We have just finished our second year of presenting you with information and opinions on issues relating to attacks by our government on our rights, freedoms and way of life as intended and established by our Founding Fathers. These past 27 months under the ideologically radical, intellectually dishonest, corrupt, arrogant, racist and abjectly incompetent Obama Administration have been among the worst (excluding the Civil War) in our nation's history.
Even worse than the Carter's years.
We have a "president" who shows an unmistakable and perpetual disdain for our country and a majority of its citizens (which has been on display internationally). His actions have consistently been geared to weakening us economically and militarily and to reducing us to a non-exceptional and middling nation in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Domestically, he has relentlessly sought to abrogate our rights, freedoms and choices often by resorting to unconstitutional or fringe means and regulations that frequently make use of his hand-picked radical, anti-American and often Marxist czars and far-left infested government agencies. These are imposed against the will of the people - US!
These are the signs and manifestations of tyranny and MUST NOT BE TOLERATED.
Obama, as well as those in his Administration, in Congress and elsewhere who seek to negate our rights like that which occurred in the old Soviet Union through the Politburo, must be vehemently and vociferously opposed and either neutralized or removed from office or government positions.
Information is power and we must use it to Save Our Rights!
Thank you for your continued support ... and spread the word.
Many of the elected Left are seeking to make elections and elected officials somewhat unimportant in many ways. That is, they are continually seeking to impose greater restrictions on the American public not necessarily just through laws passed by Congress but also by seemingly infinite rules and regulations promulgated by unelected bureaucrats.
Their goal?
To evolve our country into a socialistic one with a large central government that has virtually total control over most of the activities of its citizenry. The population will be neutered with an ever increasing number becoming docile and agreeable dependents of the State. This further facilitates implementation of their far left ideological agenda.
These same politicians, who are acting like an elitist class akin to the politburo of former Soviet Union, will be rewarded with privilege, power and wealth. We have to look no further than Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel, Charlie Schumer and Barney Frank to see what is transpiring.
The solution?
We must vociferously and staunchly oppose all these individuals and their policies and do whatever it takes to abrogate their actions and remove them from office.
Our Unelected Rulers
Investor’s Business Daily 04/15/2011
Administrative State: Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi says "elections shouldn't matter as much as they do." Maybe they don't even matter as much as she thinks they do. It seems that bureaucrats are making our laws.
Speaking last week at Tufts University, Pelosi suggested that until recently there was little difference between her party and the Republicans because of "shared values." In her mind, these shared values had rendered elections meaningless in the pre-Tea Party era. But now she fears a true grass-roots uprising has forced a bright line between the parties.
What she and most of the country are missing, though, is the impact of the administrative state. America has become a nation where unelected regulators make law. We should be alarmed.
Recently we learned from U.S. News & World Report that "just six pages" of the 907-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have been turned "into 429 pages of new regulations." That is one page for "every page of (President) Obama's campaign book, 'The Audacity of Hope' — plus another 45 pages."
A few months earlier, the New York Times reported that federal rule makers "suddenly find themselves at the center of power as they scramble to work out details of hundreds of sweeping financial and health care regulations that will ultimately affect most Americans."
According to the Times, "More than 200 health regulators working on complicated insurance rules have taken over three floors of a suburban office building" in Bethesda, Md., "paying almost double the market rate for the space in their rush to get started."
Paul Dennett, senior vice president of the American Benefits Council, a trade group for large employers, is quoted as saying: "There has never been a period like what we are going through now, in terms of the sheer volume and complexity of rule-making."
Issues to be settled by regulators, not elected officials, the Times said, include:
• How much credit-card companies can charge shopkeepers for administrative fees when cards are swiped for purchases.
• Which types of financial companies are so "systemically important" to the economy that they should be subject to greater federal oversight.
• What services must be covered by all insurers as part of the "essential health benefits" package and at what point would premium increases be considered so "unreasonable" that regulators could step in.
This is not a sudden bump in rule making. Regulators have been busy for decades, particularly during Obama's first year in office — which wasn't even a full year. In 2009, the administration published a record-breaking 163,333 pages of rules that affect our daily lives, from the energy we use to the financial decisions we make to the health care we get.
