This just in from our Republican Insider, who has been very busy of late regarding the impending sequestration conflict that is being played out 24/7 by the Mainstream Media and the Obama White House. RI told us last week that if it was up to them they would simply let the cuts happen – that the sum total of those cuts is only a small fraction of the amount that truly needs to be reduced from the federal government. Today they indicate with this emailed update that despite the talks of a doom and gloom sequester crisis, it is the Obama White House that actually intervened to prevent a possible compromise to originate from the Democratic Party controlled Senate.
“Mock him for acting like a panicked little girl throwing a hissy fit.”
________________________________________________
RI: Hope you enjoyed your weekend. Mine was a mess.
I received word from a source who works with the “other side” on the Hill that a handful of Senators was preparing a sequester compromise to be worked up and presented to Reid’s office by today. Word of that compromise got out and reached the White House. I am guessing it was someone working for Reid who relayed that information. Regardless, it was the very next day that a staffer for one of the Senators working the compromise deal received word from Legislative Affairs to not under any circumstances continue to produce a compromise, or publicize any such deal. That would indicate it came from Pagano (who I know and like) which makes it more interesting because of who one of the Senators I was told was part of the group working up the compromise. I guess it also means the leak could have come from that Senator himself. Hadn’t thought about that until just now, although that would also involve another back story with this particular Senator related to the gun control issue, a back story that has been frustrating the White House.
Back to the sequester issue though. I’m just trying to give you a heads up here that the Obama White House is purposely attempting to head off any potential compromise in order to play out this false emergency for as long as possible. I guess that’s not actual news for most of you paying attention, but the events over the weekend with this latest compromise deal being pushed back directly by the White House confirms this and the fact I was told about it means others were too which might create a backlash against the president from some inside his own party. It also confirms that the White House must be planning on some kind of PR stunt soon on this that will not only try to place the president as the only adult in the room, but really hammer away at the Republicans in the House. That is the real goal with this. Barack Obama needs Democrats to take back the House in 2014 otherwise he knows he will be done. The agenda will be halted for at least two years and then his role will be greatly diminished. That process is already underway but people still fear him because of the massive voter information machine he has in place. He is sucking funding away from the DNC and putting it directly into his own Organizing for Action and the Obama operatives are threatening everybody, Democrats and Republicans, that those resources will be used to eliminate anyone who opposes them.
Can’t just blame the president or Harry Reid and the Senate here though. Once again I am very disappointed in the failure of John Boehner and his crew to create an effective counter-argument on this sequestration issue. I know he has a lot tougher job doing that with the media so stacked against any kind of Republican message, but to this point he has pretty much curled up into a fetal position and is waiting for this thing to just go away. I heard a great idea the other day about how Republicans should have created a website where voters could go on and vote on what things should be cut from the budget. Let people see how much waste and fraud there is. Let them think about the things we really need vs a lot of garbage the politicians and their special interest supporters just want. That would get people personally involved in the issue and counter the media’s very slanted version of the argument. It’s ideas like that that could really make so much of a difference in how conservatism is viewed. Appeal to people’s common sense. I still believe that if given good information in an easy to understand format, most people will choose common sense over selfishness or ignorance. Boehner’s office hasn’t figured that one out and I just don’t think they know how to. When it comes to basic messaging they just plain suck at it.
You know, if the Republican leadership wants an example of basic messaging that appeals to people’s common sense they should look at how Senator Rand Paul handled the sequester issue a couple days ago. He’s asked about the role the president has taken on the subject and instead of mincing his words or talking about compromise or any of the other things people like Speaker Boehner do, Senator Paul comes right out and says what is really going on in a way that is easy to understand and puts Barack Obama exactly in the place he deserves. Did you see the interview I’m talking about? I love it when people say Obama is simply fear mongering. That he is lying. Here is a quote from Senator Paul when asked about the president’s position on the sequester crisis:
“I would say balderdash. It’s untrue, unfair, dishonest, disingenuous. The president is making stuff up. He puts law enforcement, he puts firemen and policemen, who 98 percent of them are being paid for with your local taxes, and says you’re going to lose your local policeman because of this. It’s not true. The sequester is a slowdown in the rate of growth of government. It’s the least we can do. Our country is drowning in a sea of debt, borrowing $50,000 a second. We have to slow down spending. And for the president to use this histrionics is really I think beneath the office of the presidency.”
