Interesting article in Slate magazine that discussed this: The United States of Inequality http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026/

Amen!

You have no clue what you are talking about.

I have EVERY clue what I'm talking about. They've OPENLY DECLARED their intent to dismantle Social Security, raise the retirement age to 70, block unemployment benefits, block work programs, and block regulation of Wall Street and STIFF Social Security for the money borrowed against it(so they can tell YOU it's bankrupt and close it down). But they want to preserve THEIR portion of the Bush tax cuts. It WAS Bush(not Obama) who bailed out Wall street, you know. But ask them to bail out MAIN STREET, and what do you get?? NOW they claim to be "deficit hawks"! So it isn't ME who's clueless...you OWN THAT ONE.

"HOW ye treat the LEAST among US is ALSO how ye treat ME" (Some guy named JESUS). ~SIGH~ (INDEPENDENT-ly yours).

@wblack hmmm wblack searching memory banks. Aren't you the same wblack who questions my grasp of the facts, AND tells me that Confederate slave traders were somehow NOT capitalist? Keep on typing, my friend! Again, I notice you ascribe ideas to the image that aren't there, while deftly avoiding the ones that ARE.

@wblack Slavery wasn't stopped by some Capitalist "team". It was stopped by a government...a BIG government.... and its laws (and artillery). Regulation in action...AGAINST free-market capitalists...and very much against their will. So, spare me your overly wordy "fact" sheet.

Original comment: @wblack An amazing command of the facts. Bravo Yes, spare the wordy fact sheet, ideology runs from the facts as darkness flees the light. Diversion works also, like over simplified Civil War analogies. Socialism and dictatorship do not work. Open a history book.

@wblack Look: I'm sure both you guys mean well; BUT... FACT:People who think like you(Republicans) have run our country for the VAST majority of the last 30 years. FACT:During that time we've gone from the richest nation on the planet to the largest debtor nation in history. AT NO TIME HAVE THOSE NUMBERS IMPROVED UNDER A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENCY. Is THAT your idea of "pulling my cheeks from the fire"?? FACT: During that time we've gone from the largest manufacturer of finished goods to the largest importer of finished goods. AT NO TIME HAVE THOSE NUMBERS IMPROVED UNDER A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENCY. Is THAT your idea of "pulling my cheeks from the fire"?? FACT: During that time we've gone from the largest importer of raw materials to the largest exporter of raw materials. AT NO TIME HAVE THOSE NUMBERS IMPROVED UNDER A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENCY. Is THAT your idea of "pulling my cheeks from the fire"?? FACT: During that time EVERY industrialized nation, and several primarily agricultural nations, have surpassed us in literacy rates, infant mortality rates, education, and quality of health care. Is THAT your idea of "pulling my cheeks from the fire"?? FACT: The last time the income disparity between the wealthiest and the rest was this great, the result was also great: The Great Depression. Is THAT your idea of "pulling my cheeks from the fire"?? Actually, I can see it is; Because you ARE one of those Banana Republicans. You can push Randian concepts ad nauseum: The fact is, history is NOT on your side. Except in Somalia. @Tommy3D So now we're a socialist dictatorship? And you think it's ME who needs to open a history book?? Thank you for sparing me your "ideology", as well. As I said in the beginning: I'm sure both you guys mean well; BUT... Before you dismiss the facts above as "over simplified"(sic), prove them untrue.

