Info 24 Online: History

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Gov.  Paul LePage used his weekly radio address to blast President  
Obama's  health care law and described the Internal Revenue Service as  
the "new  Gestapo."</div>
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<img alt="Paul LePage" border="0" class="PopBoxImageSmall" height="489" id="id016725242231527937" src="http://media.onlinesentinel.com/images/300*489/portland-press-herald_3626240.jpg" title="Paul LePage" width="300" /><div style="color: #aaaaaa; float: right; font-size: 9px; margin: 0px 0px 5px 20px;">
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Gov. Paul LePage</div>
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The IRS description was a reference to a provision in the 
Affordable  Care Act that requires Americans not insured by their 
employers or  <b>Medicaid</b>
 to buy health insurance or pay an annual penalty when filing  their tax
 returns. The provision, known more broadly as the individual  mandate, 
was the subject of a multi-state lawsuit, but was recently  upheld by 
the U.S. Supreme Court.</div>
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LePage said the court decision has "made America less free."</div>
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"We the people have been told there is no choice," he said. "You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo -- the IRS."</div>
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Maine  Democratic Party Chairman Ben Grant, responding to LePage's  
remarks,  said, "We've come to expect a bunch of nonsense from Gov.  
LePage, but  this is a step too far. There appears now to be no limit to
  the extreme  language he will use to misinform, degrade and insult  
people. Somebody  needs to explain to him that he's the governor of a  
state, and not a  talk radio host. I demand a full apology on behalf of 
 all those who  suffered at the hands of the real Gestapo."</div>
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"There is nothing that  degrades politics more than purported leaders
  who so cavalierly invoke  the worst in human history when they can't  
get their way in legitimate,  modern policy disagreements," Grant said.</div>
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The Gestapo were Nazi Germany's official secret police under  Adolf  
Hitler, who imprisoned and murdered thousands of people without  cause.</div>
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The debate over the mandate has become a political flash point since 
  the health law was enacted. Republicans maintain that the requirement 
 is  an unfair tax. Democrats say the mandate was originally a 
Republican   idea born from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which 
introduced   the measure in 1989 as a counterpoint to calls for a 
single-payer  health  care system.</div>
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LePage also addressed another element of the  health-care law that  
was immediately thrust into the public debate:  Medicaid expansion.  
Originally, the Affordable Care Act required states  to increase  
eligibility for low-income residents or pay a penalty. The  court  
decision struck down the penalty; however, the federal government  is  
still offering to pay for the expansion.</div>
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The federal government will fund 100 percent of the expansion from 2014 to 2016, gradually declining to 90 percent after that.</div>
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LePage  says he needs more answers before making a decision about the
  Medicaid  expansion, which has been assailed by fellow Republican  
governors. At  least 15 have said they'll forgo the federal funding.</div>
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LePage said  the state doesn't know how the federal matches will be  
paid for and how  the newly eligible recipients would be defined.</div>
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"However, Maine  is already a welfare expansion state because of the 
 generous benefits  offered," he said, adding that Maine's welfare costs
  are among the  highest in the nation because the state had expanded  
Medicaid prior to  the Republican electoral sweep of 2010.</div>
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The governor also appeared to preempt potential pressure from hospitals to support Medicaid expansion.</div>
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Hospitals  may end up supporting the expansion because increased  
Medicaid  offerings lower uncompensated, or charity, care levels.</div>
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Uncompensated  care is health-care costs that hospitals absorb  
because people can't or  won't pay. A recent report in the Portland  
Press Herald showed that  uncompensated care by Maine hospitals has  
doubled over the last five  years, from $94 million to $194 million.</div>
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LePage said that  increasing Medicaid may make it more difficult to  
pay hospitals the $500  million the state already owes in reimbursement.</div>
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The governor  added that Maine will not move forward the ACA's  
insurance exchanges --  the marketplaces where individuals can shop for 
 health plans from  private companies -- until the proposed $800 million
  tab to pay for them  passes Congress.</div>
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"With these looming uncertainties circling around this issue, Maine cannot move forward right now with Obamacare," LePage said.</div>
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The  governor finished his radio address by outlining his ideological
   opposition to the health-care law, which he said "raises taxes, cuts 
  Medicare for the elderly, gets between patients and their doctors, 
costs   trillions of taxpayer dollars, and kills jobs."</div>
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"Even more  disheartening is that reviving the American dream just  
became nearly  impossible to do," he said. "We are now a nation which  
supports  dependency rather than independence. Instead of encouraging   
self-reliance, we are encouraging people to rely on the government."</div>

LePage calls IRS the 'new Gestapo'

Gov. Paul LePage used his weekly radio address to blast President Obama's health care law and described the Internal Revenue Servic...

