Obama’s Regulatory Chief Pushes New ‘Bill of Rights’

A government that is constitutionally required to offer each citizen a “useful” job in the farms or industries of the nation. A country whose leadership intercedes to ensure every farmer can sell his product for a good return. A nation that has the power to act against “unfair competition” and monopolies in business. This is not a description of Cuba, communist China or the old USSR. It’s the vision of the future of the U.S, as mandated by a radical new “bill of rights” drawn up and pushed by President Obama’s newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein. Sunstein openly seeks to create a “progressive” consensus as to what the U.S. Constitution should provide for by the year 2020. It also suggests strategy for how liberal lawyers and judges might bring such a constitutional regime into being. Many of the people working with President Obama are Marxists or socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party, according to a socialist Columbia University professor with strong ties to Obama’s radical associates, including Weathermen terrorist Bill Ayers.

• Obama’s socialistic agenda is most clearly seen in his choice of advisors; it’s a scary group. By calling their programs ‘rights,’ they try to position increased government control as protection of citizen’s basic entitlements. Instead, it creates a hamstrung population totally dependent on government.

Obama Addresses Congress about Healthcare

President Obama alternately wooed and lashed out at critics of his landmark health care plan Wednesday in an effort to regain momentum lost during a month of growing public doubt and anxiety Saying he wanted to succeed where presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have failed, Obama told a joint session of Congress and millions watching on TV that he’s willing to compromise — but unwilling to start over or settle for the status quo. Obama’s goal of remaking the U.S. health care system has advanced through four congressional committees — further than ever before. Yet for the past month, it’s been losing support in public-opinion polls and among the moderate Democrats whose votes may be key to passage.

Obama used Wednesday’s speech to get specific about his plan. He endorsed tax credits for those who need help buying insurance, mandates that individuals get insurance and large companies provide it to workers or pay a fee, and a new tax on the most expensive insurance policies. The plan, he said, would cost about $900 billion over 10 years. Many Republicans in the chamber weren’t impressed. Some laughed when Obama said there were “significant details to be ironed out.” Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., yelled “you lie” when Obama said his plan would not insure illegal immigrants.

• Besides the huge problem of government control over healthcare, where does Obama expect to find another $900 billion? Oh yeah, print more money and send us the bill.

Obama Speech ‘a Litany of Lies’

A conservative media watchdog organization is demanding that the media reports President Obama’s “lies, distortions, and exaggerations” delivered in his speech on healthcare reform Wednesday night. The Media Research Center says President Barack Obama continues to commit what it calls “serial dishonesty with the American people until the media expose his false figures and bogus exaggerations for what they are: fraudulent scare tactics.” The group describes the president’s Wednesday night speech about healthcare as “a litany of lies.” “He talked about how he would not add a single dime to the deficit, when the studies are showing it would add about a trillion dollars to the deficit over the second year of the plan. He talked about not permitting any illegal immigrant to be covered, when in fact it was Democrats who voted down any attempt to verify immigration status.”

Underlying Health Care Issues

Nearly half of Americans have a chronic condition, and 75% of the $2.6 trillion spent annually on health care goes to treat patients with long-term health problems, says Kenneth Thorpe, a professor at Atlanta‘s Emory University and head of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. In the Medicare program, 95% of spending is linked to a chronic disease. Researchers say much of these conditions could have been avoided or mitigated by healthier habits. Although health officials have exhorted Americans for years to get in shape, two-thirds of adults today are overweight and smoking remains an issue, despite overall declines in usage.

Uninsured patients aren’t the only ones using the ER for non-urgent care. With too few primary-care doctors to go around, many patients turn to the ER when they can’t get an appointment with their regular physician, says Sandra Schneider, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. In some ways, insurance payments contribute to the shortage, Epperly says, by discouraging physicians from going into primary care. Medicare, which covers people over 65, pays doctors far more to perform procedures than to monitor a patient’s overall health, Epperly says. In the past decade, only 10% of new doctors — who graduate from medical school with an average of $140,000 in student loans — have gone into primary care.

