Exelon Receives Another Deal from the Obama Administration

It is encouraging to see increased American development of energy having a worldwide impact. However, such impact should not come at the expense of subsidies and loans footed by the American taxpayer or special deals. Exelon, the largest nuclear energy company in America, has a diverse energy production portfolio. They also are involved in liquefied natural gas production and solar energy. With the current natural gas glut, prices are quite low, which has cut into Exelon's profits. These low prices also make natural gas power plants competitive with Exelon's nuclear plants. Never fear for Exelon though! The Obama administration is on the way! As an article at Crain's Chicago Business reports: 

Exelon Corp. got a win last week when the U.S. Energy Department allowed a group of investors to build a facility in Texas that will export liquefied natural gas to countries without free-trade agreements with the U.S. 

Don't see the connection? Every cubic foot of natural gas that's liquefied and shipped overseas is a cubic foot that doesn't get sold at rock-bottom prices to gas-fired power plants that compete with Exelon's nuclear plants. Low gas prices enable gas-fired plants to sell electricity cheaper, bringing down prices in wholesale power markets. 

[...] 

Exporting to non-free-trade countries requires special permission from the Department of Energy. Heated debate over the policy has erupted in recent months. Natural gas producers are pushing for more freedom to export, while environmental groups and big gas users like Dow Chemical Co. defend the current restrictions. 

Some see last week's decision on the Texas facility as a sign President Barack Obama is leaning toward a looser export policy. It's a little early to draw that conclusion. Rather than articulating a broad policy shift, the administration says it will evaluate proposed non-FTA export facilities on a case-by-case basis. Until Friday, the DOE hadn't approved one since 2011. Nineteen applications are pending.

Seeing the implication that President Obama is going to loosen policy on anything related to non "green" energy development is a surprise. There is perhaps reason to evaluate such special situations for export to non-free trade countries, but when a company like Exelon receives a deal, it is suspect. Exelon has a reputation for being an energy giant, but it also has a reputation for its ties to President Obama.

 As a Senator, Obama watered down an anti-nuclear energy bill to help Exelon. Why? In 2008, Exelon was Obama's four largest donor. Additionally, Exelon has spent tens of millions of dollars for lobbying since President Obama took office. This lobbying has paid off. An Exelon acquired solar energy company received a $646 million loan from the Department of Energy in 2011 to build a solar energy plant.

It is exciting to see that natural gas production is booming in such a way that producers have opportunity to energize America and have opportunity for export. It is discouraging that "case-by-case" export opportunities are going to companies who have the political connections and clout to continue to receive special deals.

Crossposted here and here.

President Obama's Trickle Down Perpetual Campaign

During the 2008 presidential campaign, then candidate Barack Obama was asked to compare his experience to that of Vice Presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin. Obama made a disingenuous comparison by only referencing Palin's mayoral experience, but he also tried to bolster his executive credentials by referencing his ability to manage  "large systems" and millions of dollars in campaign funds:



It is now nearly five years later, and little has changed. The President's executive experience still lies in running a campaign, but not one that comes at the expense of his donors (and actually often to his donors' benefit) . He has turned his executive branch cabinet level departments into components of this perpetual campaign at the expense of American taxpayers.

President Obama 's Treasury Department has turned into a campaign opposition research department by targeting Tea Parties, religious groups, and pro-life groups and combing through every detail of these groups and their memberships. When this department got their hands caught in the cookie jar, the President scapegoated the already lame duck IRS commissioner who wasn't even in the role of commissioner when these targeted audits were being performed.  His Department of Justice has also contributed to this effort by bugging the cloak room in the House of Representatives and seizing phone records of AP reporters who cover the GOP majority House. His elected colleagues, his constituents, and even his pals in the media became his political opponents.

During his campaign, the President would often offer a special opportunity for a donor to meet him. As President, he has done the same kind of thing, but on a much larger scale and at the expense of the American taxpayer and the American energy consumer. Instead of offering an expenses paid meeting, he is offering millions in taxpayer dollars and special favors. 80% of his Department of Energy stimulus loans went to companies tied to his donors. Meanwhile, the President has stalled on the development of Keystone Pipeline.  Several of his donors stand to benefit financially from the Canadian Sands Oil regardless of whether or not the pipeline is built, and just last week, scores of the President's donors are sent a letter petitioning him to not build the pipeline. Moreover, the President is not only trying to turn return the favor to his actual political donors, his Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is essentially acting as a fundraiser to promote the President's healthcare policy agenda. The President is repaying his donors with political favors and asking political favors to implement his policies.

