Agenda 21, One World Government
Pelosi laid groundwork for Obama’s Transformation of America
By Judi McLeod Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The clock ticking toward midnight in the well orchestrated Fall of America is Nancy Pelosi’s shining hour.
Rational people may ponder how Pelosi can urge Democrats to vote for ObamaCare even if it means the end of their careers.
Like Pelosi, many of her Dem cohorts including Senators Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Diane Feinstein among others, are long past their due date. In ending their careers for ObamaCare they have nothing to lose. How many of them will live out the rest of their lives in fabulous wealth? Are Dems being paid off with funds stolen from the American till during the destructive Obama administration?
Pelosi was at her Marxist best when she told ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas that elements of the Tea Party movement shared common cause with Democrats: “We share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C….It just has to stop.”
Special interests were never stopped but only aided and abetted on the Democrat’s watch.
Like a ravening wolf now that it looks like the sheep called America is at its most vulnerable, Pelosi bares long fangs.
While arrogant Obama will gladly take credit for it, Pelosi, more than any other member of Congress, paved the way for the takedown of America by the globalist-socialist elite fomenting for One World Order.
Not long after Barack Obama was Barry Soetero in red diapers, Pelosi as Useful Idiot Numero Uno was already setting the stage for America’s transformation to a Socialist State.
Pelosi’s hogging of today’s stage as ObamaCare shill covers a past freedom lovers should never forget. For it was Pelosi who carefully shepherded Agenda 21 through Congress, ultimately calling on and getting President Bill Clinton’s help after laying the initial groundwork.
Back on March 29, 1993 Pelosi introduced a joint resolution (H.J. RES166) to renew the call for the United States to “assume a strong leadership role in implementing Agenda 21 and other Summit agreements”, eventually gathering 67 co-sponsors for her bill. Thirty of those sponsors are still in Congress; co-sponsors Ted Kennedy and John Murtha no longer here.
Agenda 21 architects were were former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Canadian UN Poster Boy Maurice Strong, among others. In layman’s terms Agenda 21 is a global sustainability document which, among many other things, helped set the stage for converting military installations around the world into globalist activity centers.
Few recall that Pelosi was an investor in a real estate investment entity called PRESIDIO PARTNERS. Presidio Partners Holdings included the Presidio property where Gorbachev would eventually set up shop. Working with Pelosi, the late John Murtha played a key role in working with U.S. Navy officials, Pelosi’s nephew and Presidio Parters to ultimately bring about Gorbachev’s tenancy at San Francisco’s Presidio.
“In a nutshell, the Presidio quickly took its place as a Globalist Utopia, free of US controls. The typical world citizen would be shocked to learn the real agenda of these master engineers and facilitators.” (Ken Raggio, From the Presidium to the Presidio).
“Pelosi cheered the arrival of Gorbachev to the Presidio as a tenant, in a speech before the House of Representatives on June 4, 1992, entitled “From Swords to Plowshares”. Pelosi and Murtha showed their true ideological colors in their energetic efforts to bring the world’s most influential Communist to American soil to establish his American base for promoting his Globalist-Socialist agenda.”
“In April of 1993, Mikhail S. Gorbachev became the first civilian tenant at the prestigious Presidio in San Francisco. In a dedication ceremony, the former Soviet president and his wife were given the keys to a Coast Guard officer’s house by a three-star American general, where they were to run the Gorbachev Foundation. The mission of the Foundation was to conduct research on global political and environmental issues.” (CanadaFreePress, 11/15/06).
“As many other times before and since, Pelosi and her unpatriotic cohorts brazenly utilize their positions in the US Congress to put forward the most reckless globalist-socialist agendas—not even authorized by any mandate of the American voting public. Her radical liberal, globalist, socialist projects are entirely extra-curricular to her official role as a U.S. Government official,” Raggio wrote.
In effect, Obama would have no role to turn American over to Socialism without the diligent work of Nancy Pelosi who could stand in for the EU’s Woman Riding the Beast.
While the not long ago red-diapered Obama drags his TelePrompter about, delivering speeches about how he is prepared to shove Obamacare down America’s throat, Pelosi worked diligently in the background doing all the dirty work to make it possible.
Some day historians will record a US traitor whose betrayal of America far surpassed that of Benedict Arnold.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
IMF-STYLE AUSTERITY MEASURES COME TO AMERICA:
IMF-STYLE AUSTERITY MEASURES COME TO AMERICA:
WHAT “FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY” MEANS TO YOU
Ellen Brown, Mach 1st, 2010
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/fiscal_responsibility.php
In addition to mandatory private health insurance premiums, we may soon be hit with a “mandatory savings” tax and other belt-tightening measures urged by the President’s new budget task force. These radical austerity measures are not only unnecessary, however, but will actually make matters worse. The push for “fiscal responsibility” is based on bad economics.
When billionaires pledge a billion dollars to educate people to the evils of something, it is always good to peer closely at what they are up to. Hedge fund magnate Peter G. Peterson was formerly Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and head of the New York Federal Reserve. He is now senior chairman of Blackstone Group, which is in charge of dispersing government funds in the controversial AIG bailout, widely criticized as a government giveaway to banks. Peterson is also founder of the Peter Peterson Foundation, which has adopted the cause of imposing “fiscal responsibility” on Congress. He hired David M. Walker, former head of the Government Accounting Office, to spearhead a massive campaign to reduce the runaway federal debt, which the Peterson/Walker team blames on reckless government and consumer spending. The Foundation funded the movie “I.O.U.S.A.” to amass popular support for their cause, which largely revolves around dismantling Social Security and Medicare benefits as a way to cut costs and return to “fiscal responsibility.”
The Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform has pushed heavily for action to stem the federal debt. Bills for a budget task force were sponsored in both houses of Congress. The Senate bill was narrowly defeated, and the House bill was tabled; but that was not the end of it. In Obama’s State of the Union speech on January 27, he said he would be creating a presidential budget task force by executive order to address the federal government’s deficit and debt crisis, and that the task force would be modeled on the bills Congress had failed to pass. If Congress would not impose “fiscal responsibility” on the nation, the President would. “It keeps me awake at night, looking at all that red ink,” he said. The Executive Order was signed on February 17.
What the President seems to have missed is that all of our money except coins now comes into the world as “red ink,” or debt. It is all created on the books of private banks and lent into the economy. If there is no debt, there is no money; and private debt has collapsed. This year to date, U.S. lending has been contracting at the fastest rate in recorded history. A credit freeze has struck globally; and when credit shrinks, the money supply shrinks with it. That means there is insufficient money to buy goods, so workers get laid off and factories get shut down, perpetuating a vicious spiral of economic collapse and depression. To reverse that cycle, credit needs to be restored; and when the banks can’t do it, the government needs to step in and start “monetizing” debt itself, or turning debt into dollars.
