The decision Monday to reject an appeal from a former Republican state lawmaker in California was no surprise because a federal appeals court has yet to consider the case. The high court almost never reviews cases before the issues have been aired in lower courts.
Of more significance is the sign that all the justices took part in rejecting the appeal. New Justice Elena Kagan refused to say during her confirmation hearings whether she would take part in the court's deliberations over the health care law. Kagan was Obama's solicitor general before joining the court.
The court has noted Kagan's absence in more than two dozen other cases, suggesting that she voted on the health care appeal.
Kagan has stepped aside from cases in which she was involved as a Justice Department official before joining the court.
Justice Clarence Thomas also apparently voted on the case. Some critics have called on Thomas to step aside from the health care cases because his wife, Virginia Thomas, has been an outspoken opponent of the law in her role as founder of the conservative advocacy group Liberty Central.
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The case is Baldwin v. Sebelius, 10-369.
U.S. Chamber says health care law hammers small businesses in an attack on Betsy Markey, D-Colo.
The U.S. Chamber attacks Betsy Markey, D-Colo.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is attacking Betsy Markey, a Colorado House member running for re-election, for supporting major Democratic initiatives. But in making its criticism, the chamber distorts key parts of the proposals.
"Colorado is facing economic disaster," the ad says. "We told Betsy Markey we needed jobs. Why didn't she listen? Markey fought for the Obama-Pelosi government take over of health care, crushing small businesses with billions in penalties. Now Markey wants a national energy tax, costing families nearly $2,000 a year. Call Betsy Markey, tell her to listen. Tell her to stop supporting Pelosi and making the economy worse."
Markey did vote for the new health care law, a major overhaul of health care regulations, as well as a cap-and-trade law intended to curb carbon emissions and address climate change. But the ad's descriptions of those measures are deceptive.
For example, Markey does not favor a national energy tax. She did support a cap-and-trade proposal that limits carbon emissions of polluters by requiring them to buy permits. Companies would more than likely pass on their costs to consumers, but it wouldn't cost nearly $2,000. Nonpartisan agencies estimate it would cost families between $80 and $340 a year, depending on income. We wrote a detailed analysis last year when Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that the Obama administration's cap-and-trade plan would create "a $1,761 yearly energy tax." We rated the statement False. The $1,761 number was a figure created and promoted by a conservative blogger.
Here, we're looking at the ad's claim that the Democratic health care law crushes small businesses "with billions in penalties."
We found this claim perplexing, because small businesses can actually qualify for tax credits under the new health care law.
Generally speaking, tax credits are available to employers with fewer than 25 employees who are paid average annual wages of less than $50,000. If the employer pays for at least half of the insurance for workers, the employer gets a tax credit for part of the contributions. Those tax credits start for the 2010 tax year, and they increase in 2014 when more provisions of the health care law take effect.
During the debate leading up to the health care law, members of Congress considered -- but ultimately rejected -- a straightfoward mandate requiring employers to offer health care to workers and imposing penalties if they didn't. Instead, they came up with a complicated fine for large employers. Starting in 2014, large employers who don't offer health care face a fine, but only if their workers qualify for tax credits from the government to buy health care. It's likely that most large employers who don't offer insurance will have to pay the fine.
But again, small employers -- those with 50 employees or fewer -- are exempt from the fine.
Still, that's the provision the Chamber pointed to when we asked them for evidence for the claim in the ad. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines would come to $52 billion over 10 years.
We should note that there's a lot of political mischief to be had around the term "small business." Pollsters tell us that Americans have very positive opinions of small businesses, but people often have different ideas of what size a small business is.
In a similar vein, Republicans have made the case this year that most of the wealthiest Americans are actually small business owners, but that's a dubious claim. We looked into a statement to that effect earlier this year and rated it Barely True. And the health care law does impose some new taxes on the wealthiest Americans: It imposes a 3.8 percent tax on the investment income of couples who make more than $250,000 or individuals who make more than $200,000.
The Chamber argued that businesses can have more than 50 employees and still be considered small businesses. Spokesman J.P Fielder pointed to regulations from the Small Business Administration that consider a small business to be anyone with 500 or fewer employees.
And it's true that generally speaking, the Small Business Administration does consider a small business to be a firm with 500 employees or less. But there are exceptions for that, depending on the industry. For example, a manufacturing firm with 500 employees is probably a small manufacturer, but an accounting firm with 500 employees is relatively large, said spokesman Hayley Matz. In some cases, the small business designation is determined by the firm's revenues, not the number of employees.
We also looked at research the Small Business Administration compiles using data from the U.S. Census. Their research shows that the vast majority of businesses in the United States have fewer than 50 employees. In 2007, 5,814,584 firms had fewer than 50 employees, compared with a total just over 6,049,655 firms. In other words, 96 percent of U.S. small businesses are specifically exempted from fines on employers who don't insure their employees.
