Socialism at Bank of America

Bank of America has made a change to their employee's Medical Insurance coverage; and it is one that will please every good Communist, Socialist, and Progressive anywhere.

Starting immediately, coverage is being extended to every child up to 24 years of age, regardless of whether the child is making any attempt to make their life productive. This will jump to 26 years old in a few months. This particular feature is a direct result of the Obama Care requirements.

The policy that takes effect in 2011 will no longer be billed on the benefits you desire, rather, on the amount you earn. If you are close to a $50,000 annual salary, you may want to skip that next raise since it may cause your monthly paycheck deduction for medical expenses to triple. Starting from the baseline of the 2010 deduction amounts, employees will have their monthly expenses cut in half, if they are covering their whole family. If the employee only covers a partner or children, the deduction is 30%. For an employee only covering herself, the discount is only 10%. Employees that earn between $50,000 and $100,000 will get a decrease of 15%, 10%, or 5%. Those that earn over $100,000 will have a 14% increase in their premiums.

There's no reason to call the coverage insurance, anymore, because they have removed all restrictions for pre-existing conditions and preventive care is covered at 100%. There will also be NO LIMIT for any medical expenditure. This means that the common policy, shared between the young, the healthy, the elderly, and the careless, will be on the hook for unlimited expenses (e.g. cancer, heart disease, HIV, diabetes, and asthma). However, anything you get from the pharmacy, that you don't have a prescription for, will have no hope of being covered by any reimbursement plan.

How will they pay for these "benefits"? They are doing so by removing one of the most effective methods of managing health care costs: the Health Savings Account / Medical Reimbursement Account.

Joe The Plumber asked the question that is now on the minds of every employee of Bank of America that doesn't have money to burn: What is my incentive to succeed when "you're going to tax me more"? Socialism just spreads the costs around. It never gets around to creating any wealth to share; at least not beyond those who have firmly situated themselves at the top.

Repost from NewZeal.Blogspot.Com

There is such a wealth of information here, that I am concerned that the source site will be attacked and shut down by the leftists. I am only reposting this to preserve the information. The original poster is newzeal.blogspot.com

Obama File 102 America's Little Lenin? Joel Rogers and the Obama Movement.

Obama file 101 here

It is becoming increasingly clear that Barack Obama did not create a movement. A movement created Barack Obama.

One of the key leaders of that movement is a Madison, Wisconsin, law professor and sociologist - Joel Rogers.

While not widely known outside "progressive" circles, few people have exercised more influence in more strands of the movement that selected and elected Barack Obama, than has Joel Rogers.

Obama's former "Green Jobs" Czar, the Marxist-Leninist Van Jones has been part of Rogers' network for some years.

Rogers has served with Jones on the board of the Apollo Alliance , a radical led coalition of green groups and labor unions that had considerable input in writing Obama's massive "stimulus package". Rogers has served as Senior Policy Adviser to Jones' Oakland based Green For All - the Northern California affiliate of the Apollo Alliance.

In the video below Van Jones, takes time in his address to the January 2009 Mayors Innovation Project conference to praise his friend Rogers.

Jones points out three "great gifts" that Joel Rogers "has given our movement".

Firstly, there is "a new economic model ...high road development ...the best thinking that he represents is now reflected in the White House."

Secondly , "...the New Party, which is now the Working Families Party...the idea of a 'new politics' that you could actually have in this country bringing together labor, civil rights, feminists...and actually make a difference...is the basic framework for what just took over the White House."

Thirdly, ..."his idea of a new energy paradigm. His founding the Apollo Alliance. I believe the stimulus is going to put something like $80 billion in this direction..."

Jones credits Rogers with dreaming up the White House economic model - basically a 21st century "green" version of corporate socialism. Rogers also allegedly masterminded the electoral alliance that put Obama in the driver's seat. He then founded the organization that helped write the "stimulus bill", which is now funneling billions into a movement primarily designed to keep the Obama and the Democrats in power.

That's a lot of influence for one man. Does Van Jones exaggerate? Let's investigate.

The New Party which Rogers and Dan Cantor founded in the early 90s, was an attempt to to unite the poor, Blacks, Latinos , labor and "community groups" to work with and inside the Democratic Party to elect large numbers of leftist candidates to public office.

The party was essentially amalgam of four organizations -radical Washington DC "think tank" the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

The first strategic meetings to plan the New Party were held in Joel Rogers' home in Madison Wisconsin in the very early 1990s. Present were Rogers' wife Sarah Siskind, Dan Cantor (now leading the New party spin-off Working Families Party in New York) , ACORN leaders Wade Rathke , Zach Polett , Steve Kest and Jon Kest and IPS linked activists Steve Cobble , Harriet Barlow and Sam Pizzigati .

The very first meeting included Gerry Hudson from DSA and SEIU and early ACORN leader and IPS affiliate Gary Delgado. Anthony Thigpenn, from Los Angeles was also approached, but though supportive, did not wish to play a leadership role.

Incidentally, both Delgagdo and Thigpenn were later supporters of Van Jones' anti Iraq War magazine War Times.

