supply is Poisoning Our Children

Should Austin’s infants and children be drinking our tap water when it tastes moldy and more like the bottom of Lake Austin than healthy, pure water? According to the Environmental Working Group, Austin’s tap water exceeds the EPA’s health limits for chlorinated compounds, lead, and coliform bacteria.

Also, many may not be aware that City Council distributes a one size fits all medication, fluoride, through our water supply. Because of the distribution method for fluoride, children and adults get the same amount in a glass of water.

And, because there is no dose adjustment or control for size, weight, height, or sensitivity, fluoride causes multiple side effects such as dental fluorosis, hypothyroidism, osteosclerosis and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) has issued a powerful Resolution against fluoridation.

In addition, the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) of the fluoride chemical, hydrofluorosilicic acid, that is added to Austin’s water supply, recently included a health warning for children.

Related:

How Prolonged Ingestion of Fluoridated Drinking Water Damages The Brain

How to Detox Fluorides from Your Body

Don’t Drink the Water

Dumbing Down Society Part I: Foods, Beverages and Meds

Aluminum + Fluoride = Alzheimer’s and Dementia

FLUORIDE TRUTH hits the TV in AUSTRALIA

Additional related posts at Infowars.com:

1. CDC adjusts fluoride poisoning of America’s water supply to a lower level
2. Pinellas County Commission votes to stop putting fluoride in water supply
3. ADA study confirms dangers of fluoridated water, especially for babies
4. Mobile fluoride vans to target communities that voted to remove chemical from public water supply
5. World Health Organization: Fluoridate Water-Supply Population-Specifically
6. New Hampshire bills would ban foreign substances & fluoride from water supply
7. Fluoridated water now reaches nearly 70% of U.S. population
8. World Fluoridated Water Map
9. Too Much Fluoride in the Drinking Water
10. Calgary removing fluoride from water supply
11. Judge ok’s adding fluoride to city’s tap water supply – despite overwhelming public opposition
12. Teenagers want fluoride-free water

Ask Congress to Help Protect Honey Bees

Save the bees -- we need them for our on survival… If the bees die, so do all our fruits, flowers, veggies and so will we with no food.

Yesterday a legal petition was filed--along with over a million public comments--calling on EPA to suspend registration of Bayer’s controversial bee-toxic pesticide, clothianidin.

As the public debate over causes behind Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) – a syndrome in which bees seemingly abandon their hives – carries on in the media, more and more new science has shown that neonicotinoid pesticides like  clothianidin are indeed a critical piece of the puzzle.

Bees are still sick, and EPA is still stuck. While we may not know the exact cause of CCD, EPA knows enough to act, and has the authority and responsibility to suspend Bayer’s bee-toxic pesticide, clothianidin – yet for over a year the Agency has failed to do so.

Congress has the authority to exercise oversight over federal agencies like the EPA. I just signed a petition from the Center for Food safety asking Congress to step up and help protect bees. Can you sign it too?

It only takes a few seconds and you can sign here:

http://bit.ly/HoneyBeePetition

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. -- Ron Paul

h/t  to Patricia Gillenwater

Healthier Easter Candy Choices – BETTER CHOICES

Video: Healthier Easter Candy Choices - BETTER CHOICES

Easter is a calorie laden holiday for most. Without skipping the goodies, instead of filling up those baskets with unwanted goodies, just a little comparison and information can make for a healthier basket. If you are a chocolate person, choose dark chocolate which actually contains healthy antioxidants, and just be careful to eat in moderation. So when you are deciding what to put in those Easter baskets just make them a little healthier make sure you choose the right candy and lose some of the old standby’s.

Here is one example:

CHOOSE: Special Dark Chocolate Kisses (4 Kisses)

(4 Kisses)

• Calories 90
• Fat 5g
• Sodium 5mg
• Carbs 11g
• Fiber 0g
• Sugar 9g
• Protein 0g

LOSE: Cadbury Creme Egg

• Calories 150
• Fat 6g
• Sodium 15mg
• Carbs 24g
• Fiber 0g
• Sugar 20g
• Protein 2g

Skipping the Cadbury Creme Egg and picking up the Kisses saves you 60 calories some fat, carbs, and sugar which will not only leave you happy, but your kids as well. The extra bonus is that it feels like you got more than you actually did with the Kisses because you get to eat 4 which feels like more of an indulgence than just chowing down on one Egg.

