Paying your dues... to someone else

[Tonus]

Ah! So this is why (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124458836591599769.html#mod=rss_opinion_main) the UAW is getting a huge and disproportional piece of GM and possibly Chrysler! They will need it for the next elections... (http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/10/big-labor-insolvent/)

*...congressional and presidential elections, that is!

(Note: I'm quoting the second link at HotAir, be sure to check the first link as well)


Big Labor insolvent?

No wonder the unions have fought so hard to get Card Check passed. The Wall Street Journal reports that the SEIU and the AFL-CIO have all but gone bankrupt after throwing away tens of millions in the last election. The massive unemployment in union-sector jobs may sound their death knell:
‘We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama,” declared Andy Stern last month, and the president of the Service Employees International Union wasn’t exaggerating. The SEIU and AFL-CIO have been spending so much on politics that they’re going deeply into debt.

That news comes courtesy of federal disclosure forms that unions file each year with the Department of Labor. The Bush Administration toughened the enforcement of those disclosure rules, but under pressure from unions the Obama Labor shop is slashing funding for such enforcement. Without such disclosure, workers wouldn’t be able to see how their union chiefs are managing their mandatory dues money.
Obama demanded tighter enforcement of Wall Street for not handling its investments properly. Why is he allowing the unions off the hook for the same problem? At least people invest willingly on Wall Street; unions take their dues whether the employee wants the union or not.

How badly have the unions handled the money?
Alarm is coming even from inside the AFL-CIO — specifically, from Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, who sits on the AFL-CIO’s finance committee. Bloomberg News reports that he is circulating a report claiming the AFL-CIO engaged in “creative accounting” to conceal financial difficulties heading into last year’s Presidential election. As recently as 2000, the union consortium of 8.5 million members had a $45 million surplus. By June of last year it had $90.6 million in liabilities, or $2.3 million more than its $88.3 million in assets. “If we are not careful, insolvency may be right around the corner,” Mr. Buffenbarger warned. …

As for the SEIU, as recently as 2002 total SEIU liabilities were about $8 million. According to its 2008 disclosure form, the union owed more than $156 million, a 30% increase over the $120 million it owed in 2007. Its liabilities now equal more than 80% of its $189 million in assets. Net assets fell by nearly half last year, to $34 million, from $64 million in 2007. The debt includes an $80 million loan the SEIU took out in 2003 to purchase a new headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. But the liabilities also stem from political spending, including at least $67 million last year on political and lobbying expenses, twice what it spent in 2007.
They need Card Check to rope more dues into the coffers. Card Check would allow the unions to intimidate workers into signing cards and eliminate the secret ballot that would give employees one last opportunity to reject intimidation from either side. Once the union gets its closed shop, it can suck dues out of the paychecks and in essence cover up the profligate spending of the union bosses.

Congress needs to reject Card Check and demand greater disclosure from unions on what they do with worker dues. If Obama and the Democrats don’t want that, then Republicans need to inform union workers of these facts and ask them who stands up for the working men and women of this country — and who stands with the union bosses who have thrown away their money.
In some ways this is an old story. Once a union becomes big enough and powerful enough, it becomes just another corporate entity, except that it normally doesn't have to temper its actions out of fear of shareholders or concern over the bottom line. Except that now, they've run themselves so far into the red that they're looking at... well, not insolvency. Does anyone think that the Obama administration will allow large powerhouse unions to fail?

Which means that if these unions do get to that point, we'll just bail them out. And it'll be so appropriate! These unions are treating worker's dues the same way this government is treating our taxes-- as money to be wasted with no accountability. Therefore, get ready for another 'stimulus' package.

What's more, the administration is already working to ease enforcement of disclosure rules, a process that I expect will continue until there is no risk of having their financials disclosed at all. That will make it easier for unions to continue to misuse funds collected from workers, while also making it easier for the government to help them remain solvent. Now we can ALL be union members!

[Grunthos]

The bulk of California's current budget troubles can be traced to two unions: SEIU, and the local teachers' union, the CTA.

