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News, World

FILE – In this Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 file photo, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s P-3C Orion surveillance plane flies over the disputed islands in the East China Sea, called the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. China said Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2013 it had monitored two unarmed U.S. bombers that flew over the East China Sea in defiance of Beijing’s declaration it was exercising greater military control over the area. Tuesday’s flight of the B-52 bombers underscored U.S. assertions that it will not comply with Chinese demands that aircraft flying through its newly declared maritime air defense zone identify themselves and accept Chinese instructions. (AP Photo/Kyodo News, File) JAPAN OUT

China launched two fighter jets to patrol the newly announced “air defense identification zone” on Thursday, after the U.S., Japan, and South Korea had flown military aircraft through in defiance of their East China Sea claim.

Since announcing the zone, which overlaps with a similar Japanese zone that includes a string of disputed islands in the East China Sea, China has clarified that it was “not a territorial airspace,” and that unidentified warplanes that entered it could not be shot down.

However, China says the nation “has the right to identify and ascertain the intentions and attributes of aircraft from foreign countries and make the relevant response according to different situations and degree of threats,” said Col. Yang Yujun, a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman, during a press conference in Beijing.

Last week China said that all aircraft entering the “air defense identification zone” — which is a maritime area between China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan –must notify Chinese authorities prior, and that it would take unspecified defensive action against those nations who do not abide by the new zone’s boundaries.

Neighboring countries and the U.S. have said they will not honor the new zone and have criticized the move, saying it unnecessarily raises tensions.

The state-run China News quoted Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Shen Jinke as saying the Chinese fighter jets identified and monitored two U.S. and 10 Japanese aircraft during their flights through the zone early Friday.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul on December 1 to discuss the rising tension that the zone has created between nations since it was announced on Saturday. The trip had initially been intended to discuss economic issues, but the latest announcement has shifted the focus of that meeting.


China sent fighter jets on the first

Opinion

WASHINGTON — We are tomorrow’s past, so this Thanksgiving give thanks for 2013, a year the future might study more for amusement than for edification. HealthCare.gov performed the public service of defeating Barack Obama’s ascription of every disagreeable effect to one of two causes — George W. Bush or global warming. Concerning the latter, a CNN anchor wondered if an asteroid that passed by Earth on Feb. 15 was “an effect of, perhaps, global warming.” The Los Angeles Times announced that it had stopped publishing letters questioning global warming caused by human activity.

Which makes sense, if you agree with The New Yorker’s resident expert, who called the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on warming “the last word on climate change.” It evidently is the first science to reach the end of its subject, all questions answered. Therefore it is puzzling that dramatic predictions of an unusually high number of 2013 hurricanes were dramatically wrong.

Paleoanthropology has not reached its last word. The story of human evolution may have been simplified by conclusions reached this year about a 1.8 million-year-old skull found in the Caucasus in 2005. The earliest human remain found outside of Africa indicates that our ancestors emerged from Africa as a single species, not several species. Its brain was about one-third the size of today’s human brains.

Some of today’s brains. A Tennessee judge’s ruling was reversed: She had ordered a family to change their child’s name, Messiah, because that “title” has “only been earned by one person.” At the school where a Maryland kindergartner is supposed to learn reasonableness, school officials interrogated him for more than two hours before notifying his mother that he possessed a cap gun. Fortunately, it contained no caps; otherwise it would have been deemed an explosive. Michigan educators forced the removal of the little plastic soldiers a mother had put on cupcakes she brought to school on her son’s birthday.

On Sept. 17, Constitution Day, a student at Modesto Junior College was told to stop distributing copies of the Constitution until he had filled out the requisite forms for permission to use the college’s designated “free speech area.” The Bank of England is putting Jane Austen on a new 10-pound note because without a woman on some notes, British currency would “not command respect and legitimacy.” Queen Elizabeth II is on all notes. When Britain’s education secretary said children should learn to add and subtract, and memorize some of the nation’s kings and queens, a teachers’ union objected. The union had hitherto said: “For the state to suggest that some knowledge should be privileged over other knowledge is a bit totalitarian in a 21st-century environment.” American University in Washington, D.C., scheduled a course on “The 50 Shades Trilogy.”

The infantilization of adults continued with the marketing of $600 High Rollers, which are Big Wheels for (biological, not actual) grown-ups. MSNBC, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Gov. George Wallace’s attempt to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama, identified Wallace as a Republican.