Throughout the President's perpetual campaign, he has tried to redistribute the blame of the burgeoning scandals. Rather than being a leader and taking responsibility, he has allowed his politically driven administration to trickle down the blame. Four rogue IRS employees are being blamed for the targeted Tea Party audits, yet IRS employees are claiming they were only following orders. In trying to make sense of the attacks on the Libyan consulate last September, the Obama administration--the White House, the State Department, and the CIA-- has woven a complicated web of blame and responsibility in the midst of a presidential campaign.

When it comes to the President's campaign claim of being able to manage "large systems", it seems Obama has been disproved by his own former campaign adviser David Axelrod. In trying to defend the President's ability to deal with multiple, simultaneous scandals, Axelrod inadvertently made the case for smaller government when he said that there is only so much a President can know "because the government is so vast". The President has proven that when executive experience is manifested in a hybrid of small leadership and big government, it only perpetuates a campaign cycle that trickles down the blame.

Crossposted here and here.

Climate Change and the "Green" Light District

"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." - President Ronald Reagan

Last week, Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee and others passed a resolution stating that climate change disproportionately affects women and may drive them to engage in "transactional sex" (i.e. prostitution). There is a nugget of truth in Lee's ridiculous resolution. Climate change itself may not drive women to prostitution, but the farce of climate change has driven some men (and probably some women as well) to essentially engage in political prostitution.

Yesterday, a Bloomberg article noted that Al Gore is now worth upwards of $200 million. Gore has derived his wealth from several avenues, but many of these are tied to his peddling of green Henny Penny nonsense. The Bloomberg article notes that Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth", led to speaker's fees of around $175,000 a pop. Additionally, as has been often noted, Gore's sale of Current TV to Al-Jazeera netted him $100 million by itself. Gore also has his hand in green investing, which has ultimately padded his own pocketbook. In 2004, Gore joined with former Goldman Sachs managing director David W. Blood to form Generation Investment Management (GIM), as Bloomberg notes (emphasis added):

By the time of the Capricorn investment, he was already starting to rake in cash from Generation Investment Management - - a fund that incorporates “sustainability” into its investment approach. Gore co-founded GIM in 2004 with former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Managing Director David W. Blood. 

Public filings show that in 2008 through 2011 London-based GIM racked up almost 140 million pounds ($218 million) in profits to be split among its 26 partners. Gore and Blood as founders are thought to have the largest equity stakes. 

Not of all of Gore's investments have been successful though. GIM later partnered with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers on "green" investments. Kleiner Perkins backed Fisker, an electric car company, which received more than half a billion dollars in government loans in 2009 only to lay off about 75% of its staff last month. When Gore's "investments" have been unsuccessful, often its the American taxpayer--non-consenting investors--who lose.

The American people became non-consenting investment partners in billion of dollars of Department of Energy grants and loans from President Obama's 2009 stimulus package and other efforts over the last few years. Roughly 80% of those DOE loans went to companies tied to President Obama's donors. The Obama administration has invested hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars in biofuels for the US Navy. A biofuel company that received a more than a half a billion contract, Solazyme, has ties to former Obama adviser and donor, T.J. Glauthier. Solazyme's contract is equivalent to $16 a gallon for fuel, about four times as high as traditional fuels. Even as the Navy's budget is being cut by sequestration, they are continuing to make this expensive type of fuel a priority.

At best, climate change and its cause are unproven. Some cite a summer of higher temperatures as proof of climate change. Others say that man-created pollution may be the cause of a cooler spring. Even if anthropogenic climate change was true, the methods of mitigating its effects are unhelpful. Electric cars are often charged by coal powered electricity and are prone to catch on fire (more carbon emissions!). Biofuels, like wood and grain-based ethanol and algae based fuels, have proven to be inefficient in both their production and their consumption. All this "green" light district business does is fill the bank accounts of the politically connected at the expense of the American taxpayer...and proves President Reagan right once again.

