I've always wondered why they don't use a system like that. If nothing else it would ensure more succinct answers.
I believe so far in all 3 debates Obama/Biden have ended up with 3-4 minutes of additional talk time over their opponents which is understandable in that moderators are probably less likely to want to interrupt a sitting President/VP too much, but in terms of a fair debate it's generally unacceptable to allow one side so much additional time.
For one, it's hard to be charged with a crime in the US for actions others take in another country. For another the only death I know of that were linked to the riots was one protestor who suffocated on smoke from a flag he was burning.
Despite repeated statements from the current US administration the attack in Libya had absolutely no connection to the video as there was no protest present at the consulate. The attack that resulted in American deaths was a terrorist attack specifically designed to occur on 9/11 and was even predicted by Libyan officials days before it happened. No one in the State dept. took any action after the Libyan warnings so if any wrongful death suits are brought they will most likely be Families vs. Govt. of the United States.
I'll have to assume your post was missing a/sarc tag because otherwise I'd have to be faced with the idea that there are actually people proposing that being seen as bowing to pressure from violent extremists in order to satisfy their demands, even if not actually the case, is a good thing because of it's immediate short term gain.
Because as everyone knows, the positive reinforcement of bowing to terrorist threats always leads to a feedback loop of love and understanding and never leads to any sort of future problems. And just to be clear, that last sentence was sarcasm.
For a group of people not apologizing the current administration has spent a lot more time condemning a YouTube video than condemning the actions of the mobs in various countries attacking US interests and killing Americans.
There's been more condemnation, and for that matter more action taken to bring about resolution, with regards to the consulate attack by the average Libyan in the street than the by US officials at every level who continue to try and connect a terrorist attack to a video nobody saw, even going so far as to bring it up in a speech to the UN.
The limits to free speech involved with yelling fire is only related to immediate danger caused by your actions and nothing to do with who may or may not be inflamed by speech to later wreak havoc cause harm. The time separation of speech to reaction is very important and in this case is squarely on the side of the film maker (though from the preview calling this a film is being very generous). This has already been decided in the Supreme count on several occasions.
People can say whatever idiotic thing they want no matter who it might upset but if they aren't actively leading an angry mob to take up an illegal action then there is little the government can do about it.
But the fact they are Russian ships is not in doubt. In addition to the ship’s radar arrays and hulls, which are dissimilar from U.S. warships, the photo features one more give-away: a large white flag with a blue ‘X’ at the ships’ sterns.
If you want to see how race affected voting for Obama you may want to look at the nomination breakdown. Hillary won every racial breakdown (most being in the neighborhood for 60/40 for Hillary but the black vote went overwhelmingly for Obama (85.1%) and that gave him the nomination.
If ideology is the only factor affecting black voting patterns, as you assert, then how do you explain such a disparity in voting when the only candidates are effectively identical from an ideological perspective.
With regards to the embassy hit, according to both sources inside Libya and Washington the administration knew it was a terrorist attack and in no way related to the YouTube video within 24 hours yet they were still pushing the video story up to and including Obama's address to the UN.
Several sources, including the Libyan government itself, reported that they were warning the US at least 3 days prior to the attacks that they were expecting some form of attack against US interests inside Libya on September 11th and yet no actions were taken to increase any security measures at the consulate. There was actually less intel pointing towards a link to the video than there was that this was a terrorist attack and yet it took a week for the administration to even use the word terrorism to describe it (I believe Obama still hasn't).
So far the only place to get any actual honest coverage about the attack on the consulate are from sources outside the US because most of the US media is following the administration line. There have been a few honest reports about the fact there were no protests in Libya prior to the attack, but for the most part the narrative is still that it was just an opportunistic attack timed with existing protests.
This was not an example of getting out the news to the people when they had it and just being a little slow on the uptake, this was a prime example using the YouTube facade to make a foreseeable action seem like just an unlucky coincidence when they knew before appearing on any of the new programs that the two incidents were not linked.
I think the Russian naval insignia on the bows in the place normally reserved for the American flag on US ships might have been a tip off as to the origin of the ships, even if they don't know the difference in radar arrays or actual ship design.
They planes they used in the graphic also happen to be of the Turkish military stunt flying team and not the US Air Force.
So 0 for 2 for whoever's job it was to put that image together.