If all this seems inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence's guarantee of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without state interference, there's good reason. As Heritage Foundation senior fellow Robert Moffat has written, Americans rightly "feel that they are increasingly being governed by administrators, not legislators. ... The rule of law is being supplanted" by rules and regulations.
The administrative state's disciples believe an army of experts is needed to organize society because they hold special knowledge. In his 1887 essay "Socialism and Democracy," Woodrow Wilson gave fuel to a radical agenda that gnaws at us yet today when he wrote that "men as communities are supreme over men as individuals."
The rise of the administrative state is oxygen for a political left that relishes control of civil society because its members believe they're too smart not to be obeyed. It has a chokehold not only on individual rights, but on the economy as well.
The Phoenix Center in Washington has found that on average, "eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private sector jobs annually."
This would strike most as evidence that the administrative state is counterproductive. Yet there's an absence of a strong effort to reverse it. This isn't inspiring. Elections should mean something, and deconstruction of the body of unelected rule makers would give even more meaning to the pivotal 2012 races.
Local, state and federal governments are becoming increasingly intrusive in our private lives in accord with the liberal philosophy that "the government knows better".
Guess what (there is no need for guessing here)?
The government doesn't know better and it has no right dictating our choices (as long they are "legal").
In a Chicago school, children are not allowed to bring in their own lunch anymore because the administration feels that the parents are incapable of feeding their children properly. The school forces the children to eat there ... and what it deems that they should eat. California and N.Y. are the most well known for their restrictive, intrusive and punitive culinary restrictions for restaurants.
Soon, governments may decide what kind of toilet paper we must use and the number of sheets that can be used before being subjected to a fine.
These intrusive actions, signs of large and powerful governments and unrestrained politicians, must be abrogated!
In the following speech in the Senate by Sen. Rand Paul, he rails against a large, omnipotent central government, the "Collective", and instead exhorts Senators to consider the protection and expansion of the rights, freedoms and choices of the individual. He cites Ayn Rand and her prescient novel, "Anthem", in his discussion.
With the 2011 and 2012 budgets occupying much of the news these days, coverage of attempts to defund and dismantle Obamacare by the Republicans have been relegated to low priority and interest by the liberal “mainstream” media. We must make sure that the anathema of Obamacare be relentlessly publicized.
This dangerous, disastrous and extraordinarily expensive government take-over of healthcare and usurpation of our rights must be abrogated. The American people have unequivocally voiced their antipathy of this government confiscation. They know what this will lead to and on virtually all accounts, it is extremely bad.
Socialized medicine has been an abysmal failure worldwide and there were and are so many models that exemplify this. Canada and Great Britain are quintessential examples of this. Both countries are have been seeking radical changes in order to improve their abject care and bankrupting costs.
We must continue to keep the pressure on our politicians for the repeal of Obamacare. This corruptly passed (and probably unconstitutional) legislation was all about power and control by the Democrats – and not about costs or access.
Pain And Suffering
Investor’s Business Daily 04/06/2011
Health Care: Recall the complaints that the U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that doesn't provide universal medicine? So how's that arrangement working elsewhere? Rather poorly, particularly in Britain.
Agitators for government health care can no longer, as they did at one time, hold up the British system as the model the U.S. should follow. They've learned to stay away — and for good reason. The system has followed the path that all socialist systems must follow: It is breaking under its own weight.
The nation with the reputation for rotten dental care is quickly developing a reputation for delays in medical treatment. "Devastating and cruel" is how British surgeons are now describing the long waits for operations.
It's the National Health Service's way, reports the BBC, of finding nearly $33 billion in efficiency savings by 2015. To achieve those savings, knee and hip replacements apparently have been limited by the bureaucratic rationing teams.
"We've started to get reports over the last nine months that access to these services is being restricted," Peter Kay, president of the British Orthopaedic Association, told the BBC. Of the 692 surgeons contacted by the broadcaster, 106 said "routine operations had been put on hold in their area. Others described new limits on when patients qualify for hip or knee replacements."
