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POPSThe Lords of Entitlement They WILL subjugate us. They do not represent us; they have, indeed, become our "lords". We work for Washington. The American people have entered a new era of serfdom and slavery. The action in the Senate on this bill and the 2010 elections are our last hopes.
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POPSOwens Breaks 4 Campaign Promises in First Hour in Congress
Mr. Owens also indicated during his campaign that he was firmly opposed to cutting Medicare benefits, taxing health care benefits, and increased taxes on the middle class in any way as you can see clearly in the screenshot taken directly from Mr. Owens' campaign website. http://www.gouverneurtimes.com/images/stories/2009/11/06/oewns-screenshot.jpg The House Health reform bill contains sections that cut Medicare benefits, tax existing health care benefits, and increases taxes on the middle class, yet Mr. Owens stated today that he will now vote in favor of those things contrary to what he had promised the voters of NY's 23rd Congressional District that he would vote against. Mr. Owens indicated in his press release today that "This legislation will reform the insurance industry and provide increased access to affordable healthcare without taxing healthcare benefits, cutting Medicare benefits or raising taxes on the middle class, and that is exactly the direction.....
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POPSWhy Precious Should Have Been Taught Math Instead of Journaling Anyone who has taught adult-literacy classes knows that inexperienced writers' efforts are more often clichéd, vague, and confusing than searingly original and profound. And that's just the work of students with an aptitude to write... Maybe writing in her journal allowed Precious to conceive of a better life for herself and her children; maybe creating a persona on the page enhanced her self-worth. But, contrary to what Hollywood would have us believe, the world does not reward self-expression as readily or consistently as it rewards a good head for numbers. It's hard for any writer to support herself writing. Precious's teacher should have known that, and given her a calculator along with that journal.
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POPSRepubliucan Health Bill “As Leader Boehner has made clear, our proposal will focus on the No. 1 concern of the American people—reducing health care costs, and we do it at a price tag our nation can afford,” said spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier. “Our proposal will help struggling middle-class families and small businesses by increasing access to affordable, high-quality health care,” Ferrier said. It also includes a ban on any “federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother.” Of course, in true Dem fashion, they responded to the Republican bill with this profound and poignant comment: It’s “insubstantial.” and…
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POPSUntil Medical Bills Do Us Part A complicating factor was that this was a second marriage. M.’s first husband had died, leaving an inheritance that he had intended for their children. She and her second husband had a prenuptial agreement, but that would not protect her assets from his medical expenses. The hospital told M. not to waste time in dissolving the marriage. For five years after any divorce, her assets could be seized — precisely because the government knows that people sometimes divorce husbands or wives to escape their medical bills. “How could I divorce him? I loved him,” she told me.
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POPS"Paranormal Activity" Trailer to the highly anticipated movie deemed as this generation's The Exorcist. "scary as hell." "the scariest movie of the year." "the entire auditorium was freaked out of their minds...people were actually physically shaking..." http://www.paranormalactivity-movie.com/about.html
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POPSWall Street's Naked Swindle This was a brokered bloodletting, one in which the power of the state was used to help effect a monstrous consolidation of financial and political power. Heading into 2008, there were five major investment banks in the United States: Bear, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Today only Morgan Stanley and Goldman survive as independent firms, perched atop a restructured Wall Street hierarchy. And while the rest of the civilized world responded to last year's catastrophes with sweeping measures to rein in the corruption in their financial sectors, the United States invited the wolves into the government, with the popular new president, Barack Obama — elected amid promises to clean up the mess — filling his administration with Bear's and Lehman's conquerors, bestowing his papal blessing on a new era of robbery. Read the whole nasty sociopathic scam
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POPSArab White House correspondent disses U.S. White House reporters Hmmm, I wonder who are considered third and fourth class citizens. And, why YouTube remove the video? I haven’t read anything from her or from the Dubai-based MBC but I’m willing to bet that they are not sucking up to Obama like the American main stream press is. You gotta play by the rules, baby.
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POPSSafety nets for the rich More: Enough! Goldman Sachs is thriving while the combined rates of unemployment and underemployment are creeping toward a mind-boggling 20 percent. Two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 — two-thirds! — went to the top 1 percent of Americans. We cannot continue transferring the nation’s wealth to those at the apex of the economic pyramid — which is what we have been doing for the past three decades or so — while hoping that someday, maybe, the benefits of that transfer will trickle down in the form of steady employment and improved living standards for the many millions of families struggling to make it from day to day. That money is never going to trickle down. It’s a fairy tale. We’re crazy to continue believing it.
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POPSHow Much Obamacare Costs the Average Family That Obama is charging premiums to those living at or on the border of poverty is absolutely incredible! And this from a candidate who pledged that he would not tax the middle class! If you have insurance, you will get hit by his proposed 40 percent tax on insurance premiums. When the tax -- and the legislation -- takes effect in 2013, all families making about $120,000 or more in combined household income (14 percent of all families or one in seven) will have to pay the tax. By the next year, 2014, the tax will hit every family making more than $100,000 (about 18 percent of all families or one in six). By 2019, 10 years hence, the tax will reach down to affect every family making more than $75,000 a year (31 percent of families or one in three). The tax will take 40 percent of all premiums above $21,000. So if you don’t have insurance, you will be socked with a mandate to buy coverage and pay a hefty proportion of your income to do it; and if you have insurance . . .
