Following are excerpts from The Patriot Post of June 26, 2009.
Re: Obamacare
One of Obama's key claims is that "you can keep your plan if you want to." What he means is that the government won't specifically mandate that anyone lose coverage, but the effect of his policies would be to cause many individuals to lose their benefits. America's Health Insurance Plans, the nation's largest trade group for health insurers, warned of "devastating consequences" from a government plan. In a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), the lead author of the health care bill, the group said that a public health insurance option "would dismantle employer-based coverage, significantly increase costs for those who remain in private coverage, and add additional liabilities to the federal budget." This is painfully obvious to us, but the power brokers in DC aren't interested in a market-based approach.
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"Why would [a government plan] drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical." --President Barack Obama
On Cap and Trade:
On the cost of energy, The Wall Street Journal writes, "The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment." Even billionaire Democrat donor Warren Buffet acknowledged that cap and tax is a "huge tax ... and a fairly regressive tax." And the Journal concludes, "Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can't repeal that reality."
GOP Affairs Are a Mess
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a likely GOP presidential contender in 2012 who waged a well publicized battle with the Obama administration over stimulus cash, likely put himself out of the running after a bizarre absence from his state last week led to his disclosure of an extramarital affair. While staffers claimed the governor was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, Sanford had traveled to Argentina to see his mistress and break off the affair. In an emotional news conference Wednesday he explained that the relationship had gone on for eight years but became romantic in the last year. His wife discovered it five months ago. Sanford resigned his post as head of the Republican Governors' Association and Mississippi's Haley Barbour replaced him.
So to recap, Sanford lied about his whereabouts on Father's Day weekend while he met his mistress in Argentina and his family sat at home. Sanford's penance isn't enough -- he should resign as governor immediately. As Founding Father Samuel Adams said, "Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." John Adams also wrote, "How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?"
Hope 'n' Change: Welfare Roles Grow Despite 'Stimulus'
For the first time since President Bill Clinton signed the Republican-propelled welfare reform legislation in 1994, welfare numbers are rising in more than half of states nationwide, with increases climbing as high as 27 percent in Oregon, 23 percent in South Carolina, 14 percent in Florida and 10 percent in California.
