So we have to pass the bill before we can know what’s in it. Incredible!
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U.S. “cap and trade” rebranded “pollution reduction”
Reporting by Thomas Ferraro; Writing by Richard Cowan, Editing by Cynthia Osterman
Like a savvy Madison Avenue advertising team, senators pushing climate-control legislation have decided to scrap the name “cap and trade” and rebrand their product as “pollution reduction targets.”
Kerry Blames Talk Radio for Lagging Global Warming Concerns Spurred by ClimateGate
Written By: Jeff Poor
ClimateGate, when a hacker broke into computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit and released a myriad of confidential files, continues to cause controversy. The documents showed scientists had attempted to suppress and manipulate data that would hurt the case proving anthropogenic global warming. They also cast doubts about what sort of policy measures should be implemented to attack this alleged global problem.
However, according to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it’s not ClimateGate – but the messenger who is at fault for growing hesitation to enact a cap-and-trade policy that would radically change the U.S. economy. Although traditional media went for weeks without reporting the matter, it was talk radio that busted the story wide open and the target of Kerry’s frustration, which he revealed in an interview with the Boston Globe on March 8. (h/t Matt Dempsey, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee)
“What we have to do is go on the offensive,” Kerry said. The science “has been maligned and misinterpreted, and we need to fight back . . . people [need to] stop being moved by these talk show [hosts] and start looking for the facts” themselves.”
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ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan
Written By: LAURA MECKLER
Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.
Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.
The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.
The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.
“It’s the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. “If you say they can’t get a job when they come here, you’ll stop it.”
The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens
Sen. Schumer’s Immigration Reform Is a National ID
Written By: Jim Harper
…It’s the natural evolution of the policy called “internal enforcement” of immigration law, as I wrote in my paper, “Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration.”
Once in place, watch for this national ID to regulate access to financial services, housing, medical care and prescriptions—and, of course, serve as an internal passport.
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Van Hollen charges five with election fraud
Written By: Daniel Bice
Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today.
Two of those charged – Maria Miles, 36, of Milwaukee, and Kevin Clancy, 26, of Racine – worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community organizing group.
“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies) registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” the Van Hollen release says.
Both were charged with one felony count.
Attempts to reach ACORN today were unsuccessful.
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In Denial. The meltdown of the climate campaign
Written By: Steven F. Hayward
It is increasingly clear that the leak of the internal emails and documents of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in November has done for the climate change debate what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war debate 40 years ago—changed the narrative decisively. Additional revelations of unethical behavior, errors, and serial exaggeration in climate science are rolling out on an almost daily basis, and there is good reason to expect more.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hitherto the gold standard in climate science, is under fire for shoddy work and facing calls for a serious shakeup. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the self-serving coalition of environmentalists and big business hoping to create a carbon cartel, is falling apart in the wake of the collapse of any prospect of enacting cap and trade in Congress. Meanwhile, the climate campaign’s fallback plan to have the EPA regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the cumbersome Clean Air Act is generating bipartisan opposition. The British media—even the left-leaning, climate alarmists of the Guardian and BBC—are turning on the climate campaign with a vengeance. The somnolent American media, which have done as poor a job reporting about climate change as they did on John Edwards, have largely averted their gaze from the inconvenient meltdown of the climate campaign, but the rock solid edifice in the newsrooms is cracking. Al Gore was conspicuously missing in action before surfacing with a long article in the New York Times on February 28, reiterating his familiar parade of horribles: The sea level will rise! Monster storms! Climate refugees in the hundreds of millions! Political chaos the world over! It was the rhetorical equivalent of stamping his feet and saying “It is too so!” In a sign of how dramatic the reversal of fortune has been for the climate campaign, it is now James Inhofe, the leading climate skeptic in the Senate, who is eager to have Gore testify before Congress.
Gore: Organized Campaign Behind Climate Skeptics
Former Vice President Al Gore says critics of his global warming warnings are part of a “massive, organized campaign.”
Appearing on the Norwegian talk show “Skavlan” to promote his newest book “Our Choice,” Gore said:
“There has been a very large, organized campaign to try to convince people that it [global warming] is not real, to try to convince people that they shouldn’t worry about it.
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‘Trust’ Gap Between House, Senate Dems Hurting Health Care Push
House Democrats’ distrust of the Senate is turning up as a major roadblock to passing health care reform. And they’re playing right into Republicans’ hands.
With President Obama pushing anew to pass the health care package through Congress in the coming weeks, several House Democrats have voiced concern that the Senate could betray them if they go along and pass its version of the health bill.
