President Obama has a now established pattern of choosing which laws he will and will not enforce.  We saw it first when he decided to stop enforcing federal drug laws in states that allow medical marijuana.  Next, his attorney general decided to not only stop enforcing US immigration laws, but to sue any state that did.  It will be an interesting development if the Supreme Court sides with Obama against Arizona immigration laws since they mirror Federal law.  Imagine waking up one morning and discovering that our immigration laws are unconstitutional.

Next Obama’s attorney general decided that bribery charges against the administration, brought by fellow Democrats, were not worth investigating.  And most recently, when House Minority leader John Boehner wrote to the President inquiring on the status of implementing the President’s executive order banning taxpayer funded abortion, a bargaining chip used to turn pro-lifer Bart Stupak and his followers, Boehner received no response.  Come on now, Mr. President, you even wrote that one all by yourself!

We are now beginning to learn the consequences of Obama’s attitude towards the rule of law.  Only a week ago, amid discouraging polls and perceptions that Obama wasn’t actually doing anything in the gulf, Obama called BP into his office for a closed door meeting.  When they emerged, BP was oh so sad and remorseful and vowed to set up a $20 billion trust fund to pay any and all damages.  Obama has been touting his success ever since.  Good, right?

The problem is that if Obama actually did anything, then he is guilty of extortion.  Constitutionally, the President of the United States cannot walk into a closed door meeting with a public corporation and demand that they hand over cash.  When Joe Barton infamously apologized to BP for the shakedown, he should have instead asked Tony Hayward the following:

“Mr. Hayward, please be very careful in how you answer these questions: Did President Obama offer you or BP anything explicitly or implicitly in order to set up the $20 billion dollar fund? Did President Obama threaten you or BP explicitly or implicitly with anything if you did not set up the fund? Did President Obama mention or imply anything about the status of your current or future drilling operations, availability of leases, or duration of the moratorium on drilling in relation to your setting up of this $20 billion fund?”

Of course, as Senator Kyl has learned, conversations in these closed door meetings don’t matter unless you are wearing a wire.

But now we are learning the folly of Obama’s shakedown and why exactly we have a legal system aside from Obama’s badge and six-shooter.  When someone is taken to court and ordered to make reparations in civil and criminal issues the money is non-deductible to the offending party and non-taxable to the receiving party.  Not so with this trust fund.

By avoiding the courts, BP now gets a nice $20 billion write-off on their taxes, while the victims have to pick it up.  Obama’s shakedown will shift $7 billion in taxes from BP to the victims of the oil spill.  But it gets better.

If the monies are recorded as income subject to self-employment tax, you can tack on an additional 15.3% to the victims’ tax bill that BP wouldn’t have had to pay.  That’s another $3,060,000,000.  Of the $20 billion trust fund that BP has promised to the oil spill victims, half will go to Obama’s government in taxes.  All because Obama decided once again that he is too good for our constitution and rule of law.

Of course, I’m sure Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner would make an exception for them.

In 2006, Nancy Pelosi promised the most ethical and honest Congress in our nation’s history.  She promised openness and an end to the “Culture of Corruption”.  That culture was displayed through a few billion dollars in pork spending, Mark Foley and his naughty text messages, and the bad taste in our mouths from Scooter Libby and Tom Delay who lost their positions and in Libby’s case went to jail, but didn’t actually commit any crimes.

Then in 2008, along came bright, eloquent, handsome, black, young Chicago politician Barack Obama.  I mention black only because, let’s be honest, if there was one thing our nation was not ready for in 2008, it was another old white male President.

Obama promised, as every politician before him, to change the way things were done in Washington.  No more backroom deals.  No more corruption.  My goodness, he was so convincing we even believed he had nothing to do with Rod Blagojevich selling his Senate seat for favors.  Every little thing that came up against Obama was dismissed as political, or even racist attacks.  It’s why we turned our heads and looked the other way when the Denver Post began publishing stories about Senate Candidate Andrew Romanoff.

Who is Andrew Romanoff?  I’m not sure the story even made national headlines.  But you may become more acquainted with that name in weeks to come.  Andrew Romanoff was the former Colorado Speaker of the House, running in the Democrat primary for the Colorado Senate seat.  The Denver Post came out with a story in September, 2009 saying that Romanoff was offered a position with the US Agency for International Development in order to drop out of the Senate race.  As with Sestak, this did not come directly from Obama, but through buffers.  According to the news reports, Rahm Emanual had deputy chief of staff Jim Messina make the offer.  By the way, this would have been a paid position.

