MIKE McINTYRE BAILS WITH 'NOT VOTING' STANCE ON OBAMACARE! BIG MEDIA IGNORE IT.

GOP House approves resolution funding all Obamacare -- including regulation attacking religious freedom!

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / 080213

THE WHEELS ARE COMING OFF. GOP GONE NUTS. WASHINGTON OUT OF CONTROL!

March 6, 2013

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GOP bails -- They have no shame! Report on Mike McIntyre shows 'Not Voting' for NC congressman.

By Terence P. Jeffrey CNS

  

President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

(CNSNews.com) - The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 267-151 on Wednesday to approve a $982-billion continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government through the rest of fiscal 2013 that fully funds the implementation of Obamacare during that period.

The House Republican leaders turned aside requests from groups of conservative members to include language in the bill that would have withheld funding for implementation of all of Obamacare, or, alternatively, that would have withheld funding for the Obamacare regulation that requires health-plans to provide cost-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

*** Exclusive report on USA DOT COM by Verne Strickland  March 8, 2013

GOP House approves resolution funding all Obamacare -- including regulation attacking religious freedom!

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / 080213

THE WHEELS ARE COMING OFF. GOP GONE NUTS. WASHINGTON OUT OF CONTROL!

March 6, 2013

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GOP bails -- They have no shame!

 

 

 

By Terence P. Jeffrey CNS

  

President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

(CNSNews.com) - The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 267-151 on Wednesday to approve a $982-billion continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government through the rest of fiscal 2013 that fully funds the implementation of Obamacare during that period.

The House Republican leaders turned aside requests from groups of conservative members to include language in the bill that would have withheld funding for implementation of all of Obamacare, or, alternatively, that would have withheld funding for the Obamacare regulation that requires health-plans to provide cost-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Rules Committee rejected a request by Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R.-Okla.) to allow the full House to simply vote on an amendment to the CR sponsored by Bridenstine, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R.-Kans.) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R.-Fla.) that would have stripped funding from implementation of Obamacare.

Last week, Bridenstine and Huelskamp sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor asking them to include such language in the CR. The CR produced by the leadership did not include that language.

Bridenstine then asked the Rules Committee on Wednesday--when it approved the rule that would govern House floor proceeding on the CR--to allow a vote on his amendment. The Rules Committee, however, rejected Bridenstine's request and refused to allow the rank and file members of the House to even vote on the proposition of defunding Obamacare.

Similarly, 14 Republican House members, led by Rep. Diane Black (R.-Tenn.) and Rep. John Fleming (R.-La.), wrote Boehner and Cantor last week asking them to include language in the CR that would reverse the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation in order to protect the free exercise of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The Republican leaders did not include language in their CR to reverse this regulation--even though Boehner himself had declared in a House floor speech on Feb. 8, 2012 that the regulation was a violation of the constitutional right to freedom of religion and that Congress would not let it stand.

The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously declared that the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation--whose enforcement will now be carried out with funds approved by the Republican-controlled House--is an "unjust and illegal mandate" that violates the "personal civil rights" of individual Americans.

While the Republican-controlled House did not use the must-pass CR to defund or reverse any part of Obamacare, it did use the CR to accomplish other priorities through defunding.

For example, it prohibited the purchase of foreign-made ball bearings. “None of the funds appropriated by this Act may be used for the procurement of ball and roller bearings other than those produced by a domestic source and of domestic origin," says the CR.

The act also, for example, prohibits (with some exceptions) sending more than 50 government employees to a conference overseas.

"None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to send or otherwise pay for the attendance of more than 50 employees from a Federal department or agency that are stationed within the United States at any single conference occurring outside a state of the United States, except for employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs stationed in the Philippines, unless the relevant Secretary reports to the Committees on Appropriations of both Houses of Congress at least 5 days in advance that such attendance is important to the national interest," says the Act.

But, by contrast, it does not restrict funding for Planned Parenthood.

