TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

Obamacare Grants IRS Perilous Power

Thursday, 18 Mar 2010 05:46 PM

By: David A. Patten

The Internal Revenue Service would gain sweeping new powers under President Obama’s healthcare reform proposals, in what Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are calling a “dangerous expansion” of IRS powers.

That’s according to a nine-page Republican report from the Committee on Ways and Means on Thursday. It’s titled “The Wrong Prescription” Democrats’ Health Overhaul Dangerously Expands IRS Authority.”

Among the new powers the IRS would assume, the report says: The authority to confiscate tax refunds, to impose fines of over $2,200 per taxpayer, and to verify whether taxpayers’ health insurance coverage is “acceptable.”

One measure of the scope of the IRS’ new responsibilities under the healthcare overhaul: The agency might have to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents, and other employees in order to administer the program, according to Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.

“It is a very dangerous expansion of the IRS’ power and reach into the lives of virtually every American,” Camp said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

The Ways and Means report portrays healthcare reform as having a wide-ranging impact on how the IRS operates, including:

• IRS agents would be tasked with determining whether Americans had obtained the insurance coverage required under the individual mandate.
• Individuals could be fined $2,250 or 2 percent of income, whichever is greater, if you are unable to prove you have “minimum essential coverage.”
• The IRS would be empowered to confiscate tax refunds if necessary.
• Audits probably would increase as a result of the legislation’s new requirements.
• The budget for IRS operations will balloon by $10 billion in the next decade in order to administrate the new program.
• Nearly half of the new individual mandate taxes will be paid “by Americans earning less than 300 percent of poverty, $66,150 for a family of four.

A statement that Democrats are sure to dispute, the report, which Camp and fellow GOP Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana prepared, says healthcare reform would “fundamentally alter the relationship between the IRS and taxpayers.”

Essentially, the Republicans state, the reform bill makes the IRS responsible for “tracking the monthly health insurance status of roughly 300 million Americans.”

They express the concern that reform would alter the IRS’ traditional mission of collecting revenue, and adding a social-program delivery function to its portfolio.

“This is an unprecedented new role for the IRS – one that will inject the IRS even further into the lives of American families,” the report warns.

Ironically, two groups of residents would be declared exempt from IRS enforcement measures, according to the Republicans: One is illegal immigrants who aren’t supposed to be included in the insurance exchanges in the first place. The other consists of people who are incarcerated.

Posted by: Donald Bly 03-19-2010 @ 10:30

I have to thank vocal left leaning proponents of progressivism for what I perceive as an irrational support of the usurpation of individual and States rights, as it has forced me to extend my research to depths that I haven’t felt necessary before. I find it fascinating that individuals can hold such views thus my quest for how they might have come to their positions.

I have begun an extensive project of research with my methodology initially focusing on one of the leading financial benefactors of the modern progressive movement, George Soros, who has directly contributed in excess of 5 billion dollars towards such organizations. This is where I began my exploration. It is an extensive list populated by a plethora of rabidly anti-American organizations. There are also numerous instances of the more mundane; labor unions, environmental organizations like the Apollo Alliance which is a project of the Tides Foundation which lists its mission as strategic planning for a spider web of philanthropic organization. In addition there is the Center for American Progress, an organization that was founded by Hillary Clinton and George Soros.

There is a massive amount of information to sift through. Much of it is very innocuous and on the surface could be seen as noble in purpose. But every now and then some real gems come to light. Concentrating on mission statements and past accomplishment of the organizations as well the bios of founders and executive officers tends to reveal more than the very carefully chosen words found on the website pages the general public would tend to visit.

On the Center for American Progress’ website, under the CEO, John Podesta’s bio page the following accomplishment was touted:

“Most recently, Podesta served as co-chair of President Obama’s transition, where he coordinated the priorities of the incoming administration’s agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees.“

On the CAP’s “About Page” under the heading “What we believe” the following excerpt is found:

“We believe an open and effective government can champion the common good over narrow self-interest,…”

Found on the CAP’s website www.americanprogress.org… is an article written by John Podesta entitled Progressivism’s Role in the Economy, Health Care, Education, and the Cimate he writes:

“What’s the difference between liberalism and progressivism? According to John Podesta, it is the “fire of social justice” that is often born from faith or a belief in a communitarian approach to the common good—as opposed to an individualistic approach.

This was a preface to a video where Podesta goes into much more detail, unfortunately there are many of these videos and for someone to do intensive research they must watch the video or rely on meta-tags for an inkling of the contents. Let me tell you, I can read much faster than they can speak but I did take time to watch the video where he outlined why the term progressivism over liberalism is used. The jist of his speech in regards to this topic was; liberalism has developed many negative connotations and is often used by conservatives as a pejorative whereas progressivism has much greater appeal to the masses as it embodies the idea of progressing towards a stronger society and economy.

