Posts Tagged ‘obamacare’

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ObamaCare Challenge Tossed

December 4, 2010

U.S. District Judge Norman Moon, a Clinton appointee, tossed out a challenge to ObamaCare in Virginia this week. This is the second victory for the Obama administration in a wave of lawsuits. Liberty University, the plaintiff in the case, has already decided to appeal in hopes of eclipsing Moon’s decision. “Congress does not have the authority to force every American to purchase a particular kind of health insurance product,” said Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty’s School of Law and an attorney on the case. Liberty argued that the law abuses the Commerce Clause of the Constitution in an attempt to provide the government strict control over the health care market. Their constitutional exegesis is completely sound, but Moon was blinded to that reality.

According to Moon, the law requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance falls legally under the Commerce Clause because the lack of the law would drive up costs, “precisely the harms that Congress sought to address with the Act’s regulatory measures.” To this we would ask, if the Commerce Clause can be melded to the whims of the backers of ObamaCare, what powers doesn’t Congress have to continue to shackle the American people?

Along the same lines…

A recent Investor’s Business Daily editorial calls it “the ultimate form of taxation without representation”: the continuing attempts by eco-fascists to force wealth redistribution upon the United States and other “rich” countries. This is all under the guise, of course, of saving the world from the scourge of global warming.

After its abysmal failure in wintry Copenhagen last year, the UN is holding another climate change conference in balmy Cancun, Mexico. There, surrounded by sun and sand, it will once again attempt to convince delegates from 193 countries that, a) the world is in peril and therefore we must drastically reduce emissions; and b) the U.S. and other developed nations must pay poor countries billions of dollars in retribution for the “damage” they caused in becoming, well, developed. The conference will feature the usual fanfare, including 250 presentations about the effects of climate change and proclamations that 2010 is tied for the hottest year since we began keeping records 131 years ago.

This is all smoke and mirrors. German economist Ottmar Edenhofer, who also serves as the pretentiously titled Co-chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change, has openly admitted that “climate change policy is redistributing the world’s wealth.” This would be accomplished in the U.S. with cap-n-trade policies being pushed by Obama and his “progressive” pals in Congress.

Despite the sunny weather, the climate at this conference probably won’t be any friendlier than it was in Denmark. Even before the Republican landslide in last month’s elections, many lawmakers were leery of saddling Americans with more taxes during the recession, especially given the fact that China — the world’s biggest polluter — refuses to make any binding promises about emissions. In addition, in the wake of the Climategate scandal, emerging studies have shot more holes in climate change “science” than in Swiss cheese. Only time will tell, but it looks as if leftists will have to find another way to siphon America’s wealth to other nations.

In related news, House Republicans are set to eliminate the climate change committee created by soon-to-be-ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In Congress at least, the climate has changed.

And yet more commentary on epic fail obama’s choice of czar for BATFE

In another example of the “Chicago Way,” last week Barack Obama tabbed Andrew Traver, currently special agent in charge of the Chicago division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (better known by the ATF acronym), as the bureau’s permanent head. “You might as well put an arsonist in charge of the fire department,” quipped NRA spokesman Chris Cox.

While the gun grabbers at the Brady Center applaud the choice, Second Amendment advocates are predictably aghast. They criticize Traver because of his ties to the gun-control advocating Joyce Foundation and work during a 2007 conference on reducing gun violence sponsored by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, another fervently anti-gun organization. The IACP report includes a call for legislation to allow federal health and safety oversight of the firearms industry. What Second Amendment?

Others question Traver’s lack of senior-level executive experience, but when has that ever stopped anyone in Washington? The Senate may get a chance to question and confirm Traver, who would take over an agency laboring under acting leaders since 2006, unless Obama decides to use him as yet another recess appointment. Certainly Traver would fit right in with the rest of Executive Branch Washington in an era where the president relies on regulation, as opposed to legislation, to enact his agenda.

SOURCE

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‘death panels and sales taxes’ : Whose money is it?