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POPSObamaCare To Thwack Middle Class With Up To 70% Marginal Tax Rate Jim Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, calculates that when combined with other policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit that also phase out, the effective marginal rate would rise to nearly 70% at twice the poverty level. (HT: hot air Handcrafted by Flip
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POPSAFSCME, one of America's largest unions, takes on Obama McEntee led workers in chanting a barnyard epithet to describe Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus’s health care bill, which would levy a new tax on expensive health care plans. He published an op-ed in U.S.A. Today warning, in terms that could be used against Democrats in the midterms, that the plan could tax the middle class and cost workers their health care. And he blew off a plea from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and published an open letter promising to “oppose” legislation that contained the tax – published over the objections, several labor officials said, of other union presidents whose names appeared on the letter.
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POPSLooking for a middle class
A sad depiction of how our middle class has been steadily losing ground to corporate dominance. This new economy is strangling the very people responsible for the success of many businesses who, along with government’s help, are creating this new economy. The days of job security are over. Beginning when companies began turning their ‘full-benefit’ employees into contractors to save the expense of providing those benefits. The middle class is about to be beat down even further when the drive to reduce the deficit and debt takes center stage. Reduction of Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements will be seen as the answer to rising costs and the middle class will be the biggest losers, again. Ms Cocco advises us to “Fight the myths. Break the back of the corrupt campaign finance and lobbying systems. These are hard political tasks. But being pushed further down is harder, still. Because no one knows where the new bottom lies.” Advice we would all do well to heed.
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POPSObamacare Means $1,700 More in Insurance Premiums for a Typical Family And, with a government subsidy, you gain nothing by paying for all those years when you don't need insurance. So Obama's program turns out not to be one to spread insurance and thus spread the risk of costly illness, but one to make people pay 7.5 percent of their incomes once they get sick, with the government picking up their remaining premium and the health insurance customers paying for the medical expenses. Some deal! So tote up the cost of this bill on the middle class: -- $1,700 more in insurance premiums for the average family. -- Medical devices like wheelchairs and hearing aids get taxed. -- Those who are sick must pay an average of about $600 more a year in income taxes because the bill raises the threshold for deducting medical expenses from 7.5 percent of income to 10 percent. -- A $404 billion cut in Medicare. -- Ending the subsidized Medicare Advantage insurance for costs over and above Medicare. Without Medicare Advantage, the elderly can only .
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POPSThe Baucus Bill Is A TAX BILL which is much faster than the growth rate of the economy or tax revenues. This is the same growth rate as the House bill that Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) deep-sixed by asking the CBO to tell the truth about its impact on health-care costs. To avoid the fate of the House bill and achieve a veneer of fiscal sensibility, the Senate did three things: It omitted inconvenient truths, it promised that future Congresses will make tough choices to slow entitlement spending, and it dropped the hammer on the middle class. One inconvenient truth is the fact that Congress will not allow doctors to suffer a 24% cut in their Medicare reimbursements. Senate Democrats chose to ignore this reality and rely on the promise of a cut to make their bill add up. Taking note of this fact pushes the total cost of the bill well over $1 trillion and destroys any pretense of budget balance. It is beyond fantastic to promise that future Congresses, for 10 straight years, will allow planned
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POPSGo Dain Go! Yeah I miss being part of the Brooklyn street art scene. But it's part of me and my own art and inspiration wherever I go. Just wanted to bookmark and share this inspiring show with you all. One of the other photos in the article showed some 40s apartment decor (wallpaper, lamp, couch) that Dain set up to go along with the pieces. So awesome.
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POPSIt shakes a village: What thousands of individual economic crises mean for an entire community
More: Through the Marin Housing Authority, Fatooh discovered three affordable housing complexes accepting applications -- then discovered a waiting list of three years. She phoned agency after agency, with no luck. Finally someone told her she'd have a better chance getting placed if she and the family spent three months living at a campsite. Meanwhile her repossessed house in Cazadero sits empty, she says. …The TV news reminds us every night: We're in a recession. But often the camera zooms in too tight: the single family facing eviction, the single worker laid off at the plant, the single patient unable to pay for cancer treatments. The panorama of such cases remains hazy: What does joblessness, foreclosure or lack of healthcare mean for entire communities? What happens to town after town of people like Kassy Fatooh? How does a multiplicity of stories like hers tear at the patchwork of agencies and services meant to hold our communities intact?
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POPSChairman Max Baucus' Big "Compromise" Would Make Matters Worse There's more: Baucus' plan was supposed to be the moderate alternative, simply because it doesn't include a government-run insurance plan. But the "co-ops" it calls for instead are almost the same thing. Anyway, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid still insists that the "public option" will be included in any bill voted on by the full Senate. Finally, much of the bill for ObamaCare would be paid for with cuts to Medicare. Seniors will love that. (Not.) As we've said before, Obama and his Democratic pals on Capitol Hill are chasing radical dreams to take over a huge swath of the economy -- a project that would take a heavy toll on jobs, restrict patients' and doctors' choices and leave health care in worse shape. As the plan wends its way through Congress, it sure isn't getting much better.
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