Dems Continue to Loot Trust, Retirement Funds

In a startling post yesterday, it was revealed that Congress since 1983 has raided every penny--$2.5 trillion's worth--earmarked for the Social Security Trust Fund. Meaning that, starting in 2016 when Social Security taxes won't be enough to pay for those already drawing on their retirement, Congress will have to raise taxes, borrow more money, lower benefits, or end the program.

Worse, the Social Security Act grants Congress sole discretion to revise or cancel the program at any time, while the Supreme Court has ruled that no one is entitled to Social Security benefits.

Now catch this juicy bit of news.

Congress has likewise screwed federal government workers and military personnel out of their pension funds to the tune of $1 trillion. In the first three months of fiscal 2010, Congress looted $65 billion from these retirement trust funds while taking every penny of Social Security receipts as well. In all, in that one quarter the U.S. government looted or borrowed $400 billion.

All this, of course, is in the name of buying votes to stay in office.

Think you can retire? Think again. Uncle Sam wants you to die on the job.

Really.

EFCA by Stealth or Fiat?

In one of the few votes being taken this week in the U.S. Senate (due to inclement weather), Craig Becker was filibustered out of a chance to be voted into office with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), though I'm sure the cloture vote will be taken again, maybe many times.

Once ensconced at the NLRB, Becker hopes to issue diktats to implement the provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), bypassing both Congress (where there aren't enough votes) and the Constitution (where it says you need Congress to vote).

Anyway, it all may be moot since rumor has it that the Dems have slipped EFCA language into the looming "jobs bill," which is probably not even a jobs bill but a bunch of pork for the cronies back home.

Anyway, I thought this cartoon pretty well summed up the consequences of EFCA and "card check."

Reward for Getting It Wrong: More $$$ for AHRQ

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), America's equivalent of the draconian National Institute for Clinical Health (NICE) in Great Britain, saw its budget increased multifold by the Obama stimulus plan--with a cool $1 billion in funding. Now, after getting the data wrong on women under 50 not needing mammograms, the agency is being rewarded with another increase of $640 million.

AHRQ is tasked with comparing medical treatments and coming up with the best (i.e., cheapest) method that works (sometimes and maybe even just partially, but it looks good on paper) for each disease and condition. This is called comparative effectiveness research (CER). CER lay behind the data given the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), which then issued a fiat that no woman under 50 be given a mammogram.

Of course, this was immediately denounced by every field-operative medical professional on the face of the earth, and the Obama administration just shrugged off the ban as being based on the "best available science."

One wonders which dictionary they used for the definition of "best."

Meanwhile, over at the National Institutes of Health (another government agency), Director Francis Collins, who helped mapped the human genome, worries that AHRQ has it all backwards, saying that the AHRQ and its CER approach wrongfully consider "everybody equivalent, which we know they are not."

In other words, "one size fits all" doesn't work in medicine, but it's a NICE solution for an agency charged with bending the health care curve through "scientific"-based evidence for rationing and denial of service.

A death panel, are ye, AHRQ?

London's Heathrow Implements Body Scanners

Anybody traveling out of Heathrow Airport in London will now be subject to screening by a body scanner (see image of results).

The new screening equipment was installed after the Amsterdam-to-Detroit bombing attempt by a Nigerian national, who slipped through security with body bombs.

"Given the current security threat level, the government believes it essential to start introducing scanners immediately," said Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis.

Britain raised its terrorism threat level to "severe," the second-highest level, on January 22, days before London was due to host two international conferences on Yemen and Afghanistan. The conferences took place last week without any security incident.

What are the odds the sexiest women are routinely--but invariably--body scanned?

SEIU Voters for Scott Brown

Here's an interesting photo (courtesy of Michelle Malkin) of SEIU members flouting the will of Union Czar Andy Stern in yesterday's Massachusetts vote for U.S. Senator:

WHO Flu Pandemic a Colossal Hoax

The question remains, "Who paid off the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to push a influenza pandemic hoax on the world?"

It's not that there weren't enough warning signs that the pandemic declaration was at best overstated and at worst a downright fraud.

First, ABC did an investigative piece on the evidence and discovered that only a very small percentage of so-called swine flu victims even had any sort of flu. Most had the sniffles. That story went largely unreported by the Obamaniacal liberal media.

Now, buried in the CDC's FluView is the faint admission: "The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza was below the epidemic threshold."

Hats off to Poland for refusing to buy into the hoax and enrich Big Pharma by stockpiling vaccines that could still end up producing horrendous side effects down the road.

As it turns out, because those exposed to the swine flu develop an immunity to the seasonal flu, flu deaths worldwide will be lower this season than before H1N1 was declared a worldwide threat.

As health and science journalist Michael Fumento has written:

The media are finally beginning to admit that the World Health Organization's "pandemic" -- made possible, as I've argued before, only by completely redefining the definition for political reasons -- is the mildest ever. Several European countries have cut back their vaccine orders, and the chairman of the influential health committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who is an epidemiologist, has asked the body to investigate what he calls the WHO's "false pandemic" and "one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century."

Health Care Reform=Mandates and New Taxes

Happy New Year, or should I say welcome to the year of many new taxes?

Let's start with so-called health care reform. Whether or not the final, reconciled House-Senate bill includes a tax on so-called "Cadillac health plans" or a tax on so-called "wealthy individuals" (who make $250K or more, which is hardly wealthy), the Medicare portion of your Social Security taxes is set to leap. If you work for yourself, the Medicare portion goes to 3.8 percent (up from 2.9); if you employ others, your employer share of Medicare taxes rises to 2.45 percent from 1.35.

Starting in 2014, if you don't have a qualifying health insurance plan (the individual mandate that candidate Obama opposed but now embraces as president), you will be assessed a fine of up to $1,485.

Now, here's a real job killer: If you own a company that doesn't offer health insurance, and if even one of your employees qualifies for a government health care subsidy, you'll have to pay a $750 assessment to the government for every worker on your payroll.

And this is just the beginning. Blogger Wintery Knight has more details.