Why can’t Republicans get together and agree that that kind of statement is how they handle this thing? Come up with the same basic message and go out and repeat it 24/7. Mock Barack Obama for the liar that he is. Mock him for acting like a panicked little girl throwing a hissy fit. When Barack Obama threatens the American people by saying they will lose police protection and teachers and firemen because of a federal budget, he is exaggerating to the point of dishonesty. Just like Senator Paul put it, over 90% of those services are paid by local taxes. And when people are reminded of that, then they have to ask themselves why President Obama is saying the things he’s saying. And that is when the light bulb starts to go on for more and more people. It’s because Barack Obama is a pathetic liar who will say and do anything because most of the media will never call him on it and he is depending on the American public to remain ignorant of fact and not really pay attention. Sadly, for the most part, that is exactly what has happened to this point but if we had more people like Senator Rand Paul explaining in such clear terms how Barack Obama is lying to all of us almost every time he opens his mouth, more Americans would realize it and punish the administration and the Democratic Party for it. Maybe punish some more Republicans for playing along to get along too and that would be fine by me.
-RI
_______________________
UPDATE: Here is the video of the interview R.I. was referencing in this update – Senator Rand Paul calling out Barack Obama for lying once again to the American people:
COMPROMISE would NOT fit the agenda. . . . After all, how much do you think all of Obama’s PR on this subject, not limited to social media. . has cost the American Taxpayers? Do all these things come FREE?
Why can’t they just continue to point out that the sequester cuts are NOT cuts at all? These so called cuts are just reductions of planned increases. Even after these CUTS (sic) the overall budget will be bigger in the coming year than it was last year. Calling these cuts without that explanation is a big fat lie. I would certainly be happy to take a 4% cut in pay if it actually resulted in a 5% increase, wouldn’t everyone? That anyone believes this scare mongering, just shows how screwed we are as a nation. With a compliant media, there is no hope.
Reading Cahn’s Book the Harbinger then I see this. UM, your insight please… I have my ideas… but…
http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=394925
Correspondence regarding interesting take on the World Financial System coming from a reader in South Africa.
Posted by Dr. Orly Tatiz, Esq.,
Francis Irvine
South Africa
February 22, 2013
Dr. Orly Tatiz
29839 Sta Margarita Pkwy, Ste 100
Rancho Sta Margarita, CA 92688
Hi Orly,
I am not a US citizen, I live in South Africa. Please continue your magnificent declaration of war on the UN, EU, Bilderberg, the Fed, and the Kenyan (word or phrase is missing from Orly’s post).
For your information, here’s a look at the global financial situation off which the world is currently unaware but soon will be, I’m sending this to better inform you about what you are up against. This is a very real situation and comes directly from the horses mouth as it were.
I’ve been in touch with traders in Hong Kong, Zurich, New York and Istanbul over night. Only those who are aware of the Elite’s game plan can understand what is going on. The rest are totally lost and have no explanation for what is going on.
Most analysts cannot find any viable macroeconomic explanation of the fact that over the last 5 months gold has been falling against the USD despite world central banks flooding the world markets with historically cheap credit, interest rates maintained at their lowest ever, and the primary money printing presses (aka the Fed, the BoE, the ECB, the BoJ and the SNB) working around the clock!
What these analysts fail to realize are, among other factors, the following: a) the Elite-owned CLS Bank International has a daily turn over of approx $4 trillion via the global FOREX market, b) the Elite are in collective control of all world central banks, and most importantly: c) the year 2013 marks the mandatory END of the Fed’s 100-year Bank Charter.
With regards to the significance of the Fed Banking Charter (item “c”, above), it would be helpful to recall that the War of 1812 occurred ONLY due to the fact that the newly gone independent USA (1776) did not agree to renew the 20-year mandate of the Elite’s Bank Charter which ran out in 1811. The First Bank Charter was granted on a 10-year basis (1781-1791). When the US Congress declined to renew the Elite’s Bank Charter, the Elite imposed the 5-year long War of 1812. Interestingly, all history books taught in the US schools cite “Taxation without Representation” as the main reason for the War of 1812!