So why haven’t you heard about this until now?  At the time, Obama was praised for taking an “interest in the local races” and working to preserve their majorities.  The “top ranking” Democrats who brought the story to the Post refused to be named, causing the story to lack much credibility.  That was before the Cornhusker Kickback when we all thought Obama was still the most ethical and honest President since Honest Abe.

Now a different picture of Obama is emerging.  Once the savior of our political world, Obama is now known for his backroom deals, hardball tactics, and even bribery in violation of our federal law.  I would say he is indistinguishable from Chicago politicians, but I would hate to generalize about Chicago politicians.

In order to go down for bribery, there would need to be an investigation.  Unfortunately, a Senate of Democrats is going to be less than enthusiastic about questioning a Democrat Attorney General nominee; leaving us with the most lawless and political Attorney General in recent history.  Eric Holder has already ruled out a special investigation into the bribery charges against Obama.

If the bribery charges were false and made up by two different Senate candidates in two different states, then this lack of interest would be a significant departure from Obama’s earlier stance against those who would misrepresent him.  In his campaign to pass the Healthcare Tax bill, Obama claimed that he would get the justice department involved if he believed that people were lying about what was actually in the healthcare plan.  But apparently he has no issue about people lying about his personal character or what federal and impeachable laws he has broken.

More likely, this pattern is a true representation of our country’s CEO.  And since he owns the “cops”, we will never see anything come of it.  We once again are learning a lesson in how ultimate power corrupts ultimately.  Our best hope is to give Republican Congressman Darryl Issa the majority he needs in November to force an investigation.

Pelosi promised the most ethical government ever if we put Democrats in charge.  Now I’m wondering how much of that trillion dollar stimulus bill was nothing more than an election buy-off slush fund.

Although the economy shrank overall in 2009, plenty of media outlets and Democrats are overjoyed to point out that the economy grew at a rate in the last quarter that was higher than we’ve seen since all the way back in, well, the Bush years.  The 5.7% GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 was more than a lot of economists expected.  Economists who know what happens when you throw trillions of debt spending at the economy weren’t too surprised.

Once again, debt does not equal wealth.  Obama increased spending by 33% his first year while revenues fell.  This year he is doing the same, even without unplanned stimulus spending.  Every jobs bill Obama thinks up is nothing more than borrowing hundreds of billions more and throwing it at short-term government infrastructure projects.  I still haven’t found out how many times you have to repave the same stretch of road before the government counts as a job saved or created.

If you lend a homeless man a million dollars at a high interest rate, he buys a house, and then the house drops in value to $800k, is his wealth growing?  He does have an $800,000 house that he didn’t have before.  I hate to say it, but our growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 is no different.

In the fourth quarter of 2009 the market value of our domestic product increased by $221 billion.  That’s not bad.  It’s not quite as good as the 7.2% GDP growth Bush’s tax cuts produced, but it’s definitely better than the economic retraction we saw in the first half of 2009.  At the same time though, debt spending increased by $260 billion in the fourth quarter.

So we borrowed $260 billion and the value of our domestic product increased by $221 billion.  Meanwhile more than 600,000 jobs were lost in the fourth quarter.  And lots of roads got repaved again.  Oh yeah, and plenty of Democrat congressional districts got new duck ponds, skate parks, and honey bee insurance.

Now we have to pay for our borrowed growth.  Someone finally read my blog and figured out that Obama is going to raise taxes by not renewing the Bush tax cuts.  Obama has already written Cap and Trade (which would increase energy costs by thousands for each American family) into his budget.  The sad thing is that with all these tax increases we still are expecting a $1.6 trillion deficit for 2011.  This is only twice what Obama was projecting for 2011 when he took office.  For the record, Bush’s worst deficit was just over $400 billion after a year of Democrat control of the Congress.  Bush even inherited the tech bubble, loose fiscal policy, and a decimated terror intelligence community (who couldn’t stop 9/11) from the previous administration.  By the way, if you think Bush inherited a surplus you haven’t been reading my blog.

Obama kept telling us that only government can fix the economy.  Many believed him.  Hopefully we have learned our lesson.  The government doesn’t make money.  The government doesn’t produce goods and services that people want at prices they are willing to pay.  The government cannot produce growth.  All the government can do is beg, borrow, and steal from some and benevolently hand out to others while calling it growth.  If Obama has caused anything to change, hopefully it’s that we finally know better.