It all sounds rather benign, however, I kept coming back to the preface of the video and the word “communitarian” and an advocacy of such a principle over the “individualistic approach”, which took me back to the “What we believe” page’s use of the phrase “common good over narrow self-interest”.

I figured I had the definition of “narrow self-interest” pretty well under control. You can’t get any narrower than an individual’s own self interest. Common good seems pretty straight forward too, the common good as used in the phrase, is more important than an individual’s rights.

But this word “communitarian”, I had to look it up. It wasn’t a word with which I was familiar, it looked a lot like communism on the surface so I did some more research.

Central to the communitarian philosophy is the concept of positive rights, which are rights or guarantees to certain things. These may include state subsidized education, state subsidized housing, a safe and clean environment, universal health care, and even the right to a job with the concomitant obligation of the government or individuals to provide one. To this end, communitarians generally support social security programs, public works programs, and laws limiting such things as pollution.

A common objection is that by providing such rights, communitarians violate the negative rights of the citizens; rights to not have something done for you. Progressives, aka communitarians assert; individuals would not have any rights in the absence of societies. Conservatives view this as a negation of natural rights.

Progressives aka communitarians believe that negative rights may be violated by a government action, but argue that it is justifiable if the positive rights outweigh the negative rights lost. They further argue that negative rights are irrelevant in the absence of positive rights.

How do the communists define communitarian?

The Socialist Alliance programme is the foundation upon which everything else is built, including in time our exact organizational forms and constantly shifting tactics. The programme links our continuous and what should be all-encompassing agitational work with our ultimate aim of a communitarian, or communist, system. Our programme thus establishes the basis for agreed action and is the lodestar, the point of reference, around which the voluntary unity of the Socialist Alliance is built and concretised. Put another way, the programme represents the dialectical unity between theory and practice.” — Weekly Worker 368, Janury 25 2001. See also: 5. The transition to the communitarian system in the same issue of Great Britain Communist Party’s Weekly Worker.

The Ism Book – A dictionary of philosophies from Peter Saint-André, editor of the Monadnock Review defines communitarianism as:

Communitarianism (Idea and Movement in politics) – “With the demise of true socialism as a viable intellectual force, communitarianism is now the most active philosophical opposition to libertarianism. Communitarianism is usually presented in vague terms, but it is probably best understood as a mild form of collectivism or “democratic socialism.”

I’ve heard many times in recent months from individuals posting on various blogs that “communism is dead”, buried under the debris of the Berlin wall. I contend that it is dead only in name and it’s core beliefs have been resurrected under the guise of “progressivism/communitarianism” A belief that the State knows better how to run your life than you do. That individual liberties have no place in modern society and that without society you would have no rights at all.

As I stated in the beginning, this is an extensive research project and I am far from done but I thought I’d post this as the first installment with more to come. Next we’ll look at how the Tides Foundation provides overarching coordination of progressivism/communitarianism’s strategy of implementing their philosophy through the activities of a myriad of non-profit organizations and how the Apollo Alliance, a project of the Tides Foundation, was a major player in writing the text of the stimulus bill to further move the USA towards a communitarian society. (it’s okay if you want to read that as “communist”, I do)

Barack Obama’s “America [Must] Serve” Plan

By Scott Shields
Published 03/19/2010

Throughout Barack Obama’s campaign for president, he expressed his desire to increase community service in America. He outlined his plan, called “America Serves,” on change.gov, the website that provided details of his presidential agenda and transition. A screen-shot of America Serves is still available at www.politicallore.com/images/change.jpg.

President Obama’s plan for community service is now described as a part of the White House’s agenda, and is outlined at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/service.

The introductory paragraph for America Serves on the original presidential transition website read as follows:

When you choose to serve – whether it is your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood – you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That’s why it’s called the American dream.

I also am a strong believer in community service, and I volunteer my time for multiple causes. (One could argue that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is not simply an American ideal, but that the Founding Fathers believed the Creator endowed all men with those rights, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, but that may be splitting hairs.)

After that lofty introduction, however, details for Obama’s plan are listed. Details that, when analyzed, are not so inspiring; nor would the Founding Fathers be thrilled that their words were associated with it. President Obama informs us that he will “call on” Americans to serve. In Obama’s world, however, “call on” does not mean “ask” – it means “require.”

Children will be “required” to give 50 hours of community “service” in middle school and high school. An “energy-focused” youth-jobs program will “provide disadvantaged youth with … getting practical experience in fast-growing career fields.”

My immediate thought is that maybe – just maybe – I might have a better sense of whether my preteen or teenage child should be performing community service, or whether he might have other needs that require time spent elsewhere. Maybe I’ve had to hire a tutor to help him, or maybe he needs to watch a younger sibling after school. Maybe we have only one car and have limited ability to take him to and from the place of community service.

