Troy Elenbaas's Letter to the Editor - Traverse City, MI, & Obama's Arrogance

   PROCEEDING WITHOUT TRUTH

     What happens when your president says he's saved jobs, even though we keep losing them?
     When he says, "Let me be clear", but makes absolutely no sense?
     When he blames his predecessor for being fiscally irresponsible, but goes on an unprecedented spending spree?
     When he says he won't appoint lobbyists, then appoints lobbyists?
     When he says he'll fix Washington corruption, then makes it worse?
     When he says we must fix the climate, even though it's not broken?
     When When he says we must borrow from China to fix our economy?
     When he states Obamacare should not use Reconciliation, then tries to pass it that way?
     When terrorists receive Miranda rights and they testimony prosecutes soldiers?
     When everyone deserves health care, even though some won't work?
     When he claims to be Christian, but prays in Islamic mosques?
     When the government takes over private business, despite the Constitution?
     What happens when an ornament of Mao Tse-tung hangs on the White House "holiday" tree?
     What happened to the truth, and how can we proceed without it?
    Courtesy of Troy Elenbaas of Traverse City, Michigan
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[The arrogant, mocking, totally unpresidential President, in Iowa, celebrating the passage of his health care bill]:  "There's been plenty of fear-mongering, plenty of overheated rhetoric. You turn on the news, you'll see the same folks are still shouting about there's going to be an end of the world because this bill passed. (Laughter.) I'm not exaggerating. Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill "Armageddon." (Laughter.) Armageddon. "End of freedom as we know it."
So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there any -- (laughter) -- asteroids falling or -- (applause) -- some cracks opening up in the Earth. (Laughter.) It turned out it was a nice day. (Laughter.) Birds were chirping. Folks were strolling down the Mall. People still have their doctors.  [Just give it some time...]

Scott Brown was discussing this speech while appearing on Good Morning America:  At a rally in Iowa on Thursday, Obama dared Republicans to try to repeal the new health reform law. "If they want to have that fight, I welcome that fight," Obama said. "My attitude? Go for it."
Brown told "GMA" the president's rhetoric is "inappropriate."

Sestak, Obama's View of the Constitution, Medicare Into Deficit This Year, John Dingell

Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight committee, told CBS News Wednesday that he will call for a special prosecutor to investigate the White House if it does not address Rep. Joe Sestak's claim that he was offered a federal job in exchange for dropping out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary.
"If the public doesn't receive a satisfactory answer, the next step would be to call for a special prosecutor, which is well within the statute," Issa (pictured) told Hotsheet.
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American Spectator reminds us:  Barack Obama has long seen the U.S. Constitution as an obstacle to what he considers progress. In a 2001 interview that surfaced during the presidential campaign, he made this very clear: the Supreme Court under Justice Earl Warren had failed to break "free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution," Obama mused on a radio show. The Warren Court was insufficiently radical, he said, conceding too much ground to the traditional interpreters of the Constitution as a "charter of negative liberties," "says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf."
The Founding Fathers, he implied, produced a defective document, much too passive in its understanding of government's possibilities. The founders had set up a form of government to protect liberty; he clearly wished they had formed a government to enact equality.
Anyone who was informing themselves about this man would have known this prior to his election.]
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The Atlantic reports: Every since the early eighties, when the Greenspan commission kicked the can down the road with a combination of tax increases and later retirement ages, analysts have been awaiting the day when the system would finally go into deficit. That date has been sliding around between 2016 and 2020 for some years now, but the suspense is finally over: the system is going into deficit this year. " . . . payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned.
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Fox News: The Medicus Firm a medical recruitment company, found in a survey that 46 percent of physicians said they’d quit or retire if Obamacare became law. According to the survey, "even if a much smaller percentage such as ten, 15, or 20 percent are pushed out of practice over several years at a time when the field needs to expand by over 20 percent, this would be severely detrimental to the quality of the health care system." 
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WJR Radio- Detroit, Paul W. Smith morning show, March 24.
Congressman John Dingell of Michigan (D): "Let me remind you. This has been going on for years... the harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation... it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people."
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From the Washington Examiner: In Iowa, President Obama repeated the myth that his bill forces insurers to cover children with pre-existing conditions:

Starting this year, tens of thousands of uninsured Americans with a preexisting condition and parents whose children have a preexisting condition will finally be able to purchase the coverage they need.  (Applause.)

