chas For President? (part 3)

How would you like to work for just a few years and collect a pension for the rest of your life?  How would you like a better health care plan than the average worker can afford?

Well, of course, no one would consider those bad deals at all, but then we all also know that it isn’t going to happen.  Not for us anyway.

Anyone who has read the writings of the Founders knows that elected office was considered an obligation, a duty of responsible citizenship, not a job opportunity for life.  The responsible citizen would lend his skills in service to the Republic for, at most, a couple of terms (as Washington demonstrated) and would then return to the home and life that had helped hone and develop those skills.  Yet today, and for the last 100 years or so, being an elected official has become a job for life, since incumbency and manipulating the shapes of electoral districts has allowed even bad representatives to remain in office for as long as they choose.

There are, of course, reasons that individuals wish to remain in office.  The pay and benefits are pretty dang good.  You get free money from others to run for office, and anything left over is yours.  There are: lots of fun; free travel (often including your family members at government expense!); more money if you are on committees, and most are on at least one; free health care; an almost instant pension.  Therein resides the problem.

Service is supposed to be…, well, service.  The opportunity to provide service to the public is itself the reward for holding office among right-thinking people.  The necessity of representation cannot be overemphasized, especially as the Republic grows, but it does have to be true representation; the service has to be representative of the people’s will, since the people, not the government, are sovereign.  We tire of the arrogant and paternalistic: “the people aren’t smart enough to understand, so we’ll just do what we think is the right thing for them.”  Garbage!  It is the will of the people that should be presented, because under the scheme of our Founding fathers, that is all that is relevant.  So here is the next change that should be made into law, perhaps by constitutional amendment:

Congress shall be in session no longer than 4 months of any calendar year.  Hence, pay will be reduced accordingly, pensions will be eliminated, and benefits shall be supplied only during that active session.

The finer points of that concept, of course, would need to be tweaked, and there might need to be an emergency provision allowing for longer sessions in case of true, bona-fide, non- manufactured emergency, but the intent of the enactment is to eliminate the costly perquisites of what is supposed to be service, not unlike jury service, but which has become bloated into a misshapen vehicle of pretention, pomposity, privilege, self-protection, self-promotion, and arrogant disregard for founding premises.

Another basic and self-evident principle of self-government suggests that laws should be understandable by the people.  A bill or law that is hundreds or thousands of pages long, which is frequently not even read, let alone understood, by those voting on it, and which accordingly cannot be timely studied and comprehended for advice and comment by those to be affected by it prior to its passage, runs counter to the notion that our servants are serving us. What benefit is it to those being represented to be inflicted with laws that none can understand, and whose meaning is lost in incomprehensible, and sometimes inconsistent, legalisms? Many pieces of legislation coming out of Washington these days are hodge-podges of last-minute compromises and pork that merely serve to provide full employment for lawyers and to supply quid-pro-quos for legislative patrons and stooges, but they have nothing to do with properly serving the needs of the sovereigns, who we must constantly remind all are the people of the Republic.

Did you know that Congress starts every new session (that is every 2 years) with 30,000 bills to work over and through?  In the end, it comes down to about 3,000 that make it to committee.  That means that if only 10% of that work product makes it to the floor, representatives vote on a bill almost every day of the year, including weekends.  Who in their right mind thinks we need that many laws or bills?  Does that sound like self-government?  Does that sound like limited government?  Does that sound like government that is only “necessary”?  Every piece of legislation that is passed, except that which fully repeals a previous law, erodes the universe of overall liberty, with liberty being defined by the absence of government involvement in people’s lives and decisions and relationships and activity.

Then too, concept of self government only works if people are committed to a certain quantum of self-control.  Otherwise, we would be electing people to instruct us how to behave, how and what and how much to eat, what we can say or think, where we can travel and not travel, what we can do in regards to worship, and whom we can and can’t associate with.  That would rip asunder the liberty-based foundations of the Republic.  But, sadly, we have allowed a bit of that to creep into relationships between individuals and government, and quite increasingly, over the past many decades, a condition which Alexis de Tocqueville aptly labeled a “soft tyranny.”

And that bleeds us into the last topic for now.

Private property and Liberty are inseparable; they are joined at the hip as Siamese Twins might be.  “Property” is really the fruits of one’s essence and efforts.  It is the outward manifestation of individuals’ inner worth; it represents one’s enjoyment of other rights, the various express ones such as freedom of speech, association, thought, press; and certain unalienable ones such as the pursuit of happiness, and the industry from the sweat of one’s brow, and the efforts of the heart and hands.  It is wrapped up in the definition of the self.  One of the great founding concepts of this country is land ownership, an incident of property rights.  The very idea of that for the regular individual was fairly foreign to 17^th and 18^th century England.  But it became a fundamental tenet of American liberty, and its importance is, among others, that it gives each person a real stake in the future of the country.  Sadly and ominously, that tenet is increasingly under attack by wrong-minded souls.