The Chamber's ad said that the new health care law crushes small businesses "with billions in penalties." But some small businesses will actually get tax credits from the health care law. Meanwhile, almost all small businesses -- those with fewer than 50 employees -- are exempt from penalties, whether they offer insurance or not. Some small businesses are larger than 50 employees and could face fines if they don't offer employees insurance. But a vast majority of U.S. firms are smaller than 50 employees and are exempt from the health insurance requirements. The chamber's ad is sweeping, and doesn't account for any of the positive provisions that don't "crush" small business but actually help them. So we rate the Chamber's statement False.
If you love your Medicare Advantage benefits, brace yourself for some disappointment. in the next few years Medicare Advantage insurers probably will trim benefits and may drop out of the program altogether because government subsidies to the program are being cut.
But even though the policies are with private companies, taxpayers are subsidizing the benefits. And taxpayers are not getting their money's worth. A Medicare Advantage benefit costs taxpayers 14 percentmore than exactly the same benefit offered through regular Medicare in some parts of he country, the difference is as high as 20 percent.
Medicare Advantage makes Medicare more expensive for everyone. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,all Medicare beneficiaries are paying for that 14 percent overhead with higher premiums, HHS says that this year these subsidies are adding about $3.60 per month to every Medicare premium. And little of that 14 percent is providing benefits to seniors. Instead, it is pocketed by the private insurance companies. They use it to pay for administration and advertising, and they also take some of it in profits.
It's a sad fact that in our autumn years, nearly all of us will suffer increasing problems with our health. For example, mesotheliomacancer rarely is diagnosed before the patient is 50, and mesothelioma treatment is expensive. Private insurance companies don't want seniors as customers -- unless taxpayers are supplying the profits.
Last year, the trustees of the Medicare program said the part of Medicare that pays hospital bills would be out of money by 2017. This year, because of the cuts to Medicare Advantage and other changes to the way Medicare is administered, the trustees said the hospital fund would be good until 2029. More needs to be done, but we're moving in the right direction.
There are no plans to cut regular Medicare benefits. In fact, the Medicare program is adding free preventive care and closing the Part D prescription coverage "doughnut hole". But Medicare Advantage is turning out to be a luxury we can't afford.
(NaturalNews) In a recent TED conference presentation, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to new vaccine efforts, speaks on the issue of CO2 emissions and its effects on climate change. He presents a formula for tracking CO2 emissions as follows: CO2 = P x S x E x C. P = People S = Services per person E = Energy per service C = CO2 per energy unit Then he adds that in order to get CO2 to zero, "probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty close to zero." Following that,Bill Gatesbegins to describe how the first number -- P (for People) -- might be reduced. He says: "The world today has 6.8 billion people... that's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent." You can watch this yourself at: http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=A...
This statement by Bill Gates was not made with any hesitation, stuttering or other indication that it might have been a mistake. It appears to have been a deliberate, calculated part of a well developed and coherent presentation. So what does it mean when Bill Gates says "if we do a really great job on new vaccines... we could lower [world population] by 10 or 15 percent?" Clearly, this statement implies thatvaccines are a method of population reduction. So is "health care," which all NaturalNews readers already know to be more of a "sick care" system that actually harms more people than it helps. Perhaps that's the whole point of it. Given that vaccines technology help almost no one from a scientific point of view (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_v...), it raises the question: For what purpose are vaccines being so heavily pushed in the first place? Bill Gates seems to be saying that one of the primary purposes is to reduce the global population as a mechanism by which we can reduceCO2 emissions. Once again, watch the video yourself to hear him say it in his own words: http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=A...
How can vaccines actually be used to reduce world population?
