According to media reports, Obama reiterated that Social Security would not be privatized while he was president. Hopefully, that will only mean another two and one half years. He suggested that the struggling federal entitlement program only needed some minor “adjustments” to make it solvent, which is blatantly inaccurate and he knows it.

( - promoted by Rocky Mountain Right - )

The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment -- air, water and land -- upon which life depends. Our tax dollars go to the EPA at the rate of $2,876,123 per day. Since the explosion on the BP oil rig on April 20, 2010, the EPA has used up $1,105,044,920 of our tax dollars.

The head of the EPA is Lisa P. Jackson. Before becoming EPA’s Administrator, Jackson served as Chief of Staff to New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine and Commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Prior to joining DEP, she worked for 16 years as an employee of the U.S. EPA. During the past 40+ days that the BP well has been pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Ms. Jackson has visited the area 3 times.

On May 20, 2010 the EPA finally intervened in the BP Spill. The EPA wanted to stop BP from using certain dispersants to break up the oil. This was the method the EPA chose to protect the environment.

On May 2, 2010, President Obama made his first trip to the gulf. At a hasty press conference he said:

"Let me be clear. BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill. But as President of the United States I am going to spare no effort to respond to this crisis for as long as it continues. And we will spare no resource to clean up whatever damages cost."

President Obama’s Calendar since the BP Oil Spill shows his efforts to respond and includes the following:

4/20/10 - Oil Spill Begins

5/3/10 - Obama meets with Navy Academy Football Team

5/5/10 - Obama hosts Cinco de Mayo Reception and party

5/9/10 - Obama gives speech to graduates at Hampton University

5/17/10 -Obama meets with U. of Conn. Womens Basketball Team

5/19/10 - Has meeting with Mexico Pres. Cadleron discing state of Arizona

5.20/10 - Attends Joint Session as Cadleron Dasses state of Arizona amid Dem cheering

5/22/10 - Speaks at graduation at West Point, NY

5/24/10 - Obama attends fund-raiser for Congress Candidate Carey in Delaware

5/25/10 - Obama attends fund-raiser for Senate Candidate Boxer in San Francisco, CA

5/26/10 - Obama meets with Steelworker Union leader Gerard

5/27/10 - Obama meets with Duke Blue Devils

5/27/10 - Obama has lunch with former Pres. Bill Clinton, content unknown

5/27/10 - Obama holds press conference. Subjects are BP Oil Spill and Sestak

5/28/10 - 400 workers arrive at beach and do extensive cleanup.

5/28/10 - Obama arrives at cleaned up beach and says the buck stops with him.

5/29/10 - Obama goes on vacation.

Up to 100,000 barrels of oil are pouring into the Gulf of Mexico each day. One barrel has 42 gallons. This oil is unrefined and holds unknown toxins. Several workers hired to clean up the oil that came ashore have become ill from exposure to the oil. The BP Oil Spill is now the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history.

If you voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and you have any environmental beliefs at all, you should reconsider your reasoning ability. Like it or not, Barack Obama owns this disaster.

( - Promoted by Hestons Ghost - )

The other day a friend of mine was joking that come March, she was going to struggle with only a three-day weekend, instead of the monthly four-day weekends she’s been enjoying thus far. She’s a Colorado state employee whose mandated furlough days have been falling once a month coupled with holidays. For instance, she had the Friday before the MLK Day holiday off and will have the Friday before the President’s Day weekend off.

Most Americans will understand if parks are closed for a day, if the IRS doesn’t answer phone calls for a day, if Congressional staffers don’t send news releases for a day or if the federal courts are closed for a day. It’s called sacrifice and it’s sorely needed. Could you imagine the savings created by dropping the 2% pay increase and furloughing the more than 2.7 million civilian workers? Colorado’s furloughs save the state tens of millions of dollars. Imagine what the federal government could save?

