Most people don’t even know what this Omnibus Bill is. Well if you have followed the news at all the Omnibus Bill is the one with 9,000 earmarks in it! That’s a lot of pork. Now not all of the pork comes from one side of the isle. Both sides have loaded this bill with pork projects, to the tone of about 60% Democrat and 40% Republican.

We can’t realistically expect Congress to stop the bill. The Republicans in the Senate have managed to stall the bill, which means it will be an issue over the weekend. This is a good thing, because the more people see this mess the more they understand what a bad idea it is.

The question is, will Obama Veto the Omnibus Bill? Considering he ran on a platform of transparent politics, and stopping wasteful spending, it might be a good idea. But does Obama have the “will” to stand up to congress and say NO to an insane spending bill in the middle of an economic downturn. My guess is he does not. He has already started to backpedal again. Obama was mentioning that these pork projects were added in last year, before he was in office. Doesn’t matter, if you are going to stop the pork you have to take a stand, you can’t just let this one ride… If Obama turns his back on the American People this time, he will prove that he is just another politician.

It is also a good thing to note that Obama has had his name stricken from the record in the Bill. Some of the pork had his name on it. Yes the pork is still there, only Obama’s name is not. There is some debate over whether the measure could be called "pork", but Obama ended that debate when he pushed to have his name removed.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000003062314

Congress will scrub President Obama’s name from a list of earmark cosponsors in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill.

The reason: Whether Obama cosponsored the earmark depends on what the definition of earmark is and when an earmark becomes an earmark, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The provision itself is still considered an earmark, and it’s staying in the bill (HR 1105) — but it’s losing the Obama brand.

As of Thursday, Obama’s name appeared along with three dozen other senators as a cosponsor of a $7.7 million line item for vocational training at two schools run by American Indian groups in New Mexico and North Dakota.

The White House objected to the characterization of the provision as an earmark — a sensitive topic, given that Obama said he didn’t request any earmarks in 2008.

Subsequently, Senate Appropriations Committee spokesman Rob Blumenthal said Obama’s name would be removed from future versions of the congressional report identifying earmarks and their sponsors. Other senators listed with him as cosponsors will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

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Cap and Trade is designed to offset the evil carbon emissions. There are a few things about Cap and Trade that just don't click.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800758_pf.html

As U.S. lawmakers work on the details of their greenhouse-gas legislation, they are looking carefully at Europe's experience. Five Senate proposals all use the same basic approach, known as "cap and trade," that Europe has used for the past two years. But what the snappy name "cap and trade" means is that the market will put a price on something that's always been free: the right of a factory to emit carbon gases. That could affect the cost of everything from windowpanes to airline tickets to electricity.

I have to correct Steven Mufson, the author of the article I quoted. The market IS NOT going to put a price on something that has always been free; the government WILL.

I thought that this was going to save the planet. But after all, who is going to say, "we can't afford to save the planet". Well perhaps that's what people should be saying. Let's assume for a minute that "Man Made Global Warming" is a real issue, and that reducing carbon emissions will fix the problem. Never mind that 10 years ago it was all about carbon monoxide...

Consider the plight of Kollo Holding's factory in the Netherlands, which makes silicon carbide, a material used as an industrial abrasive and lining for high-temperature furnaces and kilns. Its managers like to think of their plant as an ecological standout: They use waste gases to generate energy and have installed the latest pollution-control equipment.

But Europe's program has driven electricity prices so high that the facility routinely shuts down for part of the day to save money on power. Although demand for its products is strong, the plant has laid off 40 of its 130 employees and trimmed production. Two customers have turned to cheaper imports from China, which is not covered by Europe's costly regulations.

"It's crazy," said Kusters, the plant director, as he stood among steaming black mounds of petroleum coke and sand in northern Holland. "We not only have the most energy-efficient plant in the world but also the most environmentally friendly."

Of all the effects of the new rules, the rise in the price of power has aroused the most outrage. Much of the anger of consumers and industries has been aimed at the continent's utility companies. Like other firms, the utilities were given slightly fewer allowances than they needed. But instead of charging customers for the cost of buying allowances to cover the shortfall, utilities in much of Europe charged customers for 100 percent of the tradable allowances they were given -- even though the government handed them out free. Electricity rates soared.

The chief executive of one utility, Vattenfall, which owns a coal plant that is one of the continent's biggest carbon emitters, defended the decision. Lars G. Josefsson, who is also an adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said higher electricity prices are "the intent of the whole exercise. . . . If there were no effects, why should you have a cap-and-trade system?"

Germany boasts that it has cut emissions to 18.4 percent below 1990 levels, the benchmark used in the Kyoto Protocol and in Europe. But nearly half the reduction was because of sagging industrial output in the former East Germany after reunification. For the 2008-2012 period, E.U. officials sliced 5 percent off Germany's emissions proposal.

