The Hell With It. Let’s Just Go Off The Damn Fiscal Cliff. Because You Just Can’t Negotiate With These People.

I just got through writing an article calling for a compromise on the tax hike Obama is demanding.  I already have to eat my words.

It is frankly hard to believe how pathologically Democrats prove themselves to be on a constant basis, even as much as I distrust Democrats and call them liars to their faces.

Realize that Democrats – and particularly Obama – have been saying that we need to hike taxes on the rich.  In order to do what?  In order to reduce the deficit, they said.  A nice, noble-sounding reason.  I mean, how can you possibly be against wanting to reduce the deficit???

Here’s a headline of Obama demagoguging tax hikes on the rich under the pretense that it would be to reduce the deficit:

Obama proposes $1.5tn tax hike to cut deficit
US president announces a number of measures aimed at reducing deficit in next 10 years, saying rich should pay more tax.
Last Modified: 19 Sep 2011

Here’s Obama over a year later, preaching the same message:

Obama says deficit plan must include higher taxes for wealthy
By Amie Parnes and Russell Berman – 11/09/12 03:51 PM ET

President Obama called on Congress on Friday to reduce the deficit in “a balanced and responsible way” in his first public remarks since winning reelection.

The president said Congress should extend the current tax rates for 98 percent of Americans, but raise taxes on households with annual income of more than $250,000.

Obama did not talk about higher tax rates in his speech, but said he would not accept a deal that cut spending and entitlements but did not ask wealthier households to pay more taxes.

“If we’re serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes,” Obama said. “That’s how we did it in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was president, that’s how we can reduce the deficit while still making the investments we need to build a strong middle class and a strong economy.”

But Democrats are LIARS and you simply cannot do a deal with these liars because they have no integrity at all in any way, shape or form.

Take a look at this:

Senate Democrats say deficit package must include stimulus
By Alexander Bolton – 11/14/12 01:42 PM ET

Senate Democrats, feeling confident from their net gain of two seats in last week’s election, say any deficit-reduction package negotiated in the coming weeks must include stimulus measures.

They have yet to decide which prime-the-pump measures to push, but are mulling options such as new infrastructure spending and an extension of the payroll tax holiday.

Some Republicans are likely to balk at the notion that a package to cut the deficit would include new spending. But Democrats argue the No. 1 concern for voters is job creation and that the government needs to take a more aggressive role in spurring the economy.

“We need to do something on stimulus as part of the overall fiscal cliff,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate Democrats’ chief political strategist. “We have to do something because the economy is not growing fast enough in the first year or two.”

Democrats are liars, and they are particularly liars ANYTIME they say ANYTHING about cutting government spending.  Period.

Obama is the selfsame president who promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term and instead tripled that deficit.  And now they’re already at it again just days since they ran a campaign based entirely on lies.

Democrats are now implicitly acknowledging that the “hike taxes so we can pay down the deficit” was a lie and a ruse from the deceitful party of lies and ruses.  Now they’re saying, “People who believe what we say are fools, so we have no qualms about lying in every single ‘promise’ we make.  We’ll promise one thing and then do another, and if you’re dumb enough to believe us then doom on you!”

Here’s another headline to show you just how damn far Obama is from “compromise” while he demonizes the Republicans for not compromising:

Obama Demands $1.6 Trillion More In Taxes Posted
by Adam English on the Wealth Wire
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

President Obama will begin budget negotiations on Friday morning but moving twice as far away from Republican interests. Instead of the $800 billion in extra federal revenue from tax hikes,Obama will be calling for a whopping $1.6 trillion.

On the other side of the table, House Speaker John Boehner hasn’t specified a revenue target, but he has said he would be willing to accept new tax revenues. He is still unwilling to consider higher tax rates.

As a condition for the possible concession, Boehner continues to insist that Democrats accept structural changes to entitlement programs which are causing long-term budget concerns.

President Obama just attended a meeting with union officials and other activists and will be meeting with CEOs of a dozen companies today. Many executives have already voiced grave concerns about the consequences of the looming standoff over the fiscal cliff.

73% of participants of a Wall Street Journal CEO conference earlier this week said their primary concern was the fiscal cliff.

How the hell do you actually move TWICE as far away to the left from your previous bargaining posture while simultaneously self-congratulating yourself for “compromising” and demonizing the party that HASN’T moved twice as far to the right on their bargaining position?  I don’t know, but with the help of the worst media propaganda since Goebbels, Obama has managed to do it.

Statement of fact: “The offer is twice as high as a deal Obama scuttled last year, suggesting he may be prepared to let talks fail again.”  That deal – which took Boehner to the breaking point – called for $800 billion in tax hikes.  Now Obama is demanding tax hikes that will be TWICE as high as last time.  While somehow trying to simultaneously claim that HE is the one willing to compromise!

