Truth, Lies and In Between

Schwarzenegger Proposes Universal Health Coverage
California Plan Could Cost State $12 Billion
Where do you think this money is coming from? All the rich people, right? Not even close.

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8 — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) on Monday proposed a system of universal health insurance for Californians that would make the nation’s most populous state the third to guarantee medical coverage for all its residents.

The only guarantee I see in this is higher taxes for every working stiff in the state, and a crappier health care system than the one we presently have.
If you think the lines are long in hospitals now, wait until this goes in to effect.

“Prices for health care and insurance are rising twice as fast as inflation, twice as fast as wages. That is a terrible drain on everyone, and it is a drain on our economy,” Schwarzenegger said. “My solution is that everyone in California must have insurance. If you can’t afford it, the state will help you buy it, but you must be insured.”

That isn’t a solution, it is a bigger problem. Giving everyone health care insurance whether they pay for it, or I do, isn’t solving anything. It is merely creating an environment conducive to more illegal immigration, and one in which I will begin looking into leaving this state. Sorry, but this state isn’t the be all state. I refuse to pay for someone else’s issues, I have my own.

Are Nurses Pushing State Run Health Care?

Read the whole thing, I merely inserted the statement below for my own reasons.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he will veto a Senate bill establishing a state-run system to provide medical care to every resident. The CNA sponsored that bill, which is strongly opposed by the insurance industry.

Nice flip-flop. This is exactly why I did not vote for this Hollywood Shleprock.

New York Medicaid Fraud May Reach Into Billions

This is a prime example of what will happen when this state decides to add universal health care to its many socialist agendas.

It was created 40 years ago to provide health care for the poorest New Yorkers, offering a lifeline to those who could not afford to have a baby or a heart attack. But in the decades since, New York State’s Medicaid program has also become a $44.5 billion target for the unscrupulous and the opportunistic.

Unscrupulous and opportunistic, eh? Sounds like politicians to me, but hey, I guess doctors and dentists can screw the state over just as easily.

It has drawn dentists like Dr. Dolly Rosen, who within 12 months somehow built the state’s biggest Medicaid dental practice out of a Brooklyn storefront, where she claimed to have performed as many as 991 procedures a day in 2003. After The New York Times discovered her extraordinary billings through a computer analysis and questioned the state about them, Dr. Rosen and two associates were indicted on charges of stealing more than $1 million from the program.

Gov. seeks sweeping health system reforms

Didn’t Hillary try proposing this crap on a national level?

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today proposed upending just about every portion of the healthcare industry in one of the country’s most elaborate efforts at holding down medical costs and expanding insurance to those who don’t have it.

Schwarzenegger’s plan, which he publicly unveiled at noon, would require employers with 10 workers or more to buy insurance for their workers or pay a fee of 4% of their payroll into a program to help provide coverage for the uninsured.

Here’s an idea! Let’s have the employers that are still in the state pay for it! What a great way to add jobs! What a genius.

Schwarzenegger would tax doctors 2% of their gross revenue and place a 4% tax on hospitals. He campaigned for reelection on an anti-tax platform, but his administration argues that so many more people would have insurance that medical providers would make more money.

Wait! We can tax the doctors and hospitals that provide the services too! What a great idea! That will keep the doctors here in the state and get more hospitals to open up too!
How genius I am.

The governor also wants to ban insurers from refusing to offer coverage to some individuals because of their prior medical conditions. Insurers would also have to spend at least 85% of their premium revenues on patient care, a move that would limit the amount companies spend on administrative costs and profits.

Require them to cover everyone and they’ll raise the rates on everyone that is already paying for their own insurance! Man this is going to be great!

The governor gives up on the market

Read this entire article, excellent piece.

His health-care plan would regulate, centralize, restrict choice and add taxes

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan, which unbelievably promises to lower costs and increase coverage, is an exercise in Orwellian logic.

“Fixing health care requires changes from all of us,” said Kim Belshe, the governor’s Health and Human Services secretary. The key word is “requires,” which is a concept anathema to the free market, but ever-present in government, which by nature restricts, rather than frees.

The governor’s $12 billion plan would require every individual to have health insurance, whether he wants it or not, and every employer of 10 or more to provide it, or pay into a state insurance fund. After promising for months no new taxes to finance his scheme, Gov. Schwarzenegger revealed Monday what he really meant: a 4 percent payroll “fee” imposed on businesses with 10 or more employees who don’t conform to the mandate to buy insurance, a 4 percent “fee” on hospital revenue and a 2 percent “fee” on doctors’ income.

Does anyone really think that this is the way Americans want their health care? Does he really think I want to pay for everyone else’s health care?
What doctor in their right mind would stay in this state knowing that the state will screw him out of more of his money?
What hospital would open in this environment?

I can envision a lot more hospitals closing their doors here because of this system.
The CNA will start wringing their hands when their nurses find out that this pipe dream of theirs causes them to lose jobs because the cost is prohibitive.

I think it is time for me to start looking for a job in another state.

Troops capture terror suspects in meat-packing plant

Tuesday, 09 January 2007 Story by Spc. Chris McCann
2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div.

BAGHDAD — It’s the stuff war movies are made of — breaking in doors, Soldiers moving in, rifles at the ready. But this wasn’t a movie.

Soldiers of the 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (LI) conducted a nighttime raid on a Baghdad meat-packaging facility suspected of being a terrorist meeting place in the Al Rashid district Jan. 7.

The 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division concurrently assaulted the salt factory next door, also a suspected terrorist planning area. Joining the two U.S. units on the operation were members of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division. The two-pronged joint assault netted 32 detainees and more than 20 weapons, including 11 AK-47s, a Kalishnikov assault rifle, two Russian-made carbines, 15 60mm mortar rounds and a submachine gun.