ObamaCare does not require coverage of children with pre-existing conditions until 2014, despite their talking-points to the contrary in the run-up to its passage.  [I will add that he also repeated his admitted lie that if we like our current health care plan, we can keep it.  Oops, he forgot to mention that this is  only if we don't get fired or find a new job.  As Nancy Pelosi said, "we will do whatever it takes...."]

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Investor's Business daily point out: "Entitlements can be addictive, and it's certainly the purpose of this administration to make as many Americans as possible as dependent on government as possible.
That's partly why a health care bill put student loans under the Department of Education. The government needed the revenues, but it also needed the power over yet another class of citizens.
Unlike Medicare and Social Security, this nationalization of one-sixth of the U.S. economy and placing of bureaucrats and IRS agents between you and your doctor was unpopular from the beginning.
As John R. Graham, director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, reminds us, the 1965 Medicare and Medicaid amendments to the Social Security Act of 1935 enjoyed greater than 70% majorities in each congressional chamber. Social Security also passed with majorities of both parties in both chambers."
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Charles Krauthammer , on the VAT-value added tax.  "It's the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent. France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.
American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation. As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work. But to feed the liberal social-democratic project, the VAT must be added on top of the income tax. [As Margaret Thatcher said, " The trouble with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."]
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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered a most disturbing promise to PBS’s Jim Lehrer on Wednesday, proudly announcing that the methods employed and nearly employed to force ObamaCare on the American people (formerly the most free people on the planet) would, from this day forward, serve as her “model for future reforms.”
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New Taxes - And No Five Days to Read the Bill As Promised.....

FLASHBACK: Obama promises 'public will have FIVE DAYS to look at every bill that lands on my desk'...
Uninsured: 'Going to be like Christmas... It's going to be great. You know, no worries about the bills'...
IBD: 20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Freedoms...


"Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics. We pushed back on the undue influence of special interests."  [Is he talking about SEIU, the ACLU, AARP, ABA, Big Pharma, Insurance Companies, the Apollo Alliance, and the Tides Foundation?  Is he talking about the special interests of Nebraska, Florida, California, Louisiana and New York?  How about Alan Mollohan, who has had a pesky FBI investigation hanging over his head for a few years. Now, presto, right before the health care vote, it went away. The Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Eric Holder, announced that the FBI was closing the inquiry. Or how about the man whose brother was given a Judgeship?  Well, no - didn't' mean those special interests.  He means the Tea Party members, FreedomWorks, Taxandspendmustend, Code Red Join Patients First and others whose interest is the Constitution.]   "We didn't give in to mistrust or to cynicism or to fear. Instead, we proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges. We proved that this government -- a government of the people and by the people -- still works for the people." [ But - government for and by which people?  It's important for us to understand just for which people this bill actually works, and for whom it doesn't work.  It interests me that fully one third of Americans either pay no taxes, or get money back for not making enough to pay taxes.  Do we suppose that perhaps those who actually PAY taxes have a better sense of what paying taxes means, and care more about our country's deficits? As one of the new beneficiaries said yesterday:  "It's going to be like Christmas!"]
 
                                     NO NEW TAXES?  TRY THESE:


Free Republic lists some of them for us:  For the first time, the Medicare payroll tax would be applied to investment income, beginning in 2013. A new 3.8 percent tax would be imposed on interest, dividends, capital gains and other investment income for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000.


The bill also would increase the Medicare payroll tax by 0.9 percentage point to 2.35 percent on wages above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly.


The 40 percent tax on health benefits would be delayed until 2018 and would apply only to premiums exceeding $10,200 a year for individuals and $27,500 for families.
Democrats argue that high-income families fared well under tax cuts enacted in the past decade, so it's time to pay up. Republicans argue that many of those taxpayers are small business owners struggling to stay afloat.


