Affirmative action is a practice that establishes the provision of granting greater rights for particular groups of people over others which, ipso facto, is a violation of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution (unless, of course, it is interpreted as a living, changeable document by a progressive Justice). The way it has been applied in this country is to inequitably, immorally and probably unconstitutionally assign greater rights, opportunities and privileges to blacks at the expense of whites and Asian-Americans.
Is this fair?
Of course not!
This is reverse discrimination, plain and simple. People are being penalized because their skin is white (or they came from China or Japan, etc.). Such a policy fosters resentment from those who are discriminated against and exacerbates racial tensions and is counterproductive.
In the following editorial by Sen. James Webb of Virginia, a Democrat, he calls for the abolishment of this divisive, inequitable, morally wrong and unconstitutional (strictly speaking) policy. He states that:
“Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners.”
We strongly agree.
Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all 'people of color' are unfair. They should end.
James Webb July 22, 2010
The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.
Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.
I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.
In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.
How so?
Lyndon Johnson's initial program for affirmative action was based on the 13th Amendment and on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which authorized the federal government to take actions in order to eliminate "the badges of slavery." Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.
The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all "people of color"—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.
Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.
Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.
The clearest example of today's misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.
The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that "fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery."
The Civil War devastated the South, in human and economic terms. And from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the beginning of World War II, the region was a ravaged place, affecting black and white alike.
In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt created a national commission to study what he termed "the long and ironic history of the despoiling of this truly American section." At that time, most industries in the South were owned by companies outside the region. Of the South's 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white). The illiteracy rate was five times that of the North-Central states and more than twice that of New England and the Middle Atlantic (despite the waves of European immigrants then flowing to those regions). The total endowments of all the colleges and universities in the South were less than the endowments of Harvard and Yale alone. The average schoolchild in the South had $25 a year spent on his or her education, compared to $141 for children in New York.
Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks' average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.
Policy makers ignored such disparities within America's white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.
Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.
Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.
Memo to my fellow politicians: Drop the Procrustean policies and allow harmony to invade the public mindset. Fairness will happen, and bitterness will fade away.
Mr. Webb, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Virginia.
We have been calling for impeachment of Obama for a long time for myriad reasons. He presents an unprecedented existential threat to the welfare and survival of America as we have known it in the past – founded on principles of liberty, freedom, equality, justice and individuality and with a non-intrusive government.
In fact, the primary motivation and impetus for the creation of this website was the realization of the threats and risks to a free America that Obama presented combined with a far-left radical Democrat juggernaut in the Senate and House of Representatives. Information needs to be disseminated so we can all be informed and aware of what is transpiring and act accordingly. As we have just recently learned regarding the media collusion in the Journolist scandal, such information has been egregiously manipulated, controlled and even suppressed to support a far-left agenda (and candidate in Obama). The “main stream” media has become a de facto political wing and propaganda source for the Democratic Party and hence, the functioning government.
This is an incredibly dangerous situation for us American citizens and for the survival of our Democracy.
In the following trenchant, thorough and convincing editorial written by Tom Tancredo, who was a five term member of Congress, he calls for the impeachment of Obama. He concisely sums up the immense danger that Obama presents to our country by stating that:
For the first time in American history, we have a man in the White House who consciously and brazenly disregards his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. That's why I say the greatest threat to our Constitution, our safety and our liberties, is internal. Our president is an enemy of our Constitution, and, as such, he is a danger to our safety, our security and our personal freedoms.
If we can vote in enough Republicans to take over the House and Senate in November, then we will have what it takes to impeach Obama's - though we may also need to coax our elected officials to pursue this course of action.
The case for impeachment Obama has violated his oath of office over immigration
Tom Tancredo July 22, 2010
Eleven years ago, like every citizen elected to serve in Congress or any person appointed to any federal position, I swore an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic."
I've always thought it significant that the Founders included domestic enemies in that oath of office. They thought liberty was as much at risk from threats within our borders as from outside, and French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville agreed with that warning.
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the greatest threat to our nation was clear - and foreign. While Islamic terrorism still represents the greatest external threat to America and American lives, the avowed program of the Obama regime has changed the picture in a fundamental way.
For the first time in American history, we have a man in the White House who consciously and brazenly disregards his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. That's why I say the greatest threat to our Constitution, our safety and our liberties, is internal. Our president is an enemy of our Constitution, and, as such, he is a danger to our safety, our security and our personal freedoms.
Barack Obama is one of the most powerful presidents this nation has seen in generations. He is powerful because he is supported by large majorities in Congress, but, more importantly, because he does not feel constrained by the rule of law. Whether he is putting up the weakest possible defense of the Defense of Marriage Act despite the Justice Department's legal obligation to support existing law; disenfranchising Chrysler and GM bondholders in order to transfer billions of investor dollars to his supporters in the United Auto Workers; or implementing yet a third offshore oil-drilling moratorium even after two federal courts have thrown out two previous moratoriums, President Obama is determined to see things done his way regardless of obstacles. To Mr. Obama, the rule of law is a mere inconvenience to be ignored, overcome or "transcended" through international agreements or "norms."
Mr. Obama's paramount goal, as he so memorably put it during his campaign in 2008, is to "fundamentally transform America." He has not proposed improving America - he is intent on changing its most essential character. The words he has chosen to describe his goals are neither the words nor the motivation of just any liberal Democratic politician. This is the utopian, or rather dystopian, reverie of a dedicated Marxist - a dedicated Marxist who lives in the White House.
Because of the power he wields over budgets, the judiciary, national defense and even health care, his regime and his program are not just about changing public policy in the conventional sense. When one considers the combination of his stop-at-nothing attitude, his contempt for limited government, his appointment of judges who want to create law rather than interpret it - all of these make this president today's single greatest threat to the great experiment in freedom that is our republic.
Yes, Mr. Obama is a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda. We know that Osama bin Laden and followers want to kill us, but at least they are an outside force against whom we can offer our best defense. But when a dedicated enemy of the Constitution is working from the inside, we face a far more dangerous threat. Mr. Obama can accomplish with the stroke of his pen what bin Laden cannot accomplish with bombs and insurgents.
Mr. Obama's actions, not just his words, show the threat he poses. A level of government deficit spending unheard of since World War II and trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see represent an unacceptable threat to our economic security and our children's future. Mr. Obama could be the first president to guarantee that the next generation of Americans has a lower standard of living than their parents.
Mr. Obama's most egregious and brazen betrayal of our Constitution was his statement to Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, that the administration will not enforce security on our southern border because that would remove Republicans' desire to negotiate a "comprehensive" immigration bill. That is, to put it plainly, a decision that by any reasonable standard constitutes an impeachable offense against the Constitution. For partisan political advantage, he is willfully disregarding his obligation under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution to protect states from foreign invasion.
There is no higher duty of the federal government and our elected representatives than to protect our nation from invasion. Multiple reports and testimony before Congress by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have stated that a porous border with Mexico is "a path" terrorists will use if they can. Some would-be terrorists, including at least one associated with Hezbollah, already have. Recent reports of contacts between Hezbollah and Mexican drug cartels make it all but certain that terrorists intent on destroying us will come across our southwestern border. Therefore, it is of utmost importance for the administration to do everything in its power to keep Americans safe. Our safety is not a bargaining chip for another amnesty - or for any other political objective whatsoever.
Mr. Obama's refusal to live up to his own oath of office - which includes the duty to defend the United States against foreign invasion - requires senators and representatives to live up to their oaths. Members of Congress must defend our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Today, that means bringing impeachment charges against Mr. Obama.
Tom Tancredo is a former member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and five-term member of Congress from Colorado. He serves as chairman of the Rocky Mountain Foundation.
The Dept. of Justice, which should be protecting the rights of all Americans and the Constitutionally enumerated equality of all (Fourteenth Amendment), apparently is not fulfilling its mandate. Under Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, a racist bias has suffused the agency. Their ideology is that some people - blacks in particular and Democratically voting Hispanics - are "more equal" than others, specifically Whites. Some of this also stems from Obama's 20 years attending the vitriolic, racist rants of Rev. Wright in church where he preached black nationalism and supremacy. (Then again, Obama "claimed" to have heard nothing controversial. And Bill Clinton "didn't inhale" or "have sex with that woman".)
This sanctioned and enforced racism of blacks over whites is something that all Americans need to be aware of and react and respond to aggressively. If not, our rights will continue to progressively erode and we will find ourselves in a racially very hostile country that may be balkanized.
Even a more than 230 year history of democracy in America and a Constitution that champions individual freedom and rights while proscribing those of a federal government won’t prevent the hijacking or transformation of our government into an oppressive one. Unfortunately, we are witnessing and experiencing this firsthand now.
Start with a corrupt and ideologically perverted cabal of well connected individuals, add an adulating and negligent far-left press, influential and implacable liberals and idealists, a benighted populating that is more concerned with hedonistic pursuits than education and politics and you have the perfect storm for such an occurrence. Of course, it helps when the offending politicians have full and functionally unopposable powers in the legislative branch.
Most recently, this has occurred in Russia and Cuba. Let’s forcefully thwart it here before it is too late!
Castro, Obama and the Rule of Law
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown 7/10/2010
This week we had the pleasure of sharing a summer barbecue with a refugee from Cuba. Our dinner conversation was starkly different than most.
This refugee came to the United States as a young boy in the early 1960s. His family was more fortunate than most as they were able to bring a suitcase and $100 when they fled Castro's newly formed revolutionary paradise.
Our dinner consisted of all-American fare: hamburgers, potato salad, watermelon and fresh ears of sweet corn. This is a menu shared with family and friends nationwide, while celebrating the birth of our beloved America on the Fourth of July.
We began with a simple discussion about our country and the direction it has taken since Barack Obama came to power. We shared the usual complaints about the sour economy and liberal social engineering emanating from the rulers in Washington.
But then he said it. The sentence came naturally. I assume it was unplanned. But it carried the weight of a freight train.
"You know when Castro took power, none of us knew he was a Communist."
We sat stunned. He continued, "Yes, we all thought he was a patriot, a nationalist. Before the revolution he didn't sound like a radical."
The comparison at this point was easy, and I interjected, "You mean just like Barack Obama?"
He responded, "Yes, just like Barack Obama."
He continued, "We were all shocked as the government just continued to grab more power. First they said the revolution is over, so please turn in your guns. We all complied."
"I remember my uncle saying after it started, 'Castro will only nationalize some of the big industries, he will never come and take our family hardware store.' But that is exactly what happened, Castro started with the sugar mills and the large industries, but they eventually came and knocked on the door of our family hardware store. My family had run this store for generations. They said we now own the hardware store, you work for us.
And that nice, large four-bedroom home you own, it is now our property also, and you can move yourself and five children into two rooms of the house because others are moving in with you."
The lesson learned from this discussion is a lesson most Americans refuse to hear. Political leaders can lie about their agenda and once in office they can take totally unexpected turns.
If you had asked us three years ago if we thought General Motors would be nationalized, we would have never believed it. We could never contemplate a country where the rule of law, the most fundamental building block of a justice society would be evaporating just like it did in Castro's Cuba in the early 1960s.
But the news of injustice keeps increasing. Black Panthers are not charged with wrongdoing by the U.S. Department of Justice because their crimes are against whites. The bondholders of GM are stripped of their assets without due process by the government.
Governmental leaders are bribed in full daylight only to have all investigation of the crimes stifled by the Attorney General. The U.S. borders are overrun with crime and illegal activity and the leaders in D.C. act as if it is important to protect the lawbreakers while the innocent are killed and overrun. When local communities attempt to enforce the law, they are ridiculed and threatened as racists and bigots. They are sued by the very administration entrusted with enforcing the law.
Without the rule of law the U.S. Constitution is a sham. Without the rule of law our beloved America is swiftly becoming a country where only the well connected and politically powerful will be safe. As Michelle Malkin has so eloquently explained in her recent book, a culture of corruption has replaced honest government.
The only way this problem will be fixed is by massive citizen action. All honest citizens that want to be treated equally must come together and demand that the favoritism, the bribes, the uneven enforcement of law end now. And yes, it can happen here.
The following article examines various aspects of America today and postulates what the Founders of 234 years ago might think of their handiwork as it exists now. This is interesting and thought provoking.
What Would Our Founders Think About Independence In America Today?
Jane Hampton Cook FoxNews.com July 02, 2010
What would Sam Adams think of today’s tea parties? He would applaud them simply because they are free to do what he couldn’t — protest in the open without disguise or fake IDs.
If our Founding Fathers and Mothers were alive, what would they think about independence in America today? Though these architects of liberty placed the cornerstone with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, would they recognize the country they first constructed?
How about Abigail Adams? This sharp-minded gal would have deep compassion and understanding for those struggling financially. She didn’t need unemployment rates to tell her how bad the economy was in her day.