Yes Intro, I am that wblack and lets now frame the correct context for those not privy to that debate: You assert that capitalism is evil because a population of feudal plantation owners kept slaves. My valid response is: Slavery is a brutal violation of human rights -- but slavery is not intrinsic to capitalism, it is merely inhuman. Your argument is meaningless. Look around you: No capitalists are advocating Slavery.There is no slave-trade forum on Wall Street. There are no legally sanctioned slave markets in the United States today – because the Capitalist North defeated the Fuedal slave-owning South. Your argument is skewed sideways into irrelevancy, and your distortion of factual reality is merely silly, you point to a practice wiped out in the United States 146 years ago – a repugnant practice that has no bearing on either capitalism or on the issues under discussion today. See the section below on how ideas may be flawed by being cut lose from reality -- this applies to your position. In order to understand a thing (anything at all: history, politics, ethics, philosophy) you must first possess the intellectual honesty to recognize facts, to discern the difference between that which what is and that which is not essential,relevant and above all: true.The guiding principal must be first and foremost: Truth -- foremost above all, even above whatever you hold as your political beliefs. It is clear and evident that facts are not “facts” for you Intro. Facts in your thinking are merely “talking-points” that one can re-define in any manner despite reality or evidence. You bend and distort the “truth” to suit your beliefs. For you a thing is not itself – it is anything that suits your beliefs and serves, in your mind, to justify what you want to believe. You are not intellectually honest. You demonstrate this when you describe the Civil War as Big Government fighting against Capitalism – a claim that is foolish and respects no historical fact. There was no “big” government opposition to capitalism at the time. I can say that today we would call Abraham Lincoln pro-capitalist because we know what his views were, he wrote this: “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. ... You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down ... you cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.” Lincoln’s words do not reflect the view-point you ascribe to the facts and issues of that time. It is your thinking Intro that is invalid because you respect no historical facts. In regards to what you call "FACTS:" Many of the issues you cite are the result of bad thinking and bad judgment on both sides of the isle. You are wrong Intro, not because you are Liberal, but because you are intellectually dishonest and one-dimensional in your thinking. Part One: Flawed Ideas & Who Pays The Price for Them Ideas may be cut loose from experience in two senses: either they have no roots in reality, or they are not submitted to the test of experience. In either case they will fail. Thomas Kuhn in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, describes the process of paradigm shift. The change process is characterized by an older paradigm being discarded after a newer one demonstrates its superiority. That is the evolutionary process of progress. The ideas behind the Progressive agenda are removed from reality and they have not proven successful when tested against long term proven working solutions – they are doubly flawed. All of Obama's advisors have one thing in common: they have devoted their lives to the expansion of government. They believe -- quite "passionately," as Axelrod has put it -- that government is the solution to America's problems. Their political DNA is deeply antagonistic to the free market and to the assumption that monetary incentives spur productivity and growth. Professors and politicos, they know nothing of how to manage a business, and they certainly know nothing of how to balance a budget. Most ordinary human beings know a great deal more than Obama's circle of advisors. They understand that it is the private sector, not government, that produces goods and services. Instinctively, they know there's something wrong with the idea that government "creates" jobs. They understand that subsidies for biofuel start-ups and failing banks are wasteful and wrong, and they know that more subsidy is only throwing good money after bad. They also know that government revenue comes out of somebody's pocket. Only those who have spent their entire lives in government service or in academe don't understand this. The trillion dollars in stimulus of which Obama is so proud -- he still claims it created or saved millions of jobs even as the Labor Department reports that four million jobs disappeared since the stimulus was signed -- was confiscated from the paychecks of working Americans. It was spent to preserve the jobs of inefficient unionized workers, and to fund favored projects of Democratic political contributors. Americans who have to work for a living understand that Obama's stimulus spending is political payola on an epic scale. They also understand that it is capitalism that produces wealth and that the profit motive is the key to wealth creation. Without the opportunity to earn a profit -- to be paid for their labor and rewarded for their investment -- workers would not work, and investors would not invest. For this reason, a society that disdains capitalism will soon find its standard of living faltering. Fewer goods will be produced, supply will be constrained, and prices will rise. With prices rising, goods will become less affordable, and less will be purchased. The result is a vicious cycle of declining production and rising prices. What I am describing is the classic state of affairs within all socialist economies. Goods become scarce, and so, as government attempts to equalize supply, they are rationed. Since rationed goods are by definition sold at below-market prices, more and more goods find their way to the