November 18, 2010

More leftest idiocy…

A new level of budget cutting: “I said something deliberately provocative on This Week, so I think I’d better clarify what I meant (which I did on the show, but it can’t hurt to say it again.) So, what I said is that the eventual resolution of the deficit problem both will and should rely on ‘death panels and sales taxes’. What I meant is that (a) health care costs will have to be controlled, which will surely require having Medicare and Medicaid decide what they’re willing to pay for — not really death panels, of course, but consideration of medical effectiveness and, at some point, how much we’re willing to spend for extreme care.” –New York Times columnist Paul Krugman

Whose money is it? “You know while you’re making these proposals, the Congress is about to come back and talk about whether to extend the tax cuts first passed under President Bush. By extending them, that’s going to cost about $4 trillion, about the amount that you save. Couldn’t some of this be avoided by keeping the tax rates where they are? I mean, by letting them go back to where they were in 1998 when you were White House chief of staff?” –ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles

Denial: “You wrote a book last year, I believe, that predicted 40 more years of Democratic dominance in Washington. Given what happened not long ago in those elections, do you stand by that prediction?” –ABC’s Dan Harris to former Clintonista James Carville, who responded in the affirmative

Historic defeat: “Nancy Pelosi did two things for which she will go down in history. She was an incredibly effective majority leader when, and speaker, there was an opposition president. She helped make the majority. And when she was in the majority, she was the hammer that got through President Obama’s agenda and sent it to the Senate. However, that is a completely different role than what she wants to do now. For which, I think she’s kind of like Winston Churchill. I mean, she accomplished historic things for the Democrats, and they should be sending her off in a blaze of glory and adjusting for this new regime.” –Fox News Sunday and NPR’s Mara Liasson (Her greatest accomplishment was that she turned the majority into the minority.)

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ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster-in-the-making

October 30, 2010

“ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster-in-the-making. If people can be forced to buy health insurance and states can be forced to blow gigantic, federally-mandated holes in their budgets, this country will never recover. Our wannabe socialists in Congress and the White House are already, as Margaret Thatcher put it, ‘out of other people’s money.’ The election in November may do much to blunt their odious ambitions, but they will never give up trying to turn America into a socialist nation.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

“The question here is in one crucial sense about health care, but it is in fact about much more than that. It concerns the federal government’s claimed entitlement to instruct us concerning the decisions we make about caring for our health. It is possible, no doubt, to claim that ObamaCare, as enacted last spring by Congress, is so wonderful a thing no one should miss out on it. It is another matter entirely to suggest that the end here justifies the means. That’s to say because ObamaCare is wonderful/marvelous/you name it, you and you and you should be made to buy into it. That kind of assertion gives off the odor of tyranny — a prospect worse, I hope we can agree, than gaps in health insurance coverage.” –columnist William Murchison

“A nirvana ‘Star Trek’ world without money, without sickness, and without envy ignores reality. Yet not only do the Left pretend this is possible, but they sell the idea by using envy and government checks like candy from their pocket. They sell this idea to those in need, taking power in exchange for promises they cannot possibly keep. They have merely shifted the burden, first to ‘the rich,’ and then always expanding according to ever-increasing needs to the entire producing half of the country. This is not fairness. This is lust for power. This is the face of tyranny in disguise. This, then, is the liberal Democrat message of Hope and Change.” –columnist Richard Pecore

“The problem is, and always has been, that once government programs and agencies are created, they quickly become sacrosanct and virtually impossible to destroy. As Ronald Reagan said, ‘Government programs, once launched, never disappear … a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!’ So it doesn’t matter that the Department of Education doesn’t educate, or that the Department of Energy doesn’t produce energy. It’s government and, thus, by definition good in the minds of the Washington establishment.” –columnist Cal Thomas

“All indications coming out of the White House suggest that if Democrats suffer major losses, the president and his top aides will resolutely refuse to reconsider the policies — national health care, stimulus, runaway spending — that led to their defeat. Instead, they will point fingers in virtually every direction other than their own. Come November, it’s likely the D-for-Democrat that the president refers to so often will actually stand for denial.'” –Washington Examiner political correspondent Byron York

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The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ test

