Trickle Up Poverty (18 page)

Virtually every economic policy of the new administration, from plans to increase taxes on income and capital gains to proposed cap and trade legislation to a significant increase in the money supply, promises to have a negative effect on the markets. And yet there’s another perhaps more disturbing component of the Obama economic policy, namely, that the president genuinely distrusts America, especially its middle class. He distrusts what it stands for.

Barack Obama is arguably ideologically blinded by his enmity toward America, which he learned in church under his America-hating pastor. His willful misapprehension of how a capitalist market economy works leads him to think that if he finds ways to take money from “the rich” and redistribute it to the rich and the poor, the only consequences will be that the middle class shrinks. That and the ushering in of the Soviet model of a two-class society. He may simply not understand that the creators of wealth, the capitalist businessmen and women so many of whom are members of the middle class, cannot function without the markets.

If the markets’ function is crippled, there will be no wealth to redistribute.

He’d know this if he had any experience running a business.

Among the many problems with what historian Amity Shlaes has called “state capitalism” is that it tends to produce, again in Shlaes’ words, “junk GDP.”65 With government dictating what technologies must be pursued and developed, and providing billions of dollars in incentives for their pursuit, we lose the trial-and-error resilience of a free market, the small projects, privately funded, that actually develop the technologies that work and that make our lives better and more efficient.

From such disastrous mandates as the development of ethanol fuel to the new emphasis on developing “green” technologies that defy what the market has already demonstrated, such government-mandated businesses always have unintended consequences. These consequences are damaging to the people in the middle class who have to live with them long after Obama leaves office.

Our national debt ceiling has been raised to more than $14 trillion. According to the 2009 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports, the unfunded liabilities for these two governmental entitlements are more than $107 trillion, more than seven times the annual GDP of the United States.66 Our monthly deficits have reached more than $200 billion. We’ve mortgaged our and generations of our descendants’ futures to create a nation of dependents, people who no longer are taught to pay their own way nor have the desire to do so. Leftists, Marxists, progressives … whatever you want to call them, they’re perilously close to realizing their aim of total control over our lives and every important decision we make, and to bankrupting the country in the bargain.

Obama’s popularity is plunging precipitously, as is support for more untenable spending by the current congress. Both the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have issued projections of drastic revenue shortfalls, and those who are taking the time to read the healthcare bill are discovering the virtual disappearance of healthcare options for seniors, not to mention the collapse of private insurance, that they contain. The fact that the president has been able to pass that disastrous bill, even as the financial consequences of the bill were beginning to be comprehended by the American people, indicates just how unimportant what we think is to the current administration. Nothing

Obama does, not one single policy or legislative initiative, has anything to do with the will of the people or what might benefit the people.

Even Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, not someone known for standing up for the American people’s interests, seems to understand what’s going on here. In comments about then-pending healthcare legislation, Grassley told Fox News, “For every family that gets some benefit from this program, in other words, a premium subsidy, three families are going to get a tax increase and those three families obviously include the bulk of people you’d call middle class America.”67 You might want to read that again.

Seventy-nine percent of people polled in a March, 2010, Fox News survey believe that the U.S. economy might collapse. What’s more, they think that our politicians have no clue as to how to prevent a collapse from hap-pening.68 Part of the reason they believe that might be the president’s own willful misunderstanding of how a capitalist economy works. In offhand remarks during a speech, Obama made it clear how he feels about hard work and the marketplace:

I want to be clear, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.69

That leftist watchword, “fairly,” tells us all we need to know about our leader’s economic inclinations. He’s quick to tell everyone exactly how income should be “fairly” earned. And he’s ready to set limits on all of us, as he’s trying to do with financial industry executives, on just how much is “enough” when it comes to our earnings.

There’s a wisp of good news in all of this.

Day by day, the president’s agenda is being exposed to be what it really is, namely, a massive political coup designed to turn the United States into a socialist state. Yes, the citizens of the United States are starting to understand that the world Obama envisions is one in which the central government confiscates its citizens’ money and transfers it to his political comrades. This is yet another reason why the Tea Party movement is attracting unprecedented crowds.

The people are livid.