black market, where they are sold to the highest bidder. Instead of creating equality, socialism always produces a two-tiered system. On the black market, for those who can afford them, goods are plentiful. For the rest of the population, they are scarce. It is this two-tiered system toward which we are heading. In only twenty months, Obama has succeeded in shifting one hundred million Americans into greater dependency on government. One hundred million Americans now receive unemployment benefits, expanded welfare payments and child credits, food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, and (soon enough) ObamaCare. In essence, they are the recipients of rationed goods within a state-run economy. Over time, they will become less well-off as wealth continues to be sapped from the private sector and the production of goods is curtailed. They will be serving life sentences in the prison of socialism. For the political elite, of course, no such prison exists. Once it becomes apparent that the economy is not coming back, those who have engineered the miracle of Obamanomics -- long-term unemployment rates of 17%, stagnant growth, and crushing deficits -- will obtain new political appointments, move on to lucrative consulting jobs, or simply return to their tenured university positions. Comfortable and well-fed, they will continue to prosper even as they have learned nothing from the failure of their policies. As for the rest of us, we will pay for their lack of experience. Part 2: Comedy Unfunny You may know the British "Blackadder" TV series. It featured Rowan Atkinson as an upper-class twit and Tony Robinson as Baldrick, his crafty lower-class servant/sidekick. A recurring theme was "Baldrick's cunning plan" that usually failed to get them out of a jam. Our current buffoon & chief, mr. Hopnchange himself, is taking a page from Blackadder’s shtick – only no one should be laughing … Last Friday, the Labor Department issued its monthly employment data. And the news was unexpected. The unemployment rate was up and jobs were down, but private-sector jobs were up. Next thing you know, Bill Clinton will be running for president reprising his refrain from 1992. Remember? "Everything that should be down is up and everything that should be up is down!" What a talent. It's taken about eighteen months, but at last the president is really starting to take seriously the notion that there really is a problem with the economy. He and his advisors have decided that they really must do something to show the voters in November that they care about jobs. So they have come up with $100 billion in job stimulus. Part of the stimulus is a program of targeted tax cuts for small business. The plan, floated as a trial balloon at the New York Times, is this. The administration proposes to take the $35 billion extra revenue from the rich by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on taxpayers earning more than $250,000 a year. Then they will give the $35 billion to small businesses through targeted tax breaks. Now we can see the true brilliance of the Obama administration. Now we can see why we voted for a man like President Obama. Who are the folks earning more than $250,000 per year? They are, predominantly, small business owners, people who pay tax on business income through their personal income tax returns. So Barack's cunning plan to jump-start the economy is to steal money out of the back pockets of the nation's most successful small business owners and then give it right back to them -- minus the usual cut to the redistributionist bureaucrats, and plus the administrative burden placed on those busy business owners. Not even Baldrick would call that a cunning plan. As a dupe of this Progressive comedy routine it should disturb your sense of “social justice” to know the following facts: Who are the most profound victims of Obamanomics? The Fourth Great Awakening in American history continues to expand among those who drank the Obama Campaign Kool-Aid. Statistically, the most zealous believers in hope and change are the most profound victims of the Obama Hoax -- poor, young, unemployed blacks. "A sense of disappointment, bordering on betrayal, has been growing across the country, especially in moderate states like Indiana, where people now openly say they didn't quite understand the President they voted for in 2008." TIME magazine, "How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular." - Michael Scherer, September 3, 2010 The professional and semi-professional politcos, the professional Left, the journalists who shamelessly shilled for the author of this parade of foolishness ...all their lives go on pretty much as before. They rock 'n' roll on. The Obama Hoax hasn't been cruel to them. For some, it's been their life's blood. Their raison d'être. They're not victims of the Hoax; they were among its enablers. And now some are pretending to be its impartial revealers. But that won't play. The most profound victims are poor, young, unemployed blacks who want jobs. They're suffering the most from Obama's economic policies, designed more to disembowel the U.S. economy than restore it. They got change, but not the hope they believed went with it. Michael Scherer's TIME article features Indiana voters who supported Obama: a laid-off payroll administrator with 23 years at an RV plant, a South Bend orthopedic surgeon who's unhappy with ObamaCare, a disaffected "Democratic strategist" working on the midterm elections. The tone of the TIME article leads one to expect there'd be an 800 number given to donate to the individual recovery funds of the featured disaffected Obama supporters. But what about the poor, young blacks who reached for the Kool-Aid enthusiastically, clasping its cup with both hands, gulping down the elixir of hope and change hard and fast? What's become of them? How are their new Green Jobs working out? Where are the success stories featuring their newfound careers in those shovel-ready projects that awaited only passage of