Fresh ideas and a new vision for health reform (Videos)

http://terrellaftermath.com/

 

Galen Institute   "The stage is being set right now for a pivotal debate over ObamaCare in the 2014 elections – whether it gets “fixed” or replaced by a credible free-market plan.  At our Feb. 27 conference, top political and policy leaders discussed the vision, policy, and politics of health reform impacting the coming elections at our conference on “Fresh ideas and a new vision for health reform.”

...

Policy:  On Panel II, 10 policy experts from the major market-oriented think tanks translate the vision into policy solutions for real insurance with real examples of portability and tax fairness, protections for those with pre-existing conditions, and a strong safety net.

• Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D., 2017 Project
• Joseph R. Antos, Ph.D., American Enterprise Institute
• James C. Capretta, Ethics and Public Policy Center
• John C. Goodman, Ph.D., National Center for Policy Analysis
• Hadley A. Heath, Independent Women’s Forum
• Paul Howard, Ph.D., Manhattan Institute
• Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., Institute for Policy Innovation
• Thomas P. Miller, J.D., American Enterprise Institute
• Nina Owcharenko, The Heritage Foundation
• Moderated by: Grace-Marie Turner, Galen Institute

The war on poverty has ended. We lost.

Toyota's Tax Exodus Sends Shockwaves Through Job-Impoverished California .

Toyota’s move from its Torrance facility, above, will occur over  the

next three years as the new headquarters is built in Plano, Texas.

 (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

 

The state must choose; you can keep electing governments run by Jerry Brown and Nancy Pelosi or you can have prosperity.

 

Forbes   "Toyota’s decision this week to leave Torrance, California, for the pro-business environs of Plano, Texas, sent shockwaves through the Southern California community where Toyota employs more than five percent of the workforce. According to MSN Money, the move brings to mind Nissan’s decision eight years ago to move 1,300 jobs to the no-income tax state of Tennessee. A former Nissan executive recalled how the move equated to the company’s employees “getting a 20-percent raise.”

"According to the 2013 City of Torrance’s Comprehensive Annual Report, the city stands to lose more than $473 million in property taxes. Plus, just over a year ago, Moody’s downgraded Torrance’s credit rating, citing a weakened general fund and increasing public expenditures."
...
"And it is not as if California’s anti-business tactics are a well-kept secret.

• CEO Magazine’s 2013 Best and Worst State’s for Business ranks California in last place
• The 2014 ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitive Index ranks the state 43^rd in economic performance, 47^th in economic outlook, 50^th in top marginal personal income tax, 50^th in personal income tax progressivity, and, to make matters worse, 49^th in recent legislative tax changes.
• The 2014 Tax Foundation State Business Climate Index ranks California 48^th, just above New York and New Jersey."

Ron Fournier teaches Journalism 101 to White House press corps.

Five Ways to Shift Leverage From the Government to the Press and Public 


"Don't worry about rough coverage hurting relationships and access (actually, it helps). You want to be a fair reporter, somebody who takes the beat seriously and respects (even likes) the people you cover. You also want to be a tough reporter, somebody who government officials fret about. You can be both fair and tough.

"Something I learned covering the Clinton and Bush White Houses: A new reporter spends months, if not years, calling government officials and begging them for information. "What are you working on?" Once that reporter starts unearthing confidential information and writing incisive analyses that knocks the government off script, the leverage shifts: Government officials call the reporter proactively to ask, "What are you working on?" That's when the reporter realizes she owns the beat." ...  Full article.

Former AP Bureau Chief Ron Fournier Says Blow Off White House Briefings, They're 'A Waste of Time'
" So Fournier advised in National Journal that it’s time to be “both fair and tough,” to shift the leverage of the conversation from the government to the people, and even consider blowing off the White House briefing as “a waste of time.”

 

"Don't go to White House briefings. They're a waste of time. The press secretary rarely makes news and, when he does, the information is a stale commodity; everybody gets it. While your competitors rot away in the briefing room, slip outside the gates and grab a meal or cup of coffee with a potential source, ideally one who doesn't work in the White House. Blowing off briefings is a competitive advantage.

Cover the White House from the "outside in." That's the phrase used by Caren Bohan of Reuters to describe her mastery of agencies and legislative offices disconnected from the White House vault. When Politico asked for tips on how to cover the White House, Jonathan Karl of ABC News said, "By going outside the White House – to Congress, the Pentagon, the State Department or the political world."

  More here.

Issa: WH Withholding Benghazi Docs ‘Disturbing and Perhaps Criminal’ (Video)

Nice Deb  ... “In pushing the false narrative that a YouTube video was responsible for the deaths of four brave Americans, it is disturbing and perhaps criminal that these documents — that documents like these — were hidden by the Obama administration from Congress and the public alike, particularly after Secretary Kerry pledged cooperation and the president himself told the American people in November of 2012 that, quote, ‘every bit of information we have on Benghazi has been provided,’” Issa said." ...

"No wonder Obama is lawyering up.