Of the 151 members of the House who voted against this CR, only 14 were Republicans. They included: Justin Amash (Mich.), Jim Bridenstine (Okla.), Broun (Ga.), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), Scott DesJarlais (Tenn.), John J. Duncan Jr. (Tenn.), Phil Gingrey (Ga.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.), Jack Kingston (Ga.), Tom McClintock (Calif.). Thomas Massie (Ky.), Bill Posey (Fla.), Matt Salmon (Ariz.), and Steve Stockman (Tex.).

Despite the vow they made in their 2010 "A Pledge to America" to post bills online for at least 72 hours before bringing them up for a vote, the House Republican leaders brought this CR up for a vote a little less than 48 hours after posting it.

Obama's secretive and misleading way to ration health care to seniors. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

VERNE STRICKLAND / March 8, 2013

I shouldn't do this to you. I searched for ways to cut down this verbose report of the many ways that U.S. seniors will be duped and screwed by the President of the United States, who ostensibly is watching over us. At least being honest with us.

But our health and even our lives are in the hands of a selfish, tricky man who is playing cruel games with our present, and our future -- or what is left of it.

If you or any member of your family is 65 years of age or older, you owe to yourself and your loved ones to read this -- even to struggle through it, even to slurp several cups of industrial-grade coffee to wash down a super size NO-DOZ. This news is that shocking.

Please do it. You may wonder then if it's too late to do anything about it. I frankly don't know. I will be 76 on March 11, 2013. I have incurable bone cancer. The stakes for me are no higher than for you. It just seems that the "inevitable" in my case is much closer.

REMEMBER . . . American generations who are deep into the "Golden Years". For you, it has been declared through Obama's signature legislation, now the law of the land, that when you reach the age of 76, you will cross into a unenviable medical 'twilight zone'.

On that day, under the unique Obama concept, treatment for cancer will no longer be available via the snare commonly known as "Obamacare" (a title from which our president and the Democrats who spawned this monstrosity are now fleeing in shame and terror. Little wonder.)

God bless and keep you. Soon, faith and prayer may be all we have left. 

NEWS UPDATE MARCH 9, 2013: SEVENTH DISTRICT CONGRESSMAN MIKE McINTYRE IGNORED HIS RESPONSIBILITIES AND WAS ONE OF 14 ON THE 'DID NOT VOTE' LIST AS FRIGHTFUL OBAMACARE BILL WAS PASSED. THIS WAS A DATE THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY! ALL NC RESIDENTS, ESPECIALLY THE ELDERLY, ILL, AND THE VERY YOUNG, WILL SUFFER IMMEASURABLY BECAUSE OF THIS.

Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the White House (Photocredit: Wikipedia)

Health care reform has been one of the most polarizing discussions in all of public policy.  Assertions decrying poor access and low quality of U.S. medical care relative to nationalized systems, despite often being wholly contradicted by facts in the medical journals, have served to justify the dramatic changes to the U.S. health care system fundamental to the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

Only after being signed into law by President Obama has the nature of those changes become visible. While many of the law’s provisions and their implications are necessarily complex, wordsmithing by the crafters of the ACA and strident denials by its supporters have masked some of the most significant impacts of the law.

President Obama’s ACA established the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a 15-member panel of unelected federal employees; its members to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The law does not require the IPAB to be bi-partisan in structure, as is required for almost all other independent agencies. Its mission is specific – to restrict payments to doctors and hospitals in order to achieve a reduction in Medicare spending beneath a specified level.

The reality is that the IPAB represents an unprecedented shift of power from individual Americans and their families to a centralized authority, a controlling Board of political appointees that is virtually unaccountable, and destined to become President Obama’s version of the NICE rationing board in Britain’s socialized medical system, the National Health Service.

But wait – President Obama and the ACA supporters point to specific language in the ACA law that explicitly prohibits “rationing.” Beyond the obvious – the absence of any definition of rationing in the law – is that this is implausible deniability, since all evidence points to the de facto rationing that will clearly result from IPAB’s dramatic payment cuts to doctors and hospitals.

