2013 Alden Days Parade,…click on the play button (below) and then click on the timeline to the 5:10 minute mark on the YouTube video,…see our local Jim Gurr and his tractor pulling Triston Cole’s hay wagon for our entry!!!

Thanks to State Representative Greg MacMaster for the pocket Constitutions which Maryanne Jorgensen and Patty Niepoth helped pass out with free American Flags followed by Bill and Priscilla Miller who kept them coming!!!

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/XRY0B_1EBhs”]

At our monthly meeting on Monday, July 15th, 2013 of it’s paid members and it’s Executive Committee, the Antrim County Republican Party accepted a motion that was seconded and discussed, which was followed by a voice vote.

Said motion was a resolution to reject the Expansion of Medicaid per the pending legislation HB 4714 (Substitute H-3), which passed UNANIMOUSLY (without one No vote).

Said passed resolution is being formally drafted and will be presented at our next monthly meeting, Monday, August 12th, 2013 and approved for submission to our State Representative – Greg MacMaster, our State Senator –  Howard Walker, our Governor – Rick Snyder and the Michigan Republican Party.

The Antrim County Republican Party does NOT support the Expansion of Medicaid per HB 4714 (Substitute H-3) or any other legislation which expands the eligibility or funding of Medicaid,  nor the implementation of any Healthcare Exchange or Partnership associated with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act  (known as “Obamacare”) here in the State of Michigan.

Senator Patrick Colbeck offers patient-centered solution in place of Medicaid Expansion

LANSING, Mich. – Today Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, introduced the first of two bills to enact a patient-centered healthcare plan to provide a free market alternative that expands access to quality care without expanding government.

SB 459 provides the regulatory infrastructure that would enable a low cost, high quality care, free market environment within the confines of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The second bill, which will be introduced shortly, would convert current Medicaid enrollees to low cost, high quality Qualified Health Plans featuring Direct Primary Care Services and High Deductible Health Plans wrapped within a Health Savings Account. The net impact of both of these bills will be to lower healthcare costs for everyone in our state while promoting better quality of care.

Colbeck will discuss the legislation with the Senate workgroup on Medicaid expansion on Thursday, July 18. Colbeck’s patient-centered solution would be enacted in place of expanding government provided healthcare.

“We need to stop talking about expanding a government program that doesn’t work and start talking about ways to expand affordable care to all of our citizens,” Colbeck said. “The plan that I’m putting forth would allow us to capitalize on our free market system and provide better quality, less expensive healthcare to Michigan’s residents while boosting our economy.

“We can use this as an opportunity to put in place a free market based system that will not only accomplish the stated objectives of Obamacare but will also establish Michigan as a destination state for employers seeking quality, affordable healthcare for their employees. If we can provide quality services at a greatly reduced cost, we can draw patients from other states and countries that are looking for better access to quality care while creating new healthcare jobs in Michigan. Wouldn’t it be nice to be expanding our medical centers in Detroit due to out of town visitors at a faster rate than we are expanding our casinos?” Colbeck concluded.

Bonnie M. Nothoff, 71, of Kewadin, passed away at home on July 9^th, 2013.

She was born on May 28, 1942 in Flint, MI. She was the daughter of Reinhart “Rad” and Evelyn (Christensen) Radke.

Bonnie graduated from Flint Central in 1960 and went on to attend MSU and later Delta College in Saginaw, MI where she graduated with her AAS in dental hygiene. She married her high school sweetheart, Jim Nothoff, in 1969 in Flint, MI.

As an RDH, she achieved numerous prestigious awards and helped many people in need. For many years, Bonnie was a clinical instructor educating the future generations of dental hygiene. In 2005, she formed Nothoff Legislative Research and Consulting, LLC, which allowed her to advance legislation for the dental hygiene profession in Michigan.  Bonnie was also the President of the MDHA, (the Michigan Dental Hygienists Association), Chair of the Antrim County Republican Party, and the Antrim County Republican Women, among other leadership positions.

Bonnie was also an active tennis player, jogger, boater, and sang in the church choir with her close friends.

Bonnie inherited the best from both of her parents; a keen business sense, charm, grace, and poise.  She was loved dearly by her colleagues, friends, and family, whom she also loved.   She came alive in the presence of people and people came alive with her.  She would light up a room when she entered it!