Although lending remains far below earlier levels, banks say they are making as many loans as they are allowed to make under existing banking rules. The real bottleneck is with the “shadow lenders” – those investors who, until late 2007, bought massive amounts of bank loans bundled up as “securities,” taking those loans off the banks’ books, making room for yet more loans to be originated out of the banks’ capital and deposit bases. Because of the surging defaults on subprime mortgages, investors have now shied away from buying the loans, forcing banks and Wall Street firms to hold them on their books and take the losses. In the boom years, the shadow lending market was estimated at $10 trillion. That market has now collapsed, leaving a massive crater in the money supply. That hole needs to be filled, and only the government is in a position to do it. Paying down the federal debt when money is already scarce just makes matters worse. When the deficit has been reduced historically, the money supply has been reduced along with it, throwing the economy into recession.
Another Look at the Budget Reform Agenda
That raises the question, are the advocates of “fiscal responsibility” merely misguided? Or are they up to something more devious? The President’s Executive Order is vague about the sorts of budget decisions being entertained, but we can get a sense of what is on the table by looking at the earlier agenda of Peterson’s Commission on Budget Reform. The Peterson/Walker plan would have slashed social security entitlements, at a time when Wall Street has destroyed the home equity and private retirement accounts of potential retirees. Worse, it would have increased the social security tax, disguised as a “mandatory savings tax.” This added tax would be automatically withdrawn from your paycheck and deposited to a “Guaranteed Retirement Account” managed by the Social Security Administration. Since the savings would be “mandatory,” you could not withdraw your money without stiff penalties; and rather than enjoying an earlier retirement paid out of your increased savings, a later retirement date was being called for. In the meantime, your “mandatory savings” would just be fattening the investment pool of the Wall Street bankers managing the funds.
And that may be what really underlies the big push to educate the public to the dangers of the federal debt. Political analyst Jim Capo discusses a slide show presentation given by David M. Walker after the “I.O.U.S.A.” premier, in which a mandatory savings plan was proposed that would be modeled on the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (FSP). Capo comments:
“The FSP, available for federal employees like congressional staff workers, has over $200 billion of assets (on paper anyway). About half these assets are in special non-negotiable US Treasury notes issued especially for the FSP scheme. The other half are invested in stocks, bonds and other securities. . . . The nearly $100 billion in [this] half of the plan is managed by Blackrock Financial. And, yes, shock, Blackrock Financial is a creation of Mr. Peterson's Blackstone Group. In fact, the FSP and Blackstone were birthed almost as a matched set. It's tough to fail when you form an investment management company at the same time you can gain the contract that directs a percentage of the Federal government payroll into your hands.”
What “Fiscal Responsibility” Really Means
All of this puts “fiscal responsibility” in a different light. Rather than saving the future for our grandchildren, as the President himself seems to think it means, it appears to be a code word for delivering public monies into private hands and raising taxes on the already-squeezed middle class. In the parlance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these are called “austerity measures,” and they are the sorts of things that people are taking to the streets in Greece, Iceland and Latvia to protest. Americans are not taking to the streets only because nobody has told us that is what is being planned.
We have been deluded into thinking that “fiscal responsibility” (read “austerity”) is something for our benefit, something we actually need in order to save the country from bankruptcy. In the massive campaign to educate us to the perils of the federal debt, we have been repeatedly warned that the debt is disastrously large; that when foreign lenders decide to pull the plug on it, the U.S. will have to declare bankruptcy; and that all this is the fault of the citizenry for borrowing and spending too much. We are admonished to tighten our belts and save more; and since we can’t seem to impose that discipline on ourselves, the government will have to do it for us with a “mandatory savings” plan. The American people, who are already suffering massive unemployment and cutbacks in government services, will have to sacrifice more and pay the piper more, just as in those debt-strapped countries forced into austerity measures by the IMF.
Fortunately for us, however, there is a major difference between our debt and the debts of Greece, Latvia and Iceland. Our debt is owed in our own currency – U.S. dollars. Our government has the power to fix its solvency problems itself, by simply issuing the money it needs to pay off or refinance its debt. That time-tested solution goes back to the colonial scrip of the American colonists and the “Greenbacks” issued by Abraham Lincoln to avoid paying 24-36% interest rates.
Economic Fearmongering
What invariably kills any discussion of this sensible solution is another myth long perpetrated by the financial elite -- that allowing the government to increase the money supply would lead to hyperinflation. Rather than exercising its sovereign right to create the liquidity the nation needs, the government is told that it must borrow. Borrow from whom? From the bankers, of course. And where do bankers get the money they lend? They create it on their books, just as the government would have done. The difference is that when bankers create it, it comes with a hefty fee attached in the form of interest.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has been trying to increase the money supply; and rather than producing hyperinflation, we continue to suffer from deflation. Frantically pushing money at the banks has not gotten money into the real economy. Rather than lending it to businesses and individuals, the larger banks have been speculating with it or buying up smaller banks, land, farms, and productive capacity, while the credit freeze continues on Main Street. Only the government can reverse this vicious syndrome, by spending money directly on projects that will create jobs, provide services, and stimulate productivity. Increasing the money supply is not inflationary if the money is used to increase goods and services. Inflation results when “demand” (money) exceeds “supply” (goods and services). When supply and demand increase together, prices remain stable.
The notion that the federal debt is too large to be repaid and that we are imposing that monster burden on our grandchildren is another red herring. The federal debt has not been paid off since the days of Andrew Jackson, and it does not need to be paid off. It is just rolled over from year to year, providing the “full faith and credit” that alone backs the money supply of the nation. The only real danger posed by a growing federal debt is an exponentially growing interest burden; but so far, that danger has not materialized either. Interest on the federal debt has actually gone down since 2006 -- from $406 billion to $383 billion -- because interest rates have been lowered by the Fed to very low levels.
They can’t be lowered much further, however, so the interest burden will increase if the federal debt continues to grow. But there is a solution to that too. The government can just mandate that the Federal Reserve buy the government’s debt, and that the Fed not sell the bonds to private lenders. The Federal Reserve states on its website that it rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, making the money nearly interest-free.