“A hundred dollars will not purchase what ten formerly would” she moaned.
When husband John Adams joined the Continental Congress, he sacrificed half his family’s income. Abigail took over the other half — their farms. Her problems spouted faster than garden weeds. Inflation. Counterfeit cash. Labor shortages. Terse tenants.
“Frugality, industry and economy are the lessons of the day. At least they must be so for me or my small boat will suffer shipwreck,” she determined.
Abigail kept her family afloat by persevering and employing some Yankee ingenuity. Eventually she sold dresses and household goods that John sent her from Paris, making her the “eBay-er” of her generation.
From Wall Street to Main Street, Abigail would applaud Americans’ unending pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.
Take the brash and brilliant Samuel Adams — the voice of the Sons of Liberty, Boston’s underground network that fought the king’s policies. What would Sam think of today’s Tea Parties? He would applaud them simply because they are free to do what he couldn’t — protest in the open without disguise or fake IDs.
Sam’s bold words, such as “LIBERTY, LIBERTY, is the cry” were carefully concealed behind clever nicknames. Instead of his real name, he used “Determinatus” or “Candidus” for his newspaper articles. The Sons of Liberty disguised themselves as Indians for that first Tea Party.
They didn’t dare show their faces as they dumped tea into Boston’s harbor. Sam would applaud today’s Tea Parties because they prove that the freedom to assemble is not only alive but thriving.
What about Ben Franklin, the scientist extraordinaire? He was too thrifty to be first in line for last month’s iPhone4 release, but this electricity chaser would have loved the Internet. If he could have, he would’ve tweeted on Twitter and showed off his spectacles on Facebook.
On July 4, 1776, this language lover would have posted this quip: “We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Franklin would be thrilled that freedom of press and speech are still vigorously enjoyed. After all he understood this truth: “Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.”
Take, too, Thomas Paine. “’TIS TIME TO PART” he declared in his best-selling pamphlet, "Common Sense," in 1776. Would the sheer size of the federal government today shock him? Would he be appalled at the alleged abuse of power in the Blagojevich trial in Illinois? The federal expansion of health care? Deficit spending? Yes to all.
Today’s problems would seem more glaring than the sun to Paine. However, one fundamental reality would make him smile. His common sense solution is still intact. Paine’s practical plan was to establish a new government with checks and balances among executive, legislative and judicial branches. His remedy for royalty was representation.
While often imperfect, that freedom hasn’t changed. Americans still have the power to vote for their local officials, representatives, president, and often, their judges. They can openly express their opposition to policies they oppose.
Paine’s description of independence still holds true: “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.” That reality is something to celebrate this Independence Day.
Jane Hampton Cook, is co-author of “Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq and Afghanistan” and author of “Stories of Faith and Courage from the Revolutionary War
Another Obama nominee for the Supreme Court … and another pernicious threat to our Constitutional rights. Even though Elena Kagan’s record is almost nonexistent, she has revealed a willingness if not propensity to restrict our First Amendment rights. If nothing else, that should be more than enough to deep six her being confirmed.
Everything else about her pales in comparison including no judicial experience, few cases argued, a long standing far left agenda, and unwavering support for socialism and big government.
She is a political appointee who hasn’t even reached the level of a judicial lightweight, never mind, having the wherewithal to become a Supreme Court justice.
We're Speechless
Investors Business Daily 05/12/2010
Supreme Court: Elena Kagan's thin paper trail was supposed to be an asset. But the confirmation of Obama's nominee may focus on one position it's clear she holds: that banning political speech can be constitutional.
'The government's answer has changed." That was how Solicitor General Kagan began her frantic damage control during a second round of oral arguments last September in the Citizens United case, which Kagan and the U.S. government ultimately lost and the First Amendment won.
Her deputy, Malcolm Stewart, in March of last year said the government had constitutional powers extending to banning books to limit corporate political influence.
As a result, the justices ordered a second round of arguments last fall to get into broader free speech questions.
For that, Kagan stepped into the fray herself, telling the justices that the government had reconsidered its position and conceding that banning books would elicit a strong court challenge.
So Chief Justice John Roberts asked her, "If you say that you are not going to apply it to a book, what about a pamphlet?"
"I think a pamphlet would be different," Kagan responded. "A pamphlet is pretty classic electioneering," and so the government could restrict such political speech.
Who you are should determine how much you can say — that is the admitted philosophy held by this high-court nominee.
According to the president, alluding to Kagan's role in the Citizens United case as he announced her as his Supreme Court choice on Monday, "powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens."
But who decides who those powerful interests are and how much they can say?
The most powerful interest of all does: the government.
In a 1996 University of Chicago Law School Journal article titled "Private Speech, Public Purpose: the Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine," which gets raves from left-leaning legal academics, Kagan contended that "the application of First Amendment law is best understood and most readily explained as a kind of motive-hunting."
If the motive is compelling enough, in other words, the government can regulate speech in the name of the public good.
The view that "the government may never subject particular ideas to disadvantage" is mistaken, Kagan wrote. "The government indeed may do so, if acting upon neutral, harm-based reasons."
Again, it is the government that decides if, say, a talk radio host or Tea Partyer is doing "harm" by engaging in political speech that allegedly incites some wacko to violence.
Columnist Jacob Sullum hit the bull's-eye on this when he wrote:
"While the government may constitutionally restrict speech based on 'neutrally conceived harms,' Kagan says, it may not restrict speech based on 'hostility toward ideas.'But as she herself more or less acknowledges, this distinction ultimately collapses because people are hostile to ideas they consider harmful."
In last month's 8-to-1 U.S. v. Stevens court decision regarding depictions of animal cruelty, Kagan contended that First Amendment protection "depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs," a claim Roberts called "startling and dangerous" in ruling against Kagan.
At only 50 years of age, Elena Kagan, a "speech redistributionist," could be on the high court for three decades.
Her upcoming confirmation hearings could be a First Amendment battle royal.
Obama sees America not as it was intended and how it has been the paradigm of prosperity over its first 232 years. Instead, he envisions and wants to impose a Marxist philosophy that is the antithesis of our values and work ethic. Terry Paulson assessed his mindset as "America must go beyond equal rights and responsibilities to guarantee equal outcomes and entitlement programs to ensure that".
He sums up this approach of Obama’s by noting that:
"As a result, if you work hard, save, postpone gratification, and take care of yourself and your family, you lose. Not only must you support your family; you’re “forced” to support many others."
This is, in essence, legislated servitude or legalized theft. It’s a government shakedown – and consummately repulsive.
“Give Me Individual Liberty Not Government Dependence”
Terry Paulson April 12, 2010
Dennis Prager has recently added a pearl of wisdom to his repertoire of truths—“The larger the government, the smaller the individual.” The biggest danger from President Obama’s march to bigger government rests in what this means to the grounding principles that have made America great. Will America renew its commitment to individual liberty and personal responsibility or give in to government dependence and control?
As current Tea Party demonstrators would agree, Benjamin Franklin criticized King George’s high taxes to pay for the welfare entitlements of his time, “I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act (taxes for welfare), you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on someone else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty.”
Franklin preferred “responsible” caring, "I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it…. Repeal that law (taxes), and you will soon see a change in their manners. Labor…will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them."
Thomas Jefferson concurred, "A wise and frugal government...shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." Abraham Lincoln stressed common sense, “The worst thing you can do for those you love is the thing they could and should do for themselves.”
Our free-enterprise economy has served for over 200 years as the greatest anti-poverty program in human history because it encouraged work, and discouraged idleness, more than any other. Citizens have been free to pursue their American Dream based on the principle that men are created equal in their rights and their responsibilities.
President Obama finds such values outdated. America must go beyond equal rights and responsibilities to guarantee equal outcomes and entitlement programs to ensure that. As a result, if you work hard, save, postpone gratification, and take care of yourself and your family, you lose. Not only must you support your family; you’re “forced” to support many others. Americans have no trouble providing temporary help, but they expect most to bounce back and lift their own weight.
When caring for your neighbor becomes a compulsory obligation imposed by government instead of voluntary, charity turns to confiscation and freedom to achieve to involuntary servitude. To liberals, compassion seems to be defined by how many people are dependent on the government; to conservatives, it’s defined by how many people no longer need help. One promotes dependence, the other freedom, responsibility and achievement.
There is no moral or Constitutional justification for taking money honorably earned from a neighbor to pay for what some citizens can’t afford. With one half of American voters no longer paying income taxes, wealth redistribution has turned envy into legitimized confiscation.
America has always been known for its national optimism--that sense of unlimited possibility. Only a society that allows individuals to secure the rewards from applying their unique talents will ever reap the benefits of human greatness. It’s a tragedy that so many Americans today no longer believe they can realistically achieve their dreams without electing politicians who will take from other citizens to pay for what they can’t provide for themselves.
Incentives matter. You’ll never strengthen the weak by weakening and taking from the strong. Our messy but free republic works because people are free to create value instead of becoming perpetual burdens.
In the midst of a recession, Ronald Reagan said to Americans, “I’m not taking your time this evening to ask you to trust me. Instead, I ask you to trust yourself. That is what America is all about… It’s the power of millions of people like you who will determine what will make America great again.”
Our commitment to individual freedom and responsibility is one of the anchors that has held our country together through our history’s worst economic storms. President Obama would be wise to reaffirm that anchor if he wants our economy to turn around with the resilience that only freedom can produce.
Politicians and most of the news media had no complaints when President Bush was the object of interminable vile hate and epithets that were publically spewed. Back then, they considered it to be people exercising their Constitutional rights of free speech and protest.
Now that the tables are turned, the Progressives are crying foul at anything that is less than reverential about Obama. It seems that such rights are only acceptible to them when they support their purposes and ideologies only.
An ideological war has been fought out in this country over the last century between the Founders and the Progressives. There have been ebbs and flows but recently the level of conflict has reached a painful, impressive and vitriolic high.
The magnitude of importance of the ensuing outcome can’t be overstated as regards our future as a “free” country. American citizens are now fighting to preserve and regain their rights, freedoms and hard earned money from a rapidly expanding, over-reaching and oppressive government (to its productive citizens) that sees itself as the wise, privileged ruling class.
Not unlike pre-Revolutionary war times …
Tea Party Finds Its Motivation In Constitution
By Michael Barone 03/31/2010
Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.
It's an argument that's been going on for a century but was largely dormant over the quarter-century of low-inflation economic growth after the Ronald Reagan tax cuts. It's been raised again by the expand-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.
Those policies, thoroughly in line with the Progressive tradition, have been advanced by liberal elites in government, media, think tanks and academia.
The opposition, roughly in line with the Founders tradition, has been led by the non-elites who spontaneously flocked to Tea Parties and town halls. Republican politicians have been scrambling to lead these protesters.
The conservative rebellions of the late 1970s and middle 1990s were focused on taxes. The Tea Partyers are focusing on the expansion of government — and its threat to the independence of citizens.
The first mention of tea parties came in February 2009 from CNBC's Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, when he asked "if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages. How many of you people want to pay your neighbor's mortgage, that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?"
Then he called for a Chicago tea party.
This struck a chord. Tea Partyers began to dress in 18th-century costumes — political re-enactors — and brandished the "Don't tread on me" flag. They declared their independence by opposing Progressive policies that encourage dependence on government.
The Progressives have always assumed that people needed safety nets and would welcome dependence on government. The public's clear rejection of the Democratic health care bills has shown that this assumption was unwarranted.
Americans today prefer independence to dependence on government, just as they did 200 years ago.
All this was supposed to have been consigned to the past long ago.
The Progressives of the early 1900s — Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, New Republic founder Herbert Croly — argued that in an industrial era of mass production and giant businesses, ordinary people were helpless and needed government's guiding hand.
It would be more efficient, they argued, for centralized, disinterested experts to administer national institutions than to let chaotic markets operate freely and to observe the Constitution's horse-and-buggy limits on government power.
The Founders were out of date.
The Progressives had their way for much of the 20th century.
But it became apparent that centralized experts weren't disinterested, but always sought to expand their power. And it became clear that central planners can never have the kind of information that is transmitted instantly, as Friedrich von Hayek observed, by price signals in free markets.
It turned out that centralized experts are not as wise and ordinary Americans are not as helpless as the Progressives thought.
By passing the stimulus package and the health care bills, the Democrats produced expansion of government. But voters seem to prefer expansion of liberty.
The Progressives' scorn for the Founders has not been shared by the people. First-rate books about the Founders have been best-sellers. And efforts to dismiss the Founders as slaveholders, misogynists or homophobes have been outweighed by the resonance of their words and deeds.
The Declaration of Independence's proclamation that "all men are created equal" with "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has proved to be happily elastic.
It still sings to us today, thanks to the struggles and sacrifices of many Americans who gave blacks and women the equality denied to them in 1776.
