Courage To See

Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.

“The citizens of the Show-Me State don’t want Washington involved in their health care decisions,” said Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, one of the sponsors of the legislation that put Proposition C on the August ballot. She credited a grass-roots campaign involving Tea Party and patriot groups with building support for the anti-Washington proposition.

This is the iceberg of Tea Party patriots, only 10% are above water: meaning that 10% are the patriots which take to the streets protest and are publicly vocal.  The remaining 90% support the basic tenets of the limited government intrusion in our lives, fiscal responsibility and  seek representation that align with the basic values of the Constitution.  Way to go Show-Me State patriots, your voice echoed through the nation with Americans cheering your stand.

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The House will return to Washington next week to act on Medicaid and education funding for states.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the news via Twitter, saying: “I will be calling the House back into session early next week to save teachers’ jobs and help seniors & children.”

Isn’t this always the way for the hapless Democrats, frame a discussion to play on the basis of emotions, I’m surprised Pelosi didn’t add something in for kittens and puppies.

A House leadership aide told The Hill the early return was discussed following the Senate’s vote Wednesday to move forward on the $26 billion package.

This is nothing short of pay-off to blue states which refuse to balance their budgets.  Illinois has been writing IOU’s for months and California is drowning in red ink. The fiscal irresponsibility of failing states falls directly on the shoulders of elected officials and agency chiefs.  Spending tax payers money is easy when you believe the flow is eternal, only one sin tax, property tax hike or federal government bailout away.  Like all government agencies, states seldom work from sound financial principles, instead they look at a budget, rub their hands together and start thinking of all the pie-in-sky projects and expenditures they can hoodwink into existence.

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The House cap and trade bill is a disaster. Many, myself included, hoped this bad legislation which passed the House would wither on the vine, especially after email-gate broke. Anyone paying attention heard Harry Reid make statements that cap and trade in the Senate is dead, I sighed in relief.

But wait, the Senate last week unveiled their version of this draconian legislation, shorter in length but no less harmful to the freedom, liberty and fiscal well-being of the American people.

Poison Pill: The New Senate Energy Bill
By Brain Sussman

The latest Senate energy bill, quietly unveiled last week, looks like sweet compromise on radical measures like cap and trade, but buried within is a bitter poison pill that will could be swallowed in a vote that may come this week.

Unlike the 1,200-page House of Representatives energy bill, which passed last year, this scaled-down proposal does not call for an 83-percent reduction in greenhouse gases (or any reduction in greenhouse gases) and contains no mention of a cap-and-trade scheme. Also contrary to the House bill, this one does not provide a family of four earning up to $55,000 with a monthly stipend — deposited directly into their bank accounts — to offset higher energy costs. It also does not supply three years of unemployment benefits at 70 percent of former wages — plus job retraining and relocation — to those whose jobs are shipped overseas, as prescribed in the House bill.

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote.

“What we are submitting is the idea that the president should be selected by the majority of people in the United States of America,” Senator James B. Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, said before the Senate voted to enact the bill.

Wonder how the people of Massachusetts feel knowing that their vote for president may now be decided by individuals in major metropolitan areas, far removed from Massachusetts?

Under the law, which was enacted by the House last week, all 12 of the state’s electoral votes would be awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes nationally.

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LAS VEGAS – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, seeking to console liberal activists who were disappointed by the final version of the national health care law, assured them that there would eventually be a public option.

“We’re going to have a public option,” Reid said. “It’s just a question of when.”

Is this a surprise to anyone?  And it only gets better (from a progressive standpoint,) worse if you are a freedom loving American.  Reid as well as most Democrats continually sing the mantra that Social Security is “not broke.”  A classic case of progressives altering the meaning of commonly held words to suit their twisted ideology.  Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows the federal government has been pillaging the “trust” fund for decades to pay for other budget items/programs.

During a question and answer session, Reid also argued against “fear tactics of those who say Social Security is going broke. It’s not.”

“Social Security is the most successful social program in the history of the world,” he said.

My own infamous Representative Pete-I-love-Pork-Visclosky has made the same exact statement during town hall forums.  There must be a Democratic handbook which offers these buffoons talking points in order to bamboozle the American people.  What the Democrats refuse to acknowledge is that social security is hemorrhaging for the first time this year.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.

I’m thinking many of you had already heard that concerning news.

The money, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will completely run out in 2039.  Allow me to remind you that the CBO  inherently under-reports cost analysis of government programs. When projecting future economic trends the CBO adjusts numbers based on the assumption of growth in the economy including increases in the workforce, increased taxation, and uses other variables none of which are based in concrete facts.

In 2005, for example, CBO projected that Medicare would cost $1.5 trillion in 2050. Two years later, in 2007, the same CBO projected that this cost would reach $2.8 trillion in 2050. And in 2009, it projected that the cost would be $3 trillion instead. In other words, the program’s projected cost doubled in four years.

Nothing the CBO states as fact can be relied on as to any future reality.  Notoriously  all of government has mislead the American people in cost analysis, because they cannot predict what will happen 2 years from now and any assumptions are purely speculation.

