Right. and MORE govt involvement is just asking for

• The Candidate's Health Insurance Plans - Polly Cystic
  • indiana has insurance for children - why can't every state? obama doesn't have a
    • Vermont has a similar program. nm - oldtimer
  • Neither will be passed so they can say - Kiki
    • I agree....cost and insurance practices DO... - sam
  • McCain's plan... - sam
  • That's just one of many reasons why I'm - voting for Obama in November.
  • Obama's universal plan failed miserably in other - countries. Why do you think it will work here?nm
    • Because the health care plan we have does not work at all. - Yeah, that's it!
      • universal health care - DNH
      • Canada's health plan does not work... - sam
        • Sure right, if you believe him when he says that - Kiki
          • I do believe him. What is the difference in.... - sam
            • I did say in my post that Obama was no - Kiki
              • The reason I believe McCain is that he has... - sam
              • All politicians lie to get elected. - Chele
                • It is, unfortunately, about picking the lesser of the 2 - Kiki
                  • And I'm just the opposite.... - Chele
      • Universal healthcare NOT the answer!! - Chele
        • Post Office, Social Security - MLK
    • Right. and MORE govt involvement is just asking for - trouble every time. -should privatize. nm

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(08-05) 19:27 PDT DENVER (AP) --

A decade ago, John Roberts played a valuable role helping attorneys overturn a Colorado referendum that would have allowed discrimination against gays — free assistance the Supreme Court nominee didn't mention in a questionnaire he filled out for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The revelation didn't appear to dent his popularity among conservative groups nor quell some of the opposition of liberal groups fearful he could help overturn landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a right to an abortion.

An attorney who worked with Roberts cautioned against making guesses about his personal views based on his involvement in the Colorado case, which gay rights advocates consider one of their most important legal victories.

"It may be that John and others didn't see this case as a gay-rights case," said Walter Smith, who was in charge of pro bono work at Roberts' former Washington law firm, Hogan & Hartson.

Smith said Roberts may instead have viewed the case as a broader question of whether the constitutional guarantee of equal protection prohibited singling out a particular group of people that wouldn't be protected by an anti-discrimination law.

"I don't think this gives you any clear answers, but I think it's a factor people can and should look at to figure out what this guy is made of and what kind of Supreme Court justice he would make," Smith said.

On Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans released two memos by Roberts when he was as an assistant counsel in the Reagan White House. In one, Roberts argued that President Reagan should not interfere in a Kentucky case involving the display of tributes to God in schools.

In the other, Roberts writes that Reagan shouldn't grant presidential pardons to bombers of abortion clinics. "The president unequivocally condemns such acts of violence," he wrote in a draft reply to a lawmaker seeking Reagan's position. "No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department denied a request by Judiciary Committee Democrats for Roberts' writings on 16 cases he handled when he was principal deputy solicitor general during President George H.W. Bush's administration. The department also declined to provide the materials, other than those already publicly available, to The Associated Press and other organizations that sought them under the Freedom of Information Act.

"We cannot provide to the committee documents disclosing the confidential legal advice and internal deliberations of the attorneys advising the solicitor general," assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella wrote Friday to the eight committee Democrats.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel's senior Democrat, said Roberts made decisions whether to pursue legal appeals in more than 700 cases. "The decision to keep these documents under cover is disappointing," Leahy said.

The gay rights case involved Amendment 2, a constitutional amendment approved by Colorado voters in 1992 that would have barred laws, ordinances or regulations protecting gays from discrimination by landlords, employers or public agencies such as school districts.

Gay rights groups sued, and the measure was declared unconstitutional in a 6-3 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.

Roberts' role in the case, disclosed this week by the Los Angeles Times, included helping develop a strategy and firing tough questions during a mock court session at Jean Dubofsky, a former Colorado Supreme Court justice who argued the case on behalf of the gay rights plaintiffs.

Dubofsky, who did not return calls Friday, said Roberts helped develop the strategy that the law violated the equal protection clause in the Constitution — and prepared her for tough questions from conservative members of the court. She recalled how Justice Antonin Scalia asked for specific legal citations.

"I had it right there at my fingertips," she told the Times. "Roberts was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me and spending some time on the issue. He seemed to be very fair-minded and very astute."