In contrast, the early Progressives' talk of an "industrial age" and an outmoded Constitution sounds like the language of an age now long past. Their faith in centralized planning seems naive in a time when one unpredicted innovation after another has changed lives for the better.
Polls and recent election results tell us that racial minorities and the so-called "educated class" — the people who expect their kind will administer centralized institutions — still take the side of the Progressives.
Most Americans, however, are rejecting the path of dependence and are intent on declaring their independence once again.
The story below details an Orlando, Florida area urologist who posted a sign on his office door stating:
“If you voted for Obama … seek urological care elsewhere.”
This physician reaction has created a tempest in many parts, but what did Obama and the Congressional Democrats expect? They have legislated involuntary servitude of America’s physicians with their corruptly passed and ideologically radical healthcare “reform”. They are trying to pay for the Obamacare wealth transfer on the backs of productive citizens and physicians though all healthcare providers including medical device companies will be negatively impacted. They are destroying the physician-patient relationship, quality of care, etc. with the insinuation of federal officials in the mix, determining who can be treated and by what (less expensive) means.
And then there is the reimbursement part that we will put in perspective. Medicare reimbursement rates this year pay doctors below 1995 levels which were low at that time. To make matters worse, as of this April 1st, reimbursement is scheduled to drop another 21.3%. In other words, physicians will be paid almost 22% less than they were 15 years ago. Meanwhile, Congress which incredibly can vote for its own pay raise, will received nearly 95% more than they were 20 years ago!
Many physicians have been losing money for years taking care of Medicare patients at artificially low reimbursement rates that don’t even cover their expenses. Now lower that rate another 22% and add far more government bureaucracy and you have a disastrous situation.
Though it may not judged to be “politically correct” for a physician to react as this sign indicated, it is well within one’s Constitutional rights to do so and does not violate any medical laws nor should it. Despite the fine line that medical societies may need to toe in response to actions of physicians like the above, there is nothing illegal or immoral. Unfortunately, our government has facilitated such actions by their oppressive legislation.
The overwhelming sentiment in the medical community is vehemently against Obamacare for myriad reasons. Therefore, we expect to see additional significant actions in the future that would far surpass this one incident in scope and extent. Reactions to Obamacare are only just beginning...
Doctor tells Obama supporters: Go elsewhere for health care
A Mount Dora doctor posted a sign telling Obama health care supporters to go elsewhere.
By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel April 2, 2010
MOUNT DORA — A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care "elsewhere."
"I'm not turning anybody away — that would be unethical," Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. "But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."
The sign reads: "If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."
Estella Chatman, 67, of Eustis, whose daughter snapped a photo of the typewritten sign, sent the picture to U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the Orlando Democrat who riled Republicans last year when he characterized the GOP's idea of health care as, "If you get sick, America … Die quickly."
Chatman said she heard about the sign from a friend referred to Cassell after his physician recently died. She said her friend did not want to speak to a reporter but was dismayed by Cassell's sign.
"He's going to find another doctor," she said.
Cassell may be walking a thin line between his right to free speech and his professional obligation, said William Allen, professor of bioethics, law and medical professionalism at the University of Florida's College of Medicine.
Allen said doctors cannot refuse patients on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability, but political preference is not one of the legally protected categories specified in civil-rights law. By insisting he does not quiz his patients about their politics and has not turned away patients based on their vote, the doctor is "trying to hold onto the nub of his ethical obligation," Allen said.
"But this is pushing the limit," he said.
Cassell, who has practiced medicine in GOP-dominated Lake County since 1988, said he doesn't quiz his patients about their politics, but he also won't hide his disdain for the bill Obama signed and the lawmakers who passed it.
In his waiting room, Cassell also has provided his patients with photocopies of a health-care timeline produced by Republican leaders that outlines "major provisions" in the health-care package. The doctor put a sign above the stack of copies that reads: "This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it and vote out anyone who voted for it."
Cassell, whose lawyer wife, Leslie Campione, has declared herself a Republican candidate for Lake County commissioner, said three patients have complained, but most have been "overwhelmingly supportive" of his position.
"They know it's not good for them," he said.
Cassell, who previously served as chief of surgery at Florida Hospital Waterman in Tavares, said a patient's politics would not affect his care for them, although he said he would prefer not to treat people who support the president.
"I can at least make a point," he said.
The notice on Cassell's office door could cause some patients to question his judgment or fret about the care they might receive if they don't share his political views, Allen said. He said doctors are wise to avoid public expressions that can affect the physician-patient relationship.
Erin VanSickle, spokeswoman for the Florida Medical Association, would not comment specifically.
But she noted in an e-mail to the Sentinel that "physicians are extended the same rights to free speech as every other citizen in the United States."
The outspoken Grayson described Cassell's sign as "ridiculous."
"I'm disgusted," he said. "Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, ‘Do no good.' If this is the face of the right wing in America, it's the face of cruelty. … Why don't they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?"
Obama is “changing” the Constitution by both by ignoring it and with insidious maneuvering. Activist judicial verdicts further pervert the original intent, reducing citizens’ rights and expanding government power and intrusion. What we need now are explicit Amendments to further delineate and proscribe federal government overreach.
Why should Congress regularly pass legislation that all Americans are mandated to follow but it is exempt from, most notably but not limited to Obamacare? What about the generous perks that they vote for themselves such as regular raises in salary and munificent retirement packages? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the average American could also say” I deserve a pay increase this year so I am going to give it to myself”- and they then do.
This corruption, greed and lack of accountability must be extinguished. Elections alone are not the answer.
Now may just may be the perfect storm for these monumentally important changes to be made.
Will Gov't Health Takeover Bring Constitutional 'Hope And Change'?
By Larry Elder 03/25/2010
We live in a fundamentally different country from that which existed only days ago. The government now requires every American to buy health insurance. The Constitution has been attacked, interpreted in a way beyond its original intent.
Therefore, we must change it.
Ignoring the will of the majority of Americans, the discouraging experiences of countries with socialized medicine, and the already staggering amount of entitlement debt, President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats "reformed" health care.
Once a nation under a Constitution that restricted government intrusion, we now want government to provide for our "needs" by calling them "rights."
We now ask government to prop up failing businesses, make student loans, guarantee mortgages, build and maintain public housing, financially support state education from preschool though graduate school, fund private research, provide disaster relief and aid, pay "volunteers" and on and on.
Many in our nation happily submit to this bargain. They consider the Big Three entitlements — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — "rights," their absence unimaginable in a modern "caring" society. It is out of the question to expect people, families and communities to plan for retirement.
It's beyond reason to expect medical care, like any other commodity, to follow the laws of supply and demand — for prices and choices to allocate resources and competition to drive down prices and improve quality. It's too much to expect the compassion, morality and spirituality of humankind to aid those unable to care for themselves.
We ignore history's examples of how good intentions produce bad results. Almost 50 years ago, another "transformative" president launched a War on Poverty. But for many welfare recipients and their families, poverty became "structural."
People became dependent on government.
After the government finally placed some restrictions on welfare, dependency declined. Much to the surprise of those who denounced welfare reform as cruel, people changed their behavior.
We ignore the experience of price controls. Government can dictate prices, but cannot dictate costs. Price controls result in rationing, drive producers out of business and cause lower quality and less innovation. America, because its citizens enjoyed greater economic freedom, built a superior health care system — which ObamaCare now threatens to dismantle.
Communism collapsed under the romantic but bankrupt notion of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive does damage to the incentive of both parties.
European countries — "social justice" democracies — produce comparatively few private-sector jobs. Europe suffers from high taxes, choking union deals that make it virtually impossible to fire workers, and government policies that mandate paid vacations and other job-killing benefits.
Into this statist abyss we willingly jump.
Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern left the Senate after 18 years and bought a small business. It went under. He wrote: "(I) wish I had known more firsthand about the concerns and problems of American businesspeople while I was a U.S. senator and later a presidential nominee. ... Legislators and government regulators must more carefully consider the economic and management burdens we have been imposing on U.S. businesses. ... Many businesses ... simply can't pass such costs on to their customers and remain competitive or profitable."
President Obama, like many in Congress, has little experience in or understanding of the private free-market economy.
Obama never started a business, ran one or struggled to meet a payroll. He shows little respect for the hard, long hours people put in to build successful businesses that hire people. He believes unequal outcomes are unjust and government exists to right this wrong by "spreading the wealth."
If this means telling doctors how to practice, so what? If this means people will be less likely to improve themselves through education and training to get "good" jobs with benefits, so what? If this means we make employers less likely to hire for fear of fines should they fail to offer health insurance, so what? And if the "wealthy" invest less and create fewer jobs because of higher taxes and expensive regulations, so what?
Now what? As many as 39 state legislatures have taken or will take action to block the mandate. Thirteen state attorneys general immediately filed suit, arguing, among other things, that ObamaCare's insurance mandate violates the Constitution's commerce clause. Expect more states to sue.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court broadly interprets the commerce clause — wildly beyond the intent of the Founders — to allow just about anything.
So, the Constitution must be changed. It must be amended to make what was once clear absolutely, positively, unavoidably clear.
Two-thirds of the states can call for a constitutional convention, where an amendment can be proposed to prohibit the forced purchase of health insurance. Three-fourths of the states could then ratify it.
As many people are beginning to realize and what we have been warning about for a long time, Obamacare is not truly about healthcare or healthcare reform. That is the liberal pretense used for its passage. This legislation is all about the transfer of wealth, expropriation of 17% of our economy by the Federal government, and unfettered control and intrusion by the government into our private lives including access to our medical records.
There are no cost savings nor will there be a reduction in our national debt. We don’t think that adding in excess of 170 new federal agencies enumerated within this bill will accomplish this trick. Nor will the planned hiring of 16,500 new IRS agents (we don’t think that they have your interest at heart) to monitor compliance save us money. These actions tell you all you need to know about Obama’s and the Congressional Democrats’ true agenda under the guise of healthcare reform.
We all must vigorously thwart implementation of Obamacare by also providing verbal and financial support to our Senators, Representatives, Tea Party Groups, organizations and States who will be fighting this despicable legislation.
Enacting A Lie
Investors Business Daily 03/22/2010
Health Overhaul: Sunday's vote exposed the ugly truth that ObamaCare is not really about health care at all. It's all about who pays for it and who controls it — in effect a massive wealth-redistribution scheme.
Those who believe this will lead to some medical nirvana will likely be disappointed. Fact is, this poorly designed monstrosity will lead to lower-quality care, higher costs, fewer practicing physicians, higher taxes and fewer jobs.
We've done more than 150 editorials in the past year or so documenting these problems. Democrats surely understand them.
Yet, despite a recent CNN poll showing that 59% of Americans oppose ObamaCare, Congress approved it anyway.
Why? Because it's not really about health care. It's the largest wealth grab in American history, masquerading as health care "reform," another step in the socialization of Americans' income in the name of "fairness" and "spread(ing) the wealth around," as Obama himself has put it.
That's why we call the program a lie.
The idea behind all this, simply put, is control. This is a vast expansion of government that will require as much as $3 trillion in added spending over a decade. All claims of deficit neutrality are a joke.
This is socialization through the tax code. That $3 trillion has to be paid for. As we showed last week, the health care bill levies $569.2 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years alone.
At the same time, as noted by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office, it will increase U.S. budget deficits by $562 billion.
Who'll pay all these taxes? Those deemed "rich" by Democrats, and businesses. Specifically, the bulk of the money comes from a special 3.8% Medicare tax on 5 million people earning more than $200,000 a year. That tax is imposed on capital gains, dividends, rents, royalties and interest — that is, investment income.
Obama already has proposed boosting these taxes in his budget. So the top tax take on dividends and cap gains will rise to 23.8% from 15%, an increase of nearly 59%, while top rates on interest and rents will soar from 15% to nearly 44%, a 193% jump.
About 50% of this higher-taxed group reports small business or partnership income. So don't be fooled: These aren't taxes on the "rich," but on small businesses and jobs.
In ObamaCare, the taxes will be ruinous. Unlike real insurance, where individuals pay to cover their risks, this program covers everyone — including 32 million uninsured — and pays for it by a "mandate" ( read: "tax" ) and by taking money from other people to subsidize those who can't pay. And this just scratches the surface of the new taxes — we literally don't have room to list them here.
Hmm. Taking money from one group, and giving it to another. That's called welfare — or, perhaps, health-fare. It's not insurance.
Once the new program is finished wrecking what remains of the private health insurance industry — as it ultimately will — we'll be stuck with the government declaring that "the market doesn't work" and forcing all of us into a single-payer government plan.
That's what those Democrats who back "Medicare for all" want — to kill what's left of the private market for health care, which has created the best medical system on earth, and use "reform" to expand an already-bankrupt Medicare system.
