Morning Bell: One Nation Under Arrest

Posted By Conn Carroll On March 31, 2010

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Before President Barack Obama took over the White House, no United States citizen had ever been forced by the federal government to buy a product against their will. But now, thanks to the passage of Obamacare, Americans, by dint of their mere existence, are now required to purchase Obama administration approved health insurance or face a penalty assessed through the Internal Revenue Code. This is simply unprecedented . The income tax doesn’t kick in until an American earns income. Auto liability insurance doesn’t become mandated until an American chooses to drive (and even then it’s only by the state). And farmers must first grow food before they are subject to the regulations of the Department of Agriculture . But facing federal government sanction for simply breathing? That is a troubling assault on American liberty.

Unfortunately, Obamacare is just the latest example of the growing reach of the federal government into all aspects of our lives. While the final bill passed by Congress specifically made the noncompliance with an IRS individual mandate penalty not a crime , far too often when the spotlight of American attention is not focused on an issue, Congress has gone ahead and criminalized what was once before perfectly normal behavior. Consider, for example, small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, whose story is recounted  by Heritage fellows Brian Walsh and Hans von Spakovsky:

In May 2004, FBI agents driving a black Suburban and wearing SWAT gear ran Evertson off the road near his mother’s home in Wasilla, Alaska. When Evertson was face down on the pavement with automatic weapons trained on him, an FBI agent told him he was being arrested because he hadn’t put a federally mandated sticker on a UPS package.

A jury in federal court in Alaska acquitted Evertson, but the feds weren’t finished. They reached into their bag of over 4,500 federal crimes and found another ridiculous crime they could use to prosecute him: supposedly “abandoning” hazardous waste (actually storing, in appropriate containers, valuable materials he was using for the clean-fuel technology he was developing). A second jury convicted him, and he spent 21 months in an Oregon federal prison.

Putting the wrong stamp on a package. Storing your own property own your own land. When did these actions become federal crimes? Why? How can we stop them? A new book launched yesterday and published by The Heritage Foundation answers these questions. One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty documents how over the past 50 years the politicization of American criminal law and practice has created traps for millions of innocent and unwary Americans and threatens to make criminals out of those who are just doing their best to be respectable, law abiding citizens.

In 1998, an American Bar Association task force estimated that there were over 3,000 federal criminal offenses scattered throughout the 50 titles of the United States Code. Just six years later, that number is estimated to be over 4,000 and Columbia law professor John Coffee estimates that the federal government could use the criminal process to enforce as many as 300,000 federal regulations.

Lavrentiy Beria, the chief of the Soviet security and secret police under Stalin reputedly said, “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.” Our country is by no means a Soviet police state yet, but a federal government empowered with a sprawling code that makes all of us potential criminals is more than just an existential threat to American Liberty. This overcriminalization trend must end. Become informed. Learn the issues. Buy the book . And fight back .

Wait, What? President Obama Admits ObamaCare Not Cutting Costs Like He Promised
More Employers Report Squeeze From ObamaCare’s Job-Killing Tax Increases and Health Care Cost Hikes

By John Boehner, House Republican Leader

Washington, Mar 30 -

With his new health care law already hurting our economy, President Obama now admits ObamaCare is not cutting costs like he repeatedly promised it would.  Apparently, the federal government is spending a trillion dollars, raising taxes, cutting Medicare, and imposing job-killing mandates for a “first step” that will require “further adjustments.”  Tell that to the employers, workers, and small businesses who are watching ObamaCare take money out of their pockets.