They cannot take another minute of this madness.

They are no longer willing to sit idly by as their personal savings and financial security are transferred to the pockets of hedge fund pirates. Nor should they. Indeed, if America’s patriots will turn out in droves for the 2010 mid-term elections, they can oust the enemy within. They can purge the scum from the system. They can put a stop to those who are wrecking our economy and subjugating us to their political will. And maybe, just maybe, the new leadership will have the courage to bring those who have betrayed us on Wall Street to justice.

The Health Scare Fraud: What’s Really in the Bill

The American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama.

—Al Sharpton1

It takes a long time to … put the legislation together to control the people.

—Representative John Dingell2

When I was fourteen, I took a job in a local drug store in Queens, New York. It had nothing in common with the big, name brand drugstores found in just about every neighborhood these days. This was a simple mom-and-pop affair. I’ll never forget the first time I met Doc the Pharmacist. Doc was an Italian immigrant from the old country who probably lived in a small apartment over the shop. He was a thickset man with an oversized shoe on his right foot. The heel must have been eight inches high to compensate for his short leg.

Unlike the sterile-looking pharmacies today with their harsh overhead lighting designed to give you a migraine so you buy more aspirin, I don’t think there was a fluorescent light bulb in the place. Doc’s store had wooden shelves sagging under the weight of tonics and lotions, and glass display cases with rows of first aid supplies and sundries.

It even smelled different.

To this day, I still remember the distinctively pleasing aroma greeting me the moment I’d walk through the door of Doc’s drugstore. I’ll put it to you this way. It was as if the mahogany counters and floor had been scrubbed down with Old Spice and Lysol with a hint of leather. Whatever happened to that incredible smell? I should have bottled it. These days, drugstores smell like nothing. And nobody knows your name. With Doc, you felt like family.

Let’s set aside the fact he was paying me fifty cents an hour below minimum wage to save a few bucks. I had a paying job on the weekends and after school, that’s all. I was glad for the work and looked forward to going there. At lunch, Doc’s wife treated him like a king. She’d bring in a big tray with a top to keep the veal parmigiana or other homemade feasts warm. He’d sit at his desk for the better part of an hour savoring every bite. Preferring to eat his meal in peace, he’d make me the “pharmacist.”

I mean, how hard was it to fill out the prescriptions?

All I had to do was read “Penicillin, 250 mg,” find the right jar that said “Penicillin,” and then count out a dozen pills. I didn’t need medical training to count to twelve. The only time things got a bit dicey was on the rare occasion when some doctor wanted a blend of drugs ground together. You know, he’d ask for two milligrams of sulfur powder and half a gram of phosphorous plus other ingredients. These, Doc would compound himself. All I did was count pills—like today’s college educated pharmacists.

One afternoon, I’m doing my job, counting out pills, minding my own business while Doc was wiping the sauce from the edges of his mouth. In walked a guy in a dark suit and a receding hairline. He looked a lot like Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen in The Godfather. I glanced up as he approached the counter. I never saw the man before and had no idea what he wanted. He studied me like a hawk, watching me filling out the prescriptions and then, with a fake smile, said, “Hi, how are you, son?”

“Fine,” I said. While I didn’t know at the time why he was scoping out the place, something about him made me instinctively wary. “Can I help you, Mister?”

“No, no, just looking,” he said. He raised an eyebrow like an IRS agent who just found an unreported nickel during an audit. His eyes, darting around the drugstore, zeroed in on Doc sitting beside me eating the last few bites of his veal parmigiana. The next minute, he marches behind the counter to Doc, pulls out his ID and says, “I got real bad news for you, Doc.”

I later learned he was a city government inspector.

That afternoon Doc got hit with a fine—and I lost my job.

It was a watershed moment in my life.

Looking back, there have been two life-changing outcomes from those experiences working in the pharmacy. I came away with a profound interest in medicine and, years later, went on to write several bestselling books on the topic, including Earth Medicine, Maximum Immunity, Healing Children Naturally, and Reducing the Risk of Alzheimer’s. That’s number one. Second, I grew to be leery of government intervention, particularly when a bureaucrat flashes a fake smile and pretends he or she is there for my benefit. Can you blame me?