The math behind this is ugly. Medicare's long-term liabilities now total $89 trillion, according to the Government Accountability Office. Based on projected deficits, the just-passed health reform will take that to $136 trillion.
It will take a lot more than the "rich," as defined today, to make up such unfathomable tax shortfalls. That's when they'll come for the rest of us — poor, middle-class and rich alike — and we all will be paying vastly higher taxes for vastly inferior medical care.
Obamacare is an inherently and hopelessly flawed, corrupt, complex bill that is constructed on lies and deceptions and threatens to bankrupt our country and usurp our inalienable rights. It is also vigorously opposed by Americans by nearly a 3:1 margin but Obama and the Democrats don’t care.
We must do everything in our power to make sure that it is not passed. If it is, Congressional leaders will have succeeded by using chicanery, ad hominem attacks, dishonesty and other tactics that would make Hugo Chavez proud.
Our next move then? Mount a formidable Constitutional challenge.
Can Forcing Purchase Of Insurance Survive Constitutional Challenge?
Thomas M. Boyd 03/10/2010
“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
Congressional Budget Office (1994)
During the recent summit on health care reform, Republican leader John Boehner told President Obama that he and his colleagues believe the central funding mechanism underlying the president's latest reform proposal — the individual mandate — is unconstitutional.
This language would require every American to purchase a product — health insurance. It also has appeared in every serious proposal since ClintonCare in 1993, including the proposals now pending before Congress. If it eventually becomes law, it's sure to be challenged before the ink on the president's signature is dry.
The president's response was that Rep. Boehner was resorting to "talking points" rather than substance. It would have been far more instructive if the president, a former lecturer at Chicago Law School who as a candidate opposed the mandate, had given Boehner and the Republicans — not to mention the American public watching on C-Span — his own analysis in support of his current belief that this unprecedented requirement is constitutionally permissible.
The underlying question is as simple as it is fundamental: Can federal law mandate that an individual must purchase a good or service, whether he or she wants it or not, in order to fund a massive social program perceived to be for the larger public good?
If the American people can be forced to purchase health insurance, then can the Congress also require Americans to purchase American cars to salvage the domestic automobile industry?
The most obvious legal basis for this requirement lies in the Constitution's commerce clause. One of the "enumerated" powers granted the Congress, this language allows the Congress broad freedom to "regulate Commerce ... among the several States."
From Chief Justice John Marshall's use of the commerce clause to validate federal regulation of river traffic in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) to the New Deal's application of federally imposed restraints on wheat grown for purely local consumption (Wickard v. Filburn, 1942), to the more recent affirmation of federal regulatory superiority over otherwise permissible local cultivation of marijuana for medicinal use (Gonzales v. Raich, 2005), the Supreme Court has consistently interpreted its language to expand the role of the federal government, at the expense of the states, in regulating the conduct of people engaged in otherwise intrastate economic transactions.
But every constitutional power has its limits, and it's likely the same policymakers who now endorse the legality of the individual mandate were equally convinced that the Campaign Reform Act's ban on political advertising by corporations or unions within 30 days of an election was sacrosanct.
But on Jan. 21, when the Court rendered its 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, the nation discovered that the First Amendment trumped the exercise of congressional authority. Similarly, in this instance the freedom to exercise free will may trump the authority of the federal government to dictate choice.
If nothing else, whether the Congress has the power to require every American to purchase health insurance will be, as the CBO noted in 1994, a case of first impression for the court. And the result is certainly not preordained.
While it's always difficult to predict how justices might rule on a different set of facts, their prior opinions on the breadth of the commerce clause suggest that at least four of the majority in Citizens United v. FEC (Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas) may hesitate to embrace the kind of expansive view of the Commerce Clause that would be required to uphold the individual mandate.
That leaves Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in Citizens as the inevitable swing vote. And his views on the application of the commerce clause in a case like this are anything but clear.
Now that the president has announced his intention to proceed toward a vote on his version of health care reform, the issues are joined. And however the legality of the individual mandate is finally resolved, questions surrounding its constitutionality and the legitimate reach of the Constitution's commerce clause demand serious legal scrutiny and intense public debate in advance of any final congressional vote.
It's worth knowing, for example, where the money will come from if, when the court ultimately rules, the president and his political allies are proven wrong in their belief that the federal government has virtually limitless power to require its citizens to, in effect, go shopping.
Where will the money come from to fund a health care entitlement which, by that time, will have already become law? These questions deserve answers before, not after, Congress votes.
• Boyd, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of DLA Piper LLP, is a former assistant attorney general under President Reagan.
Over the last year, we have expressed our resolute opposition to Government controlled healthcare reform independent of the various iterations that have been promulgated. The present behemoth legislation, in excess of 2700 pages, will destroy the best healthcare system in the world and ultimately bankrupt this country with uncontrollable and unsustainable costs.
There are countless reasons to oppose this legislation, many of which have received little exposure in the press or by analysts (privacy issues). Regardless, this bill must be vehemently fought and opposed by all Americans if we want to preserve the world’s best healthcare as well as our rights and freedoms.
Below, is an abbreviated list assembled by Investors Business Daily of some of the reasons why Obamacare should not be implemented.
Why Health Bill Makes No Sense
Investors Business Daily 03/12/2010
Health Reform: So it's come down to this — desperate Democratic leaders strong-arming members on the worst bill ever before they go home to explain to constituents why they decided to commit political suicide.
We've said just about all we've had to say on this issue — actually dating back to 1993-94, when we wrote nearly 100 editorials in opposition to HillaryCare. Since January of last year, we've weighed in 150 more times against the latest version of socialized medicine.
But to review, here are just 15 reasons why a government takeover of the finest medical system in the world makes no sense at all:
1. The people don't want it! This, we would think, should have some bearing on decision-making. Yet the Democrats forge ahead without consent of the governed. In the latest Rasmussen poll, 53% opposed the Democrats' reform while 42% were in favor. More than four in 10 "strongly" opposed; just two in 10 "strongly" favored. This jibes with other surveys, including our own IBD/TIPP Poll, taken since last year.
2. Doctors don't want it! A survey we took last summer of 1,376 practicing physicians found that 45% would consider leaving their practices or taking early retirements if the Democrats' reform became law. In December, the results were validated by a Medicus poll in which 25% of doctors said they'd retire early if a public option is implemented and another 21% would stop practicing even though they were far from their retirement years. Even if the bill doesn't have a "public option," nearly 30% said they'd quit the profession under the plans being considered.
3. Half the Congress doesn't want it! Not a single Republican backed the health care bill that cleared the Senate on Christmas Eve 60-39. House passage was by a slim 220 to 215, and the lone Republican "aye" has since switched to "no."
Columnist Michael Barone says other changes would put the House vote today at 216-215 in favor, and he has doubts Democrats can even muster 216.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her job of securing yes votes even more difficult last week when she told a meeting of county officials that "we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it." Members of Congress aren't waiting: They've already exempted themselves from whatever they inflict on us.
4. People are happy with the health care they've got! Polls show that 84% of Americans have health insurance and that few are displeased with what they've got. Last month, the St. Petersburg Times looked at eight polls and reported that satisfaction rates averaged 87%.
5. It doesn't even cover the people they set out to cover! Supporters of government-run health care say there are as many as 47 million Americans — 9 million to 10 million of them illegal aliens — without medical insurance. The Democrats' plans, however, will put only 31 million of the uninsured under coverage.
6. Costs will go up, not down! Democrats say their plans will cost less than $1 trillion over the first decade. But analyst Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute puts the cost at $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years. Even if we go with the government's lower estimates, the cost is already on the rise. A new estimate by the Congressional Budget Office puts the cost of the Senate bill at $875 billion over 10 years, $4 billion more than its original projection. Imagine how fast costs would soar if one of the bills became public policy.
7. Real cost controls are nowhere to be found! The Democrats are offering no meaningful tort reform that will help push down the high malpractice insurance premiums that are a burden to doctors and their patients. Nor are they considering any other cost-saving provisions, such as allowing the sale of individual health plans across state lines or easing health insurance mandates.
8. Insurance premiums will rise, not fall! One goal of nationalizing health care is to lower costs, to bend the spending curve downward. Yet, as Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin acknowledged Wednesday, that won't be the case.
"Anyone who would stand before you and say, 'Well, if you pass health care reform, next year's health care premiums are going down,' I don't think is telling the truth," he said from the Senate floor. "I think it is likely they would go up."
An analysis completed by the CBO at the request of Sen. Evan Bayh confirms Durbin's suspicions. Insurance coverage in the individual market will "be about 10% to 13% higher in 2016 than the average premium for nongroup coverage in that same year under current law," it concluded.
9. Medicare is already bankrupting us! The Medicare trust fund, which has unfunded obligations of $37.8 trillion, will be insolvent in 2017. How can lawmakers justify another entitlement that will cost trillions when they can't pay for existing liabilities?
10. There aren't enough doctors now! Last month, 26% of physicians responding to a Web poll on Sermo.com, which calls itself "the largest online physician community," said they had been forced to close, or were considering closing, their solo practices. Providing coverage for an additional 31 million Americans when the number of doctors is shrinking won't improve our health care.
11. The doctor-patient relationship will be wrecked! The latest IBD/TIPP Poll, taken just last week, found that Americans, by a wide 48%-26% margin, believe the doctor-patient relationship will decline if the Democrats' plan is passed.
12. Medical care will also deteriorate! IBD/TIPP has also found that 51% of Americans believe care would get worse under government control. Only 10.5% said they felt it would improve. In our doctor poll, 72% disagreed with administration claims that the government could cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.
13. Rationing of care is inevitable! Health care is not an unlimited resource and must be rationed, either by the individual, providers or government. In Britain and Canada, where the government does the rationing, medical treatment waiting lists are sometimes deadly and quite often excessively long.
For instance, late cancer diagnoses in an overcrowded public health care system cause up to 10,000 needless deaths a year in Britain. The reasons cited for the late diagnoses include doctor delay, delay in primary care, system delay and delay in secondary care.
14. Private health insurers will be destroyed! Added mandates and price controls will force many insurers to simply get out of the health plan business because it will no longer be profitable.
15. It's probably unconstitutional! One way to help bring down the number of uninsured is to demand that those without coverage buy health plans. But the government has never passed a law requiring Americans to buy any good or service.
Constitutional scholars say any such mandate would likely draw a legal challenge.
By action and words on myriad occasions, Obama has indicated that the Constitution cramps his style. Exuding arrogance and narcissism, he readily indicates that he will blatantly disregard its restraints and promulgate whatever legislation he so desires, whether it be the Federal government takeover of healthcare, industries or even firearm and munitions restrictions.
Obama has shown particular disdain for and has challenged with legislation the First, Second, Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments. We, the American people, need to be eternally vigilant and vigorously oppose his each and every attempt to abrogate our Constitutional rights and freedoms.
Obama must be stopped!
Obama vs. the 10th Amendment
by Chuck Norris 03/02/2010
Not surprisingly, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released last Friday revealed that 56 percent of Americans think the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to their rights and freedoms.
Particularly apropos here is the feds' health care violation of the 10th Amendment, which is part of our Bill of Rights and was ratified Dec. 15, 1791. The amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Thomas Jefferson explained the pre-eminence of this amendment in 1791: "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
The point is that based on the 10th Amendment, when it comes to legislating and controlling our health care, the federal government doesn't have a constitutional leg to stand on. And even its past violations of the 10th Amendment by implementing government health care services have proved to break more national legs than they have to mend them. The proof is in the pudding. How many times does it have to be pointed out to Washington? Medicare is going bankrupt. Medicaid is going bankrupt. Case closed.
The government is inept to run America's health care system. And now it wants to expand its programs (its health care business) to oversee what equates to one-sixth of the gross national product? What rational board anywhere in the world would rightly appoint a CEO who had a string of miserable business failures and major corporate bankruptcies in his dossier?
I agree with Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University Medical Center, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who put it best in their article a few months back, titled "Alternatives to government health takeover." They said this: "We think it's critical that power shifts to the American consumer and away from government, employers and insurers, as evidence shows medical care prices come down when patients pay directly.
Government should offer tax relief, such as refundable tax credits, to encourage private health insurance purchasing -- especially for low-income families. Similar ideas, like those in the Patients' Choice Act ... are important for Americans to consider. We would do well also to consider creative ideas such as changing federal payments to state-based medicaid plans to individual vouchers or expanding health savings accounts, as has been done in South Carolina."
Returning the onus of solving health care issues to families, local communities and states would not only return a balance of power to our federal government but also help with America's economic recovery and build up communities at the same time.
The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans' private health care could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and that has governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution. Sadly, I was listening to an interview the other day in which President Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as "an imperfect document ... a document that reflects some deep flaws ... (and) an enormous blind spot." He also said, "The Framers had that same blind spot."