In that sense, not much has changed since then, has it? The best college students are recruited right out of college by the likes of the Carnegie-Mellon Foundation (Carnegie and Mellon being two of the original European Elite dynasties) with highest salaries and perks to “write” books on history, sociology, finance and so on, the way the Elite want them written.
Is that any different from the way King James had the Bible re-written (1604-1611)?. While we’re at it, let’s remember that it was the “Nobel Laureate” Milton Friedman who was behind the Nixon Administration’s unilateral action to repeal Gold Standard and the start of the fall of the US economy in 1971.
I guess the historical picture is clear enough! Although the actual Plan to establish the New World Order is only 100 years old, man’s tendency to rule his co-beings is as old as life itself. But, I digressed, again!
Yesterday, Gold closed at $1,564.30 in the New York market:
Overnight, Gold closed at $1,559.71 and this morning, gold has been fluctuating between $1,560 and $1,569:
Today is going to be a very busy day for the world markets, with the following data coming out throughout the day:
1- European Manufacturing data,
2- US Consumer Price Index,
3- New US Jobless Claims,
4- US Existing Home Sales,
5- State of the bailout offered to Cypress to be announced by the ECB,
6- Italian election polls showing Berloscuni in the lead, which is increasingly worrying European investors.
Furthermore, the currency wars have entered a new phase: a) since Monday, with Sterling going on a slide against the USD and Euro, and b) the Japanese Yen continues its slide against USD and Euro.
Both aforementioned currency wars support USD to gain against gold and thereby supporting further fall of gold in USD terms.
As we discussed yesterday, the US spending cuts (aka “Sequester Spending Cuts”) deadline is coming up on February 28th. As such, the Elite has set up the global financial system for the official GAME OVER phase’s kick off.
Stay tuned. These are unprecedented times. The 100-year global financial system which was established by the Elite in 1913 (the year the Federal Reserve Banks started operations in the US via its 100-year mandate) is about to be replaced with a commodity-based system.
We’ll discuss much more details on the new commodity-based system in the near future.
Warm regards,
Francis Irvine
(Note by poster follows.)
Must read book on topic: “The Creature From Jekyll Island” by Edward G. Griffin.
Please see Edward G. Griffin’s excellent presentation about the Federal Reserve made shortly after the publication on his book:
Millions of people like myself have had to turn down the thermostat to 64 degrees or lower and cut out all extras in order to balance the household budget. Why can’t the government do the same?
For example, we live in a state that assesses property at 100% valuation, with taxes going up yearly despite the fact property values have been going down year after year, yet when calling the police to report a serious crime we witnessed, we are told due to budget cuts, we will not respond. Now the question is, what are we paying taxes for when all levels of government mismanage the tax money they extract out of all of us?
The website idea is fantastic and would be a huge success if it were set up. People would be overjoyed to visit such a site to make budget cutting decisions line by line.
Holy shit! Just saw Boehner and some other Republicans doing a press conference on this issue. They sounded like they took RI’s playbook almost word for word! Nice!!!!!!!!!!!!
yea, and did you happen to notice that both Boehner AND Cantor referred to Kelly Ayott as KATHY!
That was probably Kathy McMorris- Rogers. She’s one of their stooges. She had massive personal debt upon her first election. After one short year in congress she was one of the wealthiest.
She and Ayotte look similar.
Besides, Boehner and Cantor would be with another House member; Ayotte is in the Senate.
WHY the hell can RI not speak all to his cohorts in the GOP to get these ideas across? WHY CAN’T the GOP brainstorm these ideas. Seems to me Boehner and his bunch just go from inept response to inept response. WHERE IS THE GOP THINK TANK????
I am predicting that with the sequester, Obama and his thugs will either orchestrate a terror attack or allow one on US soil. He and his thugs have said this will happen…Believe them.
Where are there daily talking points…Why no website for just that? Why no tweet machine?
I want to know they are on top of the social media…not more excuses After the loose the House…
On another topic…you are the most able audience posters anywhere…What can we do about this…how do we get traction?