Due to misguided signals by the United States Supreme Court, legislature after legislature have been using eminent domain to violate what the Framers thought they were protecting by way of the 5th Amendment takings clause. Indeed, it does not overstate the point to humbly suggest that we could solve our energy crisis once and for all if we could figure a way to harness the energy produced by the Framers spinning in their graves regarding what the national government, and all of its branches, have been doing with regard to that fundamental protection, and with regard to other fundamental structural and substantive matters that they thought they had defined and protected for all time.  To be sure, even though eminent domain, the detour around the takings clause, has its legitimate purpose, government stealing people’s private property to give it to other, profit-making private enterprises to capitalize on the increased tax revenue generated by that private enterprise, which is increasingly in vogue, is NOT one of them. That is sheer, governmental theft, writ large.

This is one area where a properly led and constituted Federal Government, and especially national judiciary, should exert its power on the subordinate governing authorities to preserve the regime of liberty envisioned by the Framers.  Let us not be fooled into thinking that tyranny by hundreds is any better than tyranny by one.

As a side-note, one other area of concern, a practice that should be eliminated or sharply curtailed, is the increasing trend of allowing unelected officials in various agencies to promulgate administrative regulations and guidelines that have the effect of law, but which were never voted on by the legislative branch and signed by the executive.  This form of functional law-making grants political cover to those in Congress, since they can whine “it wasn’t us,” but it serves the same liberty-invading/restricting role as if Congress had passed it. Remember the new “law” that we can no longer choose to use incandescent bulbs, after a certain date? That “law” came about by the mere stroke of a regulator’s pen, yet it invades all of our houses, it affects the liberties of us all, it impacts choices all of us should be able to make.  It is emblematic of the tyranny of regulationism, the regulatory state, which is a pervasive “Fourth Branch” of government never intended by the Framers yet is far more liberty-intrusive, on a day-to-day basis, than the actions of the other branches.

It is law in all ways, except for 2 things:  1. The people have limited control over the mechanism which brings it about.  Had Congress passed the regulation, they could be voted out of office, but that is not the case with these appointed regulators.  They are generally toast after a change in Administration anyway, but their regulations live on until changed, if ever.  2. The regime of regulationism continues the expansion of Federal Power and all that it brings with it: loss of liberty, restrictions upon freedom, forfeiture of recourse to redress of grievances against the government, etc.

Nothing in the Constitution gives such invasive power to other than the Congress, and then only in a limited fashion.

Let us look at the fork in the road, one tine pointing toward liberty, one tine toward tyranny, and, recalling the choice the Framers made, let us embrace their choice, down the road of liberty.  We, as a people, are the ones responsible for the course of our government, since we are a self-governing society; we are the sovereigns.  We, the people, have the power, unless we surrender it to others.  If we surrender it to others, we have thereby voted for tyranny, a vote by which we would have rent asunder the glorious scheme for which our Founding Fathers bled and read, fought and argued, killed and debated and wrote.

Next:  Summation

chas For President? (part 2)

Next on the Platform, Bailouts, Buyouts & Bribes:  Of course, it is doubtful that the Framers would have thought their limited-government scheme would be exploited into a scheme to take money from the people to give it to private businesses.  But if one could find originalist support for that practice, I can think of few things that would be more against the views of the Founders than giving tax money to businesses that are failing.  How many of you would invest in a business that is losing money as a matter of course?

Or think of it this way, would you buy stock in AMTRAK?   Have they ever posted in the black?  Don’t bother to look it up; I can tell you the answer is no.  If you would not personally invest in that failing business, on what constitutional theory should those representing your interests do so?  And how utterly bizarre is it to have to bail out banks?  Should we have to deliver coal to Newcastle?  First off, that is where the money is, banks!  Why do they need bailing out?  And secondly, there are laws in place to prevent banks from bad investing on a stupid scale.  For the banks to have been handing out loans to people with no income, money, or other credit-worthiness has got to be dumb on the Kelvin Scale.  Should we then be even dumber by bridging over their affirmative dumbness by bailing them out with our own hard-earned money?

I know people are going to say, “but if we hadn’t….” !  If the Government hadn’t set in place the notion that we couldn’t let banks fail, they would have been more careful.  If we hadn’t enacted laws compelling banks to make bad loans, we would have never been in this position. Then too, if we hadn’t decided government should be regulating the private economic market in the first place, maybe none of this would have happened.  There is, of course, lots of noise about how some of the bank money will come back with interest.  Oh, Wait!  That was before Obama decided to spend that money also.