In so doing, the president established a rationale and justification for disregarding the Constitution. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those "blind Framers," who just couldn't see the big picture as he does today. After all, he's the constitutional scholar, and the Framers were just, well, the creators of the document!
Our 44th president would do well to learn from America's third president, Thomas Jefferson, himself a source greater than any living constitutional lawyer. Imagine Jefferson sitting there at the health care summit, a ripe sage at roughly 80 years of age. After listening to all the clamoring of both Republicans and Democrats, he politely but sternly utters these words, which he also wrote to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson in 1823: "The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They (did not learn from the past), nor (were they) aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market."
The U.S. Census Bureau has mandated that we complete the census forms that are replete with very personal, specific and comprehensive information. In a perfect world, if the information were to used in a benign, non-political way it may still be concerning to us. However, there are so many unanswered questions including issues related to privacy, security, usage of the information by other government agencies for reasons other than general data collection, etc. that are problematic.
The following video exposes some quite relevant and serious issues that should give us all pause before we provide the government with extremely valuable, unique and intimate information.
The news media and “our” liberal politicians see themselves as so elitist and righteous that they are resorting to attacking the American people who disagree with their policies. They disparage us as ignorant or benighted simply because we are exercising our Constitutional (and inherent) rights to oppose their far-left positions. Democracy has suddenly become an inconvenience for them as it has made passage of their various bills which would further restrict and control our rights and freedoms and plunder more of our hard earned wealth, nearly impossible.
This is also exactly why they are viciously attacking and denigrating the Tea Party Movement, a grass roots movement that represents an angry middle America. We are sick and tired of politicians imperiously foisting expensive and irresponsibly solutions on us, ransacking ever increasing amounts of the fruits of our labor, and destroying our economy, jobs and freedoms yet they live by another set of rules (including their gold plated healthcare plan), corruptly aggrandize themselves with our tax dollars and evince a general antipathy toward the people who are suppose to be their bosses.
This must stop. These despicable, arrogant, corrupt politicians must be voted out of office ASAP!
As for much of the news media, a boycott of their products and programs can be quite effective. In the following article alone, several of these are quoted from that excoriate Americans that we can place on this list:
Times Magazine, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker
To this we can add other far-left media like: MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS
Money, or the lack of it, talks. Let’s be quite loud on this issue!
Blame Americans First
Democrats lose patience with democracy.
By Matthew Continetti March 1, 2010
What’s the clearest sign the Obama agenda is in trouble? That’s easy: the string of jeremiads in the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets of fashionable opinion. Unable to tout the administration’s successes, and worried about Republican ascendancy, liberals have assigned responsibility for the mess they’re in neither to their program nor to their methods but to larger, structural faults in American politics and society. Beginning with you.
You aren’t too bright, for one thing. After all, opines Jacob Weisberg in Newsweek, the “biggest culprit” behind “our political paralysis” is the “childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.” You simply do not know what’s good for you. “On many issues these days,” writes the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein, “the American people are badly confused.” “The people may have spoken,” writes the New -Yorker’s James Surowiecki. “It’s just not clear that they’re making any sense.” In a blog post titled “Too Dumb to Thrive,” Time magazine’s Joe Klein cuts to the chase: “It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.”
The problem, as Weisberg sees it, is that America “simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, and other problems.” Note the myopia. For Weisberg, the only conceivable “action” on any issue is limited to the policy preferences of liberal Democrats. No other options spring to mind.
This is nonsense. Just because the public says the economy is important does not necessarily mean it has to support a stimulus measure that has added massively to the debt without much benefit. Just because the public is concerned with rising health care costs does not mean that it has to support a bill that could alter existing health care arrangements and increase costs in the long-term. Steven Pearlstein writes that Americans “want to do something about global warming.” No they don’t. Global warming came dead last in a recent Pew survey of public priorities.
The reason health care, cap and trade, and the other blocks of Obama’s New Foundation are unpopular isn’t public ignorance. It’s that the public sees them as counterproductive—and in many cases beside the point. The people’s representatives have responded to a variety of signals, from falling poll numbers, to town hall protests, to GOP victories in -Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Which is precisely how democracy is supposed to function.
And that’s the problem, says Kurt Andersen in New York magazine. “American democracy has gotten way too democratic.” The “thoughtful, educated, well-off, well-regarded gentlemen” who designed our Constitution “wanted a government run by an American elite like themselves.” But the “populist impulse” abroad in the land today has scared legislators into obeying the people’s demands.
It was not always thus. “In the old days,” Andersen laments, “the elite media really did control the national political discourse” and “presidents and congressional leaders could pretty well manage the policy conversations” without the public trying to butt in. But there’s no going back now; “maybe our republic’s constitutional operating system simply can’t scale up to deal satisfactorily with a heterogenous population of 310 million.”
This liberal uneasiness with democracy is not new. In 2003, in The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria made the case against too much public involvement in government. In 2008, in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman dreamed of America becoming “China for a day” so that he could impose his environmental agenda on a truculent populace. In a 2009 New York Times column, Friedman wrote that a dictatorship, “when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today,” has “great advantages” over democratic systems. In the Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows writes that “whatever is wrong with today’s Communist leadership [in Beijing], it is widely seen as pulling the country nearer to its full potential rather than pushing it away.” Nevertheless, the Democrats probably aren’t going to run on “Communist China Does It Better.”
What makes the liberal jeremiads confusing is that they work at cross purposes. On one hand, you’ve got the attacks on the people’s intelligence and representative government. On the other, you’ve got the attacks on American institutions for not being representative enough. Which is it? Are the people the problem, or is their government? According to Fallows, it’s the latter: “Our government is old and broken and dysfunctional, and may even be beyond repair.”
The culprit is the Senate, which gives equal say to states with small populations and requires 60 votes to pass legislation. Fallows says these minority rights have turned the Senate “into a deep freeze and a dead weight.” “America is not yet lost,” Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, “but the Senate is working on it.” In a Huffington Post blog, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, writes that special interests are “using the filibuster to stop legislation that would benefit the little guy,” whether the little guy likes it or not.
You can make a persuasive argument that the filibuster has been deployed too frequently in recent years, especially when it has prevented presidents, Republican and Democrat, from staffing their administrations. Nevertheless, the Senate and the filibuster are there for good reasons: to defuse momentary passions that could have unintended and harmful consequences for the country.
The system is designed to ensure broad consensus before Congress enacts major reforms. Such consensus existed during the New Deal and Great Society. And there was consensus behind certain elements of Reagan’s and Bush’s and Clinton’s programs, as well. That was not the case when George W. Bush attempted to overhaul Social Security, however. The public agreed with Bush that there was a problem, but it did not like his solution. It has had the same reaction to Obama’s proposals.
The liberal program is in disarray because liberals have failed to establish general agreement. They have found that simple majorities do not automatically translate into programmatic success. And when they are met with public opposition and institutional resistance, they do what comes naturally. They blame Americans first.
Matthew Continetti is associate editor of The Weekly Standard and the author, most recently, of The Persecution of Sarah Palin (Sentinel Books).
The Supreme Court on January 21st ruled that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law was unconstitutional and overturned it. Though intentions were ostensibly good in its passage, what it ended up doing was restricting the rights of free speech and created asymmetries in political information delivery. To wit: most of the liberal news media foisting their political biases unfettered on the public both by commission and omission yet they were not regulated by this legislation.
The ruling is a victory for free speech and the First Amendment and freedom from government intrusion and restraint on our rights.
The Gag Is Removed
Investors Business Daily 01/21/2010
Campaign Finance: Five justices ruled Thursday that corporations and labor unions can donate directly to political activities. At least someone in Washington is trying to protect free speech.
Lawmakers have been strangling constitutionally secured political speech for years. In 1990, the Supreme Court upheld a Michigan law that barred corporate political contributions. Twelve years later, Congress passed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
Among other restrictions, it banned for 30 days before a presidential primary and 60 days before the general election any "electioneering communications" that would be broadcast over television airways or transmitted via cable or satellite.
The encroachments were too much for the Roberts Supreme Court, which on Thursday invalidated 5-4 the McCain-Feingold blackout period and overturned the 1990 high court ruling in its Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission decision.
In 2008, Citizens United produced "Hillary: The Movie." The documentary, aimed at derailing Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, was political in nature. The FEC shut down pay-per-view broadcasts of "Hillary," saying that it was a political ad and therefore violated federal election law.
Citizens United, an advocacy group, rightly responded by asking the courts to protect its right to free speech. The Supreme Court rightly replied by ruling for Citizens United — and for everyone else in the country as well.
Free speech cannot survive in a society when it's for me but not for thee. If the government can take away one person's free speech, it can bar free speech for all. Yet that's the society some want.
Take note of campaign finance law supporters, who suspend belief that money donated to political activity is speech protected by the Constitution. They ignore both the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court ruling, which confirmed that political donations are speech, and their own instincts that tell them financial contributions are indeed expression.
Today they condemn the pro-liberty Citizens United ruling and lament that the Roberts Court is moving hard to the right.
The First Amendment is neither right nor left. It protects all sides of every argument — yes, even the more unsavory speech that hurts feelings and offends our sense of decency. Constitutional expression promotes a vibrant, enlightened and open society. The more information we have, the better off we are.
The Citizens United ruling is an important decision that moves the country closer to the principles of its founding and the vision of its founders.
The following editorial appearing in www.humanevents.com scrutinizes Obamacare from a constitutional perspective. No where in our Constitution is the Federal government given the authority to mandate or control healthcare. Furthermore, there are several inherent issues and requirements that are clearly unconstitutional.
Of course, many Democrats and the far left treat these issues in an arrogant, perfunctory manner. “We want this healthcare reform imposed, Constitutionality be damned” are their attitudes.
Our recommended approach: Kill the bill on the basis of Constitutionality issues which are myriad. Then, vote these corrupt imperious elitists out of office.
Obamacare's Fundamental Flaw
by Gary Bauer 01/01/2010
The Left has always had an erratic relationship with the Constitution. Liberal judges are known for discovering constitutional rights that had eluded judges for centuries. That’s because some of those so-called rights, such as the right to privacy, have no basis in the text of the Constitution but rather somewhere in its “emanations” and “penumbras.”
But the alleged right to privacy has its limits even among liberals. The Left’s judges routinely rule that the right protects abortion on demand, but its legislators have no qualms about extinguishing the right of citizens to make other private healthcare decisions free of government coercion.
While much of the healthcare debate has focused on arguments over policy, a more fundamental debate is taking place over whether the Democrats’ healthcare overhaul is even constitutional.
There is nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to be involved in healthcare, and the loud affirmation of this fact may offer conservatives their best chance to pull the plug on Obamacare. It would be ironic if it is in the courts, liberals’ favorite venue for forcing social change, that the rule of law were restored and the personal freedom of the American people affirmed.
The power to regulate each citizen’s health care is not listed in the Constitution among the federal government’s enumerated powers, and the 10th Amendment makes clear that any powers not specifically granted to Congress are reserved to the states.
But among liberals, for whom it is an article of faith that government-run healthcare is a basic human right that no person of goodwill could oppose, any arguments about its constitutionality are irrelevant.
When pressed to address constitutionality, liberals often point to the commerce clause. The Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate “commerce among the several states.” But that does not mean Congress can meddle in anything that affects economic activity. The Supreme Court has rejected the notion that the commerce clause allows Congress to regulate non-economic activities just because, somewhere down the road, they may have an effect on economic activity.
The most egregiously unconstitutional element of the health care legislation concerns the individual mandate, which requires each American to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty of up to $25,000 or one year in prison. The individual mandate is essential to the Left’s plan to impose government-run health care. Without it, because of the left’s insistence on barring insurance companies from denying coverage to people for pre-existing conditions, people would simply obtain insurance only when they have a need for medical care.
The individual mandate is a way to keep costs down, but there is not constitutional authorization for it. As Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has said, “…here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want…and…that’s not constitutionally sound.”
Back in 1994, during the Democrats’ last foray into healthcare reform, the Congressional Budget Office stated that compelling individuals to buy insurance would be “an unprecedented form of federal action” because “the government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the U.S.”
Liberals often liken the health insurance individual mandate to the law requiring all people who own automobiles to have auto insurance. But it’s a flawed argument. Only state governments, not the federal government, can require automobile owners to obtain auto insurance (and two states, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, don’t).
Also, as legal scholars at the Heritage Foundation point out in a recent legal memorandum, “automobile insurance requirements impose a condition on the voluntary activity of driving; a health insurance mandate imposes a condition on life itself.”
The Heritage memo, titled “Why the personal mandate to buy health insurance is unprecedented and unconstitutional,” also notes that states require drivers to maintain auto insurance only to cover injuries to others. “The mandate does not require drivers to insure themselves or their property against injury or damage. Thus the auto insurance requirement covers the dangers and liabilities posed by drivers to third parties only…”
It would be an understatement to say that individual mandate advocates have struggled to defend its inclusion. In a series of interviews conducted by CNSNews.com, Democrat after Democrat failed to give a coherent answer about where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance.
Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka said he was “not aware” of the Constitution giving Congress the authority, while Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) said he’d “have to check the specific sections,” and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) flatly admitted that he did not know.
Senator Blanche Lincoln should have taken the Nelson route but instead opined, “Well, I Just think the Constitution charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.” And Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) dismissed the question, insisting that “nobody” questioned Congress’ authority to require individual mandate.
Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) said Congress authorization to impose an individual mandate could be found in the part of Constitution that authorizes the federal government to “provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.” But, as CNSNews.com pointed out, “health” is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.
Then there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who simply responded “Are you serious? Are you serious?” By which she seemed to be saying, “Do you seriously think we progressives would allow constitutionality to get in the way of our half-century old goal of government-run health care?!”
There are other constitutional problems with Obamacare. For instance, if the public option provides for abortion, many Americans will be compelled to subsidize other people’s abortions, which would infringe upon the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom.
And constitutional concerns exist over exempting some states from Obamacare’s provisions. In Harry Reid’s fire sale for votes, he essentially agreed that some states would bear the brunt of the economic burden of the health care monstrosity but not others. Presently state legal experts are examining whether the constitution can force such a burden upon them.
Other constitutional issues are buried deep in the pages of the bill just now seeing the light of day. For example, in spite of recent Supreme Court decisions raising constitutional questions about racial set asides, Obamacare promises federal financial assistance to medical schools, but only if they have programs that serve “under-represented” groups based on race, sex, religion and sexual orientation.
An unintended consequence of the health care debate may be that legislators on both sides of the isle are dusting off and reading their copies of the U.S. Constitution. Conservative members of Congress should resolve in the New Year to talk more often and more loudly about the constitutional arguments against Obamacare.
If it passes, conservatives should test its constitutionality in the courts. It may well be that the jobs saved or created by the Obama Administration’s health care plan go to lawyers, not doctors.
As the ObamaCare legislation is being scrutinized by the public, innumerable insidious, discriminatory, restrictive, unconstitutional, and generally outrageous clauses and mandates are being discovered that were intentionally hidden because they were either “illegal”, reflective of corruption or egregiously bad for the public. We also suspect that not one politician who voted for the legislation has read the entire bill. What unalloyed arrogance! These contemptuous politicians all need to be voted out office at their next elections.
More Reasons For Killing Off Health Reform
Phyllis Schlafly 12/29/2009
New reasons emerge almost daily as to why ObamaCare can and must be defeated.
1. Americans oppose ObamaCare by almost 2 to 1 in the latest CNN poll. Other polls show lopsided opposition to passing either the Senate or House health care bill.
Public opinion is against the bill because of its obscene costs in higher taxes, burdensome debt, anti-freedom mandates, rationing and reduced care for seniors. The American people have awakened to the fact that ObamaCare is transformational legislation that will drag us against popular will into European-style socialism.
2. The Democrats' double-counting of ObamaCare's financial benefits has been exposed as a colossal lie. Harry Reid told the Senate that his bill strengthens our future by both "cutting our towering national deficit by as much as $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years" and "strengthening Medicare and extending its life by nearly a decade."
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) refuted that assertion. CBO said the claim that ObamaCare would provide these benefits simultaneously "would essentially double-count a large share of those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the government's fiscal position."
3. ObamaCare is unconstitutional because of its mandate that all individuals must carry "approved" health insurance and all businesses must give health insurance to their employees whether or not the company can afford it. "Universal" coverage will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service with power to punish those who don't have such a plan.
Constitutional lawyers say the Commerce Clause does not give Congress authority to force Americans to buy health insurance as a condition of living in the U.S. because personal health insurance is not "commerce." The CBO wrote that "a mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action"; the Supreme Court has never upheld any requirement that an individual must participate in economic activity.
4. Since the Senate bill imposes sharp limits on health insurance companies' ability to raise fees or exclude coverage, it likely will force many of them out of business. ObamaCare is unconstitutional because it violates the Bill of Rights protections against takings without just compensation and deprivation of property without due process of law.
5. Other ObamaCare provisions blatantly legislate racial and other forms of discrimination. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights sent two letters to the president and congressional leaders warning about the obnoxious requirements for racist and sexist quotas.
The Senate bill requires that "priority" for federal grants be given to institutions offering "preferential" admissions to minorities (race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation and religion).
Institutions training social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, behavioral pediatricians, psychiatric nurses and counselors will be ineligible for federal grants unless they enroll "individuals and groups from different racial, ethnic, cultural, geographic, religious, linguistic and class backgrounds, and different genders and sexual orientations."
6. Obama's claim that "everybody" will now be covered creates few winners but lots of losers. Universal health insurance will be achieved by forcing young people to pay the additional costs (insurance for the youngest third of the population would rise by 35%), and by restricting and rationing care for the elderly.
7. According to columnist Robert Samuelson, the "wild card is immigration." From 1999 to 2008, 60% of the increase in the uninsured occurred among Hispanics, and Obama's refusal to close our borders will make this problem more costly every year.
8. ObamaCare gives Medicare bureaucrats the power to ration health care by forcing doctors to prescribe cheaper medical devices and drugs. In the recent case of Hays v. Sebelius, the court ruled that Medicare doesn't have the right to make this rule, but ObamaCare takes jurisdiction away from the courts to hear any appeal from decisions of the new Medicare Commission.
The "stick" applied to primary-care doctors is imposing financial penalties if they refer too many patients to specialists. The "carrot" is financial rewards to doctors who give up small practices and join into larger medical groups or become salaried employees of hospitals or other large institutions.
9. The Senate bill contains at least a dozen of what can be described as bribes. Sen. Mary Landrieu received a $300 million increase in Medicaid funding for her state (known as the Second Louisiana Purchase), and a $100 million bribe to Sen. Ben Nelson gives Nebraska a permanent exemption from the costs of Medicaid expansion.
10. The Senate bill even has a four-page section artfully written to enable Acorn to get federal health care grants. This section describes grant recipients as "community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups" having "existing relationships ... with uninsured and underinsured consumers."
The elitist hauteur of liberal politicians, if left unchallenged, will translate into significant loss of many of our remaining rights and freedoms. Several prominent Democratic politicians including Obama have displayed arrogant and wanton disregard for the specifics of the Constitution, perverting its dictates in order to meet their ideological agenda.
One of these involves the current healthcare legislation based on their belief that healthcare is a right that they can fully control, regulate and issue mandates including forcing people to buy health insurance and forcing citizens to subsidize the care of others. Nowhere in the Constitution is the government given such authority.
Health Care Not In Constitution
Investors Business Daily
Self-Evident Truths: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says it comes under the Commerce Clause. Rep. Steny Hoyer says it's mandated by the "general welfare" clause. Despite liberal wishes, health care is not a right.
The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing.
Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever."
He writes glowingly of how President Franklin Roosevelt, unsatisfied with the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote, proposed a Second Bill of Rights in a speech on Jan. 11, 1944.
One of the new "rights" FDR envisioned was "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." If health care were a right under the U.S. Constitution, FDR would not have had to propose it as one to be added.
Yet liberals believe it should be, and some believe it is. Feinstein, the senior senator from California, was asked Tuesday by CNSNews on what constitutional authority the Senate and House bills are authorized. She responded, as others have, "Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That's how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs."
Maybe so, but it's a power that has been grossly abused and distorted beyond all meaning. The Commerce Clause was intended for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production distribution or consumption of commodities. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity.
Mandates including the one to buy health insurance go over the line. "Even if the Supreme Court has expanded the commerce power, there has been one constant," noted Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Congress was always regulating activities in which people chose to engage." He added that "rather than regulate what people have chosen to do," the mandates "would require them to do something they have not chosen to do at all."
When asked the same question, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer pointed to Article 1, Section 8, which gives the Congress the power to raise taxes in order to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Does that give Congress the authority to buy things like health insurance?
We and others have made the point that broccoli is good for our general welfare, but can Congress make us eat it and charge us if we don't? Losing a few pounds would help us all and reduce health care costs, but can Congress mandate health club memberships? Hoyer thinks so.
This clause says nothing about the citizens of the United States, only the United States as a whole. The Constitution provides for the raising of armies to defend the country, not for whether or when women should get mammograms and who should pay for them.
Hoyer is wrong, according to constitutional lawyer David B. Rivkin: "The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly, because if that's true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything."
Does the "general welfare" allow for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make backroom deals that tax other states and other citizens to benefit a single state such as Nebraska and its citizens and to literally bribe senators like Ben Nelson for their vote?
Health care is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the only time the word "care" appears is in Article II, Section 3, which says the president of the United States "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." That includes our highest law, the U.S. Constitution.
The magnitude of corruption, bribery with our tax dollars and complete contempt and disregard for the wishes of the American people that occurred in the process of trying to legislate healthcare reform is essentially unprecedented in national politics. Congress’ responses to questions of Constitutionality of some of the mandates and clauses are dismissive. Obama and these Democrats are telling us: We don’t give a damn about what you want or don’t want and we will do as we please.
As we have been warming for a long time, this has become a dictatorial government that will trample over our rights and freedoms, steal and deal our tax dollars, and impose at will whatever legislation they deem important in order to satisfy their ideological goals.
We must do whatever it takes to reclaim our country!
Forever Gone
Investors Business Daily 12/22/2009
DeMint: Is health care reform even constitutional? AP Photo
Any law can be repealed, but the Democrats' radical health bill contains unprecedented language that could wreck the U.S. health system permanently. It's one of the dirtiest tricks yet.
'Page 1,020" — it may soon be a mantra for one of the most disturbing abuses of legislative power in history. In setting up an Independent Medicare Advisory Board, that page of the Senate health overhaul bill passed in the dead of night early Monday says, "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."
This enters the realm of "hyperlaw" or "laws on steroids."
As Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., pointed out on the Senate floor, it isn't lawmaking, but rather "creating a Senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law."
DeMint is "not even sure that it's constitutional," since it affects "the fundamental purpose of Senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future Congresses."
Clearly liberal Democratic leaders will stoop to record depths to expand the federal government's powers.
Public support plummets well down into the 30s? They don't bat an eyelash.
Mandating an individual's purchase of a private service like insurance tramples the Constitution? Just watch them do it.
Bribe Senators Tom, Dick and Ben? Here's the cash.
As John Steele Gordon noted in Commentary, the Medicaid bribe that bought the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is so unprecedented it may not withstand constitutional muster.
According to Gordon, "one could argue that Nebraskans will be getting what amounts to a rebate on federal taxes through the backdoor of lower state taxes," which might violate Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution requiring government collections to be "uniform throughout the United States."
As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admits, "I don't know that there's a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that isn't important to them," adding that "if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them."
That is the arrogance of the mind-set dominating the legislative and executive branches: Your money is really theirs, to be handed out like a Mob-backed union boss toting a bag of cash on the waterfront.
When you put together Medicare and Medicaid recipients, government employees and contractors, and active and former military members and their dependents, over 40% of Americans receive government-subsidized health care. The Democrats' health care revolution would up that to a solid majority of our citizens.
American history shows that once an entitlement is enacted, it's next to impossible to erase. Catastrophic health care for seniors, passed 20 years ago, is the only such program ever repealed; the 1996 welfare reform severely limited that socially destructive entitlement.
The statists may now finally have bitten off more than they will be able to chew politically. If Republicans act like Republicans and convince the populist Tea Party movement not to go the suicidal third-party route, the coming public backlash will see to it that the greatest health care system in the world is not gone for good.
Look for demonstrators to start burning copies of Page 1,020 the way '60s radicals used to burn their draft cards.
Though this piece was written three months ago for the American Thinker, the intervening events have added even more solid validation of the perspicacious assessment of Obama, the emperor who is not wearing any clothes. Of course, you can also substitute the words readily available on the tip of the tongues of his fervent minions: “savior” or “messiah” instead of emperor.
How much more of this can we endure?
Another Failed Presidency
by Geoffrey P. Hunt Aug. 31, 2009
Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.
George Bush Jr. didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.
But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?
No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.
But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.
In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."
Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.
Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.
The following is the third editorial posted here that was written by Svetlana Kunin, a Russian immigrant who lived in the communist Soviet Union. It offers her unique insights into the parallels of life and rhetoric in Russia and what is occurring here in the United States under Obama, Pelosi and Co. We must be vigilant, aggressive, proactive and vocal and do whatever is necessary to thwart these changes or this will be another example of history repeating itself to our severe detriment.
Perspective Of A Russian Immigrant (No. 3)
By Svetlana Kunin
Whenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States.
They don't understand why I am repulsed when I hear the president talk about "sacrificing for the collective good," which sounds so compassionate, as opposed to greedy capitalism.
