By MacPundit

Transforming America Obama Style

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” President Elect Barack Obama.

The Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, is designed to give our government control over one-sixth of our entire economy. It is the largest, most aggressive grasp for power in U.S. history. It is precisely the kind of big government-vested power that our founders feared most. It is because of this fear that they created a constitutional republic in which the power is vested in the people.

Vladimir Lenin, the father of Russian Communism, said:

“Socialized Medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist State”

While Barack Obama’s ultimate goal is still not entirely clear, that he is a hardcore proponent of radical Liberal big government is perfectly clear. There should be no doubt that he advocates for a significant shift of power from the people to the government and that he has already made remarkable progress toward that goal.

Other big-government initiatives not withstanding, Obamacare alone is a huge step in that direction—both in its function to redistribute private sector wealth and its overbearing intrusion into our private lives. Obamacare restricts our freedom to make our own life choices and it punishes personal success through government-imposed redistribution of wealth. It is wholly un-American and if left in place it will destroy our great American economy, which has been the envy of the world for countless decades and which has fed, housed, clothed, and generally raised the quality of life for more people—here and abroad—than any other economy in world history.

A great and grotesque irony is that while Europe struggles to untangle itself from the failures of Socialism and other liberal big-government economies, President Obama and his cadre of Liberal Democrats in Congress, are relentlessly determined to transform the U.S. into the very same model of a European-style nanny state that has never been able to approach the success of our traditional U.S. model.

While this correspondent cannot know whether their intentions are good, I am reminded of the old saying that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Then again, I honestly cannot be sure that Mr. Obama’s intentions were ever good.

After five years, the results of Mr. Obama’s purposes and policies have been abysmal. Our economy is in what appears to be a chronic state of non-growth. The so-called recovery is the worst in U.S. history. The real unemployment/under-employment rate has been stuck at about 14 percent for years. While he continues to claim that he is the savior of the middle class, his policies have caused a significant decline in annual middle class income. At the same time, taxes and the overall cost of living have risen sharply and remain high with no relief in sight. These core factors as well as an alarming increase in restrictive government regulations and massive and unsustainable debt have severely diminished the capacity of the private sector to expand and create new jobs. Hence, the quality of life for average American citizens is degraded. Additionally, our debt, which now exceeds $17 trillion, has imposed a literally unimaginable financial burden on our children and grandchildren! This alone is both deplorable and unconscionable.

Then there is the debacle of Obamacare. As noted earlier, Obamacare was designed to put the healthcare of U.S. citizens under the control of the government. If fully deployed, the government will control about 17 percent of our entire economy, or one-sixth. That is why Vladimir Lenin, the father of Russian Communism, identified healthcare as the key to gaining power over the people. But after three full years of preparation, the launch of Obamacare has been a monumental disaster—a government failure of unprecedented magnitude. It is just one more example of why big government is a fundamentally bad idea and why transforming America President Obama style is not and cannot be good for America.

Obamacare is a national disgrace!

By MacPundit

The announced and highly publicized purpose of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, was to achieve universal health coverage for all Americans. It’s passage into law has been loudly praised and promoted by the Democrats as President Obama’s crowning accomplishment. That is until October 1, 2013 when the much-anticipated Healthcare.gov website launched on schedule and then immediately and ignominiously, sank into the “Great Sea of Incompetency.” Six weeks later it remains submerged as millions of additional tax-payer dollars are spent to find and plug-up its leaky code.

The Obamacare website debacle

The president told us that the Obamacare website would make signing up for a healthcare plan as easy as ordering a screwdriver from Amazon, but it did not quite work out that way. Instead, it has been either completely down (offline) or effectively dysfunctional ever since its launch.

Note: I just visited the Healthcare.gov website and it appears to be partially functional with the following message at the top of the homepage:

NEW Weekend Alert: The Health Insurance Marketplace online application isn’t available from approximately 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. EST daily while we make improvements. In addition, between Saturday evening, November 9 and early morning on Tuesday, November 12, there will be times when you can fill out your application, but you will need to return and log in Tuesday afternoon to review and submit it. The rest of the site and the Marketplace call center remain available during these hours.

The website debacle is as embarrassing as it was predictable. With three years to get it right, the Obama Administration got it wrong. With much fanfare (and hot air) the website launched on October 1^st as scheduled. But it did not work. After three years in the making and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, Healthcare.gov did not work.

When the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor, our military ranked 18th in the world. Then Hitler declared war on us. We were in no shape to fight any war and certainly not in two major theaters of operation—the Pacific and Europe. Yet President Franklin Roosevelt mobilized the nation and in a miraculously short period of time we began to produce airplanes, tanks, artillery weapons, and everything else we needed. It wasn’t long before we were able to supply our allies with war materiel as well. By the end of the war we had the most powerful military in the world.