Human remains found beneath a Leicester parking lot were confirmed to be those of Richard III, missing for most of the 528 years since he lost the Battle of Bosworth. He remains buried beneath the bad reputation acquired at the hands of the Tudors’ talented PR specialist, William Shakespeare.

In Washington, even local government is demented: The Metropolitan Area Transit Authority threatened Henry Docter with “arrest, fines and imprisonment” for the crime of unregulated gardening. Docter had filled 176 empty planters at the Dupont Circle subway stop. The Transit Authority was briefly deterred by the public outcry against its threat to punish Docter for his uncompensated act of beautification. But then it had the 1,000 morning glories and other plants ripped out.

Those vigilant about our welfare never sleep; Canadian relief supplies for Oklahoma tornado victims were stopped at the U.S. border until every item could be itemized in alphabetical order and its country of origin noted. You can’t be too careful.

As the National Park Service and NASA understand. They are among the federal agencies that have their own SWAT teams. The Department of Agriculture, however, stresses sensitivity. A video of its “cultural sensitivity training” shows employees being instructed to call the Pilgrims who created Thanksgiving “illegal aliens.” Of course there were no immigration laws to make any one of the first Thanksgivings illegal — for which fact, give thanks. Someday, if there is no Agriculture Department, more thanks to be given.

George Will’s email address is [email protected].

We are tomorrow's past, so this Thanksgiving

Opinion

WASHINGTON — For all the gnashing of teeth over the lack of comity and civility in Washington, the real problem is not etiquette but the breakdown of constitutional norms.

Such as the one just spectacularly blown up in the Senate. To get three judges onto a coveted circuit court, frustrated Democrats abolished the filibuster for executive appointments and (non-Supreme Court) judicial nominations.

The problem is not the change itself. It’s fine that a president staffing his administration should need 51 votes rather than 60. Doing so for judicial appointments, which are for life, is a bit dicier. Nonetheless, for about 200 years the filibuster was nearly unknown in blocking judicial nominees. So we are really just returning to an earlier norm.

The violence to constitutional norms here consisted in how that change was executed. By brute force — a near party-line vote of 52-48. This was a disgraceful violation of more than two centuries of precedent. If a bare majority can change the fundamental rules that govern an institution, then there are no rules. Senate rules today are whatever the majority decides they are that morning.

What distinguishes an institution from a flash mob is that its rules endure. They can be changed, of course. But only by significant supermajorities. That’s why constitutional changes require two-thirds of both houses plus three-quarters of the states. If we could make constitutional changes by majority vote, there would be no Constitution.

As of today, the Senate effectively has no rules. Congratulations, Harry Reid. Finally, something you will be remembered for.

Barack Obama may be remembered for something similar. His violation of the proper limits of executive power has become breathtaking. It’s not just making recess appointments when the Senate is in session. It’s not just unilaterally imposing a law Congress had refused to pass — the DREAM Act — by brazenly suspending large sections of the immigration laws.

We’ve now reached a point where a flailing president, desperate to deflect the opprobrium heaped upon him for the false promise that you could keep your health plan if you wanted to, calls a hasty news conference urging both insurers and the states to reinstate millions of such plans.

Except that he is asking them to break the law. His own law. Under Obamacare, no insurer may issue a policy after 2013 that does not meet the law’s minimum coverage requirements. These plans were canceled because they do not.

The law remains unchanged. The regulations governing that law remain unchanged. Nothing is changed except for a president proposing to unilaterally change his own law from the White House press room.

That’s banana republic stuff, except that there the dictator proclaims from the presidential balcony.

Remember how for months Democrats denounced Republicans for daring to vote to defund or postpone Obamacare? Saboteurs! Terrorists! How dare you alter “the law of the land.”

This was nonsense from the beginning. Every law is subject to revision and abolition if the people think it turned out to be a bad idea. Even constitutional amendments can be repealed — and have been (see Prohibition).

After indignant denunciation of Republicans for trying to amend “the law of the land” constitutionally (i.e. in Congress assembled), Democrats turn utterly silent when the president lawlessly tries to do so by executive fiat.

Nor is this the first time. The president wakes up one day and decides to unilaterally suspend the employer mandate, a naked invasion of Congress’ exclusive legislative prerogative enshrined in Article I. Not a word from the Democrats. Nor now regarding the blatant usurpation of trying to restore canceled policies that violate explicit Obamacare coverage requirements.