Patients with chronic conditions may see specialists who each treat a different symptom or deteriorating organ. But these doctors may rarely if ever get together to talk about the patient’s overall health Under Medicare’s current system, no one is paid to coordinate all these services. And no one is accountable for helping the patient get better. Medicaid, which covers poor children and the disabled, also discourages doctors from taking on new patients. The federal program, which is run by the states, pays doctors an average of 28% less than Medicare, says David Tayloe, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. So many doctors refuse to treat patients on Medicaid.

• There’s no doubt our healthcare system needs an overhaul. However, government programs (Medicaid, Medicare) are already a contributing factor, so why would more government control solve the problem? Individual responsibility would solve half the problem, and an emphasis on prevention by the medical/insurance institutions would fix the other half.

Most U.S. College Campuses Reporting Flu

Almost three-quarters (73%) of American colleges and universities are reporting cases of influenza-like illnesses among students, with the highest rates in the Southeast and Midwest, the American College Health Association says. There were 4,045 new flu-like illness cases between Aug. 29 and Sept. 4 among 204 schools taking part in voluntary reporting. Most schools are not testing to confirm the virus is H1N1, or swine flu. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nearly all the flu virus now circulating is H1N1. So far there has been only one flu-related college death.

Abuse of Prescription Drugs Dips

Fewer people abused prescription drugs last year than in 2007, reversing an upward trend in abuse of potent painkillers such as Oxycontin, a federal drug survey found. People who once saw little risk in abusing prescription drugs are responding to health reports underscoring dangers of misuse, says Eric Broderick, acting administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which conducts the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health made public Thursday. About 6.2 million Americans — 2.5% of the population — said they abused prescription drugs in the past month in 2008, a decrease from 2.8% of the population in 2007.

11 End Lives under Assisted Suicide Law

Eleven people have used prescribed drugs to end their lives in the first six months after a Washington state law took effect allowing assisted suicides for terminally ill patients, an advocacy group said Tuesday. An additional five people received life-ending drugs under the law but died without using them, the group Compassion & Choices of Washington said. The deaths amount to less than one-tenth of 1% of all deaths statewide in 2008, indicating the law is being used carefully and sparingly, Robb Miller, executive director of the group, said.

Border Traffic Plunges

The number of people crossing the northern and southern land borders into the USA has dropped sharply since a passport requirement began June 1. Businesses in tourism-dependent border communities blame the policy for making a bad year worse. The change is part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, an effort to make borders more secure after 9/11. The rules affect U.S. citizens entering by land or sea, who once could get across by simply declaring themselves citizens. The change also affects citizens of Canada and Bermuda, who previously did not have to show passports. Now, they must have passports or a handful of other documents including enhanced driver’s licenses, which have more security features and are available in some Canadian provinces and Michigan, New York, Vermont and Washington. The rules for Mexicans have not changed; they have long needed special border crossing cards or passports plus visas.

• Unfortunately, these rules have more impact on law-abiding citizens than on those who sneak across the border illegally

U.N. Calls for Global Currency

The United Nations is adding its voice to the chorus call for a new global cur­rency. Already, India, China, Brazil, Russia and the IMF have backed the same idea. The crux of this latest call is for an enhanced SDR (Spe­cial Drawing Right) issued by the International Monetary Fund. Exactly how the SDR might be made to better rep­re­sent third-world coun­tries is not made clear, but it could be the estab­lishing of another global body that would manage exchange rates between countries. The U.N. spokesperson refers to the cur­rent financial system as a “con­fi­dence game” that is in jeop­ardy of collapsing.

• The New World (Dis)Order needs a global currency for its one-world government. Most likely it will first establish regional currencies like the Euro. For the North American Union, the Amero will be the currency of choice. Prototypes have already been produced.