"Issa later questioned General Lovell.:

 

Jay Carney gets testy over questions about new Benghazi emails

Legal Insurrection   "As controversy over newly released documents pertaining to the 2012 Benghazi attack continues, there was a tense exchange between White House press spokesman Jay Carney and FOX News reporter Ed Henry in Thursday’s press briefing." 

 

... "On Thursday, Ed Henry asked Carney, “If the email was not about Benghazi, as you said yesterday and you say again today, why did the White House turn it over to a conservative group seeking information about Benghazi?”
"That question prompted the tense back and forth exchange between Henry and Carney below. Additional video footage available at Mediaite."

Townhall has more: Besieged Carney Claims Newly-Released WH Emails...Weren't About Benghazi
"Beyond the conservative blogosphere and Fox News, the mainstream media's reaction to yesterday's release of crucial new Benghazi emails was...muted, to say the least. That all changed at this afternoon's White House press briefing, at which ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl pummeled Jay Carney with questions about the White House's political response to the deadly terrorist attacks. Watch the whole thing, then scroll down for extensive analysis:" ...

Weasel Zippers isn't afraid to "have a conversation about race"

MSNBC Montage: Racism, Racism, Racism, White Supremacy, Racism, Racism, Racism, White Supremacy, Racism… 

 

 

UNREAL: Wisconsin Dem Gov. Candidate To Hand Out KKK Hoods To Republicans…

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Democratic candidate for governor Brett Hulsey plans to hand out white Ku Klux Klan hoods to Wisconsin Republicans to highlight what he says are their racist policies.
 

More at Legal Insurrection  "This will not surprise you — Hulsey was front and center in the take over of the Wisconsin Capitol in 2011:" ...
 

From Politifact:   ... "So there is some historic link between Democrats and the KKK. But Martinez said it is misleading to say that the hate group was started by the Democratic Party because it was more of a grassroots creation." ...

MSNBC Panelist: Hey, How Come We Never Talk About Racism?…

"Which leads me to believe this person has never watched MSNBC because that is all they ever talk about."

Ed Schultz: Republicans Not Raising The Minimum Wage Is “Every Bit As Racist” As Sterling…

“ 'I think not raising the minimum wage is a racist policy,” he said. “Standing up, making the case that people of color in this country do not deserve a living wage is a racist policy. There’s a lot of different ways to prove racism in America. Not providing a livable wage for Americans hurts African-Americans.' ”

MSNBC proves they are not racist by making Al Sharpton an anchor

Founder of the National Action Network

Helped incite anti-Jewish riots in Crown Heights, New York in 1991

Convicted of libel for his role in the racially charged Tawana Brawley hoax

Incited black anti-Semites against a Jewish business establishment in Harlem in 1995

Democratic Party presidential candidate, 2004

 

... "Years later, Norman Rosenbaum, brother of the murdered Yankel Rosenbaum, reflected on the events of August 1991: "Based on everything we have seen and read, Sharpton never called upon the rioters to stop their anti-Semitism-inspired violence. He never called on the rioters to go home." Rosenbaum elaborated:

"The riots were the product of anti-Semites taking advantage of the tragic death of a child to justify inflicting their violence on innocent people -- the Jewish community of Crown Heights -- and murdering Yankel Rosenbaum, a Jew from Australia, amid the cries of 'Kill the Jew!'"

What has MSNBC ever said about Sharpton's racism? 

NRO commentaries: Obama’s ‘Blame the Video’ Fraud Started in Cairo, Not Benghazi

"The e-mail revelations and the Obama administration’s lies"

Andrew C. McCarthy "Here is the main point: The rioting at the American embassy in Cairo was not about the anti-Muslim video. As argued here repeatedly ...the Obama administration’s “Blame the Video” story was a fraudulent explanation for the September 11, 2012, rioting in Cairo every bit as much as it was a fraudulent explanation for the massacre in Benghazi several hours later.

"We’ll come back to that because, once you grasp this well-hidden fact, the Obama administration’s derelictions of duty in connection with Benghazi become much easier to see. But let’s begin with Jay Carney’s performance in Wednesday’s exchange with the White House press corps, a new low in insulting the intelligence of the American people.
... Full article..

"That was the beginning of the fraud’s Benghazi phase — the phase Susan Rice was prepped to peddle on nationwide television. But it wasn’t the beginning of the fraud.

"Secretary Clinton’s minions at the State Department had started spinning the video fraud hours earlier, in Egypt. The sooner Americans grasp that, the sooner they will comprehend the breathtaking depth of the president’s Benghazi cover-up."

Victor Davis Hanson: The Truth Drips Out    "For over a year and a half the White House successfully withheld communications between public servants, apparently in hopes that the death of four Americans in Benghazi would not become an issue in the 2012 election (at the eleventh hour CNN’s Candy Crowley did her best to ensure that goal by unethically becoming both moderator and advocate of Barack Obama in the second debate)."