All the fear-mongering about the economy collapsing when the Chinese and other investors stop buying our debt is yet another red herring. The Fed can buy the debt itself – as it has been stealthily doing. That is actually a better alternative than selling the debt to foreigners, since it means we really will owe the debt only to ourselves, as Roosevelt was assured by his advisors when he agreed to the deficit approach in the 1930s; and this debt-turned-into-dollars will be nearly interest-free.
Better yet would be to either nationalize or abolish the Fed and fund the government directly with Greenbacks as President Lincoln did. What the Fed does the Treasury Department can do, for the cost of administration. There would be no shareholders or bondholders to siphon earnings, which could be recycled into public accounts to fund national, state and local budgets at zero or near-zero interest rates. Eliminating debt service payments would allow state and federal income taxes to be slashed; and the public managers of this money, rather than hiding behind a veil of secrecy, would be opening their books for all to see.
A final red herring is the threatened bankruptcy of Social Security. Social Security cannot actually go bankrupt, because it is a pay-as-you-go system. Today’s social security taxes pay today’s recipients; and if necessary, the tax can be raised. As Washington economist Dean Baker wrote when President Bush unleashed the campaign to privatize Social Security in 2005:
“The most recent projections show that the program, with no changes whatsoever, can pay all benefits through the year 2042. Even after 2042, Social Security would always be able to pay a higher benefit (adjusted for inflation) than what current retirees receive, although the payment would only be about 73 percent of scheduled benefits.”
Today incomes over $97,000 escape the tax, disproportionately imposing it on lower income brackets. Projections over the next 75 years show that just removing that cap could eliminate the forecasted deficit. When the Democratic presidential candidates were debating in the fall of 2007, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were the only candidates willing to seriously consider this reasonable alternative. President Obama just needs to follow through with the solutions he espoused when campaigning.
The Mass Education Campaign We Really Need
What is really going on behind the scenes may have been revealed by Prof. Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University. An insider groomed by the international bankers, Dr. Quigley wrote in Tragedy and Hope in 1966:
“[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”
If that is indeed the plan, it is virtually complete. Unless we wake up to what is going on and take action, the “powers of financial capitalism” will have their way. Rather than taking to the streets, we need to take to the courts, bring voter initiatives, and wake up our legislators to the urgent need to take the power to create money back from the private banking elite that has hijacked it from the American people. And that includes waking up the President, who has been losing sleep over the wrong threat.
Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are webofdebt.com, ellenbrown.com, and public-banking.com.
WHAT “FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY” MEANS TO YOU
Ellen Brown, Mach 1st, 2010
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/fiscal_responsibility.php
In addition to mandatory private health insurance premiums, we may soon be hit with a “mandatory savings” tax and other belt-tightening measures urged by the President’s new budget task force. These radical austerity measures are not only unnecessary, however, but will actually make matters worse. The push for “fiscal responsibility” is based on bad economics.
When billionaires pledge a billion dollars to educate people to the evils of something, it is always good to peer closely at what they are up to. Hedge fund magnate Peter G. Peterson was formerly Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and head of the New York Federal Reserve. He is now senior chairman of Blackstone Group, which is in charge of dispersing government funds in the controversial AIG bailout, widely criticized as a government giveaway to banks. Peterson is also founder of the Peter Peterson Foundation, which has adopted the cause of imposing “fiscal responsibility” on Congress. He hired David M. Walker, former head of the Government Accounting Office, to spearhead a massive campaign to reduce the runaway federal debt, which the Peterson/Walker team blames on reckless government and consumer spending. The Foundation funded the movie “I.O.U.S.A.” to amass popular support for their cause, which largely revolves around dismantling Social Security and Medicare benefits as a way to cut costs and return to “fiscal responsibility.”
The Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform has pushed heavily for action to stem the federal debt. Bills for a budget task force were sponsored in both houses of Congress. The Senate bill was narrowly defeated, and the House bill was tabled; but that was not the end of it. In Obama’s State of the Union speech on January 27, he said he would be creating a presidential budget task force by executive order to address the federal government’s deficit and debt crisis, and that the task force would be modeled on the bills Congress had failed to pass. If Congress would not impose “fiscal responsibility” on the nation, the President would. “It keeps me awake at night, looking at all that red ink,” he said. The Executive Order was signed on February 17.
What the President seems to have missed is that all of our money except coins now comes into the world as “red ink,” or debt. It is all created on the books of private banks and lent into the economy. If there is no debt, there is no money; and private debt has collapsed. This year to date, U.S. lending has been contracting at the fastest rate in recorded history. A credit freeze has struck globally; and when credit shrinks, the money supply shrinks with it. That means there is insufficient money to buy goods, so workers get laid off and factories get shut down, perpetuating a vicious spiral of economic collapse and depression. To reverse that cycle, credit needs to be restored; and when the banks can’t do it, the government needs to step in and start “monetizing” debt itself, or turning debt into dollars.
Although lending remains far below earlier levels, banks say they are making as many loans as they are allowed to make under existing banking rules. The real bottleneck is with the “shadow lenders” – those investors who, until late 2007, bought massive amounts of bank loans bundled up as “securities,” taking those loans off the banks’ books, making room for yet more loans to be originated out of the banks’ capital and deposit bases. Because of the surging defaults on subprime mortgages, investors have now shied away from buying the loans, forcing banks and Wall Street firms to hold them on their books and take the losses. In the boom years, the shadow lending market was estimated at $10 trillion. That market has now collapsed, leaving a massive crater in the money supply. That hole needs to be filled, and only the government is in a position to do it. Paying down the federal debt when money is already scarce just makes matters worse. When the deficit has been reduced historically, the money supply has been reduced along with it, throwing the economy into recession.
Another Look at the Budget Reform Agenda
That raises the question, are the advocates of “fiscal responsibility” merely misguided? Or are they up to something more devious? The President’s Executive Order is vague about the sorts of budget decisions being entertained, but we can get a sense of what is on the table by looking at the earlier agenda of Peterson’s Commission on Budget Reform. The Peterson/Walker plan would have slashed social security entitlements, at a time when Wall Street has destroyed the home equity and private retirement accounts of potential retirees. Worse, it would have increased the social security tax, disguised as a “mandatory savings tax.” This added tax would be automatically withdrawn from your paycheck and deposited to a “Guaranteed Retirement Account” managed by the Social Security Administration. Since the savings would be “mandatory,” you could not withdraw your money without stiff penalties; and rather than enjoying an earlier retirement paid out of your increased savings, a later retirement date was being called for. In the meantime, your “mandatory savings” would just be fattening the investment pool of the Wall Street bankers managing the funds.
