Thursday, September 27, 2012

Obama Voter Says Vote for Obama because he gives a free Phone

This is not made up, this is what our country has become. Please, let's stop this madness and vote for Romney who will end the madness!



Remember this right after Obama's election:


Also this video from a couple of years ago:


And this video from the progressive Bill Maher: I am Barack O'bama and I approve these videos ....

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Health Premiums Up $3,000; Obama Vowed $2,500 Cut



During his first run for president, Barack Obama made one very specific promise to voters: He would cut health insurance premiums for families by $2,500, and do so in his first term.
But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama's vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey.
Premiums for employer-provided family coverage rose $3,065 — 24% — from 2008 to 2012, the Kaiser survey found. Even if you start counting in 2009, premiums have climbed $2,370.
What's more, premiums climbed faster in Obama's four years than they did in the previous four under President Bush, the survey data show.
There's no question about what Obama was promising the country, since he repeated it constantly during his 2008 campaign.
In a debate with Sen. John McCain, for example, Obama said "the only thing we're going to try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed onto you. And we estimate we can cut the average family's premium by about $2,500 per year."
At a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio, in February 2008, Obama promised that "We are going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2,500. We will not wait 20 years from now to do it, or 10 years from now to do it. We will do it by the end of my first term as president."

2008 Promises, 2012 Reality
To back that up, Obama pointed to a memo drafted by Harvard professors (and unpaid campaign advisers), which claimed that investing in health care IT, cutting administrative bloat, and improving management of chronic diseases would cut health costs by $140 billion a year. That would translate into $2,500 in premium savings for families.
But those projections were wildly optimistic, overestimating potential savings from IT, making big assumptions about disease management, and ignoring the fact that past government interventions have always increased health care administrative costs.
Meanwhile, the health reform law Obama signed in March 2010 has pushed up insurance costs.
In 2011, premiums spiked 9.5%, and many in the industry blame ObamaCare for at least part of it. Premiums climbed another 4.5% in 2012, Kaiser found.
And ObamaCare will continue to fuel health premium inflation.
First, the law piles on new coverage mandates. It requires insurance companies to provide 100% coverage for various types of preventive care, bans lifetime coverage limits, extends parents' coverage to offspring up to 26 years old, and requires plans to meet certain "medical loss ratios." Coming up are rules on "essential standard benefits," limits on deductibles, bans on annual spending caps, and much more.
The experience with state mandates show that they only tend to grow over time, and get more expensive. The Council for Affordable Health Insurance found more than 2,200 state benefit mandates, which add from 10% to 50% to the cost of coverage.
"One of the biggest cost drivers in our health care system is the steady proliferation of federal and state-based coverage mandates," noted CAHI's Victoria Craig Bunce.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare's insurance reforms — guaranteed issue and community rating — will likely raise premiums, too.

State Experiments
States that have tried these reforms — which forbid insurers from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions or charging the sick more — have seen insurance premiums spiral upward as healthy people leave the market, knowing they are guaranteed coverage when they get sick.
"Premium rates tended to increase, sometimes dramatically" in the eight states that tried these reforms, according to a study by Milliman, a health care consulting group.
The law's backers claim the individual mandate will prevent these rate hikes, because it requires everyone to buy insur ance. But experts say millions will still refuse to buy coverage and pay the fine instead.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Gruber — who helped design ObamaCare — found that the law will hike individual market premiums in three states by as much as 30%. The Congressional Budget Office said ObamaCare would push them "about 10% to 13% higher in 2016."
Supporters say people will be getting more generous coverage for those higher prices, and that tax subsidies will offset higher cost for many of these families. But that will be small comfort to those forced to pay more.
Perhaps the best evidence that ObamaCare won't bring costs down is a report published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine and signed by nearly two dozen leading health economists and policy experts — some of whom worked for the Obama administration. The report warns that "health costs remain a major challenge" and calls for a "systematic approach" to get spending under control.
One thing that isn't on their list of proposals: Scrapping Obama-Care and starting over.