Then there is the issue of buying out GM.  I, as a taxpaying citizen, now own part of a car company, I own its stock.  Do you think I will ever see one red cent of “profit” from my coerced “investment”?  Some say the taxpayers had to prop up GM because it “was too big to fail.”  Strange, we let similarly gargantuan steel companies in this country fail without a whimper.

We pretend to be concerned about the unemployed?  How many steel workers lost their livelihood?  Why didn’t we bail the steel industry out?  Then too, the bottom line is that none of this public saving of private companies is even remotely authorized by the Constitution.  We have allowed businesses, major businesses, to rise and fall without the country collapsing.  Did that create setbacks in some sectors?  Certainly, it did, but the way our system works, when something fails, something else comes along to replace it: that is the way of freedom, and of its economic brother capitalism. Strength comes from the lessons learned from failure; if one is artificially protected from failure, lasting strength will never result.

What about the bribing of our legislative representatives?  And before you think “special interest groups,” what I am talking about goes on right inside the Capitol by fellow representatives.  Sure, a certain amount of “horse trading” goes on, and I see little wrong with one member of Congress going to another and saying “if you support this bill of mine, I will support that bill of yours.”  That’s not what I am concerned about. To think that we can run the country without some of that going on is truly naïve.

One member should not, however, be able to say to another “we are going to send you $300,000,000 to pay for pet projects and other things in your state if you vote for this.”  That is criminal bribery; that sounds in extortion and blackmail.  And they are thereby using MY tax dollars to break the law.  Don’t tell me it is, or should be deemed, business as usual, because if I offered the same sort of deal, I’d be going to jail in a heartbeat.  And so would you.

How many millions of dollars of your and my tax money is being funneled to other states to buy the vote of that state’s representatives?  Does that even remotely sound like how the Founders worked things out at the Constitutional Convention?

In dramatic contrast with what has become the practices among our so-called leaders, statesmanship involves people getting together with each other and finding compromise, without coercion, bribery, losing their souls, or flouting the premises underlying our founding.  It is not the majority jamming things down the throat of the minority, and not the minority blocking every bill along party lines, with the sad truth being that the one begets the other.  Such are the wages of having mere politicians being involved instead of true statesmen.  We need more of the latter, and none of the former.

How about public servant Pensions?  How many jobs do you know of in the private sector where, if you work for only a couple of years, you get a lifetime pension?  Free health care until 65?  Personal security for the rest of your life?  Such is the cushy life your taxes pay for if the job is “congressman.”

Thomas Jefferson often wrote of the burden of public service and of civic responsibility.  He really hated it, noting that he had no real desire to govern other people.  Yet, each time he was called, he responded, he stepped up to help the Republic, although he never actively sought out nor “ran” for office.  In the end, one of his only rewards was that Congress bought his library to replace the one burned by the British in the War of 1812.  Jefferson personally owned the largest library in the country.  I doubt that what he received was anywhere close to what it was truly worth.  And unlike many of our laughable “leaders” who have books sitting around solely as props and for talking points, Jefferson read, studied, and understood everything in his library.

Unlike many “leaders” now, who seek to pad their nests with the fruits of our coerced taxes, Jefferson’s many years of civic service cost him dearly.  It interfered with the otherwise smooth operations of his plantation, and he always ended up with fewer crops, and hence less profit, than he should have received had he not sacrificed to serve the Republic.  Because of his public service, he was always having money trouble; our “leaders,” in contrast, do whatever they can do to get fat from what they want to label their public “service.”  Yes, yes: other economic factors were involved with Jefferson, but doing his civic “duty,” as he labeled it and lived it, always ended up costing him money.

Carry those thoughts over to part 3, when we talk about what politicians receive today for serving.  Or “serving.”

more to come……

chas & Capmotion

chas For President? (part 1)

There have been a few people, people whose political beliefs are quite different from my understandings about the Republic, ask me, in effect, “if you are so damn smart, what would you do if you were President?”

My first and sincere response is to confess that I am not all that damn smart.  But then, if the game plan is, as it always must be, that we are to be faithful to the United States Constitution, one need not be all that smart, but simply reliable, honorable, truthful, and devoted to the principles that caused the Founding Fathers to evict King George.  And I am.  It would not be all that hard, if our goals and vision are clear.  Our so-called leaders have made it appear to be much harder than it really is.[1]

Let me also say that I know that I am probably not electable to any office, by traditional standards.  It’s not that I’m some sort of nut or criminal, or that I have had a sordid life.  People just don’t expect hearing the truth, and certain other things they don’t want to hear, from politicians.  Politicians tend to sugar coat things; tend to misrepresent things; and at the same time try to tell you things will be rough for you (seldom for them) but that they can bring you through whatever matter they are addressing, if only we give them the chance and our votes.

