REVERSE ROBIN HOOD

A successful effort by Congress to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) would require low-income Americans to subsidize health insurance for the middle and upper-middle classes, says David Hogberg, fellow and senior policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

According to Hogberg:

*Both S-CHIP bills passed by Congress take the tax revenues from those under 200 percent of the poverty level and give it to those children who live in families above 200 percent of poverty, likely all the way up to 400 percent of the poverty level.
*It is not inconceivable that a parent with one child with an income of $13,690 will be funding benefits for two children in a family of four with an income of $82,600.
*S-CHIP expansion would result in families whose income puts them in the bottom 15 percent of households funding benefits for children who are in families close to the top 25 percent of households.

Hogberg also notes that Congress supports reimbursing states for S-CHIP expenses for middle and upper income children and young adults at a higher rate than it reimburses Medicaid expenses spent on the poor:

*In 2006, states spent a total of about $132 billion on Medicaid, while the federal government matched that with $165 billion.
*For that same year, states spent almost $2.4 billion on S-CHIP and the federal government sent the states $4.8 billion in matching funds.

Thus, the federal government spends two dollars on S-CHIP for every one dollar the states spend, says Hogberg. In short, the federal government spends proportionally more on the children in S-CHIP than it does on the poorer children in Medicaid.

Source: David Hogberg, "SCHIP Expansion: Socialized Medicine on the Installment Plan," National Center for Public Policy Research, September 2007.

For text:

www.nationalcenter.org/NPA560.html

D'OH, CANADA!

D'OH, CANADA!
Far from being a health care paradise, Canada's system is in disarray -- and getting worse. That's why it's pursuing private-sector reforms, even as we consider national health care, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

Consider:

*In 1998, 212,990 Canadians were on hospital waiting lists for surgery, waiting on average 13.3 weeks.
*Today, more than 800,000 Canadians are on waiting lists, waiting often 20 weeks or more.
*Survival rates for major types of cancer in the United States are higher than in Canada; as such, seven of 10 Canadian provinces send their prostate-cancer patients to the United States for treatment.

Americans have more access to advanced medical procedures like dialysis and coronary bypass surgery, and use more medical technology like CT scanners and MRI imaging machines. Canada's Fraser Institute puts it bluntly: "Canadian patients do not get the same quality or quantity of care as American patients."

Source: Editorial, "D'oh, Canada!" Investor's Business Daily, September 20, 2007.

For text:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=275093998182089

Lessons from Jena, La.

By JASON WHITLOCK

Now we love Mychal Bell, the star of the 2006 Jena (La.) High School football team, the teenage boy who has sat in jail since December for his role in a six-on-one beatdown of a fellow student.

Thursday, thousands of us, proud African-Americans, expressed our devotion to and desire to see justice for the “Jena Six,” the half-dozen black students who knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped a white classmate.

Jesse Jackson compared Thursday’s rallies in Jena to the protests and marches that used to take place in cities like Selma, Ala., in the 1960s. Al Sharpton claimed Thursday’s peaceful demonstrations were to highlight racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

Jesse and Al, as they’re prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on a mountain of lies.

There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal justice system, and from afar the “Jena Six” rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s.

But the reality is Thursday’s protests are just another sign that we remain deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.

The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail.

Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span.

Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?

That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.

There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.

Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.

A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder.

Much has been written about Bell’s trial, the six-person all-white jury that convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and offered no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black.

It’s almost never mentioned that Bell’s absentee father returned from Dallas and re-entered his son’s life only after Bell faced attempted-murder charges. At a bond hearing in August, Bell’s father and a parade of local ministers promised a judge that they would supervise Bell if he was released from prison.

Where were the promises and supervision before any of this?

It’s rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in Barker’s attack. And it’s never mentioned that white people in the “racist” town of Jena provided Bell support and protected his football career long before Jesse, Al, Bell’s father and all the others took a sincere interest in Mychal Bell. Read the rest HERE.

Rep. Jack Murtha cuts and runs when asked about Haditha

Rep. Jack Murtha being directly confronted over repeatedly accusing the Haditha Marines of murdering Iraqis “in cold blood” refuses to apologize to the two Marines recently acquitted.H/T to HotAir

Alan Keyes announces for President!

Will appear in Values Voter Debate Sept. 17

On Friday, Sept. 14, Alan Keyes filed a Statement of Candidacy (Form 2) with the Federal Election Commission--thus officially announcing as a Republican candidate for President of the United States.

Keyes told Janet Parshall, host of a nationally syndicated radio show, that he's "unmoved" by the lack of moral courage shown by the other candidates, among whom he sees no standout who articulates the "key kernel of truth that must, with courage, be presented to our people."

He added, "The one thing I've always been called to do is to raise the standard . . . of our allegiance to God and His authority that has been the foundation stone of our nation's life"--and he decried the lack of "forthright, clear, and clarion declaration" from the other candidates concerning this issue.