And that may be what really underlies the big push to educate the public to the dangers of the federal debt. Political analyst Jim Capo discusses a slide show presentation given by David M. Walker after the “I.O.U.S.A.” premier, in which a mandatory savings plan was proposed that would be modeled on the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (FSP). Capo comments:
“The FSP, available for federal employees like congressional staff workers, has over $200 billion of assets (on paper anyway). About half these assets are in special non-negotiable US Treasury notes issued especially for the FSP scheme. The other half are invested in stocks, bonds and other securities. . . . The nearly $100 billion in [this] half of the plan is managed by Blackrock Financial. And, yes, shock, Blackrock Financial is a creation of Mr. Peterson's Blackstone Group. In fact, the FSP and Blackstone were birthed almost as a matched set. It's tough to fail when you form an investment management company at the same time you can gain the contract that directs a percentage of the Federal government payroll into your hands.”
What “Fiscal Responsibility” Really Means
All of this puts “fiscal responsibility” in a different light. Rather than saving the future for our grandchildren, as the President himself seems to think it means, it appears to be a code word for delivering public monies into private hands and raising taxes on the already-squeezed middle class. In the parlance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these are called “austerity measures,” and they are the sorts of things that people are taking to the streets in Greece, Iceland and Latvia to protest. Americans are not taking to the streets only because nobody has told us that is what is being planned.
We have been deluded into thinking that “fiscal responsibility” (read “austerity”) is something for our benefit, something we actually need in order to save the country from bankruptcy. In the massive campaign to educate us to the perils of the federal debt, we have been repeatedly warned that the debt is disastrously large; that when foreign lenders decide to pull the plug on it, the U.S. will have to declare bankruptcy; and that all this is the fault of the citizenry for borrowing and spending too much. We are admonished to tighten our belts and save more; and since we can’t seem to impose that discipline on ourselves, the government will have to do it for us with a “mandatory savings” plan. The American people, who are already suffering massive unemployment and cutbacks in government services, will have to sacrifice more and pay the piper more, just as in those debt-strapped countries forced into austerity measures by the IMF.
Fortunately for us, however, there is a major difference between our debt and the debts of Greece, Latvia and Iceland. Our debt is owed in our own currency – U.S. dollars. Our government has the power to fix its solvency problems itself, by simply issuing the money it needs to pay off or refinance its debt. That time-tested solution goes back to the colonial scrip of the American colonists and the “Greenbacks” issued by Abraham Lincoln to avoid paying 24-36% interest rates.
Economic Fearmongering
What invariably kills any discussion of this sensible solution is another myth long perpetrated by the financial elite -- that allowing the government to increase the money supply would lead to hyperinflation. Rather than exercising its sovereign right to create the liquidity the nation needs, the government is told that it must borrow. Borrow from whom? From the bankers, of course. And where do bankers get the money they lend? They create it on their books, just as the government would have done. The difference is that when bankers create it, it comes with a hefty fee attached in the form of interest.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has been trying to increase the money supply; and rather than producing hyperinflation, we continue to suffer from deflation. Frantically pushing money at the banks has not gotten money into the real economy. Rather than lending it to businesses and individuals, the larger banks have been speculating with it or buying up smaller banks, land, farms, and productive capacity, while the credit freeze continues on Main Street. Only the government can reverse this vicious syndrome, by spending money directly on projects that will create jobs, provide services, and stimulate productivity. Increasing the money supply is not inflationary if the money is used to increase goods and services. Inflation results when “demand” (money) exceeds “supply” (goods and services). When supply and demand increase together, prices remain stable.
The notion that the federal debt is too large to be repaid and that we are imposing that monster burden on our grandchildren is another red herring. The federal debt has not been paid off since the days of Andrew Jackson, and it does not need to be paid off. It is just rolled over from year to year, providing the “full faith and credit” that alone backs the money supply of the nation. The only real danger posed by a growing federal debt is an exponentially growing interest burden; but so far, that danger has not materialized either. Interest on the federal debt has actually gone down since 2006 -- from $406 billion to $383 billion -- because interest rates have been lowered by the Fed to very low levels.
They can’t be lowered much further, however, so the interest burden will increase if the federal debt continues to grow. But there is a solution to that too. The government can just mandate that the Federal Reserve buy the government’s debt, and that the Fed not sell the bonds to private lenders. The Federal Reserve states on its website that it rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, making the money nearly interest-free.
All the fear-mongering about the economy collapsing when the Chinese and other investors stop buying our debt is yet another red herring. The Fed can buy the debt itself – as it has been stealthily doing. That is actually a better alternative than selling the debt to foreigners, since it means we really will owe the debt only to ourselves, as Roosevelt was assured by his advisors when he agreed to the deficit approach in the 1930s; and this debt-turned-into-dollars will be nearly interest-free.
Better yet would be to either nationalize or abolish the Fed and fund the government directly with Greenbacks as President Lincoln did. What the Fed does the Treasury Department can do, for the cost of administration. There would be no shareholders or bondholders to siphon earnings, which could be recycled into public accounts to fund national, state and local budgets at zero or near-zero interest rates. Eliminating debt service payments would allow state and federal income taxes to be slashed; and the public managers of this money, rather than hiding behind a veil of secrecy, would be opening their books for all to see.
A final red herring is the threatened bankruptcy of Social Security. Social Security cannot actually go bankrupt, because it is a pay-as-you-go system. Today’s social security taxes pay today’s recipients; and if necessary, the tax can be raised. As Washington economist Dean Baker wrote when President Bush unleashed the campaign to privatize Social Security in 2005:
“The most recent projections show that the program, with no changes whatsoever, can pay all benefits through the year 2042. Even after 2042, Social Security would always be able to pay a higher benefit (adjusted for inflation) than what current retirees receive, although the payment would only be about 73 percent of scheduled benefits.”
Today incomes over $97,000 escape the tax, disproportionately imposing it on lower income brackets. Projections over the next 75 years show that just removing that cap could eliminate the forecasted deficit. When the Democratic presidential candidates were debating in the fall of 2007, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were the only candidates willing to seriously consider this reasonable alternative. President Obama just needs to follow through with the solutions he espoused when campaigning.
The Mass Education Campaign We Really Need
What is really going on behind the scenes may have been revealed by Prof. Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University. An insider groomed by the international bankers, Dr. Quigley wrote in Tragedy and Hope in 1966:
“[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”
If that is indeed the plan, it is virtually complete. Unless we wake up to what is going on and take action, the “powers of financial capitalism” will have their way. Rather than taking to the streets, we need to take to the courts, bring voter initiatives, and wake up our legislators to the urgent need to take the power to create money back from the private banking elite that has hijacked it from the American people. And that includes waking up the President, who has been losing sleep over the wrong threat.
Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are webofdebt.com, ellenbrown.com, and public-banking.com.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Heroic Physician Fired By Hospital For Telling Truth
Heroic Physician Fired By
Hospital For Telling Truth - Vid
2-23-10
After informing his colleagues of the dangers of the H1N1 vaccine and Baxter International's contaminated samples sent to a number of eastern European labs, Dr. Spencer was summarily fired and ordered to have a psychiatric exam.
In this video he sets the record straight...
Heroic Physician Fired For Telling Truth - Pt 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89DbP4PoySQ
Heroic Physician Fired For Telling Truth - Pt 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2hOkOY7Ji4
Heroic Physician Fired For Telling Truth - Pt 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9phhSbufeck
Heroic Physician Fired For Telling Truth - Pt 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maOL4hJkfo0
Hospital For Telling Truth - Vid
2-23-10
After informing his colleagues of the dangers of the H1N1 vaccine and Baxter International's contaminated samples sent to a number of eastern European labs, Dr. Spencer was summarily fired and ordered to have a psychiatric exam.
In this video he sets the record straight...
Heroic Physician Fired For Telling Truth - Pt 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89DbP4PoySQ
Heroic Physician Fired For Telling Truth - Pt 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2hOkOY7Ji4
Heroic Physician Fired For Telling Truth - Pt 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9phhSbufeck
Heroic Physician Fired For Telling Truth - Pt 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maOL4hJkfo0
Canada's Biggest Scandal?
Canada's Biggest Scandal?
From Paul A. Drockton – February 27, 2010
(Paul's Note: This article was submitted by the author as a direct result of my "Calling All Whistle Blowers". This is what happens when Fascists in High-level Government conspire against the marketplace. They have done everything to destroy this whistleblower, who will tell his story on my Monday Radio Program 12 PM Eastern. The show is recorded so, to listen, click on the LINK)
For decades, political and business insiders, with Canadian and British Columbian governments, have known that the water resources in the American southwest and Mexico were dwindling in the face of an increasing population. A small group of Canadian political insiders saw the opportunity to earn massive profits for themselves from the export of Canada's fresh water and set about on a fraudulent and corrupt scheme to capture for themselves an illegal water export monopoly so they could line their pockets with revenues from the sale of Canadian public assests and gouge American consumers.
In the process these corrupt political insiders in Canada violated the Free Trade Agreement, the NAFTA, the domestic laws of Canada and tried to rig or fix the outcome of a public tender process that took place in California where the small community of Goleta was looking for alternate water sources in the midst of the most severe drought in its history.
In British Columbia, in the 1980's, public opinion and political opinion favored the development of a water export industry from coastal streams and rivers. There was ample water and, as long as fish stocks were protected, there was no apparent environmental or other concern with extracting a moderate amount of water from the abundance or water resources that flowed into the ocean annually. The Government of British Columbia estimated that about 400 million acre feet of water flows annually into the Pacific Ocean from the coast of British Columbia. This estimate excludes the Fraser river and rivers or streams flowing south, east and north.
In short, the quantities of water and sources of water available for export in British Columbia are so huge and so varied that they far outstrip any conceivable demand. These issues of supply and demand presented a practical business problem because free market competition would invariably lower prices and, therefore, lower profits.
The solution was a monopoly.
Monopolies are highly sensitive political issues. Typically, governments and the public resist monopolies because they know that the business people involved will gouge them with higher and ever higher prices.
So, the investors behind the bulk water export business hatched a bold and devious two step plan:
1. Obtain a source of abundant water for export from the British Columbia Government.
2. Use the environmental movement and the public media in Canada to persuade policy makers in the Governments of Canada and British Columbia to impose a ban on their competition.
The investors went to work, set up a company called W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd., persuaded the British Columbia government to give it a source of water. Then they hired public relations firms and environmentalists to induce the fear in the general public that by permitting water exports Canada woud be drained dry and that the only solution was a ban or moratorium on bulk water exports. The scare mongering began. Canadians were told that fresh water was Canada's most precious resource, that glaciers were melting, that lakes and rivers were drying up, that Canada could not risk selling any water to the USA and that the only solution was a prohibition on bulk water exports. Of course, the prohibition would not affect rights already acquired and WCW would then have a monopoly.
The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, many Canadians actually believe that water or snow is Canada's most precious resource when, in market terms, water is next to worthless - in most parts of Canada.
The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, many Canadians believe that water comes from glaciers lakes and rivers when, in truth, it originates in the ocean.
That plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, most Canadians believe that water is a non-renewable resource like oil and that every drop of water exported is gone forever when, in fact, it pretty well returns every year in the form of snow and rain.
The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, most Canadians believe that the creation of a few pipelines or aqueducts to deliver water to the United Sates and Mexico will forever destroy Canada's environment.
The plan was brilliant, it was devious, and it would have been hugely profitable and, incidentally, tax free for many of the insiders who held their interests offshore.
The political and business insiders in Canada had selected their vehicle to make fabulous proifits, W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd., but they had two viable competitors that needed to be destroyed. These were the joint venture project of two small companies, one American, Sun Belt Water Inc. based in Santa Barbara, California, and one Canadian, Snowcap Waters Ltd. based in Fanny Bay, B.C., and the small Vancouver based company, Aquasource Ltd.
As an ally of W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd., that had bribed the governing political Social Credit Party with political donations, the British Columbia Government under the leadership of Bill Vander Zalm threw a multitude of regulatory hurdles in the path of the competitors that slowed them down but did not completely kill them so, eventually the Government used brute force to destroy the competition to W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprise Ltd. and broke the Canada US Free Trade Aggeement, the GATT and the Water Act and imposed the illegal moratorium on bulk water exports that denied all competitors the ability to get an bulk water export licence
Despite its brilliance the plans by the insiders did not work and they did not work for THREE fundamental reasons,
First, the plans were illegal. The plans were illegal because they violated the Water Act, a domestic law of the Province of British Columbia, they violated the Free Trade Agreement, an international trade treaty between Canada and the USA that was approved by the Province of British Columbia and binding on the Province, and they violated the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, an agreement that British Columbia and Canada were required to follow.
