Via Carpe Diem
What's the No Insurance Club?

For an annual fee of just $480 for singles ($580 for couples and $680 for families) The No Insurance Club offers affordable pre-paid health care plans that cover basic medical services from a participating board-certified physician, with no deductibles, no additional premiums, and no co-payments. Services vary slightly depending on your location, but a $480 individual plan with this Atlanta physician covers 12-16 annual office visits, flu shot, pregnancy testing, EKG, an annual checkup, one sports physical, vision test, among other services, see full list here.

Need senior's support for your atrocious healthcare overhaul? Want more people dependent on the government? Want to secure the democrat party's power for years to come by buying votes through a massive expansion of government hand-outs? How about giving seniors $250 checks for "increased cost of living expenses" (nevermind that the recession has done away with these alleged increases but you're a democrat. facts don't matter.) Oh, and the the House Republicans should be ashamed for pandering and going along with this.

From The Heritage foundation:
Since Social Security recipients will get no cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) next year, President Obama wants to give each of them $250, a move supported in principle by the Republican House and Senate leadership. However, this move is not only unjustified; it makes a fundamental change to Social Security's structure and starts the process of converting the program from an earned benefit funded by a worker's own contributions to a welfare program.

Here's Obama's Manufacturing Czar. But...we can't judge a man by the company he keeps...or the people he hires to carry out policies. (Must watch in full screen mode).

...that if we passed the $787 billion stimulus that by september this year unemployment would be below 7.6% and that if we didn't pass the stimulus unemployment would reach 9.5%. Well, guess what...the White House, the government, the Experts, the bureaucrats were wrong.

There are your numbers Prez Bo. But don't worry, Mr President because you have professional spin doctors and a populace of myrmidons who will hang on your every word (cause if they don't, they're racists) See, politicians like the President know that if the economy improves they can take credit for it by citing the stimulus and if it doesn't improve, well, then they can say that the stimulus wasn't big enough and that another is needed...wait, they've already started discussing it. Yes, my friends (drum-roll, please) a Second Stimulus! So, you see they can't lose. They can spin it however they like and all the looters out there - statists, welfare recipients and the Obama-is-so-awesome-cause-he's-so,- well- awesome crowd - will lap the spin right up.

But the facts are that they were wrong about the first stimulus and this next one will be no different! And healthcare and the costs associated with it? Don't worry everyone, those numbers are solid.

Yeah, right.

H/T United Liberty

Al Franken, a man who I never thought I would agree with on anything - ANYTHING! - managed to surprise me. Kudo's Al. Now, if you wouldn't mind, read the 1st and 2nd amendments as well as Article 1 Section 8, then we might could sit down and have a discussion.

Read his first moment of brilliance here.

I know, we are just a bunch of over-zealous paranoid, fascist, racist right-wingers so just ignore these videos...it's cool.




lyrics:

Song 1:
Mm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

Yes!
Mmm, mmm, mm
Barack Hussein Obama

Song 2:
Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say "hooray!"

Hooray, Mr. President! You're number one!
The first black American to lead this great nation!

Hooray, Mr. President we honor your great plans
To make this country's economy number one again!

Hooray Mr. President, we're really proud of you!
And we stand for all Americans under the great Red, White, and Blue!

So continue ---- Mr. President we know you'll do the trick
So here's a hearty hip-hooray ----

Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!

I know we aren't supposed to say or suggest that the President is "taking over" the economy, i.e. regulating or nationalizing sectors of our economy, but this piece from David Boaz of the Cato Institute seems to lend credence to our charge. Please, read on...

• health care
• energy
• local schools
• banks
• insurance companies
• automobile companies
• compensation at financial firms
• newspapers
• the internet

One of our fans on Facebook posted this video on our wall and I wanted to repost it here to share with the rest of you. Listen to what Reagan is saying here and how so little has changed since the early 60's with regard to the Left's desire to subject us all to socialized medicine and how the same rules and calls to action apply today to try to stop this usurpation of our liberty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs

OMG! Free Health Care sounds so AWESOME! LOL!!!111one! Obama is my home boy! HE'S SO DREAMY! OMG! ROFLMAO! We need health care cUZ people need help and rich people can pay for it. LOL! HOPE FO' SHO'! YES WE CAN! OMG! I LUV IT!