Capital gains differs from earned income in that earned income is only taxed once, when paid to the earner while every dollar of capital gains is taxed at two different points (leaving far less than a dollar in thee end).
Salary, for example is only taxed when paid to an employee and at that employees personal tax rate. The company pays no taxes on that money as to them it is an expense and not profit. Capital gains, on the other hand, is paid from corporate profits so is taxed once at the corporate rate and then at the capital gains rate when paid to investors.
So while the same entity is not taxed twice, the same money is.
I believe the argument is that your paycheck is a expenditure by the business so is in fact a tax deduction to them. The first time that that money is taxed is when you receive it in your paycheck.
The dividends are considered profits and taxed at the normal rate and then when paid out to the investors taxed again at the capital gains rate.
So a company making $1,000,000 with $600,000 in salary would only be taxed on the remaining $400,000. That remainder of the $400,000 (assuming they keep none of the profits for themselves), after taxes, is then taxed at the capital gains rate when paid out to the investors.
The end result is the $600,000 is taxed once, at the person tax rate of the employees receiving it, and the $400,000 is taxed once at the business tax rate and then whatever is left over is taxed a second time at the capital gains rate when the investors receive it.
You may want to take some time to educate yourself about how congress works; the budget only requires 51 votes to pass in the Senate. So at any time in the past 3 years the Democrats could have passed any budget they wanted, even Obama's proposal.
But in the liberal mind the fact Obama's plan have received 0 votes in the last 2 years and the Dem's have put forward zero proposals of their own while the Republican's have passed their own budget proposal through the House of course means it is the Republican's holding up the process.
There are a lot of people that forcing a deductible of $2000 would be a huge increase to their plan. There are hundreds of plans tailored for the low risk groups that are designed to cover only catastrophic injury or disease. Most people under those plans pay out of pocket for things like routine doctor visits and even broken bones. You'd be surprised how cheap you can get some procedures done if you pay cash instead of going through the red tape of dealing with an insurance company. There are clinics and doctor's offices across the US that specialize in dealing with direct payment patients; it's a huge savings for them so they pass it on to their patients. For the people that prefer that kind of service the hundreds they save every month more than makes up for the reduction in coverage and they are still covered if, God forbid, they are diagnosed with some life altering illness. Those types of plans are now effectively gone except in cases where the cost of the plan + the 'tax' are still lower than the new federally approved plan.
As for the male and female plans, the point is that while, for example, a 30 year old male could minimize their insurance costs by looking for a plan without a lot of extras like free birth control and mammograms, under the new system the likelihood of that is greatly reduced as insurance companies will be moving to more of a one size fits all plan system to deal with Federal guidelines.
Insurance companies are not in the business of losing money so for every 'free' service the federal government foists on them they will simply price their plans to cover them. For the person getting that new 'free' service that could be a costs savings but for the millions that had no use for it it's an increase. Pre-ACA, companies customized plans accordingly, but now to meet federal requirements thats simply not an option.
Two little clarifications that may completely toss your assumptions of cost out the window:
The "individual mandate" part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires you to carry health care insurance.
This simply isn't true. The mandate requires you carry health insurance (of a particular kind, which is generally higher than required for a large percentage of the country) OR pay a 'tax' (as it's now defined) to the government. In pretty much everyone's opinion this 'tax' is substantially less than the cost of the insurance that would meet federal requirements. The end result is that people can opt out of buying insurance and then use the pre-existing conditions rules to jump back in when needed.
As for Romneycare, costs for insurance across the board, increased higher than the national average after it was implemented. It also went almost 50% over budget in the first year. It wasn't until the downturn in the economy and a series of price controls (including pushing people to cheaper care facilities first) that costs started to go down. Even with the downturn Mass. is still one of the most expensive places in the US to get insurance.
The end results: if you are a responsible adult and purchase insurance for yourself or your family then your premiums will likely increase as the number of things covered can be increased above and beyond anything you may require by Congressional or Presidential fiat. If you're a freeloader you pay a little more in tax to continue to be a freeloader knowing that if anything really bad comes up (cancer, organ disease, etc.) you can then opt into the same plan as your healthy neighbor with almost no punitive affects.
