21 August 2009

Dealers stiffed as clunkers pile up
20 Aug 2009
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Some New Mexico auto dealers have backed out of the cash-for-clunkers program and more may do so as the federal government takes its time providing cash reimbursements.

 

Dealers across the state are owed more than $3.6 million, according to a dealers' group which says that so far Uncle Sam has only written three checks totaling about $14,000.
http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/business/business_krqe_albuquerque_dealers_stiffed_as_clunkers_pile_up_200908200033

 

Cash for Clunkers to end on Monday

Aug 21

WASHINGTON – Car shoppers have until Monday night to take advantage of lucrative Cash for Clunkers rebates from the government, and the Obama administration is hoping for a smooth ending to a program that has spurred auto sales but created headaches for many auto dealers.

 

The popular program will end at 8 p.m. EDT Monday after burning through much of its $3 billion in funding in just a month. All new deals will have to be completed and dealers must file their paperwork by the deadline in order to get repaid for the big incentives.

 

President Barack Obama and administration officials declared the program a success Thursday...

 

...it has also created problems for dealers, many of whom have yet to be repaid for the clunker deals they have made. Under the program, dealers take rebates of $3,500 or $4,500 off the price of a new car in return for older, less fuel-efficient trade-ins that are sent to the scrap heap. They then must submit a 13-page application with proper documentation of the sale in order to get repaid.

 

That has left many dealers with unpaid claims worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

"It has brought in some traffic that we would not have had, but if you don't get paid, it is all for naught," said Alton Owen Jr., sales manager at Owen Ford in Jarratt, Va. His dealership won't be offering the clunker deals this weekend because it has yet to be repaid for 21 sales.

 

Obama and LaHood pledged that dealers will get their money back. But government data shows that many claims are still outstanding. As of Thursday, 457,000 sales worth $1.9 billion had been received. About 40 percent of those claims have been reviewed, but only $140 million, or about 7 percent of the claims dealers submitted, have actually been paid...

 

...John McEleney, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, said he remained concerned that so few dealers had been reimbursed for Clunker deals...

 

...Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of the auto Web site Edmunds.com, said the government incentives could dry up sales in September and October, along with a tight vehicle inventory, higher prices for new models arriving in the fall and consumers who are focused on finding a good deal.

 

"It's been a nice party for a few weeks. The hangover, I don't think, is going to be anywhere near as much fun," Anwyl said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090821/ap_on_bi_ge/us_cash_for_clunkers

 

Canadians visit U.S. to get care
Deal lets many go to Michigan hospitals
8/20/2009
Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.

 

Agreements between Detroit hospitals and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for heart, imaging tests, bariatric and other services provide access to some services not immediately available in the province, said ministry spokesman David Jensen.

The agreements show how a country with a national care system -- a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress -- copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities.

 

Michael Vujovich, 61, of Windsor was taken to Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital for an angioplasty procedure after he went to a Windsor hospital in April. Vujovich said the U.S. backup doesn't show a gap in Canada's system, but shows how it works.

 

"I go to the hospital in Windsor and two hours later, I'm done having angioplasty in Detroit," he said. His $38,000 bill was covered by the Ontario health ministry.

 

Dany Mercado, a leukemia patient from Kitchener, Ontario, is cancer-free after getting a bone marrow transplant at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.

 

Told by Canadian doctors in 2007 he couldn't have the procedure there, Mercado's family and doctor appealed to Ontario health officials, who agreed to let him have the transplant in Detroit in January 2008.

 

The Karmanos Institute is one of several Detroit health facilities that care for Canadians needing services not widely available in Canada.

Canada, for example, has waiting times for bariatric procedures to combat obesity that can stretch to more than five years, according to a June report in the Canadian Journal of Surgery...
more at
http://freep.com/article/20090820/BUSINESS06/908200420/1319/
Where will the Canuks go when we have socialized medicine? Mexico?

Drop in world temperatures fuels global warming debate
8/20/2009
WASHINGTON — Has Earth's fever broken?

Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.

 

That's given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.

 

Proposals to combat global warming are "crazy" and will "destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family's annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year," the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. "High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health," the ads asserted.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/74019.html

 

Greenpeace Leader Admits Arctic Ice Exaggeration

The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization's recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was "a mistake."  Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled "Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts," which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.

 

Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the "Hardtalk" program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.

 

"I don't think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake," he said.

 

Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.

 

The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing "misleading information" and using "exaggeration and alarmism."

 

Leipold's admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.

 

Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization's practice of "emotionalizing issues" in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.

 

Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate...
more at http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/amcelhinney/2009/08/19/exclusive-lies-revealed-greenpeace-leader-admits-arctic-ice-exaggeration/

 

Climate summit flop feared

19 August 2009

DENMARK- Hotel reservation cancellations spark failure fears for the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen

 

The Foreign Ministry has cancelled 20,000 overnight hotel reservations meant for people attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December.

 

The move is expected to cost the hotel industry about 40 million kroner in lost revenue, calculated by each night in a hotel room costing about 2,000 kroner, reports Business.dk.

 

Reservations in a number of hotels across Zealand and parts of Skåne in southern Sweden have been cut from 120,000 to 100,000 overnight stays.

The two-week conference in December is expected to attract between 12,000 and 15,000 participants.

The ministry described the cancellations as a natural 'adjustment'.

 

But Thomas Færgeman, the director of environmental think tank Concito, was concerned the government had lost confidence that it could broker a ground-breaking climate and had therefore lowered expectations as to how many participants were expected.

 

Hotel cancellations have also been taking place in Copenhagen and Denmark's largest hotel, the Radisson SAS Scandinavia, near the conference centre, has seen 10 percent of the ministry's bookings cancelled.

 

The hotel's general manager, Karim Nielsen believed the cancellations were due to the Foreign Ministry lacking confirmation of attendance from participants.

 

'No one knows how big the Copenhagen climate conference is going to be. If the ministry doesn't cancel the surplus reserved rooms at least a month before the conference, they will be liable for 100 percent of the payment,' Nielsen said.

http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/88-national/46609-climate-summit-flop-feared.html

 

Leading Blue Dog: Covering uninsured not top priority of health reform
8/20/2009
Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) said on Wednesday that providing healthcare to uninsured Americans is "not what this healthcare reform debate is about."

In making his comments, Ross, who is the centrist Blue Dogs' health reform point man, questioned one of the primary healthcare goals of the White House and Democratic leaders.

 

"That is a side benefit to healthcare reform and an important one," Ross told the Arkansas Educational Television Network. Instead, the fifth-term congressman said the bill should focus on "cost containment."

 

The Energy and Commerce Committee member reiterated that he wants to pass a health reform bill by the end of this year, a desire that may irk some Republicans who supported his effort to slow the bill before August recess.

 

"The extreme right had a two-week love affair with me," Ross said. "The extreme right, simply, they do not want healthcare reform. And so, they saw me as killing healthcare reform because I put the brakes on
healthcare reform."
http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/08/20/leading-blue-dog-covering-uninsured-not-the-top-priority-of-health-reform/
OK Congresscritter Mike, when has the government ever been successful at containing costs...? The post office maybe? Medicare perhaps? Was it cost conainment when Congress stole, I mean "borrowed", the money in Social Security and replaced it with worthless IOUs?

 

..speaking of containing costs..

 

GM's $4,000 Car We Won't Get
8.20.09
Here is a starting tidbit:

 

In coverage of GM's reported intention to produce a $4,000 car, the company revealed that its near-term "goal" is to "have 75 percent of its sales" outside the United States.

 

Your tax dollars at work.

 

Now, the $4,000 car is a fine idea. It represents a return to economic sanity. It would be simple and affordable. No six year payment plan. No $40,000 "investment" (like the completely insane Volt electric car) that will depreciate to less than half original MSRP sticker price by the time it's finally paid off. No GPS, closed-circuit cameras, power parallel parking systems, multiplexed seat heaters or built-in coffee pots.

