Healthcare Taxes -> Ric Edelman Says Life Got Harder

Icebear: This is the commentary that Ric Edelman offered on the new Healthcare laws.

Health Care Reform: Life Just Got Harder

The health care bill is now law. As a result, taxes are rising. Many middle-class working Americans will soon incur greater expenses for services they have already been receiving. As a humanitarian, I don’t believe anybody can argue with the principle of providing health insurance to 32 million Americans who have not had access to it. But those benefits have a high cost, and middle-class working Americans will be the ones paying for it.

Let’s take a look at the new taxes that the 2010 health care law has created. Most will be phased in over the next few years and are as follows:

2010

Starting July 1, indoor tanning salons will charge a 10% sales tax.

2011

Pharmaceutical manufacturers will collectively pay a new excise tax, starting at $2.5 billion and rising over time. The drug makers will no doubt pass this new cost onto consumers.

Non-qualified distributions from Health Savings Accounts will be taxed at 20% instead of the current rate of 10%. That’s a 100% tax increase.

2012

Private insurance plans will be forced to pay the government $1 or $2 each year for each participant. If you have health insurance through a private insurance plan, you will likely be required to pay this charge.

2013

Medicare payroll taxes will rise 62% for those earning more than $200,000 a year ($250,000 if you are married filing jointly). The tax on wages in excess of $200,000 (or $250,000) is rising from 1.45% to 2.35%. That’s an additional tax of 0.9%, or a 62% increase.

There will also be a new 3.8% tax on gross investment income for those earning more than $200,000 ($250,000 for married filing jointly). “Investment income” includes interest, dividends, capital gains, rental income, annuities and royalties. In addition to this new tax, capital gains taxes are set to rise in 2011 from 15% to 20% — that’s a 33% increase. Therefore, for people who are making over $200,000 a year ($250,000 if you are married filing jointly), the total tax on capital gains is jumping from 15% to 23.8%. That’s a 59% increase.

Medical device manufacturers must collect a new national sales tax of 2.9%. You will directly pay this tax, but it will not apply to eyeglasses, contact lenses or hearing aids.

Employers will no longer receive a subsidy for providing retiree prescription drug coverage. Companies will pay more to provide such benefits as a result (AT&T has already announced that it will pay $1 billion in new taxes annually because of this provision). Similar announcements have been made by John Deere ($150 million), Caterpillar ($100 million), 3M Company ($90 million) and AK Steele ($31 million), and many more companies in the Fortune 500 are expected to make similar announcements soon. It is widely expected that Corporate America will pass these costs onto consumers in the form of higher prices for their goods and services, reduce the benefits they provide to their retired employees (who will in turn be forced to pay higher health care costs) or both.

You will not be able to deduct medical expenses on your tax return until you’ve spent 10% of your Adjusted Gross Income. Currently, you can begin deductions after you spend 7.5% of your AGI. Therefore, this is a 33% increase in the threshold.

Contributions to Flexible Spending Accounts will be capped at $2,500 per year, and you will no longer be able to use the money to buy over-the-counter drugs. This change will cause some taxpayers to pay as much as several thousand dollars more in health care expenses and in annual income taxes.

If you’re an executive in the health insurance industry and earn more than half a million dollars a year, taxes will effectively double for all of your income above $500,000.

2014

Employers with more than 50 employees that do not provide health insurance to their employees will pay a $2,000 penalty per employee per year, starting with the 31st employee.

If you do not have health insurance, you and each member of your household will pay a new tax of 1% of household income (at least $95 per person per year). This tax will rise to 2.5% per year (at least $695 per person) by 2016.

2018

Health insurance plans that cost more than $10,200 for individuals ($27,500 per family) will pay a new 40% tax on any coverage that exceeds the limit. Plan sponsors will no doubt pass this cost along to you.

In addition to these new taxes, the new health care law cuts federal funding of Medicare by $500 billion over the next decade. The states will find themselves forced to deal with this cutback, and they will have little choice but to increase state income taxes, force Medicare patients to pay more of their health care costs, or both.

Medicare is not the only entitlement program likely to see cuts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 2010 will be the first year that Social Security pays out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes. This was not expected to occur until 2016. Based on current projections, Social Security will be broke by 2037 unless changes are made. That means taxes will rise, and benefits will be delayed or reduced, or all three.

Retirees are already feeling pressure. There was no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security in 2010, and none is expected for 2011 either. This represents a net decrease in income for retirees, because Medicare taxes continue to rise despite the fact that there is no offsetting increase in Social Security benefits.

