Dr. Ben Carson - Obama's Charm Offensive

"As we allow the Government to take more and more of our money, all it does is fuel their growth."
Dr. Benjamin Carson

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PJTV Trifecta - Trifecta Feels Your Pain - So Why Can't GOP Leaders?

Liberals and conservatives believe in compassion. So why do conservatives seem unable to craft a compassionate message? Have Republicans adopted esoteric policies that help the rich and forget the plight of families and the middle class? Has the GOP lost sight of basic values like liberty? Find out on this Trifecta.

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Americans for Prosperity - The Medicaid Funding Scam

Medicaid is a complex and burdensome system, covering 55 million low-income individuals, and costing taxpayers $400 billion per year. Find out how states work with providers to fleece federal taxpayers by using "provider taxes" as an excuse to increase funding.

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Star Parker - More Republican Governors Drink Medicaid Kool-Aid

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has become the eighth Republican governor to agree to expand Medicaid coverage in his state under the provisions of Obamacare.

Is the last line of Republican resistance to Obamacare disintegrating?

In 2011, 26 states joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the provision of Obamacare, which forced them to participate in expanding Medicaid coverage as a condition to continue to participate in the program.

The Supreme Court ruled in their favor last year, negating the mandatory requirement, so it is now voluntary for states to expand Medicaid coverage.

The Congressional Budget Office still estimates that expanded Medicaid coverage, though now voluntary rather than mandated on states, will contribute about a third of the reduction in the number of uninsured Americans brought about by Obamacare by 2022.

So it was assumed, once expansion of Medicaid became voluntary, that this was a line Republican governors would not cross. Refusal of Republican governors to play ball could be a serious setback for Obamacare to advance and plant its institutional roots.

But one by one, Republican governors like Christie, and just before him Florida’s Rick Scott, are playing ball.

Christie was graphically honest in describing the perverse dynamics going on.

“…I am no fan of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)…I think it is wrong for New Jersey and I think it is wrong for America…. However, it is now the law of the land and I will make all my judgments as Governor based on what I believe is best for New Jersey.”

By expanding the qualifying conditions for Medicaid, Obamacare opens the door, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate, to adding another 11 million to the almost 68 million already in it.

Those 68 million are paid for by a combination of state and federal funds. However, as incentive to bring in the additional 11 million, the federal government is paying 100 percent of the costs for the first three years.

Christie and seven other Republican governors are agreeing to take the bait.

And Christie says, clear as a bell, that he is doing so even though he knows he is strengthening a program that is bad for his country.

Assume that Christie’s assessment is correct. Multiply by fifty and we can have fifty states agreeing to take a bribe to strengthen and advance a program that will hurt the country.

A classic explanation for why free markets produce prosperity and socialism does not is that individuals benefit in government run markets by taking from someone else. In free markets, individuals benefit as result of serving others, making everyone better off.

Medicaid violates basic management principles.

One, there is no clear institutional responsibility. It has grown through funding from both state and the federal government. Anyone who has ever run an organization knows that absence of clear responsibility produces bad results.

Medicaid spending has grown from .5 percent of GDP in 1970 to 2.7 percent of GDP in 2010 and according to Medicaid’s chief actuary, “From program inception, the cost of Medicaid has generally increased at a significantly faster pace than the U.S. economy.”

And there is no individual responsibility. Medicaid is a pure welfare program. Participants have 100 percent of their costs covered by the government. And once you have qualified, there is no time limit. There are no incentives to behave and spend efficiently.

The only direction of Medicaid is to spend more and more money less and less well.

Delivering health care to low income Americans is a real challenge. But to keep America great, we need to behave intelligently as well as compassionately. If we are going to subsidize health care for the poor, it should be through some kind of voucher to buy insurance. Not through welfare.

Meanwhile, the evil geniuses in Washington have devised a way to get even Republican governors to buy into a welfare program they know can only hurt our nation.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Star Parker - America Needs a New Birth of Freedom

Journalist Bill Moyers, who worked as an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, shared memories in a column last year about how his old boss thought about our entitlement programs.

It was under Johnson, who championed the "Great Society" in the 1960s, that a good portion of the runaway government spending we are trying to get under control today originated.

