Category Archives: IMMIGRATION

Meathead America Warming To BOCare

Barack Obama, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION

A GALLUP poll, taken one day after the H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 received a majority of votes in the U.S. House of Representatives, shows that “Americans’ emotional responses to the bill’s passage are more positive than negative — with 50% enthusiastic or pleased versus 42% angry or disappointed.”

Bottom Line, conclude the authors, “Passage of healthcare reform was a clear political victory for President Obama and his allies in Congress. While it also pleases most of his Democratic base nationwide, it is met with greater ambivalence among independents and with considerable antipathy among Republicans.”

IF INDEED A MAJORITY OF Americans are beginning to thaw on Obamacare, what does it say about the changing face of this country? I do not believe that tea partiers will embrace this massive intervention into the economy anytime soon. What I do believe is that freedom-loving, small “r” republicans are in a shrinking minority. Mass immigration and the corrupting values of mass society—namely rampant democracy where property and liberty are forfeit—have rendered patriots aliens in their own country.

Lessons From Big Daddy O & His Right-Hand Ho

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Economy, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Regulation, Republicans, Welfare

HERE’S WHAT I TOOK away from the weekend long Pelosi Palooza and Obama health-care orgy:

With one flick of a pen, a politician is able to render finite resources infinite; that in the hands of millions of new affirmatively appointed state hires, private property—approximately $409.2 billion, confiscated from rightful, productive owners— will be funneled into so-called state-of-the-art health care. Basically turned into gold. That bilking “$69 billion more in penalties for individuals and businesses who don’t meet mandates to buy insurance” will generate plenty and prosperity like nothing else, just as The Founders envisaged.

Most of the revenue would come from higher Medicare taxes on about 1 million individuals earning more than $200,000 and about 4 million couples filing jointly who make more than $250,000

What assorted idiots and moochers-in-the making took away from this legislative theft is that it is constitutional to single out a distinct segment of society—the productive—for punishment. The only consideration that counts is, “How many Americans want it?” Gimme, gimme, gimme is the new national anthem.

“The man with the Reverse Midas Touch,” Big Daddy O, and his right hand Ho, have taught the nation so many lesson, not least that attainder laws are now constitutional (Article 1, Sections 9 and 10), and that “our high-minded messiah has the authority to punish an (innocent) group of people—more or less 5 million Americans who’ll shoulder the hulking H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010—“without the benefit of due process.”

Scrap that; no moocher knows what attainder laws are.

And if you don’t yet know that the Republicans are your fair-weather friends who’ll sign their own mammoth bills when they occupy the same seats in the game of political musical chairs they play exclusively with the Dems—then listen to stupid Michael Steel condemn freedom-loving demonstrators for their righteous ire and promise statists like Geraldo Rivera and Sheppard Smith of FoxNews that a welcoming immigration bill is next.

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Here’s a good precis of H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010, courtesy of the WSJ:

The $940 billion health-care overhaul will take nearly a decade to roll out in full. A look at the key parts of the bill and when they go into effect.
2010

Coverage

* Subsidies begin for small businesses to provide coverage to employees.
* Insurance companies barred from denying coverage to children with pre-existing illness.
* Children permitted to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until their 26th birthday.

2011

Coverage

* Set up long-term care program under which people pay premiums into system for at least five years and become eligible for support payments if they need assistance in daily living.

Taxes and fees

* Drug makers face annual fee of $2.5 billion (rises in subsequent years).

2013

Taxes and fees

* New Medicare taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples filing jointly earning more than $250,000 a year.
* Tax on wages rises to 2.35% from 1.45%.
* New 3.8% tax on unearned income such as dividends and interest.
* Excise tax of 2.3% imposed on sale of medical devices.

Cost control

* Medicare pilot program begins to test bundled payments for care, in a bid to pay for quality rather than quantity of services.

2014

Coverage

* Create exchanges where people without employer coverage, as well as small businesses, can shop for health coverage. Insurance companies barred from denying coverage to anyone with pre-existing illness.
* Requirement begins for most people to have health insurance. Subsidies begin for lower and middle-income people. People at 133% of federal poverty level pay maximum of 3% of income for coverage. People at 400% of poverty level pay up to 9.5% of income. (Poverty level currently is about $22,000 for a family of four.)
* Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor, expands to all Americans with income up to 133% of federal poverty level.
* Subsidies for small businesses to provide coverage increase. Businesses with 10 or fewer employees and average annual wages of less than $25,000 receive tax credit of up to 50% of employer’s contribution. Tax credits phase out for larger businesses.

Taxes and fees

* Employers with more than 50 employees that don’t provide affordable coverage must pay a fine if employees receive tax credits to buy insurance. Fine is up to $3,000 per employee, excluding first 30 employees.
* Insurance industry must pay annual fee of $8 billion (rises in subsequent years).

Cost control

* Independent Medicare board must begin to submit recommendations to curb Medicare spending, if costs are rising faster than inflation.

2016

Taxes and fees

* Penalty for those who don’t carry coverage rises to 2.5% of taxable income or $695, whichever is greater.

2017

Coverage

* Businesses with more than 100 employees can buy coverage on insurance exchanges, if state permits it.

2018

Taxes and fees

* Excise tax of 40% imposed on health plans valued at more than $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for family coverage.