This assumes people actually opt to not just pay the tax. It has already been shown that the cost of the tax (or 'fine') is much lower than the cost of required insurance. For most small injuries, even broken bones and such, it would be cheaper to pay the yearly health tax and just pay cash for emergency hospital visits. Because of the removal of pre-existing conditions clauses from policies now, if a person does get diagnosed with a long term medical condition they can then apply for insurance and cannot be refused (there is a small waiting period before it activated).
So a person can pay $0 dollars to ACME Insurance for 10 years and then when they get really sick sign up and pay the same rate as a completely healthy person and suddenly ACME is on the hook for a lifetime of expensive medical procedures (with no limits as required by the law). Only in a dream world will that not cause ACME to increase their rates to compensate. Just ask the residence of Massachusetts.
This plan may increase coverage (which is also in doubt) but will have little positive, and most likely a negative, impact on costs.
I believe that was exactly the problem that Romneycare incurred. The fine was easier to pay for than the policies so people just waited till it was needed and then jumped onto a plan for the really big expenses. The end result was one of the highest increases in policy cost in the US as insurance companies had to compensate for people not paying for coverage until the last possible minute; pretty much the antithesis of insurance.
Of course if you don't have a mortgage you are not incurring the additional expenses of having a mortgage, which the tax break helps offset to some degree, so you're still ahead of the game financially. The mortgage tax break requires that you actively spend money to get a small portion back as a deduction on your taxes; in the end you still have less than a person who never entered into a mortgage.
In the case of Obamacare, the tax is actively applied to anyone alive in the US, regardless of any activities they may partake in, and is only refunded if you happen to have a government approved insurance plan. The only way you can equate this to a tax break is if you raise the base tax rate by a percentage value equal to the 'fine' and then allow people to claim a 'health care' deduction to offset that raise.
It's not a tax break, it's an active tax; meaning a person without coverage will have a portion of their tax refund reduced by the amount of the tax (effectively a fine) while a person with coverage will receive no extra monies in their refund check. A tax break would mean the person without insurance would get back the exact same refund as usual while the person with coverage would get back a higher than usual refund.
The funny part is if you are not receiving a refund of any kind, by the SCOTUS's decision, it does not look like the IRS can legally go after you for the health care 'tax' owned so if you're good at keeping your own books you can probably get around paying it.
A lot of health insurance policies do not meet the required standards of the definition of health insurance under Obamacare, which is the GPs point.
Prior to this a person could choose their insurance to fit their needs, only cover catastrophic injury, high deductibles, selective coverage (no special 'reproductive' coverage), etc.. and get a policy that covers only what they want for a price they were willing to pay. Under Obamacare all policies are required to have certain coverage levels as well as cover certain procedures/conditions, regardless to the fact that in some cases it would be biologically unnecessary for you to make use of that coverage (not a lot of need for birth control pills or morning after pills for the average guy). For some people this will be a help but for most it will result in increased costs as they no longer have the option of tailoring their policies to their needs.
It's much the same as getting car insurance on a car you own vs one you lease. Due to the level of coverage required, insurance on a car you own can be much less than on a lease. Both insurance policies will require coverage for anyone you may cause injury to but the policy for a leased car will also require a certain amount of coverage for the leased vehicle, an added expense many people opt out when not forced on them by a 3rd party (the leasing company). In the case of Obamacare the Federal Government is essentially acting a a lease holder for your body and forcing their specific requirements on your coverage; requirements that can be changed at the whim of this or any successive Congress or even simply a bureaucrat that's puts in charge of handling the governments 'interpretation' of this spaghetti law..
You keep stating it will cause tens of thousands to not have the ability to vote yet you cherry pick two specific cases as your examples. As I already stated, in most states an valid State ID can be acquired for free or a minimal fee of as little as $5 so choosing 1 example where it would cost an elderly retiree $200 to fix her birth certificate is all well and good but hardly a sterling example of disenfranchisement. As for your other example, if you did any reading on on it Paul Carroll was offered a provisional ballot and assistance to vote (he has poor eyesight) at the polling station even with his expired license; he made the choice not to vote and left the polling area.
If these laws, which have existed in various states for several elections and entire countries for decades, are such a burden I would figure you'd have hundred or thousands of such cases to cite. There should be entire websites filled with rolls of voters who have been disenfranchised. Instead you have a couple selective cases. The difference being the people who are prevented from voting have a reason to make their cases public while those illegally voting don't. So which do you think is more likely to have a higher ratio of reported to unreported cases?
