CHRISTMAS EVE BILLS: 1) SENATE PASSES HEALTHCARE BILL AND RAISES DEBT CEILING
The US Senate just passed a pork-laden national healthcare bill that was highly unpopular with US citizens in virtually all public opinion polls. So why would elected representatives of 'We the People' flagrantly vote against the wishes of those who put them in office with such betrayal, plunging US into a trillion dollars more debt?
Clearly many political leaders in Washington have forgotten that they are supposed to answer to the voters they serve. Or maybe they just don’t care, as many of the Democrats in the Senate—like Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV)—who have ignored the wishes of their constituents and pushed their own agendas.
According to expert economist and publisher of The International Forecaster, Bob Chapman, never could this be more apparent than in the Senate’s drive to bring two massively unpopular bills to a vote by Christmas Eve—both destined to lay an enormous gift-wrapped tax burden on the U.S. that voters have resoundingly screamed they don’t want.
The first is the aforementioned high-profile healthcare bill virtually crafted in secret behind Reid’s closed conference-room doors in the past few weeks and passed the morning before Christmas. Chapman points out that it is a 2,000-plus-page albatross that most in the Senate, let alone the American voting public, have not been able to read.
“We need to focus on the punitive nature of this (healthcare reform) plan,” says Chapman. “Not only the tax increases, but the fees to be paid to government if you do not have insurance. Then you have the projected loss of 25 percent of physicians, the massive increases in prescription drug costs and, of course, the promotion of allowing the chronically ill and the old to die. Hopefully, with passage in the Senate, the House Democrats will have second thoughts of passing a joint bill that, otherwise, will guarantee they never return to office.”
As for the second Christmas Eve vote? The Senate voted to raise the nation’s debt limit beyond the old $12.1 trillion. In classic conflict-of-interest style, similar to when Congress votes on its own pay raises, in the face of adding to the nation’s debt with more spending programs, the Senate’s response is to just raise its own debt limit.
This, Chapman strongly fears, is a chronic habit and a formula for America’s economic destruction. Call Special Guests today.
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE MAY BE USEFUL FOR SHOW PREP:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BL41Y20091222
ROBERT J. CHAPMAN BIOGRAPHY:
Mr. Chapman is 73 years old. He was born in Boston, MA, and attended Northeastern University majoring in business management. He spent three years in the U. S. Army Counterintelligence, mostly in Europe. He speaks German and French and is conversant in Spanish. He lived in Europe for six years, off and on, three years in Africa, one year in Canada and another year in the Bahamas.
Mr. Chapman became a stockbroker in 1960 and retired in 1988. For 18 of those years he owned his own brokerage firm. He was probably the largest gold and silver stockbroker in the world during that period. When he retired he had over 6,000 clients.
From 1962 through 1976 he specialized in South African gold shares. He and his family lived in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) and Johannesburg, South Africa from 1970 to 1973. During that time he did a great deal of further study into the South African mining industry.
Mr. Chapman belonged to The Traders Association for 25 years. He did all his own trading. During his South African years some was done directly through Johannesburg, but 95% was done through London brokerage firms. Hence, he has extensive contacts, both in London and on the Continent.
Starting in 1967 Mr. Chapman began writing articles on business, finance, economics and politics having been printed and reprinted over the years in over 200 publications. He owned and wrote the Gary Allen Report, which had 30,000 subscribers. He currently is owner and editor of The International Forecaster, a compendium of information on business, finance, economics and social and political issues worldwide, which reaches 10,000 investors and brokers monthly directly, and parts of his publication are picked up by 60 different websites weekly exposing his ideas to over 10 million investors a week.
In 1976, after the Soweto riots, Mr. Chapman began buying North American shares exclusively for his clients. Up to that point only a handful of American and Canadian issues interested him, due to the high dividends the South African shares had paid out over the years. Between 1976 and 1988 his business surged from 1,000 to 6,000 clients, so the bulk of his business ended up being Vancouver Stock Exchange issues. For this reason he is very conversant with the quality of management, geologists, properties and traders on today’s North American scene. He is well known.
From 1976 to present he has spoken and given workshops at over 200 business conferences worldwide, and has been on radio and TV thousands of times. Until his retirement he was always judged by the attendees to be one of the top three speakers and never once was lower than first in workshops due to his vast knowledge of the mining business and his grasp of worldwide financial markets and political scenes.
In June of 1991, at the request of business associates, and due to retirement boredom, he began writing the International Forecaster.
Over the past 40 years, Bob Chapman has immersed himself in the study of world politics and economics. His articles have run in more than 200 publications. His newsletter, "THE INTERNATIONAL FORECASTER,” has active subscribers all across world. Bob Chapman has conducted hundreds of workshops at business conferences and has been a featured guest on hundreds of radio and television programs.
Some of his uncanny predictions include:
* Called the top of the market in April 2000.
* Predicted 9/11 or an event like that, nine months early, within 33 days of it actually occurring.
* Predicted the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq two years before they happened.