 

Just, you know, basic transportation.

 

America needs this right now. Or rather, tapped out Americans need such a thing right now. The proposed $4,000 car costs less than the government's loathsome "cash for clunkers" giveaway -- which forces some taxpayers to subsidize the "purchase" (loosely used) of a new car by others. Instead of ripping off one group of taxpayers to provide a government giveaway to another set of taxpayers, GM's $4,000 car would represent honest productive effort, free exchange -- goods produced by a market that freely consents to buy them. People would get the basic, inexpensive transportation that has largely disappeared from the new car marketplace. GM would make money.

 

What a concept.

 

But, here's the catch: GM won't be able to sell the $4,000 car in the United States. Because in the United States, new cars must be "government approved" before they can be approved by consumers. And to be approved by government, a new car must be fitted with a horn o' plenty of government-mandated safety and emissions control equipment.

 

"Safety" and "low emissions" may be laudable, but they aren't free. The federal requirement that each new car be equipped with multiple air bags is alone worth an estimated $1,000-$1,500 per car -- or one-third to nearly one-half the projected final cost of the GM $4k car.

 

In so-called "developing countries," there are not (yet) such requirements (which explains why they are still developing while we are treading water and about to go under). And it explains why GM will be selling its $4k car in such countries rather than in this country.

 

GM knows the United States is a dying market for new cars -- mainly because Americans are increasingly no longer in a position to buy them. And they are no longer in a position to buy them because they have become so expensive (an average mid-sized family sedan such as the Toyota Camry or Chevy Malibu typically sells for around $25,000). And they have become so expensive because of the endless conveyor belt of new diktats issuing forth from the DOT and EPA in Washington...
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/08/20/gms-4000-car-we-wont-get

 

Firms with Obama ties profit from health push
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.

 

Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama's 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama's campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama's campaign, and Axelrod's son Michael and Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe work there.

 

The firms were hired by Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now. Each was formed by a coalition of interests with big stakes in health care policy, including the drug maker lobby PhRMA, the American Medical Association, the Service Employees International Union and Families USA, which calls itself "The Voice for Health Care Consumers."

 

Their ads press for changes in health care policy. Healthy Economy Now made one of the same arguments that Obama does: that health care costs are delaying the country's economic recovery and that changes are needed if the economy is to rebound.

 

There is no evidence that Axelrod directly profited from the group's ads. Axelrod took steps to separate himself from AKPD when he joined Obama's White House. AKPD owes him $2 million from his stock sale and will make preset payments over four years, starting with $350,000 on Dec. 31, according to Axelrod's personal financial disclosure report...

 

...A larger issue is a network of relationships and overlapping interests that resembles some seen in past administrations and could prove a problem as Obama tries to win the public over on health care and fulfill his promise to change the way Washington works, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group.

"Even if these are obvious bedfellows and kind of standard PR maneuvers, it still stands to undercut Obama's credibility," Krumholz said. "The potential takeaway from the public is 'friends in cahoots to engineer a grass roots result.'"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090819/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_care_consultants
Now if this had been W or Dick Cheney....

 

Poll: Majority of Americans Say No Health Care Reform Better than Passing Current Bill
August 19, 2009

(CNSNews.com) - According to a poll report released Monday by Rasmussen Reports, the majority of Americans believe that no health care reform would be better than passing H.R. 3200, the current reform bill in the House of Representatives.
 
When respondents were asked whether it would be better to pass the current bill working its way through Congress, H.R. 3200, or do nothing at all this year, 54 percent chose nothing at all. Thirty-five percent of respondents supported the bill, and 11 percent said they were still not sure.
 
