Obama shows a pattern of refusing to enforce laws (or refusing to permit states like Arizona to enforce them). When he dislikes our laws, Obama forces change by dictate rather than seeking legal change through the political process. Congress gets bypassed.

Those benefiting can claim a new category of legal immunity: FBO’s–Favored By Obama.

Selective enforcement is being taken to new extremes. Furor would follow any straightforward official announcement that Obama is forgiving thousands from deportation, so the new amnesty policy is coming to light gradually, memo by memo and place by place.

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Financiers know that the bill guarantees them future bailouts.  Obama pretends otherwise by using a nonsense definition of bailouts.  He considers it okay to send billions to pay off a company’s creditors—who typically are big companies and Wall Street firms.  Then he denies that’s a bailout.

So while he pummels them in public, Obama pushes a plan that rewards his Wall Street friends and big donors.  They’ll absorb the rhetoric, because they’re getting paid to do so.  And paid quite well.

Here are the details:  “Obama Plan Blows Secret Kisses to Wall Street.”

Congress wants America to believe its new promises to control spending even as it reneges on its old promises and spends more than ever.

The “new” promise within health care reform bills is to reduce Medicare spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet simultaneously, Congress is reversing 1997 legislation that claimed it would reduce Medicare spending.

The latest example of hypocrisy is known in Washington as the “doc fix,” (shorthand for fixing payment rates to doctors) and it’s scheduled for a House of Representatives vote next week.

Doctors have a valid complaint that government underpayments make it unprofitable to see Medicare patients. But throwing more borrowed money at the problem makes things worse because it moves Medicare and the rest of the federal budget deeper into bankruptcy.

The cost estimate for the doc fix varies from $210- to $245-billion. But it’s actually far larger. A study by Texas A&M scholars and a former Medicare trustee (published by the Heritage Foundation) shows the doc fix legislation “increases Medicare’s unfunded obligation by $1.9 trillion using the 75-year horizon and by $4.1 trillion in the long term.”

This is on top of news that October’s federal deficit was $176-billion. That’s for a single month. Next year’s deficit is projected to surpass the $1.4-trillion record set this year.

Washington’s attitude is summed up well by one of today’s headlines, “After spending binge, White House says it will focus on deficits.”

“After.” Discipline is always put off until tomorrow.

The “doc fix” is accompanied by promises of “PAYGO” (pay-as-you-go) rules to require new spending to be offset—and full of the same loopholes Congress historically has exploited.

The doc fix itself was created by 1997 legislation that promised to curtail spending by future reductions in Medicare payment rates to doctors. Once the deadline arrived, Congress and the President pushed it back. It’s already been pushed back for seven years in a row. The House next week will vote on an extra ten-year pushback.

But there’s no new revenue source and no spending offsets for the extra costs of this. And Congress and President Obama have exempted this $250-billion from his promise not to add one dime to the deficit in healthcare legislation.

It’s a “King’s X” to their pledge. Time out. Fingers crossed.

Hope exists that fiscally-responsible House members will reject the doc fix next week in a bipartisan way. One bright ray came when the Senate last month rejected the doc fix on a 47-53 procedural vote. This time around, the Senate has set a good example for the rest of Washington to follow.

Under the 1,990-page $1.1-trillion+plus legislation, a presidential appointee will both control the new government-run insurance plan AND decide how private insurance companies must operate. Likewise, employer-run health plans would answer to this super-czar.

In other words, this health czar will control both the government plan and all of its competition. So much for claims about a level playing field!

Her bill says this “Health Choices Commissioner” will also “negotiate” rates with America’s 788,000 active doctors and 5,708 hospitals. That will take a lot of staff. We need more jobs, but not by creating more bureaucrats!

The new czar would also oversee the millions of Americans who would qualify for insurance subsidies; would assess fines; and would have power to collect whatever data the office deems necessary, which could involve reviewing your medical records. And more.

Read the details from Ernest Istook here at The Heritage Foundation’s blog.

If we continue to spend and ask the Federal Reserve to print more paper money to cover the debt, we could be on the Road to Zimbabwe.

Last year, Zimbabwe was printing currency with face value of $100-trillion thanks to government-created inflation. That’s $100,000,000,000,000.00.

More details here.

My full article is here at The Heritage Foundation’s blog.

A major new report confirms the worst fears of many: Health care reform will raise the costs for most Americans—by about 18% on average. That is on top of existing and expected inflation of health coverage.

This exposes President Obama’s fictitious claim that people will save money under his proposal.  Only those who receive new government subsidies and benefits will “save.”  The rest of us will pay–big-time.

Once the plan is fully phased-in (by 2019), a typical family of four would pay an extra $4,000 each year.

When combined with inflation, costs would rise from today’s $12,300 annual average to $25,900. Of that 111% increase, $9,600 is due to existing factors uncorrected by the legislation, and $4,000 due to additional costs created by the legislation.

For single persons, the differential is projected at $1,500 a year. Premiums would rise from today’s $4,600 a year to $9,600 overall.

Prepared by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), the study was requested by AHIP—America’s Health Insurance Plans. It focuses on the leading plan pending in Congress, sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D, MT), which is scheduled for a Senate Finance Committee vote on Tuesday.

The PWC projections track what The Heritage Foundation and many others have said about the legislation: It does not save money. It simply taxes those who have health coverage and uses their money to give care to others.

