Simple outline of the Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act.
Gruber: Pay More if You Are Fat
There are those that are fat, there are those that smoke and those that need behavior modification. So it is any wonder when we read the highlights of the Obamacare law, we begin to understand what is in the law and why? It is any wonder why Mayor Bloomberg of New York City tried the concept of controlling soda in take, salt on the food and then there is Michelle Obama and her food program. It all begins to come into full view. Read here for the full 2 page essay courtesy of Jonathan Gruber.
Gruber became the healthcare expert on behavior modification that was core in the construction of the Obamacare law. Gruber wrote a book and a detailed essay which is found here. 
Every day young people engage in risky behaviors that affect not only their immediate well-being but their long-term health and safety. These well-honed essays apply diverse economic analyses to a wide range of unsafe activities, including teen drinking and driving, smoking, drug use, unprotected sex, and criminal activity. Economic principles are further applied to mental health and performance issues such as teenage depression, suicide, nutritional disorders, and high school dropout rates. Together, the essays yield notable findings: price and regulatory incentives are critical determinants of high-risk behavior, suggesting that youths do apply some sort of cost/benefit calculation when making decisions; the macroeconomic environment in which those decisions are made matters greatly; and youths who pursue high-risk behaviors are significantly more likely to engage in similar behaviors as adults.
Taxing Sin to Modify Behavior and Raise Revenue
Jonathan Gruber, PhD, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
U.S. policymakers have long used taxes on tobacco products and alcoholic beverages – so called “sin taxes” – both to moderate consumption of these products and to generate revenue. There is a pronounced inverse correlation between cigarette tax rates and cigarette consumption (Figure 1), and numerous studies have credited tobacco taxes as being the single most effective strategy in achieving our country’s dramatic reductions in smoking. 1 More recently, similar taxes on products linked to obesity have been receiving increased attention, with the Institute of Medicine recommending this strategy as a weapon against childhood obesity, 2 several states and localitites flirting with significant new taxes on sugary sodas, and an early proposal to use a soda tax as a financing source for national health reform. A just-released longitudinal study showing that a 10 percent rise in the price of sweetened soft drinks was associated with a 7 percent decline in daily caloric intake from sodas, lower overall calorie consumption, lower weight, and improved insulin resistance lends new support to a sin tax on sugary soda.3 States now facing severe budget shortfalls may also find these taxes hard to resist. Estimates produced by the Yale University Rudd Center suggest, for example, that California could raise over $560 million in 2010 alone by taxing sugary beverages at a rate of 3 cents per 12 ounces. 4 Despite this allure, the case for sin taxes is not clear cut. In this essay I review the arguments for and against sin taxes and describe how these considerations play out for cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. I then offer some thoughts on using sin taxes to combat rising obesity rates.
Denise Simon Appears on The JJ McCartney Radio Show – 02/03/15
Tuesday on The JJ McCartney Show JJ’s guest will be fellow conservative talk radio host Denise Simon of The Denise Simon Experience.
Denise is the Senior Research/Intelligence Analyst for Foreign and Domestic Policy for Stand Up America US as well as the aide de camp for MAJOR GENERAL PAUL E. VALLELY, US ARMY (ret).
Her weekly show delves into the very deep and murky waters of foreign and domestic issues. Denise’s show can be heard Thursdays at 9PM Eastern time at jjmccartney.com and WDFP.us!
The Mufti, 1947
An anniversary was remembered last week of the Holocaust. As anti-Semitism continues to mount in the Middle East at the hands of Iran, it festers in Europe without explanation considering history. Haj Amin El Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem had a proven hand in the Holocaust which was revealed at the Nuremberg trial. Today, the mission to destroy the Jews in Israel continues at the hands of Iran and the Palestinian Authority. It defies logic that the P5+1 would even negotiate with Iran on their nuclear weapons program and that the United Nations continues to work for the sake of the Palestinian Authority.
In case you are confused or have any questions, watch this short documentary for understanding. *** For more perspective:
The Palestinian Muslim Who Inspired Hitler’s Final Solution
By: David Bedein
The 27th day of Nisan year marks the day when the Warsaw Ghetto uprising began against the Nazis in 1943. The 27th of Nisan was therefore selected as Holocaust Remembrance and Heroism Day in Israel, the day on which Israel would remember the mass murder of Jews in World War II, not only as a day of mourning and remorse, but also as a day to remember those who fought back against the Nazis and their allies. To paraphrase the question asked on Passover two weeks ago, people often ask why this persecution of Jews in Christian countries was different than other persecutions? After all, Jews had suffered persecution in Christian lands over the centuries.
