The news that is not White House approved...
Empty Promise
On the campaign trail, the president talked a lot about how much he would lower your health care premiums. Remember this?
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THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA, OCT. 15, 2008: The only thing we're going to try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed on to you. And we estimate we can cut average family's premium by about $2,500 per year.
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Well, not anymore. Politico.com notes that the president has stopped floating that $2,500 figure. In fact, nobody knows if your premiums will go down at all if the government takes over your health care.
Politico says, "For all the ink spilled on the effects of health care reform, no independent group has taken a comprehensive look at how the legislation would impact premiums for the 170 million Americans who receive insurance through their employers."
So it looks like the president actually has no idea if this reform will actually lower the premiums. What a shock.
Ethical Eliot
Disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had an interesting booking Thursday, giving a lecture at Harvard University's Center for Ethics.
Now this caused a lot of raised eyebrows, but Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig says that Spitzer isn't actually lecturing on ethics, telling the New York Daily News, "He has been invited to speak as part of a series on the topic of institutional corruption."
Institutional corruption in the financial sector is certainly a topic that Mr. Spitzer seems to be an expert on.
Correction, Please!
Rather than host a jobs summit at the White House in December, the president may want to hold auditions to find some new economists. Although Obama said Thursday that the stimulus created or saved over a million jobs, that number is once again being disputed by a major newspaper.
After an extensive review, The Boston Globe has concluded that the White House's numbers are "wildly exaggerated." Of the $4 billion awarded in Massachusetts, the stimulus report claimed 12,000 jobs were created, but The Globe uncovered countless examples of erroneous figures.
Take for example, Bridgewater State College, who originally said they created 160 jobs, now acknowledges the number of new jobs is "almost nothing."And then there is a Greenfield community action agency who reported 90 jobs were created, but now reveal that money instead was used to give employees cost of living increases.
Here's the good news: Massachusetts is set to receive yet another $1 billion in your hard-earned stimulus funds.
Payback Time
It was payback time Wednesday night for country music superstar Taylor Swift. Not only did the 19-year-old take home the Entertainer of the Year Award at the 2009 Country Music Awards, she also got some revenge on rapper Kanye West.
You may remember back in September, West interrupted an acceptance speech by Swift. Well, this time around, she had the stage all to herself:
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TAYLOR SWIFT, SINGER: And I want to thank every single person in this room tonight for not running up on the stage during this speech. Thank you.
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Very talented.
Taylor was not the only one to poke fun at Kanye. Listen to the duo of Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood:
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BRAD PAISLEY, SINGER: (Singing) Mammas don't let your babies grow up.
CARRIE UNDERWOOD, SINGER: (Singing) Don't let your babies grow up...
PAISLEY: To be Kanye.
UNDERWOOD: Let 'em pick guitars and drive 'em old trucks, 'cause cowboys have manners, they don't interrupt.
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Now there's some great advice from two great country music superstars.
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