On the other hand...What the New Benghazi E-mails Show, and What They Don’t     "Charles Krauthammer argued on Special Report tonight that the new Benghazi e-mails from the White House are a “smoking document,” but that the media will plead that the scandal is too complicated, so the issue is dead. Alas, the scandal is complicated enough that Krauthammer is either mistaken about the facts of what he calls “a classic cover-up of a cover-up,” or he’s eliding the details for his audience." ...

Drip, drip, drip on Benghazi.

Via Lucianne; always a good source.

USA Today  "WASHINGTON — U.S. military personnel knew early on that the Benghazi attack was a "hostile action" and not a protest gone awry, according to a retired general who served at U.S. Africa Command's headquarters in Germany during the attack.
...
"Lovell's testimony contradicts the story that the Obama administration gave in the early days following the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. Consulate that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

"Back then the administration insisted that the best intelligence it had from CIA and other officials indicated that the attack was a protest against an anti-Islam video that turned violent." ...

New Benghazi Witness on Sending Help: ‘We Should Have Tried’    “ 'There are accounts of time, space and capability discussions of the question, could we have gotten there in time to make a difference,” Lovell will testify. “Well, the discussion is not in the ‘could or could not’ in relation to time, space and capability. The point is we should have tried.' ”

 

Liberal, pro-Democrat Maureen Dowd is fed up with President Obama's international dithering

With Obama being mentored by the likes of Rev. Wright and Bill Ayres (pictured below), we now know how America would turn out if we had actually elected a Black Panther or a 60s radical as president.

Chicago Mag

Is Barry Whiffing?   ... "As Leon Wieseltier wrote in the latest New Republic, oppressed and threatened swaths of the world are jittery and despairing “because the United States seems no longer reliable in emergencies, which it prefers to meet with meals ready to eat.”’

"The Times’s Mark Landler, who traveled with the president on his Asia trip, reported that Obama will try to regain the offensive, including a graduation address at West Point putting his foreign policy in context.

 

"Mr. President, don’t you know that we’re speeched out? It’s not what we need right now." ...  More...

Putin Is Launching a New Version of the Evil Empire. What the U.S. Needs to Do Now.

No Speech Can Fix This   ... "In the midst of these world crises—and a U.S. military readiness crisis—we have a president who questions “the efficacy and even legitimacy of American power,” lamented Heritage Distinguished Fellow Jim Talent and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

"It’s been 100 years since the beginning of World War I. Where does America stand when it comes to protecting its citizens and allies? This question is on many minds as the world watches Putin’s ambitions unfold. Can we even maintain the level of safety we have enjoyed in recent years as our leaders continue to gut the military?" ...

 

From the UK Guardian

 

UK readers comment on the cartoon:        

                   

"I think he means that the only action the U.S. is capable of taking these days in regards to international affairs is playacting."

 

"The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.
is mentioned by WS in Henry V (IV.4.64):
, "I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true, the empty vessel makes the greatest sound". "

 

"Like all conflicts the Americans arrived late...at least in public anyway!"

Foreign Policy: From Bad to None; Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here.

Victor Davis Hanson   " Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none.

"The first-term foreign policy’s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W. Bush. Whatever the latter was for, Obama was mostly against. ...

"If Bush wanted garrison troops left in Iraq to secure the victory of the surge, Obama would pull them out. If Bush had opened Guantanamo, used drones, relied on renditions, reestablished military tribunals, and approved preventive detention, Obama would profess to dismantle that war on terror — even to the point where the Bush-era use of the word “terrorism” and any associations between it and radical Islam would disappear.

"If Bush had contemplated establishing an anti-missile system in concert with the Poles and Czechs, then it must have been unwise and unnecessary. If Bush had unabashedly supported Israel and become estranged from Turkey, Obama would predictably reverse both courses..."  More...

  

Doctors And AMA Split Over Contentious Issue Of ObamaCare

It seems that just as the teacher's unions do not seem to have the education and welfare of our children at heart, neither does it appear that the AMA looks out for our doctors. Never assume because the AMA endorses a program that it helps patients or doctors.
Our own family physician has been burdened with much more paperwork, even having to hire an extra person just to put government-required patient information into a computer.
She has told us that after all patients have been seen for the day, she continues to do paperwork at home until bedtime. She admitted that her family life has suffered.  I can attest to that, having just recently received an email from her explaining results of some tests she had ordered for me.
The email came to me at 11:30 pm.  The Tunnel Dweller.

Forbes  "For more than 160 years, the American Medical Association has served as the self-appointed chief lobbying group for doctors. But the AMA’s lofty status has been under threat over the last several years — and is under attack today. In fact, the AMA now only counts about 17% of doctors as members.
" According to a new survey, the majority of doctors do not believe that the AMA represents their views and interests. Much of that dissatisfaction stems from the organization’s support for President Obama’s contentious health care reform package.
"That shouldn’t be surprising. The AMA declares that its core mission is to “help doctors help patients.” But ObamaCare undermines that pursuit by making life harder for physicians and driving down the quality of care available to patients."  More here.   Emphasis mine, TD
Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is The Truth About Obamacare.