The Front Page Cover
Featruring:
Judge Watson's Abominable Travel Ban Ruling
by David Limbaugh
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. Making Health Insurance Insurance Again
By Louis DeBroux: The release this week of the Congressional Budget Office's scoring of the GOP's liar-nObamaCare replacement bill brought on immediate condemnation, hyperventilation, and Chicken Little the-sky-is-falling theatrics from all the usual suspects in the Democrat Party and the Leftmedia (but we repeat ourselves).
According to the CBO, the GOP plan would reduce the deficit by several hundred billion dollars, but add 14 million to the ranks of the uninsured in 2018. Pretty horrible, right?
Not if we keep in mind the CBO's track record, which is not very good. By law, the CBO must score legislation statically (essentially net-zero formulations) rather than dynamically (factoring in human behavioral responses to economic changes). Unable to factor in human behavior, CBO projections are generally off by a wide margin.
In 2009, the CBO predicted liar-nObamaCare would cost taxpayers $900 billion over 10 years, but just two years later the projected costs had more than doubled. Likewise, the number of Americans added to the insurance rolls was a fraction of projections, and a sizeable chunk of those added were lumped into Medicaid, which is a taxpayer-funded welfare program, not insurance.
Lost in the discussion of premiums, enrollment rates, deductibles and so forth is the fact that liar-nObamaCare was never an insurance program. Rather, it was a quasi-socialist health payment program, a temporary bridge to what Democrats actually wanted — single-payer, government-run socialized health care. liar-nObamaCare was never intended to work; at least, not as it was sold to the stupid American people.
As summarized brilliantly by Robert Tracinski at The Federalist, "The point of insurance is not that healthy people pay for sick people. ... The point of health insurance is not to provide health care. The point is to hedge against financial risk. ... You still set aside a certain amount every month, as you do with savings, but you control for the short-term risk of needing your benefits before you have fully paid for them. Some people will pay premiums for only a few months before they need the benefits. Others will pay for decades without needing them. You accept this because you don't know ahead of time which one of those people you are going to be."
"But you can make calculations about which one of those people you are likely to be," Tracinski continues. "So you want your premiums to be correlated to your own level of risk and not just be a slush fund to be 'shared' with others, because that looks a whole lot like getting ripped off. If you find yourself required to pay extremely high premiums while you're still young and healthy and with a healthy lifestyle, and therefore with a very low risk of using much of your coverage, then you may well decide you're better off without insurance."
By definition, liar-nObamaCare can't be called insurance because it prohibited insurers from basing premiums on risk factors such as age, race (certain races have higher likelihoods of contracting certain diseases than others), lifestyle (smoking, drinking alcohol, and promiscuous sexual behavior all significantly increase health risks), etc. So a chain-smoking 50-year-old man could not be charged much more than a 23-year-old female triathlete. Insurers were also not allowed to deny coverage, or charge higher premiums, for those with pre-existing conditions.
This created a perverse incentive for both younger people who were unlikely to be sick and for people living an unhealthy lifestyle to go without insurance, knowing they could wait until they needed costly medical care before signing up. At worst they would have to pay a small penalty, which would be more than offset by the money saved from not paying monthly premiums for years.
Without cost being tied to risk, there was little incentive for people to be responsible and to sign up for insurance. In the end, the insurance companies, who salivated at the thought of government forcing everyone to buy their product, lost billions of dollars as they saw primarily sicker and older people signing up, without the young and healthy paying premiums to offset the costs.
That's why 18 of the 23 liar-nObamaCare co-ops have already gone bankrupt, and why major insurers are pulling out of markets left and right.
Fixing the failures of the health insurance market will require a return to free market principles. It will require insurance to be insurance, not a slush fund shoveling money from the young and healthy to the older and infirm. It means returning to a model where we pay for routine care out of pocket, and use insurance as it is meant to be used — namely, to deal with unforeseen, catastrophic health problems. How much would auto insurance cost if government required it to cover new tires, oil changes, and windshield wipers?
Real reform will require risk-based premiums, and addressing the issue of pre-existing conditions, which would be better addressed by moving those people into a high-risk pool subsidized by the states. That's welfare, not insurance, but it would make risk assessment more reality-based and lower overall costs.