The Social Security “trust” fund is in BIG trouble, it’s time we face this fact and figure out what to do.  The Dems want you living in a false reality, because they do not believe the American people can grasp, understand and accept the truth.  It’s time they stop coddling and become stateswomen/men, displaying honest fact based concern for the people they are elected to represent.

Wake-up Hoosiers, a second enforcer of consequences is hiding in the barn.  Another Tricky Dicky is slithering through the streets of Washington.  Lugar  praises Kagan’s life experience ignoring the liberty destroying positions she embraces.  Write Lugar today and ask him to reconsider his vote on this appointment.  To view some of Kagan’s antifreedom/liberty positions see this earlier post.

Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana has become the second Republican to back President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

“I have concluded that Solicitor General Elena Kagan is clearly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court and that she has demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of court history and decisions,” Mr. Lugar said in a statement posted to his Web site Wednesday. “I believe that she has had a distinguished career in both education and public service and is well regarded by the legal community and her peers.”

Mr. Lugar is the first in his party to publicly pledge his support of Ms. Kagan since Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, joined the 12 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee in the vote to forward her nomination to the full Senate.

The full Senate will vote on the nomination before the summer recess, which begins Aug. 9. Here’s an account of how other Republicans are expected to vote.

During the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings, Lindsey Graham was the only Judiciary Committee Republican to vote “yea” and sanctioned the confirmation process to move forward.  On the Senate floor Graham chided the Chamber and indeed the American public that “Elections have consequences.”

My question then and now, does that make you the enforcer of those consequences?

The apparent answer is.. yes.  Graham believes himself the omnipotent father wielding consequences through his votes.

Whether Justice Sotomayor deserved confirmation is up for debate, one thing though is clear she did have an extensive record of judiciary decisions to base her qualifications as a potential Supreme Court judge.

Not so with the current nominee Elena Kagan, who has no record of judiciary decisions to base a judgment on whether she should be granted a life-long seat on the Supreme Court.  I have previously discussed concerns surrounding Kagan in this post.

The short version of those concerns can be stated as NO.  Kagan has shown  strong beliefs in the ideology of “the common good, supersedes the private good.”  She believes this “common good” extends to your dinner table as well as the books you read.

But never mind those concerns, Graham broke ranks with other Republican Judiciary Committee members and again voted “yea” to move the nomination forward.  The enforcer of consequences (Graham) allowed the pResident to proclaim bi-partisan committee approval.  I’ve had it with Graham, who I consider a RHINO.

Senator Graham, do you have any principle which would you would not forsake in order to further the progressive agenda?  Do you even stop to consider what the consequences of your actions may have on the American people?  Or do you believe that as freedom is lost it will propel people through fear of forsaken liberty to vote Republican?

Lindsey Graham is up for reelection in 2014, operatives in the South Carolina Republican party are saying he will face a primary challenge, “It’s no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘who’ and ‘how many.”

I hope that Graham finds out the hard way, yes elections have consequences and so do the votes he makes.

Continually throughout the Health Care debate, if you want to call it that, Democrats insisted that the “penalty” (as described by the language of the bill) was NOT a tax.  The pResident emphasized this very point while being interviewed by ABC’s Stephanopoulos.

A short cut from the interview:

STEPHANOPOULOS:  I wanted to check for myself.  But your critics say it is a tax increase.

OBAMA:  My critics say everything is a tax increase.  My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy.  You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…

STEPHANOPOULOS:  But you reject that it’s a tax increase?

OBAMA:  I absolutely reject that notion.  (emphasis mine)

Now the first suit by Virginia is being heard in court.  Virginia has filed suit arguing  that the federal government with the health care reform law is making a power grab beyond what the United States Constitution allows.  Basically the state is saying the same thing many of us have said, no where does the federal government have the power to mandate that any citizen purchase a particular commodity.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli outlined his basic argument to NPR earlier in the year. “It is our position that the individual mandate is unconstitutionally overbroad under the Commerce Clause,” Cuccinelli, a Republican, said. “You cannot compel someone to buy something from someone else.” As you will recall, nearly every American will be required to purchase health insurance. This will be important for keeping down the ever rising price of health care in this country, according to the Obama Administration.

Commerce clause you say?  Wait one minute, the Obama administration is now arguing that they (the federal government) have a Constitutional “power to lay and collect taxes.”   However in reading the bill, no where did legislators state the levy as a tax, they continually referred to it as a “penalty.”

Oh yes but the administration is saying that since the law will raise an estimated $4 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the “penalty” is a tax.  Plus we have the pesky IRS enforcement aspect of the bill.. exactly what does the IRS collect?

Florida, as well as other states have stated:  “Congress is attempting to regulate and penalize Americans for choosing not to engage in economic activity. If Congress can do this much, there will be virtually no sphere of private decision-making beyond the reach of federal power.”

As these suits proceed forward, lets remember that sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide favor repeal the passed health care law, including 49% who Strongly Favor repeal. How will these individuals feel once they learn, the “penalty” is really a tax and that the pResident lied to them all-along?  Lets get this information out.. IF your congress critters hold townhalls this summer ask them why the pResident explicitedly stated the “penalty” was not a tax and is now arguing in court that it is. As Representative Joe Wilson stated in the face of outright disdain from the pResident over his blatant lack of honesty…