United Liberty

A Department of Health and Human Services report was released last week showing that health care costs would actually increase under ObamaCare.

It turns out that this report was sent by the Medicare Actuary before the final votes on ObamaCare with plenty of time to make Members of Congress aware of what the impact of the bill would be:

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

“The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,” says an HHS source. “Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.”

The analysis, performed by Medicare’s Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a “nonpolitical” office, set off alarm bells when submitted. “We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff,” says the HHS staffer, “and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary’s office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report.”

I’m shocked, SHOCKED, that the Obama Administration would supress a report on this bill until after it passed. Transparency continues to die for this president’s agenda.

James Bovard visited a Tea Party rally in Maryland and came away wondering just how anti-government the movement really is:

At a Tax Day tea party in Rockville, Md., the speaking venue was draped with a huge banner: “Tired of Big Government?” Members of the “Tyranny Response Team” stood near the front of the rally with their official blue T-shirts. Giant American flags and ones with “Don’t Tread on Me” (with a coiled rattlesnake) were carried around by men with tri-corn hats. Political campaigns busily sold “9/11 Remembrance” bracelets.

And yet, the crowd of 300 seemed most outraged that the US government is not being sufficiently aggressive in using its power.

Ken Timmerman, the author of “Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America” and other hawkish books, declaimed that the US government must take every step to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Mr. Timmerman denounced the Obama administration for being soft on Tehran and urged support for legislation to impose harsh sanctions on Iran. Timmerman previously advocated a US naval blockade of Iran, which he claimed was planning a nuclear attack on the United States.

Running through a litany of President Obama’s greatest failings, Timmerman denounced him for forcing US agents to “stop using enhanced interrogation methods. Has that made us safer?”

“No!” the crowd hollered indignantly.

“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” - Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond (1821)

The folks from The Simpsons sent South Park some love in the opening sequence of Sunday night’s show.

A federal court recently ruled that the federally recognized National Day of Prayer violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and thus unconstitutional.

On this, Bob Barr writes:

Not surprisingly, the religion separatists were able to find a federal judge – this one in Madison, Wisconsin – to agree with their myopic view of the First Amendment.  Judge Barbara Crabb did just that in a ruling earlier this month.  Graciously, the judge permitted this year’s National Prayer Breakfast in the nation’s capital (and ironically in the shadow of the National Cathedral) to go on as scheduled.

Reflecting the multi-front nature of the assault on prayer practiced by various First Amendment fanatics, another self-styled “watchdog” group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, campaigned successfully to have the Pentagon disinvite Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, to lead a military day of prayer May 6th.  The entire prayer observance was then cancelled.

Back in February, President Barack Obama told reporters that “every economist, from the left and the right, has said, because of the Recovery Act, what we’ve started to see is at least a couple of  million jobs that have either been created or would have been lost.” Of course, that wasn’t entirely true.

The bad news for President Obama is that more economists are doubting the impact of the Keynesian-style “stimulus” spending passed by Congress:

In latest quarterly survey by the National Association for Business Economics, the index that measures employment showed job growth for the first time in two years — but a majority of respondents felt the fiscal stimulus had no impact.

NABE conducted the study by polling 68 of its members who work in economic roles at private-sector firms. About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower as a result of the $787 billion Recovery Act, which the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers says is on track to create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year.

That sentiment is shared for the recently passed $17.7 billion jobs bill that calls for tax breaks for businesses that hire and additional infrastructure spending. More than two-thirds of those polled believe the measure won’t affect payrolls, while 30% expect it to boost hiring “moderately.”

On the floor of the United States Senate, Max Baucus (D-MT), one of the primary authors of ObamaCare, says that none of his colleagues understands the bill:

Yet another part of ObamaCare that we didn’t know about until it became law, the Independent Medicare Advisory Board:

An unelected board with virtually unlimited power over health care.

Yea, that’s a good thing.

Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard and fellow at the Cato Institute, offers his thoughts on Arizona’s new immigration law:

This law is incredibly misguided. Enforcement will be selective, inflaming ethnic and racial tensions. Police resources are better utilized pursuing crimes like homicide, rape, and theft. And the measure’s impact on immigration will be modest in any case.

The only way to reduce illegal immigration is to expand legal immigration; punitive, “supply side” measures will not work so long as the wage gap between Mexico and the U.S. persists.

I tend to agree. I don’t buy into much of the rhetoric surrounding illegal immigration. Typically, immigrants contribute much more to our economy than the anti-immigration crowd wants to admit.

A 2006 study from the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina shows that hispanics, both legal and illegal, have a significant impact on that state’s economy:

North Carolina’s rapidly growing Hispanic population contributes more than $9 billion to the state’s economy through its purchases, taxes and labor, while costing the state budget a net $102 per Hispanic resident in health care, education and correctional services, according to a new study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.