And worse. When Congress tried to make Obama’s “fix” legal — i.e., through legislation — he opposed it. He even said he would veto it. Imagine: vetoing the very bill that would legally enact his own illegal fix.

At rallies, Obama routinely says he has important things to do and he’s not going to wait for Congress. Well, amending a statute after it’s been duly enacted is something a president may not do without Congress. It’s a gross violation of his Article II duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

A Senate with no rules. A president without boundaries. One day, when a few bottled-up judicial nominees and a malfunctioning health care website are barely a memory, we will still be dealing with the toxic residue of this outbreak of authoritative lawlessness.

Charles Krauthammer’s email address is [email protected].

WASHINGTON -- For all the gnashing of

Policy

ObamaCare cost will push total health expenditures to $5 trillion a year by 2022, according to a document obtained by People’s Pundit Daily from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

President Obama and the Democrats have taken to claiming that the cost of health insurance has been accelerating in the last decade, but are projected to slow because of ObamaCare cost. However, that’s simply not true, and the president’s new health care law will be “financial Armageddon,” just as then-soon to be Speaker of the House John Boehner first said in 2009.

“In 2014, national health spending is projected to rise to 7.4 percent, or 2.1 percentage- points faster than in the absence of reform [or, passing ObamaCare], as the major coverage expansions from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are expected to result in 22 million fewer uninsured people (compared to estimates that exclude the law’s impacts). Increases in Medicaid spending growth of 18.0 percent and private health insurance growth of 7.9 percent both contribute to this overall acceleration in national health spending in 2014.”

When translated, what the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is saying is that due to the influx of new people being thrown and/or eligible for substandard government Medicaid coverage (as previously reported by PPD) and the intentional destruction of the private insurance market, as President Obama now infamously lied about, the estimated ObamaCare cost will skyrocket.

As far as private insurance plans, which a PPD study proved would be eliminated in the private market by ObamaCare altogether far before the mainstream media even acknowledged, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services projected whatever remnant of the private market remains is barely left will see major increases in cost.

“In 2014, the coverage expansions under the ACA result in projected private health insurance premium growth of 7.9 percent (4.1 percentage points higher than in the absence of reform) due to an estimated 12.3 million people obtaining coverage through the new exchanges (including 3.1 million newly insured),” the CMS 2011 – 2021 estimates claimed. But under the ACA, or ObamaCare, government-mandated plans are labeled “private plans,” because the real “private” free choice market will have already been eliminated.

Those who followed the health care reform debate may remember the phrase “donut hole.” Prescription drug cost was another mantra of the Democratic Party, who claimed to be a champion of reducing health care cost.

“Consequently, prescription drug spending growth is projected to reach 8.8 percent in 2014 (4.7 percentage-points faster than in the absence of reform) and spending on physician and clinical services is projected to grow at 8.5 percent (3.2 percentage-points faster than in the absence of reform).”

What ObamaCare has done is not only exacerbate the problem of high cost drugs, but eliminated most American’s ability to get quality drugs. And for those who do, for instance the demanding of brand name drugs, will be significantly higher in cost.

With an economy growing at an anemic rate, in large part due to ObamaCare cost associated with business overhead, the prospect of spending $5 trillion per year on health care is sobering. It is little wonder that public approval of the law is getting worse by the day.

ObamaCare cost will push total health expenditures

Culture, Holidays, Opinion

For years, former consumer advocate and journalist John Stossel, has been airing his special “The Tragedy Of The Commons” around Thanksgiving, in which he and guests discuss the basic economic principle that observes some of the most basic elements to our human nature.

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We should be teaching these aspects to our children through Thanksgiving at a young age, but we aren’t. As Stossel once wrote, “Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. ‘Isn’t sharing wonderful?’ say the teachers. They miss the point.”

And Stossel is right, they are missing the point, thus so are our children. Our children used to read “Animal Farm” and other tales validating the rightness of American philosophies put in a manner children can understand. Now, however, if parents don’t do it, our statist government will teach them their own indoctrination ideology.

“The failure of Soviet communism is only the latest demonstration that freedom and property rights, not sharing, are essential to prosperity. The earliest European settlers in America had a dramatic demonstration of that lesson, but few people today know it,” Stossel wrote in his controversial column 6 years ago.

Our ancestors whom we recognize on Thanksgiving had their own failed experiment in “sharing” that was transplanted from England, but they wised up and quickly became capitalists. If they didn’t, then they would have died and we wouldn’t be reading and sharing this article today.

