Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Obama's Columbia problem; Health care costs were not skyrocketing; Cronyism led to no bank execs being charged; IRS pays billions to identity theives; Polish President accuses Obama of betrayal; Hydraulic fracking opponents have no peer-reviewed science; Tanzania benefits from global warming; Counties with more voters registered than actual live voters; Illinois to spend more on government pension than on education; Indian government blames Obama; Paying students to go to summer school; Texas senators push weather modification programs; Medicaid is broken; Student loans come with less choice

Here is Wayne Allen Root, a supposed classmate of Obama's while at Columbia.  He has a great column which I encourage you to read, parts of which follow: 
My answer for Romney? Call Obama’s bluff.
Romney should call a press conference and issue a challenge in front of the nation. He should agree to release more of his tax returns, only if Obama unseals his college records. Simple and straight-forward. Mitt should ask “What could possibly be so embarrassing in your college records from 29 years ago that you are afraid to let America’s voters see? If it’s THAT bad, maybe it’s something the voters ought to see.” Suddenly the tables are turned. Now Obama is on the defensive.
My bet is that Obama will never unseal his records because they contain information that could destroy his chances for re-election. Once this challenge is made public, my prediction is you’ll never hear about Mitt’s tax returns ever again.
Why are the college records, of a 51-year-old President of the United States, so important to keep secret? I think I know the answer.
But don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that Fox News randomly called 400 of our Columbia classmates and never found one who had ever met Obama.
I can only think of one answer that would explain this mystery.
Here’s my gut belief: Obama got a leg up by being admitted to both Occidental and Columbia as a foreign exchange student. He was raised as a young boy in Indonesia. But did his mother ever change him back to a U.S. citizen? When he returned to live with his grandparents in Hawaii or as he neared college-age preparing to apply to schools, did he ever change his citizenship back? I’m betting not.
If you think I’m “fishing” then prove me wrong. Open up your records Mr. President. What are you afraid of? http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/obama%E2%80%99s-college-classmate-the-obama-scandal-is-at-columbia/
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One of the key arguments that President Obama used to get his health care law though Congress, control of soaring health care costs, turns out to have been bogus.
Here is the way Obama put the argument in a September 9, 2009, speech about health care to a joint session of Congress:
Then there’s the problem of rising cost....insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages....our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers.  When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined....
Now, these are the facts. Nobody disputes them. 
Obama’s voice saying “these are the facts. Nobody disputes them,” is almost enough to set off sound effects akin to those that accompany Pinocchio’s growing nose in the Disney movie.
Sure enough, now that the data are in, the emerging consensus is that health care costs, rather than “skyrocketing,” have been moderating, even flat-lining. And they were beginning to do so well before Congress passed ObamaCare in March 2010. http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/06/the-health-care-spending-claim-that-made
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A new report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) finds that President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s failure to criminally charge any top Wall Street bankers is likely a result of cronyism inside the Department of Justice and political donations made to Obama’s campaign.
GAI argues that the Obama administration’s decision to not go after Big Finance is due to senior DOJ leadership — Holder, Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, Associate Attorney General Tony West, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Deputy Attorney General James Cole and Deputy Associate Attorney General Karol Mason — who “all came to the DOJ from prestigious white-collar defense firms where they represented the very financial institutions the DOJ is supposed to investigate.”
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The IRS is paying out billions of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds to identity thieves; a problem that the tax service’s inspector general told CNBC is a “growing problem” involving numbers that are increasing “exponentially.”
In a new report to be issued Thursday, the inspector general for the IRS says that tax thieves are stealing the identities of taxpayers and then filing bogus returns on their behalf and collecting fraudulent refunds as a result.
The inspector general estimates that the IRS could issue as much as $21 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the next five years.  In another case, a single residential address in Chicago was the source of 765 tax returns, generating more than $900,000 in potentially fraudulent refunds, the report said.  [Don't they employ computer programmers?  Try doing something like this with a credit card and you will be found out immediately.] http://www.cnbc.com/id/48462508
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Polish president accuses Obama of betraying Poland

The Polish president has accused Barack Obama of betraying Poland by cancelling a promised missile defence system. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/9456610/Polish-president-accuses-Obama-of-betraying-Poland.html

