Keith Olbernan is Right -- the Mandate Must Go -- Obama is Accomlishing the Opposites of What He Promised Those of Us Who Voted for Him!

After eleven months in office, Barack Husseien Obama is going down as a president who did not keep his promises, but also a president who is accomplishing EXACTLY the opposite of what he said he would do.

He is the anti-war candidate who has us deeper in war. He has done nothing in Iraq that President Bush had not only promised to do. And Obama has increased the troop levels in Afghanistan by over 50,000 troops.

Yes, he is the only Nobel prize winner who has ever won the prize and then increased troops in a war. But that is exactly what he had done.

He is the Trojan horse president. We elected him to do one thing, but he is doing the other, in so many cases.

He was elected to bring honesty to the White House, yet he defends the Bush torture techniques and the Bush secrecy policies. And he was elected to bring health care reforem and his SENATE bill is just a big, mandated payout to the insurance companies.

WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT TO THE ONES WHO VOTED FOR HIM! How much better is he in reality than McCain, if at all?

He promised not to raise taxes on the middle class, yet his health care niil, without a public option to help keep costs down, has a huge tax cost.

The Joint Committee on Taxation has published a list of the 17 tax increases in the Senate health care bill, which are estimated to raise $370.2 billion in revenues over ten years:

1.40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500/$23,000 ($149.1 billion)
2. Employer W-2 reporting of value of health (negligible revenue effect)
3. Conform definition of medical expenses ($5.0 billion)
4. Increase penalty for nonqualified health savings account distributions to 20% ($1.3 billion)
5. Limit health flexible spending arrangements in cafeteria plans to $2,500 ($14.6 billion)
6. Require information reporting on payments to corporations ($17.1 billion)
7. Additional requirements for section 501(c)(3) hospitals (negligible revenue effects)
8. Impose annual fee on manufacturers & importers of branded drugs ($22.2 billion)
9. Impose annual fee on manufacturers & importers of medical devices ($19.3 billion)
10. Impose annual fee on health insurance providers ($60.4 billion)
11. Study and report of effect on veterans health care (no revenue effect)
12. Eliminate deduction for expenses allocable to Medicare Part D subsidy ($5.4 billion)
13. Raise 7.5% AGI floor on medical expenses deduction to 10% ($15.2 billion)
14. $500,000 deduction limitation on taxable year remuneration to health insurance officials ($0.6 billion)
15. Additional 0.5% hospital insurance tax on wages > $200,000 ($250,000 joint) ($53.8 billion)
16. Modification of section 833 treatment of certain health organizations ($0.4 billion)
17. Impose 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery ($5.8 billion)

Talk about TAX and SPEND -- but the ones who get rich are the insurance companies!

As Keith Olberman, as honest a man as there is on television, put it recently, the mandate to buyr insuracne, without a public option, is a terrible thing. He called for its repeal from the already atrocious bill.

Olberman warned Obama: "Mr. President, they are calling you a socialist, a communist, a Marxist. You could be further to the right than Reagan – and this health care bill (as Howard Dean put it here last night, this bailout for the insurance industry) sure invites the comparison.

"And they will still call you names.Sir, if they are going to call you a socialist no matter what you do, you have been given full unfettered freedom to do what you know is just. The bill may be the ultimate political manifesto, or it may be the most delicate of compromises. The firestorm will be the same. So why not give the haters, as the cliché goes, something to cry about.

"But concomitant with that is the reaction from Democrats and Independents.
You have riven them, Sir. Any bill will engender criticism but this bill costs you the left — and anybody who now has to pony up 17 percent of his family’s income to buy this equivalent of Medical Mobster Protection Money.

"Some speaking for you, Sir, have called the public option a fetish. They may be right. But to stay with this uncomfortable language, this bill is less fetish, more bondage.

Nothing short of your re-election and the re-election of dozens of Democrats in the "house and senate, hinges in large part on this bill. Make it palatable or make it go away or make yourself ready — not merely for a horrifying campaign in 2012 — but for the distinct possibility also of a primary challenge."

Olberman continued: "There is only one redemption possible. The mandate in this bill under which we are required to buy insurance must be stripped out. The bill now is little more than a legally mandated delivery of the middle class (and those whose dreams of joining it slip ever further away) into a kind of Chicago stockyards of insurance. Make enough money to take care of yourself and your family and you must buy insurance – on the insurers terms – or face a fine.

"This provision must go. It is, above all else, immoral and a betrayal of the people who elected you, Sir.You must now announce that you will veto any bill lacking an option or buy-in, but containing a mandate."

This is a harmful bill, this Senate monstrosity, and we must pray that it is killed before it does much harm. It is not reform, it is not healthy and it is not ethical. The Senate bill with the mandate must be defeated, if not in the Senate, then in the House.

Health care reform that benefits the industry at the cost of the people is intolerable and there are no moral constructs in which it can be supported. Kill the bill tomorrow morning, for our children and our children's children.