the stimulus bill? A shovel was at work, all right, but it wasn't throwing dirt – it was throwing something that smells much worse. Summer job opportunities for all youth have declined. Teen unemployment is at an all-time high at 26.1% in July. But for those voters who most overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama, the employment figures are particularly dismal. Unemployment among Black teens ages 16 to 19 -- while "extremely volatile from month to month," states the [August 2010, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics] report -- has been steadily increasing throughout the summer. In July, their jobless rate stood at 40.6 percent, up from 39.9 percent in June and 38 percent in May, compared with white rates of 28.7 percent (July), 23.2 percent (June) and 24.4 percent (May). Teens by gender: In July, both Black men and women saw a slight increase in joblessness. Unemployment for Black male teens remains the highest at 43.7 percent, up from 43.2 percent in June. Black female teen unemployment rose from 36.5 percent in June to 37.1 percent in July. Part 3: Liberal Political Payola & How it Targets The Poor Recently in debate with another liberal progressive on this site, my unfortunate opponant cited the stimulus and remarkarked that the streets in his city have never been in better repair. Consider: The funds to pay for those streets are taken from the pockets of working men and women – and in fact, the money has not actually been earned yet, it has been borrowed against future tax income. So while money has been shuffled around, no wealth has been created. The burden of the massive debt incurred will weigh on corporations and businesses for decades to come, restricting hiring, expansion, and growth. They have borrowed against tomorrow’s productive economy for a minimal if not outright questionable gain today and the consequence will be long term in its damage. Additionally: I have observed streets and sidewalks which were in perfect repair, they were not crumbling, there were no potholes, all the area intersections had just had their pedestrian walks and side walk access ramps upgraded to better accommodate the handicapped with brand new non-slip non skid ramps, new thermal-walled illuminated bus shelters had been installed (critical in a climate where sub zero temperatures along with ice and snow prevail six months of the year) and all of those new improvements – completed no more than two years ago – were removed, dug up, destroyed, and replaced by identical, and in the case of the bus shelters, not replaced at all. Notably, in the one area, half a block off the main street, a half block section where the sidewalk and road are crumbling, where the sewer backs up and floods a half block section every time it rains – this was not repaired at all and remains in its crumbling deteriorating state. The local Aldermen, a Democrat, now has convenient parking directly in front of her office. Note: the poor and working class poor will be shivering in sub-zero ice and snow storms exposed directly to the elements while the Aldermen will hardly have chance to feel a chill as she need cross no more than feet of exposure between luxury automobile and office. How fortunate for her. Her gain however represents direct injustice. It is quite clear who reaps benefit from bureaucratically mandated economic controls – the benefits in this case creates an active injustice against the poor and working class poor in this Alderman’s district. Keynesian economics of digging a hole and filling it in proved to be a monumental failure in the past and it is proving to be so now, the government cannot create wealth. Wealth is the product of creativity it cannot be mandated into existence and every failed socialist state is a monument to that fact. Part Four: Lies, Deceit, Broken Promises, & The Legacy of Obamacare On March 21, after more than a year of contentious debate, Congressional Democrats finally passed their health care reform bill without a single Republican vote in either house. The facts show that (a) many of the highest-profile selling points employed by the Left to drag Obamacare across the finish line were either incorrect or intentional distortions, (b) the consequences of not repealing this law are dire, and (c) the public’s enduring hostility toward Obamacare demonstrates a political appetite for repeal. Recent polls reflect America’s zeal for repeal, as does an August ballot referendum in Missouri rebuking the individual mandate, which succeeded by a margin of 71-29. Throughout the lengthy public debate, President Obama and his surrogates consistently ridiculed and denounced critics of the bill as bad-faith, fear-mongering propaganda merchants. The facts now prove there was plenty to fear in good faith. Promise #1: If you are satisfied with your existing health care arrangement, you can keep it Over and over again, the president and his ideological allies assured Americans satisfied with their current plan/doctor/coverage that nothing would change if the bill became law: He told the AMA: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.” Critics of the bill predicted this pledge would expire almost immediately. They were right. As government mandates for plans— “important consumer protections” as Obama called them— pile up, premiums will rise and the composition of even allegedly “grandfathered” plans will change. A former Medicare/Medicaid official wrote that insurers and doctors are already shifting business models in anticipation of dramatic changes. CBS News featured a small business in Pennsylvania to demonstrate how provisions within Obamacare incentivize employers to drop their employee’s health coverage, and how other elements of the law discourage hiring—thus undermining the nation’s employment recovery. Companies with 25-49 workers are relatively unscathed by the new law, whereas businesses with 50 or more employees face stringent new mandates. Under this system, employers with, say 48 workers, would