All bad news for Obamacare

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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On Wednesday, March 4, the Supreme Court will hear the King v. Burwell case. It is likely to deliver a death blow to ObamaCare when the decision is announced in a few months.

About the only good thing ObamaCare demonstrated is that the federal government should be kept from taking over sectors of the nation’s economy that are working just fine without it.

Health care expert Edmund Haislmaier and legal expert, both of The Heritage Foundation, provided an explanation of the case.

“The question before the Supreme Court is whether the Obama administration overstepped its authority in issuing an IRS ruling that conflicts with the ObamaCare statute. The statute allows payment of ObamaCare subsidies only to individuals who obtain coverage ‘through an Exchange established by (a) State.’”

ObamaCare got such a cold reception nationwide that 34 States refused to set up an exchange, forcing the feds to do it. Those exchanges distributed subsidies to individuals participating in them, but the ObamaCare statute “seemingly did not authorize subsidies in such cases.” Suffice to say that ObamaCare health insurance is considerably more costly than what one could have previously purchased on one’s own; thus the need for the subsidies gambit.

The February edition of Health Care News, published by The Heartland Institute was filled with articles attesting to the failure of ObamaCare. Here are a few excerpts from them.

Devon M. Herrick, Ph.D., a health economist and senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, noted “Obama touts the claim (that) millions more people are now covered under health care insurance policies through employer plans. However, research has shown exchange subsidies will cause employers to drop coverage…Mandatory benefits are not free; workers bear the cost in the form of lower wages.”

Dr. Herrick added, “Obama said (in his State of the Union speech that) ‘in the past year alone about ten million uninsured Americans finally gained the security of health coverage,’ but he neglected to mention roughly 6 million were coverage through Medicaid expansion and many of them were finding it difficult to find doctors willing to work for the paltry fees state Medicaid programs pay doctors for treatment.”

An article by Matthew Glans, a Heartland senior policy analyst, noted that “The Health and Welfare Committee of the Tennessee Senate voted on February 5 to reject a bill that would have allowed Gov. Bill Haslam to expanded Medicare under the Affordable Care Act.”

Kenneth Artz reported that “A new study by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services found half of all providers listed in Medicaid managed-care plans are not available to new Medicaid patients, either because they are not at the listed location or aren’t accepting new Medicaid patients.” Feeling ill? “For doctors who are accepting new Medicaid patients, the average wait time to get an appointment is two weeks, with close to 25% of patient having waits of one month or longer.”

Tom Steward, writing for the Minnesota Bureau of Watchdog.org, contributed to Health Care News noted that “In a significant victory for religious liberty and economic freedom, the American Manufacturing Company received a permanent federal exemption from provisions of the Affordable Care Act that contradict the owner’s religious convictions.”

Sean Parnell, the managing editor of Health Care News, reported that “Rhode Island officials predicted up to 100,000 residents would use the state-created exchange established under the Affordable Care Act to buy health insurance in 2014. Data from the state show only 27,961 people enrolled during the 2014 open-enrollment period, a number that declined throughout the year as many enrollees failed to pay their first premium or later dropped coverage.”

ObamaCare is on critical care because it could die at any time. Not surprisingly, three Republicans, John Kline, Paul Ryan, and Fred Upton, chairmen respectively of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce, have put together a plan to address the likelihood that the Supreme Court decision will put an end to ObamaCare.

As they said in a recent Wall Street Journal commentary, “If the court rules against the administration, as any fair reading of the law would demand, millions of individuals and families will hit a major roadblock. They’ll be stuck with health insurance designed by Washington, D.C., that they can’t afford.”

“What we propose is the off-ramp out of ObamaCare toward patient-centered health care. It has two parts: First, make insurance more affordable by ending Washington mandates and giving choice back to the states, individuals and families. And, second, support Americans in purchasing the coverage of their choosing.”

What a unique idea! Let people choose the health care plan they want and that they can afford. That’s the way it used to be before the Affordable Care Act was passed entirely by Democrat votes because the GOP would not support it. That’s why Congress is controlled by the GOP these days. And that’s why this nation will return to the free marketplace.