—Sources: House bill; Kaiser Family Foundation

Corrections & Amplifications
The House health legislation imposes a 2.3% excise tax on the sale of medical devices. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the tax was 2.9%, the figure before a last-minute change to the legislation.

Updated: Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot

Classical Liberalism, Europe, Glenn Beck, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Jihad, Multiculturalism, Nationhood

The excerpt is from “Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot,” now on WND.COM”:

“The ‘One-Man Global Content Provider’ [Mark Steyn] is wrong. Demographics need not be destiny. The waning West became what it is not by out-breeding the undeveloped world. We were once great not because of huge numbers, but due to human capital – people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.

Declining birth rates – and their antidote; the mass immigration imperative – are the excuses statists make for persevering with immigration policies that are guaranteed to destroy Western civil society and shore up the State.

If, as Geert Wilders and Mark Steyn contend, “Islam is a problematic religion; every school of Islam is basically at its core jihadist; and the religion is much closer to a conventional imperial project than to a faith” – its religionists must be kept away. State-engineered mass immigration must be halted.

Yes, postmodernism, PC and relativism hobble the West. Post-colonialism, however, affords it the opportunity to redraw the frontiers at the borders. This is the Wilders project. It has yet to be embraced fully by his American boosters. As Steyn has openly confessed, ‘For a notorious blowhard, I can go a bit cryptic or (according to taste) wimpy when invited to confront that particular subject head on.'” …

The complete column is “Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update: Declining birth rates – and their antidote; the mass immigration imperative – are the excuses statists make for persevering with immigration policies that are guaranteed to destroy Western civil society and shore up the State.

To add to “Anon’s” dazzling examples of small (First World) populations that produced genius second to none, another erudite gentleman spoke of “quality, not quantity,” and offered the examples of the Scottish Enlightenment and modern Jews.

Update III: Glenn Suggests Geert A Fascist (& European Rightists R Surprised)

Europe, Glenn Beck, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Race

I caught the late-night iteration of the Glenn Beck Show, in which he insinuated that Geert Wilders was of the “far right,” and that the European far right was fascist. See for yourself.

Defunct link:

Functioning one:

Glenn here is aping the thinking of the likes of Mark Steyn, Daniel Hannan, and other neoconservatives: all disavow any reclamation of national identity when done by Europeans. Neoconservatives are multiculturalists by default, by which is meant that, while fussing ceaselessly against official multiculturalism, neoconservatives motivate for that hollow concept of a propositional nation. Accordingly, and to quote from my upcoming book, a nation is nothing but a notion (the last is Buchanan’s turn of phrase), “a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.” There is nothing new about that.

See “Get With The Global Program, Gaul.”

Update I (March 9): Note please that the allusion above was to the neoconservative’s deracinated “thinking” Glenn has assimilated vis-a-vis nationhood and national identity. I do not know who said a good word about Wilders and how it was grounded philosophically, since the reader hereunder does not substantiate his assertion. However, it is one thing to defend Wilders’ right to free speech. That’s dead easy and doesn’t demand much mental effort. It is quite another to tackle Wilders’ refusal, in the name of Western tolerance, to prostrate his patriotism and his very survival—and the steps he wishes to take to that end.

Neoconservatives generally disavow, even mock, European reclamation of identity, with hackneyed, shallow assertions of American superiority: “Americans are so much better than they, as we ‘assimilate’ everyone into our [already dissolved] culture.” That would be a vintage neocon argument.

“Get With The Global Program, Gaul,” and other articles, has dealt with these nuanced neoconservative deceptions.

See what you think of Larry Auster’s dissection of Steyn. Read “Steyn calls for the destruction of Europe.” And here is the Auster Steyn archive. You really have to look beyond the Steyn pizazz and analyze what the man says.

Update II: The multiculturalims aspect: It exemplifies a seductively shallow aspect readers find appealing in the neoconservative’s argumentation arsenal.

Formulaically, they will finger multiculturalism and the newcomer’s failure to assimilate in a gamut of problems—from what they dub anti-Americanism to terrorism. Neoconservatives, however, resolutely resist dealing with the Putman findings, according to which racial and ethnic diversity mess with people’s minds—especially the host population—and makes them miserable and dysfunctional.

Update III (Mar. 10): I have updated the original, defunct YouTube embed with the functioning one provided by Robert. As Ms. West alleges here, Fox News removed the unreasoned Beck rant. Surprising to me is the surprise evinced by European rightists, and trackers of all things USA, at the denunciation of their positions by Chuckie Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. The latter—together with Hannan, Steyn, etc.—are completely congruent and consistent.

For the European Right “identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory”—that’s neoconservative Francis Fukuyama’s derisive description.

My readers are also having a hard time with the distinctions I’ve tried to draw so far.

BECK VS. BURKE. With respect to the Enlightenment and Schmidt’s comments: In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke provides a “compelling presentation of historically-based conservatism.” Russell Kirk said about “Reflections” that it “burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes.” The Founders brought a lot of Burke to the republican table, but, for obvious reasons, our countrymen (Beck is representative) know and love Thomas Paine, who sympathized with the Jacobins and spat venom at Burke for his devastating critique of the blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution.

You can guess who it is that I prefer as a historical figure and social theorist. To quote my friend Paul Gottfried, it is not “the peripatetic troublemaker Paine.”