Democrats illustrate disregard for US Constitution

During my morning reading of various news sources I came across an article on Yahoo! titled Dems Strike Back on Hobby Lobby Case With 'Not My Boss's Business Act' (http://news.yahoo.com/dems-strike-back-hobby-lobby-case-not-bosss-182210871--abc-news-politics.html) In the article, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray is quoted, "We are here to ensure that no CEO or corporation can come between people and their guaranteed access to healthcare. I hope Republicans will join us to revoke this court-issued license to discriminate and return the right of Ameircans to make their own decision about their own health care and their own bodies."

Sen. Murray, healthcare is not a right afforded Americans under the United States Constitution. The decision by the Supreme Court to uphold  the owners of Hobby Lobby's US Constitutional Right to be able to exercise their religious views is a Right guaranteed all Americans. While I understand the attempt of this legislation is to score political points; rather than to observe the restrictions our Constitution places on Congress, the President and the Judicial branch.

Nothing in the Hobby Lobby cases is preventing any American to ability to make their own decisions on their own health care or bodies. Ironically, the Affordable Care Act does as it mandates all Americans to have health care coverage or face additional taxation for not. Thus taking away the option for any American to self-insure.

Another point getting lost in the conversation is healthcare, at least until the ACA, is a benefit offered by an employer to attract and retain employees. Benefits offered to employees by employers are not a right of employment thus can be changed at anytime. No one denies people the right to pursue their own happiness and success; rather people need to understand that when you trade your services for money and benefits you give up some of your rights afforded you under the US Constitution while performing the duties of said job. Prime example is the three paragraphs every computer displays when one has to sign into a work station that essentially states that by hitting ok you, as the employee, are giving up your right to illegal search and seizure protection is so far as the use of the computer.

Sen. Boxer (D-CA) quips in the article, "The court's majority has decided that corporations are entitled to more rights than individual Americans." Again a chirp to score quick political points rather than actually reading the application of the decision. Why does Sen. Boxer think it is okay for Congress to pass a law and the President of the United States to sign said law that curtails one ability to practice their religious beliefs without fear of retribution from the Government?

Yes, Hobby Lobby is a closely held corporation. A reason people will incorporate their business is to limit their liability and protect their personal assets. By doing that, does an American give up their Rights afforded to them by the US Constitution?

Marcia D. Greenberger, Co-President of the National Women's Law Center, is quoted at the end of the article, "Bosses should stick to what they know best: the boardroom and the bottom line. Stay out of the bedroom and the exam room." Now, I did read the opinions rendered in the Hobby Lobby decision, all sides, and I don't recall a single sentence that  authorized a boss to dictate to employee what they are to or not to do in the bedroom or the exam room. I wonder too if Marcia Greenberger understands that when, at least prior to the ACA, employer offered healthcare as a benefit of employment it never translated to a right guaranteed by the US Constitution.

Now, if real change wants to occur the Senators need to look to the US Constitution to make that change otherwise they can waste taxpayer money debating a law that is already Unconstitutional. The only reason why ACA is allowed to remain in effect is that Congress has the power to tax.

Status Quo

Yet again, President Obama via Executive Order alters the Affordable Care Act by waiving the requirement that businesses with less than 100 employee provide health insurance until after the next Presidential election cycle. The ACA was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama with the notion that it would mandate that all Americans have health insurance coverage by January 1, 2014.

The latest Executive Order violates that United States Constitution as the Executive Branch doesn't have the power to legislate or alter enacted law. Sen Mike Lee (R-UT) claimed on FoxNew Sunday today that, "the president knows this is wrong" and doesn't see anyway to stop President Obama. Really!?!?

Trouble is that Sen. Lee and others, except perhaps Rep. Rand Paul, wants to be on record of leading the charge of impeachment against the first black president. There is no clearer violation of the United States Constitution by these Executive Orders that are waiving the requirement and pushing back the date of the mandate.

By allowing President Obama to get away with a clear violation of the powers granted the Executive Branch does pave the way for future Executive Branches to further violate the United State Constitution. Perhaps that is the real reason why Sen. Lee, and others, are not moving forward with impeachment proceedings. America its time to wake up and demand that our Constitution be upheld and not allow any branch of government to usurp it.

Healthcare Insurance Bandaid

Yesterday the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3350 (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr3350eh/pdf/BILLS-113hr3350eh.pdf) that will allow health insurance companies to continue to offer insurance policies that did not meet the grandfather clause of the Affordable Care Act or the minimum standards set in place by ObamaCare. Rep Upton (R-MI) sponsored H.R 3350 that passed 261-157 with over 30 Democrats voting in favor of it. Earlier this week, President Obama acknowledged that his pledge that if you like your health insurance you can keep it was not accurate. While President Obama did not say he lied to the public, he did recognize that "We put a grandfather clause into the law but it was insufficient."