have compelling reasons to avoid hiring any more full-time workers. Even more devastating, draft regulation guidelines issued by the federal government itself predict that between half and two-thirds of Americans’ current private plans will lose grandfathered (i.e., “protected”) status by 2013. As the Daily Caller reports, “for plans that do not fall under the grandfathered status, employers would have to find a plan that complies with the health care bill.” More than one million part-time and lower-wage workers are already feeling the squeeze, as popular “mini-med” affordable limited-benefit plans will be banned by the feds starting this fall. And, if none of this worries you, keep in mind that the same Congress assuring you that no matter how much changes, your personal health care will remain the same may have accidentally stripped themselves of their own health care. Bottom line: Despite what the president told us repeatedly, it’s quite possible you will not be permitted to keep your health care plan– no matter how much you may like it. Supporters of health care reform argue that government mandates for certain kinds of coverage will only change health care plans for the better, making them more comprehensive, so no one will be negatively impacted. This argument ignores the loss of both choice and money inflicted by government mandates, but even if it were true, that wasn’t the promise, was it? Promise #2:Reform will lower America’s health care spending Remember all that talk about “bending the cost curve down”? Obamacare supporters often spoke about the urgent need to lower the country’s out-of-control spending on health care. They often cited statistics suggesting that the U.S. spent exorbitant amounts of money on care; far more than other industrialized nations. Obamacare, they told us, would finally bring spiraling costs under control. On March 4, 2010, President Obama committed to the premise that, “My proposal will bring down the cost of health care for millions: Families, businesses, and the federal government.” Conservatives weren’t so sure. Hadn’t Congressional Budget Director Doug Elmendorf warned Congress that, if anything, the legislation would actually bend the cost curve up? Approximately a month after the vote went through, a damning report prepared by the government’s very own Medicare Actuary exposed the truth: Obamacare will actually increase the nation’s health care tab. In the first ten years of the program, spending will increase about 1 percent or roughly $310 billion. Bottom line: Obamacare supporters were wrong when they told the country the legislation would lower the nation’s health care costs. Ten years after its passage, health care will represent a larger percentage of GDP than the current projection. Obamacare proponents like Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic argued that the uptick in spending over 10 years didn’t matter because the long-term trend does bend the curve down. But the Actuary’s report says the savings liberals are counting on in part to cause this long-term bend “may be unrealistic.” Promise #3: Reform will lower Americans’ health care premiums People on all sides of the debate seemed to agree on one thing: Higher premiums were a major bummer. So, President Obama announced his plan would reduce them. The new health care market “will lower rates,” he said, “it’s estimated by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you’re currently getting.” During a stump speech in Cleveland, he went even further, claiming that premiums could fall by as much as 3,000 percent (a spokesman later clarified he meant $3,000). Gaffes aside, the message was rates would head south under Obamacare. But CBS, the Washington Post, and the CBO argued in 2009 that kind of reduction was unlikely. Even early on in the public debate, opponents of the plan harbored serious doubts about this claim. Could the government really force insurance companies to lower premiums without risking a collapse of the private market? Federally mandated bargain-basement premium rates would inevitably lead to insurance companies cutting costs through layoffs, offering lower quality care, going bankrupt, or all the above. President Obama insisted that the demise of private insurance was no longer his or the Left’s long-term goal, going so far as to claim that his bill would actually strengthen the private market by opening it up to millions of new consumers. But the question remained: How would the government add patients, add mandates to health plans, and not raise costs to average Americans? Were Congressional Democrats convinced by their own party’s talking point? Nope. Less than a month after their March triumph, Senate Democrats were so concerned over the prospect of dramatic premium hikes, they began scrambling to regulate premium rates. (Video of Harkin’s committee hearing is unavailable on CSPAN or YouTube, but it can be seen here, on the committee’s website.) Democrats’ price-control bluster has only intensified as reality sets in. The original bill did not use explicit price-control mechanisms because, of course, premiums were supposed to fall because of the original bill. But the CBO and media fact-checkers agreed that higher premiums were likely on their way. Obama himself conceded people might be paying more for health insurance before his bill passed, during a Blair House exchange with Sen. Lamar Alexander, but that it was only because they’d be getting better insurance. Politifact awarded the president a generous “Half-True” in this exchange, but added, “Bottom line, people won’t be paying more for the same thing. They’ll be paying more for better plans.” One can argue that paying more for more product is something worth doing, but one can’t argue it satisfies Obama’s promise. In their defense, if only some real-life scenario had been available to Democrats to help them envision how top-down health insurance price controls would play out, may have made more responsible decisions. Oh, wait. If only