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Washington — Consumers saved nearly $1.5 billion in 2011 as a result of rules in President Obama´s healthcare law that limit what insurance companies can spend on expenses unrelated to medical care, including profit, a new analysis shows. Much of those savings — an estimated $1.1 billion — came in rebates to consumers required because insurers had exceeded the required limits. The study by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund also suggests that the Affordable Care Act forced insurers to become more efficient by limiting their administrative expenses, a key goal of the 2010 law. In some cases, insurers passed savings...

This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains.The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector.Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters.Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior vice president Kevin...

- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com - The Grover Plan: More Cowbell!Posted By Mickey Kaus On 5:58 AM 11/13/2012 @ 5:58 AM In DC Exclusives,KausFiles | No Comments We’ll dilute our way out of it! Republicans did poorly among Hispanics last week. How to address that problem? The answer, they’re told by Washington savants, is to back an immigration reform that … increases the number of Hispanics! It’s a plan so crazy it just might be crazy.Joshua Culling, who works for Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, elaborates on the plan elsewhere on this site. It turns out the idea–let’s...

GLENDALE, Calif. (KABC) -- Proposition 37 is a measure to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food. There are two sides to this contentious issue.

The city of Santa Cruz, usually at the forefront of environmental causes, became the latest, but probably not the last, local government to ban single-use plastic bags, with the 6-0 vote by the City Council Tuesday night. Santa Cruz banned foam products as well. Santa Cruz's new law on foam products, for instance, will outlaw foam coolers, toys, shipping containers and packing peanuts. The city of Capitola also bans foam ice chests and coolers, and the county bans foam food containers. The 48 and counting plastic bag and foam bans of some type in California offer a patchwork of regulations,...

Once one of the most beautiful cities in America, San Francisco is now a bastion of 'progressive' lunacy: the law is basically ignored, the homeless are encouraged to camp-out... convicted felons are given jobs over honest citizens... our military is hated and disrespected... and droves of gay activists walk the streets stark-naked. Public decency laws, federal immigration laws, and plain common-decency have been replaced by a city that no longer respects itself, or others... And if the 'progressives' have their way- the whole country will look just this nuts. So if you want to be offended, disrespected, and insulted, plan a...

OIL STOCKS GOLD

Peter Orszag, former head of the Obama Office of Management and Budget, is desperate. With even Roll Call recognizing that President Obama is fighting an uphill battle for re-election, Orszag is floating a trial balloon: mandatory voting. His call for forced voting comes in an op/ed for Bloomberg News: The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults. It’s our own fault -- because voter participation rates are running below 60 percent, a candidate would have to win 85 percent or more of...

Obama is perhaps the most divisive President in modern U.S. history. The country is in severe economic crisis -- history books will someday call this the Obama Great Depression. Yet our President doesn’t see fit to deal with the economy in general. He doesn’t make big announcements to save Americans in general. He doesn’t have a plan to create jobs for all Americans. Because for Obama it isn't about America...or the economy...or jobs. It's all about cold, hard, heartless politics. Obama sees politics as divided by race. Everything he does is about division. Obama divides rich vs. poor (with his...

The Rev. Al Sharpton, leader of the National Action Network, will be honored with a humanitarian award at the BET annual awards show at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles July 1, the network announced. BET said Sharpton will receive the 2012 Humanitarian Award for his commitment to political activism and social reform over the last five decades. “As the Founder and President of the National Action Network, Sharpton continues to raise awareness about civil rights and political issues, and actively takes a stand against prejudice and injustice for all people-no matter one's race, gender, sexual orientation or political affiliation,”...

Loving Soul To Spend Time With Our Daughter Manchester, CT 06042 Occasional (as needed) Hi there, my daughter will be turning 4 in August. We've never really had a babysitter for her, other than my parents, but I am feeling like it would be really nice to have another person or 2 we could call upon to watch her when we have plans, events, etc that come up. Here's a bit about us: I am an artist & living food chef. I also teach classes and do consults. Her dad does freelance film work, so his schedule is different every...

Electric car drivers hit the road Friday to inaugurate the first major section of a West Coast "Electric Highway" dotted with stations where they can charge up in 20 minutes. The stretch of 160 miles of Interstate 5 served by eight stations marks the next big step in developing an infrastructure that until now has been limited primarily to chargers in homes and workplaces. The stations go from the California border north to the Oregon city of Cottage Grove and are located at gas stations, restaurants and motels just off the nation's second-busiest interstate. One is at an inn that...

When I heard yesterday that Sarah Palin was already talking about a potential presidential bid in 2016, I saw the writing on the wall: The Republican establishment isn’t even pretending to care about 2012 anymore. That an Obama win seems certain despite Obama’s middling approval ratings is an embarrassment to the Republican Party, to be sure. The people in the trenches care, certainly, but the Party bigwigs? Not so much.Even so, those who are sounding alarms about the end of the Party as we know it need to calm down and remember 2004. By the end of George W. Bush’s...

Well said, Santorum -- well said. At a campaign stop in Michigan on Saturday morning: Santorum On Obama 'What A Snob' "Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands... and want to work out there making things. President Obama once said, he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. There are good decent men and women, who go out everyday to put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go...

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said today that watching John F. Kennedy’s speech to the Baptist ministers in Houston in 1960 made him want to “throw up.” “To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?” Santorum said. “That makes me throw up and it should make every American who is seen from the president, someone who is now trying to tell people of faith that...

The wife of presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Thursday that his rise in the polls is due to God working in mysterious ways. "I personally think this is God's will. I think He has us on a path, and I do think there's a lot more happening than what we're seeing," Karen Santorum told Glenn Beck as she and her husband sat for an interview on his Web-based show, GBTV. "Personally I mean I think Rick's a great guy, and he's really smart and everything. But I think a lot more is happening than what we can actually see."

DALLAS, Texas - Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Thursday that President Obama wants more young adults to go to college so they can undergo "indoctrination" to a secular world view. In an hour-long interview with conservative television host Glenn Beck, Santorum also defended his record on abortion and his vote in favor of President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind education law. On the president's efforts to boost college attendance, Santorum said, "I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely ... The indoctrination that is going on at...

Sheldon Adelson plays as stubbornly in politics as he does in business. So the criticisms that he’s trying to personally buy the presidential election for Newt Gingrich are met with a roll of the eyes. “Those people are either jealous or professional critics,” Adelson tells me during his first interview since he and his wife began funneling $11 million, with another $10 million injection widely expected, into the former speaker’s super PAC, Winning Our Future. “They like to trash other people. It’s unfair that I’ve been treated unfair—but it doesn’t stop me. I might give $10 million or $100 million...

in his own words, unreal

I can confirm tonight from multiple sources that phone calls are in fact occurring between Republicans in Washington and among evangelical leaders to raise money for Rick Santorum rapidly. The sources tell me that this is not for a Santorum win, though the evangelicals I spoke to continue to hope it is possible. This is to stop Newt Gingrich. One evangelical leader I spoke to said, “If Newt wins, we won’t be able to make family values an issue in the general.” One lobbyist I spoke to said, “They [the GOP leaders in DC] are really nervous about Gingrich and...