Obama Advisers Claim 1M Jobs Saved or Created

President Obama‘s economic advisers estimated Thursday that the economic stimulus package has saved or created about 1 million jobs, drawing immediate criticism from Republicans. Christina Romer, the head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said her team consulted other economists for its report to Congress on the likely effects of the $787 billion package of tax cuts, government spending and aid to states. Republicans called the White House estimate unreliable, pointing to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showing a 9.7% unemployment rate in August and a net loss of 2.4 million jobs since Obama signed the stimulus law in February.

Failing Commercial Loans Threaten Small Banks

The speed at which loans on commercial properties such as office buildings and malls are souring is “unprecedented,” a recent report from Deutsche Bank said. The delinquency rates on these loans reached 4.1% in June, more than double the March rate. Banks are most vulnerable because they hold about $1 trillion of commercial real estate loans and an additional $530 billion in construction loans. Job losses have led to rising office vacancies. Tight-fisted consumers have helped close retailers such as Circuit City, forcing mall landlords to default on loans. That is having a tiered effect on the banking industry: It is especially noxious for the smallest banks, which have very large portions of their loan portfolios exposed. That’s the chief reason bank failures have hit 89 this year, vs. 25 for all of last year. The very largest banks, those with at least $1 trillion in assets, are less exposed. The National Association of Realtors projects that retail vacancy rates will increase from 11.7% in the second quarter of 2009 to 12.9% in the same period of 2010.

Taxpayers Face Heavy Losses on Auto Bailout

Taxpayers face losses on a significant portion of the $81 billion in government aid provided to the auto industry, an oversight panel said in a report released Wednesday. The Congressional Oversight Panel said most of the $23 billion initially provided to General Motors and Chrysler late last year is unlikely to be repaid. The prospect of recovering the government’s assistance to GM and Chrysler is heavily dependent on shares of the two companies rising to unprecedented levels, the report said. The government owns 10% of Chrysler and 61% of GM.

• Government ownership of business entities (think Amtrak and the Post Office) always lose money that is covered with taxpayer dollars

Social Security Reports Record Deficit

The Social Security Trust Fund reported an August net deficit of $5.865 Billion. This is the largest monthly deficit in nineteen years. Base on recent years’ data it was not surprising the Fund ran a deficit in August. But the magnitude of the shortfall was a surprise. This deficit is now the seventh in the past twelve months. That pace has never been seen before. The Net Present Value of future committed liabilities is in deficit by $7 trillion. To plug this sized hole would require a significant increase in payroll taxes. The alternative is cutting benefits, not a popular option. To shore up the fund would require across the board cuts greater than 20%.

• There is no ‘trust fund.” That’s a semantic illusion. The government spends the payroll taxes as part of its overall operating budget. It’s the ultimate Ponzi scheme.

Economic News

Americans’ household income last year took the sharpest drop since the government began keeping records in 1947, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. Median household income sank 3.6% to $50,303. A decade’s worth of gains wiped out in one year. Economists predicts income will drop at least 5% this year because of rising unemployment in the recession’s second year.

About 12% of eligible borrowers have begun trial modifications of their mortgages since the start of a $75 billion federal program to rework home loans into more affordable monthly payments, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday. Since the program’s launch in March, 360,165 borrowers had received three-month trial modifications through August. If they keep up their payments for the trial period, lenders are supposed to extend the modifications for five years. “It’s still a slow ramping up,” says Mark Zandi, at Moody’s Economy.com.

Job openings fell to the lowest level in nine years in July, according to a Labor Department report Wednesday, as businesses remain reluctant to hire despite signs the economy is improving. The report underscores the tough competition that jobless Americans face. With 14.5 million unemployed people in July and only 2.4 million openings, that means there were six unemployed people, on average, for every job opening. Employers’ hiring plans for the upcoming fourth quarter dropped to their lowest level in the history of Manpower’s Employment Outlook Survey, which started in 1962.