Because the plan was illegal, it was a well guarded secret and the Canadian public have been left with an incomplete understanding of the fraud that was foisted upon them while the nation was left with an ill-conceived and ill-thought out bulk water export policy that originated as part of a fraudulent conspiracy.
Secondly, WCW Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd. were greedy and attempted to gouge the first US customer, the Goleta Water District, by pricing its water at 50% more than the American competitor, Sun Belt Water Inc.
In March 1991, the Goleta Water District selected Sun Belt Water Inc., after an open public competitive process, to supply approximately 7,500 acre feet of per year. The competing bid of W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd. was rejected because of grossly over inflated pricing. Sun Belt Water Inc. and its Canadian partner, Snowcap Waters Ltd., were poised to become the first players in the emerging bulk water export import business.
Third, when the politicians and insiders in Canada saw that their plans had gone sideways, they went crazy, broke the Canada US Free Trade Agreement and announced that Sun Belt Water Ltd. would not be permitted to have access to fresh water from Canada and that only WCW could supply the water Goleta wanted.
The Government of British Columbia moved quickly and imposed its first moratorium, a moratorium it knew was illegal, on bulk water exports in order to prevent Sun Belt from getting water for export thereby attempting to force the Americans to do business with WCW at exorbitant prices in order to line the pockets of their friends.
With no fresh water to serve its customers, the Sun Belt venture, a small business, collapsed. Goleta refused to do business with WCW and WCW carried on for a few more years before collapsing into bankruptcy although it had raised over $100 million to finance its business
A few years later, Sun Belt Water Inc. retained a lawyer in Canada who started to move a claim forward in the Canada's courts that would expose the criminals. The insiders moved quickly, manipulated the Canadian judiciary and shut down the Sun Belt case in Canada's courts and financially and professionally destroyed the Sun Belt lawyer.
Having committed no crimes, the lawyer was jailed twice by the Governments of Canada and British Columbia, his business was destroyed by Government actions, he is effectively barred from practising law in British Columbia, where he successfully practised for 22 years from 1977 to 1999.
Governments in Canada have slandered and libelled his reputation. He is prevented from filing legal claims on his own behalf in the British Columbia courts. When summoned to court, in British Columbia, he is prevented from calling witnesses and denied the right to present evidence. Judges in British Columbia have fixed cases against him and his clients in order to undermine his economic survival.
In addition, Governments in Canada attached the woman who gave him some assistance. A mother of five children, a legal secretary and a nurse. She has been followed, spied on, her telephones have been monitored, her assets stolen by Canadian government agents. She and her young family were traumatized and thrown into chaos by the deliberate attacks of agents of the Governments of Canada and British Columbia acting through Canada's politically controlled court system.
The lady and the lawyer went underground, dug up the dirt on their enemies and now nine of the judges who collaborated with the Canadian government and mis-used their powers on the bench are dead. Scores of crooked civil servants have been exposed as criminals and lost their jobs and three Governments that attacked them have been undermined and thrown out of power.
This is their story, and it is told here and on their blog.
Source: http://moneyteachers.org/Water.htm
Printer friendly version Email this article to a friend
Last updated 01/03/2010
From Paul A. Drockton – February 27, 2010
(Paul's Note: This article was submitted by the author as a direct result of my "Calling All Whistle Blowers". This is what happens when Fascists in High-level Government conspire against the marketplace. They have done everything to destroy this whistleblower, who will tell his story on my Monday Radio Program 12 PM Eastern. The show is recorded so, to listen, click on the LINK)
For decades, political and business insiders, with Canadian and British Columbian governments, have known that the water resources in the American southwest and Mexico were dwindling in the face of an increasing population. A small group of Canadian political insiders saw the opportunity to earn massive profits for themselves from the export of Canada's fresh water and set about on a fraudulent and corrupt scheme to capture for themselves an illegal water export monopoly so they could line their pockets with revenues from the sale of Canadian public assests and gouge American consumers.
In the process these corrupt political insiders in Canada violated the Free Trade Agreement, the NAFTA, the domestic laws of Canada and tried to rig or fix the outcome of a public tender process that took place in California where the small community of Goleta was looking for alternate water sources in the midst of the most severe drought in its history.
In British Columbia, in the 1980's, public opinion and political opinion favored the development of a water export industry from coastal streams and rivers. There was ample water and, as long as fish stocks were protected, there was no apparent environmental or other concern with extracting a moderate amount of water from the abundance or water resources that flowed into the ocean annually. The Government of British Columbia estimated that about 400 million acre feet of water flows annually into the Pacific Ocean from the coast of British Columbia. This estimate excludes the Fraser river and rivers or streams flowing south, east and north.
In short, the quantities of water and sources of water available for export in British Columbia are so huge and so varied that they far outstrip any conceivable demand. These issues of supply and demand presented a practical business problem because free market competition would invariably lower prices and, therefore, lower profits.
The solution was a monopoly.
Monopolies are highly sensitive political issues. Typically, governments and the public resist monopolies because they know that the business people involved will gouge them with higher and ever higher prices.
So, the investors behind the bulk water export business hatched a bold and devious two step plan:
1. Obtain a source of abundant water for export from the British Columbia Government.
2. Use the environmental movement and the public media in Canada to persuade policy makers in the Governments of Canada and British Columbia to impose a ban on their competition.
The investors went to work, set up a company called W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd., persuaded the British Columbia government to give it a source of water. Then they hired public relations firms and environmentalists to induce the fear in the general public that by permitting water exports Canada woud be drained dry and that the only solution was a ban or moratorium on bulk water exports. The scare mongering began. Canadians were told that fresh water was Canada's most precious resource, that glaciers were melting, that lakes and rivers were drying up, that Canada could not risk selling any water to the USA and that the only solution was a prohibition on bulk water exports. Of course, the prohibition would not affect rights already acquired and WCW would then have a monopoly.
The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, many Canadians actually believe that water or snow is Canada's most precious resource when, in market terms, water is next to worthless - in most parts of Canada.
The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, many Canadians believe that water comes from glaciers lakes and rivers when, in truth, it originates in the ocean.
That plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, most Canadians believe that water is a non-renewable resource like oil and that every drop of water exported is gone forever when, in fact, it pretty well returns every year in the form of snow and rain.
The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, most Canadians believe that the creation of a few pipelines or aqueducts to deliver water to the United Sates and Mexico will forever destroy Canada's environment.
The plan was brilliant, it was devious, and it would have been hugely profitable and, incidentally, tax free for many of the insiders who held their interests offshore.