Under the new health care bill, married couples with combined incomes approaching $250,000 would have to keep tabs on their spouses' pay to avoid an unexpected tax bill. Those with investments would have to pay even more attention to the income they earn from interest, dividends and capital gains.


Unless they are very conscientious folks who constantly monitor their income tax withholding, they're going to have quite a surprise when they go to file their income taxes," said Jeffrey L. Kummer, director of tax policy at Deloitte Tax LLP.


The new Medicare taxes would raise an estimated $210 billion over the next decade. The new tax on investments would be on top of capital gains and dividends tax increases already proposed by Obama. The president wants to increase the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends from 15 percent to 20 percent. If Congress goes along, the new top rate would be 23.8 percent in 2013, when the health care taxes kick in.


The new tax on high-cost insurance plans, $32 billion.


-- A fee on the makers and importers of brand-name drugs, $27 billion.


-- An excise tax on the makers and importers of certain medical devices, $20 billion.


-- An annual fee on health insurance providers, starting in 2014, $60 billion.


-- The repeal of a tax loophole that could allow paper manufacturers to get tax credits for generating alternative fuel in the paper making process, $24 billion.


---a possible end to the income tax exclusion for employer-paid health benefits.


The IRS will be the agency in charge of compliance in purchasing insurance or paying fines......collecting and enforcing mandatory "premiums".  So much for smaller government.]
Boustany said the bill, allocating $10 billion to pay for 16,500 new government jobs in the IRS, would allow the IRS to confiscate refunds if there are penalties for not buying health care.

Taxpayers could be required to buy insurance under President Barack Obama’s reform proposal by 2014 or face penalties of roughly $325 per individual that the IRS would collect. [Gee, shall I pay the fine, or pay thousands of dollars for insurance?  I think I might choose to go without insurance, especially now that pre-existing conditions are a-okay.  So, let's follow this trend.  Fewer people actually get insurance until they get sick or injured.  Insurance companies are forced to take a pool of customers who have a 100% risk, so they must increase premiums to everyone else or go out of business.  Oh, perhaps that is the ultimate plan, just as has actually been stated by this administration?  The Cloward and Piven strategy works so well!  Now we will all have our hands out to the government, completing the move to Socialism, and to perpetual votes for the Democrat Party.]

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President Obama starts a victory lap on health care Tuesday, signing it into law at a White House lawn party - and hitting the road to sell it to the American people. That may be the tough part. A national CNN poll last night found Americans opposed the bill 59% to 39%
[Does anyone else find it interesting that about 40% of Americans either pay no taxes or pay very little?   The Tax Foundation reports: Despite the charges of critics that the tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2003 and 2004 favored the “rich,” these cuts actually reduced the tax burden of low- and middle-income taxpayers and shifted the tax burden onto wealthier taxpayers. Tax Foundation economists estimate that for tax year 2004, a record 42.5 million Americans who filed a tax return (one-third of the 131 million returns filed last year) had no tax liability after they took advantage of their credits and deductions. Millions more paid next to nothing.  In addition to these non-payers, roughly 15 million individuals and families earned some income last year but not enough to be required to file a tax return. When these non-filers are added to the non-payers, they add up to 57.5 million income-earning people who will be paying no income taxes.

Table 2. How “Refundable” Tax Credits Work
Married Couple with Three Children	Tax Liability Under 2004 Tax Law
Adjusted Gross Income in 2004	$40,000
Minus Standard Deduction	-$9,700
Minus Personal Exemption	-$15,500
Taxable Income	$14,800
Gross Taxes Owed	$1,505
Minus 3 Child Credits	-$3,000
Taxes Owed	$0
"Refundable" Credit Received	$1,495

