“Government’s first duty is protect the people, not run their lives.”--President Ronald Reagan, Republican, (1981-1989)
The latest polls reveal that voters are turning away from Pres. Obama and the Democrat Party. Non-aligned voters have especially lost confidence in Democrat leadership. Watch for a huge barrage of propaganda against the pharmaceutical companies during August, as Nancy Pelosi tries to bolster the Party image.

In this newsletter:
- Today’s Political Cartoon
- Obama Misleads Public, Does an End Run Around Congress
- Obama Lies about the details of his healthcare proposal
- $$$$ Billions of Stimulus Funds Disappear!
- Watchdog says TARP tab could hit $24 Trillion!!!
Political Cartoon (This cartoon was sent to us by Beth Ann Ryker. Thanks, Beth Ann!
Have You Heard Pres. Obama Describe His Healthcare Plan? Don’t Believe What he Says! Pres. Obama has been making misleading claims about his healthcare proposals. When Obama says his plan will keep “government out of healthcare decisions” and Americans will have “the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it,” he is not telling the truth!
Arizona Republican Rep. John Shadegg says, “The Democrat-backed health care plan “inserts the federal government and the federal bureaucrats in virtually every healthcare decision in America. And, under the clear terms of the bill, you will not be able to keep your current plan, whether you like it or not.”
Shadegg sees the House bill as a “massive takeover of every aspect of healthcare.” The legislation “empowers bureaucrats to make virtually every decision,” he says. “It creates a new healthcare advisory commission, a new healthcare benefits board. It creates a new commissioner who would have powers just short of the powers of the president.”
As for Obama’s claim that his plan allows Americans to keep their present insurance if they wish, “That simply again is flat false,” Shadegg says. The House bill sets forth standards that every insurance plan in America must meet regarding coverage, minimum benefits, plus more requirements are forthcoming. “No plan currently in existence in America could possibly meet those standards. Therefore, no plan today will continue to exist” under Obama’s healthcare. The statement that if you have a plan you like you can keep it “is simply wrong.”
Shadegg says that nationalizing health care will give Democrats their goal of making Americans dependent on the government. Obama and Pelosi say they can cover all Americans while bringing health care costs down. The Congressional Budget office has been very candid and straightforward in saying THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE. The CBO says that Obama’s health plan will increase the cost burden on the United States Government, on all insurance providers, and on every one of us!!!
The CBO also says that Obama’s health care spending will create a massive spike in the federal deficit!
Our legislators must read the whole bill and vote in a responsible manner! We don’t want Congress to pass legislation they haven’t read and then say, “Sorry, I didn’t read it before I voted for it, so of course you can’t hold me responsible because I didn’t know.”
House Republicans Unveil $700B Healthcare Plan
“We are introducing this bill because we support health care reform, but in a way that empowers patients.” This bill gives GOP lawmakers a positive plan to point to when they go home for the congressional August break.
The GOP plan was drafted by Rep. Tom Price, R-GA, a physician. It avoids expanding the federal role in overseeing the health insurance industry. Unlike Dem proposals, it would not set up new federally regulated purchasing pools for individuals and small businesses. Instead, it would allow individuals to use the Internet to purchase lower-cost coverage available anywhere in the country.
The plan would offer tax deductions and tax credits to help make the purchase of health insurance more affordable for individuals. States, associations and small businesses would be allowed to pool together to offer less expensive insurance coverage. It would provide grants to states to help set up high-risk pools for people with medical problems who are denied coverage by commercial insurers. And it would allow employers to automatically sign workers up for the company’s coverage—similar to what’s done with 401 (k) retirement plans.
The GOP will would take on medical malpractice, limiting jury awards for pain and suffering and creating new health courts in which a specially trained judge would hear and decide cases involving medical negligence.
Republicans say their plan is fully paid for, but it hasn’t been assessed yet by the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper for the costs of legislation.
It’s unclear how far the plan would go in reducing the number of uninsured. Most independent analysts—and the insurance industry—say some sort of requirement to purchase insurance is needed to ensure coverage. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said “we believe we can come up with a plan where every person in the uninsured has access to insurance.”
President Does an End Run Around Congress!
In last year’s presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised us that he would not bypass Congress in his decision-making.
Truth: Obama has appointed an army of “czars”, each wholly unaccountable to Congress, and each spearheads major policy efforts for the White House, with authority second only to the President.
In his first six months, Obama has done an end run around the legislative branch by appointing many people who are not subjected to Senate confirmation and congressional oversight, and who have absolute authority in almost every aspect of our lives. Barack Obama poses a grave threat to our system of checks and balances!!
Obama Already Breaking Tax Promises
By Grover Nyquist, Wednesday, July 29, Newsmax - On September 12, then-Senator Barack Obama made the American people a promise. We were told “no family, making less than $250,000 a year, will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax. Not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
President Obama didn’t keep that promise. He broke it 16 days into his presidency when he signed the SCHIP bill, instituting a tax hike on smokers, a group with a median income of $36,000. And that’s about the last place his promise was even comprehensible.
Since then Obama has broken that promise while he and his mouthpieces have told America that the promise comes without caveats, that the president doesn’t draw lines in the sand, and that he has kept and will keep the promise. It sounds baffling in print – it’s even more confusing when you see and hear it.