October 30, 2010

“Legal arguments for Obamacare’s individual mandate fail the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ test and the duck test. In two court challenges to the law in the past 11 days and a court hearing today on a third, the Obama administration’s legal position is fading faster than the Cheshire Cat. Democrats took some solace from the first case, a challenge in Michigan, because Judge George C. Steeh ultimately ruled in favor of Obamacare. Yet even though that Clinton-appointed judge refused to declare the mandate unconstitutional, he undercut the administration’s key argument that the penalty for failing to buy insurance is a ‘tax,’ and that the mandate it enforces is allowable within the broad taxing power provided by the Constitution. ‘The provisions of the Health Care Reform Act at issue here, for the most part, have nothing to do with the assessment or collection of taxes,’ Judge Steeh ruled. This is so important that the federal district judge in Florida, in Thursday’s preliminary ruling in the second case, spent 22 pages analyzing it. If the fine is a penalty rather than a tax, Congress’ power is far less extensive. Judge Roger Vinson noted Congress repeatedly called the fine a ‘penalty,’ explicitly changing its description from a ‘tax’ that earlier versions of the bill assessed by name. Citing Alice’s admonition to Humpty Dumpty that words can’t ‘mean so many different things’ as Humpty intended, Judge Vinson concluded, ‘Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing … [only to] argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely.’ Judge Vinson explained that no matter what Congress called it, the assessment was designed to act as a punishment, not a revenue measure. Hence, it’s not a tax. His 22-page analysis is an exposition of the logic that if something is called a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck — and the same goes for a penalty. The tax issue is vital because it’s the Obama administration’s fallback position if it loses on the first and biggest dispute, which is whether Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause not only to regulate commerce, but to force individuals to engage in specific commerce.” —The Washington Times

SOURCE

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Of Tapeworms, Liberals, and parasites in General

October 19, 2010

“The political success of liberalism is parasitic, feeding off order and prosperity that the implementation of liberal policies couldn’t possibly create. Bill Clinton’s recent bragging on the campaign trail about the budgets that he balanced in the 1990s is an illustration of this: Where did those budgets come from? Not from the policies of liberalism. Take away the significant reductions in defense spending that came from Ronald Reagan winning the Cold War, the wealth from an entrepreneurial economy that an era of tax cuts generated, and the check on Democratic spending schemes from Newt Gingrich’s Congress, and those budgets would never have been balanced. In his first term, Clinton had every intention of busting the budget with HillaryCare, but he just couldn’t get away it. If Clinton is a ‘successful’ president, as pundits these days insist, that’s because his agenda failed where Obama’s succeeded. By passing ObamaCare and a raft of other bad bills, the Democrats have made it possible for voters to measure liberal rhetoric against the grim realities it produces. The parasite got fat enough to eat the conservative host whole, and now it is dying. … Liberalism normally enjoys the demagogic advantage of appealing to emotion over reason. But in moments of crisis, people want reason over emotion.” –columnist George Neumayr

SOURCE

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Colorado Election : Positions concerning 2010 Statewide Ballot Initiatives

October 16, 2010

As directed by the Libertarian Party of Colorado Constitution, the Board of Directors has reviewed the 2010 amendments and propositions on the ballot for voter consideration.  There are seven proposed amendments to the Colorado Constitution and two propositions to change the Revised Statutes.