CHOOSE the Special Dark Hershey’s Kisses and LOSE the Cadbury Creme Egg. 

Some of the healthiest candies are black licorice and Mounds made of dark chocolate, coconut and vanilla.  Almond Joy’s are one of the best milk chocolate bars.

M&M’s have about half the calories of Skittles.

And choose Jelly Belly jelly beans over other brands.  They are smaller, so you feel like you are getting more and they use a higher quality of ingredients.  The even make an energizing sports bean.

Also… definitely choose chocolate (dark is the best) over the Peeps and those types of sugary candies.

The Eat This, Not That! No-Diet Diet...

Why the Supreme Court Will Strike Down All of Obamacare

By Peter Ferrara  -  Forbes

Barack Obama made a national laughingstock out of himself with his recent comments on the Obamacare law now before the Supreme Court. Obama said on Monday, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” (emphasis added).

President Obama is not stupid. But he thinks you are. He knows the Obamacare health care takeover was not passed by a strong majority. But he figures you’re so dumb he can rewrite recent history in plain sight. The law passed a House with a huge Democrat majority at the time by only 219-212. It did not get a single Republican vote, but the opposition was bipartisan.

The law also barely squeaked past a Senate filibuster despite an overwhelming 60 Senate Democrats, and even then humiliating buyoffs were necessary. Public opposition was so strong that the ultraliberal Democrat controlled Massachusetts, the only state to go for George McGovern in 1972, elected a Republican in a special election for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, to terminate the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. That required final passage of the law improperly in violation of Congressional rules as a reconciliation measure, which is only to be used to clean up the budget and so cannot be filibustered.

And given that Obama is so certain you can’t remember what happened just two years ago, he is more than certain that you have never heard of the ancient history of Marbury v. Madison, where the 14-year old Supreme Court in 1803 took the then unprecedented step of overturning a provision of law adopted by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1789. That case was where the Supreme Court first recognized its power of judicial review, under which it is empowered to strike down laws found unconstitutional. As the Wall Street Journal observed on Tuesday:

“In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of these laws were passed by a ‘democratically elected’ legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by ‘strong’ majorities….probably stronger majorities than passed the Affordable Care Act.”

As a former constitutional law professor and President of the Harvard Law Review, Obama no doubt knows all about Marbury v. Madison and judicial review. But he figures he can safely assume a majority of you know nothing about it, and his party controlled media will not tell you anything concerning it at this inopportune moment. Hence, another classic example of what I have called Calculated Deception.

President Obama further assailed any Supreme Court decision ruling his Obamacare health care takeover unconstitutional as “judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” Alexander Hamilton disagreed over 200 years ago in Federalist 78, writing, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. . . .”

Or, as the Wall Street Journal explained on Monday:

“Judicial activism is not something that happens every time the Supreme Court overturns a statute. The Justices owe deference to Congress and the executive, but only to the extent that the political branches stay within the boundaries of the Constitution. Improper activism is when the Court itself strays beyond the founding document to find new rights or enhance its own authority without proper constitutional grounding.”

The Journal added, “Far from seeking an activist ruling, the Obamacare plaintiffs aren’t asking the Court to overturn even a single commerce clause precedent.”

In my role as General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, I filed 3 amicus curiae briefs with the Supreme Court in the Obamacare litigation. I also filed amicus briefs in the lower federal courts in the cases in Virginia and Florida.

The reason that at least 5 Justices are going to find the law’s individual mandate unconstitutional is that it is contrary to the fundamental federalism architecture of the Constitution. Under the Constitution, the federal government is an authority of limited, enumerated, delegated powers. All other powers of government are reserved for the states, including the broad authority labeled the “police power.” That is the power to compel individuals to take specific actions for the public good, such as actions for the public health like vaccinations or quarantines, or obtaining car insurance, or attending school. Notice that all such laws are adopted at the state or local level. (Any federal laws compelling action are based on specific delegated powers other than the Commerce Clause, like those providing for national defense, or taxation).