One of the things I firmly believe is that the reason running this country appears to be so much harder than it should be is not that life in general is so much more complicated than when our Forefathers formed this Republic, but instead it is because we have moved so far outside of the clear guidelines laid down by the Constitutional Convention, and the additions later attached to that document.  We have strayed due to the purposeful acts of self-serving and wrong-minded leaders.  So, here is what I think would be a great start to fixing many of the problems we have in the country today.  We need to return to the framing premises that there are specifically limited things the national government is empowered to do, and those are largely found in Article 1, section 8, and areas truly only “necessary and proper” to those enumerated powers. And “proper” must be assessed within the context of the Framers’ plan about what the national government should, and hence should not, do.  All other exercises of “power” lay with state and local governments, subject to expressly protected rights, and rights inherently residing in the people within the meaning of the 9th and 10th Amendments.  So, what to do?  How do we begin?

First:  End Social Security.  Don’t get too worked up until you hear how it gets eliminated.  No one who has contributed to Social Security is going to get screwed out of it.  If you were born after December 31, 1994, you will not be required to contribute to Social Security.  All those who are currently contributing to Social Security will continue to contribute, and they will receive the benefits anticipated when they commenced involvement in the program.  All others will be permitted to start their own retirement account and will be permitted to contribute up to 10% pre-tax dollars.

A special tax, WITH A SET DROP DEAD DATE, will be established to fund the remainder of the program, until the last recipient is gone.   Of course, the short fall will cost us all and some behind us.  Apart from the reality that the system finds no support in the four corners of the Constitution, the system, as it is, cannot be sustained, and this plan would help establish a funding source insulated from the general operating budget.

Some will say that it is harsh, maybe even cruel, to end Social Security.  Even if such were true, and it is not, what is far crueller is commanding all of us to pay for the irresponsibility of others.  That is not even close to any idea the Founders would have condoned.  Some will say there is a moral responsibility of us all to those who cannot work.  There is already in place a way to take care of that.  It would be a simple matter to make them part of the welfare program, although with limitations and necessary fine-tunings, and largely administered at the state and local level.

Second:  Do away with the Department of Education, among other executive agencies.  President Reagan tried to do so, but the outcry was so intense that he dropped the idea.  Imposing Federal standards for local education has done nothing but screw up the education system in this country.  It is clear that the ratio of teachers to administrators and other non-teaching staff is diminishing to the point that we appear to lose focus on what the mission of the schools should be.  In every state, localities have their own locally elected boards of education.  Money is always better and more efficiently spent when the locals have the say over how their money is spent.  And we should never forget that it is their money, not the money of national bureaucrats.

It might be said by some that there are local boards that could not afford to run their schools on what they receive in local taxes. That should return to being a state funding issue.  And that would be taken care of by the dramatic lowering of federal taxes associated with the dramatic diminishing of national government involvement in state and local and individual affairs.  The less the national government takes from you, the more that will be available for local and state government.  And when things are funded closer to home, the money is used more efficiently, and the people have more control over how it is used.

Third:  End Foreign Aid.  If there are catastrophic tragedies, such as Haiti, Americans are the most giving people in the world.  There is nothing in the Constitution that commands us to be charitable, or even authorizes the national government to extract money from us in the supposed name of national charity.  Besides, forcing people to give money to others is not charity: it is coercion; it is theft.  Charity must come from the heart, not from threats of government sanction, and Americans have been shown to have the biggest hearts of any peoples when disaster strikes.

As for general foreign aid, foreign countries have learned that we do not punish for their bad behavior, either against us or against others.  So, they smile, take our money, and then repay us by voicing how evil and nasty we are.  They laugh at us when we ask them for help in various matters in foreign theaters.  They refuse to cooperate with us about sanctions and about various other enterprises, and then they talk badly about us.  So, why should we give them our hard-earned money?

Some might say we would be harsh to condition our gifts of money on the receipt of appreciation from those we are giving it to; they might say we are bribing people to do our bidding if we condition it on their supporting us; they might say that turning off the money flow to other countries might be punishing their people, who might or might not control or approve of their government’s handling of foreign or domestic policy.  I say we assist friends and resist enemies and we are foolish to be financing exhibitions of hatred toward us, whether the hatred is exhibited by other governments or their people.  If the governments do not represent their people’s interests, the people should overthrow their governments; that’s how we began.

There are many more thoughts to follow in subsequent presentations.

---

 I want to say that Capmotion was instrumental in his input as co-author.  Cap alone could fill about 6 Cabinet Offices and the VP slot for me any day of the week, although he would probably prefer to serve the people as Chief Justice of the United States.

