Obama Health Care, the ultimate "HMO!"

Paul Joseph Watson

Families struggling in the midst of a deep recession who earn a combined total greater than $88,200 and don’t have their health care covered by their employer will be hit with a mandatory annual fee of about $15,000 according to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the final Senate Obamacare bill.

As we highlighted yesterday, the health care bill would introduce a raft of new taxes that would inevitably lead to higher costs that would be passed on to the public. A Boston Globe analysis revealed that there were at least 19 new taxes contained in the legislation which is set to be passed on Christmas Eve.

On top of this, a CBO analysis identifies five facts about the bill that will financially devastate families with an annual income greater than 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Under Obamacare, Americans will be forced to buy government-approved health insurance and anyone earning a middle class wage will have to pay for it out of their own pocket. Federal subsidies will only be provided for people who are not offered coverage by their employer and earn below the 400 percent poverty level.

Employers will not be required to offer their workers coverage, being subject to a $750 annual penalty if they fail to do so, a figure most analysts say is not high enough to prevent employers from dropping their plans, meaning that more people will be forced to buy government health care.

“The Senate health care bill gives employers two powerful incentives to stop offering health insurance coverage to their workers,” writes Terry Jeffrey. “First, if an employer does offer coverage, its lower-wage workers will lose the federal insurance subsidy they would otherwise get. Secondly, if an employer does not offer coverage, the $750-per-worker fine it faces will be far less than the premiums it would pay if it did offer coverage.”

Costs are also set to soar as a result of insurance companies being hit with federal mandates that increase their risk.

“Policies purchased through the exchanges (or directly from insurers) would have to meet several requirements: In particular, insurers would have to accept all applicants, could not limit coverage for pre-existing medical conditions, and could not vary premiums to reflect differences in enrollees’ health,” according to the CBO.

This will inevitably force insurance companies to pass higher costs on to the public.

As a consequence of all these factors, families whose employers drop their plan will be forced to buy it on their own – at a cost of over $15,000 dollars a year.

“Average premiums per policy in the nongroup market in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies and $15,200 for family policies under the proposal,” states the CBO.

Jeffrey predicts that families being hit with a federally mandated $15,000-per-year insurance bill will provoke a “rebellion”.

“When that happens, the liberals will not say: We made a mistake. We never should have forced families out of their employer-based health insurance and required them to purchase a $15,000 policy,” he writes. “They will say: We told you so. We cannot trust these greedy insurance companies. We need a single-payer system so the government can provide everyone with health care. Just like they did in the Soviet Union.”

Introduction written by After America

Forget the label of being a liberal or a conservative. Forget the label of Democrat or Republican. Both parties are bought off by the same political action committees. Ron Paul ran as a Republican back in 2007, however, the main stream media never gave him the exposure he deserved. It is also interesting to note that that everything and I mean everything is being “presented” and “pitched” as a “crisis in America.”

Now onto some compelling research, reading and food for thought. Cheers!!

"The Fake Progressives!"

Written by Norman D. Livergood

Some Americans are realizing that the capitalist cabal that seized control over our nation is rapidly destroying American workers. But no genuine transformation of American society is taking place because counterfeit progressives are making Americans believe that their Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speeches, their street demonstrations, their New York Times editorials, their TV talk shows, or their humor is actually bringing–or soon will bring–genuine progressive transformation 1 of American society for the better.

In this essay, we’ll explore these lethal, fake progressives and highlight genuine transformative actions we can take in building cooperative communities.

We can ignore the fake populists because to any thinking American it’s clear that they’re merely pretend progressives, propping up the capitalist system through lies and distortions. Unfortunately, we’ll discover that the counterfeit progressives are doing precisely the same thing: supporting the continuation of the devastating free market scam through deceiving American workers and sabotaging change.

From "Change We Need" to "We Need Change!"

Of course the worst of the counterfeit progressives is Barak Obama, whose insidious pretence of being for the workers fooled a nation into making him president. Even now, in the face of incontrovertible evidence that he’s nothing but the cabal’s puppet, people are still believing in him.

You have to be a mindless idiot to continue believing that Obama is in any way “for” workers.

One – He’s taken the money that should go toward creating jobs for workers or for repairing the nation’s decaying infrastructure and putting it into the military-industrial complex. His militaristic imperialist escalation of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan involve more troops being put in harm’s way than Dubya dared to commit.

Two – He pretends to be against obscene bonuses for fatcat banksters, but he does nothing to stop this.

Three – Obama tries to make Americans believe that he’s horrified by what the Wall Street looters have done in relation to the sub-prime scam and the bankster bailouts, but Timmy Geithner has just conned Congress into extending the TARP rip-off indefinitely so Goldman-Sachs can continue its assault on American workers.