The power to compel the purchase of health insurance for the public good, as in Obamacare’s individual mandate, is a function of the police power reserved to the states, and denied to the federal government by the Constitution and Supreme Court precedents. If the federal government is now to hold a national police power, then the constitutional framework of federalism, with limited, enumerated powers delegated to the federal government, and the remaining powers of government retained by the states, would be obliterated.

That is why the Supreme Court held in United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000), “We always have rejected readings of the Commerce Clause and the scope of federal power that would permit Congress to exercise a police power.” The Court added, “the principle that the Constitution created a Federal Government of limited powers, while reserving a generalized police power to the States, is deeply ingrained in our constitutional history.” The Court explained in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) that Congress may not exercise its enumerated powers in a way that “infring[es] upon th[at] core of state sovereignty.” The Court in Morrison rejected the argument that women who are sexually assaulted would need medical care provides a sufficient interstate commerce connection under the Commerce Clause.

As Justice Kennedy explained in United States v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949 (2010), “the precepts of federalism embodied in the Constitution inform which powers are properly exercised by the National Government in the first place.” The Court added in Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 457 (1991), “[t]he Constitution created a Federal Government of limited powers [and] withhold[s] from Congress a plenary police power that would authorize enactment of every type of legislation.”

The Obama Administration tried to shoe horn the individual mandate into the federal enumerated power of the Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Their argument boiled down to the claim that millions of people choosing to not buy health insurance substantially affects interstate commerce. But every economic decision, when aggregated across the whole market, substantially affects interstate commerce in this way, including decisions not to do something. So that would leave the Commerce Clause eating up the whole Constitution and its most fundamental doctrine that the federal government is an authority of limited, enumerated, delegated powers. Federal power would then be without limit, contrary to the whole concept of the federal government in the Constitution.

That is why the Court kept asking the government for a principle that would limit its interpretation of the Commerce Clause, and its failure to come up with one is fatal to the government’s case. All prior cases under the Commerce Clause were based on the principle that some action had been taken that the federal government could then regulate as interstate commerce. To hold that inaction could be regulated as well as itself substantially affecting interstate commerce would break through any limitation on the power, and so was not what was intended. That would also again tear down the Constitution’s fundamental federalism architecture and any distinction between limited federal and plenary state power.

That is why the Supreme Court in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995) rejected the notion of unlimited Commerce Clause power, holding that it will strike down regulation under the Commerce Clause which leaves no principled limit to federal power under the Clause. The Court said, “the Constitution’s enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated and that there will never be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local.” Justice Kennedy added, “[T]he federal balance is too essential a part of our constitutional structure and plays too vital a role in securing freedom for us to admit inability to intervene when one or another level of Government has tipped the scales too far.”

Once the Court finds the individual mandate unconstitutional on these grounds, as it will, the question becomes whether the whole Obamacare Act must be struck down as unconstitutional as a result. The law does not include a traditional severability clause providing that if one of provision of the Act is found unconstitutional, the rest of the law should stand.

Consequently, the question becomes whether the remaining parts of the Obamacare law can still remain fully operative and function as Congress intended, and whether Congress would have passed the Act without the individual mandate. The answer in both cases is indisputably no.

Obama’s lawyers themselves have repeatedly argued in courts all over the country that the Obamacare law cannot function without the individual mandate. That is because of the Act’s regulatory requirements for guaranteed issue and community rating. The Act requires all insurers to cover all pre-existing conditions and issue health insurance to everyone that applies, no matter how sick they are when they first apply or how costly they may be to cover. Moreover, the insurers can only charge them the same, standard, market rates as everyone else.

Under these regulatory requirements, younger and healthier people delay buying insurance, knowing they are guaranteed coverage at standard rates after they become sick. Sick people show up applying for an insurer’s health coverage for the first time with very costly illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, which the insurer must then cover and pay for, out of the same standard premiums as everyone else pays. This means the insurer’s covered risk pool includes more costly sick people and fewer less costly healthy people, so the costs per person covered soar. The insurer then has to raise rates sharply for everyone just to be sure to have enough money to pay all of the policy’s benefits.

Those higher rates encourage even more healthy people to drop their insurance, leaving the remaining pool even sicker and more costly on average, which requires even higher premiums, resulting in a financial death spiral for the insurers and the insurance market.