[Tonus]

Democrats: let's tax the health care plans of the rich... what's that? Some of the larger unions also use those plans? NO PROBLEM! (http://www.qando.net/?p=3018)


It may be hard to believe [/snark], but it appears when Democrats speak of “fairness” they define it in their own special interest kind of way. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476309180208203.html)

Take the talk about taxing your private health care benefits (something adamantly opposed by Obama during the campaign).

Originally it was going to be everyone. But other Democrats complained mightily to Senate Democrats who were considering such a tax to pay for the conservatively estimated 1.5 trillion necessary to pay for “health care reform” (PAYGO? HA!). So they modified it a bit - tax the “rich” - those who had the best of coverage. Always a popular populist fallback, Sen. Dems were sure that would work.

Alas it was soon discovered that a huge number of those holding “Cadillac” health care policies were unions. Yes, the special interest group in the pocket of the Dems (and vice versa) would be heavily hit by such a tax. As you might imagine, they were not happy.

Solution - drop this bad idea?

Of course not. Instead exempt the unions, you silly person:
Mr. Baucus officially floated his plans for a tax this week, only with a surprising twist: His levy will not apply to union plans, at least for the duration of existing contracts. In other words, Mr. Baucus intends to tax the health-care benefits only of those who didn’t spend a fortune electing Democrats to office. Sen. Ted Kennedy, who is circulating his own health-care reform, has also included provisions that will exempt unions from certain provisions.

The union carve-out is designed to allay the fears of many Democrats who remain outright hostile to a tax on health-care benefits, whether out of principle, political fear or union solidarity.
This is not your grandfather’s America. Pay czars who arbitrarily set arbitrary pay limits based on what they “think” (according to presidential spokesperson Robert Gibbs) is “fair”, a government appointed CEO for an auto company who admits he knows nothing about cars and the government hijacking of health care.

If you’re not concerned, you’re not paying attention.
How does Obama plan to pay for all of his new goodies? By taxing the rich. Well, except for those who support him. The fact that this leaves him a few trillion dollars short of his goals is no problem-- right around November 5th 2010 he will suddenly remember to tell us that he is "forced" to raise taxes... on everyone.

[Grunthos]

Barney Frank admitted today that this health care debacle will have a starting price tag of over a trillion dollars, not counting the "money" (purely fictions on paper) that Obambi has "reserved" for it.

Over $600 Billion in new taxes just to get it rolling.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqLNecbH0dcg

[Tonus]

From the WSJ, a reminder that we've been down this road before... (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124528251402125409.html)


'Public Option': Son of Medicaid
Lard atop lard that only a politician or bureaucrat could love.

In his speech on health care to the American Medical Association, President Obama explained why the U.S. has "failed" (yet again) to provide comprehensive reform that "covers everyone." He had a list of the failing people, who "simply couldn't agree" on reform: doctors, insurance companies, businesses, workers, others. And "if we're honest," he said (ergo, disagreeing with this is dishonest) we must add to the list "some interest groups and lobbyists" who have used "fear tactics."

It seems to me, if we're honest, that one other contributor to the health-care morass should have been on the president's list: Congress. Indeed a close reading of Mr. Obama's speech suggests he holds the political class innocent insofar as he blames everyone else but them. Can this be true?

Back before recorded history, in 1965, Congress erected the nation's first two monuments to health-care "reform," Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid was described at the time as a modest solution to the problem of health care for the poor. It would be run by the states and "monitored" by the federal government.

The reform known as Medicaid is worth our attention now because Mr. Obama is more or less demanding that the nation accept another reform, his "optional" federalized health insurance program. He suggested several times before the AMA that opposition to it will consist of "scare tactics" and "fear mongering."

Whatever Medicaid's merits, this federal health-care program more than any other factor has put California and New York on the brink of fiscal catastrophe. I'd even call it scary.

Spending on health and welfare, largely under Medicaid, makes up one-third of California's budget of some $100 billion. In New York Gov. David Paterson's budget message, he notes that "New York spends more per capita ($2,283) on Medicaid than any other state in the country."

After 45 years, the health-care reform called Medicaid has crushed state budgets. A study by the National Governors Association said a decade ago that because of "new requirements" imposed by federal law -- meaning Congress -- "Medicaid has evolved into a program whose size, cost and significance are far beyond the original vision of its creators."