As a result, Keyes said, "We're putting together an effort that's not going to be like anything before, because it's going to be entirely based on citizen action. We're going to be challenging people to take a pledge for America's revival," and elevate them from spectators in the political arena to participants.

Arthur Miller's Missing Act

For all the public drama of Arthur Miller's career—his celebrated plays (including Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, his social activism—one character was absent: the Down-syndrome child he deleted from his life.
Read the Vanity Fair article HERE.

ACC orders commandwide standdown Friday

Contrary to rumors surrounding the Air Combat Command's stand-down of all 100,000 active-duty airmen ordered for tomorrow, the U.S. will not be devoid of fighter aircraft to protect the nation.

Michael Kucharek, spokesman for NORAD and USNORTHCOM, told WND the stand-down does not include the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves assigned to NORAD.

About 70 percent of the aircraft involved in NORAD alerts are Air National Guard or Air Force Reserves aircraft, according to Kucharek.

Meanwhile, NORAD and USNORTHCOM will be on alert status Sept. 24 when the U.N. convenes a high-level meeting on climate change and the following day when the General Assembly begins its 62nd Session in New York City.

Jerome Corsi at WND has all the details HERE.

The Untold Story of Delta Flight 1824

Doug Hagmann from NEIN gave me another exclusive Friday morning on the show.

9 September 2007: The passengers aboard Delta Airlines Flight 1824 flying out of Orlando International Airport last Thursday at 7:15 a.m. heard the following statement over the intercom as they were preparing to taxi onto the runway on their way to Atlanta, Georgia:

Ladies and gentlemen, we have been informed that there is “a credible security risk with this aircraft” and we are returning to the terminal.

Delta Flight 1824 was scheduled to take off at 7:15 a.m. on September 6, 2007, but did not take off until 10:19 – three hours and 5 minutes behind schedule, landing in Atlanta without incident at 11:52 a.m. This report could have been quite different had it not been for the great work by security officials on-site at the Orlando airport. The events that led to the delay might never have seen the light of day had it not been for those special people who care about bringing the honest truth of the Islamic terrorist threat to the public.

If you rely on official government statements and the major media, the entire incident involving Flight 1824 was “benign” and was never a security risk. It involved 12 people from two families, all of Middle Eastern origin, reportedly carrying suspicious items in their luggage. Again, if you rely on official government statements and the major media, the “suspicious items” inside of checks luggage turned out to be “a bottle that had been covered with tape to prevent leaking.”

"It was all benign," said Dave Couvertier, the FBI agent from the Tampa, Florida Orlando FBI office. The flight ultimately took off about 10:20 a.m. without the two families, who were still undergoing FBI questioning at that time. They were ultimately released, stated FBI spokesman Couvertier. Knowing the series of events that caused the abrupt turnaround of Flight 1824, let’s see how “benign” this incident really was. Read the rest of the details HERE.

More info on the incident at Orlando International Airport see below from a source on the inside.

There were 9 middle easterners, supposedly a family. 3 females and 6 males, they were "randomly"selected by the airline for additional screening by TSA. As a "SELECTEE" we automatically run an "EXPLOSIVE TRACE DETECTION" test on your bags after xray.
2 of the bags and some contents tested positive for SEMTEX (an explosive used by terrorists.) We tested the bags 4 times using different machines and got a positive each time. We then dump the bags...we found 3 jars of Vaseline duct taped together (as 1 cylinder) they tested positive. The Vaseline had been removed and put back in the jars, as we could see the voids on xray. We found strands of wire with the ends stripped, packets of the small eyeglass screw drivers, and 2 of the males had Vaseline smeared on their arms and neck areas. 3 of the males had false or fraudulent credentials, 1 male possessed 2 pass ports (same picture different names). After 2 hrs the FBI and OPD took them away from the checkpoint to the OPD station at OIA. From that point on I don't know what happened with them...

We removed all bags from the plane and did complete bag searches at the International gate side. We (TSA) found the 8 large bottles of Hydrogen Peroxide, not the bomb dogs.

You are 100% on the right track here. OIA is playing this thing down (probably for the bottom line) drasticly.

Hope this helps and is legible as I'm in a bit of a time crunch here.

thanks for getting the word out...OH! NOTHING IN THE LINE OF REAL EXPLOSIVES WAS FOUND, JUST TRACES.

MORE...

I have more....At about 1;00 pm Thurs. the same scenario was repeated, a middle eastern female was detained at the same checkpoint at OIA. Her bag tested positive for SEMTEX. An OPD officer on duty at the time confirmed to me, she was directly connected to the family earlier.

Also, if this was a "BENIGN" incident, why is TSA requesting all available for overtime to work Sat.and Sun. "just to walk around the airport, to show a presence"...

I know I have your support with my anonymity

Luciano Pavarotti - Ave Maria - Schubert