Dubofsky had never argued before the Supreme Court. Smith said she called his firm and asked specifically for help from Roberts, who argued 39 cases before the court before he was confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

Smith said any lawyer at Hogan & Hartson would have had the right to decline to work on any case for moral, religious or other reasons.

"If John had felt that way about this case, given that he is a brilliant lawyer, he would have just said, `This isn't my cup of tea' and I would have said, `Fine, we'll look for something else that would suit you,'" Smith said.

The Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which helped move the case through the state and federal courts, said Roberts' involvement raised more questions about him than it answered because of his "much more extensive advocacy of positions that we oppose," executive director Kevin Cathcart said.

"This is one more piece that will be added to the puzzle in the vetting of John Roberts' nomination," Cathcart said.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, said his support for Roberts' nomination has not diminished. "He wasn't the lead lawyer. They only asked him to play a part where he would be Scalia in a mock trial," Sheldon said.

Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, said Roberts' involvement was "certainly not welcome news to those of us who advocate for traditional values," but did not prompt new concerns about his nomination, which the group supports.

"That's what lawyers do — represent their firm's clients, whether they agree with what those clients stand for or not," the group said in a statement.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/08/05/national/w135401D98.DTL

So what are you saying?  That it is fair for them to admit incompetence, whine for help and take the people's money, but its nobody's business what they spend it on?  Corporate welfare has got to stop!

This is no different than if a relative came begging for help making their house payment, you gave it to them, then instead they blew it on caviar and a cruise - and expected/demanded more money from you in the future.  Would you feel you had the right then to tell them what to do with it?  Or would you refuse to give them another cent and let them crash and burn?

In this society, when an individual admits their incompetence and declares (or has concerned others prove) they are unable to handle their affairs, they are made a ward of the court with a guardian or a committee of guardians to tell them what to do with their money and their lives.  This is not a temporary situation (such as individual welfare is supposed to be), the government has more huge payments to AIG scheduled.   Yes, there should be strings attached to the money - BIG ones.

My first real job some 30 years ago was a CETA job. That was Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. This was doing medical transcription for a county health department.  I worked as a CETA employee for a year, they trained me and paid me, and I have worked in transcription for 30 years, of course moving on to hospital stuff. Made big bucks for quite a few years and now here I am, strangely enough, I think back to the same money I made all those years ago.  You've got to keep your sense of humor. 

The Federal Reserve (Fed) has gone beyond playing with fire, and may have indeed set the house on fire. It’s one thing to push interest rates to near zero to stimulate the economy; it’s another to “monetize the debt” by printing money to buy government debt. In recent weeks, the Fed has broken outside even those boundaries and become actively engaged in managing the private sector beyond the core banking system. Worse still, the steps taken may be difficult to reverse and as such may shape the U.S. economy for a long time. These steps are taken with the best of intentions, to “save” the economy. The only trouble is that we may be on a slippery slope to destroying capitalism on the way. In “doing whatever it takes” to get the economy back on its feet, the Fed risks destroying the foundation of why the U.S. has been able to establish itself as the world’s leading economic force. Actively participating in credit allocation within the private sector, the Federal Reserve (Fed) jeopardizes the capitalist foundation the U.S. economy is built on. As a result of these actions, the U.S. may be on its way to becoming a modern incarnation of a planned economy.

Why these harsh words? To understand what is so frightening with recent Fed activity, consider that most central banks focus on interest rates, inflation and money supply to promote price stability (and maximum employment in the Fed’s case). Generally, they all influence credit creation by managing the cost of borrowing. Central banks may employ slightly different levers and targets; and while some central banks are better than others at achieving their goals, what they have in common is that they traditionally focus on government debt, mostly short-term Treasuries, to achieve their goals. This is very much by design as good central bank policy leads to an environment of price stability fostering long-term economic prosperity. On the other hand, bad central bank policy may lead to inflation, wide swings in economic activity or unnecessarily high unemployment. However, free market forces will push the private sector to make the best of it. It’s when policy makers start subsidizing ailing sectors of the economy that distortions are created that will come back to haunt us. Traditionally, for better or worse, elected officials decide on the socio-economic fabric of society. Now, the Fed decides which areas of the economy need to be propped up.