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<img alt="This image dated around 1918 shows Ernst Hess, a judge at the district court of Duesseldorf, western Germany. " border="0" height="360" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/120708025732-ernst-hess-story-top.jpg" width="640" /></div>
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This image dated around 1918 shows Ernst Hess, a judge at the district court of Duesseldorf, western Germany. </div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1067060932251704212" name="em0"></a></div>
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<b>STORY HIGHLIGHTS</b></div>
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<li>The Jewish Voice from Germany newspaper unearths internal Nazi files on Ernst Hess</li>
<li>Hess served in Hitler's infantry unit in World War I but didn't know him, then was a judge</li>
<li>A 1940 order saved Hess, despite his Jewish heritage, "per the Fuhrer's wishes" </li>
<li>The order was revoked the next year, and Hess ended up in Nazi concentration camps</li>
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<b>(CNN)</b> -- An estimated 6 million Jews died at the 
hands of the Nazis and their allies during the Holocaust. Hundreds of 
thousands more suffered, but somehow survived, in concentration camps. 
And some escaped, savoring freedom they otherwise never would have 
known.</div>
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Then there's Ernst Hess, 
who was a decorated World War I soldier, former judge and, despite being
 raised a Protestant and marrying someone of that faith, a "full-blooded
 Jew" in the eyes of the Nazi regime.</div>
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According to a 
groundbreaking report, Hess was granted a reprieve despite this 
designation thanks to none other than Adolf Hitler.</div>
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Susanne Mauss, editor of the Jewish Voice from Germany
 newspaper, found the August 27, 1940, note from the Gestapo (the 
infamous Nazi secret police) that saved Hess -- albeit temporarily. The 
order was revoked the next year, and Hess spent years doing hard labor 
in Nazi concentration camps and work sites.</div>
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Still, given Hitler and 
his colleagues' extreme views and actions on Jews, even the temporary 
amnesty granted in the letter that Mauss unearthed in a file kept by the
 Gestapo in Dusseldorf about Hess is extraordinary.</div>
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Written by the notorious 
SS figure Heinrich Himmler, the note calls for saving and protecting 
Hess "as per the Fuhrer's wishes," referring to Hitler, who had led 
Germany since 1933.</div>
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The slave workers were forced to live outdoors and were treated terribly, and of course they were watched by members of the SS</div>
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Ursula Hess</div>
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The letter, a copy of 
which is posted on the Jewish Voice from Germany's website, also states 
that Hess should not be inconvenienced "in any way whatsoever."</div>
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Hitler and Hess had 
crossed paths before, serving in the same infantry unit during World War
 I. In fact, for a short time Hess had been Hitler's commander -- though
 the Jewish Voice from Germany said Hess, whose now 86-year-old daughter
 was interviewed for their story, didn't personally know Hitler and 
their fellow comrades described the future Nazi leader as quiet, with no
 friends in the regiment.</div>
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But Hess himself was 
close to many of his fellow veterans, including Fritz Wiedemann, 
according to daughter Ursula Hess. And Wiedemann, who became a top aide 
to Hitler from 1934 to 1939 before becoming Germany's consul in San 
Francisco through 1941, helped connect Hess to Hans Heinrich Lammers, 
the head of the Reich Chancellery during Hitler's reign.</div>
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Hess, who was forced to 
retire as a judge in 1936 -- the same year he was beaten up by special 
police in front of his home -- had pleaded for leniency before. 
According to the Jewish Voice, he had petitioned Hitler to make an 
exception because his daughter Ursula would be considered a 
"first-degree half-breed" under Nazi doctrine.</div>
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Highlighting his 
patriotism and Christian upbringing, Hess wrote, "For us, it is kind of 
spiritual death to now be branded as Jews and exposed to general 
attempt."</div>
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That appeal was denied, 
though the Hess family was able to move to a then German-speaking part 
of Italy for the next several years. In that time, Hess still got part 
of his military pension and his passport wasn't stamped with a red J to 
brand him as Jewish, the Jewish Voice reported.</div>
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But after a pact with 
Italy that ceded that area to the Nazi regime and the family's attempts 
to flee to Switzerland and Brazil failed, they landed back in Germany in
 1940.</div>
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The reprieve, credited to the fuhrer, came in the summer of that year.</div>
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But in 1941, Hess 
submitted the letter of protection, only to have it swiped away. The 
special order revoked, he landed soon thereafter in a concentration 
camp, and then began working for a timber processing company helping 
build barracks for Nazi soldiers.</div>
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"The slave workers were 
forced to live outdoors and were treated terribly, and of course they 
were watched by members of the SS," said Ursula Hess of her father, who 
besides being a soldier, judge and "sportsman," had once been a concert 
violinist. "Had he not been as fit as he was, he would never have 
survived."</div>
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The name Hess is well 
established in German 20th-century history. A man also named Ernst Hess 
was one of Germany's ace fighter pilots during World War I, before being
 killed in action. Rudolf Hess was once Hitler's deputy, before flying 
to Scotland on an alleged peace mission in 1941 that instead ended with 
him becoming a prisoner of war.</div>
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Ernst Hess, though, was a
 prisoner of a very different sort through the early 1940s when Nazi 
authorities deemed him "a Jew like no other."</div>
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When the war ended and 
he gained his freedom, according to the Jewish Voice report, Hess was 
asked to become a judge yet again. He turned down the offer. A year 
later, Hess launched a new career and gained new prominence as a railway
 executive.</div>
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By then, he'd rejoined 
his wife and daughter. But not all his family: His sister Berta was 
killed in 1942 in the Auschwitz concentration camp.</div>

Hitler ordered reprieve to Jewish man

This image dated around 1918 shows Ernst Hess, a judge at the district court of Duesseldorf, western Germany. STORY HIGHLIGHTS...