The U.S. trade deficit shot up in July to the highest level in six months, signaling a pickup in the economy, as a surge in shipments of foreign oil and autos pushed imports up by a record amount. The Commerce Department said Thursday that the trade deficit rose 16.3% to $32 billion in July. Imports rose 4.7%, largest monthly advance on records that go back to 1992, while exports edged up a smaller 2.2%. Both gains provided evidence that the most severe recession since World War II was beginning to lose its grip on the global economy.

• While signaling a pickup in the economy, the ongoing and now increasing trade deficit continues to put strain on the value of the dollar in international markets

From January to August, national bankruptcy filings reached 954,911, up from 703,732 in the same period of 2008. From January to August, national bankruptcy filings reached 954,911, up from 703,732 in the same period of 2008.

Americans cut their outstanding credit by a record $21.5 billion in July, damping hopes that a resurgence in consumer spending will juice the economic recovery. Consumers slashed their credit at an annualized rate of 10.4% to $2.47 trillion. It was the sixth-consecutive monthly decline.

• Consumer reduction of debt is a good thing. The main problem is not lack of consumer spending, but rather unprecedented increases in government debt.

Poll finds Soaring European Support for U.S. Policy

European support for the U.S. president’s handling of foreign policy has soared since President Obama took over from former president George W. Bush, but Europeans continue to view major issues including Afghanistan, Iran and global warming differently than Americans view them, a poll released Wednesday found. Among those polled in the European Union and Turkey, about three-fourths, on average, said they supported Obama’s handling of foreign policy compared with about a fifth who said the same for Bush last year, according to the survey. It was conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a nonpartisan policy institution that promotes trans-Atlantic cooperation, and the Compagnia di San Paolo, a research center in Turin, Italy. The results were especially pronounced in Germany, where support shot up 80 percentage points to 92%, and in France, where it rose 77 percentage points to 88%.

• A poll conducted by an organization that promotes globalism has to be taken skeptically. However, Obama’s mystique still plays well abroad.

Eight Years after 9/11, al-Qaeda is Weakened but Still a Threat

In the eight years since the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller has spent nearly the entire time focused on one enemy: al-Qaeda. Thousands of terrorist operatives have been killed or captured. Terrorist safe havens and training grounds in Afghanistan where operatives were trained have been destroyed. Military forces largely have shattered al-Qaeda’s leadership in Iraq. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden and top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who once closely managed al-Qaeda’s day-to-day operations, have been driven into seclusion. Now, Mueller and counterterrorism analysts are tracking the emergence of a new threat. Al-Qaeda has morphed into a fractured network of small terrorist franchises strewn across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Al-Qaeda’s transformation raises an unsettling question: Does its splintering help make the USA and its Western allies safer, or does it complicate efforts to guard against terrorism?

• The terrorism threat remains substantial and is not going away, merely adapting

Israel

Well over half of nearly 1,400 Palestinians killed in Israel’s Gaza war were civilians, including 252 children younger than 16, a leading Israeli human rights groups said Wednesday, challenging Israel’s claim that most of the dead were militants. Determining the number of civilian casualties is seen as key in the ongoing debate over whether Israel, along with Hamas, violated the rules of war in its three-week offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers last winter. International human rights groups have said they suspect both sides committed war crimes — Israel by using disproportionate force in crowded Gaza, and Hamas by hiding behind civilians and indiscriminately firing rockets at Israeli towns.

• Hamas wanted a high civilian death toll to further erode public support of Israel. Any war efforts in the densely populated Gaza is bound to cause civilian deaths.

Afghanistan

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she sees little congressional support for boosting troop levels in Afghanistan, putting the Democratic majority in Congress on a possible collision course with the Obama administration over the future conduct of the war there. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Kabul, is expected to formally request as many as 40,000 U.S. reinforcements this month. Support among Democratic and independent voters for the Afghan war has been evaporating for months, and a raft of recent polls has found that majorities of both groups now oppose continuing or expanding the conflict.