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Making predictions

Making Predictions from Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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If there is one thing pundits like to do it is to make predictions. If they turn out to be right you can always look back and quote them as proof of your prescience and if they are not, you can always ignore them.

The best ones, of course, are those filled with doom and I suspect they are the most prevalent. We all live to some degree in fear of the future.

It is, after all, unpredictable and we are conditioned to believe something awful will happen. That’s what keeps insurance companies in business. Governments continue to create problems and then promise to solve them.

For example, at some point there will be a huge earthquake in California thanks to the San Andreas Fault and in a comparable fashion the Yellowstone National Park will have an even bigger event due to a huge volcano that lies beneath it. The loss of life and economic impact will be historic no matter when they occur.

What is predictable will be natural events such as hurricanes and tornadoes, but what is largely unreported is that both have been occurring less in recent years. As Weather.com noted this year, “the Atlantic basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, produced the fewest tropical cyclones and fewest named storms since 1997.”

Worldwide, there are some 40,000 tornadoes and the U.S. averages some 1,200 a year. So the weather guarantees some unhappy news for some of us some of the time.

Blaming natural phenomenon on “global warming” which is not happening or on “climate change” which has been happening for 4.5 billion years is the way the merchants of fear keep everyone scared of real and imaginary weather events. The planet has been in a natural cooling cycle for the past nineteen years because the Sun is in one as well, producing less radiation.

As for climate, it is measured in units as small as thirty years and as big as centuries and millenniums. Nothing mankind does has any impact. The Pope is wrong. The President is wrong. And lots of others who claim that climate change is an immediate threat.

What interests most people is the state of the economy and the good news is that it appears to be improving although relying on government issued statistics is problematic because they are often mathematically skewed to show a favorable trend.

There is a natural dynamism to the U.S. economy which would be even greater if the government would eliminate the hundreds of thousands of regulations that interfere with the conduct of business and stop issuing more. Less taxation would boost the economy as well.

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I am hopeful people will stop being taken in by the talk about “income inequality.” If the economy improves there will be jobs and the marketplace will determine the salaries they will pay. By contrast, legislating minimum wage increases reduces jobs. We’ve been watching machines replace humans for a long time now.

Elsewhere in the world, the economy is very iffy. The drop in the price of oil will have a dramatic impact on nations whose economies are dependent on it. The Russian Federation will likely be less aggressive with neighboring nations. Venezuela is already in a world of trouble.

The Middle East will feel its impact as well. The reason traces back to the increase in the technology of hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking. It had its beginnings in 1947 and today it is unlocking huge amounts of oil and natural gas. It will make the U.S. energy independent and that’s a very good thing. It will also continue to generate jobs and revenue.

Will there be wars in the world? The short answer is that there will always be conflicts because that is the nature of the world. Wars are very expensive and most nations want to avoid them. The big problem in 2015 will focus on two nations.

North Korea is led by a mentally unstable dictator, a threat to others in its region thanks to its nuclear weapons, missiles, and huge army. Iran will be a threat if it is allowed to acquire the ability to make its own nuclear weapons. When that happens the threat level to Israel and the U.S. increases, along with every other nation its missiles can destroy.

What is entirely predictable will be the horrific attacks of Islam’s “holy war” on all other religions and, testimony to its lack of internal cohesion, its attacks based on whether Muslims are Sunni or Shiite.

It would be nice to predict that science will find cures to many of the ills of mankind and the fact is that it has been doing that for much of the last century and will continue to do so in this one. In 1973, life expectancy in the U.S. was 71 years of age and it is now up to 78.

In much of the world people are living longer and that is having some interesting demographic impacts in nations that are trying to cope with providing care for a growing older generation.

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In the sphere of U.S. politics the most encouraging trend as seen in the last two midterm elections has been voters—those who actually show up and vote—toward conservatism. The Republican Party has regained control of the Senate and expanded its control of the House.