Late Saturday night, House Democrats and one Republican passed HR 3962.  This more than 2,000 page bill included payoffs to many of the more conservative Democrats who were sitting on the fence, but still it only squeaked by.  Despite the bill’s passage, there was one major victory for conservatism in the bi-partisan Stupak-Pitts amendment that bans federal funding for abortion.  The amendment reflected a shift in social values in the US, highlighted by a Gallup poll earlier this year showing that the majority of Americans oppose abortion.  The amendment enjoyed the support of 69 Democrats.

Democrats may not have realized this, but the Stupak-Pitts amendment goes much further than HR 3962.  In fact, that one amendment is a knife in heart of the Democrat universal healthcare agenda.  Unwittingly, Democrats have helped make HR 3962 non-implementable.

Under HR 3962, health costs and health insurance premiums will go through the roof.  Democrats pay for universal healthcare by taxing healthcare universally.  They tax insurance companies, tax doctors, tax health product manufacturers, tax pharmaceuticals, and of course, tax you.  What do they do with all that tax money?  They give it back to us disproportionately so that we can all buy insurance.  Through this wealth redistribution, healthcare costs far more but the government subsidizes it.   Without the government subsidy, most Americans will not be able to afford these higher rates.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment makes it so that not only can the government not offer abortion in it’s cheaper public option (which do not be mistaken, will put every other insurance company out of business), but government cannot subsidize abortion in other insurance plans.  At the much higher health costs under HR 3962, this will make abortion a luxury that only the rich will be able to afford.

Already Democrats are in full revolt against one another.  One side realizes that their radical attempts to use federal funds to pay for abortion will destroy their party’s power.  For some Democrats it is even a violation of conscience.  On the other hand, the more liberal wing of the party realizes that without catering to the radical factions in the party they will lose their base.

One thing is for sure, a final bill cannot have the Stupak-Pitts amendment in it.  When the government is paying for or subsidizing every approved health insurance plan, and the government is not allowed to pay for or subsidize abortion, then abortion has been effectively killed in the United States.  On the other hand, a Democrat style health takeover bill will not pass the Senate without an abortion amendment and barely passed the House with one.  Either the abortion amendment or the healthcare takeover has to go.

There are few people in this country so convicted of every person’s constitutional right to equality and the pursuit of happiness as Rush Limbaugh.  Rush has spoken many times on his radio program about each individual’s rights to equal treatment under the law, opportunity without government prohibition, and God given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  He has also been vocal about each person’s responsibility to live up to their personal potential and how special treatment from the Government prohibits this.  Of course, these views are not at all popular with those who believe that the rich have been treated unfairly well and that certain specific groups of people need the government to take from the rich and give to them in order to succeed.

Add to this that Rush is an outspoken conservative public figure and it is easy to see why so many, especially on the left, outright hate him.  Even back when political correctness ruled our country, Rush could always be counted on to give his clear personal opinion.  That always makes some people uncomfortable.  There aren’t many honest people left out there in the public spotlight.  The reason for this is the rampant bigotry against people who lean heavily conservative.

This was made all to evident this week as Rush was denied his attempt to purchase a portion of the NFL football team, the St. Louis Rams.  Rush has an intense love for football, I dare say almost as much as my own love for football.  But what began with racist attacks from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson ended with Rush being disallowed from purchasing a portion of the franchise.  For years men and women were not allowed to vote, drink from the same fountain, own property, or shop at certain establishments because of their race, gender, or in some cases sexual preference.  Now we are seeing discrimination based on political views.

We should have seen this coming.  In fact, some of us did.  Suddenly a few months ago, disagreeing with this President was racism.  Speaking out about healthcare or cap and trade became hate speech.  Now, believing in equality, opportunity, and the constitution is racism and expressing your conservative leanings is hate speech.  And if they can’t find good examples of things you have said to make people hate you, they make them up.

When the news first came out about Rush’s desire to pursue his happiness and own a minority stake in the St. Louis Rams, false quotes immediately began appearing and being attributed to Rush.  One such example was CNN saying that Rush had said “Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.” But it turns out Rush never said this.  A leftist bigot made up the quote and attributed it to Rush because he hated Rush’s conservatism.  But as the blog I linked to here points out, CNN was too busy fact checking a Saturday Night Live skit about Obama to fact check their own story on Rush.

So what is the end result of all this?  Maybe I should quit my blog.  I buy stocks in different companies, which is no different then what Rush was trying to do.  Will I someday be told by a company that I can’t buy their stock because I am an outspoken conservative? Will I someday be turned down for a job because in my personal life I am an outspoken conservative constitutionalist?  Some argue that we have already reached this point.