It will require a firm spine and some political capital, but our leaders need to have a frank discussion with the American people and disabuse them of the notion of an eternal, cost-free gravy train. We are at $20 trillion in debt, and rising. Major entitlements are the primary drivers. We can either responsibly address the crisis now, or wait until the house of cards collapses. Prudence and wisdom dictates that we act now. ~The Patriot Post
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“One Of Smartest Guys” If Rogue Judges
Should Be Impeached
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ David Rifkin, a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who Lou Dobbs describes as “one of the smartest fellows in the country, joins him to discuss the two wildcat “so-called” judges who ruled against the second terrorist travel ban executive order... Mr. Rifkin is proof that being smart has nothing to do with your ability to coordinate your outfit for a television appearance. Rifkin is asked for his thoughts, replying, “They’ve gone rogue, they ruled in a way that’s contrary to the Constitution, which gives the two political branches, acting jointly as is case here, nearly absolute authority in this area, but more importantly than that, they also have actually gone rogue vis-a-vis the Supreme Court. They have completely ignored a body of precedent at the Supreme Court level that make it abundantly clear that this executive order should have been upheld, frankly, the first executive order should have been upheld. They didn’t even try to explain away those precedents, they just absolutely unbelievable behavior.”... http://rickwells.us/dobbs-asks-one-smartest-guys-rogue-judges-should-impeached/
Rounding Up and Locking Down George Soros
by Larry Usoff
{ipatriot.com} ~ Is there anything good that can be said about George Soros? Doing my research, it would appear that there isn’t. Not in my memory has there been a person so devoted to disruption, corruption, and perversion of the political kind as he is... Starting with his collaboration with the Nazis, aiding in the extermination of his fellow Jews and countrymen. Through his financial dealings, including “breaking the bank” of England, and manipulating the money of different countries, he has amassed a huge fortune and is one of the richest men in the world. Back in August of 2016, the business paper, Investors Business Daily, ran a piece about Soros and his non-profit organizations…groups that were actually front-men for liar-Hillary Clinton. The anti-Soros organization that investigated him dug up some interesting things too. In 2011, for example, Soros backed a group, “Extreme Polarization and Breakdown in Civil Discourse”, which was to conduct opposition reports translation: dig up dirt they could use on many conservative figures including Pamela Geller, David Horowitz and even the former Vice-President’s daughter Liz Cheney. This information or dirt was then given to another Soros group, the Center for American Progress(CAP) for action. Now, if that wasn’t enough, CAP was founded by…wait for it…John Podesta, who was at the time liar-Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager! One last tidbit and then we’ll move along... http://ipatriot.com/rounding-locking-george-soros/
.Rush Limbaugh Reveals Michelle
As A Liar And A Fraud
{conservativeworlddaily.com} ~ During the presidential campaign, Michelle liar-nObama had some harsh words for Donald Trump, and made her support for liar-Hillary Clinton quite clear. The Political Tribune reports that Rush Limbaugh has some choice words for the former First Lady... One of Michelle’s worst comments about Trump was that he was a man who “brags” and that she didn’t care for his “locker room talk.” Limbaugh says that Michelle is a liar. According to the Tribune, he reminds us that she failed to mention all the times she invited rappers to the White House. Rappers, who consistently degrade women in the most horrific ways possible with their dirty, violent, misogynistic lyrics...
.Unvetted “Refugee”
Sleeper Cells Imported At Night...
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ The woman in the video is not introduced but that may have been by choice for her own protection, given the nature of the information she exposes regarding terrorist importation into America... She’s been sitting in on many of the required meetings held by the UN refugee resettlement invasion industry and is blasting the alarm sirens. This is the invasion that President Trump attempted to protect us from through his executive orders. It’s also because it is a blatant violation of our sovereignty and an effort to plant foreign forces within our borders that the enemy forces, those led by Hussein liar-nObama and George Soros, are so willing to violate the law through judicial activism in broad daylight. They want their foot soldiers for the jihad in place and this is how they’re doing it... http://rickwells.us/unvetted-refugee-sleeper-cells-imported-night-given-social-security-us-passports/
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Trump Delivers Documented Evidence of
liar-nObama Wiretaps To House Panel
by MIchael DePinto
{freedomoutpost.com} ~ At this point in time, the public does not yet know the contents of the documents delivered by President Trump’s DOJ to the House Intelligence Committee regarding the wiretapping incident... but presumably since the documents were sent by Trump’s team, it stands to reason that whatever was delivered to the House Intelligence Committee was in favor of Trump's claims, not the other way around. Throughout his time in office, Barack liar-nObama associated with many political operatives who were real lowlifes, and who often walked a tightrope between the world of what was considered legal behavior (however, unethical), and what was considered criminal behavior. There’s an old saying I'm sure you're familiar with that goes: Are we about to learn next week that liar-nObama got a haircut, and we’re all going to find out? In the video below, Right Wing News breaks down the recent report from Young Conservatives, and compares it with an earlier report from Doug Hagmann of the Canada Free Press. Did liar-nObama finally go to far this time? Let's hope so. It's long overdue!... http://freedomoutpost.com/trump-delivers-documented-evidence-of-obama-wiretaps-to-house-panel/
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Judge Watson's Abominable Travel Ban Ruling
by David Limbaugh
{townhall.com} ~ Anyone who understands the modern left could not be shocked by U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson's issuance of a temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump's executively invoked travel ban -- but that doesn't make the order any less outrageous.