The party was socialist in character, but only revealed its true nature to friends.

In March 28-30 1997 Democratic Socialists of America convened their annual Socialists Scholars Conference at Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York. Barack Obama, incidentally, attended some of these conferences in the early 1980s.

The 1997 conference was themed "Radical alternatives on the eve of the millenium".

Invitees were asked to join the debate on "changes in the labor movement, Marxist theory, the state of the economy, market socialism, and other areas where theory and practice meet...listen to the United States' only independent and socialist congressman, Rep. Bernie Sanders..."dialogue with Joel Rogers of the New Party... "

Barack Obama joined the New Party in Chicago, during his 1995 Illinois State Senate run. Obama was also a leader of the Chicago New Party sister organization , Progressive Chicago, as far back as 1993. Other Progressive Chicago leaders included Keith Kelleher of SEIU and ACORN, Kelleher's wife, Madeline Talbott (ACORN) and Ron Sable, Danny K . Davis and Lou Pardo of DSA.

The New Party relied on "fusion" voting for its success. Candidates ran on both the Democrat and New Party lines, combing the vote totals from both. This practice was illegal in many states, so in 1997, Rogers and his wife Sarah Siskind took a case to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the state bans.

According to the The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel December 5, 1996;

With allusions to possible electoral chaos, justices of the U.S. Supreme Court expressed skepticism Wednesday over an effort to overturn 40 state laws that forbid nominations of the same candidate by more than one political party.

The high court heard arguments in a case from Minnesota that was orchestrated by a Wisconsin couple Joel Rogers, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, and his wife, Madison attorney Sarah E. Siskind.

Rogers is a co-founder and national chair of the New Party, which describes itself as progressive and claims 10,000 members nationwide. The party has elected candidates for local offices in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

The case failed and '"fusion" voting was ruled unconstitutional. Deprived of its main tactic, the New Party, went into sharp decline, surviving under the Working Families Party banner in New York and a few other states.

Coincidentally, Sarah Siskind worked for the the Madison Wisconsin office of Barack Obama's Chicago law firm, Miner, Barnhill and Galland.

In 2002 Sarah Siskind represented ACORN in a successful class action against sub-prime mortgage lender Household Finance Corporation.

According to Miner, Barnhill and Galland.;

For the last ten years, the firm (principally Sarah Siskind) has also represented individual consumers and organizational plaintiffs in class action lawsuits challenging predatory lending practices. These include a series of deceptive practices actions brought in Illinois, California and Massachusetts against Household Finance Corporation, and recently consolidated in In re Household Lending Litigation, Case No. C-02-1240 and Related Cases, N.D. Ca.) and settled for $152 million in benefits and future practice change relief...

Siskind won a settlement against Household Finance Corporation which gave delinquent borrowers interest rate reductions, waivers of unpaid late charges, deferral of accrued unpaid interest and principal reductions.

It was a socialist "win-win" situation. Siskind and Miner, Barhill & Galland made money, ACORN was able to force another mortgage lender to make more soft loans to its "core constituency" and the 2008 sub-prime mortgage collapse was brought one step closer.

Some commentators have surmised that some socialists leftists, working through ACORN and similar groups may have deliberately promoted sub- prime lending as a way of creating economic chaos, thereby provoking a subsequent increase in government involvement in the economy.

They point to the now famous Cloward-Piven Strategy devised in th e 1960s by Richard Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven. The "Cloward-Piven" plan involved enrolling as many people as possible onto state welfare programs. The point was to overload and collapse the state systems, leading to a Federal takeover of welfare.

Interestingly, when Richard Cloward died in 2001, 500 people gathered at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City to celebrate his life and work. Speakers included Frances Fox Piven, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, (all New Party founders and DSA members) Gus Newport (DSA member) Howard Zinn (New Party founder) , Joel Rogers and Miles Rapoport.

Coincidentally Rapoport was the president of the New York based "think tank" Demos, an official partner organization of the Institute for Policy Studies and a close ally of ACORN.

Barack Obama helped establish Demos in 1999-2000 and became a Trustee of the organization. Van Jones also later served as a Demos Trustee, but is currently on leave.

In 1998 Chicago DSA activist and IPS affiliate James Weinstein presided over a major Chicago "Back to Basics" conference designed to re-align the U.S. left back to "class politics"

To explore how we (the Left) can increase our presence in the mainstream of American political and intellectual life.

Speakers included Dr. Quentin Young (DSA member , New Party founder , Barack Obama long time friend , mentor and physician) Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (a San Francisco based activist and comrade of Van Jones'), plus DSA comrades Christine Riddiough, Joseph Schwartz and Roberta Lynch.

Joel Rogers, founder of The New Party, listed people's concerns: education, campaign finance reform, environment, raising the minimum wage, and concern about global capitalism. Neither Democrats nor Republicans take this list seriously. Liberalism relied on favorable government regulation and mass politics to deal with problems. A new time calls for new politics, emphasizing economic strategy, citizen participation, and electoral strategy.