Creating Hysteria To Pursue Policies

The hysteria that has been created by policy makers and the media has allowed the Fed to pursue its recent unorthodox policies. In late September, the world financial system looked rather dire; the government was able to play a role to avoid a disorderly collapse; but the government’s role should have been limited to allowing an orderly adjustment of the excesses of the credit bubble. Instead, the latest salvo to promote the bailouts is that payrolls have dropped by the largest amount since World War II. This may be the case in absolute numbers as the population has grown, but more jobs were lost as a percentage of the workforce in a twelve month period in each of 1982, 1961, 1958, 1954, 1948/49; in many of the cases more than twice as many. Recessions are no fun, neither are personal or corporate bankruptcies; but they may be the cure needed to weed out the excesses of the boom. In contrast, today, hedge fund managers that ran their funds into the ground are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to start anew. Some of the folks that ran Long Term Capital Management into the ground in 1998 started fresh only to have another massive failure in the current credit crisis. We don’t expect the new breed of second chances to be any better. And while the blame lies with the managers, excessively low interest rates contribute to irrational risk taking: all of the bailouts focus on those who have been over-leveraged. What about the group of responsible savers that rely on income? With interest rates near zero, many are tempted to engage in highly leveraged strategies to meet their required income objectives. Pension funds “must” return 6% per year, leaving them little leeway but to give money to hedge fund managers to magically turn 1% yields into 20% returns; the way to achieve this is with leverage. Actually, there is another way: the Swiss public pension fund system just announced that it will scale down its long-term return objective to 4% from its current 6% per annum.

Giving Credit Where No Credit is Due

In late December, the Fed Board of Governors approved GMAC’s application to become a bank. The vote was 4-1, and the one board member with experience as a bank regulator, Elizabeth Duke, dissented. There was another hurdle: GMAC, General Motors’ finance arm, did not have sufficient capital to be a bank. That problem was solved, too, in early January, as the Treasury injected $5 billion into GMAC; the Treasury also GM $1 billion, so that GM could inject that money into GMAC. Equipped now with a minimum capital base, GMAC is able to operate as a bank, go to the Fed to access the TARP program, as well as other regular and emergency Fed windows.

In December, car sales fell off the cliff. But it wasn’t only GM that had problems; even Toyota that had access to credit and introduced zero percent financing, recorded a 37% plunge in sales (unlike other car makers, Toyota has traditionally not offered zero percent financing). Shell-shocked consumers are worried about their jobs and have lost a substantial amount of their net worth in 2008; further, incentive programs prior to the bursting of the credit bubble lured consumers into 6-year loans with zero percent financing. Consumers simply don’t want or need a car right now. Policy makers take this as a reason to provide money to GMAC that pursues a business model proven to be ruinous: it simply doesn’t make sense to offer cars at 0% if interest rates are above that, even if they are “close to zero” as they are now. GMAC takes money from the Treasury to be able to request more from the Fed. And the first course of business for GMAC is to extend zero percent financing to consumers with lower credit ratings than had traditionally qualified.

Difficult to Unwind: Long Term Inflation Likely

The Fed is only ramping up its mission to allocate credit where the Fed – rather than the free market - deems it appropriate. A major program announced in the fourth quarter, but rolled out in early January consists of a $500 billion program to buy mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The perceived positive is the plummeting of mortgage rates. Consumers with superb credit now qualify for 30-year mortgages at less than 5%. One problem with such programs is that the Fed intentionally inflates prices (lowers the yields) on these securities; in turn, rational market participants may abstain from buying them. As a result the Fed risks replacing private sector activity, rather than encouraging it. Furthermore, the Fed jeopardizes the dollar as foreigners may be discouraged from buying U.S. government and agency security debt; given that the U.S. has become dependent on foreigners to finance its spending needs as well as the unprecedented debt that will be financed in 2009. This is a very dangerous road to be on.