In his speeches, Mr. Obama makes the original vision of his "public option" insurance plan sound about as simple as driving through toll booths with an electronic pass on your windshield. It's going to be all about "best practices" with patients "reimbursed in a thoughtful way," as if the federal government is about to become just another big Google.

Medicaid is a morass. Since the program's inception, Congress has loaded it up every few years with more notions of what to cover, shifting about 43% of the ever-upward cost onto someone else's tab, mainly the states. A 1988 congressional mandate requires local schools to pay for schooling and related services for disabled children, but because Congress underfunds its mandates, the states pay the rest through Medicaid.

The list of add-ons is endless, and there's little about it that is thoughtful. Why shouldn't one think that, as with Medicare and Medicaid, the Obama Public Option in time will become an impossible fog for patients to navigate? But unto eternity the program's administrative complexity will provide work for bureaucrats, Members of Congress, their staffs, lobbyist spouses and the "health-care" establishment of foundations and economists.

Oh, and the courts. The fact that this is a public program ensures not just congressional meddling but also makes it vulnerable to litigation. Over time, the Sotomayors of the federal bench will make it bigger. One piece of California's incredible budget mess flows from a federal judge's 2006 decision to seize control of the state's prison-health system and make the state pay billions for new health spending imagined by his appointed federal overseer.

Medicaid alone didn't put California and New York on the brink. Add in spending on public education and you've accounted for about 60% of their budgets. This drives the deficits and gets all the ink, but not least among the casualties of bigness is the idea of governance.

The elected legislatures of California, which holds 36.7 million American citizens, and New York, with 20 million, are essentially falling apart as governing bodies. The whole country has witnessed the spectacle of the comic "coup" in New York's Senate in Albany the past two weeks.

With collapse comes a truth: The bigger the government, the smaller the politicians. As mandated entitlements grow, the spending "crowds out" the need or obligation to think or to govern. Legislators with nothing very real to do become lazy, slack and corrupt. They become Albany. Or Sacramento. Or Trenton.

Mr. Obama's plan is intended to "guarantee" health insurance for all. Whatever the truth of that, its outlays -- larded atop Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security -- guarantee that Congress will become more like the states' clown shows. But they are expensive clowns.

In his speech, Mr. Obama said the cost of the Public Option won't add to the deficit: "I've set down a rule for my staff, for my team -- and I've said this to Congress -- health-care reform must be, and will be, deficit-neutral in the next decade." If we're honest, that means tax increases are inevitable. Sounds scary to me.

Yeah, that's right. Government-run health care, available to those who cannot afford it? We already implemented it more than 40 years ago. And it has worked so well, that we're talking about implementing... get this... government-run health care that will be available to those who cannot afford it. Go ahead, look at what Medicaid and Medicare were supposed to be, and look at what they are now... a $67 trillion monstrosity, portions of which are enough to crush individual state governments, even though it doesn't cover all of the people who need it. And these same idiots and criminals want to foist another one of these messes on top of it.

The best part is right at the end. When Obama talks about only taxing "the rich," anyone who has a smidgen of intelligence understands that he's talking about doing the impossible, when his plans and promises are taken into account. The poor will wind up paying more than "the rich"-- as a percentage of their income-- over the long haul. Services will cost more. Goods will cost more. Jobs will become more scarce. In fact, before Congress has even managed to put together a complete proposal for a health care system, the administration is already planning $100 billion in taxes and service cuts per year for the next ten years.

And why? So that we can implement government-run health care that covers the needy. Just like we did in 1965.

[Shady]

I've been fearing this for many, many years. Talk about a nationalized health care plan has been nothing but talk for most of those years. But I've been saying the same thing the entire time; look at Medicare and Medicaid. Look how these plans are run. Look at what they are supposed to do, and then at what they actually do. Look at the effectiveness of them. Do you really want your only viable health care coverage option to be one of those plans? Why create a totally new entity that is basically the same rotten system we already have?

And people are just now putting two and two together about this when there is a very real fear that this may come to pass with this joke of a president we now have.

The whole thing just makes me :wallbash:

[Tonus]

So Barney Frank says, let's take the profits from this TARP program, and let's spend it (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Barney-Frank--49649362.html) before we even know if it'll be profitable!