"Sacrifice for the collective good" is one of the founding principles of socialism, where the collective, not the individual, is the basis of society.
Revolutionaries in Russia did not go around boasting about destruction; they made inspiring speeches about fairness, equality, justice and the greater good. After securing power and their own access to material goods, government officials decided what to give and take from the masses, according to their definition of what is good.
When party leaders talk about the "collective good," what they are really talking about is their right to determine what is good for the collective. Government bureaucrats decide what level of sacrifice is needed and who needs to sacrifice. They replace voluntary charity with the forceful redistribution of other people's private property.
Why do people born into a free society accept a failed 100-year-old ideology? It seems Americans are simply unaware of modern history. They don't know the theory behind slogans such as "fairness and equality" and "sacrifice for the collective good," much less how it works when implemented. They buy into old utopian slogans masquerading as new progressive ideals for "Hope and Change."
In the USA, people move up and down the economic ladder all the time. In Western Europe, a milder form of a socialist-democratic political system resulted in higher unemployment, less innovation and less social mobility compared with the U.S. European youth face a continuing decline in their standard of living, as they are burdened with an unsustainable welfare state.
In the USSR, China, North Korea and Cuba, a much harsher form of socialism led to mass murder and mass misery under the banner of "sacrificing for the collective good," "fairness and equality" and service to the state.
The USSR provides numerous examples of what an oppressive centralized government can lead to:
Millions of talented artists, writers and scientists were sent to prison because they did not conform to government standards. Government control of agriculture led to constant shortages of food in one of the largest and most resource-rich lands in the world.
Americans think they are protected. The Constitution is a uniquely American document that specifically limits the power of the government and protects individual liberties. But if all branches of government will ignore this unique document, and people will allow them to do so, there will be nothing different about America.
Americans are not different from people in Russia, Germany, China, Korea or anywhere else. It is human nature to seek power and control, just as it is human nature to seek profit. Deny profit and you destroy any incentive for people to produce and innovate. Give up enough of your liberty to any centralized power and the result is entirely predictable.
Compare North Korea to South Korea, East Germany to West Germany before the fall of the wall — these are examples of the same people living under two different systems: socialism vs. capitalism.
Laws are necessary in a civil society, and this includes laws that regulate the free market. But a government takeover of the economy will result in the transformation of the land of opportunity into a land of apathy and stagnation, a land in which individuals become cogs moving and turning according to government regulations.
In the USSR, they taught us in school that socialism is good and capitalism is bad. That they now teach the same in American schools I find strange.
In a speech delivered by Obama in Tokyo, he arrogantly called himself the “first Pacific President”. He also constantly reminds us of his firsts such as being the first African-American President and first one with a Muslim father, etc. These are all manifestations of his insatiable narcissism.
We have a few suggestions for him to add to his list of “firsts” - and these are actually true. How about claiming about being the first President to electively surround himself in government with communists, terrorists and anti-American individuals? Or being the first President whose ideologies and policies mirror those of our staunchest enemies rather than those of a free and democratic America based on a Constitution that should serve to protect and delineate personal rights and freedoms? Oh yes, and he can be considered to be the first President who finds the Constitution too confining, antediluvian and inconvenient for his radical agenda – essentially over rated in importance.
In the following video, Charles Krauthammer discusses Obama’s narcissism and the fallacy of his self-assigned appellation.
The following press release by Jim DeMint unveils his brilliant plan of seeking an Amendment to the United States Constitution which will set term limits for U. S. Senators and U.S. Representatives. In a very lucid and concise fashion he presents a very convincing case for this action.
November 10, 2009 - WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) introduced an amendment to the United States Constitution that would apply term limits to all members of Congress, limiting U.S. Representatives to three terms and U.S. Senators to two terms in office. The amendment is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), and Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). As an amendment to the Constitution, it would require a two-thirds majority vote approval in the House and Senate and must be ratified by three-fourths of the states.
"Americans know real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians," said Senator DeMint. "As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buyoff special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power. I have come to realize that if we want to change the policies coming out of Congress, we must change the process itself. Over the last 20 years, Washington politicians have been reelected about 90% of the time because the system is heavily tilted in favor of incumbents. If we really want to put an end to business as usual, we’ve got to have new leaders coming to Washington instead of rearranging the deck chairs as the ship goes down.”
Senator Coburn added, “The best way to ensure we are truly a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, is to replace the career politicians in Washington with citizen legislators who care more about the next generation than their next election. The power of incumbency has created an almost insurmountable advantage for Washington politicians. Incumbency allows politicians to raise millions of dollars in campaign funds in exchange for earmarks. Incumbency gives Congress the power to raise money for itself – Congress just approved itself an increase of nearly $250 million from the U.S. Treasury that members will spend to promote themselves. Finally, with redistricting incumbents can choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives. Term limits is the best way to break this cycle.”
“Some say only long-serving, seasoned elites have the skills to lead the people, but that’s exactly what we have today and how do you think it’s working out for us?” said Senator DeMint. “It wasn’t the ‘people’ who gave us a $12 trillion debt, an IRS tax code seven times longer than the Bible, over 1,700 departments of the federal government, trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, $100 trillion long-term shortfall in Social Security and Medicare, the Wall Street and auto bailouts, and the pending health care takeover.
“This nation can no longer afford these entrenched men and women who enjoy lives of luxury wholly insulated from the consequences of their major policy failures.
“I want to be clear: demanding that reformers adopt self-imposed term limits is a recipe for self-defeat on this issue. We lost the battle for term limits after the 1994 Republican Contract with America because we forced our best advocates for reform to go home, while the big-spending career politicians waited them out. We must have term limits for all or term limits will never succeed. Only when we apply the same rules to all will we be able to enact vital bipartisan reforms.
“Term limits will increase legislative turnover, expand the field of candidates who run for office, and instill transparency and accountability in our public officials. By ratifying this amendment, we can end the tremendous advantage enjoyed by incumbents in Washington, break long-lasting ties to special interests and lobbyists, and transform Congress from the body of career politicians that it has become, to a chamber of true citizen legislators,” said Senator DeMint.
History repeats itself. Those who don’t learn from it are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. In our present situation in America, all the warning signs have been there and couldn’t be any clearer yet many either refuse to believe them or are just plain apathetic, lazy or corrupt.
USSR, 1959: I am a "young pioneer" in school. History classes remind us that there is a higher authority than their parents and teachers: the leaders of the Communist Party.
The story of young pioneer Pavlik Morozov is required reading. Pavlik reported his father to the secret police for disobeying government regulations. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to serve their government.
From the first year in school, all of us are made aware of our ethnicity (ethnic Russian, Jewish, Asian, etc.) and class (proletariat, intelligentsia), around which society is structured. This inherent divisiveness makes it easy for the government to stir ethnic and class tension and in this way distract from economic failure.
Newspapers and TV transmit government-approved news. Any critical voice is immediately suppressed and publicly denounced.
My parents, as all citizens of the USSR, work for state-run companies. All workers are unionized — another way the state controls the citizens. There is no private enterprise in USSR.
Whatever small private farms or shops that existed before 1930 have been taken over by the state. All medical care and schools are state entities. The government regulates what kind of technology, service and compensation are allowed.
From school age through adulthood, citizens are called to public service four to five times a year. Activities such as farming, cleaning places of work, and paper/metal scrap collections are mandatory.
Religious symbols are forbidden in schools or on state property. Most old religious buildings are transformed for secular use.
The Soviet government imposes the Iron Curtain. The state has strict control over our ability to travel abroad. This prevents us from realizing the discrepancy between the media's image of the great socialist country and the reality of our low standard of living.
USA, 2009: "Progressives" control the government. Children in some public schools sing songs about the president and study his directives.
Progressives view people not as unique individuals, but as groups. They play on class envy, or divide people by ethnicity (African-American, white, Hispanic, etc.). From early childhood they remind children of their ethnic identity. The idea of a color-blind society united under the American flag is not politically correct.
The mainstream media are aligned with the government. Those media outlets critical of government policy are publicly criticized by government officials and are in danger of suffering repercussions.
Government seizes a majority stake in two major auto companies and, through TARP money, has control over major banks.
Congress discusses capping salaries in private businesses and is in the process of increasing its control over the health care industry.
Big labor union leadership is fully aligned with the progressives in government. There is strong pressure to eliminate the secret ballot in order to increase union membership.
Cap-and-trade, if passed, will drive a lot of small businesses into bankruptcy and create a fruitful soil for favoritism and government control over private entities.
Sept. 11 is declared a day of national service by the administration. It is no longer a day of remembrance for the horrific attack perpetrated by terrorists.
The American Constitution protects the separation between church and state. Atheist zealots pervert this ideal in order to force out religious symbols and traditions from public space. It is fashionable in progressive circles to ridicule religion and religious people. "Tolerance" is applied only to anti-religious values.
As a former citizen of the USSR, I heard and experienced all of this before. I listen to the speeches by the president asking people to sacrifice and serve. So what are we to sacrifice? For what? And to whom? I think I get it now.
Citizens of America, sacrifice your elders and forget your selfish aspirations of prosperity for yourself and your family! Sign onto Service.gov and serve your government!
• Kunin lived in the Soviet Union until 1980 and now lives in Connecticut.
The following editorial, written by Thomas Sowell, should serve as a clarion call to all Americans that our country, rights, freedoms and way of life are on the precipice of annihilation due to the inimical ideologies combined with contemptuous, nefarious, imperious politicians who desire unfettered power. In a very comprehensive yet succinct and persuasive manner, he states his case … which we must act on immediately and decisively before the situation becomes even more dire.
Dismantling America — Piece By Piece
By THOMAS SOWELL
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50% or 90%?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — to create a situation where some papers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get lifesaving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life-and-death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving schoolchildren material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies.
What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brownshirts of dictators than like anything American. How far the president will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America"; the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among those appointed as czars by Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government — people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.
Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.
Nothing so epitomizes Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed.
That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.
Internationally, Obama has made every mistake that was made by the Western democracies in the 1930s, mistakes that put Hitler in a position to start World War II — and come dangerously close to winning it.
At the heart of those mistakes was trying to mollify your enemies by throwing your friends to the wolves. The administration has already done that by reneging on this country's commitment to put a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and its lackadaisical foot-dragging on doing anything serious to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That means, for all practical purposes, throwing Israel to the wolves as well.
Countries around the world that have to look out for their own national survival, above all, are not going to ignore how much Obama has downgraded the reliability of America's commitments.
Iraq, for example, knows that Iran is going to be next door forever, while Americans may be gone in a few years. South Korea likewise knows that North Korea is permanently next door, but who knows when the Obama administration will get a bright idea to pull out?
Countries in South America know that Hugo Chavez is allying Venezuela with Iran. Dare they ally themselves with an unreliable U.S.A.? Or should they join our enemies to work against us? This issue is too serious for squeamish silence.
The eminent climate change skeptic, Lord Christopher Monckton, gave a presentation in St. Paul, Minnesota on October 14th. In this 4-minute excerpt from his speech, he issues a dire warning to Americans regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty which is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009 by Obama. There has been considerable debate raging about Monckton’s premise that the Copenhagen Treaty would cede US sovereignty.
It has been largely Republican members of Congress who have questioned the legality and authority of Obama’s myriad czars. The calls for more scrutiny of these appointees intensified when the radicalism of the “green jobs” czar, Van Jones, came to the fore. A few Democrats have joined the chorus of concern including one of the more liberal members of the Senate, Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who also is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has requested information from the White House regarding the exact roles and responsibilities of the czars as well as the constitutionality of their powers.
With the excessive number of czars in place, many with radical agendas that they ostensibly want to implement, and no defined restraint of power, Obama has essentially created a parallel unelected shadow government that has no accountability to the American people or even to Congress. Left unchecked, this situation has the potential to severely curtail our rights and freedoms and radically and undesirably transform our socioeconomic system.
The following letter was originally published in IBD on Friday August 21st and has been appeared again in several subsequent editions. We feel the perspective and message is powerful and important enough that it be posted in its entirety this 9/11. Many Americans take for granted the rights and freedoms that we still have and don't realize that we must relentlessly fight to preserve them as they can be legislated or just taken away.
By SVETLANA KUNIN
In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble.
In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness.
Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures.
The government-assigned salary of the proletariat (blue-collar worker) was 30%-50% higher then any professional. Without incentive to improve their life, professionals drank themselves to oblivion. They — engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers — earned a government-determined salary that barely covered the necessities, mainly food.
Raising children was a hardship. It took four to six adults (parents and grandparents) to support a child. The usual size of the postwar family was one or two children. Every woman had the right to have an abortion and most of them did, often without anesthesia.