If regulation required fire insurers to issue policies to people whose houses were already on fire at standard rates, the fire insurance pool would include only all burned down houses, which would obviously be dysfunctional.

The Obamacare law tries to counter this problem by adopting the individual and employer mandates, seeking to require everyone to be covered and contributing to the pool at all times. Without these mandates, the government itself has repeatedly argued, those who would remain uninsured would substantially affect the interstate market for health insurance, by allowing the remaining regulatory requirements to cause soaring health insurance premiums through the above process and ultimately a financial death spiral.

That financial death spiral would cause the costs of other provisions of Obamacare to soar, such as the subsidies for purchase of health insurance on the Exchanges, which would be even more costly than expected, and the costs for the Medicaid expansion, where more people would qualify given the decline of private insurance.

Indeed, Obamacare itself in its very statutory language recognized the essential role of the individual mandate in the statute’s overall framework, saying in Section 1501(a)(2)(I):

“[I]f there were no [individual mandate], many individuals would wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care….The [individual mandate] is essential to creating effective health insurance markets in which improved health insurance products that are guaranteed issue and do not exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions can be sold.”

As the court said in Alaska Airlines v. Brock, 480 U.S. 678 (1987), “Congress could not have intended a constitutionally flawed provision to be severed from the remainder of the statute if the balance of the legislation is incapable of functioning independently….” Moreover, the Court also recognized that in the absence of a statutory severance clause the entire statute must be struck down if Congress would not have enacted the statute without the unconstitutional provision.

Consequently, the loss of the individual mandate so centrally affects the entire structure of the Act that without it the entire structure must fall. Trying to determine what could be salvaged would embroil the Court in rewriting the statutory policy and framework to govern one-sixth of the entire U.S. economy, which is obviously not a judicial function.

The only other foreseeable outcome is for the liberals on the Court to agree to go along with a ruling declaring the mandate unconstitutional if the Court will just decide to hold back on deciding severability to give Congress the chance to figure out how it wants to fix it. But Congress could just pass a whole new law in any event if the Court just strikes down the whole thing, which based on its precedents is exactly what it should do.

But liberals should not despair. There is broad bipartisan agreement on alternative means of covering the uninsured with a health care safety net, which would not be expensive if done right, and addressing health costs through market competition and incentives, which altogether could well actually reduce federal spending sharply. The end result would be a much better bill that satisfies all desirable social goals. But that would still require a different President, because Obama’s anti-market, left wing, ideology would not allow him to accept that desirable result.

78 percent increase in autism rates over past decade coincides with new vaccination schedules

Back in 1983, for example, the CDC recommended only ten vaccines for children from birth through six years old (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/images/schedule1983s.jpg). Today, that number has risen significantly to 29 vaccines and counting, many of which are now administered all at one time or in combinations like the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine (http://www.cdc.gov).

78 percent increase in autism rates over past decade coincides with new vaccination schedules

Jonathan Benson  -  Infowars.com  -  April 3, 2012 – h/t to MJ

The rate of autism among American children has nearly doubled over the past decade, according to a new report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), jumping from about one in 150 children back in 2000 to about one in 88 children in 2008, which is the last time official estimates were calculated. And interestingly, this steady rise in autism rates coincides directly with CDC-endorsed vaccination schedules that have also risen sharply since the 1980s.

Back in 1983, for example, the CDC recommended only ten vaccines for children from birth through six years old (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/images/schedule1983s.jpg). Today, that number has risen significantly to 29 vaccines and counting, many of which are now administered all at one time or in combinations like the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine (http://www.cdc.gov).

And yet the mainstream medical system and its allies in the government and media are willfully ignoring this glaring fact, blaming “unknown” causes and “genetics” for causing autism, which are the two most common catch-all scapegoats. And in explaining the drastic rise in autism rates over the years, the talking heads actually claim that there is no rise — the seemingly elevated autism rates are merely the result of improved autism screening methods that are now identifying more cases.

Vaccines, fluoride, MSG, GMOs, toxic chemicals, processed foods – the real causes of autism

Sadly, these laughably unscientific excuses for this epidemic condition are actually being taken seriously by many people, while the true causes of autism — vaccines, fluoridated water, monosodium glutamate (MSG), genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), toxic chemicals, and processed foods — continue to remain taboo subjects when talking about autism.

