Germany Raises Health Insurance Premiums

Government run health care is the ultimate goal of Barack Hussein Obama (mmm mmm mmm) and his progressive base. They want cradle to grave dependence on government and government controlled health care will do just that.

Don’t worry, they tell us, the costs will come down and they will be able to afford it. Their idea of affording anything is to tax the producers in our society and redistribute that money to those who do not. What happens when there is not enough money? Easy, just tax the rich a little more.

Hell, they can afford it and who are they to decide how their money is spent? They have an obligation to take care of everyone else.

In Germany, the insurance premiums are going up to 15.5% of gross pay to cover a huge deficit in the state run health care system:

The measure is part of an overhaul of health care intended to plug an 11-billion euro ($13.8 billion) deficit in the public health-insurance system in 2011. It follows Cabinet agreement on June 29 to cuts in spending on drugs to reduce soaring costs to public health-insurance funds. Bloomberg

Is there any doubt that once the health care takeover kicks into full swing in 2011 we will run huge deficits? The government can’t even run a small $5 billion high risk program without discussing rationing and denial of care so what makes anyone think this country, which has shown absolute fiscal irresponsibility, will be able to actually run things on budget?

And what happens when the cost exceeds the budget? Tax the rich, of course. But the rich can’t pay for it all. They pay most of the taxes in this country and foot the bill for those who pay little or no taxes at all. Since the rich can’t afford it all, what will be next?

A national tax on our gross pay, just like in Germany. Once government is in the health care business it can decide how to pay for it and it will extort money from people. They already do it. Social Security and Medicare deductions from our gross pay are not voluntary. We have NO say in the matter so they just take the money.

They will also take money to pay for the health care system that is sure to have more gallons of red ink than gallons of oil in the Gulf.

But don’t worry, they have it covered.

With more of our money.

Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

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As Obama’s Numbers Fall, Democrats Revolt

Looks like the Won is finally coming down to Earth. His approval rating country wide is the lowest it has been at 56%. His supporters will say that this is a good number, and it is, but it has continued to trend downward and poll numbers for individual states are lower with Ohio at 49% and Virginia at 48%. George H.W. Bush had approval numbers in the 70s following the Gulf War and they rapidly disappeared (within a year). Obama had a wave of excitement because he screamed Hope and Change and because he is the nation’s first half black leader. Some of the shine is starting to wear off. His approval is up but his approval index is -5.

Obama said we had to act now with the stimulus or we would be doomed. They acted “now” without even reading it and we are still doomed. The unemployment number, the one he promised would peak at 8% with the stimulus, has reached 9.5% and will likely hit 10% by the end of Summer. He has spent trillions we do not have and he continues to push for more spending that is unwise and reckless. People are beginning to see he is out of his league and that he is taking us the wrong way. While Germany, which said no to stimulus, is rebounding from its recession, we are heading deeper into ours and Obama’s solution is to have another stimulus. He wants to do more of what did not work. These very acts are the ones FDR took when HE drove us into a depression.

The Democrats of his majority are bucking him. A large number oppose the health care plan because it is too expensive and would add to the massive debt they are creating. The cap and tax bill has met stiff resistance in the Senate where Robert Byrd has been extremely vocal about not supporting it. Others have reservations as well. Even the liberal Brookings Institute says it will cost too much and be damaging to us financially.

Universal health care and cap and trade will have a tough time passing even though the Democrats can do that without any Republican support. This economy and all the things going on belong to Obama and his party and the consequences are theirs as well. The Democrats in Congress are aware of this and they are thinking about their next campaigns to be reelected.

Obama’s numbers will continue to fall unless, by some miracle, his policies start to make things better. However, since history shows that we will suffer high inflation (a position many economists predict) things will not get better any time soon.

While Obama works on another stimulus to spend even more money we do not have, Germany is seeing the outcome of acting responsibly. Contrary to what some of his advisers think, a second stimulus will not help any more than the first one did.

If he continues on this path 2010 will be a good year for Republicans (if they can get good candidates to run).

We will have to wait to see if we still have a country in 2012 to make predictions.

As an aside, Congressman Hoyer says health care bill would not get votes if members had to read it. [Big Dog Salute to Stop the ACLU]

Big Dog

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Germany Was Right About Stimulus

Barack Obama said we needed to pass the stimulus package or things could worsen. He said we could go into a tailspin, a spiral from which we might not recover. The very fear tactics he criticized Bush for were front and center. Obama said that if we did not pass the stimulus that unemployment would be over 9% but if we did pass it unemployment would be around 8%. He got it passed and unemployment is now at 9.4%. My liberal friends dismiss this and say that these are just estimates and predictions. If this is the case and he was this wrong, why should we pay attention to any of his other predictions?