“The Senate has given us a lot of reason not to trust them,” Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., who voted against the House bill last year and is currently undecided, told “Fox News Sunday.”
Trust is such a key factor because the end game for health care reform involves House lawmakers passing the Senate-passed bill, and then crossing their fingers in hopes that the Senate will follow up with a packages of changes to get it more in line with what many House Democrats want to see. That bill could, under the scenario, be passed with a simple majority by using the controversial tool known as reconciliation.
But what if the Senate never passes a second bill?
That question is one that Republicans have tried to raise and is apparently nagging at Democrats.
Altmire said Sunday that the trust factor could be a stumbling block.
“Certainly that’s a key component of the dynamic of getting the votes — is there has to be some certainty that the Senate is going to follow through on their part,” he said.
He said the thought that the Senate would leave the House hanging “gives me concern.”
Other Democrats have suggested the House should not budge until the Senate passes the package of changes — though it’s not clear if that’s even allowed under Senate rules.
Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., told CBS News last week that the Senate “has been the single problem” with getting the bill out of the House. He referenced the hundreds of bills that have languished in the Senate after passing the House.
“Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me 290 times, shame on you,” Weiner said.
The paranoia about the Senate turning its back on the House has been fed by Republicans hoping to send the bill back to the drawing board.
“Once they pass that bill, what’s the incentive for anyone here (in the Senate) to do anything?” Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said last week. “I don’t see the incentive for them to pass a reconciliation bill.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also suggested the Senate could sit on the package of fixes.
“The House has to trust the Senate that we’ll go back in and fix the most egregious political problems,” he told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday.
Trust is hardly the only roadblock, though it is a big one. Another hurdle seemingly getting higher by the day is restrictions on abortion funding.
The House-passed bill was considered far stricter on that issue, and many House Democrats have threatened to reject the Senate bill without more assurances.
“Given the vote dynamic, abortion may be the decisive issue,” Altmire said.
Cleaver: Obama doesn’t have the votes to pass health care reform
Written By: Steve Kraske
Congressman Emanuel Cleaver said today on KCUR’s “Up to Date” that President Barack Obama doesn’t have the votes to pass health care reform in the U.S. House.
“We’re not at 217,” Cleaver said, referring to the number needed to pass the bill.
Later, the three-term Democrat from Kansas City said the passage number could be 216 given vacancies in the House.
The count today, Cleaver said, is about 201 health care supporters.
That number, he added, could fluctuate significantly as a final vote nears.
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Glenn Beck will have an interview with Congressman Massa on his television show tomorrow.
“Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) said. “He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive.”
Rep. Massa describes a confrontation with Emanuel in a shower: “I am showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me.”
On radio show, Massa says Dem leaders railroaded him because he voted against ObamaCare
Written By: David Freddoso
Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., under investigation for alleged sexual harassment of a male staffer, accused House Democratic leaders of lying about the charges against him and using them to run him out of Congress because he voted against health care reform when it last came before the House.
Roll Call reports this morning that on the local radio show he hosts in his district, Massa said he had not been informed of the sexual harassment allegations before they became public. He claimed that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., spoke falsely when he said he had brought the matter to him previously, Massa said. “Steny Hoyer has never said a single word to me, at all, ever, not once,” Massa said. “Not a word. This is a lie. It’s a blatant, false statement.”
He also railed against Hoyer for discussing Ethics Committee business with the press. “Never before in the history of the House of Representatives has a sitting leader of the Democratic Party discussed allegations of House investigations publicly before findings of fact. Ever.”
Massa, who voted against health care reform in November, accused Democratic leaders of driving him out of office in the cause of passing health care reform. “With the departure of Congressman Neil Abercrombie (D), who is running for the governorship of Hawaii, and with the tragic and very sad passing of my personal friend Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill and this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.”
The comment that landed Massa in hot water, he claimed, was a sexual proposition he made in jest at a table full of drunken male staffers at a wedding reception on New Year’s Eve. He also said that the complainant was not the man he allegedly harassed, but an offended third party who witnessed the incident.
“This is what Congress has come to,” an angry Massa said. “The government is not our enemy, but it is broken beyond repair.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Massa-accuses-Dem-leaders-of-railroading-him-because-he-voted-against-ObamaCare-86840467.html#ixzz0hdoGmebt
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Obama pleads for health Rx – for sake of presidency
Written By: GEOFF EARLE
President Obama yesterday pushed wavering House members to OK health-care legislation for his own political standing and for theirs, as the battle came down to a bare-knuckle brawl for votes.
Obama met with groups of liberal and more conservative Democrats in the White House to try to assemble a winning coalition.