( - promoted by Rocky Mountain Right - )

The Obama Administration has put up a web site, recovery.gov, to show Colorado citizens what they did with the money spent in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. A walk down memory lane will show that our President claimed that passage of the Recovery Act was essential to keep unemployment down to the 8% range. Currently, the unemployment rate is 9.8% in spite of spending these billions to create jobs. Considering that Mr. Obama flew out and signed this multi-billion dollar legislation in our own state, one may wonder what happened to this landslide of job creation.

Among the more interesting local winners of this Obama Lottery are:

* The Douglas County School District got $9,850,000 for special education projects.

* The towns of Castle Rock and Parker got $174,800 and $172,400 respectively to change out street light bulbs to LED lights.

* Douglas County got $81,921 to help out 40 low income individuals.

* The Sedalia Water & Sanitation District got $215,625 to fix water pipes and to help poor people buy homes.

* Hedley Mendel Management Co. LLC got $60,000 for low income housing assistance and still managed to "save or create" 3 jobs with this paltry sum.

All told $85,998,492 went to Douglas County government units or private companies. A total of 654 jobs were "created or saved"  in Douglas County, CO for a grand total of $131,548 for each of these great jobs. The itemized list is below:

1. Town of Parker, CO - $172,400 for lightbulb replacement. -0 jobs
2. AES Group Inc. - $96,952 for boiler replacement at a VA hospital -6 jobs
3. Town of Parker, CO - $27,082 for bar coding equipment -0- jobs
4. Teletech Government Solutions LLC - $28,387,503 for the digital TV changeover -635 jobs
5. CH2M-Hill - $7,000,000 to redo Centennial A/P Taxiway -0 jobs
6. CDOT - $333,489 for ramp metering -0.91 jobs
7. CDOT - $31,465,783 to fix C-470/I-25 - 35.78 jobs
8. C&L Water Solutions - $1,424,031 for water utilities at Denver Fed Ctr.
9. Zimcor LLC - $204,300 for water utilities at Denver Fed Ctr.
10. CDOT - $6,384,813 for highway infrastructure - 3.05 jobs
11. Douglas County Government - $119,160 for victims assistance to crime victims -0 jobs
12. Douglas County Government - $81,921 to help out 40 low income individuals - 0 jobs
13. Douglas County School District - $9,850,633 for special ed. = 0 jobs
14. Sedalia Water & San. District - $215,625 for water infrastructure/ home ownership - 0 jobs
15. Town of Castle Rock, CO - $174,800 for street light changeout - 0 jobs
16. Hedley Mendel Management Co. LLC - $60,000 for low income housing assistance - 3 jobs

At this rate we will quite a few more stimulus bills to take up the employment slack.

MIke Robinson is Senior Partner at Robinson & Henry P.C., a Castle Rock, CO Law Firm.
 

We see in today's Denver Post what Obama's economic recovery plan has funded, virtually nothing.

A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of President Barack Obama's economic-recovery plan.

The real number: fewer than 1,000.

A child-care center in Florida said it saved 129 jobs with the help of stimulus money. Instead, it gave pay raises to its existing employees.

Elsewhere in the U.S., some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times. The government has overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under the president's $787 billion recovery program, according to an Associated Press review of data released in the program's first progress report.

It is time we recognize this for what it is, wasted tax dollars. Washington could have held on to the money and had nearly the same result.

The DCCC has just sent out a breathless fundraising email mortified that an elected official would call the President of the United States a liar:

Last night as President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress on the need for health insurance reform, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina actually screamed out "you lie" on the House floor in front of the full Congress and the entire nation.

Calling the President of the United States a liar in front of the nation is a new low even for House Republicans and it deserves the strongest response we can give. That's why we're issuing a special Rapid Response Alert.

Their outrage is understandable. The Democrats have always shown the utmost respect and decorum for the office of the presidency, regardless of who holds it or what their party affilliation is. The House Democrats in particular have always been a shining example in this regard. You would never hear any of them calling a president a liar.

( - promoted by Rocky Mountain Right - )

In a virtually unprecedented action, Douglas County School District (DCSD) Officials altered and rewrote a key document to greatly expand the number of impressionable children exposed to the direct influence of President Obama on September 8, 2009.