Wednesday, September 19, 2012

We can thank Obama for this too ....Alpha closing 8 mines, cutting 1,200 jobs in all


This is what Obama said:



And this is what is happened in numerous states:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- Coal producer Alpha Natural Resources said Tuesday it was cutting production by 16 million tons and eliminating 1,200 jobs companywide, laying off 400 workers immediately by closing mines in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The mine shutdowns start Tuesday, while the rest of the layoffs will be completed by the end of the first quarter after Alpha fulfills current sales obligations, Chief Executive Officer Kevin Crutchfield said. In all, the layoffs amount to nearly a tenth of Alpha's 13,000-person workforce.
Alpha said it was closing four mines in West Virginia, three in Virginia and one in Pennsylvania. They are a mix of deep and surface mines, and all are non-union operations.
Company spokesman Ted Pile said most of the displaced workers may eventually be rehired, either assigned to new jobs in other locations or replacing outside contractors. Only 150 workers in West Virginia and three in Pennsylvania will not have any other employment opportunities with the company, he said.
Though some miners will stay on to seal the operations, most will either be reassigned or laid off immediately.
Support positions will also be cut proportionally as Alpha reduces its operating regions from four to two, Crutchfield said, and two executives will retire Nov. 1.
It wasn't immediately what other states would be affected by the still looming layoffs.
Crutchfield said the shutdowns and layoffs are a necessary part of ensuring Alpha survives in what has become a difficult U.S. market, where coal companies face a dual challenge: Power plants are shifting to cheap, abundant natural gas, while companies like his face "a regulatory environment that's aggressively aimed at constraining the use of coal."
The affected West Virginia operations are the Alloy deep mine near Powellton, the Alloy surface mine near Boomer, the Premium highwall mine near Gilbert and the White Flame Surface Mine near Wharncliffe. The Virginia mines are Guest Mountain deep mines No. 8 and No. 9 near Norton, and the Twin Star Surface Mine near Hurley. In Pennsylvania, Alpha will close its Dora deep mine in Jefferson County.
Bristol, Va.-based Alpha will cut production 16 million tons by early 2013 and reduce overhead by $150 million as it shifts away from thermal coal used in domestic power generation to concentrate on metallurgical coal used in steelmaking overseas.
Globally, "there remains a structural undersupply" of metallurgical coal, Crutchfield said, and Alpha expects to see demand grow by more than 100 million tons by the end of the decade.
Alpha's $7.1 billion acquisition of Massey Energy helped create "one of the most valuable met coal franchises in the world," Crutchfield said, effectively doubling its production potential. It has 25 million to 30 million tons of export capacity through the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, giving it the ability to scale up exports quickly, he said.
About 40 percent of Alpha's production cuts will come from high-cost eastern mines "that are unlikely to be competitive for the foreseeable future," Crutchfield said, while about half will occur in the Powder River Basin, the largest coal-producing region in the U.S. The basin is located in northeast Wyoming.
Alpha's Wyoming operations, Alpha Coal West, consist of the Eagle Butte and Belle Ayre surface coal mines. Together, the mines have about 650 employees and produce about 50 million tons of coal a year, according to the Wyoming Mining Association. The number of layoffs that might occur there was unclear.
"We're still trying to figure out, with the reduction in production, what our operations will look like," said Mike Lepchitz, spokesman for the Belle Ayre Mine.
Crutchfield said "the elimination of jobs on this scale is something I take very seriously."
"Unfortunately," he said, "we think we have to do it to set the company on the right foot going forward."
In the long run, the new strategy will create a leaner, more agile company that can readily adapt to changing market circumstances, he said.
Politicians - mostly Republican - across the coalfields were quick to pounce on the announcement as further evidence that President Barack Obama's administration is waging a "war on coal" through new air-pollution standards, but many U.S. power companies have long planned to close or convert some of their aging, inefficient coal-fired plants.
"A group of government bureaucrats have decided the coal industry isn't something that they like, so they're going to try to force it out of business," said U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va. "This is appalling and it must stop."
In West Virginia, fellow Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito said her constituents want to stay in their home state and raise their families, "but the president's extreme policies are cripplingly entire towns and making it harder for workers to find jobs."
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration said the number of mining jobs in West Virginia fell by about 1,300 in the second quarter as other coal companies laid off workers and idled operations or shifted resources.
Chris Hamilton, vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said layoffs are likely to continue through the end of the year and into the first quarter as operators struggle with both regulations and the loss of traditional customers such as power plants.
"There's no sign of that easing up anytime soon," he said. "We're clearly on the valley floor here of the cyclic nature of the industry."

By the Associated Press

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Monday, September 17, 2012

Kid, I know how you feel


Seriously Yard Sale For Obama. What next, the poor to sell their blood for him?

Our glorious leader wants us to sell stuff for him ... I am not kidding! What an ego on these people. What next, the poor to sell their blood for him? This goes with sending wedding money to Obama and that is true!