Though more Democrats support the bill and more Republicans favor doing nothing this year, two thirds of unaffiliated respondents said they would prefer that Congress not pass the bill. Only 23 percent of those likely voters said they supported H.R. 3200...
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/52750

400 Percent Profit by Health Insurers Is Selective, 'Meaningless' Number, Say Analysts
August 20, 2009

(CNSNews.com) - In calling for health care reform, many Democratic congressmen say that private health insurance companies enjoyed 400 percent profit increases over the last eight years – a statistic generated by the liberal coalition group, Health Care for America Now (HCAN). But industry analysts say those numbers are selective and "meaningless" in terms of understanding profits.
 
"They are cherry-picking even their own meaningless data, because their chart shows profits dropped by 35 percent from 2007 to 2008, making the increase from 2000-2008 only 249 percent instead of 428 percent," Dr. Robert Book, senior fellow for Health Economics at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told CNSNews.com.
 
"The fact that leaving off one year makes such a huge difference demonstrates how meaningless that particular calculation is," he said. "Not to mention that if the 2007-2008 trend continues, profits will be back below their 2000 level very quickly [by 2011]."
 
Bert Ely, a financial analyst and monetary policy consultant at Ely & Company, Inc., told CNSNews.com: "The HCAN numbers are not a relevant measure of the profitability of the health insurers.  The relevant profit measure is their profits per premium dollar collected.  Those profits are just a few pennies per premium dollar."
 
HCAN, an advocacy group whose steering committee includes liberal groups like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Moveon.org, recently published a report, "Premiums Soaring in Consolidated Health Insurance Market: Lack of Competition Hurts Rural States, Small Businesses."
More at http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/52745

 

Obama Administration Planning to Wind Down Clunkers Program Amid Dealer Complaints
August 20, 2009
Washington (AP) - The Obama administration is developing plans to wind down the popular Cash for Clunkers program and could announce by Friday when the incentives will no longer be available.
 
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Wednesday the department would announce within 48 hours how it intends to discontinue the program...

...Transportation Department officials met with car dealer trade groups on Wednesday to discuss how the program eventually will end and respond to complaints over a backlog of rebate payments to dealers...
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/52787

Postal Service Managers Angry at Obama for Denigrating Postal Service While Defending Government-Run Health Plan
August 20, 2009

(CNSNews.com) – U.S. Postal Service managers are upset with President Barack Obama for denigrating the Postal Service as part of his argument defending the idea of creating a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers...

...The U.S. Postal Service faces a net loss of $7 billion in fiscal year 2009, according to a Government Accountability Office report. (See Previous Story)
 
The Postal Service is expected to end 2009 with $10.2 billion in outstanding debt and might not generate enough revenue to make a mandated fiscal year 2009 payment of $5.4 billion for future retiree health benefits, the GAO report said.

 

But the Postal Service has said things are looking up, and in an Aug. 14 letter, Ted Keating, president of the National Association of Postal Supervisors, criticized President Obama.

"On behalf of 35,000 members of our association, I am writing to express our collective disappointment that you chose to use the Postal Service as a scapegoat and an example of inefficiency," Keating wrote.

 

"Your negative comments on the Postal Service--without knowledge of the facts--was not only a disservice to members of our organization, but to all the postal employees," he added.

"Employees of the Postal Service are largely represented by unions and management associations, all of whom strongly supported your candidacy last year," the letter said. "For our support we do not expect any special consideration. However, we would like to be treated fairly and not have our current situation misrepresented, especially by the commander-in-chief."
more at http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/52771

 

Homosexuals more likely to seek psychological help
 8/20/2009
A new study shows that homosexuals and lesbians seek mental health counseling far more than heterosexuals.

 

The UCLA School of Public Health found that to be true in California, but there have been other studies with similar results. Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality says homosexuals usually respond that they would not have so many problems if society would simply accept their behavior as normal.
 
"You can't just keep going back to homophobia and societal stigma to account for this huge difference between straights and homosexuals with regard to various pathologies," he contends. "First of all, we're talking about California, where there's a much greater tolerance for homosexuality -- so you can't keep pointing to the stigma."
 