there had been some trusted, liberal source who could have delivered the message— like an Edwards and Clinton speechwriter who can’t afford health care in a state with allegedly “universal” health care. Bottom Line: Contrary to the president’s commitments, your premiums could increase under Obamacare. Why? Just count the reasons. Or ask Dick Durbin. Promise #4: Obamacare will not lead to a doctor shortage, or escalate the primary-care physician shortfall Implicit in the president’s if-you-like-your-doctor-you-can-keep-him schitck was the assumption that his plan certainly wouldn’t negatively impact Americans’ access to doctors. The administration dismissed admonitions of the impending doctor shortage their bill would exacerbate. No worries, they cooed, primary care physicans would come out of the woodwork once all of the bill’s wonderful elements were implemented. After all, Obama had secured the backing of the AMA for his endeavor, right? What could go wrong? Quite a lot, actually. As a result of the new law, the Associated Press advises Americans to “beat the crowd and find a doctor” because the “landmark health care overhaul…promises extra strain” on the already-dwindling ranks of primary care physicians. Inauspiciously, the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Center for Workforce Studies estimates a shortage of 160,000 doctors within 15 years. America’s medical schools “can’t keep up,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “A nurse may soon be your doctor” because of the shortage, explains USA Today. Obamacare proponent Ezra Klein conceded this point in a post arguing against fears of a doctor shortage. He euphemized such a possibility as a “hiccup” in a growing system and predicted, “Increased need for basic care could lead to more use of nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and things like Minute Clinics.” There’s also considerable evidence that Obamacare will overwhelm cramped emergency rooms and slammed hospitals. How might this deepening shortage affect Americans? Just ask a Canadian. Bottom Line: Thanks to Obamacare, America’s doctor shortfall will accelerate and it will become more difficult to get quality, timely care from a doctor. Promise #5: There will be no government rationing of medical care Democrats’ most furious pushback against anti-Obamacare arguments resulted from predictions of government-mandated rationing. The White House website’s “reality check” feature devotes two full pages to “debunking” so-called right-wing smears about rationing. The president himself assailed his opponents on this point. Speaking in New Hampshire, he dismissed concerns over rationing, “that somehow some government bureaucrat out there will be saying, well, you can’t have this test or you can’t have this procedure because some bean-counter decides that this is not a good way to use our health care dollars.” Those fears, he said, were unfounded. “So I just want to be very clear about this. I recognize there is an underlying fear here that people somehow won’t get the care they need. You will have not only the care you need, but also the care that right now is being denied to you.” What worried many skeptics was the equal clarity expressed by liberal Democrat and former cabinet secretary Robert Reich, who in 2007 candidly laid out the underlying need for government rationing within any government-run health care framework: Does Secretary Reich fall under into the category of smear merchant? What about Obama’s own Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag? After his boss’ plan was signed into law, Orzag publicly marveled at the government’s new powers to hit “aggressive” health care cost-cutting goals—largely without the inconvenience of Congressional oversight. His unedited remarks belie the president’s words in New Hampshire: In addition to Orszag’s remarks, consider President Obama’s appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, arguably one of the most influential health care posts in the entire new federal bureaucracy. The president has selected Harvard professor Donald Berwick, who the American Spectator’s Philip Klein nicknamed “Obama’s rationing man.” Berwick is an unapologetic fan of Britain’s National Health Services, notorious for cutting effective (but expensive) medical treatments, and subjecting patients to sub-standard care and neglect. “I am a romantic about the [British system]; I love it,” Berwick told a British audience in 2008. He also co-authored an academic paper urging “rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest” to “reduce per capita costs.” The Obama administration gave Berwick a recess appointment in July, which means he will get no public hearing. The disingenuous rationale for this appointment was that Republicans were holding the nomination up, but as ABC News reported at the time, “Republicans were not delaying or stalling Berwick’s nomination. Indeed, they were eager for his hearing, hoping to assail Berwick’s past statements about health care rationing and his praise for the British health care system.” It is precisely because the administration no longer wants to address what Obama once called a “legitimate concern” that Berwick will not have to face the Senate. There was also that whole Guide to Death pamphlet issued by the VA— a joint venture of sorts with the Hemlock Society—which might have led to “legitimate concern” about bean-counters meddling in personal medical decisions. Bottom Line: Whether dressed up as “comparative effectiveness research” or described bluntly by Mr. Reich or Berwick, government rationing is a frightening and unavoidable byproduct of government-administered and –regulated health care. Promise #6: “The firm pledge” – Ninety-five percent of Americans will not see any form of tax increase because of Obamacare (or anything else) It doesn’t get any less ambiguous than this Obama promise: “I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12, 2009. “Under my plan, 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.” Candidate Obama repeated this vow so often on the campaign trail, anyone who even loosely followed the 2008 presidential campaign could likely repeat it in his sleep. Once a behemoth new entitlement was on the table, some dishonest, rumor-peddling cynics began to wonder if the president would be forced to abandon his central campaign pledge to pay for it. Such an admission, naturally, might have caused some angst among voters and fomented more opposition to the bill. “But of course we’ll honor our tax pledge!” the White House insisted. Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, the president was adamant: “I can still keep [the $250,000 tax] promise because as I’ve said, about two-thirds of what we’ve proposed would be from money that’s already in the health care system but just being spent badly. And as I said before, this is not me making wild assertions.” He was even more frank speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. Now the federal government itself is arguing in court challenges to its constitutionality that the individual mandate is a tax after all, to which all Americans will be subject. The New York Times: When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.” We also now know that in its current and future attempts to pay for Obamacare, the federal government will raise taxes on millions of Americans, violate “the firm pledge” repeatedly, and force the American public to become even more intimately acquainted with the Internal Revenue Service. There are at least 18 new taxes embedded into the new law, many of which don’t detonate until after the president’s 2012 re-election campaign. All of those taxes must just target the rich, right? Wrong. The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation breaks the bad news: Millions of middle class families will get “socked” with a $3.9 billion tax hike in the years ahead thanks to Obamacare. There are also some “costly” new IRS mandates. The head of the IRS has warned taxpayers failure to comply with the government’s new universal mandate to purchase approved coverage may result in the confiscation of tax refunds. If that sounds like a lot of bureaucratic work, you’re right: The feds are contemplating hiring thousands of new IRS agents to track and enforce compliance on a national scale. The federal government’s own National Taxpayer Advocate Service argued in July that Obamacare has it doing work it’s not remotely trained, qualified, or funded for and that the health care law “may impose significant burdens on businesses, charities, and government agencies.” So, how’s that ‘firm pledge’ holding up, Mr. Outgoing White House budget director? It’s been downgraded to a presidential “preference,” eh? It was fun while it lasted. Bottom Line: Hold on to your wallets. Promise #7: Health care reform won’t add “a single dime” to the deficit—and will actually cut it Remember that unambiguous, crystal-clear presidential promise from item number six? Here’s another one, delivered to a joint session of Congress and a nationally televised audience: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. (Applause.) I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.” Right-wing paranoiacs really didn’t believe this one, but the Democrats had an ace in the hole. Leading up the vote—voila!—Pelosi & Co engineered a final CBO score that magically validated the president’s famous words. Go crazy, America! Your massive new entitlement program will reduce the deficit by $130 Billion over ten years! A number of Debbie Downers made valiant attempts to expose the folly. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin crunched the un-manipulated numbers for the New York Times and found that the “real arithmetic” was nowhere near deficit-reducing or –neutral. The truth: Obamacare would bloat the deficit by $563 Billion. The advertised ten-year price tag of $900+ Billion was risible. In reality it sat much closer to $2.5 Trillion, as the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Financial Services Committee inadvertently admitted. So how did Democrats manage to gerry-rig the CBO’s scoring system to produce superficially solvent math? Rep. Paul Ryan meticulously decimated their “smoke and mirrors” gimmickry at the Blair House summit, thoroughly explaining to the president’s face precisely how his administration and party were misleading the country. The clip is worth your time, and informative to the last drop: In fairness, here’s Obamacare proponent Ezra Klein’s rebuttal to Ryan, which is worth a read for a pretty frank but ultimately unconvincing defense of tricky government accounting. But even in rebutting Ryan, Klein concedes, “The 10-year cost of the bill is really only counting six years of operation. This was a deceptive effort to keep the bill’s price tag under $1 trillion, even as the bill’s price tag was really quite a bit more.” In short, the Democrats’ bogus score relied on: (a) Double-counting unrealistic, never-gonna-happen Medicare cuts to the tune of $500 Billion. (b) Pretending the $200B+ “Doc Fix” was a separate, unrelated issue—it has since passed the Senate. For those who think treating “doc fix” as an unrelated issue was fair, they may want to ponder why the expensive measure was included in an early version of the House bill until Democrats needed a better CBO score, at which point it was removed. (c) Shoehorning 10 years’ of tax revenues into just six years of “benefits.” (d) Double-counting social security tax revenue. (e) Totally ignoring billions in requisite “discretionary” spending for Obamacare’s implementation. On the eve of the health care vote, a CBO letter to Rep. Paul Ryan confirmed that, without such gimmickry, the health care bill would add $260 billion over 10 years to instead of reducing it by $138. Both the CMS and the CBO have objected to the double-counting of Medicare savings as paying for Obamacare and shoring up Medicare, but the administration continues to use the misleading metric, even