When the Plymouth Colony was first settled the Pilgrims lived and organized under a communal “sharing” system, and they almost paid for that mistake with every single life in the colony. Gov. William Bradford implemented dramatic reforms consistent with the philosophy of private property, which was most closely associated with Adam Smith and John Locke, and the results were dramatic in turn.

“So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue the next year also, if not some way prevented,” wrote Gov. William Bradford in his diary. The colonists, he said, “began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, [I] (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. … And so assigned to every family a parcel of land.”

The colonists in Plymouth moved from socialistic “sharing” to private farming. The result was prosperity.

“This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. … By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many. … ”

It was only when they acknowledged private property rights that the first Thanksgiving could be possible in November, 1623.

The tragedy of the commons was popularized as an economic theory by Garrett Hardin, but the principle goes much farther back.

In ancient Greece, as Stossel noted, Aristotle is widely remembered for his observation, “That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.”

The enclosure movement in England, which led to over 5000 Inclosure Acts from 1750 to 1860, were centered on the analysis and economic principles championed by Adam Smith. Shared parcels of land led to overgrazing, because the notion of “common” resources separates those who share in those commons from the consequence of making the wrong decisions, leading to “shared” suffering not prosperity.

In one of my personal favorite quotes on the tragedy of the commons, Winston Churchill said, “the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

In 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin explored this social dilemma in “The Tragedy of the Commons,” published in the journal, Science. But why, over 300 years later, did we have to reteach ourselves basic economic principles predicated upon basic observations of human nature? To our Founding Fathers, these principles were just another few examples of “self-evident” truths, but despite Thanksgiving being celebrated every single year, we have forgotten the real Thanksgiving message, which is that private property and the freedom to make our own choices are essential to total freedom and true prosperity.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

John Stossel has been airing the special

News, Politics

Employer Mandate Delay In Order to Dodge 2014 Political Bullet

Once again a unilateral change has been made to delay the troubled ObamaCare law. President Obama has taken it upon himself to delay online enrollment for small businesses by a year.

The White House administration teed up the narrative that the decision is due to the federal website and, as usual, the president is misleading the American people.

Conveniently, the delaying of enrollment for small businesses holds back the millions upon millions of private insurance cancelation notices that would have been mailed before the 2014 midterm election.

Giving the president the opportunity to dodge the 2014 political bullet and small businesses get a reprieve from the Affordable Care Act until November 2014.

Furthermore, the end of the month is a mere three days away, and the administration is still continuously struggling to repair the HealthCare.gov website for those on the individual market.

Health and Human Services officials are now telling small business owners to sign up directly through an agent, insurer, or broker.

A HHS official stated: “This allows small employers to sign up for coverage through offline enrollment while CMS works on creating an online experience that is operational in the SHOP Marketplace.”

The delay will apply to those in the three dozen states where the federal government is running the marketplace.

Announcements such as these makes it apparently clear that the administration is not only continuing to fail to fix HealthCare.gov, but is also trying to slow down traffic.

Fox News confirms that officials are persuading allies not to drive traffic to the site in order to prevent a crash.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), claimed the administration of “doing its best to bury the latest confirmation that this law was not ready for prime time.”

HHS urges small businesses to use “direct enrollment” to sign up and other avenues that are available in order to enroll their staff — phone, mail, and in person.

With all of this said it is quite clear that the Obama administration refuses to take advice from professionals such as Bill Gates and John McAfee, who of which both know the problems that occur when you add new code to broken code.

Its like applying caulk to the exterior of a cracked foundation, it is still broken no matter how pretty it looks on the outside. The major issue is President Obama consistently changing the ObamaCare law with a stroke of a pen and as a “constitutional law professor” he would know that he does not have the executive power to unilaterally change congressional laws.

The most obvious is the damaged riddled website is just a simple smoke and screen tactic to cover up the millions that would be dropped during election 2014. ObamaCare just might very well be the Democratic Party’s biggest mistake, no matter how far they try to run from this, they all voted yea.

Once again a unilateral change has been

Polls

Barack Obama incessantly bashed George W. Bush in both of his presidential campaigns, but it is ironic that comparing Obama and Bush to a candidate is just as bad for voters. For most voters, Ronald Reagan remains the best president of the last 30 years to compare a politician to.