The system is designed to tax energy usage to encourage less energy use. But as the article states, there was no bonus for being efficient in the government's eyes. Why then would this encourage anyone to update their systems?

Look at it this way. The system will be enacted retroactively, the power plants are already built and running. Some plants are going to be more efficient than others. The newer more efficient plants are in the green, so to speak, because they are newer. The older plants are not going to fair as well on the carbon scale. So let's increase taxes on the businesses we just told to upgrade! How is that going to encourage anything. The power companies that have to offset their emissions are going to be at an immediate disadvantage, because they are going to loose money instantly.

If the community relying on the, now higher taxed companies, can support the price increase; then that will be the end of it. Because after all, how many power companies are "in competition"? This is absurd. It's not like a car where you can pick a different one if you like. This just passes the cost to the end user, who has no direct control over what goes on. What are you going to do, not pay your power bill in protest?

If the government is really worried about the environment, then why don't they offer tax reductions NOW to companies which upgrade their systems. Why impose a new tax, then offer incentives to decrease it, especially when the economy is in a downturn.

Obama to The San Francisco Chronicle last year [2008]:

"So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted."

This can't be misunderstood. Obama is saying outright that they want to destroy part of the energy sector. Not only that, they want to destroy part of the energy sector -- before there is an alternative. This is not wise.

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This article hits home for me, because I have worked in the facility that they are mentioning here. The University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute.

http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/03/02/us_system_to_rate_health_therapies/

Lisa Wangsness:

"Harder on Cancer, easier on you," proclaims the banner on the University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute website, a pitch to men scouring the Internet for advice on prostate cancer. This type of radiation treatment targets tumors more precisely than X-rays, the site claims, reducing side effects.

But a study found that though proton beam therapy is at least five times as expensive as other forms of radiation, only a few small, brief studies have examined its effectiveness. There was no evidence that it was better at curing prostate cancer, and insufficient evidence that it was superior at preventing side effects.

This is a small part of what worries me. The government is going to stifle research. It will have to create mandatory time tables in which effectiveness must be proven. There is nothing wrong with deadlines, but when it comes to research things are a little different. Anyone who works in a research field can tell you that time should no be a factor; data however should.

The economic stimulus package contains $1.1 billion for "comparative effectiveness research," a down payment on a project that could ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The legislation also creates a council in the Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate the work.

Dennis Smith, a senior research fellow in health economics for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said restricting treatment options based on a government-run board's interpretations of research could result in a kind of "cookbook medicine" that ignores individual differences that make medicine "an art as well as a science."

I agree; Mr. Smith has a very good point, treatment options should be chosen by the doctor and the patient. Everyone is different, that's one reason that a one-size-fits-all aspect to health care is ridiculous.

Dr. Steven Pearson, president of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review at the hospital, said the question "is whether we as a society are going to get serious about judging whether something that is a teeny bit better but vastly more expensive is a wise way to go."

The institute, which conducted the review of the scientific literature on proton beam therapy for prostate cancer, found little evidence favoring proton beam over other kinds of radiation, even though payers typically paid $50,000 to $80,000 for proton beam therapy, compared with $10,000 for the implantation of radioactive seeds, or $20,000 for radiation therapy using an X-ray technology.

"Our system is not set up to look at whether the evidence suggests that paying so much more for proton beam therapy makes sense for anybody," Pearson said. Instead, hospitals and clinics have the reverse incentive - to channel patients to the most expensive treatments, he said.

Dr. Steven Pearson automatically assumes that hospitals are staffed with dishonest people. There is no difference here and the camera in Subway (sub shops), make sure that those extra pieces of cheese aren't passed out. This research is based on human dishonesty. Even if there are cheaper options, there will still be one that is more expensive than others. This is ridiculous.

Researchers are already preparing to apply for research grants funded by the stimulus money. Anthony Zietman, a radiation oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, is part of a team that wants to compare two or three different kinds of radiation therapies for prostate cancer, including proton beam. Such work, he said, is urgently needed.

"We've got to help patients sort their way through this morass of options," he said. "If these new technologies are better - prove it. If it's worth the cost, we should pay the cost. If it's not worth it, we should dispense with them or not cover them."

All the way at the end of the story you get to the real meaning of all of this, "If these new technologies are better - prove it. If it's worth the cost, we should pay the cost. If it's not worth it, we should dispense with them or not cover them". I wonder who "we" is going to be? Perhaps the tax payer?

Here is a list of tax cuts that were passed under the Bush administration. Bush attempted, on multiple occasions, to make these tax cuts permanent. Congress passed these tax cuts, but only as a temporary measure they will all expire by 2011.

Now we have Obama running around saying that he’s going to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. The problem here is that 95% of Americans don’t pay taxes. The second problem is all of his proposed spending.

Obama claims that he in going to cut the deficit by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Lets take a look at what that entails…

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/wm486.cfm

Note: Some of the following tax cuts were extended until 2009, but ALL will end by 2011.