Regardless of the circumstances, I do not want the government reaching into our home and giving us another mandate about how to raise children.

College conscripts

One section of the America Serves plan indicates that President Obama will “require” 100 hours of service in college. Like many of the statements candidate Obama made and President Obama has made, it is not quite true. College students will actually be required to give 100 hours per year of college. A student who attends four years of college (the most common duration) will have a burden of 400 hours.

In exchange for the 100-hours-per-year commitment, President Obama proposes an American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000 a year.

A tax credit is a curious compensation vehicle for college students because the vast majority do not generate sufficient income to take full – or even partial – advantage of that tax credit. Perhaps he envisions that the tax credit will carry forward for future years, but is that not simply a payment for services? And how can a program be called “public service” when the “service” is required and is compensated? I would like to know how that differs from requiring every college student to be a federal-government employee.

But the federal government’s intervention into college and universities does not end with mandatory conscription of every student. America Serves also calls for “at least” 25 percent of College Work-Study funds to “support public-service opportunities instead of jobs in dining halls and libraries.” [Emphasis mine.]

The height of arrogance, but typical. The government is, apparently, not only entitled to intervene in the operations of a university, but also feels that at least 25 percent of work-study jobs are simply not needed. After all, colleges don’t need fully staffed dining facilities and libraries, do they? Or, perhaps, those jobs really are needed — in which case the colleges will simply have to hire workers to replace the work-study students the government has decreed should not be toiling in demeaning positions in cafeterias and libraries.

Retiring Americans will also be “engaged” to participate in America Serves. (The language is unclear whether “engaged” means “invited to volunteer” or is Obama-speak and participation will be mandatory.)

Note, also, that referring to “retiring” (not “retired”) Americans leaves open the possibility of similarly conscripting those Americans who may still be working full-time, raising children, supporting their parents, et cetera. After all, many “retiring” Americans are looking to at least 15 years of working before being eligible for Social Security benefits. (Wouldn’t paying Social Security taxes be considered “serving your community”?)

Slavery is not freedom

Thus, President Obama manages to invoke the lofty principles of the Declaration of Independence (“life, liberty, pursuit of happiness”) and infuse them with the exact opposite meaning: mandatory government labor. This written sleight-of-hand is a clever – though Orwellian – act of commingling the idea of forced labor and the warm glow of patriotism and humanity. Nevertheless, it will take a more profound man of letters to convince me that forced labor promotes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And forced labor is what it is. For how else do you refer to mandatory community service? Sure, Obama may declare that “your” community service could be configured how you want – if you’re a college student in a pre-med program, for example, you could serve in a hospital. If you are a high-school student and want to work with your hands, you could serve with a carpenter.

But what if your schedule is jam-packed with school, sports, and a paid part-time job? What activity will you curtail to meet your “civic duty”?

And what if someone refuses to participate in America Serves? Saying “no” to the government is not like saying “no” to a boss or to a teacher; it is not like saying “no” when asked to volunteer your time to a cause or an organization. Sure, saying “no” to a boss or teacher has negative consequences, but saying “no” to the government is almost never an option. (If you doubt that, try saying “no” to the IRS, a judge, or a police officer.) Having a monopoly on legalized violence means never having to accept “no” for an answer – whether or not it is unfair to the citizen.

Most galling of all Obama thinks he and the government have a right to take decision-making out of students’, parents’, and professionals’ hands, and to insist that the government has a claim on their time because it knows best. Many people choose not to perform community service, but Obama does not respect that decision; rather, he believes that community service provides such great benefits to society that individual decisions not to participate have no legitimacy.

One of the benefits of voluntary community service is the opportunity to willingly help others less fortunate or to promote a cause about which one feels so passionate that he offers his most valuable asset – his time. In return, the volunteer can take great pride in knowing he has done something worthwhile.

But can psychic benefit be achieved if the person is forced to assist others, or forced to select a cause to promote? There is just as much potential to feel that the activity is punishment – as if the “volunteer” is a cog in nothing more than a glorified chain gang.

I have no doubt that some children and adults would benefit from being exposed to the kinds of undertakings America Serves might promote and from participating in them. However, to subject all affected Americans to the program for the possibility that some may derive benefit is the same thinking that has led to all Americans’ paying taxes to support pet projects of some members of Congress.

In a very real sense, how is mandatory, government-enforced service any different from slavery? In both situations, you do not have a choice about whether to participate – you must participate with minimal (if any) recompense.

Murray Rothbard describes involuntary servitude in his classic discussion of individual rights, For a New Liberty:

[What] is slavery but (a) forcing people to work at tasks the slavemaster wishes, and (b) paying them either pure subsistence or, at any rate, less than the slave would have accepted voluntarily. In short, forced labor at below free-market wages.

