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AARP's ObamaCare Endgame Revealed

That is the title to an American Thinker piece that shows the Democrats using pages out the the Republican Establishment's crony capitalism playbook:

We now have a clear picture of the treachery in which AARP has engaged since President Obama took office.  The Daily Caller reports that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has granted Medigap policy sellers, including the American Association of Retired Persons, exemption from ObamaCare-mandated federal supervision of insurance premium hikes.  "Medigap" is an industry term for a type of coverage that helps pay medical costs not covered by Medicare.

Non-Medigap insurers, not exempted from ObamaCare's rate reviews, must justify rate increases.  In effect, the HHS exemption gives AARP the ability to generate profits not achievable by non-exempted competitors.

It's important to remember that AARP helped push ObamaCare through Congress by contributing to a $121 million advertising campaign and paying for millions of dollars worth of Washington lobbying.  AARP has betrayed the seniors whose interests the organization allegedly protects and positioned itself to make billions after playing along with the Obama administration's corporatist favoritism.

Corporatism, or "crony capitalism," takes many forms.  For instance, when seniors began to catch on to the systemic health care damage that ObamaCare would cause, President Obama and congressional Dems feared disappearing senior political support.  As I discussed last August, it is at such junctures that "the Halliburtons, BPs, attorney groups, SEIUs, and AARPs, which donate in return for political favors that funnel dollars into corporate bank accounts," enter the picture.  In crony capitalism, corporate entities fund misinformation campaigns that paint harmful government action as beneficial and shifty politicians as straight-up.  In the case of ObamaCare, AARP leadership supported legislation which AARP members judged harmful and therefore rejected.

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So AARP's game is now crystal clear.  The organization pushed legislation which will hurt seniors financially and in quality of medical care.  AARP leadership betrayed current members to gain future members.  The leadership learned well: corporatism creates prosperity for the few who play the game.

Prosperity for the many is another matter.  General wealth increases when people with legal business ideas get equal opportunities to introduce those ideas to the marketplace.  Entrepreneurs must be free to pour resources into products and services that people want.  In such a system, companies win by providing the best products and services in the fastest, cheapest ways.  Businesses and consumers win.

But in helping Democrats pass economically destructive legislation, AARP has helped number the days for revenue streams and jobs in insurance industry competitors that fail to negotiate the corporatist maze.

AARP has joined more than 1300 entities granted the freedom to compensate for the higher costs assured by Obamacare's overregulation of the health care and insurance markets. AARP's actions will end up contributing to seniors' health care quality falling and costs rising-by government fiat.

The truth comes out, there is no Social Security Trust Fund; time to go private

Here is the current situation in regard to the debt ceiling issue:

The nation Wednesday edged closer to a catastrophic default, as the two parties continued battling each other and themselves over how to raise the debt limit and as Sen. Charles E. Schumer warned the stalemate could prevent Social Security checks from going out next week.

House Republicans warmed to Speaker John A. Boehner's latest proposal for cutting government spending and raising the debt ceiling in two steps, a measure the House is set to consider today.

Boehner, R-Ohio, was direct in a meeting with rank-and-file GOP lawmakers as he urged reluctant conservatives to back his plan. "Get your a... in line," he told them. "I can't do this job unless you're behind me."

But tea party conservatives continued to harbor doubts about the Boehner plan, which both President Obama and the Democrats controlling the Senate have rejected -- leaving Congress with no clear path to raising the debt ceiling by the time the Treasury reaches that limit Tuesday.

That fact sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting nearly 200 points.

And that could just be the beginning of the dire consequences of the debt-limit stalemate, Schumer, D-N.Y., warned. With the government facing $306 billion in payments in August and only $178 billion in revenues coming in, a default would force the Obama administration to decide which bills to pay and which to let slide."There's a potential, unfortunately, that Social Security benefits wouldn't go out," Schumer said. "There's a potential that veterans benefits wouldn't go out. If you paid those, you might not be able to pay the creditors."