Among other things, President Eisenhower mobilized the country to build a new federal highway system, the same system we enjoy today.

President Kennedy challenged the nation to go to the moon “… in this decade” and we did.

So why did President Obama fail so miserably to accomplish such a comparatively easy task as having a website built in three years? After all, starting from way behind, we mobilized the entire nation to build a huge military force and won a world war in less than four years. Simply put, President Obama is not a leader. When he ran for the presidency in 2008 he was by any fair standards the least qualified presidential candidate in U.S. history. He had been a community organizer, an unremarkable state senator in Illinois, and had not even completed his first term in the U.S. Senate. He was and remains a campaigner, not a leader. He is also a hardcore liberal politician who regularly puts politics before the welfare of the country. So why should we have expected that he would be a good leader, or for that matter, a good president? Half the country knew that he was clearly unqualified to be president and the other half did not seem to care. They apparently did not know that elections have consequences.

President Obama’s radical liberal beliefs and his personal associations coupled with his lack of leadership experience continues to have a serious detrimental effect on the health of the nation. He is a rigid ideologue and he is belligerent toward anyone who opposes him. Studies by credible non-partisan organizations rate Mr. Obama as the most divisive president in U.S. history. This too was predictable because he was the most Liberal member of the Senate and voted 97 percent of the time along party lines. After becoming president, he tellingly said of Republicans, “They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in the back.”

The fact that the Affordable Care Act was passed into law without a single Republican vote is significant. It is also unprecedented. It was the first time the U.S. passed a major piece of legislation of this magnitude without bipartisan support. The Democrats, who controlled both houses of Congress, rammed the bill through Congress in one of the most conspicuously corrupt legislative processes ever. With somewhere in the neighborhood of 2700 pages, they did not even bother to read it before they voted on it.  The process was a national disgrace as is the law itself.

Incredibly, then Speaker of The House, Nancy Pelosi, infamously said,

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

Fog of the controversy? How about the foggy brains that passed this monstrosity?

There should be no doubt that the Affordable Care Act is the worst piece of major legislation in U.S. history. Already, as of this date, it is widely reported that at least 5 million Americans have lost their healthcare plans even though President Obama promised repeatedly that “If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it.”

If Obamacare is not repealed it will cause irreparable damage to our economy, seriously reduce the quality of our healthcare system, forever diminish our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Barack Obama

Maybe it would have been a good idea to have asked him what, exactly, he meant before voting for him! Ya think?

President Obama said, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it. Period.”

By MacPundit

He said it at least forty times with various rhetorical iterations:

“If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it. Period.”

“If you like your healthcare plan you can keep your healthcare plan. Guaranteed. Period.”

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Period. End of story.”

“If you like your hospital, you can keep your hospital. Period.”

Notice that he even added the word “guaranteed” occasionally, as if he was worried that we would not believe him when he simply said “period.” In fact, sometimes he actually used “period,” “guaranteed,” and “end of story” all in the same sentence. When people began to lose their healthcare plans—the ones they liked—he was asked why that was happening because he had promised they would not lose their plans. He said he should have been more clear. More clear? What could be more clear than, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it. Period.”

Millions of healthcare plans already canceled and still counting …

Conservative estimates from credible non-partisan organizations are that private healthcare cancellations could total 15 million or about 5 percent of the population. But, apparently, that is just the beginning because some predict that cancellations may well reach as high as 129 million after the business mandate kicks in.

It’s only about 5 percent of the population. That’s what President Obama and the hardcore Obama apologists keep telling us. In other words, why is everyone so concerned that we misled a mere 15 million Americans?

If you I like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.

“But,” the spin-masters say, “the plans they had were sub-par, garbage plans and Obamacare will replace them with much better plans.” First, let’s not forget the promise that if you like your plan you can keep it. — Period. Guaranteed. End of story. Just where exactly is there even a hint of a caveat or condition to the very clear promises that the President of the United States of America made to we the people? When did our president say that you can keep your plan if it meets Obamacare standards? Of course the answer is that he never said any such thing. Period. End of story. In fact, now he is essentially saying, “If I like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.”

The insurance companies canceled the plans, not us.

Incredibly, the Obama White House spin machine, Democrats in Congress, and some of the left-wing media quickly added that tortured lie to the Big Lie. Really? The insurance companies are the culprits? Have you people no shame?

Let’s be clear: The lie is not always in the words alone, but it is always in the intent. It is true that the insurance companies canceled the healthcare policies, but they did so because they had no choice. If the healthcare plans do not meet the new requirements in the Obamacare regulations, the policies can no longer be offered. So any attempt to place blame on the insurance companies is blatantly dishonest.