Nothing To See

Unless something really moves me there will be no updates to the blog for the remainder of the month.

I hope that everyone who supports my efforts here will understand the need to decompress from time to time.

I hope that you will return at the beginning of the Month when I again take pen in hand, so to speak, and again take on the expansiveness of Government in violation of the Constitution.

God Bless you and yours.

chas

Oddities Abound

It is no surprise to us who have a working understanding of the Constitution that since FDR and the Raw Deal, the USSC has largely ignored it’s role as stated and prescribed in the Constitution.  It has gone so far as ignore it when plainly unconstitutional programs such as Social Security came into being.  The Court in fact was implicitly involved in it’s crafting, (a violation of the separation of powers intent of the Constitution), as to help FDR write the bill so as to make it hard to challenge in Court.

While the USSC has in fact ignored it’s responsibility to maintain the standards and intent of the Constitution, they have gone far beyond the scope of the intent, created powers never granted to the Legislative Branch, the Executive Branch and have even created individual rights to the people that are not in the Constitution.

There is not a single one of the Founders that would have agreed with the notion that a right to privacy would include killing an unborn child, if it was not done for the sole reason of saving the Mother’s life.  The abdication of enumerated power is not acceptable, nor is it Constitutional.  To ignore the power of the Court to constrain the Congress, and to ignore that power is about as close to treason as one can get.

Congress is no better.  The War Powers Act is nothing more than a political scapegoat.  Only the Congress has the power to declare War, yet they have allowed the President to do so so that they can say we oppose the War, but we can’t vote against funding our troops.

By the same token, Congress can pass a bill “called” Defense Spending, load it with pet pork projects, costing billions of dollars, making it very hard for a President to VETO it.  Democrats just did this, the Bill was sent back, (Thank You President Obama), but it will still pass in some lighter form I bet in a month or so.  Right after they ram unconstitutional and mandatory health care down your throat.

One of the problems in this Country is, kids aren’t really taught the Constitution of the United States.  Every young person I talk to or hear from thinks there is no limit to Constitutional power of the Congress, so long as it doesn’t take away from their “rights”.  They don’t actually have a clue of what their rights are but that doesn’t matter.

Seems they think that their “rights” included what they want to do.  Doesn’t matter what it is they want to do, they think Government doesn’t have the right to stop them from doing what makes them feel good.  No one ever taught them that your “rights” end at the end of my nose.  In other words your rights do not trump mine.

But back to the point at hand.  Each Branch seems to want to pass the buck, until another Branch steps on their toes.  The toe stepping is going on, but it gives political cover, once again, to the President and Congress.

There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the USSC to power to interfere, and that is the word, with the operations of war.  War is the responsibility of the President and Congress.  It makes no difference if it is detainees, carpet bombing or tribunals conducted by the military.  The USSC is simply not equipped or empowered by the Constitution to handle such responsibilities.

We are in danger of becoming subject to the rule of the Courts, who are not elected but appointed by the President and serve for life.  The court must be reigned in at some point, before it is too late to do so.

chas

“Rebellion to Tyranny is Obedience to God”

Clowns To The Left Of Me….

…Jokers To The Right.

In one of the dumbest answers provided from this Administration yet, we have another reason why a bomber was permitted on a plane with “hot shorts”.  “The system worked as it should have — which is why it failed. “

It seems that the reason it works is because it is so Politically Correct, as not to offend anyone, it failed because it is so Politically Correct.  Now if that makes sense to you, please stop reading right here because I can assure you won’t understand anything I am saying now, or ever again for that matter.

“At the end of the day, the thing that’s really going to make us safe is doing our job and identifying these people long before they get to the airport,” said James Carafano, foreign policy studies director at the Heritage Foundation.  How about we undertake 3 simple no-nonsense improvements?

1.,  If you live or come from a foreign Country, whose population is majority Muslim, search them with a great deal of diligence.

2.  When someone’s father tells the American Embassy that his son is nuts, you should think that he should be on a “no fly” list right then.

3.  Quit worrying about offending someone.  Start searching the “usual suspects”, that is people from those areas of the world that are mostly Muslim, since they are the ones who have the “hard on” against us.  If Muslims that aren’t trying to kill us are offended, tough chit.  It’s their “Brothers” that caused this situation, that put them in this position, so don’t blame the players, blame the game.

Stupid is, Part 2:

In a rush to be Politically Correct, to appease the left we started to send GITMO attendees to various home countries, like Yemen.   That policy has allowed at least a dozen former terrorist to rejoin Al Qaeda.  Let’s consider, or reconsider having detainees in our civilian courts getting let loose on our streets because of legal technicalities, as we all know happens.