The men detained, some of whom were guards at the building, were held on suspicion that they were allowing the buildings to be used as a terrorist rendezvous point, a suspicion strengthened by the weapons found in the area.

More.

INVASION USA
Sex-offender stings get thousands of illegals
Experts still concerned U.S. children could become prey to repeat offenders

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

More than 9,000 sex offenders have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials through a series of stings called Operation Predator in three years of operation, a 2006 Department of Homeland Security Report says. But some experts are wondering if the efforts are enough to protect innocent American children from being preyed on by returning criminal alien sex offenders.

Foreign nationals account for roughly 85 percent of child sex offenders arrested by the operation, which was launched by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in July 2003, officials say. And as WND previously has reported, authorities also have linked illegal aliens to a wave of gang-rapes across the U.S.

The program was designed to safeguard children from foreign national pedophiles, human traffickers and international sex tourists, and in the first year alone, ICE arrested more than 3,200 child predators in the U.S. who committed forms of child exploitation.

But Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, a researcher of violent crimes and criminal profiler who consults with FBI, state and local police, told WND, “Illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes first cross the U.S. border illegally, then gradually commit worse crimes and are continually released back into society or deported. Those who were deported simply returned illegally again. There is a clear pattern of criminal escalation. From misdemeanors such as assault or DUI, to drug offenses, illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes break U.S. laws repeatedly.”

More.

RIP and thanks for the Scooby-Doo memories.

Cartoonist Who Created Scooby-Doo Dies

Jan 9, 6:36 AM (ET)

By DAISY NGUYEN

LOS ANGELES (AP) – In a career that spanned more than six decades, Iwao Takamoto assisted in the designs of some of the biggest animated features and television shows, including “Cinderella,””Peter Pan,””Lady and the Tramp” and “The Flintstones.”

But it was Takamoto’s creation of Scooby-Doo, the cowardly dog with an adventurous heart, that captivated audiences and endured for generations.

Takamoto died Monday of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Warner Bros. spokesman Gary Miereanu said. He was 81.

Born in Los Angeles to parents who had emigrated from Japan, Takamoto graduated high school when World War II began. He and his family were sent to the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert, where he learned the art of illustration from fellow internees.

Despite a lack of formal training, he landed an interview with Walt Disney Studios when he returned to Los Angeles and was hired as an apprentice.

Takamoto worked under the tutelage of Disney’s “nine old men,” the studio’s team of legendary animators responsible for its biggest full-length films before moving to Hanna-Barbera Studios in 1961. There he worked on cartoons for television, including “Josie and the Pussy Cats,””The Great Grape Ape Show,””Harlem Globe Trotters” and “The Secret Squirrel Show.”

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50 Militants Said Killed in Iraq Battle

an 9, 9:13 AM (ET)

By LAUREN FRAYER

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, backed by American warplanes, battled suspected insurgents for hours Tuesday in central Baghdad, and 50 militant fighters were killed, the Defense Ministry said.

Elsewhere, a cargo plane carrying Turkish construction workers crashed during landing at an airport near Baghdad, killing 30 people and injuring two, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. Initial reports indicated the plane crashed due to bad weather and heavy fog, a Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not yet been authorized.

U.S. helicopters circled above the Haifa Street area where the battle took place, and witnesses said they had seen the aircraft firing into the combat zone. Explosions rang out across the area, just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Shaker, a ministry spokesman, said 21 militants were captured, including seven foreign Arabs – including three Syrians – and one Sudanese.

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These nazi fucks are going to attempt to screw over the troops, but since they already apporved the war, they can’t stop the President from executing it as he sees fit, hence the title, Commander in Chief.
Nice try though. Any bullshit the Demoncraps try to push through will get vetoed.
Idiots.

Democrats to Challenge Bush’s Iraq Plan

an 9, 9:58 AM (ET)

By ANNE FLAHERTY

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush is telling lawmakers he will send thousands more U.S. troops to Iraq’s two most troubled regions, in a plan that Democrats are resisting as a major escalation of a 31/2-year-old war.

Bush on Wednesday will announce a new war strategy and is expected to call for as many as 20,000 additional troops, according to several senators briefed by the president on Monday.

On Tuesday, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said he expects Bush to announce that up to 20,000 additional troops will be sent to Iraq, but will not say how long the extra forces will be there. Levin, who spoke to reporters a day after meeting with White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley, said he thinks Bush will signal that the overall U.S. commitment in Iraq is not open-ended.

The extra forces would be sent to Baghdad, which has been consumed by sectarian violence, and the western Anbar Province, a base of the mostly Sunni insurgency and foreign al-Qaida fighters, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and others said following the session with Bush.

U.S. Launches New Attacks in Somalia

an 9, 9:47 AM (ET)

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) – A Somali official says U.S. helicopter gunships have launched new attacks against suspected al-Qaida terrorists. An earlier U.S. airstrike hit targets in southern Somalia where Islamic militants were believed to be sheltering suspects in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies, Somali officials and witnesses said Tuesday. Many people were reported killed.

Monday’s attack was the first overt military action by the U.S. in Somalia since it led a U.N. force in the 1990s that intervened in Somalia in an effort to fight famine. The mission led to clashes between U.N. forces and Somali warlords, including the “Black Hawk Down” battle that left 18 U.S. servicemen dead.

Helicopter gunships launched new attacks Tuesday near the scene of a U.S. airstrike in the village of Hayi, although it was not clear if they were American or Ethiopian aircraft, and it was not known if there were any casualties.

Two helicopters “fired several rockets toward the road that leads to the Kenyan border,” said Ali Seed Yusuf, a resident of the town of Afmadow in southern Somalia.

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off Somalia’s coast and launched intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia, the military said. Three other U.S. warships are conducting anti-terror operations off the Somali coast.

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