By COREY BOLES

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday to prevent Acorn, an umbrella group of community organizers, from being able to bid for federal grant money.

The 83-7 vote came as Acorn — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — has been in the spotlight for hidden-camera videos in which Acorn employees give tax advice to a couple posing as a prostitute and her pimp. Prosecutors in Florida last week issued warrants for several Acorn employees on allegations they falsified voter-registration records last year, and on Friday, the Census Bureau severed ties with the organization as it prepares for the 2010 count.

A spokesman for Acorn didn’t return an email seeking comment on the vote. Earlier, a spokesman said Acorn would have no comment until the Senate acted.

For the rest of the story please go here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125298410509811027.html

Face Fwd Comments:

I just wish these guys would go away.  But like most illegal money making operations if the name ACORN disappears don’t assume it is dead.  It will just raise it’s head with a new improved name.  Like, Americorp or one of my favorites St. Hope.  Remember St. Hope and the poor Inspector General that was fired because he reported wrong doing?  That is more of what we can expect for organizations like ACORN.  Don’t expect them to go away.  But do expect them to have a much better name the second time around.

OBAMA: “Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”

THE FACTS: That’s correct, as far as it goes. But neither can the plan guarantee that people can keep their current coverage. Employers sponsor coverage for most families, and they’d be free to change their health plans in ways that workers may not like, or drop insurance altogether. The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it because their employers would decide to stop offering it.

In the past Obama repeatedly said, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.” Now he’s stopping short of that unconditional guarantee by saying nothing in the plan “requires” any change.

He’s dropped the “period.”
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OBAMA: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Period.”

THE FACTS: Despite this “period,” the White House and congressional Democrats have already shown they’re ready to skirt the no-new-deficits pledge.
House Democrats offered a bill that the Congressional Budget Office said would add $220 billion to the deficit over 10 years. But Democrats and Obama administration officials claimed the bill was actually deficit-neutral. They said they simply didn’t have to count $245 billion of it — the cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don’t face big annual pay cuts.
Their only-in-Washington reasoning was that they already decided to exempt this so-called “doc fix” from congressional rules that require new programs to be paid for. In other words, it doesn’t have to be paid for because they decided it doesn’t have to be paid for.

The administration also said that since Obama already included the doctor payment in his 10-year budget proposal, it didn’t have to be counted again.

Even aside from that, the long-term prognosis for the costs of the health care legislation has not been good.

Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf had this to say in July about evolving health care legislation: “We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.”

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OBAMA: Requiring insurance companies to cover preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies “makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.”

The facts: Studies have shown that much preventive care — particularly tests like the ones Obama mentions — actually costs money instead of saving it. That’s because detecting acute diseases like breast cancer in their early stages involves testing many people who would never end up developing the disease. The costs of a large number of tests, even if they’re relatively cheap, will outweigh the costs of caring for the minority of people who would have ended up getting sick without the testing.

The Congressional Budget Office wrote in August: “The evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall.”
That doesn’t mean preventive care doesn’t make sense or save lives. It just doesn’t save money.
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OBAMA: “If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage.”

THE FACTS: It’s not just a matter of being able to get coverage. Most people would have to get coverage under the law, if his plan is adopted.

Read the entire article here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/09/fact-check-obama-drops-iffy-line-health-plan/?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r1:c0.157073:b27625558:z0

By MARK MIX  – Wall Street Journal

In the heated debates on health-care reform, not enough attention is being paid to the huge financial windfalls ObamaCare will dole out to unions—or to the provisions in the various bills in Congress that will help bring about the forced unionization of the health-care industry.

Tucked away in thousands of pages of complex new rules, regulations and mandates are special privileges and giveaways that could have devastating consequences for the health-care sector and the American economy at large.

The Senate version opens the door to implement forced unionization schemes pursued by former Govs. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois in 2005 and Gray Davis of California in 1999. Both men repaid tremendous political debts to Andy Stern and his Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by reclassifying state-reimbursed in-home health-care (and child-care) contractors as state employees—and forcing them to pay union dues.

Following this playbook, the Senate bill creates a “personal care attendants workforce advisory panel” that will likely impose union affiliation to qualify for a newly created “community living assistance services and support (class)” reimbursement plan.

The current House version of ObamaCare (H.R. 3200) goes much further. Section 225(A) grants Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius tremendous discretionary authority to regulate health-care workers “under the public health insurance option.” Monopoly bargaining and compulsory union dues may quickly become a required standard resulting in potentially hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses across the country being forced into unions.

Ms. Sebelius will be taking her marching orders from the numerous union officials who are guaranteed seats on the various federal panels (such as the personal care panel mentioned above) charged with recommending health-care policies. Big Labor will play a central role in directing federal health-care policy affecting hundreds of thousands of doctors, surgeons and nurses.

For the rest of the article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574400571702189240.html

California officials have stated the reported attack by one of the ACORN backed demonstrators against an opponent of health care reform has ended with the victim having his finger sewn back on.

Ventura County Sheriff’s Capt. Frank O’Hanlon estimated that there were about 100 people demonstrating in favor of health care reforms Wednesday night on a street corner. A individual described as a large angry man walked across the street to confront the 4 to 1 outnumbered counter-demonstrators.

The Sheriff says the individual from the pro Health Care Reform group got into a verbal disagreement with one of the Senior Citizen that were counter protesting.  The war of words escalated into a pushing match and a fist being thrown in which the Pro Health Care Reform individual bit the finger off of the 65 year old victim.

In a statement released by the hospital:, “the man lost half the finger, but doctors reattached it and he was sent home the same night”.

The Spokesperson says the victim had Medicare and was fully covered.  No wonder he is resisting his program being cut.

Sheriff O’Hanlon says the attacker fled but they have a good description and he should be in custody soon.