Meanwhile, "152 specialists said patients now have to be more disabled or in greater pain, and 118 told us hip and knee surgery had been regarded as a procedure of low priority."
The consequences of trying to treat everyone through the government go far beyond the pain and suffering of missed joint-replacement surgery. Sometimes, the wages are death.
That's how it ended for Margaret Hutchon, who happened to be a former NHS director. She died last month, the Daily Mail reported, "after waiting for nine months for an operation — at her own hospital" (emphasis ours).
She "had been waiting since last June for a followup stomach operation," but "her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery."
Not only are treatments being delayed, so is NHS legislation that would, among other provisions, make the system less bureaucratic and increase private-sector involvement.
The political left, which clings tenaciously to government programs that permit the exercise of power over others, has demagogued the legislation, sounded the dreaded "privatization" alarm and won a delay.
Britons should be outraged. If the government taxes them to fund universal care, they should get the care. If the government can't do the job — which clearly it can't — it should get out of the business of meddling in people's lives and let everyone take care of his or her own health care.
Americans should be outraged as well, because a Democratic Congress and White House have forced on them a program that will be no more successful than the British health care wreck.
Yes, ObamaCare is an unpopular law with low approval ratings. But the antipathy toward it and those who engineered its passage over constitutional limitations and public opposition is not as intense as it should be.
Pressure for ObamaCare's repeal should be so sharp that official Washington will be left with no other option. If not, the British health care problems of today will be America's health care problems tomorrow.
If we want to protect our rights and freedoms and even recoup much of what has been lost, the relentlessly expanding federal Leviathan needs to be tamed and substantially reduced in size. Its immensity is a perpetual threat to the individual and not what our Founding Fathers desired or envisioned. They presciently knew the threats of a larger, more invasive and powerful central government and warned against this happening.
We need to support and elect individuals like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) who declared in his response to Obama’s State of the Union address that: “We believe, as our founders did, that the pursuit of happiness depends on individual liberty, and individual liberty requires limited government.” Of its small role, he also opined that: “We believe that the government has an important role to create the conditions that promote entrepreneurship, upward mobility, and individual responsibility.”
None of these conditions are being met today.
We must make them a reality!
Choice, Not Compromise
Terry Paulson 2/14/2011
Rep. Paul Ryan’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union provides a clue to the political battle that is coming: “The principles that guide us; they are anchored in the wisdom of the founders in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and in the words of the American Constitution. They have to do with the importance of limited government and with the blessing of self-government. We believe that the government has an important role to create the conditions that promote entrepreneurship, upward mobility, and individual responsibility. We believe, as our founders did, that the pursuit of happiness depends on individual liberty, and individual liberty requires limited government.”
There is no compromise on opposite principles; it’s either empowered individuals or an all-powerful government. Thankfully the recent overreach by President Obama on healthcare reform, the Republican gains in November, and recent court decisions are moving things closer to a showdown in the Supreme Court and in the coming budget battle.
Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact the Affordable Care Act that required Americans to obtain commercial insurance. Judge Vinson argues that to allow the law to stand, would fundamentally transform our constitutional scheme from limited to unlimited federal power and narrow the scope of individual liberty. In Judge Vinson's words, "the more harm the statute does, the more power Congress could assume for itself under the Necessary and Proper Clause. This result would,…allow Congress to exceed the powers specifically enumerated in Article I." A Supreme Court decision looms on the horizon.
As President Obama delivers his 2012 Budget this week, the battle will accelerate. With Republicans looking to cut the size and spending of government by cutting the funding for implementing the Affordable Care Act, additional stimulus investments, and relief for debt-ridden states, the battle of all battles will begin. Glenn Beck, in his well-documented book Broke, challenges conservatives to focus the fight on the Constitution and core principles. Our founding fathers fought for equal rights, not rights to benefit some at the expense of others.
Beck points to Ayn Rand for an easy way to distinguish whether a right is in accordance with the Constitution. After any right is proposed, simply ask the question “at whose expense?” Is there a universal right to a college education or healthcare? At whose expense? Your right to life and liberty was not to come at expense of anyone else. As Ayn Rand wrote, “The government was set to protect man from criminals, and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government.” Individual rights were to supersede any government power.