In 2004, Joel Rogers from the Center On Wisconsin Strategy, and Robert Borosage from IPS enlisted DSA friendly Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and SEIU President Andy Stern, to propose a new alliance of labor, environmental groups, business and "social justice" leaders - the Apollo Alliance. The Alliance, which soon included over 200 supporting organizations, released a report "High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green Economy" arguing for a ten-year program of investment in a “clean energy, good jobs” economy.''

Joel Rogers was the Alliance's founding chairman and continues to serve on its board. Borosage is also a board member, as is Leo Gerard. John Podesta from the Center for American Progress also serves, but took a break while co-chairing President Obama's "transition", where he

"coordinated the priorities of the incoming administration’s agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees."

Podesta also looked after another Apollo Alliance board member Van Jones, giving him a job with Center for American Progress , when Jones was forced to exit the White House.

Besides Rogers, two old New Party affiliates are involved in the Apollo Alliance. Gerry Hudson of DSA and SEIU serves as a board member. Anthony Thigpenn serves on the Apollo Alliance advisory board and runs the Apollo affiliate in Los Angeles - which trains "anti racist environmental organizers."

Thigpenn is a former member of the Maoist leaning Black Panther Party, but that's pretty mild by Apollo standards. The former head of the New York Apollo Alliance Jeff Jones, once led the terrorist Weather Underground Organization with he and President Obama's 's mutual friends , Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Former DSA youth leader and SEIU organizer Ron Ruggiero, serves as Apollo Alliance National Field Director.

It's a safe bet that a good portion of the "stimulus package" $80 Billion dollars will be going to Van Jones' Green For All in San Francisco in San Francisco, to Anthony Thigpenn's "environmental anti racism" trainers in Los Angeles and Jeff Jones' former crew in New York.

Any good Leninist will tell you. It is not gaining power that is important, it is the KEEPING of power.

Joel Rogers' New Party, modeled the movement that put Obama in power. His Apollo Alliance provides a means for holding that power.

It is essentially a massive patronage system, where huge amounts of taxpayer's money is channeled into radical led "green" camouflaged mass organizations.

These "green" armies will be the vote herders of the future. They will confront the Tea Party movement and other patriots on the streets of America. They will be the paramilitary armies used to intimidate the very people who fund them.

In a January 2 2009, tribute to late to Democratic Socialists of America founder Michael Harrington, Gerry Hudson of the Apollo Alliance/SEIU/DSA wrote;

It’s tragic for so many reasons that Michael died too young; his voice and his wisdom are sorely needed. How he would marvel at the election of Barack Obama and the promise that this victory affords all of us on the democratic left! He is sorely missed. But were he alive, I would hope—and expect, that he and others who are informed by this vision of democratic socialism would join with us in SEIU as we seek to take advantage of a moment most of us have spent our lifetimes only dreaming of.

Joel Rogers is the glue that ties many of these threads together - Institute for Policy Studies, Democratic Socialists of America , ACORN, SEIU, New Party, the Apollo Alliance - even possibly the sub -prime mortgage crisis.

I believe, had there been no Joel Rogers, there likely would have been no President Barack Obama

What do you think?

Analyze That!

"I got a letter -- I got a note today from one of my staff -- they forwarded it to me -- from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn't have insurance. She couldn't afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt." - Barack Obama

What does it say about this man, that he thinks this story is an example of why he should control health care in America?

It turns out that this lady (and her partner) chose to invest in a small business instead of a more comprehensive health care policy. She chose not to have routine exams, because this expense would have come out of pocket. Her policy would have kicked in to cover her illness, and she would have only had to pay $10,000 out of pocket. Not a desirable price, but not an insurmountable amount either.

What does it say about the Democrats, and politicians in general, that they don't provide the coverage to their staff that they claim the rest of the country needs?

It would seem that a campaign that spent over $700 Million to elect Barack Obama as President, could have set an example of their flagship issue by providing Universal Coverage for their own campaign workers. To give this perspective, Obama spent $400 million more than his rival, McCain.

What does this say about the President's assessment of our ability to reason, when they claim cause and effect with this story?

This story is supposed to illustrate that if Universal Health Coverage existed, this lady would be alive today. It assumes that if her exams were covered at no cost, she would have had them done. But, the exams are inexpensive at a regular doctor's office and often offered for free for at-risk patients and the poor. Furthermore, it is common to be diagnosed early and yet still succumb to cancer. We can not be certain that catching this early would have saved her life or diminished her suffering.

What does it say about a person, that they feel compelled to tell the world that someone chose to be buried in a shirt with their name on it?

Is that really an honor? Is it truly a show of solidarity? The audience didn't think so, as they felt compelled to respond with a macabre laughter. Obama, however, was completely sincere. He proceeded to tell the crowd that the shameful thing to do would be to deny passage of a bill that would give immense taxing powers to the Federal Government. He claimed that the only dishonor would be in halting his fight to give the government the supreme authority over its citizens lives and health. In short, he claims that he could have managed this lady's health care better then she herself did. And, he does so with a completely straight face.