The majority of U.S. states have Republican governors. The Tea Party has played a significant role in this, but it is a movement and will continue to take the lead in seeking to reduce the size of the federal government that is far too large for a society based on the idea of freedom and liberty.

In what is likely to be an increasing bipartisan effort, the new Congress will work to control as much as possible the damage Obama seeks to inflict.

It takes no great prescience to predict that Barack Hussein Obama will spend his remaining two years in office doing what his Communist roots and ideology has trained him to do; stir as much racial divisiveness as possible, encourage more illegal immigration, keep the increasingly unpopular ObamaCare alive, undermine our moral structure, degrade our military strength, and other such mischief.

Two years sounds like a long time, but he will be gone by January 20, 2017 when a new President takes the oath of office that he has ignored. One prediction about him is easy. He will be judged the worst President the nation has had and, in fact, that judgment has already been rendered.

What is not predictable are the directions the U.S. Supreme Court will take the nation in 2015. Despite its August name, it has made some supremely bad decisions in the past.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it undermined ObamaCare after having helped inflict it on a health system that was the best in the world and is now suffering greatly from it?

If any of my predictions turn out to be true, I will claim bragging rights, but mostly what I intend to do is maintain my personal sense of hope, sensing that more people worldwide are discovering that others share their desire for less corruption and more freedom.

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Immigration: The law and assimilation at issue

IMMIGRATION: The Law and Assimilation at Issue from the files of J.B. Williams at the North American Law Center.org

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There is no more guess work needed to accurately assess the current immigration policy of the United States Federal Government, all three branches. The current policy is designed to forever alter the social fabric and population demographics of the United States.

Because Americans would never willingly accept “global governance” or Marxist notions like “social justice,” it was necessary to flood America with anti-American illegal aliens and legal immigrants. To “change” America, they have to “change Americans.”

An immigrant is someone who enters our country “legally” and abides by our laws, assimilating into American society, speaking our language and revering the principles of freedom and liberty that brought them to our shores.

Those who come here by any other manner are not “immigrants,” they are “illegal aliens.” They are mere illegal migrants, “inhabitants” of the territory, and certainly not “citizens.”

The Rule of Constitutional Law

In the United States, amendments and statutes which are of themselves not constitutional -- have no force of law behind them. For any statute to enjoy the force of law, it must be in pursuance of the Supreme Law of the Land, the U.S. Constitution, to include the Bill of Rights.

Over the past 227 years, legislatures have drafted and passed many federal, state and local statutes which are directly in violation of the U.S. Constitution. In addition, the courts have assumed unconstitutional legislative authority via Common Law Rules of Precedent and Procedure, issuing numerous case rulings (aka common law) which directly undermine and subvert the Rule of Constitutional Law. The courts have unconstitutionally altered the Supreme Law of the Land by way of broad ungrounded interpretations and irregular applications of law.

Further, academia’s role in the subversion of Constitutional Law has been to redraft new definitions for old words. In the case of immigration, the primary definition change relates to the term “birthright citizenship.”

In 1828, the official American definition of “birthright” was – “any right which results from descent.” In modern terms, a birthright is any right which one inherits from natural descendants (parentage) at birth. The Law of Nations goes into great detail in Sections 212-219, separating the many different types and rights of “inhabitants vs. citizens vs. True (aka Natural Born) Citizens.”

But by today, academics have already altered the definition of “birthright” as follows – “a right that you have because you were born into a particular position, family, place, etc., or because it is a right of all people.”

As a result, we have “anchor babies” and “illegal aliens” today, presumed to be entitled to citizenship rights equal to that of True American Citizens. Of course, the process by which we arrived here is entirely unconstitutional, as it is a direct offense to the Rule of Constitutional Law and an affront to every True American Citizen.

The use of Common Law (judicial fiat) amounts to the intentional subversion and usurpation of Constitutional Law, resulting in “equal rights” for non-U.S. citizens. Today, illegal aliens often have more rights than legal U.S. Citizens. It’s not constitutional… it is only “social justice.”