this week. Passage of the “Doc Fix” alone, coupled with this little wrinkle, has already driven Obamacare into the red. Finally, the current director of CBO has decisively torpedoed the entire “cost savings” charade. Revisiting a previous devastating critique that nearly derailed the process in 2009, Elmendorf has concluded that Obamacare will not “bend the cost curve” of health care spending down. Putting the federal budget on a sustainable path would almost certainly require a significant reduction in the growth of federal health spending relative to current law (including this year’s health legislation). Too little, too late. It’s now the law of the land. Bottom Line: The president’s bill won’t add a single dime to the deficit. It will pile trillions upon trillions of dimes atop an already mountainous debt. Promise #8: Health care reform will help businesses—employers and employees,alike The conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation offers a good list of concerns conservatives had about the effect the health care reform bill might have on businesses. Here’s the story of just one, wholesome Midwestern company rethinking its employer-provided health insurance in the wake of Obamacare. White Castle, maker of the nation’s beloved fast-food sliders, provides employees with health care coverage that covers 70-89 percent of their costs. This would seem to make the company one of the good actors, according to the administration’s standards. But health care reform is discouraging this good behavior instead of encouraging it. They will consider dropping their health care and leaving employees to government exchanges. They’re not the only ones. That’s why the International Franchise Association opposed the law, saying it will “impose tremendous burdens on America’s restaurants and hurt our industry’s ability to create and sustain jobs.” Small business owners and the self-employed get hit again with a new, onerous tax burden meant to close a tax reporting “loophole” to pay for the health care that’s allegedly going to do nothing but help them. The federal government’s IRS ombudsman took issue with a new requirement that every business and non-profit file a 1099 form for anyone from whom they buy $600 or more in goods or services annually. This would require that each business owner keep a tally of goods he bought from Staples to make sure his ink cartridges don’t hit $600, and would affect up to 40 million businesses, many of them sole proprietorships. Some House Democrats have since realized the folly of this anti-business imposition, and have offered a bill to repeal this part of Obamacare, but are balking at the loss of revenue. They say realizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Let’s hope they’re right, as even Democrats begin to relinquish the farce that this bill can be all things to all people and all paid for, all at the same time. I have debated you via the site mail Intro, and I know how little understanding of the facts lies behind the tiredly recycled propaganda you’ve swallowed whole and without question directly from the shills of mainstream media. Knowing the facts will save America from the abomination of Obama’s circle of radicals – and yes, Intro, when those American’s of integrity and knowledge act this November we will act to save ourselves, but our actions will pull even your cheeks from the proverbial fire. There is nothing random about the facts I offer Intro, the same cannot be said of your intellectual dishonesty, your disregard for the facts, and your casual distortion of the truth. You have been proven wrong Intro. That's a fact.

my friend... you have been proven right by wblack and his double-speak and lack of humanism... have no fear, you are welcomed and respected, and ideology is merely.... how did the Bard put it... "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." politicrats operate in their own bubble, screaming at the futility of the voting class as they try, through legal and democratic means, to make the world a better place, not just for themselves but for anyone that believes in freedom... ah well, you can't have music without at least someone screaming the wrong lyrics...

@1358 :)) Your brevity is the soul of eloquence. Love my country tho' I do, I wish we had your balance sheet, on many levels. VERY many levels,indeed.

@wblack ".....You have been proven wrong Intro. That's a fact." Proven WRONG??? By whom?? Certainly not by your ridiculous diatribe, nor by the last thirty years of history. Have you NOT BEEN HERE...or WHAT???? Your research(slanted or not) is not the problem. It's YOUR interpretation that's ridiculous. If someone hit you on the head with a hammer, I truly believe YOU'D BLAME THE HAMMER. ANYONE who believes that slavery is not a result of an unregulated capitalist system NEVER GOOGLED American Saipan/Willie Tan/Tom Delay. This was not the nineteenth century. THIS IS NOW. Anyone who thinks un-regulated Capitalism does not morph into feudalism is simply a Libertarian moron. Anyone who thinks that the Union Army was not the ENFORCEMENT WING of a relatively BIG GOVERNMENT is crazy. Anyone who thinks slavery was not "regulated to death" by that BIG GOVERNMENT when Grant took Richmond is a fool. Anyone who thinks the slave trade in the Cotton Belt was not Capitalist (Profit on investment) has NO RIGHT to call anyone else "intellectually dishonest", Such a person ought make no claim to intellect whatsoever. You divorce Capitalism from its worst aspects, and call it paradise. If I divorce the Black Plague from its worst aspects, it was just population control. Just another necessary step on the road to the Renaissance. Hi-Ho, Hi-ho, How bright the bonfires glow. Believe whatever bookish nonsense you choose, then go spend the night under some urban bridge. There may you find truth.

This is an excellent!

@brilliant comment! If you like progressive readings and maybe want to go a bit further than the Dem/Rep scheme take a look at zcommunications.org.