The Pelosi Smoke Screen: Stories You May Be Ignoring In the Meantime

Given all the media coverage on Pelosi and the CIA briefings it comes as no surprise that there are other big news stories going on behind the scenes.  This is typical of this administration and the liberal super majority ~ they create a crisis or a smoke screen and work fast behind the scenes to pass an agenda item without the full knowledge of the electorate.

Several items of interest have gone on over the last week or so.  Although I have not been able to post as much as I would like to, I have been keeping abreast by listening to C-Span during the weekdays and much of what I have caught is not giving me that shiny happy feeling…

Some items of note are the Census Director hearing, health care, Internet Neutrality, media bailouts, media contributions to the Obama campaign, Cap and Trade, and executive pay caps.

Census:

Robert Groves, who we reported on a while back, had his hearing on Friday, interestingly enough, no votes were taken on Friday and therefore, almost all the senators had gone home to their home states.  Groves has been associated with faulty sampling that could game the system and was deemed unconstitutional back in the 90′s.  Although he is incredibly intelligent and qualified as a statistician, ethics, morals, and integrity are required to run the Census, since it is such a sensitive department.  The Census has the capability of changing the entire political/voting landscape of a country and could have a long lasting effect that would ensure the redistricting gives the upper hand to one party over the other if not done ethically or properly.  The Census has had past associations with ACORN, the same ACORN that is facing charges of voter fraud in more than over a dozen states.  ACORN was also reported to have been marking front doors and canvassing neighborhoods using GPS as recently as last week.

Health care:

The Senate version is mandating everyone carry health care as of 2013… exempting only illegal immigrants and those opposed for religious reasons. Odd concept since in some parts of the country, it is the illegal immigrant population driving up the costs.

All employers will be mandated to provide insurance to their workers, or face a “special tax”. Additionally, the government will be mandating the four levels of coverage provided by that employer… from lowest to highest. And no annual or lifetime limitations allowed either.
Not only will the government regulate the marketing of commercial insurance premiums to families and employers, they will also regulate premium prices, allowing workers to drop out and seek a better deal…. no doubt that offered by the federal government plan.

Not enough? They plan to dictate sales commissions as well.

Under the Senate proposals, the government would regulate not only insurance products, but also the marketing of insurance and sales commissions paid to insurance agents and brokers.

Under these auspices, the private insurer – who requires a profit to stay in business – cannot compete with the government who just sucks more out of the taxpayer as their costs increase. With government mandates controlling everything from premium price for coverage to marketing, their demise is imminent. Indeed, it is being orchestrated.

One of the most notable features of the Senate proposals is that workers could drop out of an employer’s group health plan and buy private insurance on their own, outside the workplace. The employer’s normal contribution for a worker would be paid to the insurance exchange.

Democrats said that people dropping out of employer plans would, in many cases, be eligible for tax credits to defray their premiums.

Employers worry that this feature would destabilize the health plans they provide to employees.

“If people can opt out of employer-sponsored insurance and get a tax credit, that will lead to a death spiral for employer-sponsored plans,” said James P. Gelfand, senior manager of health policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce.

“People who are sick will stay in employer plans, and many young, healthy people will opt out,” Mr. Gelfand said.

The House version accomplishes something similiar, using a government “health insurance exchange” that mandates participation by all private insurers. The government would also label all insurers with “quality ratings”…. a Good “House”keeping Seal of Approval, so to speak.

Consumers could sign up for insurance at hospitals, schools, Social Security offices and state departments of motor vehicles.

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Under the Democratic proposals, the government would offer tax credits to help people buy insurance. The credit would be available to people with incomes up to four times the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four).

The government would also provide tax credits to help small businesses buy insurance for employees. The credit would be available to businesses with up to 25 employees, and businesses with the lowest-wage workers would get more aid.

Read the rest here… the report goes into detail on how Obama lied after its meeting last weekwith top health care CEOs.