We’ve seen this presidential switcheroo before: when it became clear the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ wasn’t working, the President claimed it was never about creating jobs anyway.  For the American people, who have always considered lowering costs to be their highest health care priority, ObamaCare is fast becoming just another Washington program that overspends and underdelivers.  That’s why we need to repeal this government takeover of health care and replace it with reforms focused first on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.

ccording to a new USA Today/Gallup poll, a majority of Americans say ObamaCare is “too costly”:
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the health care overhaul signed into law last week costs too much and expands the government’s role in health care too far, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, underscoring an uphill selling job ahead for President Obama and congressional Democrats.  Those surveyed are inclined to fear that the massive legislation will increase their costs and hurt the quality of health care their families receive…”

 • Higher costs for employers:  “Insurer Prudential Financial Inc. said Monday that it will take a $100 million charge in the first quarter in relation to the recent health care overhaul legislation. … Prudential joins a growing list of companies that have said they will take accounting charges because of the health care bills. AT&T said last week it would take a $1 billion charge in the first quarter. AK Steel Corp., 3M Co., Caterpillar Inc., Deere & Co. and Valero Energy have also said they would take smaller charges.” (Associated Press, 3/29/10)

• Higher costs for workers: “Officials at Fort Smith-based Baldor Electric Co. also have not determined the financial impact of the new bill, although they anticipate it will add costs for the company.  ‘We do know, however, that the legislation which passed last week will have a negative effect on our overall health care costs.  Health care costs for our company and our employees will increase next year as a result of the new provisions required by the law,’ said Tracy Long, Baldor’s vice president-investor relations. … The company employs between 7,000 and 7.500 in 26 plants in five countries and sales offices serving more than 80 countries.  About 2,000 are employed in the Fort Smith area.” (Fort Smith (AR) City Wire, 3/30/10)

• Higher costs for younger workers: “Health premiums could rise 17 pct for young adults.  Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty.  That’s when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press. … The higher costs will pinch many people in their 20s and early 30s who are struggling to start or advance their careers with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.” (Associated Press, 3/29/10)

• Higher costs for small businesses: “Local pharmacy, small business owners worry about cost of health care bill.  John Kempinski, owner of Crossroads Pharmacy in Hanover Twp., fears the health care bill … will burden him with crushing taxes. ‘If they raise taxes, it’s going to affect every small business,’ Mr. Kempinski said. ‘Luzerne County’s taxes are going up.  All those taxes are going up and if they throw another tax on us, it curtails me from remodeling, hiring, advertising and giving contributions to the Little League. It curtails all of that.” (Scranton Times-Tribune, 3/23/10)

• Higher costs for those who already have insurance: “For most Americans insured through their work, coverage with the new health bill is expected to stay the same, but premiums will rise. … How much? No one’s certain.”  (CBS News, 3/22/10)

• Higher costs for taxpayers: “Provisions of the health-care law that expand benefits for home-bound elderly, certain early retirees and coal miners will likely cost more than expected, say analysts and even some of the measures’ proponents.  The Congressional Budget Office warned last year that the Class program’s own benefits eventually would grow so large that it would drain the government’s finances.  ‘The Class program would inevitably add to future deficits…by more than it reduces deficits in the near term,’ the office said in a letter to lawmakers. … The second program, to subsidize health-care plans that cover lots of retirees under age 65, will benefit cities and states as well as old-line manufacturing firms. … A spokesman for Rep. Sander Levin (D., Mich.), the House Ways and Means Committee chairman and a close ally of the auto industry, left open the possibility of additional funding.” (The Wall Street Journal, 3/29/10)

Obama’s Defining Lie
Terry Jeffrey
Wednesday, March 31, 2010

History will remember how often and adamantly President Barack Obama insisted that the socialized medicine law he signed last week would reduce the federal deficit. It will be his defining lie.

“This legislation will also lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades,” Obama said when he signed the bill on March 23. “It is paid for; it is fiscally responsible.”

Two days later, he repeated the claim at the University of Iowa. “Costs will come down for families and businesses and the federal government, reducing our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades,” he said.

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Americans wisely do not believe him. A Gallup poll released on Tuesday asked people whether the federal budget deficit would “get better, not change or get worse” as a result of Obamacare. Sixty-one percent said it would get worse, and 14 percent said it would not change.