On the morning of September 2nd, in reaction to a huge volume of phone calls to the School District, Officials posted a notice concerning the September 8, 2009 Obama speech to students. As an attachment to the notice, the Officials included a .pdf form entitled "Presidential Address Permission Form." You can view the .pdf of the release form here. The form posted was taken from Douglas County School Board approved form IJA-E, the Guest Speaker Permission Form.You can see it here.

It provides for an alternative activity if a parent doesn't want their child to hear a guest speaker or if a signed permission form is not returned to the school, i.e. an "Opt In" form. Because of this, a parent doesn't have to do anything to stop their child from seeing the Obama Address.

Later on the very same day, DCSD Officials made the unusual decision to alter the posted, approved form and change the form language so that a parent must now print out the form, sign it and return it to the child's school, or their child will be required to be influenced by the Obama Address. This altered form is called the " Presidential Address Permission Form - Opt Out". You can see the altered form here.

A thorough search of the DCSD school records as shown on the District's web site shows that there is no "Opt Out" form adopted or approved by the Douglas County School District. Ms. Susan Meek, the Acting Director of Communication for the District declined to comment on this abrupt change of the parental consent form or to return phone calls and emails. A review of the metadata on the Opt Out form's .pdf shows that the form was written by Ms. Stacey Neith, a Communications Specialist in Ms. Meek's office.

If any parent is offended or would like to comment on this unusual extra-legal action by school officials, Ms. Meek may be contacted at 303-387-0030 or 720-971-9830.

All of us here at Rocky Mountain Right have been trying our hardest to ignore the silly rumors about Barack Obama being born in Kenya (or Indonesia, or Britain, or Betelgeuse VI...), but a poll to be released in full later today purports to show that 43% of Colorado Republicans do not think President Obama was born in the United States.

We sincerely hope those numbers are inaccurate. If not; it is a sad commentary on the Republican Party in this state that when we have a president who promptly burned over a trillion dollars upon taking office and has been trying to push through a radical healthcare plan, that 43% of us are wasting our time indulging conspiracy theories that should be more at place on Coast to Coast AM. Talk about misplaced priorities.

Even worse, this whole theory can be debunked in around 10 seconds. Unless you honestly believe that either:

A) Barack Obama's parents could see the future and planted birth announcements in the Honolulu newspapers in anticipation of this problem. Or..
B) Barack Obama travelled back in time and planted the announcements himself.

If either of those scenarios were true, there would be much more interesting questions raised than whether or not Obama was born in the United States. These questions would include, but are not limited to: Where did President Obama obtain a time machine? Is the gift of prophecy genetic, and if so, did Obama inherit it?

We get it. You don't like Obama. We don't either. But please focus on stuff he's actually done instead of fantasies.

(- promoted by Rocky Mountain Right -)

The U.S. House of Representatives finally released the text of the health care bill called ··America·s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009·· HR 3200 and it can now be read in its 1,018 page entirety. The bill's subtitle is " A Bill to provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes. All the bill's language was written to further this cause, i.e, to provide healthcare to everyone and to reduce the growth in spending. You can link to a pdf of the health care bill here.

Since the bill's public release, a lot of people have gotten fired up in support and in opposition to it. Each side has called the other liars, and worse. One part of the bill in particular has touched a nerve. That is Section 1233, ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION.

Although the section is only ten pages long, it is still hard to digest. Below is a condensed version of this Section with cites to page number and line number. In Section 1233, the person being consulted is an individual over 65 in the medicare program. The Consultant is called a "practitioner".

p. 428, l. 14-19 - A 'practitioner" is a physician, nurse practitioner or physician's assistant. The practitioner is the one who consults on Advanced Care Planning with the individual. There is nothing in the health care bill that states the consultation is voluntary.

p. 425, l. 17-21 - The practitioner first gives an explanation of and counsels on advance directives, living wills, durable powers of attorney and health care proxies.

p. 426, l. 4-8 - The practitioner then explains and counsels end-of-life services, palliative care where they ease pain without curing the underlying disease, hospice programs for meeting the physical needs of the terminally ill and the benefits for such services. The practitioner does not have to explain any drawbacks of these end-of-life services such as death itself.