The below summary encapsulates a great argument against government intervention with the health care industry and especially the single payer system.  John Lechleiter of Eli Lilly spoke before the US Chamber of Commerce on May 15, 2009.  He did not get political but stated his concern that policy makers would enforce a system that would leave out innovation and would actually create the opposite results than what would be originally intended:

In remarks before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today, John C. Lechleiter, Ph.D., chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) said that federal policymakers’ attention to access, quality and costs in health reform should also include a focus on innovation – or the results could include “unintended side-effects.” Innovation, he said, helped boost the average Americans life expectancy from 47 to 78 years, a rise of 66 percent over the past century and “unprecedented in human history.” In his keynote speech before a group of business, government and health care representatives, Lechleiter identified specific policy proposals and their implications for patients and for developing breakthrough treatments and cures.

“Encouraging innovation needs to be the purpose of U.S. health care reform, not its victim,” Lechleiter said. “It’s innovation that explains why we are the healthiest, longest-lived and wealthiest human beings ever to occupy the planet.”

But, he asserted, if heath care reform does not encourage innovation, “then the important goals of expanding access, improving quality and controlling costs will prove illusory.”

He cited a Columbia University study that analyzed data from 52 countries and showed that, controlling for other factors, the availability of new medicines alone accounted for 40 percent of the increase in life expectancy during the 1980s and 1990s. He said the medical advances of the past century that made life-expectancy and quality-of-life gains possible included the invention of:

–  Antibiotics to cure infections
–  Vaccines that have nearly eradicated several conditions, such as polio
–  Effective treatments for a growing number of cancers, and
–  Medications that have lessened the toll of a number of dreaded diseases,
such that they are now considered chronic, manageable conditions.

He then observed, “The economic payback from these gains is difficult to overstate. The payback is years of productive work, economic value added, consumer spending and tax dollars paid – which together outweighs the costs of treatment overwhelmingly – even if you resist the idea of putting a number on the intrinsic value of being alive.”

Lechleiter expressed hope for similar future gains, but he pointed to major bellwethers warning that innovation is at risk:

–  The pharmaceutical industry, he said, is “in the midst of a wave of
defensive consolidations that will leave the world with even fewer
entities capable of taking an idea — a discovery — and turning it into
a medicine approved for patients.”
–  “Half of the smaller biotech firms in the U.S. have less than a
year of [operating] cash remaining, and a third are down to their last
six months”; and
–  Recent FDA new drug approvals have dropped sharply relative to the past
30 years.

Lechleiter rounded out his speech with a closer look at several areas of public policy under which, depending on the path taken in health reform, innovation will be enhanced or curbed. Prefacing his policy prescriptions, he said: “When it comes to sustaining innovation, the burden remains on us — as it should. We’re not asking for a handout or a bailout. Instead, businesses that live or die by health care innovation in the U.S. ask only that we be allowed to continue doing just that: proving the value of what we’ve developed or failing in the marketplace.”

He urged all stakeholders engaged in health reform to ensure that:

–  The value of medicines is evaluated by doctors and patients, who, when
properly informed, can choose from the available alternatives a drug
that’s medically appropriate and best for the individual patient;
–  Innovators get a return on investment that accurately reflects the value
of the innovations delivered, thus encouraging investment in new
treatments and cures for patients; and
–  Innovators retain ownership, for a reasonable period of time, of their
intellectual property, to provide the necessary incentives for
risk-taking that leads to innovation.

Such an approach to public policy, he contended, would usher in:

–  An era of “personalized medicine,” which would tap the
insights of the Human Genome Project and replace the usual
one-size-fits-all approach;
–  Market-based health reforms, including access to insurance for all
Americans, supported by public subsidies and tax credits rather than a
government-run option;
–  Solid comparative effectiveness research that informs on the benefits,
risks and costs of various treatment options but that does not trump
physician judgment, deny patients access to needed treatments or mandate
prices;
–  A 14-year data protection period for biologic drugs, which balances the
prospect of a return on investment with a clear path to lower-cost
copies.  The bipartisan “Pathways for Biosimilars Act” in
Congress takes this approach.

Internet Nuetrality and Google’s Power:

C-Span video here…

Google can pick and choose what sites can be in their searches or what will appear at the top of pages during those searches etc.  There is quite a bit of information in this video.  Google is also lobbying to be exempt from anti-trust laws.  Obama received a lot of money from Google and Silicon Valley so there is a good chance that he will possibly rule in favor of Google.  If Google is not held to anti-trust laws this could be a huge problem for any differing ideologies.