Airstrikes by coalition forces in Afghanistan have dropped dramatically in the three months Gen. Stanley McChrystal has led the war effort there, reflecting his new emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties and protecting the population. NATO fixed-wing aircraft dropped 1,211 bombs and other munitions during the past three months — the peak of the fighting season — compared with 2,366 during the same period last year, according to military statistics. The nearly 50% decline in airstrikes comes with an influx of more than 20,000 U.S. troops this year and an increase in insurgent attacks. Ground troops are less inclined to call for bombing or strafing runs, though they often have an aircraft conduct a “show of force,” a flyby to scare off insurgents, or use planes for surveillance.

Commandos freed a New York Times reporter Wednesday after he was kidnapped by militants in northern Afghanistan last week, the newspaper said. An Afghan official said the reporter’s translator was killed in the operation. The Times kept the kidnappings quiet out of concern for the men’s safety, and other media outlets, including the Associated Press, did not report the abductions following a request from the Times.

A group of Afghan journalists has blamed international troops for the death of a kidnapped colleague during a rescue operation. In a statement issued Thursday, the Media Club of Afghanistan also criticizes NATO commandos for leaving his body behind while they rescued a foreign New York Times writer. They also condemn the Taliban for abducting both men last week in northern Afghanistan.

Riots in Uganda

Supporters of the traditional ruler of an ethnic group in Uganda have clashed with police and soldiers in the country’s capital, and at least seven people have died. police and the army clashed with stone-throwing protesters who burned tires Thursday in Kampala. The clashes began when a representative of the traditional ruler of Buganda, Uganda’s largest ethnic group, was prevented from traveling to a region northeast of the capital to prepare for a political rally Saturday. The Buganda advocate a federal system, which would strengthen their traditional ruler’s influence. This has been resisted by the central government, led by President Yoweri Museveni.

Wildfires

A prolonged drought, which is drying up vegetation and fueling a seemingly endless fire that has burned more than 250 square miles of Los Angeles County, could be the start of a fall siege in Southern California. “We’ve had extreme fire behavior: 2007 and 2008 were what firefighters refer to as ‘siege years,’ ” says Janet Upton, deputy director for communications for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as CalFire. California is in the third year of a drought that has contributed to extreme fire conditions. Fire officials say the lack of rain makes brush burn more easily. And when fire hits parched forests, the fire tends to burn faster and do more damage.

Weather

The USA’s summer was cooler than average in 2009, for only the second time this decade, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Several Midwest states — including Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota— recorded one of their 10 coldest summers on record. Northwestern Pennsylvania recorded its coldest summer ever. Climate records date to 1895.

• I guess we need to watch out for global cooling now

Flash floods gushed across a major highway and a commercial district in Istanbul on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and stranding dozens in cars or on rooftops, the city’s governor said. Some of the dead drowned inside their vehicles. Fueled by the worst rain in decades, waters rose more than three feet (a meter) high in the city’s Ikitelli district, cutting off the route to Istanbul’s main airport and the highway to Greece and Bulgaria on the European side of the sprawling city. Eight other people were still missing and 20 others were injured.

A violent storm that spawned a tornado and mudslides killed at least 16 people across northern Argentina and southern Brazil, authorities said Tuesday. Dozens were injured in the winds and hail as their homes were destroyed. Rescue workers in Sao Paulo searched the rubble Tuesday evening for three people still missing and were also trying to find two children believed buried after part of a school collapsed, according to civil defense officials. Extremely heavy rains tangled traffic in Sao Paulo for most of the day and cut off phone service in some neighborhoods. Two rivers overflowed onto major highways in South America’s largest city.

Drought in Kenya’s is the worst in 12 years. The dry conditions pose a serious threat to the large and majestic animals, whose striking silhouettes across Kenya’s broad savannah draw around 1 million tourists each year. A recent survey in Chad showed its elephant population had declined from 3,800 to just over 600 in the past three years due to the drought and poaching.