Back then, I lost my job when the government stepped in.

Today, I’m losing the best healthcare system in the world because the government seized this industry and now controls one-sixth of the economy!3

On March 23, 2010, with the stroke of a pen, our Naked Emperor signed the death certificate on what was once the greatest healthcare system in history and the envy of the world. He did so even after the overwhelming majority of Americans—a full 61 percent—opposed it saying, “Congress should scrap that plan and start all over again.”4 As the deadline for passage approached, an estimated 100,000 calls an hour from irate voters bombarded Congress.5

None of that mattered to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid.

In order to usher in socialized medicine, these Demoncats shackled the middle class with $2 trillion in new debt6—not the $940 billion figure touted by Team Obama to get the measure passed. That, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), is the real cost of the bill’s first-decade. As the Weekly Standard points out, the CBO says “we need to start the clock when the costs would actually start in any meaningful way: in

2014.”7

In other words, ObamaCare is a ticking time bomb. It’s set to explode after Obama leaves office saddling us with skyrocketing debt, reduced care, and unprecedented invasion of privacy. The painful side effects caused by this bill will be lethal to the physical and financial health of Americans. As soon as 2019, ObamaCare has provisions designed to soak the middle class with a $3.9 billion tax increase!8 Likewise, young adults seeking health insurance will, according to the Associated Press, “carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans—a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people” by an estimated 17 percent.9 Other estimates place the figure of increased premiums as high as 30 to 50 percent for young people.10

And, as you’ll see in a moment, there’s a “death panel” that may just deny you the coverage you need in the name of “medical rationing” … especially if you’re a senior citizen—the very death panels the Obama tricksters denied existed before the vote. Indeed, ObamaCare creates trickle up poverty for the middle class. What did Congress pass under the cloak of darkness while America slept?

Buried within more than 2,000 pages of complex regulations, Obama’s Demoncats have granted massive new—and dangerously expansive—powers to the IRS costing $10 billion over the next decade primarily to hire 16,500 additional IRS agents and examiners.11 What purpose does this Healthstapo serve? President Obama knows his healthcare bill will be so wildly unpopular once the provisions kick in, he’s preparing to marshal an army of mean-faced IRS agents to enforce full compliance. If you fail to comply by purchasing the “minimum essential coverage” mandated by ObamaCare, the IRS has the authority to fine you up to 2 percent of your income.12

Thanks to Barack Obama, you must buy a healthcare policy. Unless, of course, you’re an illegal alien.13

That’s right. Those who are here illegally are exempt from these fines.

And, while the ObamaCare bill excludes extending coverage for illegal aliens, which some say was the price of securing the vote from conservative Democrats, that omission won’t prevent illegals from continuing to sponge off the taxpayers pocketbooks. As one illegal immigrant said, “My daughter is six. She was born here. The state pays for her to go to [the] hospital. If I get sick, I do what all the Mexicans do: I go and sit in the emergency room where they cannot turn you away.”14 You and I must pay for coverage and then stand in line behind someone else who hasn’t paid a dime and doesn’t belong in the country in the first place. Tell me that isn’t upside-down logic.

What’s more, isn’t it comforting to know that ObamaCare has made the IRS the government’s chief enforcer of the new socialized medicine program? Make no mistake: there’s no grace where the IRS is concerned. Before the bill was signed into law, Dave Camp (R-MI), Ranking Member of the Committee on Ways and Means, and Charles Boustany (R-LA), Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Oversight, warned about the consequences if your coverage were to lapse for even one month:

Disturbingly, the IRS [is now] in charge of verifying that every American taxpayer has obtained acceptable health coverage for every month of the year. If the IRS determines that a taxpayer lacks acceptable insurance for even a single month, then the IRS would impose a new tax on that taxpayer, even auditing the taxpayer and could assess interest and penalties on top of the tax.15

In other words, as Camp and Boustany explain, the IRS now must track the “monthly health insurance status of roughly 300 million Americans.” To help the IRS with that task, your insurance carrier must rat on you by providing the IRS with personal “information about the taxpayer”—including your name, address, phone number, tax identification number, and employer16—and the “type of coverage, including the portion of premiums paid by the employer.”17

Who said Big Brother wasn’t watching us?