For the 2010 election, the Colorado “Blue Book” contains succinct summaries of each of these.  There are also pro and con websites and other information being provided in numerous information media outlets.
The Libertarian Party of Colorado consists of free thinkers and responsible voters who seek as much information as possible about the pros and cons of every voting decision they will make.  We believe every libertarian and other voters will make up their own minds based on their careful review of the issues.
The following are the Libertarian Party of Colorado positions concerning each of the 2010 Colorado initiatives.
Amendment P –Regulation of Games of Chance. The LPCO takes no position either way on this amendment.
Moves bingo and raffle licensing from Sec State to Dept of Revenue (or other designated by the state legislature).  In addition to time, energy, and money already expended on this change to existing law, there will be a onetime $116,000 expenditure from bingo and raffle license fees.
The amendment makes no significant changes to the Colorado Constitution or the long term financial situation of the State Government-
Amendment Q –Temp Location of State Seat of Government.  The LPCO recommends Yes on this amendment.
Currently there is no provision in the Colorado Constitution for convening of the State Government if a major disaster emergency were to make Denver unusable.  This amendment provides direction for the Governor and the Legislature to designate a temporary location for the seat of government.
Amendment R –Exempt Possessory Interests in Real Property.  The LPCO recommends Yes on this amendment.
Eliminates property taxes for individuals and businesses that use government-owned property for a private benefit worth $6,000 or less in market value.
The fiscal effects of this amendment are relatively minor, but should increase the efficiency of local governments by reducing the costs of assessing and collecting minor amounts of property taxes from numerous small assessments.
Ammendment 60 –Concerning Property Taxes. The LPCO recommends a YES vote on this amendment.
Strengthens TABOR by adding a new section (10) to Article X, Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution.
-Requires audit and enforcement of this section.
-All owners of real property would be entitled to vote on all proposed property taxes affecting their property.
-Voters may petition to lower property taxes
-Property tax issues shall have November election notices separate from debt issues
-Property Tax bills list only property taxes and late charges
-Enterprise and authorities shall pay property taxes.  Lower mil-levy rates to offset income to taxing dist
-10 year expiration on property tax rate increases
-Extending expiring property taxes, is a tax increase
-Prior actions to keep excess property tax revenue are expired; future actions are tax increases expiring in 4 years.  Local governments and enterprises will have to make serious adjustments to their budgets and seek direct voter approval of property taxes on at least a four-year cycle.
-by 2020, non-college school districts phase out ½ of their 2011 property tax rate for operating expenses.  State aid replaces the revenue.  Shifts school operating costs to State general fund from local resources.
Amendment 61 –Limit State and Local Government Borrowing. The LPCO recommends YES on this amendment.
-Repeals existing Article XI Section 3 and re-enacts the original 1876 version of this section to read, “The state shall not contract any debt in any form.”
-Repeals Article XI Sections 4, 5, 6(2), and 6(3) as obsolete and superceded.
-Repeals and re-enacts Article XI Section 6(1) to require voter approval for local governments to contract debt.  Also requires ballot title to be specific.
-Adds further specific requirements concerning debt to Article X section 20(4)
–November Ballot approval
–10 year limit on new local debt
–borrowing can’t exceed 10% of assessed valuation
–Tax Rates must be reduced when borrowing is repaid
Amendment 62 Application of Term Person. The LPCO recommends NO on this amendment.
Would define person as at the beginning of biological development and entitled to full protection of Colorado law.
This is an effort to insert the State into the intensely personal decisions concerning the beginning of human life.  It would only further complicate already difficult decisions.
Amendment 63 -Health Care Choice. The LPCO recommends Yes on this amendment.
Adds Article II section 32 to make health care choice a constitutional right.  Prohibits the state from requiring a person to participate in health plans.  Restricts the state from limiting a person’s ability to make or receive direct payments for health services.  Exempts emergency treatment and Workers’ Compensation from this new right.
This is in response to the recently enacted Federal health care decrees.  It is unfortunately now necessary for Colorado to take a stand to protect individual and state rights associated with US Constitution Article I and Amendments 9 and 10.
Proposition 101 -Income, Vehicle, and Telecommunication Taxes and Fees.  The LPCO recommends YES on this Proposition.
-Reduces state income tax rate from 4.63% to 4.5% in 2011 and then over time to 3.5%.
-reduces and eliminates vehicle taxes and fees over next 4 years.
-eliminates all state and local taxes on telecommunications service, except 911 fees
-requires voter approval to for future vehicle and telecomm fees.
–Proposition 102 –Criteria for Release to Pretrial Services Programs.  The LPCO recommends NO on this proposition.
Adds requirements to Colorado Statutes to prohibit release of a defendant on an unsecured bond to pretrial services program unless it is a first offense and is nonviolent misdemeanor.
If passed this measure will reduce the ability of Judges to release those accused of crimes while awaiting trial.  Those unable to afford additional bonding expenses would remain in custody.  Additional total costs to the State are estimated at $2.8 million.
Retention of Colorado Supreme Court Judges.
For the 2010 November election, voters are asked to consider retention/non-retention of a number of Judges.  The LPCO encourages all voters to carefully consider each judge.
Several of the Citizen initiated amendments on the 2010 November Ballot are in response to Supreme Court decisions contrary to the intent of existing constitutional provisions.  The activist nature of the recent Colorado Supreme Court and it’s decisions appears to be more focused on predetermined outcomes rather than the Rule of Law.
-The LPCO recommends NO on each of the 3 Supreme Court Judges to be considered.
SOURCE:
Date: 12 Oct 10
From: LPCO Board of Directors
To:   Colorado Libertarians and interested Voters
Subj:  Libertarian Party of Colorado Positions concerning 2010 Statewide Ballot Initiatives.