Media Bailouts (Exception to Anti-Trust Laws & Tax Cuts):

As Fox News and the Wall Street Journal increase reader and viewership, the liberally biased media continues to slip in ratings and consumers.  The serious issue at hand with government media bailouts is the slant of information.  The media would openly be in the pocket of government and would act as an arm of a particular party.  This begins to look more and more like Pravda, the propaganda….errr… media of Stalin & the USSR.  I say openly, because currently, much of the media is ultra liberal and is already a part of the DNC.

I am a strong believer in free enterprise and free markets, therefore, I adamantly disagree with bailing out any entity because it causes bias and goes against the basic principles of doing business in a capitalist society.  If a company cannot create a valuable business model it should file bankruptcy, plain and simple – this has caused a nation of lazy, complacent, entitled enterprises and individuals – moral hazard has become the norm.

Four of the suggestions coming out of the policy makers (Kerry):

– Bring copyright laws into the age of the search engine. Taking a portion of a copyrighted work can be protected under the “fair use” doctrine. But the kind of fair use in news reports, academics and the arts — republishing a quote to comment on it, for example — is not what search engines practice when they crawl the Web and ingest everything in their path.

Publishers should not have to choose between protecting their copyrights and shunning the search-engine databases that map the Internet. Journalism therefore needs a bright line imposed by statute: that the taking of entire Web pages by search engines, which is what powers their search functions, is not fair use but infringement.

Such a rule would be no more bold a step than the one Congress took in 1996 rewriting centuries of traditional libel law for the benefit of tech start-ups. It would take away from search engines the “just opt out” mantra — repeated by Google’s witness during the Kerry hearings — and force them to negotiate with copyright holders over the value of their content.

– Federalize the “hot news” doctrine. This doctrine protects against types of poaching that copyright might not cover — the stealing of information not by direct copying but simply by taking the guts of the content. While the Internet has made news vulnerable to pilfering because of the ease of linking from one site to the next, the hot-news doctrine has limited use because it is only recognized in a few states.

Now that many news aggregator sites have taken “linksploitation” to a commercial level by selling ads wrapped around the links they post, Congress has the incentive it needs to pass a federal law protecting hot news. Such a law would give publishers an additional source of legal leverage outside of copyright to demand fair compensation for the content they create.

– Eliminate ownership restrictions. Media insolvency is a greater threat today than media concentration. Congress should abolish caps on ownership of broadcast stations and bars on newspaper and television ownership in the same market. These outdated rules belong to an era when the Web was a home for spiders.

– Grant an antitrust exemption. Congress first came to journalism’s defense with antitrust relief in 1970, when it permitted endangered newspapers to combine their business operations without fear of antitrust suits if their newsrooms remained independent.

As noted in the Kerry hearing, publishers need collective pricing policies for their Web sites to finally break out of the expectation of free content that is afflicting the industry. Antitrust immunity is necessary because most individual news sites can’t go it alone by walling off their content for fees — readers will simply jump to sites that are still free.

A temporary antitrust shelter would serve the public interest by enabling the industry to take steps today to preserve for tomorrow the journalism that benefits us all.

Individual states (Washington) are also giving some unfair treatment to their media by only cutting taxes for those entities and not other businesses.

– Use tax policy to promote the press. Washington state is taking a lead in the current crisis with legislation signed into law this week to slash business taxes on the press by 40 percent. Congress could provide incentives for placing ads with content creators (not with Craigslist) and allowances for immediate write-offs (rather than capitalization) for all expenses related to news production.

Yippeee!  And this is what Obama has to say on the matter:

What about those media contributions?

Follow the money.

Some people say rich millionaires own the networks so they support the GOP. That is not true.  They’re not owned by a lotta rich Republicans.

Actually, they’re owned by publicly held corporations. General Electric owns NBC, Disney owns ABC, Viacom owns CBS.

Follow the money. (And at the bottom see where FOX News owner News Corp gave it’s money. You will be surprised.)