Let's conduct a mental experiment on this issue. If vaccines are to be used to reduce world population, they obviously need to be accepted by the majority of the people. Otherwise the population reduction effort wouldn't be very effective. And in order for them to be accepted by the majority of the people, they obviously can't just kill people outright. If everybody started dropping dead within 24 hours of receiving the flu shot, the danger of vaccines would become obvious rather quickly and the vaccines would be recalled. Thus, if vaccines are to be used as an effective population reduction effort, there are really only three ways in which they might theoretically be "effective" from the point of view of those who wish to reduce world population: #1) They might kill people slowlyin a way that's unnoticeable, taking effect over perhaps 10 - 30 years by accelerating degenerative diseases. #2) They might reduce fertilityand therefore dramatically lower birth rates around the world, thereby reducing the world population over successive generations. This "soft kill" method might seem more acceptable to scientists who want to see the world population fall but don't quite have the stomach to outright kill people with conventional medicine. There is already evidence thatvaccines may promote miscarriages(http://www.naturalnews.com/027512_v...). #3) They might increase the death rate from a future pandemic. Theoretically, widespread vaccination efforts could be followed by a deliberate release of a highly virulent flu strain with a high fatality rate. This "bioweapon" approach could kill millions of people whose immune systems have been weakened by previous vaccine injections. This is a known side effect of some vaccines, by the way. A study documenting this was published in PLoS. Read the story here:http://www.naturalnews.com/028538_s... Here's the study title and citation:Does Seasonal Influenza Vaccination Increase the Risk of Illness with the 2009 A/H1N1 Pandemic Virus? Viboud C, Simonsen L (2010) Does Seasonal Influenza Vaccination Increase the Risk of Illness with the 2009 A/H1N1 Pandemic Virus? PLoS Med 7(4): e1000259. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000259 The short answer is yes, seasonalflu vaccinesdo cause increased susceptibility to the H1N1pandemicvirus. In other words, seasonal flu vaccines could set up the population for a "hard kill" pandemic that could wipe out a significant portion of the global population (perhaps 10 to 15 percent, as Bill Gates suggested). Conveniently, theirdeathscould be blamed on the pandemic, thereby diverting blame from those who were really responsible for the plot. As yet another beneficial side effect for the global population killers, the widespread deaths could be used as a fear tool to urge more people to get vaccinated yet again, and the entire cycle could be repeated until world population was brought down to whatever manageable level was desired...all in the name of health care! The more people around the world are vaccinatedbeforethe release of the "hard kill" pandemicvirus, the more powerful the effect of this approach.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Perhaps not coincidentally, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into vaccine programs targeting people all over the world. One such program is researching the development of "sweat-triggered vaccines" that could use specially-coated nano-materials to deliver vaccines to people without using injections. More interestingly, his foundation has also invested millions insterilization technologiesthat have been called a "temporary castration" solution. (http://www.naturalnews.com/028887_v...) It seems that the actions of the Gates foundation are entirely consistent with the formula forCO2reduction that Bill Gates eluded to in his TEDconferencespeech: CO2 = P x S x E x C. By reducing birth rates (through sterilization technologies) and increasing vaccine penetration throughout the world population (by using sweat-triggered nano-vaccines), his stated goal of reducing the world population by 10 to 15 percent could be reached within just a few years.
Who will be left alive? The smart people
The interesting thing about all this is that this campaign to reduce global population through vaccines will obviously not impact people who consciously avoid vaccines. And those people, by and large, tend to be the more intelligent, capable people who actually have an improved ability to move human civilization forward with thoughtful consideration. I can only imagine that those people designing this vaccine-induced population control measure might be sitting around a table chuckling to themselves and saying, "It's only the stupid people that are going to be killed off anyway, so this is actually helping the future of humankind!" (Their words, not mine.) In a weird worldgovernmentkind of way, this effort might actually be based on some distorted vision ofphilanthropywhere some of the most powerful people in the world quite literally believe the way to save humanity isto kill off as many of the gullible people as possible. Vaccines are, in effect, an "evil genius" kind of way to conduct anIQtest on the population at large: If you go get vaccinated every flu season, you're not too bright and probably don't engage the kind of strong mental faculties that humanity will no doubt need if it is to face a future where it is now all but obvious we are not alone in the universe. If humanity is to save itself from its own destruction and compete as an uplifted species in our universe, killing off the least intelligent members of society (or making them infertile) may appear to the world controllers to be a perfectly reasonable approach. I disagree with that approach, but it may be precisely what they are thinking. In any case, choosing to receive a seasonal flu shot is undoubtedly an admission that you have failed some sort of universal IQ test, whether or not this is the intention of world influencers such as Bill Gates. More importantly, it is also a betrayal of your own biology, because it indicates you don't believe in the ability of your own immune system to protect you even from mild infections. Perhaps the world vaccine conspirators figure that if people are willing to betray themselves anyway, it's not much different for governments and institutions to betray them as well. In other words, if you don't even care enough about your own health to take care of your health, why should any government care about protecting your health, either? As you ponder this, also consider something else: The U.S. is going broke due to sick-carecostswhich are rising dramatically under the new federal health care reform guidelines. Can you guess the fastest and easiest way to reduce those health care costs? If you guessed, "unleash a hard-kill pandemic that takes out a significant portion of the weak or sick people" then you guessed right. Sadly, killing off those most vulnerable to sickness could save the U.S. government literally billions of dollars in sick-care expenditures. Plus, it would save Social Security yet more billions by avoiding ongoing monthly payouts. (Again, I am completely against such an approach because I value human life, but I also know we live in a world where the people in charge have little or no respect for human life and will readily sacrifice human lives to achieve their aims.) As far as Bill Gates goes, consider his statement in the context of what we've discussed here:"The world today has 6.8 billion people... that's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent." It suddenly seems to make a lot of sense when you understand that reducing the population reduces CO2emissions, and using more vaccines on more people increases thedeathrate of the population. My advice? Try to avoid being among those 10 to 15 percent who get culled through global vaccine programs. You will not only save your life, you'll also pass the "universal IQ test" which determines whether you're smart enough to know that injecting your body with chemicals and viral fragments in order to stop "seasonal flu" is a foolish endeavor. Be healthy and wise, and you'll survive theworld depopulation effortthat victimizes conventional thinkers who don't have the intelligence to question what they're being told to do by their own corrupt governments.