- Child Credit: This credit will shrink from $1,000 to $700 per child on January 1, 2005.

- The 10 Percent Bracket: The upper income level for this bracket will decrease by $1,000 per filer on January 1, 2005.

- The 15 Percent Bracket for Joint Filers: On January 1, 2005, the upper limit of this bracket will shrink from 200 to 180 percent of the upper limit of the 15 percent bracket for single filers, creating a marriage penalty.

- Standard Deduction for Joint Filers: On January 1, 2005, this will shrink from 200 to 174 percent of the standard deduction for single filers, creating a marriage penalty.

- Alternative Minimum Tax: Exemptions will decrease by $6,500 per filer on January 1, 2005.

- Bonus Depreciation: This provision, which changes depreciation schedules for businesses in a way that encourages investment, will expire on January 1, 2005.

- Small Business Expensing: On January 1, 2006, the maximum amount that a business may deduct will fall from $100,000 to $25,000, which will not be indexed to inflation.

- Capital Gains: Rates will rise to 10 or 20 percent, depending upon income, on January 1, 2009.

- Dividends: Rates will rise to match standard income tax rates on January 1, 2009.

- Child Credit: This credit will shrink from $700 to $500 per child on January 1, 2011.

- The Income Tax: Rates will increase between 3 and 4.5 percentage points in each bracket on January 1, 2011.

Here is the real kicker. Remember how Obama said that people are going to see an increase in the amount they see each paycheck? Well that doesn’t work quite the way you thought it might. His measure is not a tax cut. It is a tax credit. The tax rate (the tax owed per amount earned) is NOT going down. As a matter of fact tax rates will go up in each bracket; back to where they were before the Bush tax cuts were instated. Under Obama's plan employers are simply going to withhold less. Check it out, here is the link to the IRS website.

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=204521,00.html

Available for tax years 2009 and 2010, the Making Work Pay credit is 6.2 percent of a taxpayer’s earned income with a maximum credit of $800 for a married couple filing a joint return and $400 for other taxpayers, but it is phased out for higher income taxpayers. Most workers will qualify for the maximum credit. Because the credit is refundable (people can get it even if they owe no tax), most low-income workers will also qualify for the full credit.

Though all eligible taxpayers will need to claim the credit when they file their 2009 income tax return next year, the benefit will generally be spread out over the paychecks they receive beginning this spring and continue until the end of the year.

A Tax Credit, I thought Obama said, "tax cut"? So in other words Obama’s plan amounts to you claiming more dependants on your 2009 W-4 form. So at the end of the fiscal year, when you have to file your taxes, that extra $10 a week is counted as INCOME. This means that you will be taxed on it when you file your 2009 taxes.

Don't forget that the Bush tax cuts are going to expire in 2011 causing a tax increase for EVERYONE (that pays taxes). Of course the terminology the Obama Administration likes to use is, "roll back tax cuts".

Some tax cuts huh?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-090226soldier-letter,0,7802298.story

As President Obama and military officials plan for a marked escalation in the number of American troops in Afghanistan, the powerful words of a fallen soldier show how much the mission continues to mean to the women and men on the ground.

Illinois National Guard Sgt. Scott Stream, 39, of Mattoon, Ill., was killed Tuesday in Afghanistan. Below is a letter he wrote to a friend on New Year's Eve. The Tribune received a copy of the letter from Stream's mother.

I never knew Scott Stream. I wish I did. People like Scott are the ones who bring the world in to perspective.

Scott Stream:

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 9:30am

A strange thing...

When I think about what surrounds me, the institutional corruption, the random violence, the fear and desperation. I feel the reasons why I am here more and more sharply. As we grow in our soldiers skills, surviving by finding the hidden dangers, seeing the secret motives and the shifting politics... we grow a set of skills that is unique and powerful in this situation.

We also see what you cannot see in the States, you are surrounded by the love of Christ and faith in freedom and humanity, like a fish you think water is 'a puff of air' because it is always there, you do not notice it... we who are out of the water look back and see the world we love surrounded by enemies, poison and envy that wants to fall on you like a storm of ruin.

We who joined with vague notions of protecting our country see how desperate the peril, how hungry the enemy and how frail the security we have is. So the more I love you all the more I feel I must keep fighting for you. The more I love and long for home the more right I feel here on the front line standing between you and the seething madness that wants to suck the life and love out of our land.

Does that mean I cannot go home? I hope not, because I want this just to be the postponement of the joy of life, not the sacrifice of mine. If it costs me my life to protect our land and people then that is a small thing, I just hope that fate lets me return to the promise land and remind people just how great our land is.

War is a young mans game, and I am getting an old mans head... it is a strange thing. I just hope that I am not changed so that I cannot take joy in the land inside the wire when I make it home. I want to be with you all again and let my gun sit in the rack and float on my back in a tube down a lazy river...

May God be with all of our troops.