Robert J. Avrich claims that he was fired from a screenwriting job for being too conservative for Hollywood.  Ben Stein says he was fired from the New York Times for being a creationist, but one leftist blogger at Businessinsider.com contends that it was just because Stein is conservative.  Kansas teacher Tim Latham was fired for being a conservative.   And now Rush is the latest to be on the receiving end of this leftist discrimination.  But you will never see Congressional Democrats adding conservatives to the hate crimes protected groups list.

Rush Limbaugh said on his program today that he probably wasn’t going to sue over this because he has never conducted himself or his business that way.  I would caution Rush that when he is discriminated against in this way, he does not just represent himself.  He represents every outspoken conservative in America.  When Rush is denied this opportunity solely because of his conservative values, we are all denied.

Do you think I’m wrong here?  Leave me a comment on my official blog at The Conservative Constitutional Movement.  I think this is a very serious issue that in the long run could affect every outspoken, freedom loving conservative.

“In my new film I speak for the first time in one of my movies about my own spiritual beliefs. I have always believed that one’s religious leanings are deeply personal and should be kept private. After all, we’ve heard enough yammerin’ in the past three decades about how one should “behave,” and I have to say I’m pretty burned out on pieties and platitudes considering we are a violent nation that invades other countries and punishes our own for having the audacity to fall on hard times.

I’m also against any proselytizing; I certainly don’t want you to join anything I belong to. Also, as a Catholic, I have much to say about the Church as an institution, but I’ll leave that for another day (or movie).”

Thus begins Michael Moore’s letter to Christians at the Huffington Post.  He then proceeds to tell you exactly what he believes about Christianity in relation to Capitalism, why Capitalism is a sin, why we should join him in ending it and why Christianity should dictate how Americans spend and invest their money.  Sounds a little to me like proselytizing.

First of all, if Michael Moore is truly a Catholic but believes that proselytizing is wrong, then he is either a liar or an evil person.  How could someone who believes in heaven, hell and salvation through Jesus Christ be opposed to evangelism?  That would be like a Global Warming believer driving a dumptruck full of leaking radioactive materials everywhere.  Or perhaps flying back and forth across the country in their own private jet.

But more important here is the hypocritical call for Christians to support government socialism because of their faith.  The man who opposes prosylitizing apparently supports a financial theocracy.   Moore’s movie, which confuses Capitalism with government bailouts, is a scathing rebuke aimed at Wall Street fat cats who make as much money as he does.  In the end, his conclusion is not that we should get the government out of the market and stop having the government take from the poor and give to the rich.  His conclusion is that we should give all to the government and let the government give to any in need.  Apparently this is what Moore believes Jesus actually taught.

Moore doesn’t actually cite any Biblical references, which I suppose would require actually opening a Bible.  If he had, he might discover that no where does Jesus say that the government has a responsibility to take care of the poor.  No where does Jesus say that the government should take from those who have and give to those who don’t.  No where does Jesus say that the government should provide universal healthcare.  Whenever Jesus talks about giving to the poor or caring for the poor, he is addressing individuals.  I wonder how much Michael Moore gives to charity every year?  What do you say Mr. Moore, are you willing to give us all a look at your last three years’ tax returns?

Michael Moore needs to take a basic economics class and learn what Capitalism actually is.  Capitalism is freedom and opportunity.  In a Capitalist system, you are free to make billions of dollars.  On the other hand, you are then free to give those billions to the homeless shelter in your city if you so choose.  That is the beauty of Capitalism.  It’s not about forcing the government to rob from the rich and give to the poor, it is about your personal freedom to obey Jesus Christ and give to the poor.  Capitalism isn’t about bailouts, pork spending, government corruption, and government owned companies.  TARP is not Capitalism.  Going to a job, earning money, saving it for your kids college education, giving to your church and charities, hiring thousands of people and giving them the opportunity to do the same, THAT is Capitalism.  Capitalism is about freedom, not religious tyranny from a self proclaimed Catholic who is seeking to impose his ideas of financial religion on the rest of us.  That is why the Constitution prohibits the Congressional establishment of religion.

“It doesn’t seem you can call yourself a Capitalist and a Christian — because you cannot love your money and love your neighbor when you are denying your neighbor the ability to see a doctor just so you can have a better bottom line.”