An honest look at the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the total health care package backs the commonsense conclusion of the average American.

On March 19, two days before the House voted to enact the Senate health care bill and a companion reconciliation bill to make alterations in the Senate bill, the CBO sent a letter to Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, responding to his question about the combined budgetary impact of these two bills plus an associated bill to adjust the Medicare payment rates for doctors that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed to enact.

The bill to adjust the Medicare payment rates for doctors is needed because, under current law, those rates are set to suddenly plunge by 21 percent in April. After that, they are set to decline by about 2 percent per year for the next decade.

These dramatic cuts are the result of a gimmick members of Congress wrote into earlier budgets: They mandated that doctors’ fees suddenly drop by one-fifth as a way of making the deficit spending they were voting for seem less than it was. They always knew they would repeal the dramatic fee cuts before they actually hit. Like Obama’s claim that the health care bill will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion, these phantom fee cuts were a lie.

So, what is the impact on the deficit when the Senate health care bill, the reconciliation bill to fix the Senate health care bill and the bill to fix the phantom reductions in doctors’ fees are all considered together?

“You asked about the total budgetary impact of enacting the reconciliation proposal (the amendment to H.R. 4872), the Senate-passed health bill (H.R. 3590) and the Medicare Physicians Payment Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 3961),” CBO said in its letter to Ryan. “CBO estimates that enacting all three pieces of legislation would add $59 billion to budget deficits over the 2010-2019 period.”

Rather than cut the deficit by $1 trillion over two decades as Obama claims, the full health care package increases the deficit by $59 billion over one decade. The CBO only does budget estimates for 10-year periods.

There are other factors buried in the CBO’s analysis that further debunk the president’s claim that his plan will reduce the deficit. For example, the CBO discovered that the bill authorizes new discretionary spending that Congress will need to approve in future years to make sure the bureaucracies are in place to carry out the new plan. CBO estimates this will lead to “at least $50 billion” in new spending over 10 years that was not included in the health care bill itself.

By contrast, the CBO did include in its analysis of the health care bill $53 billion in new Social Security tax revenues it believed would come to the government when employers drop expensive health care plans that will be subject to a new federal tax and use some of the money saved on premiums to pay their employees higher salaries that will be subject to higher payroll taxes.

The problem with counting this $53 billion in Social Security tax revenue against expenditures in Obama’s health care plan is that Social Security is already in deficit and faces a multitrillion dollar long-term shortfall.

Nor should Obama’s socialized medicine plan be viewed in isolation from the rest of his budget. CBO says his fiscal 2011 budget proposal will increase the national debt by $9.8 trillion over the next 10 years. He is running a record $1.5 trillion deficit this year, and the smallest deficit he will ever run is $724 billion in 2014 — the year his unconstitutional individual insurance mandate kicks in.

After that, the deficit starts an unbroken climb, surpassing $1 trillion again in 2018 and heading ever higher.

Just as Obama’s claim that his socialized medicine plan will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion will be his defining lie, his legacy will be this: He bankrupted America.

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on March 30, 2010

We don’t have to wait until we have a Republican in the White House to rid this nation of the shackles of Obamacare.  We can do it next year if we win simple majorities in one or both houses of Congress.
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The Obama health care bill was an authorization measure which established a program and set down its parameters.  But authorization bills are not appropriations.  Each year the Congress must act on appropriations for each department and agency in the government.  If no funds are appropriated, nothing can be spent.
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So if Republicans take the House (where appropriations have to originate) - and especially if they also take the Senate - they will have the capacity to zero fund Obamacare, appropriating not a dime for it in their spending bills.  Indeed, they can and should include a specific amendment to their appropriations bills banning the expenditure of any of the funds on Obama’s health care program.
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In the wake of the passage of the health care bill, states are filing lawsuits and talk of repeal is in the air.  Both are useful efforts.  But litigation takes time and the key challenge - to the constitutionality of the requirement that everybody buy insurance - cannot even begin until it takes effect in 2014.  And repeal will obviously be impossible as long as Obama wields the veto from his Oval Office.  It would be impossible mathematically for the Republicans to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate and unlikely in the House, so an override is out of the question.  Repeal will have to wait until 2013, after Obama’s defeat in 2012.
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But zero funding can happen immediately after the Republicans take Congress.  All this makes the elections of 2010 critical.  If we can stop this bill from getting off the ground, it will be possible to repeal it when we take over the White House.  But if the Democrats keep their majorities, the program will be so entrenched by the time we defeat Obama that its repeal would be unlikely.