Higher monthly premiums and deductibles

As shocking as it was for those who have been notified that their healthcare plans will be canceled as of January 1, 2014, the worst was yet to come. They soon realized that the plans offered by Obamacare are much more costly than their canceled plans. Many Obamacare plans increase monthly premiums by as much as 800 percent and some people have reported that their deductibles have gone from $3500 up to as much as $12,500 — increases they simply cannot afford. Not surprisingly, they have reacted with anger and fear — anger at President Obama for deceiving them and fear for their future.

Coverage I don’t need and don’t want

A common complaint is that the plans offered by Obamacare to replace the plans people have and like are loaded with coverage they do not need or want. For example, a thirty year old unmarried man is offered a plan with maternity care, pediatric care, and other coverage for which he has no need. The same unnecessary and unwelcome coverage is in Obamacare plans for older couples who are beyond their child-bearing years. Our governments reaction? – Take it or leave it.

Presidential fraud!

If anyone in the business sector had made the kind of false promises that President Obama made, they would have most certainly been charged with fraud. It is now well documented that the Obama White House knew years ago that upon the implementation of Obamacare, millions of Americans would lose their healthcare plans. Did Mr. Obama, himself, know this? That question is yet to be answered, but we must suspend all credulity and rational thought to believe that he did not.

President Obama is a dishonest man

President Obama’s intimacy with deception is well-documented on this website. He is a habitually dishonest man. This is not opinion, it is fact. So yours truly was not in the least surprised to learn that his repeated declarations that “If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it. Period.” were all false. Still, I was left with a troubling question: Why has it taken so long for so many to realize that our president is a very dishonest man?

See: Obama’s Dishonesty

As to the government shutdown …

… An important question is: “Who did it?” If you want the answer without political talking points or media spin, read this article by Thomas Sowell — one of America’s most renowned economists.

Who Shut Down The Government?

By Thomas Sowell

Even when it comes to something as basic, and apparently as simple and straightforward, as the question of who shut down the federal government, there are diametrically opposite answers, depending on whether you talk to Democrats or to Republicans.

There is really nothing complicated about the facts. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going — except for ObamaCare.

This is not a matter of opinion. You can check the Congressional Record.

As for the House of Representatives’ right to grant or withhold money, that is not a matter of opinion either. You can check the Constitution of the United States. All spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, which means that Congressmen there have a right to decide whether or not they want to spend money on a particular government activity.

Whether ObamaCare is good, bad or indifferent is a matter of opinion. But it is a matter of fact that members of the House of Representatives have a right to make spending decisions based on their opinion.

ObamaCare is indeed “the law of the land,” as its supporters keep saying, and the Supreme Court has upheld its Constitutionality.

But the whole point of having a division of powers within the federal government is that each branch can decide independently what it wants to do or not do, regardless of what the other branches do, when exercising the powers specifically granted to that branch by the Constitution.

The hundreds of thousands of government workers who have been laid off are not idle because the House of Representatives did not vote enough money to pay their salaries or the other expenses of their agencies — unless they are in an agency that would administer ObamaCare.

Since we cannot read minds, we cannot say who — if anybody — “wants to shut down the government.” But we do know who had the option to keep the government running and chose not to. The money voted by the House of Representatives covered everything that the government does, except for ObamaCare.

The Senate chose not to vote to authorize that money to be spent, because it did not include money for ObamaCare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that he wants a “clean” bill from the House of Representatives, and some in the media keep repeating the word “clean” like a mantra. But what is unclean about not giving Harry Reid everything he wants?

If Senator Reid and President Obama refuse to accept the money required to run the government, because it leaves out the money they want to run ObamaCare, that is their right. But that is also their responsibility.

You cannot blame other people for not giving you everything you want. And it is a fraud to blame them when you refuse to use the money they did vote, even when it is ample to pay for everything else in the government.

When Barack Obama keeps claiming that it is some new outrage for those who control the money to try to change government policy by granting or withholding money, that is simply a bald-faced lie. You can check the history of other examples of “legislation by appropriation” as it used to be called.

Whether legislation by appropriation is a good idea or a bad idea is a matter of opinion. But whether it is both legal and not unprecedented is a matter of fact.

Perhaps the biggest of the big lies is that the government will not be able to pay what it owes on the national debt, creating a danger of default. Tax money keeps coming into the Treasury during the shutdown, and it vastly exceeds the interest that has to be paid on the national debt.

Even if the debt ceiling is not lifted, that only means that government is not allowed to run up new debt. But that does not mean that it is unable to pay the interest on existing debt.

None of this is rocket science. But unless the Republicans get their side of the story out — and articulation has never been their strong suit — the lies will win. More important, the whole country will lose.

[Thomas Sowell is one of America’s most honored economists. This article was published at Townhall on October 4, 2013.]