First note that it would be King Obama who would decide if Social Security checks went out or not.

And why would we need to use the $178 billion to fund the Social Security checks? The pro-Social Security crowd said there is a "Trust Fund". Check this out:

Social Security status-quo defenders have assured us for the past 25 years that Social Security is fully funded—for the next 25 years, or 2036.  So if there are real assets in the Social Security Trust Fund—$2.6 trillion allegedly—then how could failure to reach a debt-ceiling agreement possibly threaten seniors’ Social Security checks?

The answer isthat the federal government has borrowed all of that trust fund money and spent it, exactly as Krauthammer asserted.  And the only way the trust fund can get some cash to pay Social Security benefits is if the federal government draws it from general revenues or borrows the money—which, of course, it can’t do because of the debt ceiling.

Thus, the answer to my initial question is that the president is telling the truth now in the sense that he is conceding there’s no money in the trust fundto pay benefits; but he and other Social Security status-quo defenders have been deceiving the public for decades.

And here’s the real irony: Anytime someone has proposed personal Social Security retirement accounts as a way to ensure that people have real assets in their own account without bankrupting the government or future generations, defenders of the status quo would pounce, calling such a reform, in Al Gore’s words, a “risky scheme.”  They have vociferously claimed that those trust fund assets are real and that only by having the government manage and control the accounts would seniors be guaranteed to get their retirement checks.

Well, we have the status quo and seniors may not get their checks.  Had we shifted to a system of pre-funded, personal Social Security retirement accounts years ago, this wouldn’t even be an issue—because retirees would have their own money in their own accounts.

So lets raise the debt ceiling and make the government return our Social Security taxes and put them into private accounts. Then we can shut down the Social Security ponzi scheme once and for all. The working class would receive a 7% pay raise, and business would have a 7% reduction in their labor costs. Imagine what that would do to the economy? We would have billions of dollars available for capital investment to the private sector for expansion by using cheaper labor (who are getting paid more) instead of automation.

Governor Daugaard in Salt Lake with the Chinese; exporting jobs, importing government control

KSFY reports on Governor Rounds weekend adventure:

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard is attending the annual meeting of the National Governors Association in Salt Lake City this weekend.

Topics will include education, innovation, international trade and economic growth.

There will also be a U.S.-China Governors Forum.

Note the involvement of China. This was set up by our Secretary of State:

Over the past several years, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has stepped up its courtship of America's state and local officials. A growing stream of Governors, Mayors, County Commissioners, school superintendents, college presidents and university officials have been making the pilgrimage to Beijing and other Chinese "sister cities," in efforts aimed at wooing Chinese investors to their communities and in search of export opportunities to China's growing consumer market.

The intense mutual lobbying between local U.S. and Chinese officials is expected to hit a new zenith in mid July, as our nation's state Governors gather in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the summer meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA). Their Chinese counterparts will join them there at the NGA's first U.S.-China Governors Forum.

The Forum was created with the help of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration during Chinese President Hu Jintao's White House visit in January. In a January 19, 2011 press statement, Secretary Clinton announced a "Memorandum of Understanding concerning the establishment of the U.S.-China Governors Forum to Promote Sub-National Cooperation," which she said was the culmination of two years of effort by the Obama administration "to extend mutual understanding and interests beyond national governments to individuals, businesses, and state and provincial governments."

The real purpose is this:

However, the NGA's scripted chorus line, with U.S. governors and Chinese provincial officials linking arms in smiley-faced, harmonious poses, is already generating sour notes with many constituents who see the song-and-dance routine as more cover for the continued transfer of the U.S. industrial and economic base to China. With most of America's manufacturing base and much of our technology and jobs already having been shipped to China, the Beijing regime's strategists are now targeting the remaining U.S. hi-tech sectors, as well as agricultural and food production, pharmaceuticals, and nutritional supplements. In addition to alarm over the ongoing strip mining of America's productive capabilities, many Americans are becoming more concerned about plans by their state and local officials to implement Chinese-styled Special Economic Zones, or SEZs, with the help of China's state-run corporations. Besides dragging the American economy further into socialist/fascist central planning, the SEZs would likely serve as a springboard for massive transfers of Chinese emigrants to the United States to serve in the new SEZ workforce.