Throughout the week, the drum beat has been that this misstep to dropped coverage only applies to the 5% of the market. While that is accurate, what is not discussed or even raised is that waivers were given to the rest of market until 2015. What will happen in October of 2014 when ObamaCare provisions of the law are applied to employer based health insurance plans?

President Obama also said during his press conference this week that, "We're also requiring insurers to extend current plans to inform their customers about two things. One, that protections -- what protections these renewed plans don't include. Number two, that the marketplace offers new options with better coverage and tax credits that might help you bring down the cost." A) The Executive Branch does not have power to make/alter law that is the power of the Legislative Branch. B) Offer more coverage or options never drops the cost of anything!

Now a Bipartisan bill has been passed by the House of Representatives, which President Obama plans to veto, ought to be given a vote in the Senate. Rep. Pelosi is accurate when she stated prior to Affordable Care Act being passed when she said that once we pass this bill we will know that is in it.

Obamacare failures is the shiny object

Over the past weeks, the Hamburg Post has been filled with blog posts reviewing the Amendments that Mark Levin proposes in his book The Liberty Amendments. Today, a break from that and a look at ObamaCare. The past week saw Congress grill various stakeholders in the development and roll out of the Federal website Healthcare.gov as it hasn't worked as advertised.

The various glitches being reported now have Democrats, that are up for re-election in 2014, asking President Obama to delay the mandate from six weeks to an entire year. First off, the President doesn't have the power to legislate which he has already done granting Congress, the Executive Branch and business exemptions from the law. The Affordable Care Act clearly states in the law the start date of the law and all of whom are to be part of it. To change this, delay or not, Constitutionally requires an act of Congress and a signature of the President.


That being said, America faces a larger problem with ObamaCare. Well it's not a problem if you enjoy being dictated to and prefer a loss of freedom. For Americans that prefer choice and freedom the current glitches are all part of the plan. In order for ObamaCare to work, it requires 7 million healthy Americans to sign up to pay premiums to cover the costs of less healthy users. Trouble is that the healthiest Americans, as a pool, are those between the age of 18-26.

Ironically the Affordable Care Act has taken these healthy American's off the payroll by allowing them to stay on their parents health care until they are 26. Without this low risk pool paying premiums, the funds will not exist to pay for higher risk pool users of the exchanges. Yet, this is just part of the complicated plan of cradle to grave nationalized health care.

Another aspect of the Affordable Care Act was to require health insurers to take on all Americans despite of their preconditions. Health care insurers, for the most part, already do this but the insurance premiums are higher for high risk pools than lower risk pools. Now with that option taken away from healthcare insurers, those of us in lower risk pools now must pay higher premiums.

Precondition pool is the Trojan Horse of the Affordable Care Act for Single Payer Nationalize healthcare system. Companies such as UPS have given notice to their employees that spouses will no longer be covered. Consulting firm Deloitte surveyed 560 companies and found that 9 percent of them plan to drop coverage over the next three years. We are also seeing a shift from full time employment to part time employment by firms to get under the 50 employee number that allows them to avoid a fine for not offering healthcare benefits.

Once the pool of preconditioned  Americans are no longer covered by employee based healthcare insurance the exchanges will be deemed a failure then the real push for Nationalized healthcare begins.

A women's right to privacy

In the aftermath of the Affordable Care Act debate a lot was made of the objection by Catholics, and other  Christian groups, as to being forced to provide contraception in their health insurance coverage despite their moral objection. The moral objection by the Catholics was painted by the media and Liberals as a war on women. Recently, North Dakota enacted some of the most restrictive abortion rules in the nation by making it illegal once a heartbeat is detected.

Yesterday the United States Food and Drug Administration announced that Plan B One-Step morning after pill can be sold over the counter to girls as young as 15 years of age. While the morning after pills does nothing to stop a pregnancy, it must be taken with days after unprotected sex takes place. Whether or not any woman decides to use contraception, have an abortion or kill a baby from a botched abortion is a choice that should be left to that female regardless of my own belief. Although I'd argue that if that child is born of a botched abortion, or induced as Dr. Gosnell does to abort fetuses, has the same right's of a child of 1 year or 16 years of age.