Could it be that government “help” has just escalated the cost of healthcare and education? While published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, the median family income rose only 147 percent and healthcare cost rose only 250%. Are those increases a result of true costs to improve education or are they a result of the fact that they can get away with such charges because government provides more loans and grants? Parents, students and taxpayers are left with more debt because government tries to “help” by throwing your money at the “problem!”
How can citizens afford the cost of college and healthcare? By keeping most of the money they now give to government.
John Stossel, in Give Me a Break, shows Federal spending from 1789 to 2003. The line is all but flat until World War II. When America began, government cost the average citizen $20 in today’s money. That’s $20 a year! Taxes rose during wars, but for most of the history of America spending never exceeded a few hundred dollars per citizen. During World War II, government got much bigger. It was supposed to shrink again after the war. It never did; it just kept expanding. In 2010, federal spending ($6.3 trillion) cost every man, woman and child in this country just under $20,000 a year! If you aren’t paying that, you’re making your neighbor pay your share!
It’s not too late. Support politicians who are fighting to take back America to what it was formed to be—a beacon for liberty and opportunity not an invitation to dependence on big government!
The parallels between what is happening in Egypt with Mubarak and how Americans feel about the despot-in-the making, Obama, are quite close. It is unfortunate that Obama "can't" be overthrown like the Middle East situation.
The extent of suppression and oppression legislated on Americans by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats has not reached the levels endemic in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world but our rights and freedoms are increasingly being abridged while greater and outrageous amounts of our earnings are being confiscated by an ever enlarging government with an insatiable appetite for spending.
Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, bluntly has stated that with full implementation of Obamacare, health care will be a government run dictatorship. He has identified 1968 new and expanded powers of the federal government in addition to 159 new federal agencies. At the top of this pyramid of power is the Secretary of Health and Human Services which at present is Kathleen Sibelius.
Do we really want a health care system that grants the federal government such immense power and control?
Of course not!
Each agency and rule further erodes our health care rights and freedoms.
Why does Obamacare require the hiring of 15,000 new IRS agents? What does this have to do with health care? Will they make our care less expensive? Will their presence make it more efficient?
You get the picture – and this is only a fraction of the abominable issues inherent in the Obamacare legislation.
This legislation needs complete repeal. Anything short of this will be a failure.
Gingrich: Country in danger of health dictatorship
Misty Williams The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 20, 2011
States should be given more control over how to run health care programs rather than broaden the federal government’s role in a system that’s already rife with problems, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday.
“Maybe we would be better off having 50 parallel experiments,” Gingrich told reporters at the Center for Health Transformation, which was unveiling its latest review on the impact of the federal health care law.
The law grants the federal government 1,968 new and expanded powers -- most of which would fall under the purview of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius -- and 159 new federal offices, according to the center founded by Gingrich.
Those controls cover a range of issues from access to drugs and insurance coverage to how care is delivered and changes to Medicare, the group said.
America is in danger of a health dictatorship, Gingrich said.
“I think it means that the next time you need a health consultation, you may want to consult with your lobbyist rather than your doctor, because the fact is your doctor is not going to be able to make a whole range of decisions,” he said.
The former speaker, who said he will decide by the end of February whether to form an exploratory committee for a presidential run, described Wednesday’s vote to repeal health care reform as more than symbolic.
He said, “It is the beginning of a dialogue and the beginning of a process which I think over time is going to be very, very powerful.”
Proposed alternatives to the current health care law should have bills dealing with malpractice reform and fraud, which is especially prevalent in the Medicaid arena, Gingrich said. If the federal government can’t run Medicaid, it’s better for the states to take the helm, he said.
He added that states should develop their own health care exchanges instead of leaving it up to the federal government. The exchanges, which go into effect in 2014, would allow small businesses and individuals to form large pools to garner better insurance prices.
Each state is unique and faces different issues, Gingrich said.