On a good note, the President is now going to miss his rush to judgment to close GITMO.  It was ill-conceived from jump street and lucky for us all, the “Not In My Backyard” crowd deterred the haste to close GITMO and he now has to reconsider.

Now, the Administration is “considering” not sending any more “isolated violators” back to Yemen to rejoin this “isolated minority extremest” people who just happen to want us dead.

All I can say, it’s about time and thank you.

Vote For It First:

E.J. Dionne, Washington Post thinks the whole problem with Obamacare is the whole process “looked rather ugly”.

The whole plan got discredited in the, in the minds of some people because the legislative process looks really awful.  And the more the focus was on the legislative process, the more people said, “What’s going on here?” Once they pass a plan, you can actually talk about a plan.

Raise your hand if you think passing something none of us know absolutely anything about…  I didn’t think I’d get many takers on that.

Isn’t that kind of thinking rather obtaining a bottle of  prescription pills, taking a great deal of them and then reading the dosage requirements?  Of course if you do, the talking about it that you do will be with the Doctor AFTER they pump out the contents of your stomach.

I bring this up because of C-SPAN.  If you haven’t heard C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wants the Democrats to allow them to televised  the “secret talks”, that of course won’t then be secret, to show the American people just what we are getting into with this health care take over, I mean “reform”.

“The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety,” Lamb wrote. “We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multi-camera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool.“

On  THIS WEEK; Gibbs’ response: “Well, Jake, first of all, let’s take a step back and understand that this is a process legislatively that has played out over the course of nine months.  There have been a countless number of public hearings.  The Senate did a lot of their voting at 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning on C-SPAN.  A lot of this debate — I think what the president promised and pledged was so that you could see who was fighting for their constituents and who was fighting for drug and insurance companies…“

So far, that sounds like a NO to me.

“Well, but the bill gets put together on the floor of the Senate,” Gibbs said. “That’s where the bill got augmented.  And I think if you watched that debate — I don’t know — I wasn’t up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning for a lot of those votes, but I think if the American public had watched — has watched the committee process play out in both the House and the Senate, watched the process play out on both the floor and the — the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate, you’d have seen quite a bit of public hearing and public airing, and I think quite frankly, people have a pretty good sense of who is battling on behalf of thousands of lobbyists that are trying to protect drugs profits and insurance profits, and who’s fighting on behalf of middle-class Americans hoping once and for all to have access to affordable insurance and removing insurance company restrictions like discriminating against people that are sick.“

OK, that is an absolute NO.  Were you up at 1 and 2 AM watching the backdoor deals and bribes going on?  I know I wasn’t and they didn’t get to show them anyway since they were all done in “hat trick” Harry’s office.

I ask again, if this is such a great deal, why is Congress exempt from it, why is it being done in secret and why MUST it be rushed through?

I’m just asking.

chas

“Rebellion to Tyranny is Obedience to God”

I’ll See & Raise Your Trillion

The President has tossed all his eggs into one huge, already overstuffed basket, banking on his second term on passing a take over of the health care system.  Problem is the Congress, in trying to ram it threw in a hurry, raised way too many alarms in the American People.

For all his vaunted education, history obviously wasn’t part of the studies.  The last President who tried to fight a war and radically change the fundamentals of the Republic was LBJ.  It ended up so badly he wouldn’t even run for his second term.  At least FDR, when he went left coast with the Raw Deal, had 8 years to screw up the economy before he had to deal with war.

If the President has to offer “goodies” to get votes from his own party members, and they (the Congress) has to exempt themselves from the plan, how damn good can it possibly be?  Just how savvy is it to risk the economy of the Nation for 30 million people at the expense of 330 million?  Population is around 360 million, minus 30 million leaves 330 million.  Charity at knife point is theft.  Plain and simple.

Democrats seem to think that there is a moral duty implied in the Constitution that says we have to give up our income to help others.  I have no trouble helping others, just not at knife point.  The truth is that the Constitution is written to prevent Government from wasting our labors, to prevent Government from sending your paycheck to those who will not work, in order to keep Government as our servant, not the other way around.

The support for this bill has tanked, most notably, among the independents who won the President his seat.  Will he risk his seat for a second term to forward his agenda over the objections of the majority of the people?  He claims he will, but is willing to cut any deal and settle for any bill that looks as if a health care bill has been passed.

So far all I see is tax increases, money collected and nothing being solved or given until after elections are over.  This worries many Democrats who are up for reelection this year.  Month’s ahead of any so-called benefits and elections, come increases in health insurance premiums and taxes.  Some even consider this a death knoll for their reelection hopes.