Mr. Moore, I am not keeping my neighbor from seeing a doctor.  My neighbor has just as much freedom to work, buy insurance, and visit a doctor in a Capitalist system as I do.  If you believe that we are all morally responsible to send our neighbor to the doctor, then again I ask: have you?  How many people is Michael Moore footing the insurance bill for?  There is nothing in our Capitalist system preventing Michael Moore from sending his neighbor to the doctor.  But that isn’t the point, is it.

Michael Moore doesn’t want to send his neighbor to the doctor; Michael Moore wants you and me to send his neighbor to the doctor.  Moore’s idea of religion is the government forcing you and I to pay higher taxes so that the government can give people high quality government programs like Cash for Clunkers, Social Security and Public Schools.

Moore asks, would Jesus be a Capitalist?  Absolutely, and in fact his followers were.  Paul worked as a tent-maker and chose to use those proceeds to fund his ministry.  The Christians chose to sell their property and possessions and chose to share with one another.  Wealthy Christians in different cities chose to house Christians and Jesus on their missionary journeys.  Jesus was poor, but he did not take Roman welfare.  Jesus didn’t command the pagans to fund his ministry.  Jesus healed with His own hands, He didn’t require the government to provide universal health insurance to the sick paid for with taxes on the poor and middle class.

If Michael Moore truly thinks that making money is evil and should be outlawed, I can recommend a few places where he can choose to give the $5 million his movie made over the weekend.

In the last couple days, to the shock and surprise of the current administration, it has been discovered that Iran may be trying to enrich weapons grade uranium at their nuclear facilities.  Now, this may just be more fear mongering, like it was for the last 8 years when President Bush was warning us about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  Then again, this time it may be the real thing.

New evidence of potential weapon development at Iran's peaceful nuclear energy facilities

As is the custom of the left, we will be sure to respond with harsh language, tepid condemnations, and economic sanctions.  If things get real bad over there, we might even send Jimmy Carter.

Economic sanctions, the weapon of choice to combat nuclear weapons proliferation to dangerous terrorist dictators, are when a majority of the international community use their economic muscle to hurt the people living in the dictatorship through embargos, trade restrictions and tariffs.  I don’t recall Saddam ever selling a golden palace to feed his people while under US sanctions.  But we keep using them, so they must work.

Actually, you may not know this, but Brazil has put sanctions on the US.  That’s right, because Uncle Sam takes your tax dollars and uses them to subsidize US cotton growers, the World Trade Organization has determined that we must also pay $800 million in economic sanctions to Brazil (again, coming out of your tax bill).  You would think since we are loaning them $2 billion to drill for oil there so that we don’t have to drill here, they might let us slide on the cotton issue.

Speaking of sanctions, You might never guess who is currently facing tougher sanctions from the US than Iran.  You are.

Now I know, you don’t enrich uranium and try to hide it.  You haven’t test-launched any missiles lately.  Chances are you probably aren’t supplying weapons to terrorists in Iraq.  But you have definitely caught the watchful eye of the US government, and your behavior must be changed.

Enter the mandatory insurance penalty.  If you do not provide yourself with insurance under the Obama health plan, you will pay a fine of up to $3,800 a year per family.  How much is the total revenue from mandatory insurance supposed to come to?  It is nearly impossible to find a clear estimate of how much revenue these mandatory insurance penalties would raise, but it is certain to be more than the $1.64 billion in current sanctions on Iran.

You might ask yourself, wouldn’t it be cheaper than $3,800 a year to just have people pay for their medical bills?  In fact, wouldn’t it be more likely that people would buy health insurance if they were actually held responsible to pay their doctor bills?  Am I suggesting doctors withhold treatment?  Of course not.  I am suggesting that people who chose to not purchase health insurance be put on a payment plan, negotiated with their doctor, after receiving treatment so that the overall cost of healthcare is driven down by all of us.  I call it responsibility over social engineering taxes.

The reason it costs $5,000 to have a broken leg set is because the last 15 people before you didn’t pay for theirs.  Sure, some people are in a desparate situation and won’t pay for their procedures no matter what, but those people won’t be paying any of Obama’s mandatory health insurance taxes either.

What is the biggest difference between paying Obama $3,800 a year for not buying insurance like the government wants and paying $3,800 a year for your medical procedure?  Simple.  With mandatory health insurance sanctions, the money goes to the government.  When you simply require that people be responsible and pay the bills they actually incur, it goes to the doctors and eventually to you as the costs come down.

But instead, be prepared to be hit with all the social sanctions this healthcare plan has in store for us.  Sanctions for drinking soda, sanctions for not buying health insurance, oh yeah, and $215 billion in sanctions for buying a really good health insurance plan.  That’s right, you pay tax penalties for not buying insurance, and you pay taxes for buying too much insurance.  Yes it’s unconstitutional, but that hasn’t mattered for years.