Johnson signed into law Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty programs, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Moyers recounted that for Johnson, Social Security and Medicare "were about a lot more than economics."

He recalls a time when the Johnson administration was supporting retroactive increases in Social Security payments. Moyers said he argued for the increases as economic stimulus. But Johnson called him and said:

"My inclination would be ... that it ought be retroactive as far back as you can get it ... because none of them ever get enough. That they are entitled to it. That's an obligation of ours. It's just like your mother writing you and saying she wants $20, and I always sent mine $100 when she did. I always did it because I thought she was entitled to it. ... We do know that it affects the economy. But that's not the basis to go to the Hill, or the justification. We've got to say that by God you can't treat grandma this way. She's entitled to it and we promised it to her."

I don't think we could have a clearer picture of Johnson's muddled thinking about his job and the role of government, which contributed so much to the problems we have today.

Johnson's words sound so wonderfully compassionate. But let's get things in perspective.

He saw no difference in his relationship and responsibilities toward his own mother, and sending her his own money, and his responsibilities as president of the United States and the relationship of government to citizens.

There is a world of difference between the appropriate responsibility of parents toward their children and children toward their parents, and politicians deciding on how to spend someone else's money for someone else's children, parents or grandparents.

Johnson didn't seem to grasp, or care, about the fact that family and government are two entirely different social institutions that serve very different purposes.

So the Johnson administration years marked not just the beginning of many huge government programs that we can't pay for today, but they also marked a major cultural change where government began displacing family and personal responsibility.

It is no accident that as the American welfare state grew, the American family collapsed.

In 1960, 72 percent of American adults were married. By 2010, this was down to 51 percent.

The change is most pronounced among two of today's largest Democratic Party constituencies: youths and blacks. In 1960, 45 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 were married compared to 9 percent today. In 1960, 61 percent of black adults were married, compared to 31 percent today.

Means testing, targeted tax increases on the wealthy, raising the retirement age -- all proposed ways to keep Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid going as they are -- all simply grow the American welfare state, increase dependence of working Americans on government and other taxpayers, and displace family and traditional values with socialism.

This is why Democratic leaders are not stressed out by the entitlements crisis facing us. More socialism in America is what they want.

They are not bothered that slow growth and high unemployment go hand in hand with this socialism.

Republicans won't succeed as an opposition party if they keep tiptoeing around the fact that facing America today is a crisis of vision and values.

They need to stop selling the alternative to welfare as unpleasantness and spending cuts. They need to start selling that restored prosperity will only come with a rebirth of American freedom and the values that go with it.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Star Parker - On the Road to Death Panels

With the first presidential debate and the only vice-presidential debate behind us, it seems pretty clear that so-called "social issues" are not going to get much attention in this year's presidential politics.

It's unfortunate, I think. We deceive ourselves to permit the assumption that values and behavior are not the real drivers behind our economic problems.

The fiscal crisis of our entitlement programs is the direct result of these values and behavior.

The fiscal soundness of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is rooted in the assumption that those who work can fund the needs of our elderly through payroll taxes. In the case of Social Security, we're talking about retirement income; in the case of Medicare, health costs of the aged; and Medicaid, long-term care of low-income elderly.

When these programs were founded, using payroll taxes to fund care for our elderly seemed like a viable idea.

The bottom has fallen out, however, because of changes in our behavior. There are fewer and fewer workers per retiree as result of longer life spans and a shrinking workforce.

In 1950, there were 16 working Americans for every retiree. Today, there are fewer than three. By 2030, it's projected there will be fewer than two.

It doesn't take a supercomputer to realize that if we don't reduce the retirement and health care resources available to our elderly, the burden on each working American to provide those resources increases substantially.

Yet the discussion about this crisis is 100 percent focused on how to cut the spending and zero attention is spent on restoration of values that could rebuild families, produce more children and stop destroying the unborn.

According to a new report just out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overall fertility rate of American women -- defined by the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 -- is the lowest ever recorded since the government started gathering this information. After years of hovering slightly above 2.1, it has now dropped below to 1.9.

According to demographers, a fertility rate of 2.1 -- in which each adult woman produces 2.1 children on average over her lifetime -- is necessary to keep the overall population steady.

