Obama's Plan Taxes the Sick

Faced with a need to scrounge for revenue to fund his plan for health care, President Barack Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus have come up with a brilliant new idea: Tax the sick!

In a new amendment to the health care bill, they propose to limit the deductibility of medical expenses on income taxes.
Now, taxpayers may deduct any medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of their Adjusted Gross Income.  

Obama and Baucus want to raise that threshold to 10% as long as the taxpayer is under 65.
Eight million Americans are sick enough and poor enough that they have to pay more than 7.5% of their income in medical expenses. And it is these folks that the liberals Obama and Baucus plan to tax! Six million of them earn less than $75,000 a year!
For a family earning $75,000 a year and facing out-of-pocket medical bills of $7, 500, this proposal would cost them about $600 a year in extra taxes.

And let’s remember who it is that they are taxing. This proposal affects people whose incomes are so limited and whose medical costs are so high that they exceed 7.5% of their pre-tax income.
Their proposal literally hopes to raise $20 billion over ten years by taxing sick people.

The Democrats defend their proposal by saying that it would discourage health care spending. But nobody deliberately spends 7.5% of their income on medical costs unless they are pretty sick and needy.

Obama and Baucus have singled out the sickest among the middle class for this heinous tax. (The poor will not have to pay it because they are eligible for Medicaid). Originally, the Democrats continued their war on the elderly by proposing to tax everyone who spends more than the 7.5% threshold on medical costs. But they retreated when it became clear that six million elderly would be hit with the tax. Now they just sock it to eight million sic k, middle income Americans.

This tax, and their desire to cut Medicare and Medicaid by $500 billion, makes Obama and Baucus unlike any Democrats I have ever known. Democrats, at least when I worked for Clinton, defended the elderly and the sick rather than cut the former and tax the latter.

by Dick Morris

Michelle Obama on Sesame Street

Beijing Olympics

Let's wheeze our way to Beijing by way (historically) of France and Greece.

This is episode, No. 2343 from Engines of Our Ingenuity.

Media coverage of the Beijing Olympics seems more about athletes -- not records -- that will fall. Cars, construction and coal-burning factories cast a permanent and leaden shroud over this city of twelve million. Particulate matter, not athletic matters, is on everyone's mind because it will be in everyone's lungs. The American trainer has told his athletes to wear masks from the airport to the starting line.

This is a funny business: you see, the modern Olympics were meant to cure the ills that overwhelm Beijing. This, at least, was the hope of the Olympics founder, Pierre de Coubertin. Coubertin was the child of an aristocratic Parisian family. In the wake of France's many revolutions Coubertin's noble family became as irrelevant as, well, ancient Greek.

As it turned out, ancient Greek -- specifically the ancient Greek Olympics -- would be Coubertin's and France's salvation.

The young aristocrat spent his youth fencing, boxing and riding horses. But Coubertin then visited England in 1883 and had a vision. He toured Rugby and Eton, on whose playing fields Waterloo had been won. What if France had had its own playing fields, Coubertin wondered? Would it have lost at Waterloo? Or been humiliated in its war with Germany in 1870? Couldn't organized sports remake France's martial spirit?

In fact, couldn't it also counter the ills of industrialization and urbanization that were transforming France and sickening its citizens? Coubertin decided to rejuvenate a pallid and puny France. His aim was to put "color in the cheeks of a solitary and confined youth, toughen his body and character by sport." Coubertin quickly discovered that the lack of green spaces was matched by the state's lack of interest. Many officials even believed physical competition was elitist.

But Coubertin persisted. The turning point was a meeting he organized in Paris in 1894, where representatives from thirteen countries agreed to revive the ancient Olympics. Coubertin was overjoyed: he believed the resurrected Olympics would make the world more peaceful. He also thought they would offer a healthy and pure ideal to a world swept by mass industrialization, mass entertainment, and mass consumption.

And so, the Olympics were reborn in 1896. But what about Coubertin's dreams? Some might say they were stillborn; WWI certainly buried his internationalist hopes. And the ills of modernization have not gone away. Look at China, overwhelmed by the same problems that plagued 19th century Europe, but at a vastly greater scale. In 2002, there were 25,000 premature deaths in Beijing alone due to particulate matter. In comparison, Coubertin's goal of putting color back in youthful cheeks seems positively quaint. Less quaint is the prospect of athletes running and jumping with asthma inhalers at hand.

Yet, the perseverance of these athletes reflects Coubertin's own doggedness on behalf of an ideal that, though battered, still inspires. Let the games begin!

---

E. Weber, My France: Politics, Culture and Myth. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

Jesse Owens, victor at Hitler's 1936 Olympics (internationalism ensnared). Both images courtesy of Wikipedia.