We already face a host of sanctions from our government for bad behavior.  You are punished for smoking, drinking, driving, making too much money, and soon you will be sanctioned for using energy in your home through Cap and Trade taxes.  Perhaps Iran and North Korea never take our sanctions seriously because what they pay is nothing compared to what US citizens pay.

But on the other hand, the government rewards you for good behavior.  If you fit the government mold, you can get more aid than the $3.5 billion in US tax dollars Africa has received in foreign aid.  In the US first time home buyers have received $10.4 billion in taxpayer aid for being a good citizen and buying their first home.  Good citizens who bought government approved cars received $3 billion in aid.  Our very tax code is written to mold us into what the government deems model citizens.  You get tax breaks for owning your home instead of renting, for saving for retirement, for buying health insurance, for going to college, for marrying someone of the opposite sex, for giving to charity, for having two children, and for hiring ex-felons and “disconnected youth” (high school dropouts who can’t get a job anymore since they raised the minimum wage).

On October 1st, President Obama and the international community are going to get tough with Tehran.  Who knows, with enough economic leverage maybe they can get the Iranians to become model citizens too.

>>For more posts, visit my official blog at The Conservative Constitutionalist Movement

There’s something Humana wants you to know about the Baucus Healthcare plan.  The administration is making sure they can’t tell you.

The Baucus plan is a loser for doctors, clinics, medical suppliers and patients.  The problem with the Baucus plan is that it does not deal in reality.  In the minds of the crafters of our new health scheme, if you raise taxes on healthcare providers that is not a tax increase on healthcare consumers.  For Democrats, if you cut payments to doctors and healthcare providers that does not result in a cut in service.

This is exactly what the Baucus plan does.  You may have been asking yourself how Obama plans to cut hundreds of billions of dollars out of the Medicare system without cutting benefits.   If you are like me, you were probably thinking that if it’s so easy to cut waste out of the Medicare system we should have done it already.  Here is the magical plan to cut Medicare waste, ready?

Cut Medicare payments to doctors and healthcare providers.  Obama’s reasoning is that if you cut the amount the government pays to doctors and healthcare providers, they will put in the work to cut waste.  After all, would you treat someone who didn’t deserve it if you weren’t getting paid as much to?  Would you treat someone who did?  The Congressional Budget Office says probably not.  In fact, the Finance Committee is projecting $500 billion in cuts to Medicare providers over the next 10 years.  Humana believes this will result in service cuts and tried to tell their clients so, but the White House has shut them down and has ordered investigations into their claims.

The Baucus plan raises taxes on doctors and clinics, cuts Medicare payments to doctors and clinics, and forces more people on to government approved insurance plans. The insurance companies will be negotiating for the lowest prices possible to pay for their own tax increases from the Baucus bill.  But while insurance companies get 40 million new clients who will be forced under penalty of the law to buy health insurance and given the money to buy it, doctors will see little benefits from the market interference.  Emergency Rooms will be happy to see more patients carrying insurance, but they will still be required to treat illegal aliens.  Also, ERs will still have to treat those who are too poor to get insurance.  Many of these people have not taken advantage of plans that their states offer for the poor so they are not likely to seek Federal help either.  In addition, they do not file taxes, so they won’t have to worry about the Baucus penalty tax for not buying insurance.

In the end, the money makers in the Baucus plan are the insurance companies and the government. The next step in the process is seeing how much it takes in pork barrel bribes to get 60 votes.

For additional posts, links and video, visit my official blog at The Conservative Constitutionalist Movement

During the campaign, Obama sought to defeat the old Liberal label of “tax and spend”.  He swore fiscal responsibility and pay-go.  $1.58 trillion in red ink later and here we are.

He promised something else.  Obama promised no tax increases on people who make less than $250,000 a year.  That number fluctuated, but in the end it was between $150,000 and $250,000.  Now Obama is in trouble.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise.  All throughout the campaign, Conservatives kept saying you can’t have fiscal responsibility, buy whatever you want, and give 95% of Americans a tax cut.  We said even if you don’t balance the budget, if you spend as much as Obama was promising, you will have to raise taxes.  Some of us even predicted that Obama would seek to redefine the word tax in order to get around it (e.g. raising government fees, licensing costs, and other such things).

