I’ve updated my list of Obama criticisms. The list can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/
March 29, 2014. Tags: Barack Obama, corporate welfare, Economics, Government waste, Green Party, Health care, Jill Stein, Libertarian Party, Medical marijuana, Obama, Obamacare, occupy-wall-street, Police state, Politics, Ron Paul, Solyndra. Barack Obama, Politics. .
Associated Press has just reported that the Obamacare approval rating is 26%.
Last month, Time magazine reported that 26% of Americans don’t know that the earth goes around the sun.
March 28, 2014. Tags: Health care, Politics, Science. Health care, Politics, Science. .
Uh uh. Too many parents decided to do something to improve the bleachers at their children’s school. Better cancel the improvements, and bring things back to the lowest common denominator. Who needs improvements anyway?
The Daily Caller Reports:
Equality! DOJ says boys’ baseball field is nicer than girls’ field, must die
The U.S. Department of Justice determined that a Michigan high school broke federal civil rights law by allowing its boys’ baseball team to fix up its athletic field, making it nicer than the field belonging to the girls’ softball team–even though the improvements were paid for privately.
To avoid a fine, Plymouth Canton Community Schools had no choice but to take down the new bleachers and scoreboard, which had been paid for through a private fundraising drive.
Six years ago, parents complained that the seating at boys’ baseball games was inadequate.
“It’s hard to watch the game through the black chain link face, so we created our seating deck to sit above,” said parent Dan Gilbert in an interview with FOX 2 news.
Gilbert and other parents installed and paid for the new seats themselves. They were put in years ago. The parents also bought a new scoreboard.
March 28, 2014. Tags: Barack Obama, Education, Obama, Political correctness, Politics, Sexism, Sports, war against achievement. Barack Obama, Education, Political correctness, Politics, Sexism, Sports, War against achievement. .
Before Obamacare was passed, Obama said:
“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people… If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
A video of Obama making this promise more than 20 different times can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCUpJDzyRnY
However, just now – four years after Obama signed Obamacare, and more than a year after the 2012 election, the New York Times is reporting that one of the authors of Obamacare is saying that it will cause most employers to stop offering insurance. The New York Times reports:
Why Employers Will Stop Offering Health Insurance
March 26, 2014
Here’s a prediction: By 2025, “fewer than 20 percent of workers in the private sector will receive traditional employer-sponsored health insurance.” The source of this claim? Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, in his just-published book, “Reinventing American Health Care.”
Dr. Emanuel is an accomplished oncologist, medical ethicist and academic (and contributing opinion writer to The New York Times). And, of course, he’s no stranger to politics: He helped craft the Affordable Care Act as a health policy adviser to the Obama administration, when his brother, Rahm, now the mayor of Chicago, was chief of staff.
… he argues, the so-called Cadillac tax on especially generous health plans, set to take effect in 2018, will help pave the way by discouraging companies from offering those plans.
This is typical of the sneaky, underhanded, lying Obama and his entire administration. In order to get a law passed, and in order to get elected, Obama lies about what he will do in the future. Then in the future, only after the legislation has passed, and only after Obama has won the election, do we find out the truth.
It’s also typical of the biased, Obama supporting, mainstream media, which refused to analyze the Obamacare legislation to discover this information on their own. If the New York Times had done its job properly, they would have had their legal experts read and analyze the Obamacare legislation four years ago, and would have reported at that time that it would cause most employers to stop offering insurance. But the New York Times did not do its job. Instead, they allowed Obama to go unchallenged in his repeated lies that people could keep their insurance. And now that the New York Times is finally reporting this information, it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it – Obamacare has already passed, and Obama has already run in as many elections as he is allowed.
March 26, 2014. Tags: Barack Obama, Health care, Obama, Obamacare, Politics. Barack Obama, Health care, Politics. .
In the past, donations from the Koch brothers were used to fund the invention of a cancer drug called Yervoy, which has saved the lives of cancer patients.
Now, the SEIU, the NAACP, the Working Families Party, and other left wing organizations are protesting against the Koch brothers’ recent $100 million donation to New York-Presbyterian Hospital. You can read about this absurd protest, and see pictures of it, here, here, and here.