“To maintain a strong presidency, we need to pass the bill,” Obama told the liberals, according to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who attended the meeting.
Boehner says he expects health bill to hit House floor ‘within days’
Written By: Michael O’Brien
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday he expects Democrats’ healthcare bill to hit the House floor “within days.”
Boehner said he expects the debate over healthcare to begin, in earnest, as Democrats in the House prepare to take up the health bill passed by the Senate last Christmas Eve.
“I think we’re within days of this bill coming to the floor of the House,” Boehner said during an appearance on Fox News. “It’s pretty clear that the president, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid want to do everything they can to jam this bill through the House and the Senate to get it to the president’s desk.”
SEIU Wants to Unionize Doctors
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Kathryn in Colleyville, Texas. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. It’s great to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I was calling about Medicare and the slow erosion of freedom within the doctor community. Basically over the past two or three months, cardiology has been taken incredible pay cuts, which are impacting the practice of medicine.
RUSH: Medicare and Medicaid particularly, you mean, right?
CALLER: Medicare, yes.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Specifically, a couple of months ago the imaging that is performed in cardiologists’ office took a 40% pay cut, and that was followed up this past Monday with a 20% pay cut to all physicians. It’s really affecting how patients are getting taken care of. We had to lay off some employees, and it’s really touch and go whether we’ll be able to continue to see Medicare patients.
RUSH: I was just going to say: Your only hope is to get out of the program.
CALLER: Well, there is an out, which a lot of cardiologists — about, probably, 30% — have already accepted. Hospitals are buying out cardiology practices, only to become employees of hospitals.
RUSH: Yeah. I know.
CALLER: Huh. And that’s (garbled).
RUSH: But once you opt out of Medicare you can’t take a Medicare patient ever again, right?
CALLER: I’m not sure all the rules. I’m probably out of my territory there, but there are specific rules for not taking care of Medicare patients. But the problem is that once you’re an employee of a hospital you’ve lost your freedom, and some practices that have been bought out have already been told by the hospitals that, “Oh, well, we’re going to have to cut your pay 15%, and you have no recourse.”
RUSH: All right. I want to try to put what you’ve said here into an understandable context for the audience.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: No, no, no. Stay on the line here because I need you to tell me if I’m right or wrong on this.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: The odds are I’m right (I’m very seldom wrong) but I still want you there to correct me. Now, the very people who just yesterday in a big dog and pony show said, “We’re going to expand coverage, we’re going to insure 31 million more people, we’re going to lower costs,” the same people are reducing what they are paying you and your husband, cardiologists, to the point that you cannot keep your practices going?
CALLER: That’s basically it. It’s a huge part of this. Probably 50% of local cardiology business is Medicare.
RUSH: Well, of course it is.
CALLER: It’s a very successful business. Let me tell you that over the past ten years… You know, heart disease was the number one killer ten years ago. But do you know that in the last ten years the mortality has dropped 30% because of cardiology care?
RUSH: Yeah. Oh, I’m not surprised. Despite all these horrors like childhood obesity, the life expectancy just continues to edge upward in this country.
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: But my point with you, Kathryn, is that the very people who claim they know how to fix this are breaking what we have now.
CALLER: Exactly. What we have now is already so broken that basically insurance companies and government have doctor groups fighting among ourselves for what’s left of our 8% of the Medicare dollar. About 8% of what goes through Medicare actually makes it to doctors. Everything else is wasted.
RUSH: Thank you, Kathryn. I want to make another point about this, ladies and gentlemen. I want to go back to my old buddy Howard Fineman and his piece earlier this week in Newsweek in which he wondered, “Where’s all the money going?” Where’s all the money going if they’re cutting the doctors? Well, the money isn’t there. We don’t have it. We have a $1.5 trillion deficit. The money is owed. The money is going to debt. But this is the real point. You listen to this doctor. I could do this all three hours any day I wanted. I could take calls from doctor after doctor after doctor who would tell the same story: Medicare payments, copayments are being cut back to the point that they can’t continue to keep the office open on what the government is paying them.
You have cardiology patients, heart patients, going in to get treated, and some far-off bureaucrat somewhere… Not an insurance company. We’re talking Medicare here, not some evil insurance company. Some federal bureaucrat is deciding what the cardiologist is going to get paid. That’s not a free market. There’s no relationship to Kathryn’s patients and the price of Kathryn’s service. The patient isn’t paying diddly-squat, or very little on Medicare and even less on Medicaid if we lump that in. We’ll leave Medicaid out of it for now. There’s absolutely no relationship. These people walk in with a heart problem. The service and the fee attached to it by Kathryn and her husband the cardiologists is not based on that woman’s ability to pay or the patient’s ability to pay or the patient’s level of care that’s needed, treatment, what have you.