We know that doctors cite the money-losing reimbursement rates for government insurance as the Number One reason for refusing new Medicaid and Medicare patients. And we know, even before the ACA payment cuts of 31 percent in 2013, more than 20 percent of primary care doctors already were not accepting any new Medicare patients (five times the rate of doctors who refuse private insurance), and about 40 percent of primary care doctors and 20 percent of specialists already refused most new Medicare patients. By 2019, Medicare cuts under the Obama law will be so severe that payments will become even lower than Medicaid, a system by which almost one half of doctors already refuse to accept new patients.

But what about the claim by Obama supporters that rationing by the IPAB in government insurance is no different from having private insurance, where coverage can be denied?  No, it is not at all the same.  When a government body, or any single entity, is the overwhelmingly dominant insurer for a group of people, or when such an entity is given vast and unaccountable authority over decisions, like IPAB, that body’s decisions to restrict care are essentially absolute.

On the contrary, a private insurer has no monopoly – in a competitive environment, consumers can shop for insurance that meets their coverage needs.  Just as in any other good or service, competition not only reduces prices, it improves choices for individuals. The difference is that in this case, choice can save lives.

All that said, the clout of IPAB is even broader and more nefarious than on initial consideration. Beyond overpowering authority to directly cut payments for care under Medicare, the IPAB has the power to regulate all health care in the U.S., including private health care and private health insurance, so long as such action is deemed to “help reduce the growth rate [of national health expenditures] while maintaining or enhancing [Medicare] beneficiary access to quality care.” For instance, IPAB can reduce reimbursement via private insurance down to, or even below, the reduced Medicare rates, thereby maintaining (equal) access to care for Medicare enrollees and limiting overall national spending.



Can we predict the future of IPAB? Over a decade ago, Britain set up its National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), a group of appointees whose pronouncements limit medication and technology usage based on costs. Despite the endless complaints and numerous lawsuits by doctors and citizen groups in Britain, NICE served as the model upon which IPAB was based. A Board of appointees like the IPAB, its role is to reduce health spending.

NICE has become a rationing Board, holding costs down by limiting available treatments. Ninety percent of England’s hospital trusts are now rationing care by following NICE’s long list of “recommendations” that includes stopping access to drugs that prolong life or cure breast cancer, stomach cancer, kidney cancer, macular degeneration (causing progressive blindness), multiple myeloma, rheumatoid arthritis, early Alzheimer’s disease, MS, and osteoporosis that causes hip fractures and premature death. NICE also restricts hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, procedures for back pain, infertility, steroid injections and cancer screening like PAP smears.  David Stout of the NHS Confederation representing primary care trusts explained to the BBC that “the NHS faces considerable financial pressures and scarce resources have to be used as effectively as possible.” Under NICE, treatments are routinely refused on the grounds of limited resources and the need to make decisions based not on individual’s or family’s choice, but on the government’s assessment of the benefit.

Ironically, according to its own annual reports, NICE is spending more money on propaganda about its decisions than it would have spent if it allowed patients access to the very medicines it is denying. 

 Britain’s Daily Mail reported that money that the institute spends on public relations campaigns “could have paid for 5,000 Alzheimer’s sufferers to get £2.50-a-day drugs for a year” or “nearly 200 patients with advanced kidney cancer to have a drug for 12 months that would double their life expectancy.”
Regardless of how strident the denials by ACA supporters about IPAB, nothing was more revealing about President Obama’s true agenda than his personal choice for Administrator of Medicare and Medicaid, Donald Berwick, officially appointed within a few months of the bill’s signing. Berwick proclaimed to the NHS in 2008 that individual choice is not appropriate in structuring health care – “that is for leaders to do” – as he continued, “I’m romantic about the NHS. I love it” despite its proven inferior outcomes and scandalous limits of access to care.

And one year later, Berwick praised the UK’s rationing Board specifically, saying “NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable, and — importantly — knowledge-building system.” This is the same Donald Berwick, who declared before his stealth appointment by President Obama while Congress was in recess that “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

ARE YOU A 'SEVENTY-SIXER'?

THE SPIRIT OF "76" -- OBAMA'S VISION FOR SENIORS WITH CANCER

 By Verne Strickland / March 5, 2013

 Discussion of cancer is all the rage these days. Not surprising in that cancer is raging through virtually every country on earth, every social and economic stratum, and almost every household.