National Socialist States of America
Written By: R.L. David Jolly 3-30-2010 

When giving his centennial address to Congress in 1876, President James Garfield issued the following warning: “Now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress.  If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.  If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…If the next centennial does not find us a great nation…it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”

The United States of America is well on its way to becoming a socialistic nation and it wouldn’t surprise this author to see the Obama administration change our name to The National Socialist States of America before he leaves office, if he ever does.

President Obama’s family has a history of Islamic and Marxist ideologies starting mainly with his father and mother.  He admittedly sought out socialist and Marxist professors while in college and even his so-called personal advisor and Christian pastor Rev. Wallace is a self-proclaimed socialist and has preached many socialist teachings from his pulpit.  He has surrounded himself in office with a number of advisors with socialist and Marxist beliefs.  So is it any wonder that Obama has abandoned the United States Constitution and has set on a course for the ultimate destruction of our nation as we have known it?

The health care bill that he so proudly waves from his pulpit is a complete affront to everything the Founding Fathers established in the U.S. Constitution.  It violates several articles of the Constitution, including those that prohibit the federal government from requiring private citizens to purchase any product—including health insurance—and invoke a fine if they don’t.

The health industry in all of its many aspects accounts for nearly one-sixth of the total economy of the U.S.  With this bill, that now gives the federal government control over that portion of the economy.

Now they are already working a major financial reform bill.  If they succeed, it will basically give them complete control over the entire economy of this nation.  Add that to the immigration reform and education reform, and the only thing left will be the military.  Oh yeah, I forgot, they are already swearing allegiance to the United Nations instead of the United States.

But wait, what about the Second Amendment that gives American citizens the right to own and bear firearms?  Have you not read that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has informed the United Nations that the U.S. will work closely with the U.N. to pass the “Small Arms Treaty”?  This U.N. treaty is nothing more than global gun control.

Once they can get away with a flagrant disregard for the U.S. Constitution on any one item, it’s just a matter of time before they completely toss the entire document in the garbage can and fully establish the National Socialist States of America with a new document, one that will be subject to their changes and interpretation as they see fit.

In 1775, John Adams expressed this concern in a letter to his wife, Abigail, when he said, “Our consolation must be this, my dear, that cities may be rebuilt, and a people, reduced to poverty, may acquire fresh property. But a constitution of government, once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost, is lost forever. When the people once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their right of defending the limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.”

“Oh, you’re just an alarmist,” some will say.  And I would agree, because just like the lanterns that shined from the bell tower of the Old North Church in Boston so many years ago, it is once again time to signal an alarm.

Wake up America!  What’s happening today sounds exactly like what the British crown did to the colonists in the 1700’s, by controlling their commerce and imposing undue taxes upon them.  And what was the response from the colonists and our Founding Fathers?  They drove them out of OUR country with whatever means were available, up to and including waging war on the tyranny of the crown.

Right now, the most effective way to wage the war and fight this socialist agenda is to vote for Christians to fill every available political position, just as instructed by John Jay, the First Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court when he said, “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

It is our duty to vote for Christians and if there are no Christians running for office, then we need to find ones that are qualified and encourage them to do so and get behind them and support and endorse them.  The only way to save the United States of America and prevent it from becoming the National Socialist States of America is to put Christian leaders back in office as in the days of our Founding Fathers.