P. 426, l. 9-16 - The practitioner finally explains the Order Regarding Life Sustaining Treatment and why it is beneficial to the individual and the individual's family. The practitioner does not have to explain any drawbacks of this Order such as death itself.

After the consultation is over, the individual is not involved with any further parts of the Advance Care Planning Consultation. In no part of the process is the individual required to sign anything or execute any planning documents.

p. 427, l. 10-25 - Having a consultation in and of itself, allows the practitioner to formulate an Order Regarding Life Sustaining Treatment without any further input from the individual. The Order just needs to be signed by a physician, nurse practitioner or physician's assistant to be in full force and effect. The Order is an actionable medical order designed to stay with the individual and to be followed by health care professionals for the remainder of the individual's care.

p. 430, l. 1-4 The only input from the individual for the formulation of the Order is that it communicate the individual's preferences regarding treatment. Since the individual doesn't have to sign anything or affirmatively state anything during the consultation, it is up to the practitioner to presume and interpret the individual's preferences.

p. 430, l. 13-24 The Order has the power to limit medical interventions, limit the use of antibiotics, limit nutrition and limit hydration. The Order can address whether an individual goes to the hospital or remains at a hospice or other nursing home.

So where does the language in the Order come from?

p. 428, l. 5-13 The Order is guided by a coalition of stakeholders including state hospice associations, home health association, etc. This is the section that has been decried as a "Death Panel" by Gov. Palin and others.

Since this house bill is written to reduce the growth of health care spending and people over 65 consume health care dollars at the end-of-life, it is pretty easy to see why Section 1233 was inserted into the health care bill.

Older Americans are not stupid. They can read and they can comprehend this health bill. No wonder so many older Americans are turning out in droves at town hall meetings. You would be angry too if the federal government was trying to kill you off.

If you want to vent, below are the phone numbers for our congress members and senators. Give them a buzz.

Dianna Degette - CD1 - 202-225-4431

Jared Polis - CD2 - 202-225-2161

John Salazar - CD3 - 202-225-4761

Betsy Markey - CD4 - 202-225-4676

Doug Lamborn - CD5- 202-225-4422

Mike Coffman - CD6 - 202-226-4623

Ed Perlmutter - CD7 - 202-225-2645

Mark Udall - Senate - 202-224-5941

Mike Bennett - Senate - 202-224-5852

Mike Robinson is Senior Partner at Robinson & Henry P.C., a Castle Rock, CO law firm.

While Gallup typically places Barack Obama's approval rating higher than some other firms due to their methodology, it is worth noting that in their state-by-state breakdown of the president's popularity that Colorado is among the lowest in the nation. Only seven states polled by Gallup ranked Obama lower than Colorado and all of those states are very solidly in the Republican column in presidential elections (Wyoming, Alaska, Utah, West Virginia, Idaho, Montana, and Oklahoma).

As Gallup notes:

North Dakota also gave Obama his highest approval rating of any state he did not carry in the 2008 presidential election. Obama's lowest approval rating in a state he won is Colorado's 55%.

Forget "diagnosis by videotape," welcome to "treatment by government decree." The latest odd talking point that an increasingly desparate Barack Obama is putting forward seems to be implying that the benevolonet bureaucracy will begin deciding the correct course of treatment for patients; all to save money by taking the decision away from our foolish doctors who might opt for a more expensive course of action without for a moment considering the government's wishes.

Ignoring for a moment the seemingly unintentional reference to The Matrix (Borrowing from the movie, the terms blue pill and red pill have become a popular metaphor for the choice between the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue) and embracing the sometimes painful, sometimes pleasant, truth of reality (red).),  it is refreshing at least that President Obama is finally beginning to admit that any health care reform package will result in quite a bit of nitpicking of patient treatments by government bureaucrats.

 Gallup has found that Americans think that physicians, hospitals and health policy scholars are more trustworthy advisers on health care insurance reforms than politicians and drug companies. Gallup’s findings are here.

I beg to differ.