Central planning is what HB 1230 is all about. While I am happy that the Democrats have put the slush fund up to a vote of the people, I disagree with their political agenda of transgerring the taxes to education. Central planning of the economy is fundamentally wrong.

I have been taking Dusty Johnson, the governor's chief of staff, to task for being a part of the big government agenda and have issued concerns on the governor's involvement with the NGA. I am not alone with my concerns regarding the NGA agenda:

Oklahoma's Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, is also feeling some heat over her coziness with Beijing. Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise (OK-SAFE, Inc.), a coalition of prominent Oklahoma conservatives with proven effectiveness in political and educational battles, has taken aim at Fallin's participation in the NGA's Salt Lake City Governors Forum.  In an article posted on its website on June 7, entitled "Sleeping with the Enemy — U.S. Governors to Pair Up with Chinese Officials,"OK-SAFE urged Oklahomans to contact Gov. Fallin and ask her about details of the U.S.-China dealings under the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiated by the Obama administration and the NGA with Beijing. Gov. Fallin is a member of the NGA's Economic Development and Commerce Committee. One of the questions OK-SAFE has for Governor Fallin — and Hillary Clinton — is: "Where's the MOU?"

As usual, despite the standard talk about "transparency," the NGA and State Department have not released a copy of the MOU so that citizens can decide for themselves whether their elected officials are cutting deals that would harm or help their state and their nation. This reporter has been unable to locate a copy of the MOU on either the State Department or NGA websites, and the State Department has not returned our repeated calls for a copy. If the deals contained in the MOU are completely straightforward, then what's to hide? Why not put it out in the open? It does seem that the more our leaders associate with the (Communist) party leaders in China, the more they are willing to emulate the Chinese Communist Party's proclivity for secrecy and autocratic rule.

Having failed to obtain a copy of the MOU by simply asking, as citizens should be able to do in a free republic, OK-SAFE has had to resort to filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with the State Department.

Nationally, The John Birch Society is one of the few organizations challenging the conventional Republican-Democrat wisdom on this issue, which seems to be that any and all expansion of political and economic ties with Communist China is a wonderful thing. In the Society's July Bulletin, an article by Larry Greenley, "The U.S.-China Governors Forum Leads to Disaster!", urged members to "contact your governor now and ask him or her to protect our national independence and prosperity by avoiding further entanglements with the state-run corporations of communist China and by not participating in the U.S.-China Governors' Forum in Salt Lake City on July 15-17."

And this tells us that the South Daktoa media will not be the ones to hold Governor Daugaard accountable for his particiaption with Communist China:

American Governors, Mayors, and County Commissioners who come to China as supplicants rarely risk spoiling the wining and dining festivities — not to mention spoiling their hoped-for economic deals — by bringing up embarrassing topics such as gross human rights atrocities, spying, technology theft, and support for terrorists and terror regimes. Like our national politicians, most of them seem to be incapable even of demonstrating enlightened self-interest, insofar as it relates to our national security and independence. Nor do they appear to be inclined to oppose policies that would increasingly make the continued economic viability of our states and communities inextricably intertwined with — and subject to — the five-year plans of China's  Communist Party functionaries. It is up to constituents to make these issues important enough that wayward and pragmatic politicians will "find their conscience." In other words, as is usually the case with politicians, they must be made to feel the heat before they will see the light.

Don't look for the leadership of the SDGOP to be the "constituents" that make the governor "feel the heat". It will be what the media has coined as "The Tea Party Movement" that will step up to that task. Now we understand another reason why both parties are creating this "debt ceiling crisis" so that the tail can be pinned on the Tea Party. Grass roots truth-sayers are problematic for the establishment.