The political and business insiders in Canada had selected their vehicle to make fabulous proifits, W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd., but they had two viable competitors that needed to be destroyed. These were the joint venture project of two small companies, one American, Sun Belt Water Inc. based in Santa Barbara, California, and one Canadian, Snowcap Waters Ltd. based in Fanny Bay, B.C., and the small Vancouver based company, Aquasource Ltd.
As an ally of W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd., that had bribed the governing political Social Credit Party with political donations, the British Columbia Government under the leadership of Bill Vander Zalm threw a multitude of regulatory hurdles in the path of the competitors that slowed them down but did not completely kill them so, eventually the Government used brute force to destroy the competition to W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprise Ltd. and broke the Canada US Free Trade Aggeement, the GATT and the Water Act and imposed the illegal moratorium on bulk water exports that denied all competitors the ability to get an bulk water export licence
Despite its brilliance the plans by the insiders did not work and they did not work for THREE fundamental reasons,
First, the plans were illegal. The plans were illegal because they violated the Water Act, a domestic law of the Province of British Columbia, they violated the Free Trade Agreement, an international trade treaty between Canada and the USA that was approved by the Province of British Columbia and binding on the Province, and they violated the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, an agreement that British Columbia and Canada were required to follow.
Because the plan was illegal, it was a well guarded secret and the Canadian public have been left with an incomplete understanding of the fraud that was foisted upon them while the nation was left with an ill-conceived and ill-thought out bulk water export policy that originated as part of a fraudulent conspiracy.
Secondly, WCW Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd. were greedy and attempted to gouge the first US customer, the Goleta Water District, by pricing its water at 50% more than the American competitor, Sun Belt Water Inc.
In March 1991, the Goleta Water District selected Sun Belt Water Inc., after an open public competitive process, to supply approximately 7,500 acre feet of per year. The competing bid of W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd. was rejected because of grossly over inflated pricing. Sun Belt Water Inc. and its Canadian partner, Snowcap Waters Ltd., were poised to become the first players in the emerging bulk water export import business.
Third, when the politicians and insiders in Canada saw that their plans had gone sideways, they went crazy, broke the Canada US Free Trade Agreement and announced that Sun Belt Water Ltd. would not be permitted to have access to fresh water from Canada and that only WCW could supply the water Goleta wanted.
The Government of British Columbia moved quickly and imposed its first moratorium, a moratorium it knew was illegal, on bulk water exports in order to prevent Sun Belt from getting water for export thereby attempting to force the Americans to do business with WCW at exorbitant prices in order to line the pockets of their friends.
With no fresh water to serve its customers, the Sun Belt venture, a small business, collapsed. Goleta refused to do business with WCW and WCW carried on for a few more years before collapsing into bankruptcy although it had raised over $100 million to finance its business
A few years later, Sun Belt Water Inc. retained a lawyer in Canada who started to move a claim forward in the Canada's courts that would expose the criminals. The insiders moved quickly, manipulated the Canadian judiciary and shut down the Sun Belt case in Canada's courts and financially and professionally destroyed the Sun Belt lawyer.
Having committed no crimes, the lawyer was jailed twice by the Governments of Canada and British Columbia, his business was destroyed by Government actions, he is effectively barred from practising law in British Columbia, where he successfully practised for 22 years from 1977 to 1999.
Governments in Canada have slandered and libelled his reputation. He is prevented from filing legal claims on his own behalf in the British Columbia courts. When summoned to court, in British Columbia, he is prevented from calling witnesses and denied the right to present evidence. Judges in British Columbia have fixed cases against him and his clients in order to undermine his economic survival.
In addition, Governments in Canada attached the woman who gave him some assistance. A mother of five children, a legal secretary and a nurse. She has been followed, spied on, her telephones have been monitored, her assets stolen by Canadian government agents. She and her young family were traumatized and thrown into chaos by the deliberate attacks of agents of the Governments of Canada and British Columbia acting through Canada's politically controlled court system.
The lady and the lawyer went underground, dug up the dirt on their enemies and now nine of the judges who collaborated with the Canadian government and mis-used their powers on the bench are dead. Scores of crooked civil servants have been exposed as criminals and lost their jobs and three Governments that attacked them have been undermined and thrown out of power.
This is their story, and it is told here and on their blog.
Source: http://moneyteachers.org/Water.htm
Printer friendly version Email this article to a friend
Last updated 01/03/2010
ObamaCare: The Threat to Physician Autonomy
ObamaCare: The Threat to Physician Autonomy
Monday, March 1, 2010 at 9:15PM
by Richard Amerling, M.D.
The debate raging over ObamaCare has been carried on mostly by politicians, pundits, policy wonks and economists, with little input from those most intimately involved with delivery of health care—medical practitioners. Doctors have too often been marginalized as self-interested. If that were true, there would be far fewer practicing physicians. Of course we are concerned with income, as are all taxpayers and businesses faced with rising costs and taxes. Unlike other businesses, however, most doctors are unable to pass higher costs to consumers due to price controls on reimbursement. When costs outpace income, bankruptcy ensues. This renders discussions of autonomy moot.
Autonomy, for physician and patient, is central to the medical profession and dates back to Hippocrates: "I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment. I will keep them from harm and injustice."
To be fair, physician autonomy, and the doctor-patient relationship, have been under assault for decades. This was an inevitable result of the acceptance of third party payment by physicians, and was greatly accelerated by Medicare and Medicaid beginning in 1965, and the Health Maintenance Organization in the 1970s.
Medicare and Medicaid sought to control costs by limiting reimbursement to physicians, payment to hospitals based on diagnosis, and by limiting payment to services it deemed “medically necessary.” Practice was and is distorted by these interventions. For example, faced with declining payment for services, doctors increase the volume of services. This means less time per patient, declining quality, and greater reliance on laboratory services, imaging procedures, consultants and hospitalizations. Total costs actually rise when physician fees are cut!
Health Maintenance Organizations promised to improve quality and control costs by assigning each patient to a Primary Care Provider, or PCP. The PCP, who could be a nurse practitioner or physician, serves as a gatekeeper, blocking access to higher level care. They receive direct financial incentives to spend the least amount per patient. This is the opposite of physician autonomy, with the PCP in effect working for the HMO.
Whatever its final form, ObamaCare would perpetuate these failed models. In addition, it will include enhanced measures to control medical care. These will be implemented under the guise of quality assurance and cost containment. Slipped into the so called stimulus bill passed last February is a new federal health care panel that will decide which procedures and drugs are “medically necessary” and “cost effective.” Based on the writings of Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother of Rahm and close Obama health advisor, we can assume rationing of care to the elderly (over 65!) and very young (under 2). Also included is a mandate for adoption of electronic health records (EHR). The clear goal here is to have access to every medical interaction; the only rationale for gathering such detailed information is to exercise control over medical decision-making.