After the Civil War, the Supreme Court declared regulation of immigration a federal responsibility in 1875. Seizure of federal supremacy has relegated State’s Rights to the ash heap of history and provided unconstitutional protections for illegal aliens against a disapproving American society.

Now, Americans can be arrested for “racism” and/or “hate speech” for calling illegal invaders by their rightful legal name, “illegal aliens.”

“At the establishment of our Constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions nevertheless become law by precedent, sapping by little and little the foundations of the Constitution and working its change by construction before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life if secured against all liability to account.” --Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823. ME 15:486

Today, it is easier for illegal aliens to access federal taxpayer assisted benefits than for legal American Citizens to do so, thanks in great part to a heavily flawed 14th Amendment recklessly passed by Congress in 1868.

In 1882, Congress passed the first comprehensive Immigration Act. The act prohibited the entry of “any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” The “public charge” doctrine served to bar arriving foreigners who could not show the financial ability to support themselves. Foreigners denied entry were returned to their starting points at the expense of the ship owners.

By 1986, after a hundred years of inadequate law enforcement concerning immigration, Congress had to pass a “one-time exemption” to these laws, which included a “one-time amnesty” for an estimated one million illegal aliens in our country at that time, signed into law by then President Ronald Reagan as The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

The condition of that bill was strict federal enforcement of all existing Immigration and Naturalization Laws forever thereafter. Obviously, the Federal Government has failed to keep that bargain with Reagan and the American people.

The Rule of Constitutional Law must be reinstated and enforced or America is no longer America.

To be American

To be “American” means much more than to claim residency in the United States. It means to invest in the American culture, to buy into American principles and values of freedom and liberty, to respect and abide by our laws, use our language and to swear an allegiance to our country, defend our way of life, with your life if necessary.

One cannot possibly enter our country in direct violation of our immigration and naturalization laws and then claim to be an American. We simply cannot afford to reward illegal invaders with “rights” equal to those of law-abiding legal U.S. Citizens, or we will be working to destroy our own country.

The Art of Assimilation

If you legally seek freedom, liberty, equal opportunity, peace and tranquility, and are prepared to invest yourself in the American way of life in order to access the American dream, then “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …”

But if you seek to exploit America’s kindness for purposes which present a threat to American principles and values, then you have entered our country with the intent to destroy it.

• If you come with the intent to harm America, hiding within society rather than assimilating into society, then you have come with ill intent and you should be met with extreme prejudice.
• If you respect America, Americans will respect you.
• If you respect our laws, our Constitution will protect you.
• If you speak our language and adopt our traditions, you will be welcome in our country.
• If you bring peace, you will find peace.
• If you are willing to earn, you will own.
• If you assimilate, you will be American.

America was once known all over the world as “the great melting pot…” where people from all corners of the earth sought freedom and liberty, the right of self-determination.

America has always been the most diverse society on earth and that was not a point of celebration until recently.

However, at some point in our history, people stopped melting into society, they stopped assimilating. They stopped seeking to become “American” and started trying to “change America.” The principles and values of freedom and liberty are worthy of celebration, that which all True Americans hold in common. The things that now divide Americans are deplorable.

This is the “change” that Obama democrats have promised all Americans. When their “change” is completed, we will no longer be America. We will no longer be a sovereign nation, or a Constitutional Representative Republic.

The Fix

The fix is in on America and amnesty by any means is a critical part of the global fix on our country.

If you expect Congress, the President, academia or the Courts to fix this, you are overlooking their direct involvement in the total destruction of our great nation.

The people are the only fix we have, and most of the people are still waiting, as if there is anyone else to solve the problem.

There is only one way to deal with evil and that is to confront it head-on and defeat it. Until the people summon the strength and courage to do so, the future of this nation is indeed bleak. The fix is the people, but so is the problem…

Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” –~ Thomas Jefferson

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JB Williams, Co-Founder

www.PatriotsUnion.org
www.VeteranDefenders.org
www.NorthAmericanLawCenter.org

"Tolerating evil in any form at any level only brings about more evil. As a result, the true cost of tolerating the intolerable is a totally intolerable society, from which you can never draft good government." - JB

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