The ruling was not just an exercise in judicial tyranny, as many have commented, but an act of jurisprudential nihilism and anarchy. Courts are not policymaking bodies but judicial tribunals that decide actual disputes on the basis of the facts and the law.
For decades, the courts have arrogated to themselves the power to act outside their constitutional authority by usurping the legislative function of writing and rewriting, rather than interpreting, laws and adjudicating their constitutionality.
Judicial activism overwhelmingly comes from left-wing judges, many of whom see their role as advancing a progressive policy agenda and exhibit little respect for the Constitution and rule of law when they might interfere with that agenda.
When President Trump issued his original travel ban, it was wholly predictable that some court would attempt to nullify it. In that case, its job was made easier by the arguable clumsiness of the rollout, even though most honest commentators believed that the underlying order passed constitutional muster.
Phony critics pretended the ban was stricken only because it was illegally crafted and opined that had Trump used greater care in composing the order, he would have faced no judicial obstacles. Others recognized this as a convenient excuse and said Trump would not be able to circumvent judicial obstruction merely by drafting a more precise order.
Alas, when the president issued a new order, it suffered the same fate as the first. Once a plaintiff was recruited for the cause, it wasn't hard to find a court to eradicate Trump Travel Ban 2.0.
What was less predictable, though, was the transparent speciousness of the court's reasoning in striking down Trump's lawful order. A self-respecting judge would be embarrassed by this sophistry, unless he derived his professional self-concept from his devotion to political causes through bastardization of his sworn judicial oath.
Chief Justice John Marshall, in establishing the judiciary's prerogative of judicial review in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, said, "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." He did not say, "The judiciary is superior to the legislative and executive branches, and accordingly, we have the right to just make stuff up."
Yet that's precisely what Judge Watson did. He issued the temporary restraining order mainly because the executive order purportedly violated the establishment clause, which Watson reduced to this formulation: "The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another." But even Watson admitted it is undisputed that the order "does not facially discriminate for or against any particular religion, or for or against religion versus non-religion." So it's not Trump's executive order that arguably violates the establishment clause; it's his alleged intent behind the order, which Trump supposedly revealed in his statements during the presidential campaign and otherwise concerning Muslims.
The judge says that to determine whether the order violates this clause, a court must apply the three-part "Lemon test." To show it has not run afoul of the clause, the government action must satisfy all three prongs of the test: 1) It must have a primary secular purpose. 2) It may not have the principal effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. 3) It may not foster excessive entanglement with religion.
Watson concluded that the order fails the first test -- the "secular purpose" prong -- so a court wouldn't even have to consider the other two tests. But it is painfully obvious that the primary purpose of Trump's executive order is secular; he has exercised his sovereign duty to protect Americans and America's national security interests. It is laughable and outrageous to suggest there was any other purpose -- much less a religiously discriminatory purpose -- to invoke the order.
On Page 32 of his 43-page screed, Watson cited the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that "official action that targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment cannot be shielded by mere compliance with the requirement of facial neutrality."
But nothing in the order targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment! The order doesn't address any aspect of Muslim religious conduct, unless Watson was arguing that terrorism is protected religious conduct. The ban applies to just six nations whose entrants are believed to present a higher risk of harm to the United States. This is not about religion but about national security. The five pillars of Islam are wholly unthreatened by Trump's order.
Particularly disingenuous was Watson's statement, on Page 36, that "any reasonable, objective observer would conclude ... that the stated secular purpose of the Executive Order is, at the very least, 'secondary to a religious objective' of temporarily suspending the entry of Muslims." This is astonishing, even for a radical jurist. No reasonable person -- apart from a mixed-up, virtue-signaling leftist -- would conclude that the stated secular purpose is secondary. If you're going to consider Trump's statements, he is nothing if not a national security hawk. Moreover, Americans who voted for him based on national security concerns see this order as a national security imperative. They know, even if pointy-headed leftist judges do not, that presidents have a duty to protect the United States and that the greatest threat to its national security presently is from terrorists. I repeat: There is no religious objective to this order at all, much less a primary one. It doesn't apply just to Muslims, and it doesn't "target religious conduct" of Muslims.
On top of all this, Watson conceded that to issue the temporary restraining order, he had to determine that the plaintiffs had met their burden of establishing a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their claim, yet he never explained how there is a small likelihood, much less a strong likelihood, of success, especially considering that this would be, according to liberal Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a case of first impression.
The judge has written 43 pages of words -- just words -- designed to obfuscate the issue and justify the unjustifiable judicial usurpation of the sovereign power of the executive branch over national security.