A new Rasmussen survey found that 47 percent of Likely U.S. Voters consider it a negative to describe a candidate as being like Barack Obama, while 48 percent view a comparison to Bush as a negative.

Digging a bit deeper into the numbers and it is worse for President Obama, as 29 percent view comparing a political candidate to Obama positive, while 19 percent consider it somewhere in between a positive and a negative. However, a similar 24 percent say describing a candidate as being like President Bush is a positive, but 26 percent think it’s somewhere in between.

Bush has made remarkable turnaround since he left office, as most presidents do, but the turnaround began when the Boston Marathon bombings became the first major terrorist attack to take place on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001.

In January 2009 just as Bush left office, according to Rasmussen tracking, 57 percent of Americans described him as one of the 5 worst presidents in U.S. history. But by November 2010, 53 percent of voters rated him somewhere between one of the best and one of the worst.

Atop all of the presidents is Ronald Reagan, with 52 percent of voters believing that describing a candidate as being like President Reagan is a positive comparison, while just 25 percent view that as a negative comparison. Nineteen percent say it is somewhere in between.

The conservative standard-bearer saw a bit of a bump from the 51 percent who viewed a comparison to Reagan as positive in late August 2011, and that was the first measurement of a clear majority, but Reagan has always been the best as far as voters were concerned.

Former President Bill Clinton, who once said that “the era of big government is over,” also ranks higher than both Obama and Bush, with 41 percent saying it is a positive comparison to make to a candidate, while 31 percent say it’s negative. For 26 percent of American voters, it’s somewhere in between.

Clinton also saw a bit of a bump from the 38 percent measured in October 2011 that said it was a positive to describe a candidate as being like him. At that time, 24 percent saw that description as a negative, while 35 percent put it somewhere in between.

Being described as a career politician is the worst, however. Just seven percent (7%) of voters consider that a positive description for a candidate. Fifty-three percent (53%) view it as a negative, up six points from 47% in August 2011. Thirty-six percent (36%) say it’s somewhere in between.

As far as Clinton compared with Obama, 62 percent of voters now believe that Clinton was a better president than Obama.

Looking at preference by party affiliation, just 53 percent of Democrats now view it as a positive to compare a candidate to Obama, while slightly more — 50 percent — of Republicans feel say the same about a comparison to Bush. Reagan reigns among his party, with Clinton fairing slightly worse among voters in his party, as 72 percent of Democrats think describing a candidate as being like Clinton is positive, but 85 percent of Republicans say it is positive to compare a political candidate to Reagan.

Voters not affiliated with either of the two major political parties agreement more with Republicans, with 51 percent saying it’s a negative comparison to describe a candidate as being like Obama, while a significantly smaller 43 percent say that is true about a comparison to Bush. Unaffiliated voters are almost evenly divided when asked about a comparison to Clinton, but 57 percent consider it a positive when a candidate is described as being like Reagan.

For a man who paints himself as the “everyday Joe,” Obama is pretty popular with elites, as 72 percent of the “Political Class” says a comparison to Obama is positive, and even slightly more — 76 percent — say the same is true for Clinton.

Unsurprisingly, no doubt because they are more of an “everyday Joe,” 77 percent of elite voters in the Political Class view a Bush comparison as negative, and 62 percent think that it’s negative to say a candidate is like Reagan.

Mainstream American voters, as defined by Rasmussen, are divided over a comparison to Clinton, but 56 percent think it’s negative to compare a candidate to Obama. A plurality (42 percent) of Mainstream Americans agree that comparing a candidate to Bush is a negative, but 62 percent regard a comparison to Reagan positive.

One final note, Barack Obama once arrogantly commented that he wanted his presidency to resemble Reagan as a matter of influence, and admonished the Clinton presidency as not being very influential, at all. Obama told a Nevada newspaper that Reagan had changed “the trajectory of America . . . [in] a way that Bill Clinton did not.”

Ironically, along with his approval numbers in the Bush ballpark, 37 percent of all Americans said in February of last year that President Ronald Reagan was the most influential president in the last 50 years. John F. Kennedy was far behind Reagan with 21 percent, but followed closely by Clinton who garnered 19 percent.

Obama, on the other hand, wasn’t even on the map.

As problems continue to surround the new national health care law, Obama’s approval ratings remain at the lowest levels of his entire presidency.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 23-24, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Barack Obama incessantly bashed George W. Bush

US

Supreme Court Justices Will Hear Contraceptive Mandate Cases

The Supreme Court Justices have accepted two cases that have produced an opposition of results in lower courts regarding the contraceptive mandate law. One was brought by the owners of Hobby Lobby, David Green, due to his biblical principles.