Perhaps the LPCO has regained some semblance of sanity? Time will tell.

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ObamaCare — Would You Like Fries With That Exemption?

October 9, 2010

A silver lining of the Democrat hegemony in Washington has been the massive resurgence of conservative thinking and action among the general public. It certainly would have been nice two or four years sooner, but better late than never.

Given that Republicans can’t possibly win a veto-proof majority in the Senate, the job of cleaning up government will take more than one election cycle. One of the biggest messes is ObamaCare. It remains to be seen whether the GOP has the fortitude to follow through on their pledge to “repeal and replace,” but the resounding defeats this primary season of several incumbent RINOs certainly serve as a motivation.

Democrats up for re-election in three weeks are running from the issue like the plague, and little wonder. This week, it was revealed that 30 companies and organizations received exemptions from the federal requirement to increase the minimum annual benefits for low-cost health plans. Unless they were granted exemptions, McDonald’s and other companies that offer so-called mini-med plans threatened to drop their health plans altogether — leaving employees on the government dole. The biggest waiver was granted to the United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund, which is a union in New York City that provides health coverage for city teachers.

According to USA Today, “Without waivers, [these] companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in [medical insurance] coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.” Of course, all this was predicted by those of us who understand basic free-market economics.

Meanwhile, in keeping with the “radical” notion that the federal government cannot force people to purchase things, voters in three states will decide this fall whether to tell the federal government to stay out of their health care decisions. If passed, the initiatives in Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma will allow those states to opt out of ObamaCare. A similar initiative already passed in Missouri with an impressive 71 percent of the vote.

Naysayers, such as Oklahoma’s Democrat Gov. Brad Henry, call the initiative fruitless, saying that even if it “passes by 100 percent,” the feds could overturn it because federal law trumps state law. In effect, the governor is saying that ObamaCare is inevitable, so we shouldn’t even bother to fight. But this isn’t true. According to what Jon Caldara of Colorado’s Independence Institute calls that “pesky 10th Amendment,” there are several instances in which the federal government is required to yield to the will of the sovereign states. The attorneys general of 20 other states are suing on that principle.

Other opponents of the initiative argue that this collective lawsuit makes the ballots redundant and not worth the costly legal battle that’s sure to follow. However, Caldara and others fighting for health care choice point out that even if this multi-state lawsuit is successful, the federal government could then pressure states to adopt programs similar to the one in Massachusetts. The problems with that system, and its parallels with ObamaCare, are well documented.

The road to repeal hit another major roadblock Thursday when U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh, a Clinton appointee, rejected the argument that the individual mandate to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. According to Steeh, the interstate commerce clause really does cover everything.