As Goes California. . . ?

This is a post from a blog that I frequent. "Jamin" is a homeschooling Mom. She has put together an article that is jam packed with information about this very important current event.

The direct link to her blog is at the end of this post. Here is her complete article:

I looked and looked to try to find out where the saying "Where goes California, there goes the rest of the country." But, I couldn't find it. It does come to mind though with the recent news about homeschooling in California. I doubt there is a homeschooler in America who has not heard what happened last week in California. For anyone who doesn't know what is going on a California Court of Appeal recently decided that homeschooling is illegal in California unless a parent is a certified teacher. Right now more than 166,000 families are homeschooling illegally in California!

I have said it before and I'll say it again...I left my heart in California! I LOVE California! (If the cost of living didn't run our family out of the State I would still be there!) Leaving California was the biggest sacrifice I have made to be able to homeschool my kids. With all that said I can tell you the homeschool atmosphere in California has never been a friendly one. We started out homeschooling in California and homeschooled there a total of 5 years. I was amazed when we left California how much easier it was to homeschool in another State. (I am now homeschooling in my 3rd State and there is no comparison to what it is like in California.)

I can only speak for myself but I thought I would share a little of what it was like to homeschool in a less than friendly State. When we lived in California I was very hesitant to be out of the house during "school" hours. We didn't tell people we didn't know that we homeschooled. We loved our house because it was very private and our kids could be outside all day and no one would ever know they were there. I did not allow my kids to answer the phone or the door during school hours. I did not take my kids to the doctor or for haircuts during "school" hours. We didn't go shopping, out to lunch or anything else that would draw attention to ourselves. The only thing we did during the week was Bible Study at church (Which had a lot of homeschoolers.) If we went on field trips we went with a large group of other homeschoolers so we looked like a school group.

So why is it like this? (This is only my opinion.) The main reason I feel is because California has never dealt with getting homeschool laws in the State. Homeschooling has NEVER been legal in California! To educate your children at home each family had to set up a private school in their home. Yep, you heard me right! Each year we had to fill our an affidavit that we were operating a private school and would follow all the rules that governed private schools. Oddly enough, there are not that many things you had to do! Basically what was required was to fill out the affidavit, keep roll each day, and keep each child's immunization records on file. There was no required amount of hours you had to teach. There was no required curriculum. The only requirement was that you had something like 20 minutes of P.E. every 3 days. (I may be quoting that wrong, It has been 4 years since we left.) You did not have to be a credentialed teacher. Once all these requirements were met you were considered a Private Home Educator. If you called the school system and asked about homeschooling you would be told it was illegal. Several years when we received the paperwork to fill out our affidavits there was a cover letter attached telling everyone that homeschooling was illegal in California. Not very comforting!

The one thing I DON'T miss about California is the homeschool laws.

With all this said let me get back to my opening sentence. "Where goes California, there goes the rest of the country." I am sure there are a lot of people reading this thinking "I live thousands of miles from California, how can this effect me?" The thing to remember is that 1 out of 3 people in America live in California! This State has a LOT of influence over our Country! If the laws in California become even more hostile towards homeschooling then a presidence has been set for the whole Country. This also hits the news and suddenly your neighbor who has never known anyone but you who homeschools just has in the back of their mind that it's illegal....It is not a good idea to place in peoples heads!

Please don't think I am trying to scare anyone. I am just pointing out that we as a group cannot become complacent. Homeschooling for most of us is NOT under fire. But together we are much stronger. (United we stand, divided we fall.) I have seen this coming for years. (Really I have, you can ask my friend Faye! We have discussed it many times. LOL) I knew that at some point homeschoolers in California would have to deal with the fact that they were homeschooling around the laws.

Thank God for HSLDA! They are on the ball and they will not let this slide. In case you didn't know YOU can help. Please visit the HSLDA site and sign the petition to request Depublishing of California Court Case In re Rachel L. This is really much more than a homeschooling concern. This should be a concern for any person who wants parents in America to retain their parental rights.

If you want to learn more about this you can click HERE to read the information page about the court case at the HSLDA website. You can read the court opinion HERE. HERE you can read HSLDA's response to the courts ruling. HERE you can listen to the Focus on the Family broadcast on the case.

Please do take a moment to sign the petition. Also, and maybe even more importantly, please join me in praying for our fellow homeschoolers in California.

There is one ray of hope in the situation...Governor Schwarzenegger has vowed to protect homeschooling in California. You can read about it HERE.

LONG LIVE HOMESCHOOLING!

Just Call Me Jamin!

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jaminacema