Crossposted here and here.

Congress Clouds the Already Weak Transparency of the STOCK Act; Updated

At the end of last week without even a vote, both the House and the Senate approved a repeal of a portion of the STOCK Act.  The STOCK Act, signed into law last Spring, is a transparency and ethics law aimed primarily at Congress and their staff. The law requires those individuals to disclose their conflicts of interests (such as stock purchases) and  prohibits the use of non-public information for private profit. However, the bill also applies to many higher ranking federal employees as well. With the repeal of the portion of this bill (if signed by the President),  two components of transparency will become opaque, as detailed by the Sunshine Foundation (emphasis added):

The bill enacted last year would require already public financial disclosures of senior congressional and executive branch officials to be put online in order to prevent or root out insider trading. There were concerns that some provisions of the bill were overbroad and would put some government employees at risk. Rather than craft narrow exemptions, or even delay implementation until proper protections could be created, the Senate decided instead to exclude legislative and executive staffers from the online disclosure requirements.  

 The sweeping exemption goes even farther than critics of the disclosure requirements requested. For those to whom online disclosure would still apply (the president, vice president, members of Congress, congressional candidates and individuals subject to Senate confirmation) the Senate bill made electronic filing of the information optional and struck the requirement that online information be searchable, sortable and downloadable, making even the disclosures that remain in the bill tepid and relatively unusable.  

Even prior to the aforementioned legislation, implementation of the STOCK Act had already been delayed multiple times. Additionally, the bill was not even available for public consumption on the  Library of Congress website until after the measure was approved by Congress. Imagine that--a bill that would repeal transparency passed through Congress in a non-transparent manner.

In today's data-driven, information age, if such government information is not online, it is essentially useless to the American public. How will constituents be able to hold their leaders and their leaders' staff accountable if such information in not available online? If such online disclosure is merely optional, there is little motivation for politicians to be voluntarily transparent.

The STOCK Act was the ultimately a hybrid of two bills proposed by Republican Senator Scott Brown and Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. When the STOCK Act was being discussed in Congress, Governor Sarah Palin called the bill " particularly weak" because they did not require Congress to disclose their stock purchase or trades immediately. Governor Palin supported a more stringent bill from Congressman Sean Duffy,which would have required all Congressmen to create blind trusts or disclose stock trades within three days. Duffy's bill never made it out of committee.

The research and work of Peter Schweizer led to such legislation being seriously considered at all. Legislation banning insider trading never got any traction until Schweizer's book Throw Them All Out was released in 2011. Schweizer called the passage of the STOCK Act a "victory", but noted that the bill did not go "nearly far enough to deal with the problems of cronyism and corruption that we face."

What must Governor Palin and Peter Schweizer think of the non-transparent weakening of an already weak bill?

The STOCK Act only received 5 "nay" votes total between the House and the Senate when it passed in early 2012. Why did a bill that received overwhelming support now engender such an overwhelming response for its weakening? Why didn't the co-author of the original bill, Senator Gillibrand, call for at least a legitimate vote on the weakening of her bill? Why did Congressman Duffy, who proposed a stronger piece of legislation, not reject such a bill?

It seems that the political forecast in Washington D.C. remains cloudy with little chance of sunlight and transparency.


Updated:President Obama has now signed this bill only further confirming that the "most transparent  administration" is nothing but.

Crossposted here and here .

President Obama's anti-Keystone Cronies

Last week the State Department released a report indicating the Keystone XL pipeline would have little impact on the environment and would create more than forty thousand jobs during construction. With this news (confirming what we already knew), why isn't the Obama administration moving forward on developing this pipeline? Because regardless of whether or not the pipeline is built, his cronies stand to benefit.

It is already widely known that Obama crony Warren Buffett has gained from the lack of construction on the pipeline. Without the presence of pipeline, much of the oil developed in the Canadian oil sands are transported by train. Per Bloomberg:

 Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit. 

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department. 

“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said in an interview. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.”

Interestingly, Buffett did not buy this railroad until a year after President Obama was elected. Per the American Thinker:

 A year after the election of Obama, Warren Buffett bought a giant railroad, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe. The BNSF has more than 32,000 miles of track and right-of-way in this nation, running from the west coast and through the agricultural heartland of America. It is also hauls coal from the mines in Montana and Wyoming and is the railroad with the best existing north-south infrastructure. In fact, it's quite well-situated to perform precisely the task for which TransCanada has proposed to build a pipeline. 