This will not stand. Watson's order cannot stand.
The ruling was not just an exercise in judicial tyranny, as many have commented, but an act of jurisprudential nihilism and anarchy. Courts are not policymaking bodies but judicial tribunals that decide actual disputes on the basis of the facts and the law.
For decades, the courts have arrogated to themselves the power to act outside their constitutional authority by usurping the legislative function of writing and rewriting, rather than interpreting, laws and adjudicating their constitutionality.
Judicial activism overwhelmingly comes from left-wing judges, many of whom see their role as advancing a progressive policy agenda and exhibit little respect for the Constitution and rule of law when they might interfere with that agenda.
When President Trump issued his original travel ban, it was wholly predictable that some court would attempt to nullify it. In that case, its job was made easier by the arguable clumsiness of the rollout, even though most honest commentators believed that the underlying order passed constitutional muster.
Phony critics pretended the ban was stricken only because it was illegally crafted and opined that had Trump used greater care in composing the order, he would have faced no judicial obstacles. Others recognized this as a convenient excuse and said Trump would not be able to circumvent judicial obstruction merely by drafting a more precise order.
Alas, when the president issued a new order, it suffered the same fate as the first. Once a plaintiff was recruited for the cause, it wasn't hard to find a court to eradicate Trump Travel Ban 2.0.
What was less predictable, though, was the transparent speciousness of the court's reasoning in striking down Trump's lawful order. A self-respecting judge would be embarrassed by this sophistry, unless he derived his professional self-concept from his devotion to political causes through bastardization of his sworn judicial oath.
Chief Justice John Marshall, in establishing the judiciary's prerogative of judicial review in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, said, "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." He did not say, "The judiciary is superior to the legislative and executive branches, and accordingly, we have the right to just make stuff up."
Yet that's precisely what Judge Watson did. He issued the temporary restraining order mainly because the executive order purportedly violated the establishment clause, which Watson reduced to this formulation: "The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another." But even Watson admitted it is undisputed that the order "does not facially discriminate for or against any particular religion, or for or against religion versus non-religion." So it's not Trump's executive order that arguably violates the establishment clause; it's his alleged intent behind the order, which Trump supposedly revealed in his statements during the presidential campaign and otherwise concerning Muslims.
The judge says that to determine whether the order violates this clause, a court must apply the three-part "Lemon test." To show it has not run afoul of the clause, the government action must satisfy all three prongs of the test: 1) It must have a primary secular purpose. 2) It may not have the principal effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. 3) It may not foster excessive entanglement with religion.
Watson concluded that the order fails the first test -- the "secular purpose" prong -- so a court wouldn't even have to consider the other two tests. But it is painfully obvious that the primary purpose of Trump's executive order is secular; he has exercised his sovereign duty to protect Americans and America's national security interests. It is laughable and outrageous to suggest there was any other purpose -- much less a religiously discriminatory purpose -- to invoke the order.
On Page 32 of his 43-page screed, Watson cited the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that "official action that targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment cannot be shielded by mere compliance with the requirement of facial neutrality."
But nothing in the order targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment! The order doesn't address any aspect of Muslim religious conduct, unless Watson was arguing that terrorism is protected religious conduct. The ban applies to just six nations whose entrants are believed to present a higher risk of harm to the United States. This is not about religion but about national security. The five pillars of Islam are wholly unthreatened by Trump's order.
Particularly disingenuous was Watson's statement, on Page 36, that "any reasonable, objective observer would conclude ... that the stated secular purpose of the Executive Order is, at the very least, 'secondary to a religious objective' of temporarily suspending the entry of Muslims." This is astonishing, even for a radical jurist. No reasonable person -- apart from a mixed-up, virtue-signaling leftist -- would conclude that the stated secular purpose is secondary. If you're going to consider Trump's statements, he is nothing if not a national security hawk. Moreover, Americans who voted for him based on national security concerns see this order as a national security imperative. They know, even if pointy-headed leftist judges do not, that presidents have a duty to protect the United States and that the greatest threat to its national security presently is from terrorists. I repeat: There is no religious objective to this order at all, much less a primary one. It doesn't apply just to Muslims, and it doesn't "target religious conduct" of Muslims.
On top of all this, Watson conceded that to issue the temporary restraining order, he had to determine that the plaintiffs had met their burden of establishing a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their claim, yet he never explained how there is a small likelihood, much less a strong likelihood, of success, especially considering that this would be, according to liberal Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a case of first impression.
The judge has written 43 pages of words -- just words -- designed to obfuscate the issue and justify the unjustifiable judicial usurpation of the sovereign power of the executive branch over national security.
This will not stand. Watson's order cannot stand.
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