Dem Ploy: Fortunes of F-22 now linked to hate crimes measure

The fortunes of the F-22 have now been formally linked to hate crimes legislation, a pairing that’s giving heartburn to all kinds of U.S. senators, especially two from Georgia.

Late last night, the Senate voted to attach the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act to the $680 million defense bill. The hate crimes measure would extend greater federal protection to people attacked because of their gender or sexual orientation.

This from the Associated Press:

“The Senate made a strong statement this evening that hate crimes have no place in America,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said….

The House in April approved a similar bill and President Barack Obama has urged Congress to send him hate crimes legislation, presenting the best scenario for the measure to become law since Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., first introduced it more than a decade ago.

And yet, President Barack Obama has promised — again and again — to veto the bill because, as of now, it contains increased funding for the Marietta-built F-22 Raptor.

The pairing has gay and lesbians worried. Obama has sent the message that, in a contest, he will choose to veto the extra F-22 spending — even at the costs of the hate crimes legislation. The Advocate, a national news site aimed at gay readers, includes this quote from Shin Inouye, the White House director of specialty media:

Reviewing Climate Change and Cap and Trade Programs to Insure Investor Protection

We all know that the artificial construct known as "cap and trade" is nothing more than a fraud to get companies to pay more taxes. It will have very little, to no, impact on CO2 levels, much less global warming.

Even if anthropogenic global warming existed there are much more effective and less costly ways of dealing with it. But those would not be income producers for our greedy governments thus they receive little attention (see Bjorn Lomborg 's Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming). At last someone is doing something about it, the Space and Science Research Center is calling for a SEC review of Cap and Trade. Especially now that global "warming" is over Cap and Trade needs to be investigated as possibly being illegal as “worthless securities”.

Little for Liberals in Confirmation Hearings

Early on the third day of last week's confirmation hearings, one of the Senate Judiciary Committee's leading liberals leaned forward in his leather chair toward Sonia Sotomayor to explain his hopes for the next member of the nation's highest court.

"I want a justice," said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), a veteran politician taking part in his first Supreme Court confirmation, "who will continue to move the court forward in protecting . . . important civil rights. I want a justice who will fight for people like Lawrence King who, at the age of 15, was shot in a school because he was openly gay. I want a justice who will fight for women like a 28-year-old Californian who was gang-raped by four people because she was a lesbian. And I want a justice who will fight for people like James Byrd, who was beaten and dragged by a truck for two miles because he was black."

So, Cardin asked the nominee: Don't courts have to take such factors as race into account?

Sotomayor paused. "Well," she replied, "it depends on the context of the case that you're looking at."

Real Healthcare Reform: Competition and Choice

The choice facing us now is not between Obama's plan for healthcare micromanaged by the government or doing nothing. Rather, it is a choice between government control, regulation and rationing on one hand, and free markets, choice and competition on the other. That is the real healthcare debate.

So what exactly would a free-market approach to reform look like? Quite simply, it relies on those time-tested building blocks of marketplace efficiency: competition and choice.

1. We need to move away from a system dominated by employer-provided health insurance and instead make health insurance personal and portable, controlled by the individual rather than government or an employer. Employment-based insurance hides much of the true cost of healthcare to consumers, thereby encouraging overconsumption. It also limits consumer choice, because employers get the final say in what type of insurance a worker will receive.

2. Changing from employer-provided to individually purchased insurance requires changing the tax treatment of health insurance. The current system excludes the value of employer-provided insurance from a worker's taxable income. However, a worker purchasing health insurance on his own must do so with after-tax dollars. This provides a significant financial reward for those who have employer-provided insurance. That should be reversed.

3. The other part of effective healthcare reform involves increasing competition among both insurers and health providers. Current regulations establish monopolies and cartels in both industries. Today, for example, people can't purchase health insurance across state lines. And because different states have very different regulations and mandates, costs can vary widely depending on where you live.

4. We also need to rethink medical licensing laws to encourage greater competition among providers. Nurse practitioners, physician assistants, midwives and other non-physician practitioners should have far greater ability to treat patients. We also should be encouraging such innovations in delivery as medical clinics in retail outlets.

The bureaucratic nightmare of Dem government-run health care... Developing...

This is the Democrat’s healthcare plan flow chart.

In this picture you are the consumer (pictured as consumers) on the left and need to get healthcare goods and services from the provider (pictured as a nurse on the right). The flows in the middle are all the steps you must go through to get the goods the services under their plan.

Download PDF at:
http://docs.house.gov/gopleader/House-Democrats-Health-Plan.pdf