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Please know that there is something we can do here in Michigan to protect the rights Washington Democrats are threatening.  Cameron Brown is proud to be the only candidate for Secretary of State to co-sponsor Senate Joint Resolution K, which would allow Michigan residents to vote on an amendment to our state constitution guaranteeing our right to make our own health care decisions. Thirty-eight other states are in the process of adopting similar measures. 
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And for those of you who want to be part of history by co-signing the health care bill, Organizing For America has provided a site for you to do so:   http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hccosign?source=20100322_FB&share-fb=
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The health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama Tuesday requires members of Congress and their office staffs to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges it creates – but it may exempt staffers who work for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate. Staffers and members on both sides of the aisle call it an ''inequity'' and an ''outrage'' – a loophole that exempts the staffers most involved in writing and passing the bill from one of its key requirements.
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IBD reports: "HR 4872, Heritage reports, would "force companies to pay a tax penalty if that business employs 50 or more workers as soon as one worker qualifies for, and opts to accept, a health insurance premium subsidy."
That $3,000 penalty is on top of the $2,000-per-worker penalty for all workers beyond the first 30 for such companies not offering a "qualified" health plan or paying 60% of employee health premiums. Such companies would be faced with a $3,000 penalty for hiring a single parent, the very kind of person desperately in need of employment.
Here's where it gets even more bizarre. According to Heritage, under the reconciliation bill, if Company A lays off an employee with a working spouse, this could generate a $3,000 tax penalty for the other spouse's employer, unless Company B also lays off the other spouse.
The power to tax is indeed the power to destroy. As we have said, this is not about health care. This is about power and the redistribution of wealth. And the IRS will be making a list and checking it twice to see who's being naughty and who's being nice."
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Finally, The Washington Examiner reports:  "Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Tuesday night offered an amendment that would require the president, vice-president, members of Congress, political appointees and congressional staff to get their federal health benefits through the soon-to-be-created health insurance exchanges."  [This one is so much better than the one insuring that felons in prison do not get to have Viagra.]
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Health Care and Canada Free Press

"This is what change looks like," Obama said later in televised remarks that stirred memories of his 2008 campaign promise of "change we can believe in."
"We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people."

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National Review Online:  "It is truly astonishing that Rep. Bart Stupak has been duped into thinking the president's executive order has done, or can do, anything to alter the Senate bill. Executive orders have the force of law only within the executive branch and only to the extent they are consistent with legislation. The executive order can do no more to prohibit use of federal funds for abortion than the Senate bill does. If there is any inconsistency between the executive order and the bill, the order gives way to the bill. Moreover, as is typical of executive orders, this one explicitly says that it creates no right at law to sue the U.S. government if funds in fact are paid for abortions. So, the executive order is a nullity. Stupak has allowed himself to be tricked into supporting a bill that he disagrees with on the basis of an executive order that does precisely nothing to alleviate his concerns."
[I believe that Stupak knew exactly what he was doing, was looking for some trickery, and was glad to find a way to dupe us.  If he didn't figure this out for himself, it is yet one more indication that he is not fit for this office. He was in hiding, though in his office when I visited Capitol Hill last Tues.  He is whining about how hard this has been on himself and his family, and I watched him scoot out of his office via a 2nd door without acknowledging his constituents in any way]
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"This is the civil rights act of the 21st century," added Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the top-ranking black member of the House.
GOP lawmakers attacked the legislation as everything from a government takeover to the beginning of totalitarianism, and none voted in favor. "Hell no!" Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, shouted in a fiery speech opposing the legislation. "We have failed to listen to America and we have failed to reflect the will of our constituents."
Thirty-four Democrats also voted "no" on the Senate-passed bill.
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Canada Free Press: Obama has now joined the likes of all other despots who have ever walked and practiced their tyrannies upon planet Earth. Tyrants like Sadaam Hussein, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-il and Fidel Castro are now unequivocally united with the US Usurper and Dictator-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama in their complete and total subjugation of their countries peoples. 