On Sunday with George Stephanopoulos, that is exactly what Obama did.  First he argues that private insurance companies raising rates because people use the ER for free is a tax increase.  Then he argues that adding up to $3,800 to a family’s tax bill for not buying government approved insurance is not a tax increase.

This issue is about to get even worse for Obama.  The White House has recently admitted that Conservatives were correct in their estimates of what Cap and Trade taxes would cost the average family in the US.  When the administration said it would cost families the equivalent of a postage stamp a day, they meant if you were mailing bricks.  The final White House number comes to $1,761 per family in new Cap and Trade taxes.  Considering how well they’ve done with their other estimates lately, like how high unemployment would get, I am not too optimistic that the number will be so low.

If Democrats stick with the Baucus plan, they will have a new tax issue to answer for.  The Baucus plan pays for itself through taxes on medical equipment, clinics, insurance companies, and medical savings accounts.  A rational person might think that if you wanted to cut medical costs, you would actually cut taxes on all these things.  After taxing these things and making them more expensive, the Baucus plan gives you tax credits so that you can afford to buy insurance at the pretax rates.  It generously gives you up to 13% of your income back to buy health insurance, if you don’t make too much.  Will that be enough to pay for health insurance when the Baucus plan increases healthcare costs by 30% with his new embedded taxes?  By the way, in case you were wondering, I am assuming that some of the cost of the Baucus plan actually will be paid for by Medicare cuts like they promise.  But seriously now, what are the odds of that happening?

Consider this, to pay for his trillion dollar deficits, Obama is considering raising the top tax bracket to 39% (a 4% increase) and tacking on a 5% “surcharge” for a total tax increase on the richest Americans of 9%.  At the same time, he is going to increase your family’s utility bill through Cap and Trade taxes by $1761 and fine you $3,800 if you don’t buy government approved insurance.  By my calculations, if you have a family of four making 300 times the poverty level, that’s a tax increase of 9%.  Now don’t get too upset, the rich will be paying embedded Cap and Trade taxes too.  Their taxes will still go up more than yours.  Feel better now?

The Baucus bill is a gift to the insurance lobby.    Think about it from the insurance company’s perspective.  Yes, you pay higher taxes as an insurance company, but then that money is given to your potential clients and they are told they must buy your product or they will pay government penalty taxes.  30 million new customers, whether they need insurance or not.  In addition, the government takes everyone who can’t afford you or is high risk and puts them in a government co-op (totally different than a government option).

Count on Obama to claim credit for giving 95% of Americans a tax cut when you get your health insurance credits.  Don’t count on him admitting that Cap and Trade, embedded healthcare taxes, tax penalties for not buying government approved insurance, taxes on your employers and taxes on your employee and health savings accounts are actually tax increases on those of us who make less than $250,000.

Despite the largest deficit in history, trillions in unfunded liabilities, Social Security and Medicare on the verge of going broke, and trillions in additional spending on the horizon, the ever politically optimistic President Obama is claiming today that you have made a 17% return on the Government’s TARP investment.

That’s great news, show me the money.  Oh wait, just like my alleged payout from insurance lobbyists for protesting Obamacare, I have a feeling this is money I will never see.  Obama is like an evil trust fund manager, investing your money in the riskiest of businesses and then taking whatever profit might come of it and buying skate parks and honey bee insurance for Democrat congressional districts.

As a matter of fact, the $70 billion that has been paid back by the surviving banks is almost enough to cover the failed auto bailout which resulted in government ownership of GM and the sale of Chrysler to another country.  By the way, in case you were wondering if we will ever see any of that money back; profits from the Chrysler sale to Fiat went to the unions and GM can’t find their way out of the red even when Obama invests your money in Cash for Clunkers.

The key to Obama’s 17% return on investment figure is that he is only counting the banks that have survived and repayed TARP.  Other banks, like Citigroup, have not been allowed to repay TARP and now are owned by you and me through Obama’s investment scheme.  The mandatory Obama tax investment portfolio, starring Citigroup and GM, would make Bernie Madoff blush.

I’m glad Obama is an optimist.  Honestly, he is more optimistic about the government than Bush was about Iraq.  But as Obama sounds the call of “Mission Accomplished” on the economy, perhaps the only people cheering should be the ones occupying the hundreds of thousands of jobs Obama claims to have created.

The other night between 8:00pm and 8:45pm the most honest person on your television set may have been Congressman Joe Wilson.  It certainly wasn’t President Obama. In town hall fashion, Wilson was the house member who forsook normal government civility and dared to call Obama a liar.  Ironically, this was only shortly after the President called half of the country liars for imagining that government healthcare might have to ration limited resources.  When Obama said that they were going to call out people who give misinformation about his healthcare plan, was he exempting himself from this threat?