Quote of the Week

“[ObamaCare’s] march to the sea is only beginning and the trail of destruction will grow. The last six months have seen 2011 premium increases as high as 9% due to ObamaCare; multibillion-dollar corporate writedowns by Verizon, AT&T, Caterpillar and others; disruption in the insurance markets leading to the erasure of child-only policies and other types of specialty coverage as shown in the McDonald’s imbroglio; the Administration beginning to impose price controls on premiums; insurers withdrawing private options from Medicare Advantage; and Democratic protection of a 1099 tax reporting mandate that will slam small businesses. Republicans should be repeating all of these tangible harms in a litany, while predicting the damage to come.” —The Wall Street Journal

SOURCE

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This administration doesn’t understand how businesses operate and really doesn’t care

October 7, 2010

“A big employer mulls dropping health insurance coverage due to ObamaCare’s mandates. The claim that if you like your plan you can keep it was a lie, and the effort to destroy private insurance is working. The 30,000 or so hourly workers at McDonald’s undoubtedly like the health care plan their employer provides and would like to keep it. For $14 a week, a worker gets a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000; $32 a week gets you coverage up to $10,000. They get minimum coverage at a minimum price, but most younger workers are healthy and for that reason, they constitute a high percentage of the uninsured. What McDonald’s Corp. offers is not a one-size-fits-all nanny-state special that forces young males to pay for mammograms. President Obama promised that under ObamaCare these workers could keep these plans, but McDonald’s has told federal regulators in a memo that it would be ‘economically prohibitive’ for its insurance carrier to continue to cover its hourly workers unless it receives a waiver to the ObamaCare requirement that 80% of premiums for such ‘mini-med’ plans be spent on medical care. Other large employers who offer such plans could find themselves in the same dilemma…. This administration doesn’t understand how businesses operate and really doesn’t care. As for private insurers, the White House doesn’t care if they’re driven out of business due to higher costs. … Companies such as McDonald’s, and insurance companies too, must manage their bottom lines to stay in business. ObamaCare distorts a system based on risk and turns it into an entitlement that is based on political considerations and aimed at getting as many people totally dependent on government as possible.” —Investor’s Business Daily

SOURCE

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Epic fail obamacare: Sebelius Expounds on Her Recent Threat to Health Industry

October 2, 2010

Shortly after declaring that “there will be zero tolerance” for health insurers spreading “misinformation” about ObamaCare causing rate increases, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius wrote an op-ed claiming that health insurers “ran wild with no accountability” and previously had “free rein” for conducting business — all while under the regulation of 50 state insurance departments. In a bit of cosmic irony that managed to elude her keen wit, this alleged insurer rampage somehow didn’t occur on her watch as the Kansas Insurance Commissioner, a position that had the power to disapprove proposed health insurance rate increases since 1965.

Not satisfied with her Orwellian mischaracterization of the truth, Sebelius also misdiagnosed an insurer’s recent premium refund in North Carolina. She claimed that the refund was the result of regulatory powers under ObamaCare when, in reality, the insurer had determined that ObamaCare had so badly damaged the state’s individual health market that pulling out of that market was its only option. The refund was simply a return of the unused portions of subscribers’ premiums.

As the Democrats are about to discover, the health “reform” that they designed to transfer health insurance regulatory power from the states to the national government may be a Pyrrhic victory come Election Day. Instead of being a Democrat electoral lifeline, ObamaCare is actually the anchor around their necks.

SOURCE

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The opposition to our Health Care Choice Amendment – Amendment 63?

October 2, 2010

What follows was edited do to late posting, and a misspell! Sorry Jon!~ 🙂

Strange Anti-Health Care Choice Bedfellows: Who’s been funding the opposition to our Health Care Choice Amendment – Amendment 63? 90% of their funding comes from Washington, DC and most of that from the unions. The SEIU, the government workers union, the NEA, and the AFL-CIO are the biggest contributors by far. Good to know that the national teachers union realizes fighting Health Care Choice in Colorado is good for, um, education? I guess if educational choice is bad for kids, health care choice would be too.

Watch my latest health care debate on TV tonight! I will be on Colorado Public Television channel 12 right after my own show Devils Advocate ends to debate our right to health care choice initiative – Amendment 63. The debate is airing on “Colorado Decides 2010” at 9pm. I will be debating Edie Sonn, Director of the Colorado Medical Society who happens to oppose the repeal of Obama Care. (Spoiler alert: the bald guy wins).