And most of the problems having to do with lineups for voting in the US are because of the way US elections are controlled. With so much control being given to the individual districts to create their own ballots, determine which machine to use and train their own workers in whatever way they see fit, you'll often get imbalances with regards to equipment usage and repair, the speed in which poll workers can process voters and simple coordination (there have been instances where no one knew who had the keys to the room where the voting machines were stored). It also leads to situations where observers, from either party, can cause havoc because there is no uniformity and poorly trained poll workers are easy prey. Neither political party should have any control over the polling stations during an election but in the US that is not just an occasional occurrence, it is the norm.
The entire system from registration to voting has to have some degree of security to it to ensure accurate results. Allowing any stage to be corrupted creates a election system with a strong degree of doubt as to it veracity.
Now to your random anti-conservative screeds.
Who do you think you're kidding? Conservatives impeached a Democratic president for getting a blow job - what would they do if a Democratic president stole an election, sat on his ass as 3,000 Americans were killed, lied us into a war, doubled the national debt, and shredded the Constitution?
Are you still beating those dead horses?
Clinton was impeached for giving misleading testimony during a civil suit (whether or not is met the legal conditions for perjury are a matter of opinion). A charge he later admitted and surrendered his law license and paid a fine for. The House charged him with perjury and obstruction. The only reason the blowjob portion mattered was it was a sexual harassment lawsuit with a former employee and his current sexual relations with another employee would have direct impacton the case.
No one has yet shown any lies by Bush about the preamble to war (which had both Dem and Repub support). All the intel from several countries pointed in a similar direction (which was actually part of Saddam's defense strategy) and like every other CnC has done since the beginning of time, he selected the data he trusted and made a decision based on it. Using the magic of hindsight, while useful when trying to assess problems with the intel gathering methods previously used, doesn't make what was know AT THE TIME any less valid. The members of the various security committees (from both parties) also had access to the same data and for the most part, agreed with the Admin assessment, even if they may not have agreed with the actions taken based on that dat
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I've always wondered why they don't use a system like that. If nothing else it would ensure more succinct answers.
I believe so far in all 3 debates Obama/Biden have ended up with 3-4 minutes of additional talk time over their opponents which is understandable in that moderators are probably less likely to want to interrupt a sitting President/VP too much, but in terms of a fair debate it's generally unacceptable to allow one side so much additional time.
Call me when Mohammad shows up in a California court to file a complaint for slander/libel against this guy.
For one, it's hard to be charged with a crime in the US for actions others take in another country. For another the only death I know of that were linked to the riots was one protestor who suffocated on smoke from a flag he was burning.
Despite repeated statements from the current US administration the attack in Libya had absolutely no connection to the video as there was no protest present at the consulate. The attack that resulted in American deaths was a terrorist attack specifically designed to occur on 9/11 and was even predicted by Libyan officials days before it happened. No one in the State dept. took any action after the Libyan warnings so if any wrongful death suits are brought they will most likely be Families vs. Govt. of the United States.
I'll have to assume your post was missing a /sarc tag because otherwise I'd have to be faced with the idea that there are actually people proposing that being seen as bowing to pressure from violent extremists in order to satisfy their demands, even if not actually the case, is a good thing because of it's immediate short term gain.
Because as everyone knows, the positive reinforcement of bowing to terrorist threats always leads to a feedback loop of love and understanding and never leads to any sort of future problems. And just to be clear, that last sentence was sarcasm.
For a group of people not apologizing the current administration has spent a lot more time condemning a YouTube video than condemning the actions of the mobs in various countries attacking US interests and killing Americans.
There's been more condemnation, and for that matter more action taken to bring about resolution, with regards to the consulate attack by the average Libyan in the street than the by US officials at every level who continue to try and connect a terrorist attack to a video nobody saw, even going so far as to bring it up in a speech to the UN.
The limits to free speech involved with yelling fire is only related to immediate danger caused by your actions and nothing to do with who may or may not be inflamed by speech to later wreak havoc cause harm. The time separation of speech to reaction is very important and in this case is squarely on the side of the film maker (though from the preview calling this a film is being very generous). This has already been decided in the Supreme count on several occasions.
People can say whatever idiotic thing they want no matter who it might upset but if they aren't actively leading an angry mob to take up an illegal action then there is little the government can do about it.