And our President wants to make it even more progressive. The dishonesty used by politicians regarding how the wealthy "don't pay their fair share" is disgusting. I would venture to bet that most of us reading this piece are not in the top 1% of income earners. In fact we are probably - most of us anyway - probably in those tax brackets that the Left targets with their class war mongering. Yet because we value freedom over "fairness", liberty over slavery and because we believe that government should "not take from the mouth of labor the bread which it has earned" we find these kinds of numbers disturbing even though it is not us who it directly affects.

I once heard a liberal talk show host in Boca Raton, Fl mention that she just didn't understand why people wouldn't vote for their self-interests and just vote to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for programs for those who aren't wealthy. To her the ballot box is a means of "leveling the playing field" and of bringing about social justice through heavily progressive taxation. I suppose the answer to her asinine question goes something like this:

Ma'am, while it may not be in my direct self-interest to oppose the heavy progressive taxation you espouse it is never-the-less in my indirect self-interest to oppose such a view. Why? I know this fact may escape you but these people, with their millions of dollars, provide jobs not only through what they do - athletes, wall street bankers, movie stars, entertainers, business owners etc - but they also provide jobs simply by who they are. The athlete, like Alex Rodriguez, provides jobs to hundreds if not thousands of people at Yankee stadium. Think of the popcorn vendor or the beer guy who sells his food-stuffs to loyal Yankee fans who came to see A-Rod hit another homerun and these fans want a beer or popcorn or a hot dog while watching him do it. Think of the opportunistic t-shirt vendor outside the stadium with A-Rod emblazened t-shirts for sale and the person who made those t-shirts, the person who made the ink for those t-shits, the person who shipped those t-shirts and the list goes on. Do you think that if Alex Rodriguez didn't get paid what he did, that he would even be a Yankee? Would those same jobs be there? Would as many people come out to the park? Would the Yankees win as many games and so attract as many people as they do now? Would that t-shirt guy enjoy more or less sales? Would the t-shirts guy's vendors make the same amount in sales? Who knows. What I do know is that things are the way they are now because, well, A-Rod is good and he gets a handsome compensation for it. I don't want to take that money from him even if doing so benefits me directly. I'm sure that A-Rod spends a great deal of that money as well. Somebody built his house and somebody probably takes care of it. Think of everything that goes into those 2 things alone! The wood, the brick, the concrete, the carpet, the walls, the lights - all of those items are the end result of a long stream of thousands of people working independently to create one simple object that Leftist like you take for granted. Would A-Rod buy all of this stuff if he was taxed more than he is now? Probably not or at least he'd buy less of it and so less people would have less to produce.
Moreover, Ms. Leftist-Talk-Show-Host-in-Boca, what makes you think I have the right to force someone else to pay extremely high taxes just to benefit me? Do I have the right to walk into your house and take you plasma tv or your ipod or whatever? No! So why I should then think that its okay to use the ballot box to essentially do the same thing, i.e. take from you money that you would otherwise use to spend on material goods or some charity or however you please?

This kind of thinking escapes the Left and that is why we have the kind of taxation we do. To them social justice and equality means "we all have the same stuff" as if though people's intrinsic equality and worth comes from how much they have in material goods compared to the rest of society. For those of us who wish to live moral and just lives the 10 commandments give us some good guidelines*. The 10th one says the following: You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's. The Left's version reads more like this: You shall covet your neighbor's house; you shall covet your neighbor's wife, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, and anything that is your neighbor's because he probably has more than you and that just ain't fair, and if you have to use the power of government to take it from him. That's the Left's modus operandi in a nutshell and it is the foundation of their ethics and form that foundation flows the kind of "progressive" taxation we see today.

Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%

by Scott A. Hodge

Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the "rich" are not paying their fair share of taxes.

Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.

We are definitely overdue for some honesty in the debate over the progressivity of the nation's tax burden before lawmakers enact any new taxes to pay for expanded health care.

[Click chart to enlarge.]

*the 10 commandments are a primarily religious document and while many of us may not be religious there are elements of the 10 commandments by which we do and should live our lives. Like the McManus brothers in Boondock Saints say: Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal, these are principles which every man of every faith can embrace...These are not polite suggestions, these are codes of behavior.