A Bad Prescription for America

As if expanding the IRS—the most feared arm of the federal government known for its fascist-like enforcement tactics—wasn’t bad enough, ObamaCare created “159 new government offices and programs.”18 One of those programs is beefing up the U.S. Public Health Service “Commissioned Corps.” Most people have never heard of the Commissioned Corps, which has been around for years. The government describes the Corps as “an elite team of more than 6,000 full-time, well-trained, highly qualified public health professionals dedicated to delivering the nation’s public health promotion and disease prevention programs and advancing public health science.”19

Maybe we need six thousand health czars in the case of a national emergency. Fine. Personally, I think if we have the funds for an “elite team” of six thousand “well-trained” professionals, the country would be better served if they were trained and used to screen the hordes of illegal aliens flooding into this country for diseases. The larger point is this: Obam-aCare expands the existing Commissioned Corps with the creation of a “Ready Reserve Corps” to be mobilized “for service in time of national emergency.”20

Who’s to say what qualifies as a “national emergency”? President Obama?

The bill doesn’t specify that detail so draw your own conclusions.

What’s more, Fidel Obama has set himself up as the one who handpicks the officers of this Ready Reserve Corps! This is unbelievable. Section 203 (3) of HR 3590 states: “Commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps shall be appointed by the President” [emphasis added]. It gets worse. This new arm of the government includes “Warrant Officers,” and Section 203 goes on to state that members of the Ready Reserve Corps must “be available and ready for involuntary calls to active duty during national emergencies and public health crises, similar to the uniformed service reserve personnel [emphasis added].”

You might want to read that again.

President Obama appoints officers for this new “Ready Reserve Corps,” whose membership may be involuntarily called into duty, for a yet-to-be defined “national emergency.” To be redundant, we already have the military, the FBI, the Secret Service, State Troopers, and county and local police forces. What’s this “Ready Reserve Corps” really about? Let’s connect the dots. As I documented in chapter one, on July 2, 2008, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, then—presidential wannabe Obama said something alarming, which was completely ignored by most of the major media. He proclaimed:

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

I must ask the difficult question: Is the formation of a Ready Reserve Corps the first step in the establishment of Obama’s private national security force? It certainly appears as though Obama laid the groundwork for his version of the brownshirts. Where’s the outcry from the civil libertarians? Why does the un-American Civil Liberties Union remain silent? I thought they opposed layers of government regulation and bureaucracy meddling in our personal affairs.

Maybe the ACLU is too busy defending—pro bono—Muslims sought by the FBI for Homeland Security-related questioning.21 Maybe the ACLU is too busy calling on the president to grant the 9/11 terrorists civilian trials rather than, more appropriate, face a military commission.22 Then again, going to the core of their ideology, maybe the ACLU resonates with Obama when he promised to begin “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”23

Their silence on this potential threat is deafening.

Obama’s Death Panel from Hell

You have to hand it to Nancy “Stalin in High Heels” Pelosi. She did a remarkable job preventing Congress from knowing what the hell they were about to vote on. She kept the public equally in the dark. Just days before calling for a vote, she had the audacity to say, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”24 That time has come. We’re now finding that what we feared about ObamaCare was just the beginning.

Case in point. Another one of President Obama’s controversial and dangerous “transformations” of the United States found in Section 1899A of the ObamaCare bill is the establishment of an “Independent Medicare Advisory Board” (IMAB)—often referred to as a “death panel” by critics. Advocates of the IMAB say the board is necessary and will have nothing to do with end-of-life decisions.

Which position is true?

Using innocuous sounding language, the bill explains that the IMAB exists to “reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending.” Translation: the IMAB is supposed to find ways to cut costs through the practice of medical rationing. While not specifically tasked with end-of-life decisions, the fact is that the IMAB is nothing more than a government-controlled panel that, in its quest to cut costs, will establish policies discouraging or prohibiting certain medical procedures. Or, conversely, it will give doctors “incentives” to withhold treatment in certain instances. Either way, coverage of certain life-enhancing, life-extending procedures will be