When asked who they were confident in asking about the right thing for reforming the U.S. health care system (there is no system and we’re talking health insurance reform here), respondents expressed confidence in:

Doctors 73%; healthcare professors/researchers 62%; hospitals 61%; President Obama 58%; Democratic leaders in Congress 42%; pharmaceutical companies 35%; Republican leaders in Congress 34%.

No wonder GOP leaders aren’t getting any respect in the health insurance reform debate. They don’t know the topic and they’re lousy communicators.

All of the mentioned players in the health insurance reform debates have tremendous financial and political conflicts of interests. None should be given more credence nor trust than any of the others.

They all begin and end with their biases, which are created by their life’s experiences as well as their intellectual journeys and their financial interests and career ambitions.

Physicians want what’s best for their patients, but only after they are financially secure. They’re human. And while they are very smart and know medicine and health care politics, I’ve found that unless they leave medicine and focus on policy, business and health economics, many are quite naive and self-centered when it comes to health policy.

Health care professors and researchers tend to be more liberal than not. They focus on very narrow topics in health policy, just as physicians do in medicine. Their conflicts of interest are in the fact that they want to see the policies they advocate enacted so that they might get government jobs, speaking and consulting engagements and more fame within their specialities. Most have great intellectual integrity, but they have their conflicts of interests, biases and blind spots like everyone else.

Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are as conflicted as anyone else that has major financial interests in health policy. The CEOs of hospitals have been campaigning for national health insurance for a couple of decades now because they want the government to pay them for caring for the uninsured. Only last week, after the Senate started talking about cutting Medicare payments to hospitals did hospitals suddenly raise alarms about Obamacare.

The financial interests of makers and distributors of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and supplies are clear.

As for President Obama and Congressional leaders, you have to begin with the understanding that none of them really know much about health care, health insurance, health care economics or even health policy. What they know is what they’ve picked up on the fly and from personal encounters with insurers and providers. After writing about health policy for 33 years, I’m still learning, and it’s easy to see the gaps in the knowledge of our political leaders.

Thus, they depend on members of Congress like Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and their Republican counterparts. These are very ideological folks who’ve spent long careers debating health care and fighting for their ideas. They don’t listen to their opponents’ ideas unless they need the opponents’ votes. This year, Democrats think they can push their ideas through without support from Republicans, although the rising concerns about the costs of the Democrats’ proposals threw a scare into them last week.

So what about journalists and bloggers like me?

Some journalists have covered health policy for decades and have strong biases. I think all health care bloggers I read have strong opinions, which is why we blog.

The bottom line is that you have to learn what all the pros and cons of the many proposals are and make up your mind. Unfortunately, health policy is so complex that even those of us who try have a tough time keeping up and balancing all the risks and rewards. It’s tough to decide what the greater good is for the country as a whole, the economy and for us as patients.

Thus, it’s no wonder that only 22% of the people polled by the NY Times claimed that they are on top of the health care insurance reform debate. I’d bet it’s less than half that. We all make decisions with incomplete information, and the country is deciding about health policy with a lot less knowledge than is needed to make good decisions.

Such is politics. Indeed, that’s the way politicians and isssues advocates want people to decide. Such is democracy, but it’s better than any alternatives.

Sadly, the huge mistakes that Obama and Congress are making will be very difficult to fix, which is why the country needs a lot of time to debate and modify Obamacare, whatever it turns out to be.

In the depression era movie It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart runs a building and loan company that suffers a run on the bank. He tries to explain to a depositor that the depositor's money is tied up in another customer's home. Even back in the 30's, banks didn't sit on money. They moved it by loaning deposits to others and making an interest spread profit for their efforts.

Here in the 21st century, banks still don't sit on their money. Starting in 2000, a new method of doing banking business came to the forefront. Instead of loaning a customer money and keeping the loan in-house, banks started moving aggresively into packaging the loans and selling them off to others. In the housing market, this took the shape of private mortgage-backed securities. The federal government has had similar programs since Fannie Mae (FNMA) was started in 1938 but this packaging always stayed within the federal system.