Which means the overall U.S. population is shrinking.

We generally look to Europe to see low fertility rates and shrinking populations. However, according to the Economist magazine, the U.S., at 1.9, now has a fertility rate lower than France, whose fertility rate stands at 2.0.

A change in prevailing values could reverse this trend. But the opposite is happening.

According to a new Gallup poll, for the first time the majority of Americans feel that government should not promote any particular set of values.

In 1993, the first year that Gallup did this annual survey, 53 percent said that government should promote traditional values and 42 percent said that no particular set of values should be promoted. Now, in this latest survey, it is the opposite: 52 percent say no particular set of values should be promoted and 44 percent say government should promote traditional values.

With no rebirth of traditional values that could lead to more babies, caring for our elderly will become an increasingly onerous burden. Where can this soulless materialism lead?

In a Sept. 16 New York Times op-ed, Steven Rattner -- a New York investment banker and former counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration -- provided a shockingly candid answer.

The op-ed began by saying, "We need death panels."

Rattner then qualified this by saying, well, maybe not "exactly."

But, he concluded: "We may shrink from ... stomach-wrenching choices, but they are inescapable."

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Star Parker - America Ready for Paul Ryan’s Adult Conversation

There’s a line of thinking on the political left that Mitt Romney served them up a great softball in picking Paul Ryan as his running mate.

According to Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, “Ryan brings to the Romney campaign the tea party’s style of magical thinking, a blissfully simplistic, ideologically driven world view that seems to think candidates can win votes by promising to reduce popular government services.”

Republican candidates, they say, are ducking for cover to avoid being branded with budget reforms that Ryan, as Chairman of House Budget Committee, has proposed, particularly for Medicare and Medicaid.

Vice President Biden, eloquent as always, told a mostly black audience in Virginia that Republicans want to put “y’all back in chains.”

Although Biden has taken flak for this nauseating remark, he should get credit for summing up how Democrats really think. That government running your life makes you free and that anyone who proposes freedom and choice wants to put “y’all back in chains.”

Earlier this year, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, sent a report on the nation’s budget to House budget committee chairman Ryan.

Here’s what he said:

“The explosive path of the federal debt that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects under what many observers would view as current policies underscores the need for policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable course.”

“The aging of the population and rising costs for health care will push spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs considerably higher as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).”

Elmendorf concludes that without major increases in revenues and/or substantial cuts in spending “the resulting budget deficits will increase federal debt to unsupportable levels.”

So Paul Ryan’s high crime is being courageous, honest and leveling with the American people about the tough realities facing us.

He, like most Republicans, believes that raising taxes, when our economy is growing at half its historical average, and with the unemployment rate 40% higher than its historical average, is economic suicide.

So Ryan takes on the major culprits in driving our long term fiscal crisis – entitlements spending.

Is this “magical thinking?” No, it’s guts.

And what courageous measures do Democrat critics take on? No major spending reform proposals and no across the board tax hikes, which Elmendorf suggests as the alternative.

Just the usual class warfare rhetoric. Tax the top 1 percent, who already pay 39 percent of income taxes, and who alone could never cover the huge deficits that CBO is projecting.

In 1975 10% of the population was on Medicaid. Now it is double that.

Ryan’s idea of block granting federal funds for Medicaid to states would give local latitude and responsibility to promote innovation to make more productive use of limited resources.

A new study published in the journal Health Affairs reports that 31 percent of physicians refuse patients on Medicaid. Yet, when innovative business models emerge to deliver care in underserved poor communities, they are attacked by the left.

The Center for Public Integrity, funded by George Soros, has posted on its website that Ryan’s budget plan is a “Path to the Poorhouse.” Yet it also attacks Dental Health Maintenance Organizations, a recent business concept to organize dental practices, making it feasible to accept Medicaid reimbursements and provide dental care in poor neighborhoods.

There is a saying that you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

Paul Ryan is courageously delivering truth to the American people, boldly and clearly.

He can’t make anyone drink the water. But if honesty and courage is no longer what sells in America, we can be sure that the future is not pretty.