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Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a process in which chemically treated water is pumped into shale rock in order to release natural gas for extraction.
Fracking has brought economic benefits to states such as North Dakota and Pennsylvania, while states where fracking is banned, such as California and New York, are suffering economically, according to Stephen Moore, senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal.
“To be against hydraulic fracturing is like being against a cure for cancer,” Moore told the Free Beacon.
Fracking represents “the most important revolution in the oil sector in decades,” according to a study by Harvard Research Fellow Leonardo Maugeri.
Numerous scientists have contradicted Gasland’s conclusions regarding pollution and cancer rates resulting from fracking.
“[Anti-fracking advocates] have a lot of amazing claims, but no peer-reviewed science to back up those claims,” said McAleer.  [This might be a good place to begin if you are undecided about the issue.  I really have no opinion formed at this time on the issue.  We will be dealing with this issue for a long time, I'm quite sure.] http://freebeacon.com/thefrackattack/
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Tanzania could actually benefit from climate change by increasing corn exports to the United States and other countries that may have more difficulty producing the crop in the future, according to a new study. 
Researchers at Stanford, Purdue University, and the World Bank set out to determine how certain trade policies might provide a buffer for countries like Tanzania from the worst effects of climate change. http://weather.yahoo.com/tanzania-where-climate-change-could-good-thing-221556450.html
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A nonpartisan election integrity group has sent legal notices to 160 counties across the U.S. that it says have more voters on its registration rolls than actual live, eligible voters — and thus represent potential hotbeds for election fraud, the organization told TheBlaze exclusively.
The Houston-based True the Vote said the counties may be in violation of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, which mandates that election officials maintain clean voter rolls by removing people who have died, moved away or are no longer eligible to vote. True the Vote is demanding each of the counties show proof of compliance or they’ll bring civil suit. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/election-integrity-watchdog-sends-notice-to-160-counties-it-says-have-more-registered-voters-than-are-actually-eligible-to-vote/
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The state of Illinois faces at least $83 billion in unfunded liability between its five pension systems, and is on track to spend more on its government pensions than on education by 2016, a new study released by Governor Pat Quinn’s office says.
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Indian government officials and Sikh leaders across India were outraged by the attack that left 6 dead, including 4 Indian nationals, at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee and called on the U.S. to do more to protect Sikhs living in the United Sates. Clinton called Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna from her stop in South Africa Monday after Krishna criticized the U.S. for failed policies and a growing trend of violent incidents against religious minorities.
"I have seen messages of condolence from President Obama and others. They've emphasized protection of all faiths. The U.S. government will have to take a comprehensive look at this kind of tendency which certainly is not going to bring credit to the United States of America,'' Krisha saidhttp://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/06/state_department_tries_to_smooth_ties_with_india_after_wisconsin_massacre
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The District is paying 305 students with poor academic and behavioral records to attend summer school, The Washington Examiner has learned.
The rising ninth-graders are earning $5.25 an hour to participate in the "Summer Bridge" program, which targets students identified by D.C. Public Schools as less likely than their peers to graduate high school within four years.
The 95 students who voluntarily signed up for the summer school program will receive half of an elective credit. But to fill the 400-student session with at-risk students, DCPS reached out to the Department of Employment Services. More than 300 students flagged by DCPS and who had signed up for the Summer Youth Employment Program were told that school would be their jobs this summer.


Handing paychecks to students for learning could, however, be a "slippery slope," said local political consultant Chuck Thies.
"How much will we pay going forward, and who will we pay, and what's the cutoff to get paid?" Thies asked. "It's critical that we get at-risk students and underperforming students and failing students into the program, but I don't think incentivizing them with money sends the right message."
lgartner@washingtonexaminer.com
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If Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall have their way, rain will go away come again some other day of their choosing.
Both Hutchison and Udall have introduced unsuccessful bills in the past that would have created national boards to oversee and fund research into weather modification. That is, artificially changing or controlling the weather.
“I … am very supportive of and concerned about weather prediction and modification,” Hutchison said at an appropriations hearing in 2011. “And I think we need to know more basic science, and we also need to — to use that to determine if we should or should not engage in weather modification.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One of the primary difficulties with Medicaid coverage is that fewer health care providers are accepting Medicaid patients. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study last year that showed that two-thirds of children on Medicaid are denied appointments to deal with serious medical conditions (compared with 11 percent of privately insured children).
Now nearly three in 10 physicians across the nation will not accept Medicaid patients.
Doctors aren’t refusing to take Medicaid patients out of cruelty. Many have admitted to feeling guilty over refusing these patients and have put off denying care for as long as possible. But, ultimately, accepting Medicaid has been costing health care providers just too much.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now that the student loan industry is totally run by the federal government, the federal government will be deciding for you which degrees you can pursue and from what schools. Apparently you are not smart enough to make your own decisions on this matter. Democrat fireplug Senator Barbara Mikulski’s site spouted this bit of irony yesterday:
“I’m for choice and opportunity in higher education, but we cannot be enablers of debt without empowerment,”Senator Mikulski said. “It’s appalling that schools are providing students with worthless degrees while leaving families buried under debt. It’s wrong for families and the federal government to make investments in higher education and be left with nothing to show for it. I’m cosponsoring the Protecting Students from Worthless Degrees Act to ensure that higher education programs meet the accreditation or licensure requirements so when students graduate they are qualified to be hired for the job they’ve prepared for.” http://www.libertynews.com/2012/08/06/senate-democrats-decide-for-you-which-college-degrees-are-worthless/
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