Baltimore City Alone Should Pay For This
May 27, 2015 Commentary, Political
Baltimore City is a liberal haven and has been run by those very liberals for generations. The result is an uneducated population that lives off taxpayers. The city is in decline and has been for decades as liberal leaders continue to push policies that enslave people to government. The goal of decades of neglect is to enslave people to the liberal plantation and ensure those downtrodden people continue to vote Democrat.
You might have heard that recently the city suffered a lot of damage because of riots. A bunch of thugs rioted and destroyed property. The cost is placed at $20 MILLION.
The cost includes overtime for police and firefighters as well as money owed to jurisdictions that came to help the city. It also includes the cost of damage to city owned property. It appears as if this dollar figure does not include the damage to private property which is in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
The expenses the city owes will go before the board of estimates today so they can approve the money to pay the bills.
Where will the money come from? It is highly unlikely that any of the people who destroyed so much are taxpayers so it will not come out of their pockets. It is unlikely that the rioters have anything of value that can be confiscated to pay for their destruction. The reality is this money will have to come from the taxpayer or by cutting from other budgeted items or from a combination of the two.
This money MUST not come from the taxpayers in the state that do NOT live in Baltimore. I know Baltimore will appeal with hat in hand asking for money from the state to pay for this but it is not the responsibility of the taxpayers outside of the city to pay for this mess.
I recommend budget cuts to the City Attorney’s office and I recommend that the welfare money be redirected to pay for the damage.
Make the people who did this suffer for it.
Hell, maybe they can do what they did to fund the stadiums and make a few scratch lottery games to pay for it. At least people could decide to participate, or not and they would have a chance of winning some money.
I imagine the city will raise parking fees for stadium events and other events that take place in the city. It will probably tack on some kind of tax to event tickets and to hotel rooms and parking garages in order to pay for the mess that took place because the city has leaders who allowed the destruction to happen.
Liberalism exists to allow things to happen so long as someone else pays the bill.
If the people of Maryland who do not live in Baltimore get socked with this bill they should show up in the city with bulldozers and level the place and then stake a claim to the property they bought.
Screw Baltimore and screw the politicians there who have allowed a once great city to become a skeletal ruin of decaying structures and dependent people who have no respect or life or property.
Let them all suffer.
As an aside, they all wanted the police out of their lives. Now that the police are not, shall we say, being aggressive in their duties the city is rapidly falling [farther] into anarchy with multiple shootings and murders.
You got what you wanted now shut up and enjoy it.
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: anarchy, baltimore city, cost, liberalism, police, riots, taxpayer, thugs
From The Frying Pan to the Fire
May 5, 2014 Obamacare
Remember Romneycare? You know, the government health care program in Massachusetts that Barack Obama said Obamacare was modeled after. Yeah, that Romneycare.
It was touted as some great accomplishment by Romney who had to defend why he opposed Obamacare when he did the same thing in MA. To his credit, the MA plan was a state initiative and other states are free to try similar approaches. The federal government overstepped its bounds by applying it to all states.
In any event, while Romney was trying to explain his health care plan and how great it was (despite its cost overruns and lack of insurance to many people) Obama was saying it was a great idea and he did nothing more than model his disaster after the disaster in Massachusetts.
Looks like Romneycare is an official failure:
Bay State officials are taking steps this week to junk central parts of their dysfunctional health insurance exchange — the model for President Barack Obama’s health care law — and merge with the federal enrollment site HealthCare.gov. Politico
So the Bay State admits that the exchange that Obama modeled Obamacare after is dysfunctional so to solve the problem MA will use the even more dysfunctional Obamacare exchanges.
While MA is technically only exchanging the exchange system (the meat and potatoes), if you will, the reality is the exchange is part of a larger and more dysfunctional problem. Massachusetts will scrap its bad exchange system for an even worse one.
Romneycare is a disaster. It costs way more than estimated, fails to cover everyone and has resulted in people not receiving health care services.
Obamacare is even worse and on a national level. The exchanges do not work, people are not covered, it costs nearly 2.5 times more than was estimated and it is not generating the enrollment from the demographic needed to support it.
Yes, the liberals in Massachusetts have decided that they should go from bad to worse and call it progress.
This is liberalism and big government in a nutshell.
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Businesses Seeking Relief From Obamacare
Mar 27, 2013 Political
Anyone with a brain knew Obamacare would cause problems. The law and the regulations implemented to enforce it are cumbersome and do nothing to help. The cost of the program has risen since it was enacted (they lied about what it would cost) and the downstream current of the law has caused the cost of private insurance to go up. The DHHS has admitted that because of Obamacare insurance will cost much more.