Romney’s bet, and I think it is a good one, is that the American people are ready for Paul Ryan and an adult conversation.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Paul Ryan corrects those confused on combating poverty

Compassion for those in need is not a function of how much borrowed money the federal government throws at unreformed, unaccountable programs.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan

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Rep. Paul Ryan On Unlocking America's Economic Growth Potential

Congressman Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, sits with Steve Forbes to discuss the choices American faces in the 2012 election, the economic policies the U.S. should embrace for future growth and how to tackle issues around funding Medicare. From the George W. Bush Presidential Center's Tax Policies for 4% Growth conference at the New-York Historical Society.

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Allen Barton - Ryan's Hope: A New Budget That Cuts Taxes and Curbs Spending

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) put forward a new budget the simplifies the tax code while cutting spending. Is it possible to clean up the federal balance sheet with just two tax rates of 10% and 25%? Find out as Allen Barton talks to Brian Doherty of Reason Magazine, and Terry Jones of IBD.

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Star Parker - NAACP Plantation Masters Play Race Card Again

Rick Santorum must be “racist” because he thinks all people, regardless of ethnicity, should have the dignity of self sufficiency.

At least that’s how the NAACP sees it.

Talking about pushing back against those in government endlessly trying to expand welfare programs because they make money off them, Santorum said, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous called this “…outrageous...race-based stereotypes about public assistance.”

Santorum was talking about Medicaid. The more states expand their Medicaid programs, the more federal funds they get. So they have a perverse incentive to keep growing these programs.

It is unfortunately analogous to drug pushers who get richer with each new addict.

If indeed Santorum did single out blacks, it’s not unreasonable because they are disproportionately on Medicaid. Blacks comprise 12 percent of the population but they constitute 30 percent of those on Medicaid.

Medicaid is government monopolized socialized medicine for the nation’s poor.

Not surprisingly, its spending is out of control while delivering increasingly shoddy care.

The program cost taxpayers $118 billion in 2000. By 2010 it was almost $300 billion and is projected to reach almost $500 billion by 2020.

Forty percent of physicians won’t see Medicaid patients because the reimbursements they get don’t cover their costs.

According to studies reported in the Wall Street Journal, the chances of a Medicaid patient dying in the hospital are double that of patients on private insurance and Medicaid patients are 59 percent more likely to have complications after heart surgery than privately insured patients.

Now it’s about to get worse. Despite over 60 million Americans now on this program that is bankrupting states and delivering substandard health care, Obamacare expands it to add another 16 million.

Given the disproportionate exposure of black Americans to this horrific program, wouldn’t anyone who cares about these folks want to seek better options for them?

Not the NAACP.

The NAACP wants to keep Medicaid as it is and opposes efforts to reform it to improve its efficiency.

One idea floated to fix the built in state incentives to keep spending more is to switch to federal block grants to states. NAACP calls this “extremist.”

Besides fighting reforms to improve dysfunctional poverty and entitlement programs, NAACP fights efforts to address the core problems that perpetuate the cycle of poverty in black America.

For instance, education. More and more blacks are getting the message that inner city public schools are beyond repair and that the only hope for black children is competition. Give parents choice with vouchers, tax credits, or combinations thereof, to go to other schools.

But the NAACP can always be depended on to initiate or join law suits fighting charter schools and vouchers, as they did in New York City earlier this year.

Despite the crisis of breakdown of the traditional black family, NAACP promotes same sex marriage as a civil rights issue. Despite half of black pregnancies ending in abortion, NAACP opposes anti-abortion activism of black pro-life groups.

Any well meaning white conservative like Rick Santorum, honest enough to state the truth about the destructiveness of welfare state programs on black Americans, can look forward to a press release from the NAACP calling him or her “racist” or the equivalent.

They then have to spend weeks doing media to apologize and carry the stigma forever.

There is no reason to apologize for telling the truth. Failing to do only so, or apologizing, just hurts blacks and the whole nation and leaves the sharp weapon of racial intimidation always ready for use in the hands of the plantation masters.

Star Parker

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Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Ohio Medicaid Russian Drug Smuggling Investigation

American Tax Dollars at Work.
Two men posing as wealthy Russian Drug Smugglers get told not to put their exotic sports cars on the Medicaid application, to classify their drug business as "babysitting," and to get abortions for their underage sisters who perform sex in exchange for drugs.

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