Some bureaucrat that nobody knows, sitting far away in some dank federal office, is using a computer with printouts and models — formulas and so forth — to determine what the doctor rendering the service is going to be paid. This is price fixing. This is government control. We already have this. This is why it’s messed up. Now, we can get lost in the details here of the doctor’s only getting reimbursed this or they’re having their payments bundled here or what have you. That’s not the point. The problem is, imagine if you had to check into a hotel this way and the room is 400 bucks a night, and some federal bureaucrat says, “We’re only going to pay the hotel a hundred bucks for this,” and the hotel has to give you the room! It can’t be sustained.
Charles Krauthammer: For Obama, health care show must go on
Written By: Charles Krauthammer
So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts’ devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.
After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.
The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House “summit” with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans’ way.
So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts’ devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.
After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.
The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House “summit” with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans’ way.
…
…even strong Obama supporter Warren Buffett [went] public with his judgment that the current Senate bill, while better than nothing, is a failure because the country desperately needs to bend the cost curve down and the bill doesn’t do it. Buffett’s advice would be to start over and get it right.Obama has chosen differently, however. The time for debate is over, declared the nation’s seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington’s wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of “budget reconciliation.” The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.
Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.
Hundreds of NHS wards to be shut in secret plans
Written By: Robert Winnett, Holly Watt and Christopher Hope
Plans that could lead to the closure of hundreds of hospital wards are being drawn up but will not be made public until after the general election, opposition parties have said.
Last year, the Government asked NHS authorities to come up with proposals to reorganise the service to save money as a result of the recession. Details have started to emerge of what is likely to be a rolling programme of cuts that contrasts sharply with assurances from Labour and the Tories that the NHS was “safe”.
So far, only the plans for London have come to light. Campaigners claimed the proposals threatened services such as casualty and maternity units at 13 out of 36 hospitals in the capital.
The failure of health authorities in other areas to disclose their response has prompted allegations that proposed closures, which could be politically damaging to the Government, will not be published until after polling day.
The scale of the cuts has caused a rebellion among Labour ministers who have openly defied the Government by publicly protesting at closures at their local hospitals.
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Payrolls fall by 36,000; U.S. jobless rate steady at 9.7%
Written By: Rex Nutting
U.S. nonfarm payrolls declined for the 25th time in the past 26 months, falling by 36,000 in February to a seasonally adjusted 129.5 million, the Labor Department estimated Friday.
The nation’s jobless rate was steady at 9.7% as the number of people employed rose by 308,000, according to the household survey.
Video: Harry Reid: Only 36,000 Lost Their Jobs Today
Oil rises to near $81 ahead of key US jobs report
Written By: ALEX KENNEDY
Oil prices rose to near $81 a barrel Friday in Asia as crude traders followed equity markets higher ahead of a key U.S. jobs report.
Benchmark crude for April delivery was up 48 cents to $80.69 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 66 cents to settle at $80.21 on Thursday.
CBO: National Deficit to Hit Nearly $10 Trillion Over Upcoming Decade
A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.
Federal Workers Paid More Than Private Employees For Similar Work
Federal employees are earning considerably more than people doing similar work in the private sector, according to an analysis from USA Today — news that’s sure to rile lawmakers already concerned about the rate of federal spending.
In more than eight out of 10 occupations, federal employees earned higher salaries, the newspaper’s analysis of federal data found.
Among the higher earners are federal accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors.
Federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for jobs that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. By comparison, the average pay for the same batch of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.
The figures don’t include health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee and $9,882 per private employee in 2008, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The federal government spends about $125 billion each year on compensation for about 2 million civilian employees.
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Dem Dozen Threatens to Bail on Health Care Over Abortion Language
Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak said Thursday he’s counted 11 Democratic lawmakers in addition to himself who are willing to kill President Obama’s health care overhaul over abortion language.
Stupak sponsored a provision in the House of Representatives’ health care bill, which passed last fall, that clearly prohibits the use of federal money to pay for abortions. That language did not make it into the Senate bill, the model Obama is using to craft the plan he is expected to send to Congress shortly.
“We’re not gonna vote for this bill with that kind of language in there,” Stupak said Thursday in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“I want to see health care, but we’re not gonna bypass some principles and belief that we feel strongly about,” he said, adding that he’s “prepared to take responsibility” for bringing down the bill.
President Obama is hoping the legislation will pass in the House by March 18, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday.
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