Tag: Heritage Foundation

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Rick Santorum is out, bloodied and bruised by Mitt Romney’s onslaught of negative campaign ads. Mitt is the presumed heir apparent. The Obama campaign machine has already begun to focus their attacks on Romney. The problem for voters, there is little light between them on policy.

By his own admission, Barack Obama has embraced conservative ideas and policies, some that are straight out of the Heritage Foundation. In his article chastising the Obama DOJ for siding with corporately owned prisons on strip searches, Glenn Greenwald out the facts about Obama’s neo-con policies:

In a speech to the Associated Press today, President Obama boasted that his signature domestic policies were basically conservative (he labeled them “centrist”): his individual mandate, he said, was pioneered by conservatives and the Heritage Foundation; his cap-and-trade policy was first proposed by Bush 41; federal spending is lower now than it was during any year of the Reagan administration, etc. Even the successes most touted by his supporters – the Detroit bailout, TARP, the withdrawal from Iraq – were started by Bush 43. Obama’s foreign policy and civil liberties assaults also, of course, were largely shared by his predecessor and are frequently praised by the Right.

Dick Cheney has been especially pleased with Obama’s covering up war crimes and prosecuting more whistle blowers than any other president under the Espionage Act, letting the criminals walk free.

Up with Chris: With the election in sight, Obama directs attacks at Romney

The Up w/ Chris Hayes panel of Newsweek/Daily Beast contributor Michelle Goldberg, The Nation.com editor Richard Kim, playwright and author Esther Armah, and MSNBC Political Analyst Jonathan Alter, weigh in on how they expect the president to frame his campaign message against Romney.

The next seven months are going to be nauseatingly boring. The four years after that are going to be even worse no matter which of the two candidates for president is elected.  

Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points”.

Talking Points: Taxpayer Tea Party   [the Bullet point version, pdf]

Americans for Prosperity — April 2009

— Stop the handouts to Wall Street.

— Stop the Federal Reserve’s printing press

— Stop the federal bailouts that pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

— Stop exploding the national debt, which will crush our children and grandchildren.

— The grassroots MUST take action in order to achieve these goals.

Federal Spending

The Obama Budget

Endless Government Bailouts

IRS History and Horror Stories

Who’s behind the baggers?

Americans for Prosperity Foundation — an organization that David Koch started, in 2004

Koch who?

And you thought the Teabaggers were being “run” by the Beckster …

Building on the President’s Health Care Agenda

The President’s vision is the right one, […] Congress should enact specific policy changes that are consis­tent with that vision and that would fulfill its promises. However, Congress should be bolder than the White House and broaden the scope of change well beyond the President’s specific policy recommendations by:

— Expanding the proposed tax provisions to cover all health plans, not just HSA-qualified plans;

— Encouraging health insurance portability through individual ownership, a defined-contribution system, and establishment of a consumer-based “health exchange” marketplace; and

— Transforming the health care market into a more consumer-based system in which individuals are empowered to take direct control of their health care decisions.

http://www.heritage.org/Resear…

Nina Owcharenko, 05/11/06

That is the advice from the Conservative Think-Tank — the Heritage Foundation!

AND the President they are talking about — is George W. Bush!

SO … a Health Exchange Marketplace = Marxist Socialism ???

Oh Really!?

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Very rarely does Rachel Maddow lose her temper. Rather, she usually engages even the worst issues with a snarky, cheerful grin, but if you see the look on her face at the end of this segment you will see the burning rage that I have a LOT of trouble surpressing, especially on topics such as these.

    Behold the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of America’s Pro-SLAVERY capitalist status quo, courtesy of the wit and brilliance of Rachel Maddow.

    Partial transcript and commentary below the fold.

One Hundred Twenty Million Americans Will Lose Their Insurance! The words drip from the mouths of the GOP in their opposition to the public option. Of course it’s all bunk, but the details behind the Lewin Group which produced these numbers are worse.

First Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) released a rebuttal of the Lewin Group study, revealing that the Heritage Foundation paid for study and that UnitedHealthCare owns the Lewin Group(PDF).

Then came a doozy from the Washington Post:

[T]he Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary that was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association, a physician’s group, of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data. Ingenix supplied its parent company and other insurers with data that allegedly understated the “usual and customary” doctor fees that insurers use to determine how much they will reimburse consumers for out-of-network care.

In January, UnitedHealth agreed to a $50 million settlement with the New York attorney general and a $350 million settlement with the AMA, covering conduct going back as far as 1994.