President Obama is doubling down on one of the most dangerous provisions in his 2010 health overhaul law. In his proposed budget, he plans to give even greater powers to the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a panel created by the new health law to contain Medicare spending.
Is this still America?
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” warned the late President Reagan. It’s probably a good thing the Gipper hasn’t been forced to witness what the current generation of authoritarian rulers has done to the land of the free and home of the brave.
Will Ignorance Lead to a Second Obama Term?
There is a wonderful quote that has been making its way around the internet over the past year. It apparently was translated from an article published in the Czech Republic newspaper Prager Zeitung last April and reads as follows:
Leni Riefenstahl: Congratulations on the HHS Regulations
Memo: From Leni Riefenstahl
To: President Barack Obama
Schatzi, it’s been over a year since I last wrote you. Please forgive me. It’s been so hot here I can barely stand to touch the keyboard. Not that I don’t appreciate the green energy projects you funded to cool off this place, but dear, you know even with the trillions you spent, those projects just keep going under. Yes, I know it helped put billions in the pockets of your donors, but hell is not freezing over you know and we could use energy for the air conditioners.
£350 to run in the park: Fitness trainers, nannies and teachers hit by fees by council who classifies it as a work place
Personal trainers, nannies, dog walkers and even teachers face hefty bills for using public parks under a town hall diktat.
Council chiefs have decided anyone using the open spaces for business must pay for the privilege.
Franz Kafka and the Nightmare of Bureaucracy
Kafka took some early stabs at writing a novel, but none of them really worked out. In 1903, he started The Child and the City. He abandoned it, and the manuscripts have since disappeared. He tried to collaborate with Max Brod on a work called Richard and Samuel, but that didn’t work out either. The fragment “Wedding Preparations in the Country” was supposed to be much longer than it was, but he gave up on it. Therefore, when talking about Kafka’s novels, we always have to start with Amerika. Although like his other attempts it remains unfinished, enough of it exists for us to recognize it as a novel, and so it is here we begin.
Bureaucracy Quotes
Webster’s 1913 Dictionary
Bu`reau´crat
n. 1. An official of a bureau; esp. an official confirmed in a narrow and arbitrary routine.