Should the pipeline fail, the oil will still be extracted, but it will then be transported by rail, and Mr. Buffett, thanks to the efforts of his friend Mr. Holland, will be uniquely situated to derive a fortune from that business, as well as enhance the value of his holdings in Conoco-Phillips petroleum. Is it possible that Warren Buffett's assistance to Obama in both policy and public relations lately may be his way of trying to tip the regulatory scales in his favor? After all, nothing says "I love you" to a Democrat better than a public plea for more taxes.

Additionally, Buffett's Union Tank Car Co is raking in loads of cash from transporting oil from the Bakken formation in the northern plains states. If built, the pipeline would transport 100,000 barrels of oil a day from the North Dakota portion of the Bakken alone.

Fast forward to this year. Just last week, the Washington Free Beacon reported a between China and a Canadian oil company with holdings in the Gulf of Mexico and in Canada's oil sands:

The Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) reached a “definitive agreement” with Nexen, Inc., a Canadian energy company, announced on July 23, 2012, to buy all of the company’s outstanding public shares. Nexen has holdings in the Gulf of Mexico and Canada, giving the Chinese government access to millions of barrels of Keystone XL and Gulf reserve oil. 

Nexen’s holdings in the Gulf, coupled with the Chinese government’s ownership of CNOOC, meant the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States had to approve the takeover, which it did on Feb. 12. 

Judicial Watch, an organization focusing on transparency and integrity in government, announced last week that they are suing the Obama administration for documents relating to the approval of this deal to communist China. In their press release, Judicial Watch notes multiple ties between the Obama administration and investors who profited from the deal:

* Taconic Capital, which reported in its third quarter SEC filing that it had acquired six million shares of Nexen between July 1 and September 30, 2012. Taconic’s founder and managing director is Frank Brosens, an Obama bundler who has raised more than $1 million for the President. Brosens was Timothy Geithner’s first choice to run the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program). 

*Farallon Capital Management LLC, which bought 8.7 million shares of Nexen (1.65 percent of the company) between July 1 and September 30, 2012. The founder of Fallon Capital is Thomas Steyer, is a long-time Democratic fundraiser who ridiculed Romney’s energy plans at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. 

*Eton Park Capital Management, which bought 6,737,000 shares (1.28 percent) of Nexen. Eton Park was founded and is directed by Eric Mindich, a bundler who raised more than $71,000 for Obama this cycle and has given more than $500,000 to Democratic candidates since 1990. 

*D.E. Shaw & Co., which increased its position by 5.8 million to 6.5 million shares, or 1.22 percent of the company. D.E. Shaw was founded by David E. Shaw, an Obama bundler in the $200,000 to $500,000 range. He also sits on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, as he did under the Clinton administration.

*Covington & Burling LLP, in which Eric Holder was formerly a partner, was hired by Nexen to lobby on behalf of the acquisition’s approval.

While the Obama administration continues to hem and haw about whether or not they will ever approve the pipeline, his cronies continue to benefit from the lack of a pipeline. Buffet's train company ownership rakes in the dough from the lack of the pipeline. Nexen will benefit regardless of whether or not the pipeline is built as the Washington Times notes:

 If not through Keystone, mined oil will be transported by rail, truck, or planned pipelines in Canada. Last month, the China Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) completed the purchase of Nexen, a major producer of oil from Canadian sands, for $15 billion. CNOOC would not have purchased Nexen without assurance by the Canadian government that the oil can be harvested.

Last April, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that approval of the pipeline would "preemptively sacrifice American sovereignty". However, in approving this deal with the Chinese government, the Obama administration is allowing the largest foreign holder of our debt greater access to North American energy resources--resources that America should gladly develop in concert with an ally. Where is the protection of American sovereignty in that?

The biggest critics of the pipeline are environmentalists. However, the lack of a pipeline is likely to cause more environmental problems than the pipeline. Transportation of oil by rail or road cause more injuries, death, and environmental damage than pipelines.Additionally,transport of the oil to China will use large amounts of energy (i.e. more carbon emissions). Rejecting the pipeline is not an environmentally noble decision; it's just another example of how President Obama rewards his cronies at the expense of the American people.