The answer: This time, Nazis incorporated the Moslem idea of Jihad — the impulse for total destruction and complete annihilation in the spirit of a Holy War. The Moslem cleric who inspired Adolf Hitler with the idea of Jihad was none other than the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin El Husseini, who did not want masses of exiled Jews to wind up in the land of Israel, which he claimed as a future Arab Palestine, devoid of Jews. Indeed, in 1936, the Mufti welcomed Hitler’s deputy, Adolf Eichmann, to his office at the Supreme Islamic Council based at the Palace Hotel in the center of Jerusalem, where Eichmann kept meticulous records of his meetings with the Mufti, where the Palestinian Arab leader of that generation taught Eichmann about the philosophy of Jihad. Journalist Maurice Pearlman, who reviewed the records of Eichmann’s meetings with the Mufti at the trials for Nazi leader in Nuremberg, wrote a book entitled The Mufti of Jerusalem, published in 1947, in which Pearlman noted that the Mufti instructed Eichmann that the way in which the Nazis could best persecute the Jews was to do so slowly and in stages, so as to catch them unaware of the next stage of persecution. Eichmann offered reciprocal hospitality for the Mufti in Nazi Germany. In 1939, with the outbreak of World War II, the British government, then presiding over the mandatory government in Palestine, expelled the Mufti, who chose to travel to fascist Italy and then to Berlin, where he remained for the remainder of World War II.
Adolph Hitler provided the Mufti with a radio station in Berlin from where he propagated the Nazi message in the Arabic language, and the Mufti was assigned the task of organizing a Moslem contingent of the Nazi murder machine which killed Jews throughout Yuogoslavia.
v The Mufti obtained Hitler’s assurance in November 1941 that after dealing with the Jews of Europe, Hitler would treat the Jews of the Middle East similarly. Husseini promised the support of the Arabs for the Nazi war effort.
In Berlin, Husseini used the money confiscated from Jewish victims, to finance pro-Nazi activities in the Middle East and to raise 20,000 Muslim troops in Bosnia, in the Hanjar Waffen SS, who murdered tens of thousands of Serbs and Jews in the Balkans and served as police auxiliary in Hungary. Heinreich Himmler, the chief administrator of the Nazi death machine, brought the Mufti on numerous tours of the death camps. Most recently, a book was written about the ZunderKommandos, whose task it was to remove the dead Jews from the crematoria. One of those ZuderKommandos remarked in an interview with a researcher that he witnessed a man with a turban whom the Nazi camp commandant brought to witness the gassing of the Jews and the removal of the bodies from the gas chambers, the stripping of their valuables and the burning of their remains. The Nazi told the ZunderKommando that this was the Mufti of Jerusalem.
During the final months of the war, the Mufti actually lived in Hitler’s bunker. Although arrested by the French army, the Mufti was somehow able to escape to Cairo. The Mufti was later sentenced to death in absentia in Yugoslavia. After Adolf Eichmann was abducted and brought to Jerusalem for trial in 1961, Golda Meir, then the foreign minister of Israel, demanded that the Mufti also be brought to trial for the same crime of genocide against the Jewish people. The Mufti’s legacy did not stop when he escaped a defeated Nazi Germany. Upon arrival in Cairo, he resumed the role that he had left, as the spiritual leader — in exile — of the Palestinian Arab community.
v The Mufti played a key role in the decision of the Arab League to reject the UN Paritition plan in 1947 to declare a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine. Instead, the Mufti rallied Arabs throughout the Arab world to apply Hitler’s concept of the final solution to wipe out the Jews in their nascent state of Israel.
The Mufti then worked to raise a new generation of young Palestinian Arabs to form a new Moslem brotherhood to take up the cause of a lifelong effort to eradicate the Jewish state.
v The Mufti also became a surrogate father to a young man who took upon the name Yassir Arafat, a name given to him by the Mufti in memory of Yasser bin Ammar, a celebrated Muslim warrior and companion of the prophet.
The relationship between the Mufti and Arafat was related by Arafat’s brother Fatchi to the HaAretz newspaper in December, 1996. The Mufti died in July 1974, one month after the PLO National Council met and ratified the Mufti’s “strategy of stages,” to conquer Palestine in phases, as the strategic methodology that the PLO uses to this day. With the outbreak of the Palestinian Arab rebellion known as the Second Intifada in October 2000, a theme that repeated itself over and over on the official Palestinian television station overseen by Arafat was the use of an academic lectures, broken up by martial music, to highlight the comparison between Yasser Arafat and the late Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. Listeners were told how Husseini opposed the Jews (al-Yahoud) in Jerusalem and how he stood up to then-world power Great Britain, as a model for Arafat’s struggle in the modern era.