She is survived by her sister Carol and brother-in-law David Symons, son Jay and daughter-in-law Marie Olivier, husband Jim, sister-in-law Peg and brother-in-law Don Smith, brother-in-law Tom Nothoff, and many nieces and nephews. She is preceded in death by her parents, father-in-law Henry Nothoff, mother-in-law Helen Nothoff, and brother-in-law Robert “Bob” Nothoff.

Visitation will be held on Sunday, July 14, 2013 from 4 to 8 pm at Covell Funeral Home in Elk Rapids.

A funeral service will be held on Monday July 15, 2013 at 11am, with visitation one hour prior, at the First Presbyterian Church in Elk Rapids, with Rev. Andrew Martinez residing.

Memorial contributions may be directed to the MDHA PAC or American Cancer Society. Arrangements have been entrusted to Covell Funeral Home of Elk Rapids.

The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it is delaying a major provision in the health care overhaul, putting off until 2015 a requirement that many employers offer health insurance.

The announcement was made late Tuesday by the Treasury Department, at the beginning of the holiday week while Congress was on recess. It comes amid reports that the administration is running into roadblocks as it prepares to implement ObamaCare.

The change in the employer mandate is arguably the most significant concession the administration has made to date.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., a critic of the law, seized on the delay as a “clear admission” that the law is “unaffordable, unworkable and unpopular.”

“It’s also a cynical political ploy to delay the coming train wreck associated with ObamaCare until after the 2014 elections,” he said.

The law requires companies that employ 50 or more workers to offer coverage or face fines. The Treasury Department and the White House said that, based on complaints by employers that the system for reporting the coverage was too onerous, they would simplify that system and give employers an additional year to comply.

“We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively,” Mark J. Mazur, the assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department, said in a statement posted online. “We have listened to your feedback.  And we are taking action.”

The mandate was originally set to kick in for 2014, but will now start in 2015.

The decision effectively means that penalties that would have been assessed against non-compliant businesses will be delayed until 2015. The administration encouraged employers to provide insurance anyway.

While the employer mandate is being delayed, the so-called individual mandate — the requirement that individuals obtain health insurance — presumably remains on schedule for 2014.

The administration also still plans to open up a new marketplace for government-regulated insurance plans on Oct. 1, to take effect on Jan. 1. And a sprawling set of subsidies would also remain in place.

The delay of the employer mandate, though, raises questions about whether more elements of the law might be delayed in the coming months.

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett explained that, on the employer mandate issue, the administration was making two changes.

“First, we are cutting red tape and simplifying the reporting process,” she wrote on the White House blog. She cited concerns that the law would have required companies to set up new data collection systems on employee access to health care. She said: “Some of this detailed reporting may be unnecessary for businesses that more than meet the minimum standards in the law.” So, she said, the administration plans to figure out a “smarter system.”

Second, she said, the administration would delay the roll-out and penalties since they were overhauling the reporting system.

“This allows employers the time to test the new reporting systems and make any necessary adaptations to their health benefits while staying the course toward making health coverage more affordable and accessible for their workers,” she said.

Randy Johnson, senior vice president of Labor, Immigration, and Employee Benefits at the Chamber of Commerce, told Fox News that with its decision, the administration has “finally recognized the obvious.”

“Employers need more time and clarification of the rules of the road before implementing the employer mandate,” he said. “We will continue to work to alleviate this and other problems with ObamaCare.”

Teens urged to promote ObamaCare under California grant, report says

Of that, $990,000 was awarded to The Los Angeles Unified School District.

A brief synopsis of the grant says it would be used for “outreach calls” to families and “adult-student class presentations.” But it also states as an objective: “Teens trained to be messengers to family members.”

According to The Heartland Institute, a spokeswoman for Covered California said the group has “confidence” the Los Angeles program “will be successful in reaching our target population, which includes family members of students.”

A spokesman for the district also told the institute that teens will be part of a “pilot” program to see if they can be trained to “deliver outreach and limited education to family and friends in and around their homes.”

“Teens will be educating adults that they already know (e.g., family or friends) and not other adults,” the spokesman said.

The grant comes amid controversy in Congress over the Obama administration’s other efforts to promote the law, in advance of the entire law’s implementation.

Several Republicans this past week urged major sports leagues to rebuff the administration’s call to help advertise for the Affordable Care Act.  The NFL on Friday issued a statement saying it had “no plans” to do so.

In a blistering rebuke of the Supreme Court decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Antonin Scalia said the self-governing power of the people has been eroded.