The full U.S Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver said forcing the company to comply with the contraceptive mandate would violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The fight over implementing certain parts of the problematic healthcare reform law will be over the controversy of involving coverage for contraceptives and religious liberty.

Certain issues are whether private and non-profits companies are allowed to refuse the “law” because it violates their religious beliefs.

Approximately over 100 pending lawsuits have been filed in federal court challenging the birth control coverage benefits in the Affordable Care Act law that have been repeatedly championed by President Obama.

Just two years prior, “ObamaCare” skimmed on by with a close call regarding the key funding provisions within the Affordable Care Act. The key funding provision ruled most Americans would be required to buy insurance or pay a financial penalty.

The same individual mandate that the Democratic Party would like to push back due to 2014 elections.

Now, the constitutional debate shifts to the separate employer mandates — whether corporations and religious institutions themselves are entitled to the same First Amendment rights as individuals.

Prior to this, two appeal courts have upheld the contraceptive mandate and three federal appeals courts have struck it down — giving the Supreme Court Justices no other alternative but to hear these cases.

Within a divided opinion, the court relied in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, ruling that corporations had political speech rights just as individuals do.

Judge Timothy Tymkovich stated: “We see no reason the Supreme Court would recognize constitutional protection for a corporation’s political expression but not its religious expression.”

A divided panel of the U.S Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia ruled that a Pennsylvania cabinet-making company owned by a Mennonite family must comply with the contraceptive mandate.

That decision noted the 10th Circuit’s opinion, but said there was a “total absence of caselaw” to support the argument that corporations are protected by the guarantee of free exercise of religion.

Judge Robert E. Cowen wrote: “Even if we were to disregard the lack of historical recognition of the right, we simply cannot understand how a for-profit, secular corporation apart from its owners can exercise religion.”

The religious freedom act prohibits the federal government from imposing a “substantial burden” on a person’s exercise of religion unless there is a “compelling governmental interest” and the measure is the least restrictive method of achieving the interest.

If Hobby Lobby finds a way around this contraceptive mandate “law” they will evade the $1.3million a day hit, which is the penalty for not funding said mandate.

David Green and his family are the owners of Hobby Lobby Inc., they are Christians, and know that parts of the mandate “law” goes against Christianity’s law.

As Christians it is their duty to God to oppose the contraceptive mandate — they say some of the drugs that would be provided prevent human embryos from being implanted in a woman’s womb could be equated to an abortion.

The privately held company does not object to funding other forms such as condoms and diaphragms.

The Obama administration has been defending the law and federal officials say they have already created rules exempting certain nonprofits and religiously affiliated organizations from the contraceptives requirements. However, leaving companies such as Hobby Lobby Inc. subjected to such implementations of the law.

If one forces the corporation to implement a law that goes against their beliefs is that not a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act?

A key issue will be interpreting the 1993 federal law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The question that will come into play is how to address companies, churches, and universities, are they to be included, or do the protections apply only to individuals?

The Supreme Court Justices have accepted two

Policy

Whatever happened to not discriminating against pre-existing conditions? That depends on what the central planners constitute a pre-existing condition. But the goal of ObamaCare to make smoking so expensive that users quit may just have backfire, with public health experts claiming the high insurance premiums force smokers to drop coverage “period” and lose smoking cessation programs along with it.

“Tobacco surcharges are not proven to help tobacco users quit and there are major concerns that they will prevent people from getting health care coverage,” the American Lung Association’s Jennifer Singleterry said.

The American Lung Association does support ObamaCare, along with the American Cancer Society, but both oppose the tobacco penalty because they believe it makes insurance premiums unaffordable for smokers.

“Charging tobacco users more in health insurance premiums, sometimes thousands of dollars more, studies have shown, will price smokers out of the market,” says Singleterry.

Unlike drug addiction, alcoholism, or obesity — all of which produce higher medical costs — smokers are the only such group with a pre-existing condition that ObamaCare penalizes. In fact, ObamaCare allows insurance companies to charge smokers up to 50 percent more than non-smokers for the same policy. But here’s the kicker: even if consumers qualify for subsidies, they cannot be used to pay down or off the ObamaCare smoker fee.