Obama said that his healthcare plan wouldn’t increase the deficit.  In order to cut Medicare costs by $500 billion without shorting doctors, they already plan on increasing Medicare funding by $245 billion in deficit spending.  Since it’s going to happen anyway, Obama decided not to count that.  That was the obvious falsehood.  The not-so-obvious falsehood is that Obama is using the most optimistic numbers his DC accountants can provide and ignoring outside independent sources.

Obama said his plan will not use federal dollars to fund abortion.  If only it were true.  Let me explain the shell game.  Obama says no federal dollars will be used for abortion.  Obama says no federal dollars will be used to fund the public option, because it will be self-sufficient on the premiums it receives.  This allows Obama to cover abortion on demand with the public option while saying that no federal funds are used for abortion.  It’s not paid for with federal funds, it’s paid for with premiums paid by the customers. Obama then says that they will provide federal dollars to those who cannot afford health insurance and subsidize them so that they can pay the premiums.  In the end, the federal government gives dollars to Americans, who then use those dollars to buy into the public option that will cover abortion. But in Obama’s mind he can plausibly deny that he is using federal dollars to pay for abortion.

If you doubt me, look at what has happened every time an amendment has been offered that prohibits the public option from providing abortion.  Look at what will continue to happen every time this amendment is offered.  And then look at the Capps amendment that specifically guarantees that the public option will cover abortion on demand.

Obama said his health plan won’t cover illegal aliens.  Here is where the vilified Joe Wilson sounded more like a member of the British House of Commons than a member of the US House of Representatives.  When he spouted “You lie!” towards the President, I paused in a moment of shock because I couldn’t tell if those words were coming from the TV or directly from my own mouth.  I figured it out when Pelosi shot daggers from her eyes towards the right of my screen and not directly at me.

When Republican Dean Heller from Nevada offered an amendment to HR 3200 requiring verification of citizenship status before someone could obtain benefits from the Democrat health plan (just like they do for any other government assistance), it was defeated on party lines.  Now why is that?  Obama says his plan won’t cover illegal aliens, but they refuse to do what is necessary to ensure that it doesn’t.  Do you see what is going on here?

It is a pattern that is becoming more and more recognizable.

During the campaign, the biggest names surrounding Obama could all be found in one place: under the campaign bus.  Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, his own grandmother, and others suddenly were mere acquaintances.  When Obama was elected he hired a string of people who didn’t know they owed back taxes, including new head of the IRS Tim Geithner.  In fact, IRS chief Tim Geithner claimed he made an honest mistake on his tax return.

Just recently, Van Jones resigned after discovering that signing the petition to investigate George Bush for causing 9/11 meant that he thought we should investigate George Bush for causing 9/11.  But Obama remains unscathed by these blunders.  As easily as Van Jones claimed he never agreed with his younger self, Obama can claim that he has no idea about his friends’ and employees’ past.  In the same fashion, he has been able to successfully tie HR 3200 to Nancy Pelosi and act as though his plan is different.  I will believe it when I see it.

Of course, this has become the modus operandi of the Left.  At the same time Pelosi was getting the class of 2006 elected on claims of a Republican culture of corruption, William Jefferson of Louisiana was plausibly denying that he knew about the hundred grand of bribe money in his freezer, Harry Reid was plausibly denying culpability for government improvements near land he had just purchased, Charlie Rangel was plausibly denying that he knew anything about his illegal rental tax shelters, and the combination of Frank and Dodd were plausibly denying that the government had screwed up with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and something needed to be done about it.

Now we have lost 2.5 million jobs since the stimulus was enacted, but  Obama claims he has created or saved over a million jobs.  Obama again last night blamed is $1.58 trillion deficit on the last 8 years.  ACORN has turned in their own members from Florida for voter fraud, claiming that this proves they are an honest organization.  Obama got alot of mileage out of bringing up the Iraq and Afghanistan war last night.  Interestingly, some of the senators who applauded the loudest were Democrats who voted for the wars before they voted against them.

From his staff picks to his policy, Obama has made something completely clear.  The buck stops somewhere before it reaches his desk.  He has surrounded himself with socialists and self-declared communists who have radical ideas about healthcare, but he himself makes speeches to children as though he were a conservative capitalist.  He talks about limited government, personal responsibility, and vast right wing mythology, but eventually America will become weary of this culture of plausible deniability.

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