Obama turned off the spigots in California’s Central Valley in order to destroy crops, fruit trees, farmers’ livelihoods etc. in that once extremely fertile and productive area and to give him a large hammer to use against all of us who eat food and drink water. Obama affected this by design and on purpose first and foremost to observe whether or not he could get away with it—without violent uprisings from We-the-People—and second to begin his totalitarian control and oppression of the American people; control that now extends to controlling the water allocations—for Obama’s own personal support issues—and ultimately (as did the genocidal Josef Stalin) our country’s food supplies.
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Note: This time, Obama agreed to turn on the water—now known as “Obama’s Water”—by 25% if Democrat California Congressmen Jim Costa and Dennis Cardoza voted for ObamaCare. They did. Next time, it will be far worse for any and all who do not support The Obama.
After Obama has shoved ObamaCare down the throats of the American people, the next steps will be an Obama fast-track program for Amnesty for Illegals (in order to shore up more new illegal votes to counter the massive legal votes to be cast against Obama and his willing Congressional minions), Cap & Trade (to make it impossible for the once middle and now forced into lower-class Americans to afford electricity) and any other oppressive program The Obama chooses to implement against We-the-People. In other words, Obama and the Marxists now in power in Washington D.C. have said—increasingly in ‘no uncertain terms’: “If you oppose us, we will crush you!” And they have.
Make no mistake, folks. Obama is ending our Republic as quickly and completely as possible. By the way, I’m still waiting for those additional “peaceful means” to stop these atrocities and their perpetrators. Thus far, I can still hear the proverbial pins dropping.
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The Washington Examiner says: "As part of today's rally to stop the Democrats' health care reform legislation thousands of protesters descended on the lawn of Capitol building. But many more were also using the occasion to visit the their congressional representative and tell them what they think of the bill. However, Capitol Police recently stopped allowing any of the peaceful protesters to enter into congressional buildings. Crowds are now gathering in front of the House and Senate offices."
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From the UK Telegraph:  The nasty car crash that is Obamacare is dragging down Barack Obama’s presidency. The cancellation of his visit to Indonesia and Australia to stay at home offering pork-barrel enticements to doubtful House Democrats is the kind of desperate expedient we expect from Third World dictators apprised of a potential coup at home. It advertised to the world the precarious nature of a presidency that has all but lost control.
In his obsession with his healthcare fantasy, Obama is prepared even to allow the subversion of the US Constitution. For what else is the so-called Slaughter Solution? Leaving aside the grim irony of this name being associated with legislation that seeks to promote an explosion of abortions in America by injecting billions of dollars into state support of that abomination – and thereby making every taxpayer complicit in abortion – the fact remains that the fundamental purpose of the Slaughter Solution is to bypass the American Constitution.
What is Joe Public supposed to make of that unambiguously malign intent? Its secondary purpose is to remove accountability from members of Congress – this from the administration of a president who was swept to power promising an end to Washington deal-making and a new era of transparency in government. Has anyone before, in the entire history of the United States, ever attempted to deny citizens knowledge of how their Congressman voted on a highly contentious topic?
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You've probably never heard of Dan Benishek, but he's a Republican running against Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who struck a deal with Nancy Pelosi that is believed to be the decisive vote to pass ObamaCare. More than 1,700 people have already joined Benishek's Facebook page.
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From American Thinker's Matt Patterson:  "In November 2008, Americans elected a socialist as their president.  In March 2010, they woke up stunned to find themselves living in a socialist country.
Where were you when the Republic died?  Health insurers - once private companies - are now organs of the federal government.  Every citizen is a ward of the state, which can now compel you to have insurance; punish you if you don't; determine if your insurance is acceptable; punish you if it isn't.  Thousands of new federal bureaucrats will soon spill from the D.C. Beltway and flood the country, scrutinizing our finances to verify compliance with this new law.

A government that grants itself this kind of power over us can conceivably do anything to us.  For our own good, of course.   Such a country is in no meaningful sense "free."

And this is only the beginning.  Liberals are salivating in contemplation of all the fanciful window trimmings that can in the future be hung from this legislative framework.  Public option will soon appear as prelude to single payer, as was the intent all along.  Soon, Americans won't even have the illusion of a choice - the government will move from subsidizer to provider, and it will be the only game in town. [The Cloward and Piven strategy is working well.]
In 1776, the American Republic boldly announced its birth with the Declaration of Independence.  In 2010, it quietly expired with a declaration of dependence - on government, on entitlement, and on the Democratic party."  For full article: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/where_were_you_when_the_republ.html