According to the Kaiser Health Calculator, insurance premiums for a 64-year-old non-smoker cost roughly $9,000 a year for a standard “silver” plan. Yet the same policy for a smoker would cost an outrageous $13,600.

“I can’t afford any insurance at that rate,” smoker Don Hampson said. “I thought that was what ObamaCare was about, to stop all this.”

So far, just 11 states stepped in to prevent the surcharge, but a majority have not. In the remaining states — which are disproportionately blue, because of the left’s sentiment on smoking — insurance providers will decide the surcharge.

Again, the surcharge’s adversely hurts low-income earners, who are far more likely to be smokers, since ObamaCare subsides cannot be used to offset the smokers’ penalty.

A study by nonpartisan Institute for Health Policy Solutions found some smokers could pay 33 percent of their income in health care premiums, though there are deductibles and co-pays left out of that figure, but well in excess of what ObamaCare considers “affordable” health care.

Below are 3 scenarios offered by the Health Policy Solutions study:

1. The premium for a young, non-smoker earning roughly the minimum wage will cost $708. The same policy for a smoker would cost $3,308, or up to 400 percent more.

2. Before subsidies, a non-smoker who is 59 or older would also pay $708 for a “silver” or mid-level policy. However, a smoker of the same age would pay $5,908.

3. In a worst-case scenario, an older couple who smokes could be “literally impoverished” by ObamaCare premiums, said the report. That couple could pay an $11,352 health care premium, or one-half their annual income of $23,000. By comparison, a non-smoking person over 59 years old would pay 90 percent less, or just $952 after federal subsidies.

“There are certainly cases where the insurance company is applying the maximum significant surcharge where someone could be paying a significant share of their income toward health insurance,” said Larry Levitt, a Kaiser Family Foundation senior adviser.

Thirty-four percent of the lowest-income Americans smoke, compared with only 13 percent of those earning $90,000 or more per year. Those who designed ObamaCare imposed the surcharge hoping it would convince users to quit — or price them out of the market. It also reflects the higher costs smokers present to insurers.

“There are competing goals here,” Levitt said. “There’s the goal of getting people insured and certainly the lower the cost of insurance, the more likely it is people will sign up. There’s also the goal of allowing insurance companies to recover their cost of covering certain kinds of people and the smoking surcharge is one way of doing that.”

However, some see smoking as an addiction, not a choice, and it is no different than any other pre-existing condition. Most state exchanges ask the question up front, “Are you a smoker?” Experts say users may try to lie, but insurers can file fraud charges if they learn a patient is lying.

Some smokers may dodge the ObamaCare smokers’ penalty in the first year of enrollment because of a computer “glitch” in the ObamaCare website, which accidentally charges older smokers the inaccurate amount. However, it isn’t the case in all states. Experts say that many millions of low-income Americans will simply not buy from the ObamaCare exchange and pay the opt-out fee.

The goal of ObamaCare to make smoking

Economy, News

On Wall Street, U.S. equity markets fell flat after the release of weak housing market data, which came in significantly weaker than economists’ forecast.

Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes have fallen for 5 straight month now, continuing in October, hitting a new 10-month low and adding to fears the housing market cannot sustain itself with the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying program.

The National Association of Realtors reported on Monday its Pending Home Sales Index, which is based on contracts signed last month, fell 0.6 percent to 102.1 in October, the lowest level since last December.

Contracts were 1.6 percent below last October’s levels.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected signed contracts, which become sales after a month or two, to rise by 1.3 percent.

The National Association of Realtors, a known liberal-leaning group who banks on risky FHA loans, just as they had down with Fannie and Freddie before the financial crisis, claimed the 16-day partial shutdown of the federal government last month had pushed aside some potential buyers.

“In a survey, 17 percent of realtors reported delays in October, mostly from waiting for IRS income verification for mortgage approval,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun in a statement.

The report was the latest indication of a moderation in the housing market recovery. A report from the Realtors group last week showed home resales also fell in October.

Sales have been hammered by a rise in mortgage rates, which saw a small spike on rumors  the Fed would taper back the bond-buying program, know as quantitative easing. The program buys up lower-yielding treasury securities with printed money in order to keep interest rates near zero and incentivize investors into the equities market.

Thus far, any attempt to pull back before inflation runs rampant has resulted in blowback from the housing market, which underscores just how weak the sector has remains after more than 5 years since the financial crisis.

On Wall Street, U.S. equity markets fell

People's Pundit Daily
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