The Final Five: July 31, 2012

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Tonight's Crazy Story:
Police: Ohio Woman Tried to Break Into Jail
Jailbreak attempts are not uncommon, but this attempt was unique in that the woman involved was attempting to break into the jail.

Topic One: ObamaCare
RomneyCare is in trouble: "After years of debate over how to contain health care costs, the Massachusetts Legislature is poised to approve a bill that burdens the entire health care system with more bureaucracy and hundreds of millions in increased expenses. "Real cost-containment is only possible when we encourage patients to reward low-cost, high-quality providers with their business," says Josh Archambault, Pioneer's director of health care policy. "Instead of providing financial incentives for individual patients to take charge of their own medical care, this legislation rearranges the system based on accountable care organizations (ACOs) and changes in payment methods. The legislation misses the mark by a long shot and will not lead to long-term, sustainable containment of health care costs."

Papa John's franchisee says ObamaCare may lead to job cuts: "Small business owners like Nichols have been studying their options since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that one of the plan's most controversial elements - the individual mandate -- was constitutional. The mandate, which the high court determined was a tax, requires individuals to purchase medical insurance or pay a penalty. Companies employing 50 or more people but which do not offer health insurance will have to pay a tax of $2,000 per employee. Nichols currently has 85 employees and has a private carrier insurance plan in place. Each employee pays $90 per month, and Nichols matches that with $90 to cover the whole premium. "That's the cost if I continue to provide insurance. So I have two options, I can stop offering coverage and pay the $2,000 fine, or I could keep my number of staff under 50 so the mandate doesn't apply."

Time for a Laugh:
"Some people are saying that the reason Michael Phelps isn't doing so well is because he let himself get too out of shape. I just have to say that I have been watching the Olympics, and if that guy is out of shape, I have been dead for five years."
-Conan O'Brien

Topic Two: The Debt Legacy
$25 trillion in debt by 2022? "The Obama administration quietly released a new budget report Friday afternoon at a time calculated to make sure it received minimal attention. The highlights of the new report are a pair of new estimates, the first of this year's deficit and the second of projected debt 10 years from now. As reported over the weekend, the new Obama budget document lowers growth estimates for the current year to a (still) high 2.6 percent and estimates this years' deficit at $1.2 trillion. That will bring our national debt to $16.2 trillion by the end of the fiscal year. The more worrisome number in the new report is the estimated national debt at the end of the current 10-year budget widow. Senator Sessions, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee posted this chart of the anticipated growth of our debt. As you can see, we'll be looking at over $25 trillion in debt by 2022"

It's time for intellectual honesty on the debt: "Was Bush too big a spender? Virtually every conservative — even those who failed to admit it during his time in office — will say so. What’s worse is that Obama not only continued Bush’s final and worst year of spending, but he added on even more. And still more troubling is the fact that while the financial health of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has been worsened by both these presidents, demographic and other changes instituted by presidents before each man’s time in office have created the core long-term budgetary problems we face. So we, members of the Debt-Paying Generation, implore politicians, pundits and voters alike to focus not just on lessening spending in the short term, but to remember that the long-term effects of entitlement spending will outweigh even the worst of the policies of Obama and Bush."

Debt Watch:
$15,873,767,378,850.16
( As of Monday, July 30, 2012 )

Change: -$4,607,116,548.26
Your share as a citizen: $50,705.19
Share per household: $138,955.92
Debt since Obama inauguration: $5,246,890,329,937.06

Topic Three: Government Motors Soccer
GM is spending $600 million to sponsor English soccer club Manchester United: "The $600 million GM is giving to Man United over the next 7 years is a sponsorship deal. In return, Man United will wear "Chevrolet" on their jerseys and GM will be able to call itself Man United's "global automobile partner." It will immediately have the edge with all those consumers who look to their favorite soccer club for car buying advice.

"There is a very good reason government shouldn't bailout failing companies with buckets of taxpayer money. The money simply allows them to keep on making the disastrous decisions that got them to be a failing company in the first place. At least straight-up bankruptcy would have probably rooted out the kind of people who would think spending $60-70 million a year to have your logo on a soccer jersey was a swell idea."

Tweet of the Day:
@JIDF: People who pretend to be friendly with everyone simply have no standards. There's nothing friendly or sincere about superficiality.

Topic Four: The New American Dream
The American dream has become just to have a job: "What we have been living through is a breakdown of the great American jobs machine. Jobs have long been the best social program, the best economic program, and the best family program in America. No longer. The jobs are not there. Unemployment today is the worst since the Great Depression.

"The unemployment statistics may be mind-numbing in the effort to portray the complexities of the national picture beyond the simple—and misleading—routine headline figures. It is very important, however, that we should understand just where we are and what the figures tell us about where we are heading. The headline unemployment number focused on by the media is 8.2 percent, but that's not the real number. If you add to the headline number the "discouraged workers" not currently looking for a job, and others "marginally attached" to the labor force, the unemployment rate would be almost 10 percent. And if you add involuntary part-time workers to the headline number, the real unemployment rate would be 14.9 percent. Fifty percent of the jobs created since the recession have been part time, which generally means that these workers receive no benefits and that their pay is inadequate to enter the middle class.

"All the net jobs created during the Obama administration have been part-time jobs. An estimated 35 million Americans are trapped in jobs they would have left in better times. Fewer Americans are working today than in the year 2000, despite the fact that our population has grown by 31 million and our labor force by 11.4 million since then."

Food for Thought - A Quote from our Founders
"A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable."
-Thomas Jefferson

Topic Five: The Power Grab
King Obama has taken power: "When presidents past overstepped constitutional or statutory boundaries, the Fourth Estate would lecture on "imperial" presidencies. For President Obama, however, the media's progressive core prompts compliments of bravery and perseverance, while journalistic duty turns a blind eye to procedural lawlessness. One wonders what their reaction would have been had President George W. Bush and his administration acted similarly.

"Politically combatting this lawlessness is difficult, as a public debate about procedural malfeasance invariably morphs into disputes of the substantive policy itself. Attempts to highlight procedural strong-arming are blurred by political attacks -- "wars" on women, immigrants, the poor, and the like. It may also be said by political strategists that when one argues about procedure, he has already lost the policy debate.

"Political challenges, however, are no excuse for allowing this administration to peel away constitutional checks and balances. A coordinated effort by conservative and Republican (big "R" and small) causes must be brought to bear to inform the voting public on these knavish executive end-runs. John Adam famously warned that our Constitution sought "a government of laws and not of men." Process matters. Our constitutional framework depends on it."

Tomorrow in History
August 1, 2001 - The controversial Ten Commandments monument is installed in the Alabama Judicial Building, leading to a series of lawsuits and the eventual removal of Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Grab Bag - Interesting and Important Stories to Conclude Your Evening:
Post Office nears default

Obama and Romney teams look for edge in early voting

Gun control views unchanged by Colorado shooting

Shocker: Obama appointee interfered in New Black Panther Party case

Man fined for collecting rainwater on his property

Romney to make first VP announcement via mobile app
Click it or ticket, canine style

Compare your tax rate to Romney's

The NCAA's revisionist history

Most Americans don't know how many justices are on the Supreme Court

The man who put the '@' in your email

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