The entire music/movie/tv industry gave to Mr. Obama $8.6 million dollars.
(I’ve spent a lotta time accumulating this information from Open Secrets at http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cycle=2008&cid;… so I hope it’s of value to you.)

Follow the money.

Here is NBC and ABC breakdown. Didn’t have available CBS (Viacom)

Jeffrey Immelt who is the CEO of GE (NBC) and its PAC have contributed millions of dollars to the DNC and to the Obama campaign.
It gave a million and a half to Dems and about 800,000 to Republicans. $400,000 directly to candidate Obama, and about 80,000 to McCain.
A sister company of NBC, GE Financials (also owned by GE) gave it’s total contribution limits to Democrats. GE Financials is also getting a huge chunk back from the bank bailout.

MSNBC? Follow the money.

Interestingly, the third top contributor to Mr. Obama was Microsoft. Ever hear of MSNBC? And you wonder why it has a liberal slant? $800,000 to Obama from Microsoft, and $400,000 from GE (NBC). Thus the owners of MSNBC (Microsoft and GE) gave candidate Obama $1.2 million in soft money. Other PACS and organizations of GE and Microsoft also contributed to Mr. Obama.

Disney (ABC) gave $300,00 to Obama, $84,00 to Hillary and $21,000 to McCain.

Democrats are the biggest recipient of money from the companies that own broadcasting networks.

Follow the money.

The entire motion picture industry gave $12.7 million to Dems and $1.3 million to GOP.

Commercial TV gave $3.3 million to Dems and $2.2 million to GOP.

Viacom (CBS) is much harder to analyze, but I’ll get back to that.

So, if you follow the money, major broadcasting networks are big time sources of campaign money for Democrats.

Oh, and FOX News? Owned by the News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch? It gave $1.5 million dollars in contributions to campaigns, 68% of that went to Democrats, or roughly about $1.02 million dollars. Less than a half million went to GOP.

Cap and Trade:

The latest IBD/TIPP poll shows that cap and trade is a no go in the public eye.  More people are beginning to understand what it actually entails/means.  Indiana has also found a way around cap and trade this past week.

However, the Obama administration seems as though it may want to advance this agenda, but just under a different name.

How does the “The Clean Energy Divide” sound to you?

The Obama administration is exploring alternative names for cap and trade legislation.

People don’t really know what cap and trade means, but they don’t like it. So a new name is being concocted to gather support for the legislation.

It doesn’t look like the names “carbon tax” or “regressive tax” are in the mix, though. How does “clean energy divide” grab you?

WSJ: Seeking to bolster public support for climate legislation, the Obama administration is consulting pollsters who advocate avoiding phrases such as “cap-and-trade” and “global warming.” On Monday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality was scheduled to meet with Robert Perkowitz, president of ecoAmerica, a Washington-based nonprofit that uses “psychographic research” to “shift personal and civic choices of environmentally agnostic Americans,” according to its Web site.

“We’re trying to give them phrases that work,” Mr. Perkowitz said in an interview. He said that in a survey of some 2,000 Americans conducted by his group in March and April, less than half of the respondents said they would support a “cap-and-trade” policy, and that only 24% said they knew what the phrase means. “If you call it ‘clean energy dividend’…almost anything other than ‘cap and trade,’ you’ll get people responding a lot more favorably,” he said.

Isn’t that nice?  let’s trick the American people so we can still strap the poor and the middle class with tax hikes to obtain our faulty liberal green agenda so Al Gore can receive a bunch of profits as well as GE, Google and Microsoft…

Executive Pay Caps:

The Obama administration has begun serious talks about how it can change compensation practices across the financial-services industry, including at companies that did not receive federal bailout money, according to people familiar with the matter.

The initiative, which is in its early stages, is part of an ambitious and likely controversial effort to broadly address the way financial companies pay employees and executives, including an attempt to more closely align pay with long-term performance.

Administration and regulatory officials are looking at various options, including using the Federal Reserve’s supervisory powers, the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission and moral suasion. Officials are also looking at what could be done legislatively.

Socialism?  Fascism?  You be the judge…

Actually, just keep looking away and don’t pay attention to what’s really going on behind the scenes – rather watch the below video instead:

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