Bob Mercer invokes "liberty, equality, fraternity"

Bob Mercer's column titled, "Our nation's spirit, in a blue bandana on Fourth of July" included this passage:

Just as I return each winter to King’s “The Measure of a Man,” there is a book written in 1922 by Cornell professor Carl W. Becker that I reopen each July. The title is “The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas.”

The book looks at the declaration as a piece of literature, studying “its ideas and emotions it summed up and released” as well as the various rewrites of Thomas Jefferson’s original draft, right down to the changes in commas.

Professor Becker also set his readers straight on the true history of when Congress declared separation from Great Britain. That resolution was passed on July 2, 1776.

Jefferson’s reworked declaration was approved two days later by Congress on July 4.

In Becker’s words, the declaration was designed to convince the world “that separation was necessary and right — in short, an argument in support of an action.”

The professor’s research disproved another myth of our nation’s founding. He wrote, “Contrary to a tradition early established and long held, the Declaration was not signed by the members of Congress on July 4.”

Instead the legislative history of the Congress shows the final version was signed by many members on Aug. 2 and some at a later date, according to Becker.

The Becker book was republished in 1941 as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi supporters spread their war. In a new forward written at the time, Becker said the times “have forced men everywhere to reappraise the validity of half-forgotten ideas, and enabled them once more to entertain convictions as to the substance of things not evident to the senses.”

He went on:

“One of these convictions is that ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ and ‘the inalienable rights of men’ are phrases, glittering or not, that denote realities — the fundamental realities that men will always fight for rather than surrender.”

The "liberty, equality, fraternity" mantra came up in previous research. First it was actually the motto of the French Revolution:

The French Revolution was not only a crucial event considered in the context of Western history, but was also, perhaps the single most crucial influence on British intellectual, philosophical, and political life in the nineteenth century. In its early stages it portrayed itself as a triumph of the forces of reason over those of superstition and privilege, and as such it was welcomed not only by English radicals like Thomas Paine and William Godwin and William Blake, who, characteristically, saw it as a symbolic act which presaged the return of humanity to the state of perfection from which it had fallen away — but by many liberals as well, and by some who saw it, with its declared emphasis on "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," as being analgous to the Glorious Revolution of 1688: as it descended into the madness of the Reign of Terror, however, many who had initially greeted it with enthusiasm — Wordsworth and Coleridge, for example, who came to regard their early support as, in Coleridge's words, a "sqeaking baby trumpet of sedition" — had second thoughts.

We also find that it was the Illuminati who was behind the French Revolution:

The Illuminati hoped to bring down all the churches and monarchs of Europe, beginning with the French Empire. The Illuminati orchestrated the French Revolution by infiltrating French Masonic Lodges and spreading revolutionary propaganda. One of the Main influences was Count Gabriel Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau. However, according to Myron Fagan's "History of the Illuminati" it all could have been prevented if France had not ignored the evidence of an international conspiracy. In 1784, Weishaupt issued the orders for the French Revolution, which were written down into a book also containing the history of the Illuminati and its extensive plans. In route to France, the book carrier was killed by lightning, and the book was discovered. Upon this discovery, the Bavarian government disbanded the Illuminati and published and distributed its findings. The Illuminati continued to influence the world by creating secret societies within secret societies. The French government ignored the warnings, and the French Revolution broke out in 1789.

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The highly influential Jacobin Club was formed by the Illuminati. The basis of the Masonic creed, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," became the motto of the revolution.

Here is more on the agenda of the illuminati:

As Mrs. Webster has shown in her book, "World Revolution," p. 22, the ideals of Illuminism were:

1. Abolition of Monarchy and all ordered Government.

2. Abolition of private property.

3. Abolition of inheritance.

4. Abolition of patriotism.

5. Abolition of the family (i.e., of marriage and all morality, and the institution of the communal education of children).