Businesses across the nation are appealing to the government for relief from the costs of this law. Specifically, businesses in states that have refused to bow down to big government are the ones asking for relief. They need help because the SCOTUS shot down the Medicaid requirement. The SCOTUS ruled that states could not be compelled to participate in the expansion and a number of them have decided not to do so.
This means that businesses will have to foot the bills and if any of their employees end up in a state exchange the employers will have to pay $3000 for each employee who joins.
This means a lot of businesses will end up in financial trouble. Some will likely end up closing their doors or they will fire enough people to get under the 50 employee mark where Obamacare is applicable.
It certainly sucks to be in the position in which these businesses find themselves but they should not get any kind of relief. If they are given relief then the costs will be shifted to everyone else. Those of us who pay taxes are already paying for the law and those who benefit from it. We are footing the bill for everyone else and if we have to cover the cost to these businesses then we will be paying even more.
It is not my job to provide health care dollars for someone else. It is my job to take care of me and my family. This is true of anyone who knows what responsibility is. Yes, we need programs in place to cover the absolute poorest among us and those who absolutely cannot afford health care BUT there are not many of those people out there.
Those who can afford cell phones, multiple cars, satellite or cable TV, expensive clothes and the newest modern gadgets can pay for their own health care insurance.
Anyone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and/or drinks a few beers or other drinks could quit doing so and use the money to buy basic health insurance. Give up the cell phone and the satellite/cable TV and they could buy a better plan.
It is about responsibility and choice.
As for the businesses, if they do not feel the pain and if their workers do not feel the pain then they will never learn. Anyone affected who voted for Obama and his minions voted for this to take place. Those who did not vote for him are, sadly, collateral damage in the war on the people waged by government.
They were all warned and now they are finding out that their decision (or the decision of the low information voters) comes with consequences.
Let them live with their decisions or the decisions of others. If their business cannot thrive in a state that has refused the Medicaid expansion then these businesses are free to move to states that have.
Or they can fire any of their employees who voted for Obama until they get down to 49.
Then they can ignore the law and their former employees can deal with the change they voted for.
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
[jpsub]
Tags: business, cost, exemptions, lies, medicaid, obamacare, relief
From The I Told You So File
May 19, 2010 Political
First up, the health care takeover. Barack Obama promised people that if they liked their insurance and their doctors, they could keep them. This is not the case as the way the law is set up companies have determined they would be better off dropping employees and paying the fines. Companies can save upwards of a billion dollars:
Even with penalties in place for employers who decline to provide health insurance, documents showed that Caterpillar could reduce its health care costs by as much as 70 percent and AT&T could save as much as $1.8 billion by shifting their employees into public programs. Reason.com
In addition, the law will end up costing more than we were told and will end up costing us money, not saving any as Barack Obama said.
The Congressional Budget Office now reports that the law will require an additional $115 billion in previously unreported (and yet unpaid-for) discretionary spending. Medicare’s actuary has reported that total medical spending in the U.S. will actually go up and that crucial cuts to Medicare—cuts being used to pay for the law’s new entitlement spending—aren’t likely to happen, but that Medicare benefits are likely to be reduced. And in Massachusetts, the state whose 2006 health care overhaul served as the model for ObamaCare, insurers have gone to war with the governor, and the state treasurer is warning that the program could drive the state into bankruptcy. Reason.com
In addition, more and more doctors in Texas are not taking Medicare patients because the reimbursements do not cover costs and doctors are losing money. Doctors in other states have decided not to take them as well and this trend will only continue with Obamacare.
Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable.
Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren’t taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program. Before 2007, the number of doctors opting out averaged less than a handful a year. Chron
It is not hard to see that this will begin to affect the elderly and though the left despises the term “death panel” the reduction in doctors taking Medicare will lead to the same outcome.
Perhaps this is why the regime is accelerating the better parts of the law (though they have their own drawbacks). The more appealing things in the law (appealing according to the Democrats) were front loaded and the bad things like the mandates were pushed well past the 2012 elections in order to allow Democrats (particularly Obama) to be reelected before they have to answer for what they have done. Now Democrats are speeding up the front loaded items in hopes they can save seats in November.
This will not work.
Finally, the left likes to blame the economic problems we are having on the Bush tax cuts. The tax cuts did not cause the problems and, contrary to popular myth, Bill Clinton did not have a multi-trillion dollar budget surplus. He had one year with a budget surplus (not zero deficit) which means that the amount the government took in was less than it spent. A budget surplus is not necessarily a surplus. Budgetary tricks and moving things off budget can give the appearance of surplus when one does not exist. However, there was never trillions in surplus:
First, that $5.6 trillion surplus never actually existed (the budget surplus peaked at $236 billion in 2000). Instead, $5.6 trillion represents the cumulative 2002-2011 budget surplus that was projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in early 2001. Instead, the United States is now projected to run a $6.1 trillion deficit over those 10 years — an $11.7 trillion swing. Washington Times
The Times article is interesting and shows how the budget numbers are manipulated and lied about. The federal government has never really had a budget surplus anywhere other than on paper. Unfortunately, what is written on the paper is often not reality.