Being run out of town on a rail would just not be sufficient for some of these people:


Barney Frank: Let's spend TARP profits before taxpayers can get them

When President Obama announced on June 9 that some financial institutions would be allowed to repay Troubled Asset Relief Program dollars, he said the massively expensive TARP bailout had made money for the federal government. "It is worth noting that in the first round of repayments from these [TARP recipients], the government has actually turned a profit," the president said. Indeed, TARP supporters have long held out the hope that the program might be profitable.

But now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the "TARP for Main Street Act of 2009," a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats.

In exchange for receiving TARP money, financial institutions were required to hand over shares of preferred stock that paid a dividend for the government. In theory, if a financial institution paid the dividend faithfully, and then repaid the TARP money, then the government would turn a profit. Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that, through June 12, 2009, the government had received $6.2 billion in dividend payments. The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt."

Frank, however, wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the "TARP for Main Street" proposal would take $1 billion "from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided under…the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called "neighborhood stabilization" fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.

The "TARP for Main Street" bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to "stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure."

Frank's proposal comes at a time when Republicans, and some Democrats, are expressing concern about the continued use of TARP money. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch recently complained that TARP funds are "now being used as a go-to solution to address all of our nation's economic ills." Hatch and Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln recently introduced a bill that would require that TARP money goes back to the Treasury for debt reduction.

Spending the dividend payments now, as Frank proposes, would reduce the chance that TARP might ever be a break-even deal for the taxpayers. "We don't know if TARP is going to be making any money, so taking the dividend payments going back to Treasury is pretty questionable," says one House GOP aide. Indeed, in its June report, the GAO revealed that 17 troubled institutions have not paid their dividends, much less repaid the TARP money itself. And last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that three other institutions were not paying dividends. But now, Frank is proposing that dividends be spent immediately. "It defeats the idea of taxpayer protection," says the GOP aide.


The headline is slightly misleading. It's not just that Barney Frank wants to spend the "profits" from TARP before the taxpayers get it. It's that Barney Frank wants to spend the "profits" from TARP before we even know if the program will actually turn a profit. See the last paragraph, some TARP recipients haven't even paid the dividends they promised, much less returned the TARP funds. Which means that after all is said and done, TARP may wind up showing a loss... without even factoring in Frank's attempt to redirect (ie, STEAL) some of the money.

The sheer hubris at work here, even for a known quantity such as Barney Frank, is infuriating. This is the same asshole who told us, as recently as 2006, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fine, that there was no housing bubble, that people expressing concern were just fear-mongering for political gain. After helping to create the economic mess we're in, he wants to deepen it in every possible way he can. And he's pretty entrenched in his district, which means that no matter how bad things get, and no matter how much of it is his fault, he'll still be there when the bottom falls out. No doubt he'll be wagging his finger at everyone else and telling us that we'll be fine, we'll just have to raise taxes again.

[Tonus]

Back to issues of government funded health care...

Bruce McQuain at QandO tackles the myth that Medicare is more efficient (http://www.qando.net/?p=3362) than private care. He links to this article at Real Clear Politics (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/27/the_adminstrative_cost_benefit_myth_97193.html) and this one by John Stossel (http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/06/medicares-efficiency-.html) to help make the case.

One critically important point-- Medicare fraud may cost taxpayers as much as 68 billion (with a B) dollars... EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Because the government doesn't worry about fraud as much as a private insurer has to (after all, the private insurer cannot simply continue to dip into your pockets to cover inefficiency without risking losing you as a customer) it doesn't spend nearly as much to deal with fraud. And thus, it's administrative expenses show up as lower than those of a private insurer. And this is touted as evidence that Medicare is run more efficiently!!!

Think about that, sixty-eight billion dollars a year, lost to fraud. And as Medicare grows, expect the amount lost to fraud to grow as well. And that's in addition to the tax drain that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security already produce, to the point where the unfunded liabilities for those programs are so large that we couldn't pay them off even if every last dollar we produced were spent on them... FOR THREE YEARS.

[Tonus]

You know it's getting bad when even the Associated Press is ragging on you (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_tax_promise) about your campaign promises.


PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama tax pledge unrealistic

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised to fix health care and trim the federal budget deficit, all without raising taxes on anyone but the wealthiest Americans. It's a promise he's already broken and will likely have to break again. Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have already increased tobacco taxes — which disproportionately hit the poor — to pay for extending health coverage to 4 million children in working low-income families.

Now, lawmakers are looking for more revenues to help pay for providing medical insurance to millions more who lack it at a projected cost of $1 trillion over the next decade.

The floated proposals include increasing taxes on alcohol, which could raise $62 billion over the next decade, and a new tax on sugary drinks such as soda, which could raise $52 billion.

Senate Democrats this week pretty much rejected a proposal by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., to tax health benefits, an idea that Obama repeatedly criticized during the presidential election campaign but has refused to take off the table.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said negotiators are still looking for revenue alternatives. Asked during an interview with The Associated Press if they included tax increases on families with incomes less than $250,000 a year, Schumer said, "There are lots of things on the table now."

The health care bill is a long way from Obama's desk, but tax experts say the debate illustrates a stark reality: It is simply implausible for the vast majority of Americans to get a free ride while the nation tackles such an incredibly difficult — and expensive — issue.

"We're all going to have to contribute," said Eugene Steuerle, a former treasury official in the Reagan administration and now vice president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Paying for Obama's agenda might be easier, Steuerle said, if the nation wasn't already facing massive federal budget deficits for the foreseeable future.

"The dilemma is trying to do the new while the old is still unpaid for," Steuerle said.

The federal budget deficit is projected to hit an unprecedented $1.8 trillion this year — on top of a national debt that has already topped $11 trillion. Obama insists that any bill on health care or climate change not add to the debt.

Obama says much of the $1 trillion needed for his health care overhaul will come from cutting costs. So far, drug companies and hospitals have agreed to provide 10-year savings of $235 billion.

Health care experts say cost cutting alone won't produce enough money to insure the nearly 50 million Americans who lack coverage. Moreover, Congress is obligated to follow budget rules that might not recognize many of the promised savings.

"The administration has an extremely difficult educational problem on its hands," said Henry J. Aaron, a health care expert at the Brookings Institution. "They understand that at some point tax increase are going to be necessary across the board.

"Yes, for the middle class, too," he added.

Obama made a firm tax pledge during the presidential campaign, repeating it numerous times in the weeks and months leading up to Election Day: no tax increases for individuals making less than $200,000 a year or couples making less than $250,000.

"Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes," Obama told a crowd in Dover, N.H., last year.

But less than a month after taking office, Obama signed an expansion of child health care financed by 62-cent tax increase on each pack of cigarettes.

Obama also signed an anti-smoking bill in June that grants authority to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. To pay for the new program, a fee is being imposed on the industry — and presumably passed on to consumers — estimated to generate more than $5 billion over the next decade.

While not directly increasing taxes, a House-passed version of Obama's plan to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for causing global warming would similarly increase American families' home energy bills by $175 a year on average, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Obama hasn't offered a detailed plan to fix health care, though his aides are working with lawmakers as they craft proposals. Obama included only a down payment for health care reform in the budget proposal he unveiled this spring.

He proposed limiting itemized tax deductions for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000. The plan, which faces stiff opposition in Congress, would limit deductions for mortgage insurance, state and local taxes and charitable contributions, raising about $270 billion over the next decade.

Obama also proposed a series of business tax increases and accounting changes that would raise an additional $30 billion.

Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for the OMB, said Obama's cost reductions and tax increases add up to "a plan which gets you really close to what you need."

"Congress has other ideas," Baer said. "We'll work with them."

The appeal of Baucus's proposed tax on health benefits was the amount of money it could raise. Currently, employer-provided health benefits are not taxed, regardless of how generous they are.

One version of it would tax health benefits that exceed the value of the basic insurance plan offered to federal workers, raising about $420 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. But limiting it to individuals making more than $100,000 a year and couples making more than $200,000 would raise only $162 billion.

The math illustrates how difficult it is to raise enough money to pay for expensive programs, when tax increases are limited to the wealthy.