Crossposted at Palin4America and The Speech A Time for Choosing.

An Obama Crony Lands a $100 million Obamacare Waiver

Today, Crain's Chicago Business reports that yet another one of President Obama's cronies received an Obamacare waiver:

 Cook County hit a $100 million jackpot over the weekend. 

In a little noticed but crucial decision announced Friday night, the federal government signed off on a request by county board President Toni Preckwinkle to enroll 114,000 low-income people a year early in the Medicaid program. 

For the county, the decision is worth as much as $100 million a year, since its network of hospitals and health clinics already is serving most of the patients free of charge. The tab now will be picked up by federal taxpayers under a provision of Obamacare, rather than by Cook County taxpayers alone.

Ms. Preckwinkle isn't only the Cook County board President (and Lady Liberty in the above picture). She is also an Obama mentor who infamously said that President Reagan could "rot in hell" for making "drug use political", as Tony Lee reported at Breitbart.com this past summer:

 Preckwinkle was discussing drug policy and how she felt drug treatment should not be a part of the criminal justice system. She was defending the decision by Chicago city officials to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. And her comments were in reference to Reagan’s “war on drugs,” which President Richard Nixon started. During Reagan’s tenure, First Lady Nancy Reagan started the “Just Say No” campaign against drugs. 

Preckwinkle made those comments in downstate Illinois. Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois.  

Preckwinkle helped Obama challenge the signatures of his primary opponents to run unopposed in his 1996 state senate race. Obama often reminisces about this race as a heroic, Rudy-esque foray into politics in which he overcame all odds to win.

Preckwinkle also supported Barack Obama in his failed primary run against sitting Congressman Bobby Rush in 2000, his 2004 US Senate run and his 2008 presidential run. As The New Yorker stated in a 2008 article, Preckwinkle was the one who suggested Obama begin attending Jeremiah Wright's church:

On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.” Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obama’s and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: “Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.” As we talked, it became increasingly clear that loyalty was the issue that drove Preckwinkle’s current view of her onetime protégé. “I don’t think you should forget who your friends are,” she said. 

 Beyond the cronyism, this "waiver" only serves to place the people of the greater Chicago area and Illinois further underwater fiscally. Most businesses, states, and areas who have sought an Obamacare waiver had done so to delay the implementation of Obamacare. Preckwinkle's request for a waiver was to begin Medicaid expansion in Cook County early, and subsequently fill a budget gap for Cook County. This is normal for Illinois politicians who often seek federal dollars to cover their own budgetary failures.With Medicaid's hybrid of federal and state funding, the solicitation of federal dollars has also led to state and local budgetary increases,and, of course, fiscal problems. A recent report on state budgets in crisis notes that one of the things that has put Illinois in such great financial peril is Medicaid:

Illinois' other structural problem is Medicaid. In FY 2010, Medicaid accounted for 23 percent of the state's budget and that figure is going to grow under the Affordable Care Act. Under the best case scenario Obamacare will only raise spending 3.3 percent above the current baseline by 2019. However other scenarios suggest the increase could be as much as 20 percent by 2020. 

Rather than address these structural problems, Illinois has resorted to heavy borrowing to cover its obligations. As a result, per capita debt in Illinois is the second highest in the nation at nearly $10,000 (NY is number one). And largely because of this high level of debt, Illinois' bond rating is the worst in the nation. Moody's downgraded the state most recently in January of 2012.

In fact, during FY2012, Medicaid was underfunded by $2.1 billion. With the growing pool of patients and a shrinking number of doctors, Obamacare has only proven itself to be nothing more than a politician promising the entire country a new car, but only giving them a set of keys. Real healthcare reform is not expanding insurance while shrinking care and paying back your cronies. Real fiscal reform is not seeking federal dollars as a stopgap measure for a county and state budget drowning in debt.

Crossposted here and here. 