To satisfy Big Labor (the single largest source of campaign funding for the Democratic party), Democrats have been pushing hard since taking control of congress in 2006 to pass a law that would circumvent the secret ballot process to unionize private businesses. Even with large majorities in both Houses and a “president” Obama eager to please his cash cow, Democrats have been unable to wrangle up enough votes to pass such a measure.
What to do now? Just as the Obama Administration is using the EPA to regulate carbon emissions because of the inability to pass Cap and Trade in Congress, it is now using the National Labor Relations Board to also do an end run around the legislative branch and impose regulations that are quite unpopular with the public and would not garner enough support as legislation in Congress. This bypassing of the electoral system and the imposing of rights denying rules is characteristic of a cynical, arrogant, authoritarian styled politician who is not looking out for the welfare, rights and freedoms of the citizens of this country.
As it stands right now, private business owners are obligated by law to allow union officials access to their workforce. The union representatives hand out "cards" to each employee to fill out - including their name - to see if there is sufficient interest to move to the next phase of unionizing - a secret ballot. Big Labor and the Democrats want to eliminate the secret ballot part of the process - a time honored American institution to protect voters from the reprisal of adversaries. They, instead, prefer the "card check" part of the process which does not allow anonymity.
This allows the Union bosses to learn the identities of those who voted against considering unionizing which will subject these employees to the bare knuckle tactics for which unions are famous in controlling dissent – both before and after the vote. Without a secret ballot, the unions have the upper hand at the expense of the employees (and employers).
If we elected our public officials in the same manner that Big Labor and Democrats want to determine the establishment of a unionized workforce in a private business, we all be exposed to the type of intimidation that we saw in 2008 when members of the New Black Panther Party harassed white voters as they approached a polling site in Philadelphia.
This is the stuff of Third World countries. Then again, Obama’s incompetence, arrogance, imposition of failed policies and ruling essentially by fiat, would qualify him to become the leader of a Banana Republic (where we seem to be heading under his rule).
Feds threaten to sue states over union laws
Sam Hananel Associated Press Jan 14, 2011
WASHINGTON – The National Labor Relations Board on Friday threatened to sue Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah over constitutional amendments guaranteeing workers the right to a secret ballot in union elections.
The agency's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said the amendments conflict with federal law, which gives employers the option of recognizing a union if a majority of workers sign cards that support unionizing.
The amendments, approved Nov. 2, have taken effect in South Dakota and Utah, and will do so soon in Arizona and South Carolina.
Business and anti-union groups sought the amendments, arguing that such secrecy is necessary to protect workers against union intimidation. They are concerned that Congress might enact legislation requiring employers to allow the "card check" process for forming unions instead of secret ballot elections.
In letters to the attorney general of each state, Solomon says the amendments are pre-empted by the supremacy clause of the Constitution because they conflict with employee rights laid out in the National Labor Relations Act. That clause says that when state and federal laws are at odds, federal law prevails.
Solomon is asking the attorneys general in South Dakota and Utah for official statements agreeing that their amendments are unconstitutional "to conserve state and federal resources."
In his letter to South Carolina's attorney general, Solomon asks the state to take measures that would prevent the Legislature from ratifying the amendment. Solomon requested that Arizona's governor decline to make the amendment official.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he believes the state is on solid ground. He plans to coordinate a response with the other three states.
"If they want to bring a lawsuit, then bring it," Shurtleff said. "We believe that a secret ballot is as fundamental a right as any American has had since the beginning of this country. We want to protect the constitutional rights of our citizens."
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley also promised to "vigorously defend our South Dakota Constitution" against any federal lawsuit.
Unions long have pushed for the card-check legislation, but the effort hasn't won enough support in Congress. Union officials say companies often use aggressive tactics — borderline illegal, they contend — to discourage workers from organizing unions.
Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that spent millions to back congressional Republicans in last year's elections, was among the groups that pushed for passage of the state amendments. Phil Kerpen, the group's vice president for policy, said the NLRB's action "shows how determined the board is to accomplish card check by backdoor means against the wishes of the American people and Congress."
Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of the pro-union group American Rights at Work, said the board was confirming that "these initiatives were intended to restrict workers' rights to determine how they choose a union, disingenuously cloaked in the language of worker protection."
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