But any rational human being that takes the time to objectively investigate the science behind how autism spectrum disorders are, at the very least, spurred on by these and other toxins, will quickly realize that the ugly truth about autism is being concealed from the public. And while these factors may not cause autism symptoms in every single person that is exposed to them, they surely trigger it in many, especially when exposures are combined and persistent.

Vaccines, for instance, which the medical establishment have presumptuously declared to play absolutely no role in autism, continue to show up in independent, non-pharma-sponsored research as a cause of autism. Whether they contain thimerosal (mercury) or not, vaccines are definitively linked to neurological disorders that were largely non-existent prior to mass-vaccination campaigns.

Even the kangaroo “vaccine court” has quietly admitted this, having settled with several families whose children were injured by vaccines. Back in 2009, for instance, a vaccine court ruled that Bailey Banks, a young boy who suffered acute brain damage after getting the MMR vaccine, had indeed been injured by the vaccine. Special Master Richard Abell wrote at the time that “the MMR vaccine at issue actually caused the conditions from which Bailey suffered and continues to suffer” (http://www.ageofautism.com).

The case was one of several that has received little or no media attention, and yet it speaks volumes about the dangers associated with vaccines. It also exposes the lies of the deniers who have declared that vaccines are in no way related to autism — case closed.

And besides vaccines, fluoridated water, MSG (http://www.msgtruth.org/autism.htm), GMOs (http://www.ageofautism.com), toxic chemicals both in the environment and in the food supply, and processed foods in general have all been linked to autism spectrum disorders as well (http://www.tacanow.org/family-resources/living-in-a-toxic-world/).

Sources for this article include:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/29/health/autism/?hpt=hp_t1

This article was orinally published at Natural News.

Related:

Drug Companies Shift Emphasis to Vaccines

83 percent of brain injury vaccine compensation payouts were for autism caused by vaccines

More Doctors 'Fire' Vaccine Refusers

Popping the Vaccine Bubble

The Lies That Grew Up To Be Obamacare

Video:  The Lies That Grew Up To Be Obamacare

It's the Lies About Beef that are the Slime… Or Is It Just the Slime?

It’s the Lies About Beef that are the Slime… Course In the End, Isn’t the Lies About Almost Everything (from the Government and the media) that is the Problem? And Why It Is So Hard to Decide…

Two Views… On the Slime

It’s the Lies About Beef that are the Slime

by Alan Caruba on April 1, 2012 at 9:28am  -  View Blog – TPN – h/t to MJ and George King

I am subject to various enthusiasms and, in 2008, I wrote a series about beef and the vast network of phony consumer advocates, vegetarian types, animal rights groups and headline chasing media folks who love a good scare campaign, all trying to convince Americans that beef was bad for them.

Today, it is a smear campaign about a type of meat promoted in the media as “pink slime.” Typically, it is a pack of lies and it’s going to cost some folks their jobs and drive up the cost of beef if allowed to go unchallenged.

What is being demonized in this 21st century reincarnation of the 1989 Alar apple scare is finely textured, 95% lean beef. It is composed of small parts of beef that are still available for use after the cuts with which we are more accustomed, like sirloin, brisket, top round, flank, porterhouse, and some forty other selections, are taken.

This lean beef is routinely added to lower quality hamburger to increase its protein content and its production has long been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It actually improves the nutritional quality of a lot of cheaper hamburger.

While the media may not approve of this beef, plenty of others do. A March 29 article in The Wall Street Journal reported that after being hammered in the media for weeks, the lean beef, “is getting support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the governors of five states, who argue it has been unfairly labeled and is actually a safe, low-cost way to make ground beef leaner.”

Other supporters include food safety activists like Nancy Donley, who lost her son, Alex, to e.coli and now advocates for tougher food safety laws to prevent similar deaths. The founder of Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP), Donley wrote in the March 17 edition of Food Safety News about her experience learning more about the modern American meat industry and her tour of a Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) plant which produces the lean beef now under attack.