The mechanisms are already in place. For the past couple of decades medical specialty societies, aided and abetted by the government, the American Medical Association, and Big Pharma, have been crafting clinical practice guidelines. These mostly opinion based recommendations will be transformed into mandates, first as “clinical performance measures,” then as “payment for performance.” Treatment algorithms will be built into the EHR to guide decision making at the point of service. Such a “one size fits all” approach will be an unmitigated disaster for patients.
The Senate bill states that qualified health plans may only work with doctors who “implement such mechanisms to improve health-care quality as the secretary (HHS) may by regulation require.” In other words, doctors who refuse to turn over patient information and treat according to guidelines will be barred from participating.
The way to preserve a semblance of physician autonomy is to send this bill to the shredder. Failing this, the medical profession must come together and refuse to sell out their patients and their profession. We must assert our right to treat patients as individuals, to the best of our ability.
Richard Amerling, MD, is a nephrologist practicing in New York City. He is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and the Director of Outpatient Dialysis at the Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Amerling studied medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, graduating cum laude in 1981. He completed a medical residency at the New York Hospital Queens and a nephrology fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He has written and lectured extensively on health care issues and is a board member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Amerling authored and signed the Physicians’ Declaration of Independence.
Monday, March 1, 2010 at 9:15PM
by Richard Amerling, M.D.
The debate raging over ObamaCare has been carried on mostly by politicians, pundits, policy wonks and economists, with little input from those most intimately involved with delivery of health care—medical practitioners. Doctors have too often been marginalized as self-interested. If that were true, there would be far fewer practicing physicians. Of course we are concerned with income, as are all taxpayers and businesses faced with rising costs and taxes. Unlike other businesses, however, most doctors are unable to pass higher costs to consumers due to price controls on reimbursement. When costs outpace income, bankruptcy ensues. This renders discussions of autonomy moot.
Autonomy, for physician and patient, is central to the medical profession and dates back to Hippocrates: "I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment. I will keep them from harm and injustice."
To be fair, physician autonomy, and the doctor-patient relationship, have been under assault for decades. This was an inevitable result of the acceptance of third party payment by physicians, and was greatly accelerated by Medicare and Medicaid beginning in 1965, and the Health Maintenance Organization in the 1970s.
Medicare and Medicaid sought to control costs by limiting reimbursement to physicians, payment to hospitals based on diagnosis, and by limiting payment to services it deemed “medically necessary.” Practice was and is distorted by these interventions. For example, faced with declining payment for services, doctors increase the volume of services. This means less time per patient, declining quality, and greater reliance on laboratory services, imaging procedures, consultants and hospitalizations. Total costs actually rise when physician fees are cut!
Health Maintenance Organizations promised to improve quality and control costs by assigning each patient to a Primary Care Provider, or PCP. The PCP, who could be a nurse practitioner or physician, serves as a gatekeeper, blocking access to higher level care. They receive direct financial incentives to spend the least amount per patient. This is the opposite of physician autonomy, with the PCP in effect working for the HMO.
Whatever its final form, ObamaCare would perpetuate these failed models. In addition, it will include enhanced measures to control medical care. These will be implemented under the guise of quality assurance and cost containment. Slipped into the so called stimulus bill passed last February is a new federal health care panel that will decide which procedures and drugs are “medically necessary” and “cost effective.” Based on the writings of Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother of Rahm and close Obama health advisor, we can assume rationing of care to the elderly (over 65!) and very young (under 2). Also included is a mandate for adoption of electronic health records (EHR). The clear goal here is to have access to every medical interaction; the only rationale for gathering such detailed information is to exercise control over medical decision-making.
The mechanisms are already in place. For the past couple of decades medical specialty societies, aided and abetted by the government, the American Medical Association, and Big Pharma, have been crafting clinical practice guidelines. These mostly opinion based recommendations will be transformed into mandates, first as “clinical performance measures,” then as “payment for performance.” Treatment algorithms will be built into the EHR to guide decision making at the point of service. Such a “one size fits all” approach will be an unmitigated disaster for patients.
The Senate bill states that qualified health plans may only work with doctors who “implement such mechanisms to improve health-care quality as the secretary (HHS) may by regulation require.” In other words, doctors who refuse to turn over patient information and treat according to guidelines will be barred from participating.
The way to preserve a semblance of physician autonomy is to send this bill to the shredder. Failing this, the medical profession must come together and refuse to sell out their patients and their profession. We must assert our right to treat patients as individuals, to the best of our ability.
Richard Amerling, MD, is a nephrologist practicing in New York City. He is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and the Director of Outpatient Dialysis at the Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Amerling studied medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, graduating cum laude in 1981. He completed a medical residency at the New York Hospital Queens and a nephrology fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He has written and lectured extensively on health care issues and is a board member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Amerling authored and signed the Physicians’ Declaration of Independence.
“Why We Americans Do Not Want This Healthcare Bill”
“Why We Americans Do Not Want This Healthcare Bill”
March 1, 2010 by ppjg
By: Donna Garner (c)copyright 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED by author.
Summary of Obama/Reid healthcare bill by Michael Connelly:
It places control of our personal health care decisions in the hands of unnamed Federal Bureaucrats who care nothing about us or our individual needs. It provides instant access for these same bureaucrats to see our medical and financial information, it massively increases our taxes and ultimately our insurance premiums, and it reduces our access to the health care that we need. It takes away our choices and our personal freedoms and it increases the Federal deficit that will eventually land on the backs of our children and grandchildren. (Michael Connelly is a U.S. Army veteran, a retired attorney, a published author, freelance writer, and teaches law courses online worldwide —
March 1, 2010 by ppjg
By: Donna Garner (c)copyright 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED by author.
Summary of Obama/Reid healthcare bill by Michael Connelly:
It places control of our personal health care decisions in the hands of unnamed Federal Bureaucrats who care nothing about us or our individual needs. It provides instant access for these same bureaucrats to see our medical and financial information, it massively increases our taxes and ultimately our insurance premiums, and it reduces our access to the health care that we need. It takes away our choices and our personal freedoms and it increases the Federal deficit that will eventually land on the backs of our children and grandchildren. (Michael Connelly is a U.S. Army veteran, a retired attorney, a published author, freelance writer, and teaches law courses online worldwide —
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