Obama would counter that, under America Serves, Americans will have a multitude of choices to fulfill their obligation. But that is a specious argument, because the most important choice – whether or not to participate – is not an option. Just consider America Serves to be cafeteria-style involuntary servitude.

[Can you once again say socialism?]

A common example used to further the cause of “socialized medicine” in the United States is to point out how well it is working in countries such as France and Canada.  However, those living in Canada know full well that their government run health care program is most certainly not working.  As a matter of fact, many Canadian citizens choose to hire high priced brokers to find them quality health care right here in the United States because of the terrible bureaucracy that controls all forms of health care in Canada.  For more about what is really going on with the Canadian health care system please watch these short but very informative documentary videos:

http://www.freemarketcure.com/brainsurgery.php
http://www.freemarketcure.com/twowomen.php
http://www.freemarketcure.com/thelemon.php
You Tube: Dead Meat by Stuart Browning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiXT0P3edfs

The number of actual uninsured’s in the US has also been grossly inflated as well.  For the real numbers:

http://www.freemarketcure.com/uninsuredinamerica.php

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world.  Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government role in health care.  Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex.  However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America’s health care system should be considered, says Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Stanford University Medical Center.

Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers:

• Breast cancer mortality is 52% higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88% higher in the United Kingdom.
• Prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in the United Kingdom and 457% higher in Norway.
• The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40% higher.

Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries:

• Some 56% of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease.
• By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36% of the Dutch, 29% of the Swiss, 26% of Germans, 23% of Britons and 17% of Italians receive them.

Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians:

• Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7% versus 5.8%).
• Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20% more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”

Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom:

• Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long – sometimes more than a year – to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.
• All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.
• In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

Source: Scott W. Atlas, “10 Surprising Facts About American Health Care,” National Center for Policy Analysis, Brief Analysis No. 649, 3/24/09 http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=17770

Because of how the Single Payer System is designed Canadian citizens have NO WHERE NEAR the choices that we as American citizens do.  As a matter of fact, until very recently (2005) it was simply not possible for a Canadian citizen to pay for their own health care or to purchase private medical insurance that would “bump them up the long waiting list” for medical treatments.  The reason Canadian citizens now have the right to do so (and it is still limited) is a direct result of long hard battles (many that are still being fought) that have been waged by brave Canadian citizens like Dr. Jacques Chaoulli who took his clients case all the way to the Canadian supreme court and won! Dr. Chaoulli (http://www.healthcoalition.ca/chaoulli.html) and his patient, George Zeliotis, launched their legal challenge to the Canadian government’s monopolized healthcare system after waiting more than a year for hip-replacement surgery.

Canada’s high court found for the plaintiffs and in doing so issued the following statement: “The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public healthcare system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public healthcare.  The evidence also demonstrates that the prohibition against private health insurance and its consequence of denying people vital healthcare result in physical and psychological suffering that meets a threshold test of seriousness.”  Furthermore, Justice Marie Deschamps said, “Many patients on non-urgent waiting lists are in pain and cannot fully enjoy any real quality of life. The right to life and to personal inviolability is therefore affected by the waiting times.”

Furthermore, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute which keeps track of Canadian waiting times for various medical procedures.  According to the Fraser Institute’s 14th annual edition of “Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada (2006),” total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, rose from 17.7 weeks in 2003 to 17.9 weeks in 2006.  Depending on which Canadian province you live in, a simple MRI requires a wait between 7 and 33 weeks!  Orthopedic surgery could require a wait of 14 weeks for a referral from a general practitioner to the specialist and then another 24 weeks from the specialist to treatment!  For even more real life horror stories about Canadian citizens left in the lurch by the Canadian healthcare system read the well researched and fact based Wall Street Journal article entitled “Too Old For Hip Surgery” here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123413701032661445.html?mod=article-outset-box This is what happens when you put government in control of your health care decisions.  Doing so in this country, would be nothing short of a train wreck.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply uninformed or “willfully ignorant”.

Real healthcare reform can be accomplished through consumer education, weeding out abuse of existing Federal entitlement programs (via a legitimate needs assessment) and continued funding of State sponsored Risk Pools so that people who are declined for insurance have an affordable option to continue coverage if declined on the individual major medical market.  Following these few simple steps will go a long way towards not only maintaining our current health care system, but also towards keeping the bulk of our nations risk where it belongs, namely with the private health insurance sector.  In light of the recent multi Trillion Dollar “Bail Outs” and many other failing corporations coming to the table with their hats in their hands (and their private jets on the tarmac) the last thing our government should do is start cutting more blind “bail out” checks in an effort to “reform” the U.S. health care system.