Meanwhile, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College released a study in March 2010 showing that married retirees who are both 65 years of age and currently free of chronic disease will spend $197,000 on health care during retirement. And a 2008 study from the Schwab Center for Financial Research says that one-third of baby boomers are currently providing financial assistance to parents, and 50% are providing support to children, proving that millions of Americans are true members of the so-called “Sandwich Generation.”

All these statistics help explain why 84% of Americans say they are not confident that they will ever be able to retire, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s 2010 Retirement Confidence Survey.

Radio legend to run for president?

I have been a listener to Coast to Coast since 1995. This is a rather interesting development. -Eisbär

'I would not hesitate to make my birth certificate available'

Posted: March 09, 2010
10:03 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Applicants for the Oval Office in 2012 already have begun lining up, just one year into President Obama's term, amid CBS poll results that overwhelming flunk the first-term Democrat and show a majority of Americans opposed to Obama's No. 1 agenda item – nationalized health care.

Among the possible candidates is Coast to Coast AM radio talk-show host George Noory, who told WND right away that there would be no questions about his eligibility as there are about Obama's qualifications under the Constitution's requirement that a president be a "natural born citizen."

"I was born in Detroit, Mich., in 1950, and I would not hesitate to make my birth certificate available to every member of the media," he said.

Obama has faced a long list of legal and other challenges alleging he either was not born in Hawaii as he has stated, or that he was not qualified because of his father's foreign citizenship at his birth.

Several of the challenges still are pending in various appellate level courts, and there has begun a move among the states to require candidates for the office of president to provide documentation of eligibility before being allowed on state ballots.

Noory previously told WND he would respond if drafted as a candidate for presidential and later repeated the promise.

"I have never run for political office," he said, "but every night I am reaching out to millions of Americans on the radio and I am deeply concerned that the middle class of the United States is being sold out to multi-national corporations with a globalist agenda.

"I have historically remained non-partisan, but as long as the United States remains a two-party system, it's increasingly hard to tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats. People are looking for someone in government to tell them the truth – we need that now more than ever," he said.

One of his concerns is energy independence.

"We need to free ourselves right now, not 10 years from now, from our dependence on foreign oil," Noory said. "We are being strangled by the oil cartels."

Further, the income tax is hurting the nation, he said.

"The income tax needs to be abolished or greatly restructured," Noory said, "because Americans deserve to get 100 percent use of the money they work hard to earn.

"I would do away with the federal withholding taxes

on income and go to a sales tax as an alternative," he said. "Americans who work hard for their money have a right to keep what they earn."

Noory, who Noory served nine years in the U.S. Naval Reserve, also worries about the influence of a globalist agenda on the U.S. He has devoted shows to casting a spotlight on efforts to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

"We need a government that does not give in to a globalist agenda," Noory said, "an agenda I am now convinced seeks to bring America as a sovereign nation and the middle class to their knees."

The economy further causes him concern, he said.

"Why are we outsourcing millions high-paying jobs to China and India?" he asked. "Why don't we secure the border and stop the country being flooded with millions of illegal immigrants? These are important questions on the mind of middle class voters all over America who are worried the politicians aren't listening."

"Jobs, jobs, jobs – that needs to be our national focus right now."

On health care, he said true reform can only come about when a bipartisan plan is developed.

Will he actually join the race?

"That's a huge question," Noory answered. "Right now, I'll continue to focus on 'Coast to Coast AM.' But, who knows? I'm certainly not convinced that professional politicians in either the Democratic or Republican parties have what the majority of American voters want in a president."

His "Coast to Coast AM" contract with Premiere Radio recently was extended another year, to run until 2013. But he has told his audience he considers 2012 a threshold year in which worldwide politics will transform into a new era of freedom.

WND staff reporter Jerome Corsi is a frequent guest in Noory's program and has addressed topics ranging from international economics and the prospects for emerging from the current global recession to foreign policy and Iran's push for nuclear weapons.

WND asked Noory how he could be a serious candidate for president when "Coast to Coast AM" has been known for its emphasis on UFOs, ancient Egypt and the supernatural.

"The current crop of political candidates looks out of touch, saying nothing new or genuine. By 2012 people are going to be saying, 'We cannot continue down the path we have been going as it will lead us only back to the familiar dead end we now see in Congress and the White House,'" he said.

"Coast to Coast AM" has the largest nighttime radio audience in the United States, reaching an estimated 3 to 5 million Americans seven days a week on AM radio.

Noory and also has hosted WND Jerusalem Bureau Chief Aaron Klein to discuss his book "Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans to a Jew!"