But with healthcare and cap-and-tax – both loaded with tax hikes – potentially hitting the president’s desk in the next few months, IT IS VITAL THAT THE PRESIDENT BE REMINDED OF HIS PROMISE. American simply cannot afford any more twists and turns in this bizarre saga of Obama’s tax promises.
Obama Fails to Shove Healthcare Through the House before Vacation
When Congress leaves Washington D.C. for a month of vacation, nationalized healthcare will still be waiting for a vote. And voters are anxious to tell their Congressional representatives during August about necessary changes in possible healthcare legislation. To counter voters, a massive propaganda campaign has begun, trying to make the pharmaceuticals, not the Democrats, the bad guys. Democrats will be painted as the saviors of the masses.
Obama admitted this week that the House will not vote on this bill before the end of September or the middle of October.
Billions in Stimulus Disappears in States Without Oversight
Illinois, President Obama’s home state, is the worst in the nation when it comes to information available online about how federal stimulus money is being spent. Illinois also scored a zero in information about stimulus spending on highways.
The 50-state study by the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog Good Jobs First sought to assess how well states are living up to President Barack Obama’s pledge that the $787 billion federal stimulus bill would seek “an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability.”
To fulfill that and similar promises from governors, state web sites were supposed to play a central role as one-stop shops where watchdogs, reporters and citizens could go to track stimulus cash. On a scale of zero to 100, Illinois scored zero!
Most states also scored poorly, with an average rating of 28. Illinois is so tainted with political corruption that critics said it should try to be more transparent than any other state.
Maryland scored 80, Colorado was second with 68, and only 4 other states scored above 50. Oregon was not specifically named.
Thanks, Paul Rentz, for calling our attention to an article on the front page of the G-T this week:
The folks that say Health Care Companies are greedy have NO competition compared to the Federal Government and the State Of Oregon- do the math!
According to an AP article that was on the front page of the Gazette Times (Corvallis’ morning paper) July 28th, 2009, Oregon lawmakers spent $176 MILLION dollars creating 113,260 hours of jobs (average job lasted 35 hours for 3,236 employees) or $1,554 PER HOUR! Is this part of the same government that is telling us that they can save us money in health care if we put them in charge?!? They think private sector health care is a rip off- oh my!
WE HAVE TO GET THE WORD OUT!
Paul Rentz
SPIN METER: 'Help Wanted' counting stimulus jobs
By RYAN KOST (AP) – 2 days ago
PORTLAND, Ore. — How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months.
But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime. "Sometimes some work for an individual is better than no work," said Oregon's Senate president, Peter Courtney.
With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon's inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working — even if that means stretching the facts.
At the federal level, President Barack Obama has said the federal stimulus has created 150,000 jobs, a number based on a misused formula and which is so murky it can't be verified.
At least 10 other states have launched their own miniature stimulus plans and nine others have proposed one, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of them, like Oregon, have promised job creation as a result of the public spending.
Ohio, for instance, passed a nearly $1.6 billion stimulus package even before Congress was looking at a federal program. When Gov. Ted Strickland first pitched the idea last year, he estimated the program could create some 80,000 jobs.
In North Carolina, a panel authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in new debt to speed up $740 million in government building projects. According to one estimate, the move could hurry the creation of 25,000 jobs.
As the bills for these programs mount, so will the pressure to show results. But, as Oregon illustrates, job estimates can very wildly.
"At best you can say it's ambiguous, at worst you can say it's intentional deception," said economist Bruce Blonigen of the University of Oregon. "You have to normalize it into a benchmark that everybody can understand."
Oregon's accounting practices would not be allowed as part of the $787 billion federal stimulus. While the White House has made the unverifiable promise that 3.5 million jobs will be saved or created by the end of next year, when accountants actually begin taking head counts this fall, there are rules intended to guard against exactly what Oregon is doing.
The White House requires states to report numbers in terms of full-time, yearlong jobs. That means a part-time mechanic counts as half a job. A full-time construction worker who has a three-month paving contract counts as one-fourth of a job.
Using that method, the AP's analysis of figures in Oregon shows the program so far has created the equivalent of 215 full-time jobs that will last three months. Oregon's House speaker, Dave Hunt, called that measurement unfair, though nearly every other state that has passed a stimulus package already uses or plans to use it.
"This stimulus plan was intentionally designed for short-term projects to pump needed jobs and income into families, businesses and communities struggling to get by," Hunt said in a statement. "No one ever said these would be full-time jobs for months at a time."
Still, critics say counting jobs, without any consideration of their duration, isn't good enough.
"You can't let them say, 'Well, we never said it was going to be full-time,'" said Steve Buckstein, a policy analyst for the Cascade Policy Institute, a free-market think tank. For the price of Oregon's $176 million, lawmakers could have provided all 3 million state residents with a one-hour job paying about $60, he said.
"By their definition, that's 3 million jobs," Buckstein said. "Is anybody gonna buy that?"
Oregon's 12.4 percent unemployment rate surpasses the national average of 9.4 percent. To supplement the federal stimulus, the state sold bonds to pay for everything from replacing light bulbs to installing carpet and finishing construction of a school in the farming community of Tillamook.
The "Go Oregon" program is still new. According to its latest progress report, 8 percent of the money has been spent and hundreds of projects have yet to be completed. More paychecks are bound to be written as construction continues.
If Oregon's dollars-to-jobs ratio remains steady, the program will create about 688 full-time, yearlong jobs. So far, it's generated only enough hours to employ 54 people full-time for a year.
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