But I digress. In the case of Catholic institutions, anyone employed there ought to know and respect the moral objection while knowing full well that contraception and abortion coverage will not be part of the health care package. At the same time no law of the land, even a tax, should require the Catholic institutional to violate their moral objection. But if the Catholics moral objection and restricting the time frame of when a woman may abort a fetus are considered violations of a women's privacy then why do trample on their privacy in other ways?

If a woman is really in control of her own body and have the right to privacy of that then why can't a woman use her body to earn a living or enjoy any vice that she wishes?

First Presidential Debate Eve!!!!

Tomorrow night President Obama and Governor Romney will square off in the first in a series of Presidential debates. A lot of rhetoric has already taken place from Romney taking about 47 % to Obama claiming that Washington cannot be fixed from the inside. Per an NBC/WSJ poll recently conducted, 40% of those polled view the debates as "important" which may impact voting come November.

On my way to get my eldest son I was listening to POTUS on Sirius radio, one of the benefits to owning a new Ford Focus, and the gentleman on - show ended at 5 pm - was having people call in and say what questions do they want to see from this debate asked of the candidates. Now I am new to this channel on Sirius radio but the host, for the fifteen minutes I listened, appeared to be fair and balanced. That is not to say he was a Fox News anchor just that he seemed to be middle of the road on the partisan spectrum.

The debate tomorrow night will be moderated by Jim Lehrer and it will take place in Denver, Colorado. The main topic or theme of the night is to be the economy, health care and governing. Interestingly enough no topic will touch on gun control. That being said, here are some questions I'd like to see asked of the candidates based on the topics mentioned above. To be brief I will keep them to a top ten style list.

1. With spending at 26% of GDP and current revenues at 14% of GDP when historically revenues are between 16-18% of GDP - what plans do you have to erase the 8-10% gap between current spending levels and historically average revenue levels?
2. Since both of you have successfully passed mandated health care, can either you of you provide proof that it bent the cost curb of medical expenses?
3. The current deficit is projected to hit $16T by the end of 2012, what will you do as President to cut the deficit in half over the next 4 years?
4. England is starting to see a shortage of qualified doctors due the rate of reimbursement and pay scales set forth under their Universal health care, what assurances do we have that a similar vacuum of talent won't take place here in the United States?
5. The Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act based on Congresses ability to tax. How can Congress use the tax code to curb unwanted pregnancies or reduce our carbon footprint?
6. We hear a lot of Presidential candidate tout that they will reform/change Washington D.C. What criteria will you employ as President to ensure lobbyist or special interest groups are not part of your Cabinet, advisors or staff?
7. The US Constitution established three separate but equal branches of Government - How will you as President use Executive Privilege to ensure equality among the three branches?
8. Unemployment sits above 8% and the number of people actively looking for work has declined by over 500,000 people - What is your plan to get the American workforce back to work?
9. For the past year we have reduced they payroll tax by 3% resulting in $105B no longer going into the SSN coffers. People in the 40's are already being told that they can expect 70% of the benefit at retirement age - What plans do you have to ensure solvency of SSN for future generations?
10. A study was done in Minnesota to see if a hospital could sustain itself on Medicare patients alone last year. The conclusion was that it couldn't. Now the Affordable Health Care Act looks to reduce reimbursement rates for Medicare patients seen. How do you propose hospital and clinics recoup lost revenues without changing level of care or raising the cost of health care for those of us not using Medicare?

Those would be ten questions I'd like to see answered. What questions would you like to see asked?

Obamacare is a tax!!

SCOTUS ruled on ObamaCare today.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf 


Chief Justice Roberts joined the four other left leaning justices to agree that Congress has the ability to mandate every American must purchase health care or risk being "taxed". All Justices, except for Ginsberg, agreed that the mandate fails and is unconstitutional based on the limited powers the Commerce Clause places on Congress.

A TAX! Back in 2009 in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, President Obama asserted that Stephanopoulos was making up words by calling the health care mandate a tax.

http://youtu.be/bg-ofjXrXio

During the three day questioning earlier this year, it was Justice Kagan had to help the Solicitor General through the tough questioning to get out the fact that the mandate is a tax.

What is next? What new tax will Congress place upon us to mandate us do something? Here is an example. Democrats fought hard to require health insurance companies to be required to provide free birth control to all women even if it violated ones religious beliefs or tenets. The Affordable Care Act also established a non-elected governance board that will make decisions on what will be covered and not. Environmentalists have argued that the worlds food supply is not enough to sustain the current population. What prevents Congress now from passing a "tax" for each additional child one has past the first born? Or What prevents Congress from passing a "tax" that requires all adults to be sterilized after the first or second child?

The Chief Justice's decision to consider this a tax has opened Pandora's Box of the use of a tax to mandate Americans to do or not to do something.