If this is true, and the federal government is considering price controls on health insurance -

In a shot across the bow to the insurance industry Tuesday, President Obama warned companies facing higher costs in part because of his health care law not to hike their prices, saying “we’ll be watching closely.”

Backing up his rhetoric behind the scenes, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is quietly working on a new regulation to determine when insurance price increases are “unreasonable” and potentially prohibited by law.

 - these people are even more thick than I imagined. Price controls always and everywhere lead to one outcome for the product in question – shortages and rationing.

As with so much else, Henry Hazlitt explained how it works.

The usual run of newspaper stories present few instances of journalistic humour, but I thought that the Daily Mail story about Cabinet Minister Chris Huhne, his bisexual lover and his rejected wife hit the nail..

The story, mainly about the hugely exorbitant expenses claimed by M.P.s,  ran:-

“In the week Chris Huhne left his wife for a younger woman, his expenses reveal he claimed money for servicing an old boiler.

The bill for £1,500 was for general household maintenance and was dated 7 April 2009. 

That was a year after he started an affair with his 44-year-old bisexual press officer Carina Trimingham and  just over a year before this week’s announcement that the Energy Secretary was leaving his 57-year-old wife Vicky Pryce.”

I don’t think a woman aged 47 qualifies for the term ‘old’!

The government has decided we ought to work longer. Reports the Telegraph:

In a landmark announcement intended to herald a new era of shorter but wealthier retirements, the Government will encourage people to work for longer by making it illegal for companies to force staff to give up work at 65.

Ian Duncan Smith, a man whose own fat pension was chiselled from the productive class under the violence of law, is wheeled out to lie to the people:

“People are living longer and healthier lives than ever, and the last thing we want is to lose their skills and experience from the workplace due to an arbitrary age limit,” he said.

Translation: the ponzi scam known as the state pension is out of cash and you must work harder for longer so the state can take yet more of your cash. What, you thought you were saving for your own pot? Don’t be stupid. Pensioners are paid tomorrow what is taxed today. The state puts not a penny aside that you pay. It is spent immediately and, not only is there nothing in the pot, there is no pot. You’ve been had.

To think, Bernie Madoff will die in prison for much, much less.

“HOME IN SHAME” screams La Gazzetta dello Sport as Italy exit the World Cup. And didn’t they do it in style? The reigning champions and four-time winners contrived to draw two, lose one and finish bottom of a group containing New Zealand. Splendid stuff, ciao ragazzi. If the tifosi are keeping up tradition, trucks groaning under a mountain of rotten tomatoes will be parked up at Fiumicino already.

The French plane will have already departed and, if I was with the gendarmes, I’d have some backup waiting on the tarmac given the rucks, rows, tantrums and discarded accreditations are anything to go by. If they reach Paris without a royale rumble breaking out on board it’ll be a miracle.

Yes, I’m really enjoying this one and it’s not because of what’s happening on the pitch. That’s partly England’s fault. Our Boys managed to dominate Slovenia yet squeak a win by blowing chance after chance. Five-nil would have been fair, yet the 1-0 win let the USA in to the top the group with the lastest of last-gasp winners against Algeria.

Outcome? USA versus Ghana and England versus Germany in the first knockout round on Sunday. Oh great, bang goes any prospect of a relaxing weekend then. The World Cup wouldn’t be the World Cup without a gut-wrenching, soul-destroying two hours of torment and agony against either the Germans or the Argies, but not already please. The twitch has started and we’re three days away. England are favourites with the bookies, but as far as I’m concerned Sunday can wait.

I am reminded of a brilliant, somewhat prophetic scene from Tony Hancock’s The Lift, from way back in 1961.  Hancock forecasts on how the world’s population will have to adapt to the ongoing population explosion.  Maybe Hancock should have focused his prognostications on the state of Britain in 2010, following 13 years of unchecked immigration.  Population figures for the UK were released this morning.  In just 12 months, the total numbers inhabiting these islands rose by almost another 400,000 (or a city the size of Bristol).  45% was accounted for by immigration.  The remainder by births.  However, despite the BBC’s attempts to whitewash (or should that be ‘blackwash‘?) the birth statistics, we already know that one quarter of births are accounted for by foreign-born mothers. Of those born to British mothers, a reasonable percentage will be born to long-standing ethnic minorities.  Thus, no matter which way you cut it, the indigenous white British population is being massively outstripped in the growth league by other demographic groups.  Scandalous!

Today’s United Kingdom has 666 people per square mile.  Quite a connotative figure given that Labour’s immigration policy was nothing more than a sickening act of devilment.  By comparison, Germany has 595; Italy, 514; France, 294; Republic of Ireland, 163; USA, 87; and Australia just 7.  Crowded societies make for more infrastructural strain, more traffic jams, more demands on public services, and more stress as people compete for room in an ever-decreasing space.  Factor in the problem of some immigrants wanting to create a template of the country(ies) they came from, and you have the beginnings of a nightmare on your hands.

Voters in the UK had two priorities when they voted at the General Election: the economy and immigration.  The first is now in the process of being addressed by essential tough cuts and tax rises.  The government now needs to make a start on the second.  I have often chuckled to myself at Britain’s airports when the UK Border Agency sign tells you that you may have to queue to get past passport control as the country’s borders need strict defence.  What a joke!  Britain’s borders are about as porous as the consignment of cheap incontinence pads I was sent for one of my residents last week.  As I said back in May, I’ll judge this government on one thing and one thing only.  Get cracking!!