March 17, 2014. Tags: Health care, Koch, Koch brothers, NAACP, Politics, SEIU, Unions. Health care, Politics, Unions. .
AFP reports:
On a rooftop in the Bronx far from the skyscrapers of Manhattan, 4,760 panels soak up the winter rays. Welcome to the solar power boom in New York state.
Robert Kline, director of commercial sales for the Ross Solar Group that installed the panels, is delighted.
“It is the largest (solar) installation in the history of New York City,” he tells AFP.
The 1.6-megawatt installation on the Jetro Cash and Carry has been proudly singled out by New York governor Andrew Cuomo as a prime example of a drive to haul the state into a new dawn.
I’m not disputing the claim that this is “the largest solar installation in the history of New York City.”
However, I am disputing the claim that his is a “boom” for solar power.
The Ravenswood Generating Station is one of many power plants that provides electricity for New York. It makes its electricity by burning fossil fuels, and it produces 2,410 MW.
If we wanted to replace this one fossil fuel power plant with solar power, it would require building more than 1,500 additional solar power projects of the same size as “the largest solar installation in the history of New York City.”
If this solar power plant is a “boom,” it would take more than 1,500 additional “booms” just to be able to shut down this one fossil fuel power plant.
And even that grossly understates the situation, because the claimed power rating for those solar panels is only applicable when the sun is directly overhead, and there are no clouds.
If the sun isn’t directly overhead, its power output would be less than the rated maximum.
If the sky was cloudy, its power output would be less than the rated maximum.
And if it was night, its power output would be zero.
The solar power plant would have to have a backup power source, and that backup power source would almost certainly be… something that burned fossil fuels.
If there is ever a solar power plant in New York that uses batteries to store its sun-derived energy for use at night, and is able to reliably and continuously produce at least 1,000 MW of electricity at any and all times of the day or night, then that would indeed be a “boom” for solar power in New York.
March 16, 2014. Tags: Environmentalism, Green energy, Math, Math illiteracy, New York, New York City, Politics, Solar power. Environmentalism, Math, Politics. .
Obamacare includes a so-called “reinsurance” tax.
In March 2014, Obama gave unions an exemption from this tax.
This was illegal for two reasons.
First, Obama made this change without approval from Congress.
And second, the Constitution requires that laws apply equally to everyone.
March 16, 2014. Tags: Barack Obama, Health care, Obama, Obamacare, Politics, Unions. Barack Obama, Health care, Politics, Unions. .
Obama gave Oregon $304 million to build its defective Obamacare website. As of February 28, 2014, exactly zero people had signed up at Oregon’s Obamacare website.
I am not at all, in any way, surprised by this.
Given all of the many, many, many other things that Obama has done, I actually expect things like this to happen.
What I don’t expect is for Obama to do anything about it. Sure, he may pay lip service, and pretend to get all angry and upset. But in the end, he won’t ask for the money back, he won’t fire anyone, and he won’t prosecute anyone for fraud.
March 16, 2014. Tags: Barack Obama, Government waste, Health care, Obama, Obamacare, Politics. Barack Obama, Government waste, Health care, Politics. .
In Israel, Rasmieh Yousef Odeh was convicted of putting a bomb in a box of candy on a grocery store shelf, which killed two people. In 2013, she was hired as an Obamacare “navigator.”
Although Obamacare “navigators” have access to people’s personal, private, and financial information, they are not subject to federal background checks, because Obama considers background checks to be “racist.” Some Obamacare “navigators” had been previously convicted of forgery.
The Obama administration accused Pepsico of “race discrimination” because it used criminal background checks to screen out job applicants.
The Obama administration filed lawsuits against Dollar General and BMW for using criminal background checks to screen employees. The Obama administration claimed that such background checks were “racist.”
The Obama administration accused fire and police departments in Jacksonville, Florida, New York City, and Dayton, Ohio of “racial discrimination” because they required potential firefighters and police officers to take a written test. Ten real examples of these “racist” questions from the New York test can be read here.