Legend of giant man-eating New Zealand eagle is TRUE

The Daily Mail

15th September 2009

A massive man-eating bird of prey from ancient Maori legend really did exist, according to new research.

Scientists have known about the existence of Haast's eagle for over a century based on excavated bones, but the behaviour of these giant birds was not clear.

As the eagles weighed up to 40 lbs some scientists presumed they were scavengers rather than the predators from mythology.

Scientists used computerised CT scans to reconstruct the Haast's eagle from a fossil of its skull

But a new study has revealed the eagle as a fearsome predator that probably swooped on flightless birds and even children from a high mountain perch.

Researchers Paul Scofield of the Canterbury Museum in New Zealand and Ken Ashwell of the University of New South Wales used computerised CT and CAT scans to reconstruct the size of the brain, eyes, ears and spinal cord of this ancient eagle.

More...

• Life was in the oceans 200m years before oxygen made air fit to breathe

This data was compared to values from modern predatory and scavenging birds to determine the habits of the extinct eagle.

Professor Scofield said the findings are similar to what he found in Maori folk tales.

'The science supports Maori mythology of the legendary pouakai or hokioi, a huge bird that could swoop down on people in the mountains and was capable of killing a small child,' he said.

An illustration shows a Haast eagle attack flightless moa in New Zealand

The researchers also determined the eagle quickly evolved from a much smaller ancestor, with the body growing much more quickly than the brain. They believe its body grew 10 times bigger during the early to middle Pleistocene period, 700,000 to 1.8 million years ago.

'This work is a great example of how rapidly evolving medical techniques and equipment can be used to solve ancient medical mysteries,' Professor Ashwell said.

They wrote their conclusions in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Scientists believe the Haast's eagle became extinct due to habitat destruction and the extinction of its prey species at the hands of early Polynesian settlers.

New Zealand paleontologist Trevor Worthy said: 'They provide a convincing case that the body of this eagle has rapidly enlarged, presumably adapting to the very much larger prey it had access to in New Zealand, but that the brain size had lagged behind this increase.'

Before the humans colonized New Zealand about 750 years ago, the largest inhabitants were birds like the Haast's eagle and the moa.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1213319/Legendary-giant-man-eating-bird-did-exist.html#ixzz0RJU36Vsf

Fragment from world's oldest Bible found hidden in Egyptian monastery

Academic stumbles upon previously unseen section of Codex Sinaiticus dating back to 4th century

By Jerome Taylor, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Wednesday, 2 September 2009

A page from the earliest surviving Bible, of which another fragment has been discovered in Egypt

A British-based academic has uncovered a fragment of the world's oldest Bible hiding underneath the binding of an 18th-century book.

Nikolas Sarris spotted a previously unseen section of the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from about AD350, as he was trawling through photographs of manuscripts in the library of St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt.

The Codex, handwritten in Greek on animal skin, is the earliest known version of the Bible. Leaves from the priceless tome are divided between four institutions, including St Catherine's Monastery and the British Library, which has held the largest section of the ancient Bible since the Soviet Union sold its collection to Britain in 1933.

Academics from Britain, America, Egypt and Russia collaborated to put the entire Codex online this year but new fragments of the book are occasionally rediscovered.

Mr Sarris, 30, chanced upon the fragment as he inspected photographs of a series of book bindings that had been compiled by two monks at the monastery during the 18th century.

Over the centuries, antique parchment was often re-used by St Catherine's monks in book bindings because of its strength and the relative difficulty of finding fresh parchment in such a remote corner of the world.

A Greek student conservator who is studying for his PhD in Britain, Mr Sarris had been involved in the British Library's project to digitise the Codex and quickly recognised the distinct Greek lettering when he saw it poking through a section of the book binding. Speaking from the Greek island of Patmos yesterday, Mr Sarris said: "It was a really exciting moment. Although it is not my area of expertise, I had helped with the online project so the Codex had been heavily imprinted in my memory. I began checking the height of the letters and the columns and quickly realised we were looking at an unseen part of the Codex."

Mr Sarris later emailed Father Justin, the monastery's librarian, to suggest he take a closer look at the book binding. "Even if there is a one-in-a-million possibility that it could be a Sinaiticus fragment that has escaped our attention, I thought it would be best to say it rather than dismiss it."

Only a quarter of the fragment is visible through the book binding but after closer inspection, Father Justin was able to confirm that a previously unseen section of the Codex had indeed been found. The fragment is believed to be the beginning of Joshua, Chapter 1, Verse 10, in which Joshua admonishes the children of Israel as they enter the promised land.

Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Father Justin said the monastery would use scanners to look more closely at how much of the fragment existed under the newer book binding. "Modern technology should allow us to examine the binding in a non-invasive manner," he said.

Mr Sarris said his find was particularly significant because there were at least 18 other book bindings in the monastery's library that were compiled by the same two monks that had re-used the Codex. "We don't know whether we will find more of the Codex in those books but it would definitely be worth looking," he said.

The library in St Catherine's does not have the laboratory conditions needed to carefully peel away the binding without damaging the parchment underneath but the library is undergoing renovations that might lead to the construction of a lab with the correct equipment to do so.

The Bible: A brief history

Although earlier fragments of the Bible have survived the passage of time, the Codex Sinaiticus is so significant because it is by far the most complete. The full text that has been discovered so far contains virtually all of the New Testament and about half of the Old Testament.

But whenever an ancient version of the holy book is found, it often raises questions about the evolution of the Bible and how close what we read today is to the original words of Christ and his early followers.

The Old Testament was written largely in Hebrew (with the odd Aramaic exception) but it is by no means a homogenous entity. Protestant and more recent Catholic versions of the Bible tend to use the Masoretic Text, a variation of the Hebrew Old Testament that was copied, edited and distributed by Jewish Masorete scholars between the 7th and 11th centuries. Earlier Catholic translations and the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches use the Septuagint, an ancient Greek version of the Hebrew text that was translated between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC.

In studying the early history of the New Testament, historians have about 5,650 handwritten copies in Greek on which they can draw, many of which are distinctly different. As Christianity consolidated its power through the first millennia, the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John came to form the key elements of the New Testament.

But other apocryphal writings were discarded along the way. The Shepherd of Hermas, for instance, is a Christian literary work of the 2nd century which appears in the Codex Sinaiticus and was considered part of the Bible by some early Christians but was later expunged. The most well-known apocryphal gospel is that of Thomas, a collection of 114 numbered sayings attributed to Jesus that was discovered in 1945. As it never refers to Jesus as "Christ", "Lord" or the "Son of Man" (and lacks any mention of the miracles attributed to Jesus in the other gospels) it is perhaps not surprising that it never made it into later versions of the Bible.

September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001, God bless the USA. Never forget.

Ancient Wall

'Massive' ancient wall uncovered in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- An archaeological dig in Jerusalem has turned up a 3,700-year-old wall that is the largest and oldest of its kind found in the region, experts say.

The wall is built of enormous boulders, confounding archaeologists as to how ancient peoples built it.

Standing 8 meters (26 feet) high, the wall of huge cut stones is a marvel to archaeologists.

"To build straight walls up 8 meters ... I don't know how to do it today without mechanical equipment," said the excavation's director, Ronny Reich. "I don't think that any engineer today without electrical power [could] do it."

Archaeologist Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority added, "You see all the big boulders -- all the boulders are 4 to 5 tons."

The discovered section is 24 meters (79 feet) long. "However, it is thought the fortification is much longer because it continues west beyond the part that was exposed," the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a news release.

It was found inside the City of David, an archaeological excavation site outside the Old City of East Jerusalem on a slope of the Silwan Valley.

The wall is believed to have been built by the Canaanites, an ancient pagan people who the Bible says inhabited Jerusalem and other parts of the Middle East before the advent of monotheism. Watch report on the discovery of the ancient wall »

"This is the most massive wall that has ever been uncovered in the City of David," Reich and Shukron said in a joint statement about the find. It marks the first time "that such massive construction that predates the Herodian period has been discovered in Jerusalem."

It appears to be part of a "protected, well-fortified passage that descends to the spring tower from some sort of fortress that stood at the top of the hill," according to the joint statement.

The spring "is located in the weakest and most vulnerable place in the area. The construction of a protected passage, even though it involves tremendous effort, is a solution for which there are several parallels in antiquity, albeit from periods that are later than the remains described here."

Such walls were used primarily to defend against marauding desert nomads looking to rob the city, said Reich, a professor at the University of Haifa.

"We are dealing with a gigantic fortification, from the standpoint of the structure's dimensions, the thickness of its walls and the size of the stones that were incorporated in its construction," the joint statement said.

Water from the spring is used by modern inhabitants of Jerusalem.

"The new discovery shows that the picture regarding Jerusalem's eastern defenses and the ancient water system in the Middle Bronze Age 2 is still far from clear," Reich said. "Despite the fact that so many have excavated on this hill, there is a very good chance that extremely large and well-preserved architectural elements are still hidden in it and waiting to be uncovered."

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