The Fed may be able to phase out its commercial paper subsidy program or drain liquidity from the TARP program over time; however, the $500 billion MBS program may be difficult, if not impossible to unwind. Indeed, the design of the MBS program calls for holding of the securities until maturity. For practical purposes, this means that the Fed’s balance sheet is not just “temporarily” inflated, but that the Fed will permanently keep more money in the economy. Traditionally, the Fed’s balance sheet is $900 billion. Therefore, even if one gives the Fed the benefit of the doubt that the current escalation to over $2 trillion is temporary, there will be a significant hangover as not all additions can easily be removed. This doesn’t even consider that, quite likely, the MBS purchase program may need to be extended beyond the 6-month period it was put in place for. Watch for bond manager Bill Gross this June, calling for the Fed to continue buying MBS, preferably the ones he has on the books, to save the economy from collapse. Incidentally, his firm, PIMCO, is one of the firms managing the Fed program.

To counter the effects of this added money in the economy, the Fed would need to keep interest rates permanently higher. One realistic alternative, however, is that the additional money will stay in the economy as draining it would cause too much economic hardship. This may well embed inflation into the U.S. economy for years to come. Importantly, note that there is little, if any, accountability at the Fed monitoring its actions; no one is there to ensure that the Fed will, at some point, phase out its programs or added powers.

Live Free Or Die

By engaging in credit allocation to specific sectors of the economy, the U.S. is stepping into a territory traditionally left to governments with a socialist or communist brand. Communism has shown us that planned economies don’t work. New Hampshire in 1945 added the slogan “Live Free or Die” to its state emblem, a quote stemming from a general in the Revolutionary war. Translated to the economic crisis, this should mean that a severe recession ought to be the lesser evil than a planned economy. And to continue the parallel, when communism swept Eastern Europe, the standard of living for everyone dropped. In today’s world, we already see that the “re-failure” rate of those who defaulted, then renegotiated their teaser rate loans, is above 50%. Yet all taxpayers have to pay the price for the bailouts.

To be sure, we are a far cry from communism. But we must keep our eyes open and not be blinded by the perceived “help” of money printed by the Fed. Debt is the origin, not the solution to the problems we face. The Declaration of Independence’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” may be difficult to achieve when drowned in debt; building sustainable wealth without the shackles of debt may be the more appropriate path. It’s not by mistake that the Founding Fathers be backed by a precious metal that cannot be inflated to give in to the temptation of the day.

Don't mean to start anything with the article, but thought some would find it interesting.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama, whose gay and lesbian supporters have grown frustrated with his slow movement on their priorities, is extending benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, a White House official said.

Obama planned to announce his decision Wednesday in the Oval Office, the official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because Obama had not signed a presidential memorandum putting his plan into place.

The decision is a political nod to a reliably Democratic voting bloc that has become impatient with the White House in recent weeks.

Several powerful gay fundraisers withdrew their support from a Democratic National Committee event June 25 where Vice President Joe Biden is expected to speak. Their exit came in response to a Justice Department brief last week that defended the Defense of Marriage Act, a prime target for gay and lesbian criticism.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_GAY_BENEFITS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-06-17-08-13-41

I want stem cell research to go forward to help those with devastating illnesses.  I do not want the embryos to be thrown away but rather put to good use.  I really do not care what people with the opposite position say.  This is my position and in my mind and heart and soul it is the right position.  I care more for those who are already alive.

In a democracy, the majority rules and the majority of Americans want stem cell research to move forward with government backing.  The debate, as far as I am concerned, is over.  I am for it, others are not.  Whether it is approved within the next two years or when finally a democratic president, who makes judgments and decisions fairly and based on what the people want and not what God has told him/her, it will be a reality within a few years.

why don't they vote into law that the ticket has to have a Rep. and a Democrat.  So, for example, this year it would be Obama/Palin and McCain/Biden.  Not that the Pres. candidate would have to choose those 2 particular but Obama would have to have  Rep. and McCain would have to have a Dem.

I am sure this will never happen in my lifetime but I have always thought that.

This article reiterates some points I've made here before - for instance, the nonsense about the "poor US infant mortality rate" being badly skewed by many thinkgs, including the fact that we try to save many high-risk preemies that other countries don't even attempt to save, and the fact that we count as an "infant death" not only those preemies we can't save but any that shows a sign of life, while those other countries do not include the preemies they let die or others that we count.

Well worth reading to arm yourself against the garbage being put out from the loony demon-crats and their leader, BO-zebumpkin:

http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/06/23/health-care-myths/