“Today’s opinion aggrandizes the power of the court to pronounce the law,” Scalia wrote in the dissenting opinion. It will have the predictable consequence of diminishing the “power of our people to govern themselves,” wrote Scalia, who was joined in his dissent by Justices Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts, while Justice Samuel Alito wrote a separate dissenting opinion.

Scalia described the “assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s representatives in Congress and the executive” as “jaw-dropping.”

“It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and everywhere ‘primary’ in its role,” said Scalia. “This image of the court would have been unrecognizable to those who wrote and ratified our national charter.”

Scalia had particular disdain for fellow Justice Anthony Kennedy’s ruling in the 5-4 case, saying it opened the door for a federal law allowing same-sex marriages.

“It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here — when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority’s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress’s hateful moral judgment against it,” he wrote.

In another section of his ruling, Scalia said, “To defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution.

“In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to ‘disparage,’ ‘injure,’ ‘degrade,’ ‘demean,’ and ‘humiliate’ our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence — indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history.”

The court’s decision takes issue especially with Section 3 of DOMA, which defined marriage on a federal basis as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and the word “spouse” referring “only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

“DOMA rejects this long-established precept” of states themselves determining the definition of marriage, said the court’s the majority opinion, written by Kennedy.

However, the court’s action goes well beyond merely rejecting a federal definition of marriage, Scalia says.

“By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. Henceforth those challengers will lead with this court’s declaration that there is ‘no legitimate purpose’ served by such a law, and will claim that the traditional definition has the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure the ‘personhood and dignity’ of same-sex couples.

“The result will be a judicial distortion of our society’s debate over marriage — a debate that can seem in need of our clumsy ‘help’ only to a member of this institution,” said the 77-year-old justice.

The decision, he wrote, was not clear cut.

“Some will rejoice in today’s decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better.”

By State Senator – Patrick Colbeck

By Priscilla Miller – Antrim County Republican Party, Secretary

Did anyone else hear from the Governor? I did!  Governor Snyder’s Office called me yesterday!   Seems I inadvertently gave out Lt. Governor Brian Calley’s personal cell phone number on Facebook Thursday, leading up to the Senate’s decision on the Medicaid Expansion Bill, and the governor’s aide wanted to clarify my message to the Lt. Governor and asked, if I had anything to say to the Governor.

I told him I had called out of concern for a bill the lawmakers had only had seven days to consider, and couldn’t see why the Governor felt it necessary to return from his trade mission to Israel, in order to push through his agenda!

All too often we have laws rushed through, only to find out ‘what’s in the bill’ after it’s passed, and I could see no harm in allowing lawmakers the time to thoroughly study, and explore the possible ramifications of such a bill before voting.

I also mentioned the fact that I disapproved of the Governor contacting Kathleen Sabelius, who I believe did a Webinar with our MRP lawmakers, to try and convince them to pass the bill, and this left me with the impression that our Governor is siding with the Democrats and Obama, in regard to our healthcare and not listening to ‘We the People!’

When his aid told me, “the Affordable Care Act was the Law of the Land”. I told him that was his opinion, but there are people like myself, who believe since there are no provisions set up to finance the Obamacare exchanges in the act itself, and if enough states refuse to do anything to help facilitate its implementation, the law will implode.

I also expressed my belief that citizens no longer ‘trust’ their government, and are tired of hearing the people they elect, instead of listening to them, decide what’s “good for them”.

In addition, I told him I thought the governor’s press conference yesterday, was very divisive, pitting members of the party against one another, and when I saw Governor Snyder, standing with that group of healthcare professionals, lined up beside him, all dressed in their scrubs and lab coats, it brought back the distasteful memory of Obama, when he signed the Affordable Care Act, and the people lined up behind him, dressed in the same manner.

The Governor’s aid assured me that he was going to convey all of my thoughts and what I had to say, to the governor, and that the governor is always interested in hearing what people in the state have to say. I told him I didn’t believe that was the case, that the governor is only interested in his own agenda.

I also mentioned that just last week the governor appeared to dismiss the ‘Tea Party’ as a group he wasn’t going to listen to. I explained to him, that there are many Democrat and Republican friends, who share the same views, even though they are not part of any Tea Party organization, and last but not least I closed by telling the governor’s aid that “I believe yesterday, the governor heard the voice of the Tea Party!”