Obama tried to get Angela Merkel of Germany to pass a huge stimulus and she said NO. The Keynesian economists were not happy. Merkel took the same approach that I wanted us to take, and that was not to spend the money.

Looks like she was correct. According to the AP (via Forbes) The unemployment rate in Germany is dropping and jobs are being created or or filled (or are they being saved).

The number of jobless dropped 127,000 in May to 3.458 million for a 0.4 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent, the Nuremberg-based agency said. Forbes

The article does indicate that some of these are seasonal jobs and that there might not be a lasting recovery. The important thing to take away is that Germany did not spend huge sums of money for a stimulus and the country did not go into a tailspin and into a spiral from which it might not recover.

In other words, they are seeing some improvement that might not be sustained but that is better than ours and they did not spend a trillion dollars. As I said, the economy moves in cycles and there will be recessions. Our biggest mistake is to intervene and manipulate the economy because it eventually adds up. All the interventions of the past exploded in 2008 (along with Democratic housing market antics). If we let the economy move in its normal cycles things will get better faster.

The US will lag behind Germany in recovery because we made the same mistakes that FDR did during the Great Depression.

What makes anyone think that government can fix the problem it created? If spending were the solution we would not have a problem because government has been on a spending spree for years.

Unemployment will be in the double digits along with inflation right after we suffer the deflationary cycle. All the stimulus in the world will not help.

Big Dog

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The Fuhrer Speaks in Germany

The Fuhrer
Sieg Heil!

The Fuhrer, Barack Obama, spoke in Berlin to a crowd of people who interrupted his speech nearly 30 times with applause as he described ways to make America weaker and to spend more of her money on Socialism. The Fuhrer drew applause for expressing a desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons because the uneducated believe that, like with gun control, everyone will disarm. He drew applause for committing to spending our money on the global economy and on the hoax of global warming. The Fuhrer was in full swing and though he said it was not a campaign speech it was.

He started off by playing the race card. He told everyone that he did not look like the other Americans who had spoken there. He also intertwined memories of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in his speech so as to be on considered on the same level as they. He mentioned change, and hope as well as other catch phrases from his campaign like “this is our time.” For a Congressional fact finding mission this sure sounded like a campaign speech. I do not remember a fact finding mission ever having a speech of this magnitude in it so if it looks like a duck…

This was well staged to make Obama look like he has the credentials to run this country and that he is loved in Europe. We are supposed to come away thinking that Obama can unite the world and his speech addressed the global aspects of the world. He sounded like a one world order kind of guy. Obama mentioned how America was there for the Berlin airlift and how we got that wall removed. It is likely that these events would never have happened if Obama had been president at those moments in history because they were provocative and Obama wants to talk not provoke.

The interesting thing to me is that he came off looking like another speaker that drew large German crowds who interrupted him with applause. That speaker also talked about new world order and his party even has the word Socialist in it.

I was not impressed with the speech. It was a campaign speech designed to make a political hack with little experience look presidential. You can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig.

Transcript

Big Dog

Is Obama Bi or Not?

Bilingual, that is.

On July 11th of this year Barack Obama told people at a Town Hall meeting in Dayton Ohio that he did not speak a foreign language and that he was embarrassed by that.

I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing!” Barack Obama exclaimed today at town hall meeting here. Obama, who often touts his time growing up overseas, made the confession while speaking about the importance of teaching foreign languages in schools. [emphasis added] CBS News

As Barack Obama prepares to give his campaign speech in Germany he has been taking questions from reporters. One asked him if his speech would be in German and this was the response:

“My German is not real good,” he said. “I can speak Bahasi Indonesian but I don’t think…there would be a lot of appeal to that.” [emphasis added] ABC Political Punch

So now the question is, which time was he lying. Was he lying at the Town Hall meeting in order to defuse the tense environment surrounding his statement that parents should be ensuring their children learn Spanish (not any foreign language but Spanish) or was he lying when he answered the question in Germany.

The over arching question is, why would he lie about it in the first place? What is the motivation behind his very different answers?

Obama definitely has a problem with the truth. I wonder if any of the fawning media accompanying him will ask him about the contradiction…

Get real, they are too busy having tingles up their legs.

Big Dog