Posted in it’s entirety because it sums up the American disaster in accurate plain terms.

Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?

By THOMAS SOWELL Posted 06/21/2010 06:13 PM ET

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.

Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler’s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

“Useful idiots” was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president’s poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP’s oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.

But our government is supposed to be “a government of laws and not of men.”

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without “due process of law.”

Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don’t believe in constitutional government.

Watching the ‘Nanny’ tactics of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in full flow as yet another series of pages of ‘Advice’ flows from the web-pages and print files of this NGO which is supposed to provide ‘national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health.’ 

Three weeks ago  it was all about ‘Minimum Pricing for Alcohol’, because they are certain that we drink too much, and lots of people are ‘binge drinking’, it’s a ‘BAD THING’, and we are all naughty.

Then two weeks ago it was all about telling doctors that they should spend much more time with their patients, finding out about their socio-economic levels, as well as being aware that socially disadvantaged young people find it difficult to access contraceptive services, for a variety of reasons, including lack of knowledge about service opening times and locations. Also doctors should dispense culturally sensitive, confidential, non-judgemental and empathic advice and support tailored to their individual needs.So, besides being thick, they are now breeding too fast.

Last week, NICE stated that we should all have our ‘drink driving’ alcohol limits lowered drastically, as over 3,000 injuries and 145 deaths could be averted by stopping us all from drinking virtually anything even vaguely alcoholic. 

Then yesterday, all our G.P.s were advised that if any pregnant female patient arrives in their surgery, they should all be breathalised to ascertain if they have been SMOKING, and immediately offered abortion if the poor women have SMOKED since having sex.

Well, allright, maybe they didn’t say the last bit, that was me editorializing a bit; but you should be getting the picture.

This bunch of do-gooders, whose job since inception seems mainly to have stating that we cannot afford new cancer- or alzheimer-fighting drugs because the Labour Party overlords have installed yet another branch of bureaucracy which has costs millions, are determined to remind the new ConDom Government of their ‘vital work’ in attempting to wrap the entire population in (sterilised) cotton wool.

I don’t know all of the costs for NICE, but one can assume that it is expensive, all these ‘Specialist’ outfits are expensive, but I believe they are trying to prove how vital they are in the constant war over their employment. I always also wonder if their constant and irritating expressions of ‘concern’ over our national health are counter-productive, as no-one really likes being told that we are all living the ‘wrong’ way’!

I always like to see states and territories toughen up their immigration laws.  It’s one significant step in the prevention of demographic saturation by alien forces.  In a world where many governments now deliberately encourage mass immigration (and, concomitantly, brainwash their voters into blithely accepting its many negative manifestations), it is a pleasant change to see someone taking a stand.  Arizona, USA is about to introduce a law making it a criminal offence to be in the state without immigration papers.  In a country where demographic transformation makes what’s happening in Europe small fry by comparison, the Copper State has begun to take essential steps towards hopefully stemming the monsoon of Hispanic immigration from Mexico and elsewhere in Central America.

Looking at the ethno-cultural future of the US is frightening.  Florida and California already have Hispanic majorities and it is estimated that in fifty years as many people will have Spanish as their first language as those who have English.  There are those that rightfully claim America is a land of immigrants.  So it is.  But the waves of previous immigrants blended to create a unique American culture with, crucially, English as its means of communication.  It is doubtful whether the burgeoning Hispanic community will do the same, given that Spanish overtook English in 1999 to become the world’s second most spoken language.  At present, a clear majority of Americans trace their ancestry to Europe.  Thus, the ties between the two have been strong is so many ways.  Will the America of 2100, probably dominated by those whose forefathers came from Latin America and Africa, have the same bonds of kinship?  Ha!

What enrages me about the challenges to Arizona’s new law is the intervention of Mexico itself.  From all the programmes I have seen about the difficulties that arise guarding America’s southern frontier, I have come to the conclusion that it appears to be the US shouldering the heavy burden in trying to keep the border reasonably secure.  Other than at offical border crossing points, efforts by the Mexican authorities look to be non-existent.  Why should they be?  Mexico is a basket-case country incapable of offering a decent standard of living to many of its people.  Thus, it looks to the US as the receptacle to collect its millions of fleeing migrants.  The fact that America shouldn’t be punished with the phenomenon of mass illegal immigration for being a successful democracy seems to have escaped those in Cuidad de Mexico.  The US/Mexico border is porous and needs to become impenetrable.  If anyone doubts that a border can be utterly fullproof, just ask the Koreans.

Video chat rooms at Ustream

The oil spill just got worse. 

Approximately 2.5 million gallons of oil are still gushing into the Gulf everyday.  That’s 2,500,000 gallons and that’s a lot of oil!

Stuck on stupid, the Federal Government stopped Lousiana efforts to protect its coastline from the oil !?!

From WSDU.com:

“The federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico…

…Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who was one of the most vocal advocates of the dredging plan, has sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the work to continue.”

Nungesser states that he has tried to reach the Federal agencies ordering the shut-down, but no one has called him back.  Puzzled as to why the dredging operations should be stopped for 7 -10 days he states:  ”The President said we were at war..”