But let us suppose there was a 4 trillion dollar surplus when Bush took office (to be sure there absolutely was not but let’s pretend) . That means the government took in 4 trillion dollars more than it needed in by way of taxes. If this was the case then Bush did nothing more than give the money back to its rightful owners. The government should not be generating more than it needs and if it does it needs to give the money back. It is ours and if they get more of it than they need they find ways to spend it.
Another myth is that the tax cuts were for the rich and hurt the poor. This myth is dispelled in the article which also points out that the sun-setting of the Bush tax cuts will further hurt the poor and middle class whose taxes will go up higher than for those who make more money.
These are things I have discussed in the past and which have been denied by the drones on the progressive left. They did not go for it then and they will not go for it now even though the information is there in black and white.
Never surrender, never submit.
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The Rangel Rope-A-Dope
Jun 14, 2009 Political
Charlie Rangel and his Democrat buddies are working on the Obama health care plan. The plan is supposed to provide health care coverage (we all have access) to those who have no health insurance. The actual number of people who have no health insurance is about a quarter of what politicians report because their numbers include people who have access but choose not to have it, are not entitled (illegals), and those who were without for a short period of time (like in between jobs and elected not to take the COBRA extension). The numbers also include those who are eligible for already available assistance but, for whatever reason, have not signed up.
The Democrats want to rush this trough like they did the bogus stimulus package so that people do not have time to react. They want to have this in place quickly before people find out what it costs and what it involves. Democrats will use sleight of hand and trickery to gain acceptance. They will display a grandiose health plan and talk about all the bells and whistles and how wonderful it will be but they will not talk about how it will be paid for. Sure, they will claim it saves money or that we can afford it by taxing the rich or other such nonsense but they will not discuss specifics. Charlie Rangel wants to make people feel real good about it all before he hammers them with the specifics. He must believe that once people are thrilled they will be less likely to oppose any method to pay for it. The only ones who will not oppose are the ones who won’t pay for it anyway.
In other words, they will not be discussing the $600 BILLION in tax increases required to pay for this monster. We cannot get that much money by taxing the rich so taxes will involve a lot of other folks. First they will consider taxing the health benefits that employers provide. Then they will continue to add taxes until they have forced everyone into government care or until the plan has grown into a monster like Medicare which is more expensive than private run insurance (the 2-3% operating costs are lies) and is less efficient. Rangel said he wants to butter people up before hitting them with the tax bill:
Rangel said that while House Democrats will likely release more details about health policy changes in their legislation next week, the package of offsetting tax increases and spending cuts likely will come later. Democrats, he said, want to put forth the more-positive aspects of an overhaul first. Rangel also wants to let lawmakers have time to study and weigh in on proposed offsets.
“We have a problem in not wanting to attract enough negative attention to the bill in terms of the pay-fors,” he said. “Let them get a good feel for the coverage.” Bloomberg
They have a problem in not wanting to attract enough negative attention to the bill in terms of the pay-fors. That means he does not want to put emphasis on how it will be paid for because it will garner negative attention, as it should. Rangel and his buddies, as indicated above, will roll out the plan without specifics regarding costs and then, later, hit us with the particulars on the cost.
They can’t let a crisis go to waste by telling us the truth because we might get negative.
The government does not belong in health care. It cannot run anything efficiently and it cannot run anything effectively. Everything government touches becomes bloated and suffers cost overruns.
Obama wants this rushed through. He and the Democrats are rushing head first into this with little regard to the consequences. They are going for this without long and proper debates reagrding the pros and cons of any government devised system. They are forcing their will on us.
Will it take a revolution before these people understand that they work for us? Will it take a revolution before they understand that we want smaller, limited government?
Anyone who does not pay taxes and ends up getting free health care (paid for by the tax payers) should have to work every weekend cleaning streets, picking up trash, cutting grass and cleaning graffiti.
When I was a kid my dad would make me get a certain kind of haircut. He said if he was paying for it he got to decide on the style. Those of us paying for other’s health care should have a say in just what care they get.
But remember, you will hear a lot about how wonderful it will be but you won’t hear much about cost. Rangel and the rest of the tax cheats will screw us with that later on.
Related:
Hospitals not happy with part of the plan
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Tags: cost, health care, rangel, tax increases, trickery