When private securities sales took off, they really took off. A trade publication, The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) keeps the data of the total amount of mortgage-backed securities that are issued and sold to investors. The numbers for private mortgage-backed securities from 2000 to the present are pretty sobering. Take a look.

Click for the full article...

( - promoted by Rocky Mountain Right - )

You know, it feels good to be right sometimes. An AP article in today’s The Denver Post “Obama steadfast on stimulus” (http://www.denverpost.com/ci_12549572) shows Obama expressing disappointment in his government borrowing and spending program. An economic advisor for the VP is quoted as saying, “Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic.” 

Hey guv, at least the guy creating those signs has job security!

Obama bit off more than he could chew when he took the oath of office in January.  While he, the media, the Left and many disillusioned Americans preached Obama "the One" could bring international credibility back to America and bring rogue nations to the bargaining table many other Americans were shaking their heads.  The skeptics were right.  The One's disciples and supporters were wrong. Really, really wrong.  Reported in the New York Post.

AMERICA'S enemies smell blood and it's type "O."

All new administrations stumble a bit as they seek their footing. But President Obama's foreign-policy botches have set new records for instant incompetence.
...
Don't worry about the new administration's ideology. Worry about its terrifying naivete.

Consider a sampling of the goofs O and his crew have made in just two months...

Click here to read O's Foreign Failures. 

Some activists fed up with the Obama administration's policies of bailing out irresponsible behavior at the expense of everyone else are planning a Denver Tea Party. The event is slated at 10 AM on Friday on the West Steps of the capitol. They have a Facebook group created but are doing this on short notice as part of a nationwide push to hold these in major cities.

If you haven't seen it yet, here's CNBC reporter Rick Santelli's original call for a "Chicago Tea Party":

Most Americans agree with Santelli, Rasmussen Reports shows that the mortgage bailout plan is very unpopular:

Fifty-five percent (55%) of American adults say the federal government would be rewarding bad behavior by providing mortgage subsidies to financially troubled homeowners. Among investors, 65% hold that view.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that, among all adults, just 32% disagree.

MICHELLE MALKIN: Serving up roast pork.

SLAPSTICK POLITICS: El Presidente managed to get video of the event with audio you can actually hear, a task my camcorder was not up to in the high wind.

PPC: A plethora of photos from the event.

(- promoted by Rocky Mountain Right -)

We've all seen that President Obama will be signing the stimulus bill in Denver tomorrow. Over the weekend, we saw quotes from Obama and Ritter saying that this stimulus bill will turn the economy around. It will create between 3 and 3.5 million jobs. If the economy doesn't turn around on Wednesday, the day after the bill is signed, Obama and Ritter will have oversold the entire package.

According to an article in The Denver Post yesterday, "The Obama administration estimates the spending will create or save 60,000 jobs in [Colorado]." Even at the national level, House Democrats argued that spending on school construction was needed to create jobs. The problem is current businesses and employees will perform those government contracts. I would wager that very few local jobs will be created as a result of this renewable energy and transportation stimulus dollars.

I'm not sure how the Obama administration would quantify how many of these so-called 60,000 jobs will have been saved. I will guarantee that significantly less jobs will have been created.

Obama, Ritter and the Democratic leadership have sold this thing as the next dot-com boom. Jobs will be created, tax cuts will prevail and money will flow down Pennsylvania Avenue directly into taxpayer pockets fixing the Recession/Depression we're in.

Instead of the GOP saying this package won't work, they need to lower expectations for the American people. While we all hope that jobs will be created for those unemployed individuals, we need to say that a couple of them might be employed as a result of this spending. The fact is, this is an incredibly low swing of the business cycle. The economy has a significant shift it needs to make from a lagging credit market and other variables that can't be fixed with one wave of the magic pen from Obama.

The GOP needs to be honest with the people to explain what they wanted out of the stimulus bill and to be honest about what the actual bill will do. It will create a quick positive blip for the economy. A couple of jobs might be created, but those already with jobs will retain the bulk of the federal dollars and government contracts. The fact is times are tough and we still have a large hole to dig out. Sometimes families need a credit limit bump to help with the short term. At some point, they have to pay it back, and so will we.