Last week’s health care choice debate here: Rocky Mountain PBS (channel 6) aired a debate I had with T.R. Reid about Amendment 63 – Colorado’s Right to Health Care Choice last week. Did I mention my opponent T.R. is a Princeton-educated sycophant of collective health care? He was the “reporter” who did that completely unbiased PBS Frontline report on how every other country is the world has a better health care system than the US. Yeah… so check out the debate online here.

Great New Education Movie! Great New Education Movie! The school system is failing our kids on a massive scale, that much is evident. But are enough people motivated to take the right kind of action and fix it? The new movie “Waiting for Superman” should open many eyes with the story of five inner-city kids whose lives hang in the balance of a charter school lottery. Perhaps that’s why the unions and status quo interest groups have attacked the movie. Waiting for Superman opened nationally this past Friday, but mark your calendars for the October 15 Colorado premiere. Until then, check out little Eddie’s post for more information and a look at the theatrical trailer.

How to Save a Billion Dollars: Colorado taxpayers are on the hook for more than $1 billion in unfunded liabilities incurred in the defined benefit retiree health plan administered by the Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA). An additional $79 million in unfunded liabilities was incurred in 2008. These are just some of the findings by Independence Institute Senior Fellow Barry Poulson in his potent new issue paper, “How to Save a Billion Dollars in Other Post Employment Benenfit Costs.” In it, Barry lays out the looming fiscal crisis driven by, among other things, flawed actuarial assumptions by PERA, and outrageously optimistic assumptions (which have failed to be realized) about the rate of return on assets held in the Health Care Trust Fund. If saving a billion dollars seems like pie in the sky to you now, give Barry’s paper a shot and find out how it can be done.

PJ O’Rourke Book Signing Event! Because PJ was so much fun last year for our annual Founders Night, we decided to bring him back for an event at Jackson’s Bar and Grill in LoDo on Monday, October 4th from 6 to 8pm. He will be signing copies of his book “Don’t Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards.” If you’d like to join us, RSVP to Mary MacFarlane by calling us at 303.279.6536 or emailing Mary at mary@i2i.org.

The Right to Earn a Living Event: The Independence Institute, Liberty on the Rocks, and the CATO Institute invite you to join us for an evening with Timothy Sandefur, Adjunct Scholar at the CATO Institute and Principal Attorney – Pacific Research Institute for a book signing of “The Right to Earn a Living.” We’ll be having the event at our Independence Institute offices in Golden on Thursday, October 7th at 5:30pm. If you’d like to join us, RSVP to Mary MacFarlane by calling us at 303.279.6536 or emailing Mary at mary@i2i.org.

Must see TV: What’s it like for Republicans running for Congress against incumbent Democrats in the age of Obama and a Democratic majority? To find out, tune in to Devil’s Advocate this Friday as I am joined by Colorado Republican candidates for Congress Ryan Frazier, Cory Gardner, Mike Fallon and Stephen Bailey. That’s TONIGHT, October 1st at 8:30 PM on Colorado Public Television 12. Re-broadcast the following Monday at 1:30 PM. And remember to stay tuned right after Devil’s Advocate for my debate over the Health Care Choice Amendment.

Must hear podcast: Education policy analyst Ben DeGrow deconstructs the $10 billion Edujobs bailout passed by Congress in August, noting that the policy not only seriously overestimated the need to curb teacher layoffs and ignored other available solutions but also discriminated against charter schools. It remains unclear exactly when and how Colorado school districts will use the funds to hire and rehire employees. Listen to this podcast on iVoices.org.

Perspective: In this week’s op-ed, Linda Gorman stresses the importance of Amendment 63 – the Right to Health Care Choice – ability to protect Colorado citizens from the mandates found in Obama Care. Colorado citizens already face dozens of mandates imposed by our state, the last thing we need is the grandaddy of all mandates to buy a health insurance, whether we like it or not, coming down from the federal government. Read here as Linda Gorman explains how Amendment 63 will stop DC.

Until next week…

Straight on

Jon Caldara

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Immigration, Law, Local Politics Colorado, News, Politics, States Rights, Wordpress Political Blogs | 2 Comments »

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