The National Taxpayers Union compared Obama’s words in pushing government-run health care in a recent speech and town hall meeting with the language of the bill itself (overview here). NTU also compared the positive (market and consumer oriented) language in the bill with the negative. While Obama used words such as “rights” and “choice” much more frequently in his speech, the language of the bill is considerably more negative. Here’s how the bill shacks out:
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Language of a Busy Bureaucracy…
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|
|
Term(s)
|
Frequency
|
| Require/Required/Requirement(s) | 494 |
| Report(s)/Reporting/Reported | 427 |
| Limit/Limits/Limitation | 167 |
| Penalty/Penalties | 156 |
| Regulations | 91 |
| Tax(es) | 72 |
| Enforce/Enforcement | 48 |
| Must | 47 |
| Prohibit/Prohibiting/Prohibition | 28 |
| Sanction(s) | 21 |
| Obligation/Obligations | 18 |
| Restrict/Restrictive/Restriction | 12 |
| Fines | 3 |
| Total | 1584 |
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Limiting Freedom, Competition, & the Marketplace
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|
|
Term(s)
|
Frequency
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| Benefit(s) | 375 |
| Choice | 47 |
| Options | 38 |
| Private | 35 |
| Rights | 21 |
| Privacy | 17 |
| Exempt/Exemption | 16 |
| Marketplace | 3 |
| Competition | 3 |
| Consumer-driven | 0 |
| Freedom | 0 |
| Liberty | 0 |
| Patient-driven | 0 |
| Total | 555 |
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Krugmanomics is that strange phenomenon, practiced by intellectual-turned-hack and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, where economics is twisted on its head to support the liberal line, and to hell with the facts.
In his latest screed, Krugman starts off on a rare intelligent note by contradicting his leftist comrades in admitting, “the government is already deeply involved, even in private insurance.”
But like a good leftist who stumbles upon the truth, Krugman promptly dusted himself off and pretended like nothing happened. Government already meddles extensively in health care and yet we have a “crisis?” Hmm, couldn’t try less government, now could we? Boulderdash!
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And they’ll take your companies paycheck decisions.
Congress wants to give the government a direct role in deciding how much executives on Wall Street are paid, after the biggest U.S. banks accepted billions in taxpayer money and still managed to distribute $1 million bonuses to thousands of employees.
The House was expected to pass legislation Friday by Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, that would ban “incentive-based” pay that could threaten the economy or viability of the institution.
The bill, which would give regulators nine months to hash out the details, would give the government unprecedented say in how private corporations reward brokers and traders.
Democrats said excessive salaries and bonuses risk harming the broader economy.
Meanwhile, meddling democrats quite clearly harm our liberty.
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I recently switched from Netvibes to Google Reader for my news reading needs. One of the additional features on Google is the ability to share items I like on the blog with a single click. You can see the seven most recent items I’ve shared on the right.
Here are the top sources of articles I shared over the last 30 days. There are more than ten because five feeds tied at 3. I also excluded RealClearPolitics because it posts articles from different sources.
Reason Magazine – 11
Cato @ Liberty – 9
The Foundry (Heritage’s blog) – 8
WSJ.com: Opinion – 7
OpenMarket.org – 6
The Corner (National Review Online) – 4
Weekly Standard Blog – 4
A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days – 3
John Stossel’s Take – 3
POLITICO Top Stories – 3
RedState – 3
WaPo Op-Ed Columns – 3
In addition to the links on the right, you can also follow my shared items directly here.
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So says President Obama.
Thanks to legislation signed by the President, taxes on cigarettes more than doubled several months ago, while his budget for 2009 included $1.4 trillion in new taxes.
Obama’s audacious lies are bordering on Clintonesque.
Hat-tip: NRO’s The Campaign Spot
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I’ll be very proud of my home state if this goes through:
In response to what some opponents see as a Congress that doesn’t represent their interests, State Legislators are looking to the nearly-forgotten American political tradition of nullification as a way to reject any potential national health care program that may be coming from Washington.
The most recent effort comes from Florida State Senator Carey Baker and State Representative Scott Plakon, who this week filed a proposed State Constitutional Amendment (HJR37) as a means to prevent Floridians from being affected by any Federal Health Care Legislation. If approved by the legislature, Florida residents could be voting on it as early as 2010.
HJR37 would deny the ability of any new law to impose demands, restrictions or penalties on health care choices on Floridians. Versions of proposed federal health care reform legislation have included insurance coverage mandates, and certain penalties on employers who fail to provide employee health insurance.
Even if this does pass, however, the state of Florida itself still imposes demands, restrictions and penalties on health care choices of Floridians. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, Florida currently places 52 mandates on insurance providers, including benefits for drug abuse treatment, hair prothesis and occupational therapy. These restrictions on consumer choice harm Floridians just as much as they would if they originated from the federal government.
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Democrats are beaming. They are quite proud of themselves, and they want you to know about it. What did they do? Well, they finally got around to learning what was in the health care bill.
They were all House Democrats, boning up on the historic and controversial health-care reform legislation that’s being crafted in their chamber. The rough draft of HR 3200 (”America’s Affordable Health Choices Act”) was unveiled two weeks ago and runs more than 1,000 pages, not counting amendments. Last week the Democrats decided that, if they’re going to try to sell this plan to their constituents, they need to have a better sense of what it says, line by line.
They needed a teach-in.
So their staffers led them through the bill, section by section — from Division A, Title I, Subtitle A, Section 101 all the way through Division C, Title V, Subtitle E, Section 2541.
After a couple of hours the Democrats had adopted a refrain:
“No one’s going to say we haven’t read the bill,” said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, as he took a break from the closed-door gathering.
Why, what good little representatives they are! Now if we can only get them to wait until after they know what is in a piece of legislation before deciding to “sell” it to the people.
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Bad news for the global warming cultists:
Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.
The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.
“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.
Hat-tip: The Locker Room
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Barack Obama quickly retreated from his claim, made despite an admission that he was in the dark on the facts, that Cambridge police acted “stupidly” in arresting Professor Gates. That hasn’t stopped a Cambridge police officer from saying she wouldn’t vote for Obama again.
But not to worry! Obama has a private slush fund to throw around whenever he pisses people off with his ham-handedness. From the White House:
Leave a commentVice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder today announced $1 billion in grants to fund the hiring and rehiring of law enforcement officers all across the country under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009…
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NRO puts the birther nuttiness in its place. Can we please move on to the real issues now?
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