"We're living in an era, over a period of 20 years or more, in which the idea that tax rates would actually be boosted is unutterable," said Aaron, the health care expert. "That has to stop."
That last line may be the most chilling of all. This idiot is telling us that we need to stop with this silly idea that tax rates shouldn't go up.

Notice that the government is looking at every possible way to tax revenue in order to generate "up to" the amount needed to pay for 'free' health care. They are not discussing the direct costs to consumers of items such as cap and trade, aside from the estimate that it would cost families an extra $175 a year. That really doesn't sound bad, except for the part where it is only counting the amount spent to implement and maintain the system. It doesn't account for the increased costs of energy, which includes not just heating your home. It doesn't account for the increased cost of transporting food, clothing, and pretty much any other goods to your town or city. It doesn't account for the decrease in services and quality (and jobs) that result from having a much higher cost of doing business and from battling for a limited resouce (carbon credits).

As for taxing tobacco and soft drinks, that sounds good on the surface-- many individual states have been working to reduce smoking for years, and taxing unhealthy habits to help pay for health care sounds logical. But the side effects could be devastating as well. The tobacco industry provides lots of jobs and revenue, two things that we cannot afford to lose right now. The impact on soft-drink providers could be similar. But there would be a cumulative effect-- if these taxes cause more people to stop smoking, then on top of the losses in jobs and revenue to the tobacco companies, the government would also get less revenue, thus impacting their estimates. There would be less money to provide insurance to the children of low-income wage earners, which would mean... more taxes somewhere else.

You cannot tax something that you are trying to reduce or eliminate, while expecting those taxes to remain at a certain level. But as should be obvious by now, the idea is to insist that you are not going to raise taxes, so that people support your policies and programs. Then, once those policies and programs are in place, you suddenly discover that the only way to pay for them is through higher taxes... more than you can raise by only taxing "the rich." Notice that Chuck Schumer, for example, refuses to dismiss the option of taxing the middle class?

[Tonus]

And if you really want to be alarmed at the potential future costs of Cap and Trade... read this post at Q and O. (http://www.qando.net/?p=3466)

I'm not going to quote it all here, but it's critical that people read it and understand what the Waxman/Markey bill will do to state budgets. In short, it will require every state, on its own dime, to inspect and certify every single building and home for energy efficiency. If they don't get this done within a year, the federal government gains sweeping new powers to create and enforce a new building code for energy efficiency.

In other words, states will be required to spend billions of dollars just for inspection, and then billions more on upgrades. There's no way that this will be possible, which means that the government has granted itself the power to spend billions (hundreds of billions at the least) to do it themselves. They'll also be able to fine homeowners for not spending the money to get their homes into compliance with the new statutes.

It's no wonder that they didn't want the bill to be read prior to being voted on. The question now is, will this particular attempt at an unconstitutional power grab get the attention and reaction it deserves?

[Tonus]

Some lighter fare: Professional hack Paul Krugman attempts to support the Medicare Myth (that its administrative expenses are lower than private insurers, thus making it more efficient) by criticizing a Heritage Foundation report on the matter... and gets slapped down (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/administrative-costs/?apage=2#comment-195423) by the report's author in the comments section.

[Edmaster]

I'm laying here in my bed fighting off a virus, and I'm having trouble sorting these news stories as fact from a sickness-induced hallucination. So if this is one giant incoherent ramble sorry in advance.

I knew about Cap and Trade and the moves against the Tobacco industry were big moves against the middle and lower class- bigger than the government will ever admit. The cost will NOT be $175 per household per year. If that was the ONLY cost to it, I seriously wouldn't have a problem with it. THE PROBLEM is the unilateral powers that the government is effectively granting to itself to control, regulate and tax EVERY PART OF OUR LIVES, not just indirectly through rising energy costs (which in turn translates to rising costs of EVERYTHING that requires energy to operate), but DIRECTLY through these new mandates and regulations with regard to "energy efficiency."

And it really is disgusting to watch ANY government official try to talk about "efficiency" of any kind with any kind of a straight face. These people have no souls.

Scary times we live in.

[Diniden]

Efficiency with our deficiency of currency for the climate. No matter how I look at that engineered statement, only part of it doesn't fit :P -goes back to sleep-