Paul Krugman

Collaborators of the Fascist Capitalists

Pretend progressives such as Paul Krugman sometimes get it right about such things as Social Security. But Krugman’s suddenly become very “main-stream” after he received the Nobel Prize for economics. He seems to be critical of the Obama/Geithner looting of worker tax money, but in fact thinks their plans might work to solve the nation’s economic problems.

The 12/11/09 Bill Moyers’ Talk Show was typical of counterfeit progressive activities that encourage Americans to believe that mere talk, mere street demonstrations, mere emotional uplift actually accomplish genuine transformation of our society. For years, Moyers and his fake progressive guests have been deluding Americans into believing that people disgruntled with cabal looting, unemployment, homelessness, taxes, and wars are joining efforts to bring about genuine change. Nothing has been accomplished; no transformation has occurred. On the contrary, conditions for workers are worsening every day!

Moyers’ show is doubly delusional when he has someone like Jon Stewart on his program.

Keith Olbermann MSNBC

Keith Olbermann and other Obama worshipers, misinform people that continually attacking the Republicans brings real social improvement. Wrong! Olbermann and his protégé Rachel Maddow try to fool people into thinking that an insightful comment once in a while makes a real difference.

Randi Rhodes

Randi Rhodes, previously of Air America, is proof that a pretend-progressive is worse than no progressive at all. Rhodes is essentially a shrill, whining Nancy Grace in liberal drag. Her egomania on her talk show spills out into callers fawning over her, her interrupting and ridiculing callers, and her constantly reminding people that she appeared before a Congressional investigating committee. Rhodes presents the liberal-progressive cause in such a bad light that it would be better if she were off the air altogether.

Most counterfeit progressives are members of what we might call the Lumpenproletariat –that segment of the working class that’s incapable of achieving class consciousness, and is therefore useless in the context of the struggle for societal transformation.

As Obama announces a huge military buildup in Afghanistan–out-Bushing Bush–Newsweek celebrates him as the post-imperialist president and The Nation continues its mindless support for Obama’s anti-worker, pro-militarist, imperialist policies.

Counterfeit progressives provide a cover for capitalism continuing to destroy workers. They are, in actuality, traitors to the true progressive cause. Counter-revolutionary action always supports capitalism’s tyranny and repression.

Since the take-over of American political, economic, and social systems by the capitalist cabal in the early decades of the twentieth century, most of the purported progressive structures of our nation have become counter-revolutionary in the sense of supporting capitalism through subterfuge, pretence, and propagandistic lies:

* Congress as a body of representatives of the people has been subverted into a group of bought-and-paid-for lackeys of corporate interests.

* Constitutional safeguards such as habeas corpus and countervailing powers have been destroyed through cabal tyranny.

* The “free press” has been debased into nothing more than channels for corporate propaganda.

* Internet radicalism remains within the capitalist structure of competition. Within the radical, anti-war, anti-cabal Internet community, there remains an excessive and debilitating competitiveness: “news” digest Web sites and many liberal writers competing to be the one to get the breaking story out first. Each activist group competes for attention–and money–to be given to its particular initiatives or theories.

* The system of citizens voting for their representatives has been perverted into a one-party system in which the cabal selects all the candidates.

“Participation in elections under the present totalitarian, fascist conditions is full of the danger of keeping alive illusions about the possibility of a “reformist” or “gradual” transition to a commonwealth system through the conquest of a congressional majority by so-called “workers’ initiatives.”

The all-destroying capitalist system openly or covertly supports most counterfeit progressives as an effective strategy for prolonging its manipulation of American society for the banksters and fat cats.

The Left Gate Keepers (click for full image).

On the image above, you’ll note that Alternet is one of the counterfeit progressive sites. It’s hardly surprising, then, that on 12/11/09 Alternet featured an article trying to brainwash Americans into believing that they are a broken people who are powerless to do anything against the onslaughts of the capitalist cabal.

One of the most vicious and destructive pretenders to progressivism is the current Democratic Party and its cabal-controlled leaders.

The agenda for most counterfeit progressives limits itself to blathering about reform of capitalism or tinkering with fascism. Workers must utterly reject counterfeit progressivism and recognize that the struggle for reforms of a totally failed–and lethal–capitalist system has become a hopeless utopia.