UM’s Army….Can we help?
This will enrage…
This is why we have a shortage of Docs…Obama and his thugs are intimidating Docs out of their practices…and extortion is part of the game…Dr. Natale in prison is meant to be a warning shot to other Docs..Comply or else!.
Dr. Natale was found NOT GUILTY of Medicare Fraud by a jury…but still..he sits in a Federal prison…that’s right PRISON!…..
The Feds are trying to prove Obama was correct, that Docs do indeed take out tonsils when only some allergy meds were needed… Doctors, of coarse, are greedy one percenters after all! S/
And Dr. Natale is being used to prove that fallacious grotesque point…
We must stop the Obama thugs…If there is no national outrage about this…there will be no one left to object when they come for you… Object, tell people …this must stop …Free Dr. Natale!
Help spread the word…what else can we do…it’s time to stand up to the Thugs….
http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/feds-run-extortion-scam-on-doctors/
FEDS RUN EXTORTION SCAM ON DOCTORS
Exclusive: Dr. Lee Hieb says Medicare mobsters have physicians running scared
byLEE HIEB, M.D.Email |
Dr. Lee Hieb is an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in spinal surgery. She is past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a free market medical organization.
Dr. John Natale of Illinois graduated with honors from Loyola University, graduated medical school from Northwestern University School of Medicine and went on to complete eight years of arduous postgraduate study to become a highly trained thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon. For over 20 years he practiced his specialty at a hospital in Illinois, doing extremely complicated cases, including treating ruptured aortic aneurysms. Although these cases have greater than 10 percent intraoperative mortality in the recognized medical literature, Dr. Natale never lost a patient on the operating table.
Yet today, Dr. Natale is in a federal penitentiary – not for monetary fraud, not for damage to the patient, not for inappropriate conduct, but for writing an operative report that may not have reflected exactly what he did in the case. Or perhaps more accurately, for daring to defy Uncle Sam’s Medicare mobsters.
At first, the federal government, in the guise of the Medicare enforcement goons, charged Dr. Natale of falsifying an operative report with the intent to defraud Medicare by “upcoding” – charging for a bigger procedure than he actually performed.
He denied and fought the charges, and a jury acquitted him of any Medicare fraud. In fact, it came to light that Dr. Natale had probably cheated himself, not Medicare, by charging less than the allowed amount.
But picking one report and one case out of the thousands that the surgeon had performed, the prosecution convicted Dr. Natale of falsifying an operative record.
Now, I am not a vascular surgeon, so I do not pretend to be able to independently judge the truth or falsehood of the accusation. The problem involves the definition of “renal artery implantation.” Suffice it to say that vascular surgery experts were found to support both sides of the argument, so this could not have been completely clear cut. But at the of the day, Dr. Natale lingers in jail – convicted … of what, exactly? Since when does it become a federal crime to write a bad operative report – even a fallacious one?
In all likelihood, Dr. Natale did not intend to write a fallacious op note, because that is really not in a surgeon’s best interest. But no one is infallible, and bad dictations are made. I am a surgeon and have done thousands of cases, many involving complicated spinal implants and decompressions. I try to dictate my operative note immediately after the case, but sometimes that is not possible. I have been on call and been rushed into other emergencies before I could get a break to dictate. Sometimes I was up for nearly two days and just couldn’t stay awake anymore (after the adrenaline rush of surgery was over) to dictate a coherent report, so put it off till the next morning.
In the worst case scenario, but one which happens to every surgeon at some point, I dictated the note, and transcription lost it. This may be from my failing to push the right dictating button, or a clerical error, or a dictating system glitch. But whatever the reason, sometimes you will find yourself “redictating” a note months later, when the details are blurry.
But what can you do? Many hospitals will not note in the first line of the report, “This is a redictation of a previously dictated but lost operative note.”
It is possible that Dr. Natale is inept or generally bad at the paperwork of medicine – but if so, how did he manage to stay on one hospital staff for 20 years? He couldn’t have been too bad.
Even in the worst case scenario – that the doctor really did, for some unknown malicious purpose (and what could that be, since it was not financially beneficial?) purposefully falsify the operative report – how does that land you in federal prison? What exactly is the crime?