In order to do their job effectively, U.S. marines must be strong enough to carry their wounded comrades off the battlefield. But Commander-in-Chief Obama considers this requirement to be “sexist,” so he eliminated it.
March 12, 2014. Tags: Barack Obama, Health care, Obama, Obamacare, Politics, Racism, Sexism, Women in combat. Barack Obama, Health care, Politics, Racism. .
I’ve updated my list of Obama criticisms. The list can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/
March 11, 2014. Tags: Barack Obama, corporate welfare, Economics, Government waste, Green Party, Health care, Jill Stein, Libertarian Party, Medical marijuana, Obama, Obamacare, occupy-wall-street, Police state, Politics, Ron Paul, Solyndra. Barack Obama, Politics. .
The New York Times and Ralph Nader have recently criticized President Obama for illegally seizing assets from shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and for illegally avoiding disclosing this information to shareholders.
The fifth amendment requires that compensation be given for such seizures, but Obama did not do this.
Federal disclosure laws require that shareholders be informed of this information immediately, but Obama waited more than three years to tell them.
Neither of these actions by Obama surprises me one bit. These things are consistent with his many, many, many other illegal activities. He has no respect for the rule of law, the constitution, private property, or individual liberty.
The New York Times reports:
Would you buy stock in a company that barred you from sharing in its future earnings? Of course not. Participating in the upside is what stock ownership is all about.
And yet, as of December 2010, holders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac common stock were subject to such a restriction by the United States government. They didn’t know it at the time, though, because the policy was not disclosed.
This month, an internal United States Treasury memo that outlined this restriction came up at a forum in Washington.
The memo was addressed to Timothy F. Geithner, then the Treasury secretary, from Jeffrey A. Goldstein, then the under secretary for domestic finance. In discussing Fannie and Freddie, the beleaguered government-sponsored enterprises rescued by taxpayers in September 2008, the memo referred to “the administration’s commitment to ensure existing common equity holders will not have access to any positive earnings from the G.S.E.’s in the future.”
The memo, which was produced in a lawsuit filed by Fannie and Freddie shareholders, was dated Dec. 20, 2010. Securities laws require material information — that is, information that might affect an investor’s view of a company — to be disclosed. That the government would deny a company’s shareholders all its profits certainly seems material, but the existence of this policy cannot be found in the financial filings of Fannie Mae. Neither have the Treasury’s discussions about the future of the two finance giants mentioned the administration’s commitment to shut common stockholders out of future earnings.
Ralph Nader wrote:
“What legal authority does the Administration have, as this section of the memo intimates, to completely wipe out shareholders — even after taxpayers have been repaid (as is likely to happen soon)?”
“Contrary to this statement, neither the memo — nor Treasury’s actions by unilaterally amending the PSPAs — leaves one with the impression that this point in the memo is meant to highlight the importance of repaying the taxpayers. It seems to be setting a precedent for using and abusing the GSEs’ shareholders.”
“Taxpayers should recoup their investment in the GSEs; but the Administration does not have to wipe out shareholders in order for this to happen.”
“This need not be an issue of choosing taxpayers over shareholders. The federal government has similarly recouped taxpayer money used to bailout other corporations (A.I.G., Citigroup, etc.) involved in the financial collapse, but has allowed the shareholders of those companies to share in their recovery. The same should be the case with the GSEs.”
March 11, 2014. Tags: Barack Obama, Communism, Fifth amendment, Marxism, Obama, Politics. Barack Obama, Communism, Politics. .
When Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec, Canada, needed cancer treatment, he came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
And when Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach needed cancer treatment, she also came to the United States and paid for her health care with her own money.
And when Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams needed heart surgery, he, too, came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
And now, we can add actor Seth Rogan to the list of famous Canadians who look to the U.S. instead of Canada when it comes to health care. The Wall St. Journal reports:
Mr. Rogen’s mother-in-law suffers from early-onset Alzheimer’s, and he set up an Alzheimer’s disease charity. He was in town to testify in front of a Senate Appropriation subcommittee on the disease and and give an emotional appeal for more funding for research — while also featuring some lighter material.
March 1, 2014. Tags: Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s disease, Canada, Health care, Politics. Health care, Politics. .
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 