In this epoch the only realistic strategy for workers is to create a commonwealth system that will ultimately replace capitalism entirely; no amount of tinkering with a totally failed capitalism is of any use. Workers no longer have any alternative between consenting to be atomized into millions of crushed, tamed individuals, or generalizing their struggles as widely as possible towards replacing the capitalist cabal itself with a genuine commonwealth polity. Workers must refuse to allow their struggles to be restricted to a purely economic, local, or sectional terrain and instead organize themselves in the embryonic forms of its future organs of power: cooperative commonwealth communities.

The 2007 economic collapse revealed in the starkest manner the lethality of capitalist financial parasitism and criminality. Such revelations are beginning to penetrate the consciousness of American workers and with the proper genuinely progressive leadership can lead to profound changes in their political-economic awareness.

We can anticipate that the American capitalist cabal will continue its unending series of wars of conquest and plunder–as has been made clear by the cabal puppet Obama. The cabal will continue its fictitious “war on terror,” its insane drive to subjugate the peoples and resources of the world while coercing American workers into submission through a combination of fear-mongering and repression.

While the capitalist cabal deludes itself into thinking that it has unlimited power, its rapid internal rot, as evidenced by the rise to its summit of the most predatory and criminal elements, demonstrates it actual escalating degeneration and impotence.

Under these crisis conditions, the critical challenge is the development of a new revolutionary leadership of the international working class. These leaders will arm them with a fully-developed program and strategy to take political power into their own hands and begin the construction of a commonwealth society.

Iraq poised to surpass Iran in global oil league

By Carola Hoyos in London

Iraq is on course to overtake Iran as the holder of the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves, solidifying its position as the energy industry’s new frontier in the scramble to secure fresh resources.

Baghdad yesterday agreed to deals with Royal Dutch Shell and China’s CNPC for two large oilfields, following on from similar accords with ExxonMobil, Eni and BP in recent months.

Consultants who have analysed the deals struck by Baghdad said the contracts underlined the companies’ confidence that they would be able to use modern seismic and drilling technology to get far more oil out of the fields than had previously been thought possible.

Iraq’s proven reserves now stand at 115bn barrels, below Iran’s 137bn and Saudi Arabia’s 264bn.

But Iraq’s reserves data dates from the 1970s, before the improvements in technology that transformed the industry.

Raad Alkadiri, an Iraq expert at PFC Energy in Washington, said the companies offered Iraq very good terms in the recent deals because they believed that the oilfields held more recoverable oil than commonly assumed.

A second consultant, Falah al-Khawaja, who spent 41 years working in Iraq’s oil sector before becoming an independent consultant, calculated that on the basis of the bids that Iraq would jump Iran in proved reserves in three years.

“These are not small companies. They have been studying Iraq for some time,” he said.

Mr Alkadiri warned that the resurgence of Iraq as a significant oil producer would cause problems within Opec, as the oil cartel would eventually have to reduce the production quotas of many of its members to accommodate Iraq.

Iraq’s quota has not been enforced since United Nations sanctions in the early 1990s.

However, if Iraq’s reserves rise, Opec’s gentleman’s agreement that sees Iraq’s quota not exceeding that of Iran will come under pressure to be changed.

“The Iraqis are making it clear that they no longer see themselves in parity with Iran. They are eyeing themselves being potentially on par with Saudi Arabia,” he said.

The start of Iraq’s second oil auction yesterday saw Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia’s Petronas win the right to develop Iraq’s giant Majnoon field after they promised to boost its production to 1.8m barrels a day from just 46,000 b/d today.

These latest awards come in addition to three big agreements Iraq has made with ExxonMobil , Eni and BP . In total, oil companies have now pledged to boost within the decade Iraq’s production by 7.3m b/d to nearly 10m b/d, more than Saudi Arabia produces today.

Iraq’s auction is not yet over. Today the oil ministry will auction off several other fields including the giant West Qurna one.

Published: December 12 2009 02:00 | Last updated: December 12 2009 02:00

And now we flip one wife along, to make our money grow!

David Davis

Truly, these people have no sense of irony, and you could not make up such screaming stuff if you tried.

Maybe the guy who used our money to have his moat cleared, actually fears that he might need to put it to its original use.

Welcome to my beautiful word of “Nude Swinging“. Well, it is very difficult to swing with your clothes on, isn’t it? I thought so. Well my friends, I am here to introduce to a very exotic lifestyle. Are you familiar with the “Swingers Lifestyle”? Damn, are you missing out. I have been in the lifestyle now about 9 years and I have made some incredible friends. Have you ever thought about you and your spouse swapping partners before? I can tell you, as lond as you are not a jealous kind of person, that swinging can be so much fun. Who the fuck wants to have sex with the same person all there life? Not me!! and I am not. My wife and I have a very close group of friends that we play with. I would like to invite you to my world for more insight on the “Lifestyle“