From the Navy Times:
You can look it up from many sources but for just one example here is the NYT.
Or if you accept blog analysis you can try The Audacious Epigone.
But of course that took 2 seconds of a google search to find so I understand that it was too much effort for some to do their own research.
If you want to see how race affected voting for Obama you may want to look at the nomination breakdown. Hillary won every racial breakdown (most being in the neighborhood for 60/40 for Hillary but the black vote went overwhelmingly for Obama (85.1%) and that gave him the nomination.
If ideology is the only factor affecting black voting patterns, as you assert, then how do you explain such a disparity in voting when the only candidates are effectively identical from an ideological perspective.
With regards to the embassy hit, according to both sources inside Libya and Washington the administration knew it was a terrorist attack and in no way related to the YouTube video within 24 hours yet they were still pushing the video story up to and including Obama's address to the UN.
Several sources, including the Libyan government itself, reported that they were warning the US at least 3 days prior to the attacks that they were expecting some form of attack against US interests inside Libya on September 11th and yet no actions were taken to increase any security measures at the consulate. There was actually less intel pointing towards a link to the video than there was that this was a terrorist attack and yet it took a week for the administration to even use the word terrorism to describe it (I believe Obama still hasn't).
So far the only place to get any actual honest coverage about the attack on the consulate are from sources outside the US because most of the US media is following the administration line. There have been a few honest reports about the fact there were no protests in Libya prior to the attack, but for the most part the narrative is still that it was just an opportunistic attack timed with existing protests.
This was not an example of getting out the news to the people when they had it and just being a little slow on the uptake, this was a prime example using the YouTube facade to make a foreseeable action seem like just an unlucky coincidence when they knew before appearing on any of the new programs that the two incidents were not linked.
I think the Russian naval insignia on the bows in the place normally reserved for the American flag on US ships might have been a tip off as to the origin of the ships, even if they don't know the difference in radar arrays or actual ship design.
They planes they used in the graphic also happen to be of the Turkish military stunt flying team and not the US Air Force.
So 0 for 2 for whoever's job it was to put that image together.
Yeah, it's like when he gives 'shout out's before holding a press conference after a national tragedy, oh wait, that was the other guy.
Capital gains differs from earned income in that earned income is only taxed once, when paid to the earner while every dollar of capital gains is taxed at two different points (leaving far less than a dollar in thee end).
Salary, for example is only taxed when paid to an employee and at that employees personal tax rate. The company pays no taxes on that money as to them it is an expense and not profit.
Capital gains, on the other hand, is paid from corporate profits so is taxed once at the corporate rate and then at the capital gains rate when paid to investors.
So while the same entity is not taxed twice, the same money is.
I believe the argument is that your paycheck is a expenditure by the business so is in fact a tax deduction to them. The first time that that money is taxed is when you receive it in your paycheck.
The dividends are considered profits and taxed at the normal rate and then when paid out to the investors taxed again at the capital gains rate.
So a company making $1,000,000 with $600,000 in salary would only be taxed on the remaining $400,000. That remainder of the $400,000 (assuming they keep none of the profits for themselves), after taxes, is then taxed at the capital gains rate when paid out to the investors.
The end result is the $600,000 is taxed once, at the person tax rate of the employees receiving it, and the $400,000 is taxed once at the business tax rate and then whatever is left over is taxed a second time at the capital gains rate when the investors receive it.
but wasn't it the left leaners who overestimated the temperature?
You may want to take some time to educate yourself about how congress works; the budget only requires 51 votes to pass in the Senate. So at any time in the past 3 years the Democrats could have passed any budget they wanted, even Obama's proposal.
But in the liberal mind the fact Obama's plan have received 0 votes in the last 2 years and the Dem's have put forward zero proposals of their own while the Republican's have passed their own budget proposal through the House of course means it is the Republican's holding up the process.
There are a lot of people that forcing a deductible of $2000 would be a huge increase to their plan. There are hundreds of plans tailored for the low risk groups that are designed to cover only catastrophic injury or disease. Most people under those plans pay out of pocket for things like routine doctor visits and even broken bones. You'd be surprised how cheap you can get some procedures done if you pay cash instead of going through the red tape of dealing with an insurance company. There are clinics and doctor's offices across the US that specialize in dealing with direct payment patients; it's a huge savings for them so they pass it on to their patients.