There is a comparative historical reality that plays out the consequences of two competing ideologies: life in the USSR and in America. When the march to the worker's paradise — the Socialist Revolution — began in 1917, many people emigrated from Russia to the U.S.
In the USSR, economic equality was achieved by redistributing wealth, ensuring that everyone remained poor, with the exception of those doing the redistributing. Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West.
The rest of the citizenry had to deal with permanent shortages of food and other necessities, and had access to free but inferior, unsanitary and low-tech medical care. The egalitarian utopia of equality, achieved by the sacrifice of individual self-interest for the collective good, led to corruption, black markets, anger and envy.
Government-controlled health care destroyed human dignity.
Chairman Nikita Khrushchev released facts about Stalin and his purges. People learned of the horrific purge of more than 20 million citizens, murdered as enemies of the state.
Those who left Russia found a different set of values in America: freedom of religion, speech, individual pursuits, the right to private property and free enterprise. The majority of those immigrants achieved a better life for themselves and their children in this capitalist land.
These opportunities let the average immigrant live a better life than many elites in the Soviet Communist Party. The freedom to pursue personal self-interest led to prosperity. Prosperity generated charity, benefiting the collective good.
The descendants of those immigrants are now supporting policies that move America away from the values that gave so many immigrants the chance of a better life. Policies such as nationalized medicine, high tax rates and government intrusion into free enterprise are being sold to us under the socialistic motto of collective salvation.
Socialism has bankrupted and failed every society, while capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.
There is no perfect society. There are no perfect people. Critics say that greed is the driving force of capitalism. My answer is that envy is the driving force of socialism. Change to socialism is not an improvement on the imperfections of the current system.
The slogans of "fairness and equality" sound better than the slogans of capitalism. But unlike at the beginning of the 20th century, when these slogans and ideas were yet to be tested, we have accumulated history and reality.
Today we can define the better system not by slogans, but by looking at the accumulated facts. We can compare which ideology leads to the most oppression and which brings the most opportunity.
When I came to America in 1980 and experienced life in this country, I thought it was fortunate that those living in the USSR did not know how unfortunate they were.
Now in 2009, I realize how unfortunate it is that many Americans do not understand how fortunate they are. They vote to give government more and more power without understanding the consequences.
Svetlana Kunin, Stamford, Conn.
Editor's note: Mrs. Kunin, an IBD subscriber, is a retired software developer. In the Soviet Union, she was a civil engineer.
There is a wise adage that goes: “Tell me who your friends are and I will know who you are.” Why are we mentioning it? Because before Obama was elected President, we learned of the many radicals, hate mongerers and anti-American individuals that Obama had associations with, some for a very long time - like Reverend Wright, William Ayers, Sheik Khalid, Saul Alinsky and Bernadine Dohrn. Despite his denials of any inimical influences from these individuals and the liberal press’ staunchly defending his claims, the pattern was irrefutable and damning.
Many conservatives in the media relentlessly and emphatically warned us that these were no chance and brief meetings and that Obama’s disaffirmations were overt audacious lies. He was a far left radical with an anti-American and racist agenda trying to pass himself off as a moderate. Unfortunately, a majority of voters seemed to have largely downplayed this – now to the detriment of our country.
We are seeing many of the manifestations of this radicalism now that Obama is President which he artfully tried to disguise previously. Many of the approximately 44 czars that he has appointed are of the same philosophical ilk – far left, radical, anti-American, racist and even avowed communists. Their positions in power and diversity of areas controlled make them a clear and present danger to the freedom and rights of ALL Americans!
We will be exposing several of these individuals in the future. The first is Mark Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and an admirer of Hugo Chavez, who was appointed as the chief diversity officer at the FCC. His philosophy is that free speech is an inconvenience that interferes with governance and need to be rigidly controlled. That includes cable news, talk radio and the internet. He praised Hugo Chavez’s revolution in Venezuela when he clamped down on opposition news sources including radio and TV stations.
Mark Lloyd is a dangerous radical in a position to effect severe restraints of our rights of free speech and diversity of information. He must be exposed and stopped!
Obama, Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats consistently demonstrate why they are dangerous for America and the rights of the American people. They write legislation like peremptory decrees – impose it on Americans and stifle all discussion. Democracies are based on the free flow of thought and the unimpeded right to dissent and protest. That is not what Obama, Pelosi, et. al have in mind.
During the Bush Administration, Congressional Democrats including Senator Obama, inexorably exercised their rights of free speech and dissent, frequently past the point of proper decorum and often beyond what jeopardized our national security. The media was complicit in this, especially the New York Times. You didn’t hear Bush or Cheney viciously attacking these partisans or worse, the American people.
Obama, Pelosi and several Congressional Democrats are waging blistering, vicious attacks on American citizens simply because they are exercising their Constitutional rights and voicing their concerns and outrage regarding irresponsible legislation, profligate spending, oppressive taxation, unchecked government intrusion in their personal lives, and risks to their rights and freedoms. The Government’s attacks are not just verbal but have also become physical. They are facilitating mob like tactics such as using labor union members (SEIU) as enforcers and protectors of their ideology.
These directives are coming right out of the White House and Congress. The sycophantic news media and the radical anti-American ACLU have not issued condemnations of what is transpiring. As to be expected!
American citizens must relentlessly continue to exercise their rights to dissent and free speech and vociferously voice their concerns otherwise we will lose many more of our Rights and Freedoms.
A shroud of mystery and intrigue persist regarding Obama’s true birthplace. The magnitude of importance of the real answer is immeasurable because the U.S. Constitutions explicitly mandates that an individual who seeks the Presidency must be born an American citizen and not a naturalized one.
Rumors have lingered for a long time that the birth certificate from Hawaii is not the real or original one and that he was actually born in Kenya. Up until now, there has been no irrefutable evidence to support this contention such as documentation from Kenya. However, a birth certificate from Kenya surfaced recently that does not overtly appear to be a fake. If this is ultimately proven to be the genuine article, then have we got a real story!
Though a majority of Americans either didn’t see or chose to ignore the radicalism, hate, racism, lies and deceptions, disingenuous rhetoric, arrogance and inexperience of Obama prior to the Presidential election, many of these people are coming to their senses now and are horrified at what they see. In fact, many are downright scared or even terrified. In just six months, America’s economic and political systems have metamorphosed by fiat more than any other time in our history. The end result is essentially fascism and socialism with a consolidation of power, reckless expansion of an arrogant government, ubiquitous governmental intrusion, irresponsible foreign policy, onerous taxes, wealth redistribution, class warfare, and laws and actions in direct conflict of our Constitution.
Leading this radical “change you can’t believe is happening” is Obama abetted by the ideologically far-left, filibuster proof Democrat controlled Congress. Speaker of the House Pelosi, the most far left and anti-American politician in Congress, runs the House of Representatives like a dictator and does much of his bidding. America is in deep trouble.
In the following editorial by the renowned economist, philosopher and columnist Thomas Sowell, he explicitly enumerates the many areas of concern that he has about Obama, his policies and the potential for unparalleled disaster in America.
Closely scrutinizing the big picture by assessing Obama’s past, his rhetoric, associations and actions reveals far more nefarious intent than most people realize. In just a short time, he along with an abetting Democrat controlled Congress has turned this country upside down economically, socially and politically. Intentionally irresponsible legislation will bring this country to the brink of bankruptcy and encumber Americans with taxation rates consistent with slavery. It will also insinuate the government in all aspects of our lives so that we will be severely constrained legally in our options and activities of daily living. In the last few months, it has acquired varying levels of control of our banking, insurance, and automobile industry and is intent on taking over the healthcare sector which constitutes around seventeen percent of America’s GDP. The Cap and Trade Bill threatens to massively increase our taxes and the cost of energy including an estimated doubling of the price for electricity as well as even the light bulbs we use. It will also affect the cars we drive and even how much we do drive.
If all this weren’t egregious enough for the American people, there are now some rumors that consideration is being given to some sort of monitoring and policing of the internet by the Federal government. Though not couched in such terms, this is unequivocally censorship which threatens our First Amendment rights and with it, many others. This must not be allowed to come to fruition.
Testifying during the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, the lead plaintiff firefighter in the Ricci vs. DeStefano (The City of New Haven) case stated that “Americans have the right to go into our federal courts and have their cases judged based on the Constitution and our laws, not on politics and personal feelings”. He also unwaveringly asserted that Sotomayor’s ruling against the firefighters in his case was solely based on "politics" and "personal feelings" and not on the law.
During the confirmation hearings, Sotomayor has been evasive and guarded in her responses to some very important questions in order to avoid controversy and be able to quickly wrap up her confirmation. Many of her answers belied her previous rulings and statements. This is a particularly prevalent tack that Obama, his cronies and nominees have adhered to – say one thing to garner votes and then do something totally different which was the true, original underlying intention. Hence the warnings that we should adhere to when reading and listening to the idologues: Actions speak louder than words. No matter what Sotomayor states in the hearings, her past record belies her true positions which should definitely strike fear in the minds and hearts of the average citizen.
Many Americans have been duped by these despicable deceptions, prevarications and the complete absence of integrity. This is all part of a master plan base on ideology to shrewdly but resolutely acquire power so that the Federal government will ultimately control most aspects of each citizen’s life.
In the recent history of these confirmation hearings, the Democrats have monolithically voted for the appointees if they were liberal and against if they were of conservative ideology – and aggressively and relentlessly challenged them. The Republican Senators have been far too gracious and derelict of their responsibilities, essentially mailing it in and accepting candidates that should have undergone far more rigorous questioning. Unfortunately, it appears that history is repeating itself again. This should rightfully enrage the countless conservatives who are placing their dwindling hopes that Sotomayor can be exposed for the racially divisive jurist that she has so patently demonstrated in the past and have her confirmation blocked. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama has taken his responsibilities seriously and should be lauded whereas Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina initial comments to her that confirmation was inevitable essentially removed virtually all of the pressure off her.
The following is Senator Jeff Sessions in Senate Hearings discussing concerns regarding Sotomayor and the issue of "empathy"
In this video, Senator Sessions discusses his concerns about Sotomayor and the Second Amendment
This video shows Democrat Charles Schumer, the smarmy, arrogant, and condescending lawmaker that he is in his introduction of Sotomayor. You may not want to watch this on a full stomach!
In the National Journal Review, Stuart Taylor closely examines the infamous New Haven firefighters affirmative action case. What he discovered was that the evidence and information reveal a far more indefensible decision reached by Sotomayor with manipulation of the legal system in order to facilitate the hiring of undeserving and unqualified minorities so as to obtain racial diversity. Even more abhorrent is that she used her legal position to pervert and “interpret” the law in accord with her race based ideologies in a very disingenuous, corrupt fashion. The result also is the violation of the civil rights of those individuals who passed the test and should have been given the jobs which they rightfully earned.
As we have emphatically stated in earlier posts, Sotomayor must not be confirmed to be a Supreme Court Justice!
Chicago’s gun control law (ban) was upheld by a three judge panel based on their unusual interpretation of the Constitution. Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s selection for Supreme Court justice, supports this decision. This is additional evidence that she is on the wrong side of the right to bear arms.
Read: Sotomayor Guns For The 2nd Amendment
Americans are getting restive and angry with the bloodless coup we find ourselves in the midst of thanks to the Obama Administration, Pelosi, Reid and other ultra-left Liberals in Congress. In every direction we turn, there are threats to our rights, freedoms and economic well-being. We have ubiquitous taxes and proposals for more taxes. Giving our fair share means taking as much as possible from those who are productive and distributing it to those who are lazy, undeserving or illegally living in this country.
Warp speed to Socialism with consolidation of power and wealth to the Big Brother Government! It is now the proud owner of GM, wants to determine pay for employees of companies even beyond those to whom it has bailed out and gives sweetheart deals to unions while illegally shafting bond holders.
In the legal department, we have a nominee (Sotomayor) that in no uncertain terms states that some individuals are more equal than others, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. She also has indicated disdain for the First Amendment (Right to Free Speech) and the Second Amendment (Right to Bear Arms) as well. We haven’t yet reviewed her stance on the other Amendments.
We can go on and on enumerating more of these radical changes and confiscatory policies being implemented but you get the point. Meanwhile, where is the opposition, the Republican Party who is supposed to represent and speak out for us? They are a minority party but their influence and presence appears to be microscopic. Perception and appearance is everything and they appear to be a feckless group though this may not necessarily the case. Instead, several passionate, articulate and well-informed Conservatives in the media have effectively taken on the challenges. Like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Newt Gingrich, Thomas Sowell and many others. Conservatives in America have been active with grassroot organizations and, of course, the Tea Parties.
The Republican Party needs to be more articulate, passionate, aggressive, bold, persistent and omnipresent rather than just polite and trying to be thought of positively by the liberal media. Maybe they should seek inspiration from their New York counterparts who recently staged a coup in their State Senate.
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