“I got to know the owners, Eldon and Regina Roth,” wrote Donley, “and was impressed by their complete commitment to the safety and wholesomeness of the meat products they produced. I was also impressed by the food safety culture they instilled throughout their company.”

The company and its owners were also the subject of a June 12, 2008 Washington Post article titled “Engineering a Safer Burger.” In profiling Eldon Roth, the Post noted that Roth, “discovered his process for separating meat from fat had the unintended effect of making the lean beef more alkaline and therefore less conducive to bacteria.

The Post further reported that Roth and his staff, “began working with ammonium hydroxide, a food additive already approved by federal regulators for use in processing cheese, chocolate and soda. It also exists naturally in beef. By increasing the level of it in beef, Roth hoped to reduce its acidity and create less hospitable conditions for bacteria.”

It worked! Exposing the meat to a tiny amount of ammonium hydroxide gas during processing elevates its pH and increases food safety. There are no reports of illness related to the consumption of the company’s finely textured lean beef.

However, if there is one thing reporters love to use to scare people it is the name of any chemical. Thus, media coverage against this beef hypes ammonium hydroxide, ignoring the fact it that exists naturally in beef. It exists in many of the fruits and vegetables one might harvest from an organic garden. Furthermore, our bodies safely produce ammonia.

That hasn’t stopped media outlets like ABC News and others from reporting scary stories about the product and smearing BPI. In a March 23 opinion posted on the Fox News Forum, Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture for the Media Research Center, summed up the latest scare campaign, writing “TV news loves a health scare. Think deadly Tylenol. Killer tomatoes. Mad Cow disease. Alar in apples, and lots more.”

Like the Alar apple scare this is a totally invented media scare. It’s the way, as Gainor wrote “Slimy journalists” use these stories as “a path to winning journalistic awards—facts be damned.” It’s also why this card-carrying member of the Society of Professional Journalists since the 1970s keeps exposing this shoddy journalism and the groups that generate it for their own selfish agendas.

Have a hamburger. Have a steak. Eat beef. Don’t run scared every time some so-called journalist exploits your lack of knowledge of where beef comes from, how it is processed, and why millions of pounds of it are eaten with pleasure and the knowledge that it is the safest found anywhere in the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Image Credit: Brian Yarvin/Getty Images

Pink slime factories shuttered after massive public backlash

by: Jonathan Benson

(NaturalNews) For several decades now, the conventional beef industry has secretly been lacing ground beef products with an industrial, ammonia-laced byproduct known as “pink slime,” a disturbing fact that recently came to the forefront of national attention after Food Network chef Jamie Oliver first drew attention to its existence. And consumer backlash has been so strong ever since that a number of supermarket chains, restaurants, and even schools have decided to stop supplying it, which has caused its primary producer, Beef Products Inc. (BPI), to close three of its four manufacturing plants.

USA Today and others are reporting that Dakota Dunes, South Dakota-based BPI is temporarily closing its Waterloo, Iowa; Garden City, Kansas; and Amarillo, Texas plants for an indefinite period of time as a result of widespread consumer rejection of pink slime products. Workers at these plants will continue to receive pay and benefits for the next 60 days, but it is unclear what will happen after these next two months expire, should the plants continue to remain closed.

Meanwhile, BPI is launching an aggressive public relations campaign to fight back against its critics, which includes claiming that pink slime is “100 percent beef,” and that it is a highly-nutritious and safe product. And many in the media are jumping onboard this propaganda bandwagon by spinning the situation back against consumers, who are technically victims that have been been duped all these years into buying ground beef products that were secretly adulterated with pink slime.

In case you missed the original story, pink slime, which is officially known as “lean finely textured beef,” is basically a low-cost ground beef filler composed of beef scraps that are mashed, processed with a chemical ammonia solution, and turned into an unappetizing pink paste, the pictures of which have circulated the internet in recent months

(http://www.naturalnews.com/035255_pink_slime_USDA_school_lunches.html).

This pink slime has been added to roughly 70 percent of all ground beef products since the 1990s, but few were aware of it. Pink slime is obviously not labeled on ground beef packages, and the only way consumers can know for sure that they are not consuming it is to buy local or organic ground beef, or to watch the beef being ground fresh before buying it.