For the people that prefer that kind of service the hundreds they save every month more than makes up for the reduction in coverage and they are still covered if, God forbid, they are diagnosed with some life altering illness. Those types of plans are now effectively gone except in cases where the cost of the plan + the 'tax' are still lower than the new federally approved plan.
As for the male and female plans, the point is that while, for example, a 30 year old male could minimize their insurance costs by looking for a plan without a lot of extras like free birth control and mammograms, under the new system the likelihood of that is greatly reduced as insurance companies will be moving to more of a one size fits all plan system to deal with Federal guidelines.
Insurance companies are not in the business of losing money so for every 'free' service the federal government foists on them they will simply price their plans to cover them. For the person getting that new 'free' service that could be a costs savings but for the millions that had no use for it it's an increase. Pre-ACA, companies customized plans accordingly, but now to meet federal requirements thats simply not an option.
Two little clarifications that may completely toss your assumptions of cost out the window:
The "individual mandate" part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires you to carry health care insurance.
This simply isn't true. The mandate requires you carry health insurance (of a particular kind, which is generally higher than required for a large percentage of the country) OR pay a 'tax' (as it's now defined) to the government. In pretty much everyone's opinion this 'tax' is substantially less than the cost of the insurance that would meet federal requirements. The end result is that people can opt out of buying insurance and then use the pre-existing conditions rules to jump back in when needed.
As for Romneycare, costs for insurance across the board, increased higher than the national average after it was implemented. It also went almost 50% over budget in the first year. It wasn't until the downturn in the economy and a series of price controls (including pushing people to cheaper care facilities first) that costs started to go down. Even with the downturn Mass. is still one of the most expensive places in the US to get insurance.
The end results: if you are a responsible adult and purchase insurance for yourself or your family then your premiums will likely increase as the number of things covered can be increased above and beyond anything you may require by Congressional or Presidential fiat. If you're a freeloader you pay a little more in tax to continue to be a freeloader knowing that if anything really bad comes up (cancer, organ disease, etc.) you can then opt into the same plan as your healthy neighbor with almost no punitive affects.
This assumes people actually opt to not just pay the tax. It has already been shown that the cost of the tax (or 'fine') is much lower than the cost of required insurance. For most small injuries, even broken bones and such, it would be cheaper to pay the yearly health tax and just pay cash for emergency hospital visits. Because of the removal of pre-existing conditions clauses from policies now, if a person does get diagnosed with a long term medical condition they can then apply for insurance and cannot be refused (there is a small waiting period before it activated).
So a person can pay $0 dollars to ACME Insurance for 10 years and then when they get really sick sign up and pay the same rate as a completely healthy person and suddenly ACME is on the hook for a lifetime of expensive medical procedures (with no limits as required by the law). Only in a dream world will that not cause ACME to increase their rates to compensate. Just ask the residence of Massachusetts.
This plan may increase coverage (which is also in doubt) but will have little positive, and most likely a negative, impact on costs.
I believe that was exactly the problem that Romneycare incurred. The fine was easier to pay for than the policies so people just waited till it was needed and then jumped onto a plan for the really big expenses. The end result was one of the highest increases in policy cost in the US as insurance companies had to compensate for people not paying for coverage until the last possible minute; pretty much the antithesis of insurance.
The federal lawyers have been calling it a tax since the beginning.
This is not a decision pulled from thin air by the SCOTUS, it was one of the defenses for the Act put forward at the onset of the case.
Of course if you don't have a mortgage you are not incurring the additional expenses of having a mortgage, which the tax break helps offset to some degree, so you're still ahead of the game financially. The mortgage tax break requires that you actively spend money to get a small portion back as a deduction on your taxes; in the end you still have less than a person who never entered into a mortgage.
In the case of Obamacare, the tax is actively applied to anyone alive in the US, regardless of any activities they may partake in, and is only refunded if you happen to have a government approved insurance plan. The only way you can equate this to a tax break is if you raise the base tax rate by a percentage value equal to the 'fine' and then allow people to claim a 'health care' deduction to offset that raise.