LaBarbera says homosexuals should accept responsibility for their behavior and not point an accusing finger at others. He believes God has set up behavioral boundaries beyond which are consequences. LaBarbera points to Christ as the answer.
 
"That's, I think, the message here. There will never be happiness and contentedness...there will never be normality associated with homosexuality. It's an aberrant, sinful lifestyle," he notes. "It's destructive. But the good news is it's changeable and people can leave this lifestyle."
 
However, he adds that the media gives scant attention to that idea.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=649914

Classical school fights to use Bible in curriculum
8/20/2009
An Idaho charter school is being threatened by the ACLU over its decision to use the Bible in the school curriculum.

The Nampa Classical Academy is being threatened by the potential loss of its charter school status if it follows through with its plan of incorporating the Bible into the school curriculum. The school made the decision to include the Bible, the Koran, the teachings of Confucius and Greek philosophers in its curriculum -- not to indoctrinate students, but to enhance their understanding of history, civilization, and literature...
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=650122

 

Labor boss gaffe: Telling the truth about taxes
C. Edmund Wright
Big labor has opened its mouth and scored a huge blow against liberal tax policy. From the HuffPo, regarding Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO:

Trumka's remarks were echoed privately by several other labor officials at the convention in Pittsburgh. In particular, the emerging Senate FinanceCommittee plan - which seems unlikely to contain a public option and could end up taxing pricey health care packages - seems almost guaranteed to incite the unions.

"We'll oppose it," Trumka said, when asked about any bill that ends the tax exemption for employer coverage. "It's actually a stupid concept because if you tax those that have it to pay for those that don't, eventually those that have [benefits] won't. Then who do you ultimately tax?" [emphasis added]

Uh, exactly. That's what conservatives have been saying about confiscatory tax policy for decades. I think more needs to be made of these snafu's.  When cornered, it is amazing what you can get a liberal to admit.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/labor_boss_gaffe_telling_the_t.html

 

Is Vancouver in your Healthcare Future?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/is_vancouver_in_your_healthcar.html

 

Health care reform that actually works!
August 20, 2009

"Where's the Republican plan?"

It's one of the red herrings that apologists for Obamacare pull out of their bag of cliched talking points when pressed to justify Democrats' attempt to grab control of 18% of the nation's economy.

Well, here's a modest proposal. Rather than looking to Massachusetts or Tennessee for examples of healthcare reform, why not look to Texas?

The Lone Stare state has its problems, but in recent years it has made major progress in improving health care availability, especially in predominantly poor and minority regions. Being Texas, the solution wasn't budget-busting, either.

Their answer? They got rid of the lawyers.

Not literally. But they did take on that perennial pillar of the Democrat Party, the trial lawyers...
More at http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/health_care_reform_that_actual.html

 

Islam's European Conquest: Is America Next?
August 20, 2009
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/islams_european_conquest_is_am.html

 

Lockerbie Convict About to Be Freed, Returned to Libya
August 20, 2009
The only man convicted in the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland is expected to walk free Thursday in time for Ramadan, despite an appeal by victims' families and the U.S. government and lawmakers for British officials to keep him in prison.
 
Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a former intelligence agent for Muammar Gadaffi's regime, was expected to fly home from Scotland, where he has been jailed since March 2002 for his role in the 1988 bombing, which cost 270 lives.
 
The Scottish government's justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, was due to announce at around 8 a.m. Thursday (East Coast time) the decision to release Megrahi – either as part of a bilateral prisoner transfer agreement, or on compassionate grounds.
 
The 57-year-old Libyan has advanced prostate cancer, and specialists have given him a short time to live. Last week he dropped an appeal against his conviction, a step apparently aimed at facilitating his release.
 
British media reported that Glasgow airport staff were on standby to receive Gadaffi's private aircraft to collect Megrahi at short notice. The type of welcome that he receives in Tripoli, where Libyans are marking the 40th anniversary of the military coup that brought Gadaffi to power, will be closely watched in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere...
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/52778

 

David Bennett <><

http://www.freewill-predestination.com