Republicans – you know – “the obstructionists” – have offered Obama revenues that match what he says he needs by eliminating and/or capping deductions.  And it turns out that Obama HIMSELF has argued that what the Republicans are proposing is a solution:

The idea of curbing tax breaks isn’t new. Tax policy experts have touted it for  years and Democrats, including President Obama, have proposed it in one form or  another. That’s why it may offer a key to resolving the fiscal cliff.

So this isn’t about raising revenue; this is about targeting one group of people to punish them for daring to try to be successful in America.  This is about an out-of-control government demanding more and more control.  This is about pure demagoguery, pure and simple.

The fact of the matter is that Obama has DOUBLED DOWN on his demand while the Republicans have offered a surprising concession in being willing to increase government revenues.  But because we live in a world that Joseph Goebbels would love, the media STILL portrays Obama as the man who is “compromising” even though he is in fact demanding TWICE as much and the Republicans as “obstructionists” even though they are massively compromising.

I’m not the only human being who can see the massive, galling, astonishing hypocrisy and dishonesty from the Democrat Party, am I?

It doesn’t matter if the Republicans come to the table willing to compromise or not; they are demonized anyway, just the same.  So why compromise?

If Democrats want tax hikes, let’s give them to EVERYBODY.  If you want somebody else to pay more taxes, dammit, YOU should pay higher taxes.

I was looking for some way forward for Republicans and some way out of this fiscal cliff mess.  But let’s just go off that damn cliff.  Because there is no possible way to negotiate with people as deceitful and dishonest and disingenuous as Democrats have proven themselves to be.  And because “the cliff” can’t be any worse than the direction Obama wants to take America, anyway.

Harvard Medical School Dean Flunks Democrat Health Bill

Newsflash: An ‘F’ is really, really bad.

But that’s exactly the grade that the dean of one of our nation’s premier medical schools just assigned to ObamaCare.

Dr. Flier points out that the 2,074 page bill isn’t just bad; it is fundamentally dishonest.

Only a true fool and ideologue would support the takeover of our life-and-death health care system and 1/6th of our economy through a bill that literally gets a failing grade.

NOVEMBER 17, 2009, 6:59 P.M. ET

Health ‘Reform’ Gets a Failing Grade
The changes proposed by Congress will require more draconian measures down the road. Just look at Massachusetts.

By JEFFREY S. FLIER

As the dean of Harvard Medical School I am frequently asked to comment on the health-reform debate. I’d give it a failing grade.

Instead of forthrightly dealing with the fundamental problems, discussion is dominated by rival factions struggling to enact or defeat President Barack Obama’s agenda. The rhetoric on both sides is exaggerated and often deceptive. Those of us for whom the central issue is health—not politics—have been left in the lurch. And as controversy heads toward a conclusion in Washington, it appears that the people who favor the legislation are engaged in collective denial.

Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. And deep flaws in Medicare and Medicaid drive spending without optimizing care.

Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that’s not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost—and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

There are important lessons to be learned from recent experience with reform in Massachusetts. Here, insurance mandates similar to those proposed in the federal legislation succeeded in expanding coverage but—despite initial predictions—increased total spending.

A “Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System” recently declared that the Massachusetts health-care payment system must be changed over the next five years, most likely to one involving “capitated” payments instead of the traditional fee-for-service system. Capitation means that newly created organizations of physicians and other health-care providers will be given limited dollars per patient for all of their care, allowing for shared savings if spending is below the targets. Unfortunately, the details of this massive change—necessitated by skyrocketing costs and a desire to improve quality—are completely unspecified by the commission, although a new Massachusetts state bureaucracy clearly will be required.

Yet it’s entirely unclear how such unspecified changes would impact physician practices and compensation, hospital organizations and their capacity to invest, and the ability of patients to receive the kind and quality of care they desire. Similar challenges would eventually confront the entire country on a more explosive scale if the current legislation becomes law.

Selling an uncertain and potentially unwelcome outcome such as this to the public would be a challenging task. It is easier to assert, confidently but disingenuously, that decreased costs and enhanced quality would result from the current legislation.

So the majority of our representatives may congratulate themselves on reducing the number of uninsured, while quietly understanding this can only be the first step of a multiyear process to more drastically change the organization and funding of health care in America. I have met many people for whom this strategy is conscious and explicit.

We should not be making public policy in such a crucial area by keeping the electorate ignorant of the actual road ahead.

Dr. Flier is dean of the Harvard Medical School.

I’d like to thank Dr. Flier for his courageous stand.  You’ve GOTTA know that the man is taking a lot of heat for it by the hard-core Massachusetts and Harvard liberal ideologue establishment.  Dr. Flier clearly isn’t taking this position on the Democrats’ health agenda for his own health, as it were.

Capitation would merely be the most obvious way that the government would place doctors in a morally/ethically untenable position: they would literally be paid more to give their patients less treatment, and paid less to give their patients more treatment.

Another means of accomplishing the same result would be to have – oh, I don’t know, say 111 federal bureaucracies – which would force doctors to consider their regulations more than considering the needs of their patients.

It is evil.  And Democrats are evil for foisting this abomination upon us.