BPI, mainstream media launch attack on consumers for rejecting pink slime

It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of American consumers are not interested in feeding their children a highly-processed additive that has been treated with toxic ammonia, which is why the product is being pulled from grocery store shelves, restaurant menus, and schools all across the country. But BPI is not going down without a fight, as it is launching a campaign that basically insults the intelligence of Americans by claiming that pink slime is no different from real beef.

But according to former U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist Gerald Zirnstein, pink slime is not actually meat, nor is it as nutritious as meat, a sentiment to which his former colleague Carl Custer also agrees. And Kit Foshee, a former executive at BPI, appears to hold the same view, having told ABC News that pink slime is processed from fat and cuts that would otherwise not ever be used as food.

“Microbiologically safe and nutritionally complete are two different issues,” said Custer to ABC News, referring to BPI’s claim that pink slime contains little fat and is pathogen-free. “It may be pink [but], nutritionally, it is not equivalent to whole-muscle tissue” (http://abcnews.go.com).

Turkey & Cheese? No. Pink slime? Yes!

The lunch police have made headlines recently, particularly when one school official actually confiscated a packed lunch they deemed unhealthy. But at the same time, the FDA has approved wide usage of a food substance called ‘pink slime’ that, as the name suggests, is allegedly not healthy. Glenn, Pat & Stu talk processed foods: as bad as people say? WATCH

Between the hormones given the cattle and the pink slime, most countries will not import or eat American beef… Why are we???

My final vote is still out on the pink slime…partly because I respect Alan Caruba, although all in all it doesn’t sound like a good thing, but the hormones are definitely something to be concerned about… as well as GMO foods of all kinds. I’ll keep doing some research on the so-called slime… but in the meantime, you be the judge…

(However in the meantime, as much as possible I will be buying locally raised and butchered meats (from the butcher) and organic cuts from known sources as much as possible. We had friends whose family are butchers and they are very negative about the meat glue and meat slime) M~

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FDA admits in court case that vaccines still contain mercury

(NaturalNews) It is a common myth today that the vaccines administered to children no longer contain the toxic additive thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative linked to causing permanent neurological damage. But a recent federal case involving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revealed that, contrary to this widely-held belief, thimerosal is actually still present in many batch vaccines, including in the annual influenza vaccine that is now administered to children as young as six months old.
Filed by a citizen-backed coalition advocating vaccine safety, the lawsuit against the FDA alleged that the agency's continued endorsement and approval of thimerosal as a vaccine additive is a serious public health threat, especially since safer alternatives already exist and are widely used voluntarily by many vaccine manufacturers. But Judge Brett Kavanaugh, siding with antiquated pseudoscience, decided that thimerosal is not a health threat, and that those who wish to avoid it can simply choose thimerosal-free alternatives.

Ignoring the evidence of thimerosal's dangers brought before him on behalf of the millions of children across the country who continue to be injected with this mercury-based additive, Judge Kavanaugh declared that the plaintiffs, which include groups like the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs (CMFD), did not have proper standing to file the lawsuit. And in the process, both he and the FDA inadvertently admitted that thimerosal is still present in many childhood vaccines, which counters popular claims to the contrary.

FDA admits on its website that thimerosal is still in vaccines

The fact that Judge Kavanaugh refused to hear the case is tragic in and of itself, as thimerosal, which is composed of 50 percent mercury, has been proven to cause serious health damage. But what may be even worse is the fact that many people falsely believe that thimerosal is not even included in vaccines anymore, which is leading them to blindly allow them to be administered to their children. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FDA have continued to provide dubious and misleading information on the subject, which the mainstream media has been complicit in spreading over the years.

But the FDA explains, in no uncertain terms, directly on its website that thimerosal is still added to certain vaccines. For this reason alone, it is crucial that parents who choose to vaccinate their children ask for an ingredients list for each and every vaccine before allowing them to be administered to their children.

"While the use of mercury-containing preservatives has declined in recent years with the development of new products formulated with alternative or no preservatives, thimerosal has been used in some immune globulin preparations, anti-venins, skin test antigens, and ophthalmic and nasal products, in addition to certain vaccines," writes the FDA on its Thimerosal in Vaccines page (http://www.fda.gov).

h/t to AJ

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