The President claims that health care in this Country is in crisis.  I’m not so sure that creating another crisis isn’t merely exasperating the financial problems?  It is also not proving to be very effective against unemployment or terrorism.

Nightmare on Dems Street:

Last thing any Democrat wanted was a terror attack during the campaign last year.  It so happened, maybe not by accident, that there was none and so the war on terror became a non-issue during the campaign.  Now we have had one.  A failed one for sure, lucky for the 300 or so who survived, but it has produced the results that were predicted during the election campaign.

Response?  Lets talk about it, review it, maybe think that there really is a threat and we can blame it on Bush?  The President’s problem is he is inexperienced and was outed.  Hillary Clinton pointed it out, until she sold out for a better position, but that doesn’t change the fact that she was correct.

The President talks a good game, but symbolism doesn’t deter many terrorist.  And thus far it’s all talk.  As Toby Keith said; “A little less talk and a lot more action”.  The President has, for all his blather during the campaign, maintained many of the Bush Administrations policies, but it seems not quite enough.

Along with health care, this failed attempt at terrorism, will give a wedge to further erode the Democrats hold in the House of Congress.  For if nothing brings home policy to Americans, it’s allowing a known threat to happen, when we have lived in pretty much a safe environment.  Except for the Nobel Prize, the President has received nothing from the Countries overseas, has done nary a thing in any of the crisis areas, unless it was already a policy of Bush.

If 2010 doesn’t see a change in power in Congress, we will see a change and I’m not sure it will be one we want to accept or welcome.  I’m afraid 2012 will be a bit too late.  Think about that this year.

chas

“Rebellion to Tyranny is Obedience to God”

Difference Without Distinction

No matter what the left says about the Bush Administration the current Administration continues to apply a former policy of that past Administration.  All the bombastic shrill complaints during the campaign, Obama has not only embraced the policy, he has further encouraged it.

“Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.”

But hypocrisy has never really been a problem for the left-wing fringe nuts.

If You Were Watching:

You were sure to miss most of this.  You’d have missed it because the major media ignored it for the most part.  In no special order:

Van Jones, White House Green Jobs adviser, was also an self-admitted Communist and anti-American who believed that we faked or caused 9-11.   This self-avowed Marxist was an early entry into what the Obama Administration had in mind.

Acorn still is in business, even though the illegal activities continue, they have the balls to sue the Government to get their ‘Constitutional” right to Federal Funds.  I can’t find the right to commit fraud in the Constitution, but the MSM doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.

Global Hoaxing, was a big story, unless you only watch CNN or MSNBC.  Even Comedy Central got laughs from the data deleting and changing.  All the others ignored it, except for FOX of course.

What Tea Party?  You mean those teabaggers who are racist and right-wing lunatics?  Never happen, or if it did FOX made it happen.

President Obama’s “safe schools czar,” Kevin Jennings, promoted homosexuality and pornographic material to 7th graders.  That’ll make Schools safer I bet.

How stimulating is this; Democratic districts have received nearly twice as much stimulus money as Republican districts.  Blue districts garnered the majority of the $787 stimulus package, getting an average of $439 million per district to the Republican average of $232 million.

DUH:

High Heels Lead to Foot Pain.  I think walking on glass barefoot might do the same.  I hope tax dollars didn’t pay for that little tidbit.

Men Much More Interested Than Women in Casual Sex.  Can you say Tiger Woods?

Children Are Affected When a Parent Suffers From Depression.  Kids suffer from embarrassment from parents also.

Coed Dorms Fuel Sex and Drinking.  Isn’t that the reason for coed dorms?  Did some idiot think there would be a different result?

Sweets Taste Better When You’re High.  I’m thinking that my wife is going to disagree.  I think she would say that eating sweets MAKES you high.  I’m just guessing of course, but I’ve seen what happens to her eyes when our Aussie friends send her a tin of Tim Tams.

There are others on the list, but I am only willing to slap you with some much stupidly this close to the end of the year.

I would like to express my thanks to everyone that takes time out of your busy lives to read this little corner of the internet of mine.  I cannot express my gratitude in words that match my feelings.  So allow me to impart upon you a greeting my Grandfather always said around this time of the year.

I wish each and every one of you and those you love a very healthy, joyous and prosperous New Year in 2010.  May the Good Lord’s blessings follow you, keep you safe and provide you with the love you all deserve.

chas

“Rebellion to Tyranny is Obedience to God”

Dropped the Ball

Either the American voter has dropped the ball or the system has.

Even though there are certain enumerated powers granted to the Congress, they are limited in those powers, in theory, as the Founders envisioned our Government to operate.