6. Abolition of all religion.

And here is more on the agenda:

One of the most terrible events in European history was the revolution in France. When a small Jacobin minority was able to enforce its will on France as that of "the people" and then set about destroying French culture and ipso facto attempted to subvert Western Christian Civilisation itself. When the so-called French Revolution is studied with the dispassionate eye of a true historical researcher, and not through the jaundiced eye of a professional historian, the heavy presence of Freemasonry, the International Jew Revolutionaries and Jewish bankers can be easily discerned. Moreover, the Proper Student of History, those who study the Hidden Stream of History, easily discerns in the shadows, the Hidden Hands that guided these sinister powers in their actions. They perceive the Dark Power overseeing it all, the Dark Intelligence orchestrating the evil and the tumult: with heavy hearts, they perceive the presence and organising mind of the Secret Masters of the Dark Empire of Secret Societies ... the High Initiates of the Cult of Evil.

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The establishment of the Committee of Public Safety achieved this, for the success of this Committee in suppressing the Norman insurrection had confirmed the majority of the Convention in the expediency of strengthening its powers. Soon after, the Reign of Terror, during which the ruling faction ruthlessly exterminated all potential enemies, of whatever sex, age or condition, began. This assault on Natural Moral Order began in September of 1793 and lasted until the fall of Robespierre on July 27, 1794: and in the period known as the "Red Terror," during the last six weeks of The Terror, nearly fourteen hundred people were guillotined in Paris alone. The Convention was soon replaced in October 1795 with the Directory, which was in turn replaced in 1799, by the Consulate. Eventually, a truly historic figure arose out of the ashes of France and became Emperor in May of 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). The so-called "Little Corporal," who, along with the other "Little Corporal" a 150 years later and better known as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), anticipated the Great Dictator in the coming New World Order.

I have order a copy of Becker's book that Mercer referred to. Certainly have many questions looking for answers in regard to "liberty, equality, fraternity". Not sure how all of this ties into the American Revolution.

SDWC scrubbed to protect the SDGOP? Updated

[UPDATE: See Cory's comment. It appears to have been a technical issue. I am now able to see the comments as of 7:30AM July 14]

If you took into the details of this thread on SDWC you will see the displayed comments are far less than the 100 plus that were made. What is going on here? Is there some kind of SDGOP coverup going on here?

Argus Leader promotes SDGOP propaganda

Jonathan Ellis has a Sunday Argus Leader column titled "Harmony at top brings domination for S.D. GOP":

What's even more unusual is that the leaders of the party get along. By leaders, I mean Gov. Dennis Daugaard, Sen. John Thune and Rep. Kristi Noem.

The three have been unified in public and, behind the scenes, they've cooperated on policy issues and on picking the party's chairman and executive director - the day-to-day officers who keep the party running, organize events, raise money and make strafing runs at the Democrats.

There's no apparent clash of personalities. Daugaard and Thune both ran their first political campaigns in 1996. They have similar personalities. Both are easy going and both have been described to me as being "cheap." In other words, fiscal conservatives. They have senses of humor, and they don't ooze icky political ego.

I wonder how does Thune and Noem can come back to South Dakota and sleep at night when their policy position of reducing spending and thereby the National Debt while the SDGOP leadership spend federal monies as fast as Obama can shovel it? In the year ended June 30, 2008, South Dakota sent $1.2 billion in federal monies. Daugaard's recommendation for 2012 was $1.8 Billion, an increase od 50%. For this limited government conservative, that is unacceptable. But Ellis found a "Republican wiseman" to  put a rose into the mouth of this pig:

One longtime Republican wiseman thinks today's party is more unified because it's more ideologically focused. The party is run by a strong conservative element, and thus there's less room for disagreement. Among today's top three Republican officials, there's little that separates them in terms of policy: They are budget cutters, and they are anti-abortion.

So peace has settled over the land of the GOP.

State, local and federal spending is higher than it has ever been. There is no truth in saying the Republicans are "budget cutters". Now we have the Argus Leader providing propaganda for the Big Government Republicans. I sure would like to know the name of that longtime Republican wiseman. I would like to have a discussion about what it means to be a "strong conservative element".