Where to turn? Once upon a time in America, most of us could "relax" with confidence that, even in the worst of times, we needn't fear the worst -- cancer without treatment, pain without relief. But there are limits now to that blessed assurance.




Especially where our elderly are concerned. Especially now that the program that bears the name of our president -- Obamacare -- is the law of the land. Frightening -- even ghoulish possibilities now loom in the future -- the immediate future. Tomorrow.

That is, for the American generations who are deep into their "Golden Years". For them, it has been declared through Obama's signature legislation, now the law of the land, that when an American citizen reaches the age of 76, he or she will cross into a unenviable medical 'twilight zone'.

On that day, under the unique Obama concept, treatment for cancer will no longer be available via the snare commonly known as "Obamacare" (a title from which our president and the Democrats who spawned this monstrosity are now fleeing in shame and terror. Little wonder.)

This article cannot cover it all. Indeed, the bill that reached the President's desk, which he quickly signed, was a Guinness-size 2,700 pages in length according to several estimates. But who's counting?

This whole thing is more than a little personal for me. I have cancer -- a plasma-borne bone malignancy called Multiple Myeloma. There is no cure. But it is responsive to advanced radiation treatment and chemotherapy, available at specialized clinics in Wilmington such as Cape Fear Cancer Specialists.

With the dedicated care and support of Board-Certified Oncologists Dr. William McNulty and Dr. Michael Papagikos, I have come out of the wheelchair that brought me to their facilities, and made very satisfying progress, to the extent that my cancer is now categorized as "in remission."

But the future for me and many other cancer victims does not look bright at this time. Because of the provisions of Obamacare, all my very effective care and treatment will end on Monday, March 11, 2013, when I reach the ripe old age of 76.

Since the dedicated care has delivered a stunning blow to the cancer which still remains in me, albeit in a weakened state, it is a certainty that my health will regress, and quickly, when all the marvelous scientific advances are withdrawn.

While I have the pen and the audience, I have to emphasize that I attempt to speak for the many others who share my plight in some form and at some level. In the chemo suite where I was treated, I had the opportunity to visit with and pray with patients whose outlook was considerably more grim than mine. They were battling such feared malignancies as breast cancer, brain cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, and others. And they fought with dignity, stoicism, and faith. God bless and keep them. Their plight is more devastating than mine.

How do I feel personally about all this? I am not happy at all with the hand that Obama has dealt me and all other Seventy-Sixers who have crossed the dreaded threshold and now will face cancer without treatment unless Obama decrees some kind of benevolent pardon to hapless senior citizens.

It is more than worth of note that, according to heretofore "secret" provisions of Obamacare, neither the prsident, nor his family, nor members of his Cabinet nor members of the U.S. Congress must live under the threat that he has cast over average American citizens.

My, but American royalty does have its privileges, doesn't it?

Discussion about all this is growing into rage as we finally get a look at the formerly hidden threats to seniors are exposed. Remember that Nancy Pelosi, in so many words, mocked Congress by proclaiming that "if you want to see what's in the bill, you'll have to pass it."

They did pass it, and they have read it. It smacks of the Draconian measures that Hitler and his Nazis unleashed on the Jews and other "undesirables" in the fierce and merciless Holocaust of World War II. Among the "undesirables" marked for death were "the elderly and infirm."

This single statement will be enough to stir up liberal Democrats frothing at the mouth in denial. But it's true. And denials will only bring forth the humiliating truth.

In the meantime, many of us, due to age and circumstances, are left to content with a future of being denied available scientific treatment and care. If that's not criminal, it should be. This, after all, is still America, no matter what President Barack Hussein Obama happens to think.

Jeb Bush Book: Undocumented immigrants should be ineligible for citizenship.