How is it possible that Americans haven’t highlighted the major reason to fight and object to this Obamacare bill is the powers enumerated in the Constitution simply do not give the Federal Government the power to mandate Americans to purchase health insurance from private companies under threat of fines for failing to comply.

How can anyone that has even the slightest knowledge of the Constitution think that is even part of the same universe as the Founding Fathers idea of America?

I believe that the real problem here is the fault of not in a small part the parents of our kids, but mostly the local school systems that have emasculated their power in favor of the Federal Government, that wants our kids to be ignorant of the principles in which our Republic was founded.  They want each generation to believe that the Government owes them, secures for them whatever they desire, that all things good are provided by the Government.

Bait & Switch:

Not that we really needed a reminder that integrity is pretty rare or at least for sale at the right price, but Ben Nelson is only the tip of the iceberg.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, after securing a sweetheart deal for his state as part of the health insurance reform bill, said Tuesday that three other senators have told him they want to bargain for the same kind of special treatment.

“Three senators came up to me just now on the (Senate) floor, and said, ‘Now we understand what you did. We’ll be seeking this funding too’,” Nelson said.

I don’t want to be obvious here, but what the hell did Nelson think was going to be the end result of his blackmailing of Harry Reid?  Or maybe better said Harry Reid’s coercion or bribe for Nelson’s vote?

What is obvious is these people put as little thought into their deals as they do the bills they craft.  And the final product matters less than the appearance of getting something done.  So far, all I see is a bill that does nothing in the way of actual healthcare reform as a bill that Obooboo can say is a start in his State of the Union Address, but it does nothing more than raise taxes, to pay for things Americans will never receive.

Obama said in August 2008, at a town-hall meeting: “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”

Reid is carving out deals, behind closed doors, buying votes at the tune of hundred of millions of dollars.  Does this even resemble what Obooboo promised in any stretch of your imagination?  Many of us were pretty certain that most of the campaign promises were nothing but hot air, most of the Nation was fooled.

Sen. Nelson might now understand what he has started, but I’m not so sure that it will have a lasting effect on any of them, or the American Voter.

Tyranny always comes in small increments.  Speed in such matters always raises concerns.

chas

“Rebellion to Tyranny is Obedience to God”

… – - – …

Can we PLEASE save our Country?  How many more dollars are we going to print, that we can’t cover, that are going to be spent for expenses that are not part of the enumerated powers granted to the Federal Government by Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution?

“The 1,000-plus-page bill covers spending for the Departments of Education, State, Health and Human Services, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, among others. In all, six of the 12 spending bills Congress is required to pass each year is folded into one measure that raises spending for its designated programs by an average of about 10 percent, or well above the inflation rate.”

I find it funny that you can stick 5,000+ pork spending projects in a 1,000+ page bill.

The legislation also:

– Includes an improved binding arbitration process to challenge the decision by General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC to close more than 2,000 dealerships.

– Renews a federal loan guarantee program for steel companies.

– Permits detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be transferred to the U.S. for trial, but not to be released.

– Calls for federal worker pay increases averaging 2 percent.

By The Way, the reports of how many in the Government make over $100K a year, yep sure that’s true.  Where I work I’ve seem 50% of the actual workers retire and an increase of 50% of Engineers hired.  Most of them make at or over $100K.  The people who do the actual work, 2% doesn’t even cover the increase in their Healthcare.

Another Land Grab?

Upwards of 40 percent of all land in the United States is already under some form of government control or ownership — 800 million to 900 million acres out of America’s total 2.2 billion acres.

The government now appears poised to wield greater control over private property on a number of fronts. The battle over private property rights has intensified since 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo v. City of New London case that the government could take property from one group of private landowners and give it to another.

I would say that the largest land grab ever was under the watchful eye of Teddy Roosevelt.  The National Parks sucked up some of the most valuable land this Country had to offer.  And though it should belong to all of us, they pass rules and laws that totally restrict what the land can be used for and what you can even do upon it.

Do you know how much land the Federal Government is actually permitted to control according to the Constitution?  Try this;

Article 1, Section 8, para 17,

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings…

The District at present is 68 sq. miles.  Any questions about the Government expanding it’s range and power?  We’ve gone from a couple of seaports and weapon storage areas to 900 million acres of land.

Didn’t get the message?

Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr. [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

But as things would have it, just like the rest of the Global Hoaxing crowd, Algore is lying to everyone.

However, the climatologist whose work Gore was relying upon dropped the former vice president in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr. Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

I call this a bald face lie.  As most liberals often do, he has another explanation for it.

Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 percent figure was one used by Dr. Maslowski as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Gore.

At some point everyone will get the entire picture, which is Global Warming is as big a hoax as Global Cooling was, Y2K, Or Climate Change.

chas

“Rebellion to Tyranny is Obedience to God”