The White House is said to be furious. After all, President Obama’s claims that he makes care more affordable are exposed as a myth by the new study.

Details and links are here.

Get the details and further links here from The Heritage Foundation.

Regulating the color of cars—or anything else—is the mark of an overly-intrusive government and a lessening of our freedoms. Teabags are quickly becoming the symbol of too much taxing and spending. Perhaps paintbrushes will become the symbol of a government that intrudes too much.

The White House admits low-balling the cost in Obama’s official budget, which claimed that his plan would add $646 billion to energy costs over 8 years.

The new price tag is three times as high, close to $2 trillion in 8 years, according to Jason Furman, deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council. That’s $250-billion each year to be passed along to consumers, equivalent to adding an extra 50% to what the U.S. Department of Energy estimates we spend on energy each year.

A 50% increase on home utilities would average about $150 per month–$1,800 per year–since the average bill is $297 a month according to the White Fence Index. The White House claims it would offset this with an $800 per year household tax credit (and 42% of it would go to those who don’t even pay income taxes. Even with an $800 rebate, the net loss is $1,000 per family per year.

Obama claims it’s necessary to halt global warming even though the Earth is actually cooling. Americans are about to pay dearly for global warming hysteria. The planet may not be getting hotter, but people will be as they learn about this.

Details are found here at Human Events online.

Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano says enforcement will be aimed at those who “exploit” illegal workers, rather than at those who simply “employ” them.

This means that so long as illegal aliens are paid “good” wages the companies get a free pass. And of course the illegal aliens do also. This twists our laws dramatically, using them to boost the pay of illegal workers rather than enforcing the laws to deport them and to punish those who knowingly hire them.

With America’s jobless rate at 8.1%, we don’t need for U.S. workers to be displaced by illegal workers.

Of course, this will be done quietly, trying to avoid the public outrage that followed amnesty legislation. Read more details here.

“Seinfeld” had characters that included a high-talker and a low-talker, but the U.S. Congress had them beat with a bevy of fast-talkers today

It was obvious to everyone watching CSPAN that the Representatives were talking much faster than normal. They were talking so fast that their tongues often got tangled!

It’s because the bloated stimulus bill is being rushed through so quickly, with only one hour to debate the rule (the parliamentary device to allow action on the bill), plus 90 minutes to debate the actual measure.

150 minutes total, divided half to Democrats and half to Republicans.

It was over $4-billion a minute. An estimated $789-billion total, over 1,000 pages, which weren’t publicly available until a few hours before the vote, and which included multi-million-dollar hand-written notes inserted at the last minute.

The rapid-pace scene on CSPAN was more incredible than the classic John Moschitta commercials for FedEx.

The quicker Congress worked, the less time for public outrage. Another possible reason: One report says Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to catch a plane later today for an 8-day trip to Rome. No word yet whether she might fly commercial, or on a government plane at taxpayers’ expense.

Today’s sped-up scenario belonged on Saturday Night Live or Comedy Central, not in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Nobody can parody Congress better than the real thing. As Will Rogers said, “With Congress, every time they make a joke it’s a law, and every time they make a law it’s a joke.”

From the Heritage blog at http://blog.heritage.org/2009/02/13/4-billion-a-minute/#more-2600

But who would loan us the money?  Answer:  nobody.  As California has learned, there’s a limit to how much a spendthrift government can borrow.

We’re already in hock to the Chinese for $681-billion, after our government borrowed an extra $227-billion from them in the last year.  The official U.S. Treasury chart of foreign lenders is online.

Even if you assembled every bit of U.S. currency (raiding the bank vaults, kids’ piggy banks, and under the cushions of every sofa), it still wouldn’t be enough to pay for this awful $888-billion bill.  That’s because the total of all U.S. cash in the whole world is only $800-billion.  (Source:  Federal Reserve)

If you think depending on foreign oil is bad, how about depending on foreign money?  Of course, the MidEast and others got that money because we wouldn’t develop our own oil and gas here in America!

Every dollar that our government borrows takes away from a dollar that could have been put to work in the private sector.  And if the liberals try to print more currency rather than borrowing, remember the Weimar Republic! 

Look for more news about this problem very soon!

 Santa Evacuated from North Pole!

Read full details at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84508

Here are excerpts:

Evacuation operations continue at the North Pole, as Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, their reindeer and an estimated 5,000 elves are being relocated due to global warming to a secure but undisclosed location.

* * * * *

“The only way to save future Christmases was to evacuate the toymakers and Mrs. Claus and to re-locate operations before the ice melts,” said Nobel Laureate Al Gore, who was on the scene with a camera crew for the occasion.  The footage will be included in Gore’s new documentary, “An Inconvenient But Jolly Old Elf”

* * * * *

Observers confirmed that Santa was red with anger and threatened to retire.  Said one onlooker:

“His cheeks were like roses and his nose like a cherry.

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the heat of his anger was as white as the snow.”

It was unclear who would have the power to appoint a replacement, but several governors volunteered to accept responsibility for picking a successor to Santa.  Said one, “You don’t get many opportunities like this.  Appointing a Senator is worth a lot.  But choosing a new Santa Claus?  Priceless!”

There’s more.  Read it all in Ernest Istook’s column at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84508