Verne Strickland / Blogmaster / February 5, 2015

 











Elise Foley   The Huffington Post
Posted: 03/04/2013 1:57 pm EST  |  Updated: 03/04/2013 5:52 pm EST

Follow:

Immigration, Video, Immigration Wars, Citizenship, Clint Bolick, Latino Politics, Immigration Reform, Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush Immigration Wars, Jeb Bush Book, Jeb Bush Clint Bolick, Path To Citizenship, Pathway To Citizenship, Politics News

 

WASHINGTON -- In a new book, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) makes a notable reversal on immigration reform, arguing that creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would only encourage future unauthorized immigration.
"It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences -- in this case, that those who violated the law can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship," Bush and lawyer Clint Bolick argue in a new book, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution. "To do otherwise would signal once again that people who circumvent the system can still obtain the full benefits of American citizenship."
The book, which The Huffington Post obtained before its Tuesday release, lays out the two men's proposals for comprehensive immigration reform. Both are longtime proponents of reform, and Bush in particular has long beat the drum for the GOP to take a new tone on the matter.
But the book's treatment of a pathway to citizenship stands in contrast to Bush's previous statements on immigration reform. And ironically, later in the book Bush argues that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, suffered immense political damage by moving to the right on the issue during the GOP primary.
"Mitt Romney moved so far to the right on immigration issues that it proved all but impossible for him to appeal to Hispanic voters in the general election," Bush and Bolick write. "Although Romney eventually called for comprehensive immigration reform, a platform that hardened the party's stance on immigration hung like an anvil around his candidacy," they continue.
Bush's reversal doesn't appear as severe as some of the tough rhetoric used by Romney during the primary. Still, it creates a contrast between him and some of Bush's possible 2016 Republican primary opponents, and shows what could be the biggest problem in finding a compromise on immigration reform this year. While some Republicans, including potential 2016 candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), are calling for a pathway to citizenship, most members of the party are arguing for only legalization. Democrats, meanwhile, argue a special road to become citizens is absolutely necessary. The American people for the most part also support such a measure, according to a number of polls.
As of June 2012, Bush asserted that he supported a pathway to citizenship.
"You have to deal with this issue," Bush told CBS' Charlie Rose. "You can't ignore it, and so either a path to citizenship, which I would support -- and that does put me probably out of the mainstream of most conservatives -- or ... a path ... to residency of some kind."
In the book, however, Bush and Bolick write that there should be "two penalties for illegal entry: fines and/or community service and ineligibility for citizenship."
They don't fully rule out citizenship, however, despite what that sentence implies. Although Bush and Bolick state there should be no special pathway, they say undocumented immigrants should be allowed to go through normal channels to naturalize by going to their native country to apply. That process currently requires three- or 10-year bars and no guarantee of return, making it untenable to many undocumented immigrants.
"A grant of citizenship is an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage," they write. "However, illegal immigrants who wish to become citizens should have the choice of returning to their native countries and applying through normal immigration processes that now would be much more open than before."
Bush and Bolick propose a different solution for Dreamers, young undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as children. They argue citizenship should be granted to people who entered the country under the age of 18, have lived in the U.S. for at least five years, committed no "significant crimes" and either graduated from high school, obtained a GED or entered military service.
For legal immigration, they argue there must be a better process that makes it less appealing to come to the United States without authorization.
"There is one reason above all others that we have millions of illegal immigrants in our country: because under our current immigration system, there is no lawful avenue for them to enter the country. ... So that saying 'they should wait in line like everyone else' is hollow because there is no line in which to wait," they write. "The days in which people could lawfully emigrate to the United States just because they wanted to pursue the American Dream are as much a memory as Ellis Island."

UPDATE: 2:55 p.m. -- Bush defended his stance to the Miami Herald's Marc Caputo after an anonymous Romney adviser accused him of advocating for the same positions that he said tanked the former GOP presidential candidate.
"[I] am not advocating self deportation, read the book," Bush wrote in an email.
The advisor argued to Caputo that it was the same stance.
"Where the hell was this Jeb Bush during the campaign?" the advisor said. "He spent all this time criticizing Romney and it turns out he has basically the same position. So he wants people to go back to their country and apply for citizenship? Well, that's self deportation. We got creamed for talking about that. And now Jeb is saying the same thing."