It's not a tax break, it's an active tax; meaning a person without coverage will have a portion of their tax refund reduced by the amount of the tax (effectively a fine) while a person with coverage will receive no extra monies in their refund check. A tax break would mean the person without insurance would get back the exact same refund as usual while the person with coverage would get back a higher than usual refund.
The funny part is if you are not receiving a refund of any kind, by the SCOTUS's decision, it does not look like the IRS can legally go after you for the health care 'tax' owned so if you're good at keeping your own books you can probably get around paying it.
A lot of health insurance policies do not meet the required standards of the definition of health insurance under Obamacare, which is the GPs point.
Prior to this a person could choose their insurance to fit their needs, only cover catastrophic injury, high deductibles, selective coverage (no special 'reproductive' coverage), etc.. and get a policy that covers only what they want for a price they were willing to pay. Under Obamacare all policies are required to have certain coverage levels as well as cover certain procedures/conditions, regardless to the fact that in some cases it would be biologically unnecessary for you to make use of that coverage (not a lot of need for birth control pills or morning after pills for the average guy). For some people this will be a help but for most it will result in increased costs as they no longer have the option of tailoring their policies to their needs.
It's much the same as getting car insurance on a car you own vs one you lease. Due to the level of coverage required, insurance on a car you own can be much less than on a lease. Both insurance policies will require coverage for anyone you may cause injury to but the policy for a leased car will also require a certain amount of coverage for the leased vehicle, an added expense many people opt out when not forced on them by a 3rd party (the leasing company). In the case of Obamacare the Federal Government is essentially acting a a lease holder for your body and forcing their specific requirements on your coverage; requirements that can be changed at the whim of this or any successive Congress or even simply a bureaucrat that's puts in charge of handling the governments 'interpretation' of this spaghetti law..
You keep stating it will cause tens of thousands to not have the ability to vote yet you cherry pick two specific cases as your examples. As I already stated, in most states an valid State ID can be acquired for free or a minimal fee of as little as $5 so choosing 1 example where it would cost an elderly retiree $200 to fix her birth certificate is all well and good but hardly a sterling example of disenfranchisement. As for your other example, if you did any reading on on it Paul Carroll was offered a provisional ballot and assistance to vote (he has poor eyesight) at the polling station even with his expired license; he made the choice not to vote and left the polling area.
If these laws, which have existed in various states for several elections and entire countries for decades, are such a burden I would figure you'd have hundred or thousands of such cases to cite. There should be entire websites filled with rolls of voters who have been disenfranchised. Instead you have a couple selective cases. The difference being the people who are prevented from voting have a reason to make their cases public while those illegally voting don't. So which do you think is more likely to have a higher ratio of reported to unreported cases?
And most of the problems having to do with lineups for voting in the US are because of the way US elections are controlled. With so much control being given to the individual districts to create their own ballots, determine which machine to use and train their own workers in whatever way they see fit, you'll often get imbalances with regards to equipment usage and repair, the speed in which poll workers can process voters and simple coordination (there have been instances where no one knew who had the keys to the room where the voting machines were stored). It also leads to situations where observers, from either party, can cause havoc because there is no uniformity and poorly trained poll workers are easy prey. Neither political party should have any control over the polling stations during an election but in the US that is not just an occasional occurrence, it is the norm.
The entire system from registration to voting has to have some degree of security to it to ensure accurate results. Allowing any stage to be corrupted creates a election system with a strong degree of doubt as to it veracity.
Now to your random anti-conservative screeds.
Are you still beating those dead horses?
Clinton was impeached for giving misleading testimony during a civil suit (whether or not is met the legal conditions for perjury are a matter of opinion). A charge he later admitted and surrendered his law license and paid a fine for. The House charged him with perjury and obstruction. The only reason the blowjob portion mattered was it was a sexual harassment lawsuit with a former employee and his current sexual relations with another employee would have direct impacton the case.
No one has yet shown any lies by Bush about the preamble to war (which had both Dem and Repub support). All the intel from several countries pointed in a similar direction (which was actually part of Saddam's defense strategy) and like every other CnC has done since the beginning of time, he selected the data he trusted and made a decision based on it. Using the magic of hindsight, while useful when trying to assess problems with the intel gathering methods previously used, doesn't make what was know AT THE TIME any less valid. The members of the various security committees (from both parties) also had access to the same data and for the most part, agreed with the Admin assessment, even if they may not have agreed with the actions taken based on that dat