I suspect the crime actually is defying the Medicare enforcers.
As graphically documented in “The Criminalization of Medicine” by Ronald Libby, federal Medicare agents don’t like it when doctors fight the charges against them. To understand what is facing your physician, you need to understand the Mafia-like world of the Recovery Audit Contractor, or RAC, auditors for Medicare.
You may have heard that Medicare is out of money. One day, the big wigs at CMS – the Center for Medicare Services – decided to find where all the money had gone. Lo and behold, the money went to doctors and hospitals! So they set about a program for getting their money back: the waste fraud and abuse scheme.
For every office encounter and every procedure, doctors must choose a numerical code. Failure to choose the right code – and the right code can be very subjective – is by definition Medicare “fraud.” Nothing is ever deemed an honest mistake.
But the system is Orwellian. If I take out a tumor, code it benign and it proves on pathology to be malignant … voila! Medicare fraud.
If I take out a tumor and label it malignant but it proves benign … voila! Medicare fraud.
I have to consider “level of severity” of the problem in choosing my office code. As a spine surgeon, what I consider complex is not what a Family Practitioner looking at the spine might think complex – yet we use the same subjective grading system. And someone a thousand miles away determines, somehow, that my office visit was not coded correctly. How?
And if your procedure is new and has no code, you are instructed to choose the closest. Yet in some cases this “closest” choice was prosecuted – even landing the surgeon in jail.
The auditors come to a doctor’s office, look at a small sample of charts, decide he is “upcoding,” multiply the upcoded percentage by total number of charts and extrapolate back to his enrollment date in Medicare, which may have preceded enactment of the regulation. They then add triple damages and charge the doctor with some outrageous sum of money – sometimes over a million dollars. Of course he doesn’t have it, and malpractice insurance doesn’t cover it, so they cut him a deal.
“Doctor, we’ll drop your fine from a million to a cool 100K, but you have to sign this affidavit that you agree to keep silent as to everything that happened to you,” the federal Medicare extortionists explain. “Of course we will print in the news that you paid us for defrauding Medicare, because that is public record. But if you speak out, the full fee goes back into force.”
Ninety-five percent of doctors sign. The ones that don’t often are slammed with criminal charges and some go to jail. The RAC income is strictly a percentage of recouped money. And, adding to the whole wise guy flavor of the thing, if your office manager has a beef with you and turns you in, he or she can be paid 10 percent of the reclaimed money.
Every doctor in America runs scared. Just like Stalin using random terror to cower the average Russian, this is a very effective technique for controlling costs. Many doctors, to be safe, tend to undercode to avoid facing the RAC.
So what happened to poor Dr. Natale? He is serving his sentence – a sentence longer than most criminals serve after being convicted for grand larceny. At least thieves are usually given the option for restitution. Maybe the court couldn’t decide what restitution for Dr. Natale would be and didn’t want to be in the absurd position of requiring him – after all the time and federal money spent on prosecution to … what? – just redictate the op note?
To the detriment of our society, and to the practice of medicine, when the admittedly imperfect but everyday behavior of well meaning citizens is criminalized, we all become criminals. Will we start imprisoning electricians who make mistakes in their wiring diagrams or mislabel a fuse box? How about the dog breeder who misidentifies a breed of dog? Everyone, not just physicians should take note. And then, free Dr. Natale
Permitting a terrorist attack on American soil would backfire on the Obama administration.
He’s already on thin ice over Benghazi. A successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil would irreparably destroy his credibility on national security.
See somebody already beat me in pointing out the press conference by the GOP this afternoon. I agree that their words seems to match up pretty nice to this update by RI which I would think that means RI knew it the press conference was coming. I still say Boehner has got to go from Speaker though. He just stinks. This whole sequester thing is pretty much a joke IMO. They can’t even slow the growth of the increases in govt w/o calling it a disaster? Gonna be over 20 million in debt by the time Obama is done. I don;’t know how we survive that.
Congress should just allow the sequester to go into effect.
Then the House should pass a bill to return funding of the military to pre-sequester levels. And dare Obama to veto it or the Senate to stonewall it and let them explain it to the American people.