President Obama's Convenient Lie Provides Free Advertising for His Donors

Earlier today President Obama tweeted the following about women's "health":

Make sure the women in your life know: twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 26, 2012

It's intriguing that the President decided to tweet a quote from a women's health magazine to make a policy point. The quote Obama used was from a scare tactic campaign from Women's Health magazine that indicates that women's reproductive "rights" may go the way of the dodo bird. A little closer look shows that President Obama may be giving Women's Health magazine the Solyndra treatment. The CEO of Rodale Inc, Maria Rodale, which publishes the magazine, has given the President $5,000 to his campaign and and another other $5,000 to the DNC. Rodale Inc mostly focuses on health and wellness related magazines and books, but interestingly also published Al Gore's "global warming" fictional book, An Inconvenient Truth--indicating their aim may be more political than solely "health and wellness". It sure was nice of the President to give some advertising to one of his donors and ideological peers, huh?

Of course, Women's Health Magazine , in addition to campaign funding, also gave First Lady Michelle Obama the platform to promote the President's health care reform bill this past May. Mrs. Obama writing in part about contraception (emphasis added): 

 It used to be that even many women with health insurance would skip these check-ups because of the cost. In fact, before the health reform law that my husband signed back in 2010, some insurance companies would routinely charge women 50 percent more than men for the same coverage because they needed more frequent access to preventive services like mammograms and cervical screenings. Fortunately, the new health care bill makes that discrimination against women illegal starting in 2014, and today, insurance companies are required to cover life-saving cancer screenings and other preventive services like contraception and immunizations without a co-pay. 

While the First Lady wrote this piece for Women's Health and provided them with her workout play list,  interestingly, she turned down an interview and cover with the Heart & Soul, a  health magazine for African American women.

Beyond the cronyism of free advertising, the tweet is blatantly false. President Obama implies that the Republican Party is trying to limit or ban birth control. Those claims are only true in liberal newspeak where "ban" is synonymous with "not forcing employers to pay for". However, this is the kind of fight the Obama administration brought upon themselves when they sacrificed the first amendment to expand government, and it's a problem easily solved if the free market is brought into health care, a concept I describe in a post at Breitbart.com in February:

Beyond the economic benefits, a free market based health care system provides the best vehicle for religious liberty. When health insurance is detached from employment, it means that employers—be they religious institutions or religious business owners-- have no requirement to violate their conscience by providing insurance that covers contraception and abortion causing drugs. 

The same is true for individual health care consumers and insurance companies themselves. Individual health care consumers would have the option to purchase plans from insurers that either do or do not cover contraceptives. While individuals opposed to contraception would not desire contraception for themselves anyway, choosing a plan that does not cover contraception means the money they used to purchase health insurance does not have the potential to “cross subsidize” contraception or abortion causing drugs. 

“Cross subsidization” occurs when insurance premiums are pooled by the insurer and then dispersed to pay medical bills for those they insure, meaning that the money one pays in insurance premiums beyond what care they need may ultimately cover another individual’s care . Market based healthcare also provides health insurers with the freedom to abide by their conscience in what they will cover. Insurers who oppose contraceptives would not be obligated to provide coverage, and those who approve contraceptives would be free to do so. There is a market for both, and it would provide employers, individuals, and insurers the freedom to exercise their religious liberty.

President Obama is again trying to scare women into believing that the only way to protect their so called reproductive freedoms is to grow government and quash religious freedom--and in the process, he's providing free advertising for his donors. In reality, the free market providers the greatest platform for both individual and religious freedom.

Crossposted here and here.

Recent Blog Posts at Big Government and the New Agenda

I've been lazy about cross posting my blog posts back here at Little Blog on the Prairie the past six weeks or so, so I've decided just to link my posts below. I've had the opportunity to write on topics ranging from Women's History Month to the lies of the anti-Palin HBO film "Game Change" to crony capitalism in Washington DC and Chicago.

The New Agenda:

"Game Change" Proves to Be Yet Another HBO Failure

We've Come A Long Way, Baby, But Still so Far to Go

HBO's "Game Change" Creates a New Film Genre--Histrionic, Historical Fiction

Celebrating Women's History Month--Reaching the Summitt


Big Government:


Algae-Based Biofuels: More of President Obama's Green Cronyism

President Obama's and Governor Quinn's Economic Philosophy--"It's All Greek to Me"

Feds Give Millions to Company Under SEC Investigation

Cronyism in Chicago Public Schools' Cafeteria